enthuzimuzzyme

[enthuzimuzzyme]

Reblogging here, too!!

@lotusquil brought it to my attention that I can add illustrations to my “A Matter of Life and Death” chapters! So that might be a thing that happens from here on out (schedule willing 🤞) though I’m not promising anything too complex, just some sketches for visual interest

Anyway! I don’t really listen to Chappell Roan?? BUT Good Luck, Babe! Came up on the radio and it reminds me a lot of the dynamic between these characters so I drew this out between finals this week to the song!

[enthuzimuzzyme]

I did not reblog here!! What!! Sorry guys, we're here now!!

Hey everybody!!

Ready for chapter three??

Excellent because it is now UP and ready for reading!

Had kind of a… chaotic weekend 😅 to put it mildly, so no extracurricular art got done, but! I did find one Hades and Pers sketch I’ve never shared (pretty sure??) so I’m sharing below the cut

One other little update about this month’s chapter:

I have two back-to-back chapters that are pretty short. They’re filler/context chapters, so I’m considering doubling up and posting Chapter 4 on the 28th. We’ll see how that pans out because I might just plan a special piece or something for later this month, too!

You can read my whole fic, "A Matter of Life and Death" here

Anyhoozles, please enjoy! Thank you for all the support and comments so far, you’re the best, folks!

[enthuzimuzzyme]

Head on over when ya got a second!

Fic update!!

Chapter 2 is up folks!! You can find it here

I am still trying to figure out how to navigate publishing work on Ao3 so bare with me!

AND a HUGE thank you to all the wonderful people who left me kind birthday messages!! I have seen your notes and comments and appreciate it immensely (seriously, I might cry)

I hope you all enjoy Chapter 2!! If any of you feel so inclined, I would love to hear your thoughts!

[enthuzimuzzyme]

Hey y'all!

"A Matter of Life and Death" chapter 2 is scheduled to be posted tomorrow!

As a little birthday present to myself (Yay 27!! 🥳) aaaand because it's the Equinox -- a win-win!

I had a busy month adjusting to my new school schedule, but if I can swing it, we should have some sticker designs ready to share for tomorrow!

[enthuzimuzzyme]

Also!! Couple little updates on “A Matter of Life and Death”

Great news!! My Ao3 account got approved! So I will be sharing over there from here on out! My username is @momithastobeclever

Aaaaand… I was going to share it on the fourteenth for consistency, but now I am debating posting chapter two on the spring equinox for the ✨effect✨

What do you all think??

[enthuzimuzzyme]

Reblogging here as well!

Also!! Couple little updates on “A Matter of Life and Death”

Great news!! My Ao3 account got approved! So I will be sharing over there from here on out! My username is @momithastobeclever

Aaaaand… I was going to share it on the fourteenth for consistency, but now I am debating posting chapter two on the spring equinox for the ✨effect✨

What do you all think??

[enthuzimuzzyme]

A Matter of Life and Death

A Disneyfied Retelling of the Famous Underworld Love Story

Introduction:

There once was a lonely king...

Who was tasked to eternally watch over the deceased and the damned under the earth. Sounds familiar, right? We've all heard that story told a million times before, in a million different ways. But, despite all the misfortune that befell him, Hades remains, to this day, a living testament to the power of love.

How? How could a grumpy, ill-tempered death god really represent the power of love, you might ask. Well, I'm about to tell you– in about twenty chapters.

This is a story about how the bitter Lord of the Underworld came to meet his much beloved Queen, and the controversy their unlikely union has stirred up over the millennia.

Chapter One:

New Beginnings Meet Old Endings

     Spring. Hades thought bitterly. Again.

      The Lord of the Underworld watched with glowing eyes as a single flower petal bobbed slowly passed his nose. Snatching it out of the air in one swift motion, Hades reduced the leaflet to embers in a small violet puff of smoke. Hermes, who’d been relaxing on the bow of an olive tree nearby, eyed him discomfitly from his perch.

     “The appeal continues to escape me.” Hades jeered, flicking flakes of stiff gray ash away from his fingers.

     Hades was on one of his semi-regular reconnaissance missions, gathering any salvageable blackmail material he could on his brothers. Since his retrieval from Tartarus, he’d been under close observation by his Olympian constituents. They couldn’t risk another titanic fiasco.

     Poor Hermes had even (begrudgingly) been assigned his not-so-temporary chaperone. How hard could it be? Zeus had mused. Report any suspicious behavior back to me. Which had sounded simple enough at the time, but everything Hades did seemed suspicious and keeping him out of trouble proved more difficult than Hermes could’ve imagined. Especially when it was a slow day in the Underworld.

     Suddenly, a faint orange glow—like a loose beam of sunlight—caught Hades’s attention from some distance away.

     “Who is that?” Hades whistled.  Hermes turned to see what could possibly be interesting enough to distract him from grousing about Spring.

     The messenger god squinted through his spectacles and caught a glimpse of her.

     Across the field from them, standing under an apricot tree, was a woman. Only, Hades judged by the way she glowed, and the way she was able to simply poof! fruit out thin air,  that she couldn’t possibly have been mortal.

     The pair of deities were close enough to this mystery goddess that the hankering God of the Dead could just make out how lovely she was; long copper curls, gentle, focused green eyes. Even from this distance, her benign disposition washed them both in a warm, comfortable sense of ease — the kind that Spring was known for. It was almost as if she herself was the season incarnate.

      One by one, the goddess continued plucking fruits lazily from the branches and dropping them into a basket at her feet.

     Hermes adjusted his spectacles, just barely catching an eager Hades by the neck of his chiton with the arc of his caduceus.

     “Whoa, whoa— cool it, Ace. That one’s off limits.”

     Hades tossed his hands down at his sides in frustration and rolled his eyes.

     “What’s the big deal? Geez, it’s like you topsiders are committed to keeping me from having a love life, like honestly.”

     The messenger deity wafted around Hades with ease, tossing a thumb over his shoulder toward the mystery goddess.

     “You know who that is, don’t you? That’s Demeter’s kid, man. Hustling her is a huge no-no.”

     “Hustle? Please — who said anything about hustling? I’m just trying to get the gal’s name.”

     Hermes tilted his little purple spectacles down with a skeptical look. The Lord of the Underworld ignored him.

     “So, you know her?” Hades had an all-too-familiar and unsettling gleam in his eye. The Lord of the Dead threw an arm around Hermes’s shoulders and offered him an impish grin.

     “What’s her name, huh? Hermes, babe —throw a death god a bone, will ya?”

     Hermes looked about ready to protest when all the bells went off in his head at once. Ding! Ding! Ding! —  maybe he was onto something here.

      With Hades distracted — and happy —chasing a wife around like a love-struck puppy dog, he and the rest of the Olympians could take a load off. No more half-baked schemes or hostile takeover attempts. No more pointless intrusions or aggressive come-ons. And most importantly, Hermes wouldn’t have to take time out of his already overbooked schedule to babysit. They’d be sitting pretty for the rest of eternity. It was perfect.

      At the poor gal’s expense, He thought only slightly ruefully. Or not, maybe by some miracle she’ll actually like him.

     They’ll work it out, a desperate Hermes concluded mentally, waving his hand in the air, trying to ease his slightly guilty conscience.

     “What are you asking me for? You should ask her yourself, you know— the old-fashioned way.” The messenger god shrugged nonchalantly with a smile teetering on sly, tapping his caduceus in his open palm.

     Hades fluffed out his chiton and smoothed back his smoldering coiffure.

     “Sit tight, flyboy, and watch the master at work—”

     Now, it would have been difficult to miss Hades’s broad physique looming above her like a black cloud, blocking her strip of sun, but if she knew he was standing there beside the trunk she didn’t acknowledge him. The beautiful mystery goddess simply continued to pick tiny golden fruits off the tree and drop them into her already overfilled basket.

     Hades cleared his throat after a few moments, and she looked up at him only briefly.

     “Look— harvest complaints are Demeter’s department.” She said, a pinch sourly, “I just work here.”

     “If you have a problem with this year’s crop, take it up with her.”

     Hades blinked.

     “Seriously? That’s what you think I’m doing?”

     She eyed him for a moment. He waited for her to show some sign of recognition, but the goddess didn’t even flinch. Hades gestured toward her with outstretched hands.

     “No offense, but your Ma was the last thing on my mind when I saw you standing over here— I mean, c’mon, really? Pretty little thing like you, all by yourself? I’da been a fool to pass up the opportunity to introduce myself.”

     He thrust out his long skeletal fingers in greeting as if to shake her hand.

     “Hey, how ya doin’? Hades, Lord of the Dead, Reaper of Souls, yada yada. You get it.”

     She chuckled softly and swept bronze curls over her shoulder, her tenor lightening some. She manifested another perfectly ripe apricot on a low hanging branch.

     “Oh, I’m familiar.”

     Hades pursed his lips and steepled his fingers with a smirk.

     “I see my reputation precedes me— what am I, some kinda celebrity up there on the roof of the world?”

     “More like a felon,” She retorted with a dry smile, turning back to her work. Charmed by her repartee, Hades appeared on the other side of the tree and leaned forward onto the trunk.

     “That’s cute— you’re cute— Well, you know, beggars can’t be choosers I guess but, hey— I saw you standing over here, all by your lonesome and thought you could use some company. What’s your name, chickadee?”

     The mystery goddess popped out a hip and rooted her palm to it. Hermes watched Hades’s desperate flirtations, amused, and slightly hopeful, from a safe distance. He’d half expected the almost entirely anti-social Persephone to brush Hades off immediately and was pleasantly surprised that—somehow— the God of the Dead had held his ground.

     Hermes crossed his fingers behind his back. Home stretch— here’s hoping he doesn’t blow it.

     “Take a wild guess.” She replied. Hades’s reputation for hitting on nearly every unattended goddess in the Pantheon wasn’t lost on her, but she was bored, and this beat the hours she’d otherwise be spending listening to her mother wax poetic over a tablet of annual crop output.

     He rubbed his hands together and grinned.

     “Oh, Ho Ho— you’re not going to make this easy on me, are you? Let’s see, let’s see…”

     The Lord of the Underworld slumped coolly against the trunk, scratching his chin thoughtfully. He studied her with a bold and scrupulous eye. Hades wasn’t one to back off in the face of a challenge, and for someone who lacked patience in pretty much every capacity, he had a knack for getting himself mixed up in long-term plots.

     “Judging by your accoutre— very lovely, by the way, really brings out the green in your eyes— you’re some… kinda… nature goddess, am I right?”

     “You’re getting warmer.” She tapped the tip of her nose, tickled.

     “Something springy— like uh, Juniper? Nah. Jennifer maybe? Josephine, Jacqueline?”

     The goddess rolled her eyes, and he could tell he was beginning to get under her skin, “What were you the god of again? Annoying people to death? You aren’t even going alphabetically.”

      “What can I say? I like to start in the middle and work my way out,”

     Hades walked two fingers up the ridge of her shoulder where she swatted them away casually with the back of her hand. Unbothered by her annoyance, Hades smirked. Sensing he was finally starting to wear her down, the death god dug his heels in and leaned closer to her.

     “You know what, I think I’ve got it— Jane right? Maybe it’s Julia? Johanna? Listen babe, I can do this all day.”

     “That’s it—you’re impossible.” She threw up her hands with an airy, exasperated sigh and bent to gather her spoils.

     Hades chuckled, reached around her and stole one of her apricots. The goddess lifted a brow and pursed her lips.

     “You know babe, I’m pretty sure this is the longest any goddess has tolerated me, like ever, I’m starting to think I’m growing on you...” He wiggled his brows at his own pun, rolling the fruit back and forth in his palm as it shriveled into a wrinkly, indistinct lump, decaying nearly instantly at his touch. She let out an exaggerated groan of disapproval.

     “Unbelievable. He makes jokes now.”

     Hades wiped his hands clean on his chiton of the rotted apricot juice and gave a defensive shrug, gesturing animatedly at her person.

     “What? That was some of my best material. C’mon, seriously, Petals— can I call you Petals? — what’s a guy gotta do to get a girl’s name huh? You want me to dance a jig? I’ll do it, don’t tempt me,”

     The goddess set her closed fists on her waist and sighed wearily.

     “You really aren’t going to leave me alone until I tell you, huh?”

     Hades examined his fingernails and gave her an obstinate shake of his head.

     “Persephone,” she said finally, extending out her hand to him. “Goddess of Spring.”

     Hades’s face lit up with a smug look of satisfaction. Using her outstretched hand as leverage, he pulled her in just close enough that she could feel his breath on her face.

     “Charmed,” He hummed, pressing a loud kiss to the back of her hand.

     “So, Persy—"

     “Persephone—"

     “Yeah, yeah— right, right— Persy,”

      Before Hades could finish his thought, Persephone carefully pulled her hand away from him with a pleasantly bemused smile. Stepping backward, she bumped the heel of her sandal against her basket of apricots.

     “Sorry— Hades, this has been fun, but I know for a fact I’m not supposed to be talking to you and I’m sure you don’t want to get caught wandering around up here, so….” Persephone tossed her hand up in a parting gesture before collecting her fruit basket and leaning it expertly against her hip. Judging he had maybe a matter of seconds before she left and never came back, Hades lifted his hands haltingly.

     “Yeah— and if you know anything about me, then I’m sure you know I don’t follow the rules very well.” He insisted, following closely beside her.

     Persephone quirked a brow.

     “Hold on— listen, listen,”

     Hades floated around her silently like an early morning fog rolling off the Aegean. It might have bothered Persephone how quiet and quick he moved had she not already seen him do it once before. He plucked a freshly opened apricot blossom off the branch closest to them and delicately pinned back her hair with it.

     “You’re alone— I’m alone, what say we be alone together, huh?” He clasped his fingers together, “You look like you could use a break, and I could use some feminine company,”

     He expected immediate rejection. Every moment she spent not turning her nose up at him was, in his mind, a tiny victory. He figured it was now or never — cast in his line and see what he caught.

      “You mean, like a date?”

     “Yes! Exactly like a date, you read my mind,”

     She seemed to consider his request. Which to him was a good sign. Hades felt a long-buried part of himself begin to feel hopeful. What were the odds he might find himself so close to success? About as unlikely as you’d think.

     “As tempting as that sounds, we just met and—" Persephone smiled, delicately unpinning the blossom and placing it in his open palm, “I’m on duty,”

     “Semantics. C’mon, the world’s not gonna end if you play hookie for a day. What are you, miss-goodie-two-sandals or somethin’? Don’t you ever cut loose?” Hades crossed his index finger over his heart, “I promise I’m a better time than I look—"

     When she still didn’t seem convinced, Hades began to feel defeated. Across the field, the messenger god hovered.

     That’s my cue.

     Hermes appeared beside Hades before he could protest further and whispered behind his hand into the Lord of the Underworld’s ear,

     “Tell her you’ll bring your dog— chicks dig dogs, works like a charm.”

     Hermes grinned at the shrewd Persephone innocently. Hades straightened out the clasp on his chiton, cleared his throat and folded his hands once again.

     “Listen— I’ll bring my dog.”

     “Cerberus—?”

     Hades nodded. Her eyes glittered.

     Eagerly, and with considerably less hesitation than either visiting deity expected, Persephone yanked forward on Hades’s sleeve and blurted out an excited,

     “Deal!”

[enthuzimuzzyme]

Resharing on the writing account so I don’t miss anybody with this post!

Hey, everybody!!

Tomorrow is the big day — I do, in fact, have a post prepared to share with chapter one, as promised!

I am SO excited (and extremely nervous too!) to share this story with all of you!

I have received so much love and so many kind responses to the work I’ve shared over the last couple of years, and now it is finally time to start posting all of the content I have cooked up for this AU.

That said, I did, unfortunately, miss my window to procure an Ao3 account. As of right now, I won’t be able to share any writing there until March. So, I will be sharing chapter one of “A Matter of Life and Death” here on my writing account (@enthuzimuzzyme) tomorrow instead.

Once I get everything sorted out with my Ao3 account, I will post all subsequent chapters there!

If anyone has any recommendations for alternative fanfic sites, I would be glad to hear them! I haven’t publicly shared writing in years, any help would be much appreciated.

Please feel free to drop an ask in my askbox and I will make new arrangements!

One more thing before I wrap up this post, I will be starting school again at the beginning of March, so I will only be posting chapters once a month until further notice — however! My plan is to have some filler visuals/short comics to go with them, so there should be two updates monthly.

Anyway…

Y’all are the best!!

[enthuzimuzzyme]

Trying NOT to forget to share relevant content on this blog 😂 some development work I’ve done of my characters!

Second post of the night!

Some character exploration stuff I’ve had sitting around for a while, I go back and forth on sharing this kind of stuff because I can never really tell if it’s good enough to post? Anyway, spur of the moment decision, so here they are!

My characters, Lilith, Yusef Mustafa and Abraham the Mage

Some of these are oldies but still relevant to the story I’m trying to tell! Lots of loose sketches, nothing really tight because I’m still working out designs (especially Yusef’s)

There are some bird men floating around too, but Khonsu is getting a bit of an update (and I’m fleshing out his own human disguise)

[enthuzimuzzyme]

Some more story development sillies, mostly just a bunch of doodles or sketches I’ve been holding onto for ages

[enthuzimuzzyme]

I want to get into the habit of sharing more of my visual development art for my novel — most of it is rough or unfinished, but that’s kind of fun right?

Anywho, my nearly complete cast of characters and a lot of the recent design work I’ve done for them!

[enthuzimuzzyme]

Bonus drawing I forgot to include with the others… whoops!

[enthuzimuzzyme]

Let’s get the ball rolling over here with some oldish/rough/unfinished doodles of Hades and Persephone from late last year

That middle one is a panel from a fifteen part comic that’s still in its veeeery early stage, but who knows when I’ll get around to finishing it!

[enthuzimuzzyme]

Here's a little compilation of some of my recent illustrations featuring my characters Lilith, Khonsu and Abraham from the novel I am writing! Don't ask me why I consistently and repeatedly forget to include the actual main character in any of these! It's a thing I'm working on

Story summary featured below! I've talked a ton about the characters on Instagram but this'll be the first I actually talk plot!

Yusef Mustafa is the 12-year-old son of recently deceased archeologists, who's death he attributes to their former employer, business tycoon and rare antiquities dealer Baron Yates. After eavesdropping on a private exchange between Baron and his mysterious and dubious new client, Al-Razi, Yusef finds himself enmeshed in a millennia old race for the Most Powerful Artifact Known To Man. After begrudgingly partnering with unlikely treasure-protecting duo Lilith, a grouchy, down-on-her-luck goddess from the dawn of civilization and her bizarre companion Abraham, who seems to be more than human, Yusef discovers that the “paperweight” his father gave him is actually an ancient map that'll somehow get them to the artifact before Razi. If he could only figure out how to open it, that is. Together, the trio evade monsters and travel halfway across the globe to find the world's oldest and most sought after treasure.

[enthuzimuzzyme]

Hey, folks!! Trying to get things rolling with this first post, I kinda want to treat this blog like a kind of book club? If that makes sense? A close-knit community of storytellers blah blah.

Only we aren't all reading the same book, so maybe not so much like a book club!

Anyway, welcome! Prepare for the info dump of a lifetime!