#<-technically i guess lmao | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

boo-cool-robot · 3 months ago

Text

Hieron Zine Comic: The Violence of Its Maintenance

[Read the left side as one storyline, the right side as another]

"For every inside, an outside." / "Every border implies the violence of its maintenance."

For me and @wellnoe's piece for the Hieron Zine, we were excited to tell a story about Hella’s semi-involuntary status as a mascot of Ordennan empire and borders as a literal technology of death that played with comic borders and formatting! The title is, of course, from the Ayesha A. Siddiqi quote.

Script for the comic below the cut, which also serves as a rough image description:

Layout note: Panels are small relative to the page and “float” in the gutter space. Adelaide swims freely between them and speaks to Hella inside the panels’ borders. The comic is laid out vertically, mostly in two columns. Panels on the left are labeled L, the center labeled M, and right labeled R. Panel numbers denote which row of the overall page they’re on.

Page 1: 3 Rows

Panel M.1.A: Adaire hunched over a map of Hieron in a dimming twilight room.

Panel M.1.B: Close up of the map having Nacre added to it near the shore, and an outline sketched of its border, the pencil in Adaire’s hand.

Panel M.1.C: Adaire’s hand in close-up, partially erasing the border around Nacre.

Panel L.2: Hella outside the Ordennan border, at a tall gate. A guard looks at her suspiciously from the other side.

Adelaide to Panel L.2: Adelaide looks at Hella condescendingly.

Adelaide: Do you imagine that walls will keep Nacre’s gift out?

Panel R.2: Hella and Hadrian ride in a halfling-driven cart through the refugee camp towards the Ordennan military camp. Hadrian watches Hella for her reaction to seeing the refugees.

Panel L.3: Hella displays the emblem of the Tristes to a crowd of cheering soldiers, brandishing her sword in a stabbing gesture.

Soldiers: Is that– From the cleansing of Nacre– She killed the queen!

Adelaide to panel L.3: For every inside…

Panel R.3: Stornras Glasseye shows Hella and Hadrian a map of Ordenna’s planned invasion of Velas.

Adelaide to panel R.3: …an outside.

Page 2: 4 Rows

Panel L.1: Hella reads the book about her family being a line of traitors, inside the undersea cave. She is hunched over awkwardly, wet from swimming in, and visibly perturbed.

Adelaide to Panel L.1: Adelaide reads over Hella’s shoulder. She’s draped over the panel like a cat, one hand dangling inside and the other holding an apple to her mouth.

Adelaide: Our dear father did like that ancestor of yours, only for her to betray Nacre and then Ordenna. Varals love to hang people out to dry.

Panel R.1: Hadrian and Hella interrogating Iduna Fel. Hella holds a torch up. Iduna, seated and hands bound, looks up at them and snarls at the torch, speaking of how Quintrona should burn Rosemerrow to stop the undead.

Iduna Fel: We should be burning every place–every person–the curse has touched.

Adelaide to Panel R.1: A family of traitors fits right in with the Tristes.

Panel L.2.A: Hella is on tour of Ordenna. She looks out distantly at the countryside. A clothesline with clothing hanging from them forming figures like people separates Hella in the panel from a mine like the ones her father worked.

Panel L.3.B: Hella on tour in an urban center, looking lost. Train tracks separate Hella from a guard station.

Ordennan soldiers: Queenkiller! It’s the Queenkiller!

Adelaide to panels L.2: Adelaide’s teeth are bared, her lazy demeanor dropping for one vicious moment.

Adelaide:At least I remember that you should be called Kingkiller as well.

Panel R.2: Hella and Hadrian walking back through the refugee camp. Refugees do laundry, multiple clotheslines crossing the panel, the clothes partially obscuring Hella and Hadrian.

Adelaide to panel R.2: Do you believe your people to be better than me? They decide who dies to expand the borders of Ordenna.

Panel L.3: Hella marching in front of a company of Anchor in a square formation, Ordennan soldiers crowding around them. Hella is smiling stiffly, uncomfortable. She is wearing a shiny new uniform.

Panel R.3: Hella standing equally stiffly in front of a line of Pala-din that guard the Ordennan camp from the refugees. She watches a circle of refugees cooking and crafting, going about the business of their survival. Some are visibly undead. Two of the refugees are a Nacreite young Black sibling pair with an older boy and younger girl, invoking Calhoun and Adelaide. Hadrian in the background examines a pala-din, his stance mirroring theirs.

Adelaide to panel R.3: Adelaide looks at the siblings in panel R.3 but speaks over her shoulder to Hella on the left.

Adelaide: Is it so monstrous that Nacre grows so that more may live after death?

Panel L.4: Hella alone in a lavish Ordennan bedroom, looking out of place and small. Maybe in plain underclothes and curled up on a chair, looking angry.

Hella: Yes!

Her dialogue fills up the panel, crowding her.

Panel R.4: The refugees notice Hella and Hadrian and look at them warily. The boy steps in front of his sister. Hella looks small in the crowd of people. She holds a hand out to the boy.

Page 3: 3 Rows

Panel L.1: Hella in a lavish Ordennan ceremonial chamber, on a stage. She is dressed in fine clothing given to her. A pearl-studded brooch with an Ordennan motif is being pinned on her by some military-uniformed functionary.

Military functionary: For you, the spoils of our first battle.

Gathered soldiers and civilians: Queenkiller! Queenkiller! Queenkiller!

Panel R.1: Hella makes an awkward ‘open your hand’ gesture to the boy, who warily opens his hand.

Refugees: Isn’t she….That’s the Queenkiller. The Queenkiller?

Panel L2: Hella, with her head bowed, has her arms and shoulders draped with garlands of gems and pearls looted from Nacre. The ends of the strands run down out of the bottom and side of the panel.

Military functionary: May you always bear the fruits of our holy empire.

Panel R.2: The boy has a handful of apple candies poured into his palm. He looks up, defiantly. A few candies fall down outside the panel.

Adelaide, to both panels L.2 and R.2: She holds the end of a pearl garland in one hand and an apple candy in another

Adelaide: Then tell me…What are you going to do about it, Hella Varal?

Panel M.3.A: Adaire’s hand drawing the refugee camp in Knoll Hollow into a map of Rosemerrow.

Panel M.3.B: The Ordennan military camp being drawn outside the refugee camp.

Panel M.3.C: The wall around Rosemerrow being drawn between the refugee and Ordennan camps as a border.

Title Text: The Violence of Its Maintenance

Subtitle: Story and words by Will Xia (boo-cool-robot)

Art and lettering by Brenna (wellnoe)

#friends at the table #hieron zine #hella varal #hieron #adelaide triste #sorry if the script is also bad to read. drew brenna a diagram to go with it lmao.#brenna: every time we do a project together you ask me to draw something technically challenging #the red candies are apple candies in particular btw #because apples have begun being eaten outside nacre #I was really thinking about consumer goods as a reflection of colonial relations after watching in the mood for love last year #mine #I should have a tag for things me and brenna make together I guess....#a podcast about sadness and that's it period

141 notes · View notes

magniloquent-raven · 9 months ago

Text

Day 4: Supportive Boyfriends

and for my next (LATE, SO LATE) @bucktommypositivityweek contribution. KITTEN FIC.

(read on ao3)

The 118 doesn't have a baby box.

In fact there aren't any in the state of California at all. Buck looked it up, after Maddie's postpartum episode. When half his family was missing and there wasn't much he could do besides wait and... think about things.

So he thought about safe haven laws. Read up on the training seminars for first responders who want to be better equipped to deal with hand-offs. Read a bunch of other stuff he sort of wishes he hadn't. Spent the next week haunted by articles about abandoned children.

He considered talking to Bobby about it. Only partly to ask him if they should get a box for the firehouse. Partly because Buck wasn't sure how he felt about the whole thing, and Bobby always seemed to have answers. But he never worked up the nerve to broach the subject.

And now. Bobby's not captain anymore, and Buck really can't imagine Gerrard giving a shit about any of this.

So, they don't have a box. But.

Well, this isn't a human baby. It's not like the same rules apply.

Buck has to wonder if wires got crossed somewhere, because. Someone left a kitten. Outside the firehouse.

Buck was just going to grab something—he can't remember what—from his Jeep, when he spotted an unlabelled cardboard box on the pavement, up against the side of the building. His first thought was bomb.

Until it meowed at him. A tiny, high-pitched peep of a meow.

Kind of scared the shit out of him, if he's being honest.

There's only one. All alone in the box. A poofy grey thing wriggling around half buried in an off-white towel. Like a very ambitious dust bunny with big round blue eyes and skinny legs. It wobbles slowly over a fold in the towel with all the effort of someone scaling a mountain.

Buck crouches next to the box, and pokes a finger inside.

"Hey, buddy," he murmurs, holding very still while the kitten inches towards his hand and squeaks. It's unclear whether there are teeth in that little maw. That means it's really young, right? Too young to be left alone for very long.

Shit, how is he going to explain this to Gerrard? He's still got, like, 12 hours left on his shift, but someone has to feed this thing. How long can kittens go without food?

Oh, it does have teeth. Really teeny ones. They're ineffectively poking his knuckle.

Buck fishes his phone out of his jacket—with the hand that isn't currently being drooled on—intending to go to Google for answers. How to figure out how old a kitten is. How often do kittens need to be fed. Do cats get separation anxiety. He has a million questions.

Only he doesn't pull up his browser. He calls Tommy.

It's a whim. Barely a seed of an idea. But when he unlocked his phone the first thing he saw was their text history (he'd been complaining about Gerrard off-and-on all morning, and Tommy had been sending random updates about all the chores he'd been getting done—his last message was a picture of a mop with no context) and he just thought... Tommy will know what to do. Not in so many words, more a feeling. Comfort and certainty, just from seeing Tommy's picture in a little bubble at the top of his screen.

"Evan?" Tommy answers almost immediately, and there's a subtle undercurrent of worry in his tone. Buck winces. Right, calling out of the blue while he's at work would look. Bad.

"I'm okay!" He says quickly, all in one breath. Then pauses. The kitten squints up at him, meowing again, long and loud. Its whole fluffy face scrunches with the effort.

"...What was that?"

"Uh. That would be why I called, actually."

—

Gerrard is less of an obstacle than Buck feared he'd be. Because he's holed up in his office doing paperwork when Buck sneaks in with the kitten, and Buck's decided he has no intention of letting him know the cat was ever here.

Tommy promised he'd come get her.

Buck didn't even really ask, and wasn't planning on asking. Didn't have any plan whatsoever, in fact. He just wanted to know if Tommy knew anything about taking care of kittens, and suddenly Tommy's voluntarily sacrificing the rest of his day off to scope out vets and pet supply stores and whatever else Buck's helpless little friend might need.

He hung up hours ago and his insides still feel warm and goopy about it. He can't stop thinking about the gentle fondness that softened Tommy's voice after Buck explained the situation. Buck would wrap himself up in it like a blanket if he could.

Tommy's getting so kissed when he shows up.

In the meantime, Buck's sitting upstairs, working his way through the dozen or so tabs he opened up after googling kitten care.

He thinks the one he found might be around three weeks old (ears not quite unfurled, can't sheathe claws yet, legs unsteady but mobile). And possibly a girl. She did not care for being picked up and turned over, and the indignant squirming made it difficult to tell what's going on down there. But he's almost certain he's right.

She was shrieking up a storm about it, and he was worried if he took any longer she'd alert Gerrard. (She didn't. She did, however, draw the attention of about half the firehouse.)

"You are disgustingly cute," Chimney coos, scratching under her chin with the tip of one finger. She's lifted her head as high as she can and her eyes are squinted happily. Buck can hear her purring from across the room. "Yes you are. Hen, can you get a picture of this?"

Hen pulls out her phone. "Sure... why?" She asks, leaning over his shoulder to snap a picture and eye him with mild suspicion.

"Jee. She'll wanna see when I tell her about my day."

Her expression softens to a smile. "I'll text it to you." She taps her screen a couple times. "Just had to make sure you weren't planning on calendar campaigning again."

Chimney grins. "Nah, my calendar days are behind me. The only person who gets shirtless pictures of me now is my wife."

"Gross," Buck says without conviction. He narrows his eyes at the site he's scrolling through, swiping away a Join Our Mailing List! popup. "You guys don't think she's cold do you? Are her ears warm? It's only, like, 70 today and we don't know how long she was out there."

Hen and Chim exchange glances, and then, disturbingly in sync, look from the cat to Buck. Chim gives her ear a perfunctory poke, which she does not appreciate as much as chin scritches, "She's fine, man."

Hen waves a hand at Buck when he opens his mouth again, "We're medical professionals. And in my medically professional opinion. She's fine."

"Okay, but—"

"Hey guys, look who stopped b—uhhh. Is that a cat?" Eddie slows to a stop at the top of the stairs, blinking at the kitten on the couch. "When did we get a cat?"

"Couple hours ago," Buck says, still frowning at Hen and Chimney. "Where have you been?"

"I found him polishing the engine."

Buck shoots out of his seat. "Tommy!"

He only half-hears Eddie muttering, "Favouritism," as he scuttles around the chair to meet Tommy halfway between the stairs and the sitting area. Tommy has just enough time to smile—and it warms Buck, like it always does, with a spark caught in his chest for safekeeping—and say hi before Buck's on him, palms clapped on either side of his face, smushing their lips together.

He makes a bit of a show of it, dramatically swooping in, because he knows the big smacking MWAH will make Tommy laugh, and he likes the way that feels rumbling against his chest.

Buck taps their noses together. "Hey," he says, savouring the mirth sparkling in Tommy's eyes for a second before kissing him again, properly this time.

His brain goes sort of fuzzy when Tommy's palm cups the back of his neck.

Someone in the distance wolf-whistles.

When they finally come up for air Tommy asks, "What was that for?" a little breathlessly, which is doing things to Buck.

"Mmn...y'know. For being you."

Tommy raises his eyebrows, kiss-reddened lips curling fondly. "Okay."

"Hey, Tommy. Good to see you," Chim calls in a very pointed way.

Right, public setting. Workplace. Friends watching. Buck exhales slowly, and tries to think about anything other than how much he wants to bite that bit of clavicle peeking out of the collar of Tommy's shirt. Like the fact that Tommy's hands are warm, and he's sort of rubbing his fingertips over the short stubbly bits of hair on the back of Buck's head, and Buck's lips are still tingling a little, and—no wait, not that either.

Tommy pulls away first, which is probably for the best, but also very sad. The corner of his mouth twitches like he can see Buck thinking it. He curls his index finger and gently taps Buck's chin with the knuckle before he turns to the group.

"Howie," he says, not even pretending to be contrite in the face of Chim's mock-judgement. "Hen."

"Tommy." Hen fails to contain her smirk.

Some time during all the kissing, Eddie moved over to the couch. He's sat next to the kitten, watching her attempt to groom her paw with all the grace of a toddler who's only a little bit sure they know how to hold a brush. She keeps starting and stopping at random intervals, sometimes licking the cushion beside her, sometimes sticking her tongue out at thin air.

She's so cute it makes Buck's chest hurt. It's a little much while he's still loopy from making out with his boyfriend.

Then Tommy goes and crouches next to the couch so he can get eye-level with the kitten while she sniffs his hand, talking to her all calm and soft with smile-lines crinkling his cheeks, and. Buck might need to lie down for a bit. Like, on top of Tommy, preferably.

The kitten seems to like him too, and he really can't blame her when she crawls up Tommy's sleeve to perch on his shoulder.

She looks so much smaller cuddled up on Tommy. He reaches up to steady her, and she's almost entirely obscured by his hand.

God, is it wrong that he's getting a little hot under the collar about that? He just looks so strong and competent and at the same time, like, gentle. Buck knows how it feels to be touched tenderly by those hands, and apparently just seeing it happen does not affect him any less. In fact it's only added dimensions to his desires.

"I should probably get going," Tommy says, bringing Buck back down to Earth with a resounding splat.

He opens his mouth to protest, then closes it. He's right. The last thing Buck wants is for Tommy to have another run-in with Gerrard, and they don't know how long the old bastard's gonna be occupied.

"Mhm, run while you still can," Chimney pipes up. "Before our dear old captain smells an opportunity to ruin someone's day."

"He does seem to have a sixth sense for that," Eddie adds sullenly. Buck makes a note to ask him what that was about. Later.

"I'll walk you out," Buck says, trying not to sound like a pouting child. He's fairly certain he fails, because Tommy laces their fingers together and gives his hand a comforting squeeze.

He says his goodbyes, the whole time being careful not to dislodge the kitten while she crawls across his shoulders.

Buck goes through the list of kitten care basics he memorized as they make their way to the parking lot. It's...more than he thought it was, honestly. It starts to feel overwhelming as he goes on, and on, and on. He's running out of time to get it all out, and he feels like it's just now sinking in his huge this responsibility that he's dumping in Tommy's lap is.

"You're sure you don't mind taking her?" The question bursts out of Buck before they make it to Tommy's car. "W-we didn't really, I mean. We talked about it over the phone, but..."

"Yeah, now that I've seen her she does seem like a real handful."

The kitten yawns, and curls up into a tiny grey ball in the crook of Tommy's neck.

Well. Alright.

"It's just, t-they need a lot of attention when they're that young, and I kinda just, just dropped this on you."

"Evan." Tommy gives him a look. "Are you worried that you baby-trapped me?"

Okay, when he puts it like that. Maybe a little bit. But also now he's having complicated yearning feelings that he really should not be having this early in the relationship.

Buck's pretty sure he looks like a deer in the headlights right now, because Tommy's doing his damnedest to pretend he isn't laughing at him.

He tugs Buck's hand, leading him the rest of the way to his car.

The backseat is full of cat stuff. Containers of milk-replacement powders, and a shiny plastic litter box, and toys, so many toys, baggies of fake mice and feathery things, just. So much stuff. Piles of it.

"I called up a friend who used to foster kittens. She had a lot of advice. And then I got a little carried away."

"I, uh. See that," Buck laughs breathlessly.

"Over the phone, you sounded like this meant a lot to you? And I think I got really attached to the idea of...this. Taking care of her for you. With you." He sounds hesitant, like he's trying not to say too much, and Buck can't stand it—

"I love you so much," he says in a rush.

"Well, good," Tommy purses his lips around a smile, eyes bright and crinkled at the corners. He reaches up to his shoulder, like he's absent-mindedly checking to see if the kitten's still there. "Wouldn't want her to grow up in a broken home."

Buck huffs a laugh.

"And I love you too."

#bucktommy #bucktommy fic #evan buckley #tommy kinard #911 abc #a raven's writing desk #technically also inspired by a tumblr post but #just the general idea of buck finding a kitten while he's at work?#i was originally gonna have gerrard feature and have some ''oh no we have to hide the kitten'' hijinks #but i didnt feel like bringing him into it lmao #wanted to focus more on the Supportive Boyfriend Tommy angle and them being like well i guess we're dads now lmao

222 notes · View notes