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#CROSSHATCHING HAS NEVER BEEN MORE FUN
sboopie · 1 year
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8 + 2C + weathe report?
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saw this combo and immediately thought of heavy weather....
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itswilliamleonard · 2 years
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I will get down on my hands and knees and beg you for a tutorial on how you draw. Your lines, cross hatching, it looks so simple but so GREAT you make me want to chew on the walls.
well: i taught myself how to draw over a ridiculous 13 years of trial and error and "messing around".... any appearance of Knowledge or Foundations or Anatomy has basically been hardcoded into myself via the silliest and most literal kind of "style evolution" possible O__O i prob shouldn't go into detail on how i draw specific things/people bc i'd only embarrass myself! but i CAN get into the Technical side... >:D
as probably most ppl know or can guess, i draw everything traditionally with fineliners! more specifically i use a Four Pen System that i devised for maximum consistency/legibility...
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0.1mm - shading, detail, tiny stuff!
0.3mm - most things, like characters and lettering!
0.7mm - BOLD lettering, speech bubble outlines, thicker lineart!
1.2mm - panel outlines, VERY BOLD lettering!
(optional: a brush pen for filling black bits in :P anything like that can be done in post though.)
i also use a non-photo blue pencil for all my sketching! VERY useful when scanning finished stuff >:)
as for the linework itself... my hands jitter a lot when i try drawing slow focused lines, so i usually just draw everything as quickly Yet precisely as possible :P it takes a weird kind of care to get right, but drawing on paper also helps - the friction keeps me steady lol! i find my hand just kinda darts and skips across, leaving a lot of messy dots behind, but i still like that look ^u^
hatching is definitely the most fun part... >:P my kinda style was inspired a lot by abby howard, and a bit of mizugiri (and above all, by never thinking to use proper screentones)! the usual straight-ahead hatching is obvs just muscle memory, and praying i don't mess up lol - but once you have that down, then just look around for more creative uses! i love doing curvy crosshatching around complex shapes, and coming up with wacky background shading... i've also tried out a depth-of-field effect, 'drawing' background objects by hatching and layering blurry shading on top >u> (also, i don't usually go for Full 90-degree crosshatching... just slowly raising the angle as i add more layers of shading feels a lot more subtle and natural!)
just never stop messing around!!! that's all i've ever done!! that's how you can keep stumbling upon cool new techniques that you can then suck up and add to your comicking arsenal ^u^
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havana-great-time · 1 year
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October 1st, 2022. La Habana.
Amigos mios —
It has been a while since you have heard from me, so I shall endeavor to relay all of my recent adventures with accuracy, although the past week entire has become somewhat of a homogenous blend in my own memory.
On Monday, as you may recall, classes were cancelled in preparation for the upcoming hurricane; it was hardly necessary, for the day was calm and even the ocean, which we visited often, remained quite still. An occasional gust of wind toyed with the palm leaves, but it was hardly more than usual. Nevertheless, I enjoyed my free time, spending much of it reading or knitting.
On Tuesday, Hurricane Ian passed over the western provinces of Cuba, hitting Pinar del Río, the Isla de la Juventud, and Artemisa especially hard. We, safely sheltered in Habana, experienced but little of its fury. Even so! The storm was a thing of wonder. You, knowing so well my fondness and affinity for storms, will not be surprised to learn that I spent much of the day sitting on my windowsill, watching the powerful wind crosshatch the driving rain, rattle the roof, throw shingles against walls, and cut palm leaves into ribboned shreds. Around noon, the electricity disappeared; a reasonable precaution entirely given the sheer number of trees freshly fallen across power lines and posts yanked out of their firmament. Though my program director called to forbid my leaving the house, I accompanied my host mother to the corner store to buy bread from far shorter lines than could be found anywhere outside of a hurricane. Certainly well worth it for the stunning view of the sunset and the wonderfully refreshing chilliness of the cool night air.
Wednesday marked the beginning of the week's bucket baths; with the loss of electricity came, too, the loss of running water in the household. My host grandmother took me on a walk around the neighborhood, primarily to watch the magnificently tall waves crash well over the Malecón and batter the nearest streets, storm drains running over in their desperate attempts to contain the incomparable ofean. Otherwise it was hardly remarkable, save for our first coconut adventure: we had gotten sufficiently bored, and further inspired by Russian tourists attempting to open a coconut against a lamppost, to go searching for green coconuts and the water inside. Our search on the ground for fallen coconuts proved fruitless, as did my friends' attempts at knocking down coconuts by tossing rocks in their general direction; but finally, just as we were about to give up, we found coconut palms low enough for me to climb and pull down two. We were quite thoroughly mocked by the Cubans who saw us, although that is perfectly understandable; nearly a dozen foreigners banging a rock against a coconut in the style of the early hominids is certainly entertaining. The drinking of the coconut water occurred very rapidly, since it was running out of the coconuts from several ends, but I would argue that it was well worth it. That night, with the hope of electricity flickering on a short stretch of the Malecón, we started our habit of extended nighttime walks. J and C delighted in explaining to me the sheer percentage of students who skimmed or never properly read their assigned readings; apparently neither of them had ever finished a reading all the way. It seems I could have achieved extraordinarily similar results for far less effort all along. I expect they shall attempt to further bother me with such stories.
Thursday marked our collective descent into extended card games. We met at the park and accomplished little else all day. We were taught Secret Hitler, which was an instant hit despite the high levels of betrayal; we played round after round of BS; and we learned Presidents. That afternoon, however, we also met at the office for a short salsa lesson that taught us all the basic steps. It was enormously fun; my only minor complaint is that it was also awfully gendered, aided little by the fact that the split in our program is equal. I remain a rather poor follow.
An interesting note is that the protests against the lack of electricity began occurring here; we heard about them vaguely from our host parents, but clearly saw the effects in the markedly high presence of police cars and the lack of data at night, shut off by the government in an attempt to prevent organization.
Besides even more card games, Friday involved my host family taking me out to a lovely and delicious restaurants and an extended group Malecón sit involving — and here you may be much shocked, my loves — even more cards. We also had our second coconut adventure! We happened upon a coconut in the road; it was kicked and snapped open neatly, so we all descended upon the road coconut and consumed it quite handily. Alas that we did not have better tools to break it open further; I cut the corners of my mouth open on the outer shell.
Saturday was dedicated to quests, since several of our party wished to acquire a certain kind of beer they had seen somewhere. We ventured into the city, stopping at various cafes and garage sales along the way, and, though we missed the sale initially, eventually found ourselves at yet another café, where we sat down and played yet more cards. (The original beer quest proved rather unsuccessful. Fourty dollars a case, it seems, is not worth it.) Ultimately, we did end up back at the Malecón; truly the appeal of the ocean calling to us is irresistible. I learned much of the tolerance of others that night.
And today we set forth to quest once more, this time to Habana Vieja to find some jewelry. Once again, I did not quest anything myself, but I did spend a wonderful afternoon in this fair city.
Finally, dear friends: I remain, as ever, so proud of my sisters, from those learning to walk (and climb! lest we forget) to those accepted to prestigious zine fairs. May they enjoy all their endeavors!
Besos,
MICHA.
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Why Amity fell for Luz: A Theory
Watching all the episodes of The Owl House and reviewing them brought back a lot of thoughts and feelings that I maybe forgot about. We all ship things and sometimes we do it for fun; sometimes for deeper reasons. I just started lumity because it reminded me of Diana & Akko from Little Witch Academia. I loved that show so much that I wanted more, and I thought it would be cool if Luz & Amity did something similar. I had no idea that it was going to go beyond that, so DAMN. To quote a talking science wolf, “For years we ask how, but we should ask why.” I mean, we saw how. But why? Well I can take a guess.
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If we’re are going to start anywhere it’s going to be with the girl in question, Amity Blight.
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As far as I know as of this typing, Amity Blight is a witchling from The Boiling Isles. She lives in Bonesboro at The Blight Manor estate with her parents and her siblings. She attends Hexside School of Magic and Demonics. Good for her.
Amity has an ambitious and competitive personality. She’s always striving to be better and be at the top of whatever she is doing. When she’s introduced in I Was a Teenage Abomination, she’s showing having great pride in being the top student in her abomination class. In Adventures in the Elements, she goes to The Knee in hopes of training to beat her siblings’ high score on the placement exam.
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Amity also has a bit of a temper and gets annoyed easily. In I Was a Teenage Abomination, she sics her abominations on Willow and Luz just because she wasn’t named top student that day. In Enchanting Grom Fright, Amity snapped at the person she bumped into before realizing it was Luz. And later in the same episode, Amity beat up Hooty when he decided to get too close.
But she does have a soft sensitive side. She keeps a diary in her secret room in the library and even reads to kids in her free time. Amity also has a strong sense of integrity. She despises cheating (and cheaters) and feels guilt when she’s forced to break ties with Willow.
So why did someone like this fall for Luz of all people? (see above image)
Enter what I call my Shipping Theory of Compliments
The Shipping Theory of Compliments is that two characters would be shipped and sometimes canonically enter a romantic relationship based on their personalities complimenting each other and fulfilling elements they don’t have alone necessary to developing the character.
People like to use the image of a missing puzzle piece, but I don’t like that comparison because I think it’s a little inaccurate and I don’t like puzzles. Think of it more like the two pieces of the yin and yang coming together and then growing the circles of the opposite colors in them.
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Something like that.
And it’s compliments, not opposites. When you think compliments, think more Star and Marco from Star vs the Forces of Evil. Star wants to go on a magical adventure. Marco also wants to go on a magic adventure. The difference is that Star goes in recklessly while Marco wants to plan it out a bit. They still have their adventure as oppose to Star’s opposite who wouldn’t want to go on a magical adventure. That sort of thing.
So how do Luz and Amity compliment each other?
Let’s start with that they have in common. Obvious stuff aside, they’re both training to become the best witches they can be. The difference comes that Luz is a human who has to learn magic via glyphs that she finds and Amity learns magic the “proper” way on The Boiling Isles. 
Luz and Amity are also both fans of The Good Witch Azura book series. Difference is that Luz is more open about her fandom while Amity tries to keep it a secret. Also petty thing but they’re both fan artists too, but I think Luz might be a better than Amity. But hey, her crosshatching is improving.
Luz and Amity are also (at the start of the series) both lonely people. Luz’s mom says that she doesn’t have any friends, and Amity doesn’t like her “friends.” The difference is that Luz reaches outward to ease her loneliness (being social and friendly, trying new things, etc.) while Amity reaches inward (keeping a diary, staying busy, having a secret spot, etc.). They both also use escapist fiction to ease their loneliness.
That’s all well and good, but now we get into the real speculative parts. 
...complimenting each other and fulfilling elements they don’t have alone necessary to developing the character.
When I was taking acting classes I was taught that the way you see people act is a persona based on their experiences on what it takes to survive and avoid physical, emotional and social death. So now we have to speculate based on what we were given on what emotional/social needs and wants has Amity not been getting before that she has with Luz.
First let me point you to another show called F is for Family. F is for Family is an adult animated sitcom on Netflix that follows a very dysfunctional family in the 1970s. These are legitimately bad characters, not in terms of being poorly written. What I’m saying is that these guys are assholes. But here’s where it gets interesting.
One of the characters is Kevin Murphy, the teenage son of the family. He’s a dim-witted wannabe rockstar who is always yelled at and put down by his parents throughout the entire series. However in season four Kevin meets Alice. Alice teaches Kevin that his favorite band is a big reference to Tolkien and gives him a copy of The Hobbit. They bond over their love of Lord of the Rings and get along really well. Alice calls him smart for being able to read all of Lord of the Rings over a few days and never puts him down. Even in the one time they did fight she never yelled at him or raised her voice which he found weird because he’s so used to being yelled at. Alice gave Kevin the emotional support he always wanted but never got from his family.
Using that as a backdrop, let’s go back to Amity.
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Amity grew up with her parents making her do things she didn’t want to do, making choices for her. Amity wanted to be one way. Her parents wanted something else. Amity’s mother even dyes Amity’s hair green so it matches her siblings. Amity wanted to be friends with Willow. Amity’s parents wanted her to be friends with the mean kids. While Amity does work hard to be the best at what she’s doing, her parents also put pressure on her to make sure that she is at that level. 
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Her siblings are another bag of awful. They constantly refer to her by an annoying nickname that I’m guessing has an embarrassing moment attached to it. They seem to live by a double standard that Amity despises. She has to work hard and follow the rules just to be accepted while they are naturally talented and break the rules with everyone still thinking that they’re perfect. 
Family is supposed to provide unconditional love except it looks like the love of the Blights is based on conditions. Nobody just likes Amity for who she is. She doesn’t have a friend.
Enter: the friendliest person she’s ever met
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Amity has to struggle and work for the simplest things, even affection. Except when it comes to Luz. Luz is naturally friendly and positive. Amity doesn’t have to earn her kindness. Even when she’s bullied Luz before, Luz is always coming back with a smile. I suppose when you live life surrounded by jerks, you’ll want to hang out with the one person who’s always nice to you. Sort of.
Yes, Amity did think Luz was a bully for constantly getting her into trouble. But even at Covention and Lost in Language, Luz kept reaching out to her. This combined with Amity’s awareness of her own behavior is what convinced her to try to reach out in kind to Luz by the end of Lost in Language. “She’s trying to be nice to me, so I should try too,” I’m guessing is the mindset especially in Adventures in the Elements. And then...Luz continued to be nice to her which is kind of a big deal for Amity.
Let’s tally up what we have so far:
Luz and Amity have similar interests (The Good Witch Azura series, art, fiction, learning magic)
Luz and Amity have similar values (work ethic, disdain for cheating, protecting those closest to you, etc.)
Luz gives Amity the positivity and affection that Amity doesn’t normally get anywhere else
They still have differing personalities with Amity being more competitive and Luz having more of a live-and-let-live attitude.
Even with all these things in mind, why was Amity so scared to ask Luz to Grom?
Speculating again but my theory is that Amity wasn’t sure if Luz actually liked her or if Luz is just friendly because that’s how Luz is. Amity was scared of being rejected because she felt that maybe she was just reading the situation wrong. Luz is this ray of sunshine in her gray skies (if you’ll forgive the cliché). People like Amity always think of all the worst possibilities (I know because I do this too). Amity was probably thinking a bunch of what ifs. “What if Luz doesn’t actually like me? What if she’s just being friendly because she feels sorry for me? What if she has feelings for someone else? What if she never actually liked me? What if she’s straight?”
Luz is Amity’s first crush and it is scary as all hell to put yourself out there like that for the first time. She wasn’t expecting to get married at Grom night. She just wanted to dance with the girl she liked.
The dance at Grom was like confirmation for her that it could happen. Amity didn’t have to ask out Luz because Luz asked her. Being with Luz isn’t a pipedream. It’s a definite possibility. And we all know how she reacted to that idea.
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Uh...she’ll be in her bunk.
While Luz and Amity aren’t together as of this typing, I believe it’s bound to happen. Until then, after The Lumity Trilogy, Amity knows that Luz is the girl she likes. 
tl;dr version
Amity fell for Luz because they have similar interests and values, their personalities differ in a compatible way and Luz provides Amity emotional needs and wants that she doesn’t get anywhere else.
Also, round eared girl pretty.
.
Thanks everyone for reading.
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steve0discusses · 3 years
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S5 Ep6: Joey Wheeler is on Fire, Yet Again
Came down with a little sickness-not the biggie, just a little sly guy. But I took some meds, I’m a little floaty, I’ve only been listening to baroque music all morning for some reason? And I hate baroque music usually? But I’ll leave it to bro to tell me if this is fluid enough.
Just so you know, these caps were kind of a hot mess for a while and some of them read like that Garfield in of hot eat the food comic until...today. So pls don’t judge me, Judge my damn DMV where no one was following Covid regulations because I’m pretty sure that’s where I got this damn cold.
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We start off with Roland getting more attention than he ever has in his entire life. Like honestly, I don’t know what Roland’s job really is...but he’s got a very diverse set of very useless skills. One of which, is knowing how to announce sports games that aren’t really a sport, while those games he’s announcing slowly fall into chaos.
Anyway, Roland’s taking so long cherishing his sweet time before everything goes to hell, that he’s boring Joey, who’s kinda turned into a ball of stress in the waiting room.
A lot of this episode is us watching them watching Joey having a break down moment by moment, TBH.
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(read more under the cut)
Yugi telling Joey to study his cards and straight up--what?
Like at this point they know what’s on the cards, right? Like there comes a point where even Yugioh cards have a finite amount of words and I’m just going to assume that like...Joey probably knows them all in his own deck, right?
(bro note: they have no limit on what they will put on a card)
Then again, maybe Yugi doesn’t know what “study” means?
Also, appreciate how some artist crosshatched the hell on Joey’s nose there and I zoomed out and ruined it.
Now for some reason every duelist is hanging out in the duel lodge, including our current arch-villain guy who’s brought a book. I want to know what book this guy even reads so no one could suspect he’s actually a hacker who uses computers. He’s reading romance, right? And I don’t think he’d even be into Twilight, I think he’s straight up into hard core Mom romance like a lame ass Nicholas Sparks over there reading “Dear John” for the millionth time because he is completely un-phased by anything else happening in this room.
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Joey, our hero, just out there being an asshole for no reason.
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After Tea is pushed into a locker or something screaming about her need for female friends (which she screamed in earshot of Rebecca again, who I figured was on friends terms with her after last episode...but I guess not) Leon hops up to remind us that we should be caring about the fact that his character exists.
And like, I love Leon’s hair color--that’s a good choice, and legit that is the color I tried to dye my hair at the beginning of the epidemic (it didn’t work PS, my hair cannot take dye for the life of it) but also like...he just kinda feels like a weak Rebecca as far as characters go. He’s young, he’s good at cards...I think he goes to a private school? That’s all I can think of about Leon.
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He mostly just reminds us that the big prize of this tourney is to duel Yugi, who anyone could have dueled at any point even without the tournament.
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On the way out of the...duel room? lounge? Area? Joey decides to like...make peace with Zigfried, and I gotta tell you, I kinda have to side with Zigfried, because Joey spent the last ten minutes being a freak in the dressing room/lounge/bathroom and at one point looked like he was going to hold the entire locker room in a stranglehold.
I would also want some space from Joey Wheeler, is what I’m saying.
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After insulting Joey’s style (which honestly, Joey...has a style? He pops his collar, that’s his entire style.) Zigfried assures us that Joey’s gonna lose and like...
...probably, right? Just looking at the plausible direction this season will go.
Anyway, Joey is such a mess (which is the theme of the episode, that Joey needs to learn to chill in order to win at card games) that Rebecca is like “I understand if all of you leave me to go help our poor baby Joey.” And no one felt bad for her.
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Mokuba comes over to tell everyone all of the Kaiba family secrets because Mokuba has no filter.
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Seto has devoted himself to staring at a computer screen for the rest of this episode. I guess he’ll put their names into Google, realize that social media hasn’t been invented yet, and then just lie his head down on the desk and take a power nap until the tournament is over. Much like I did after taking Dayquil this afternoon.
I like how Seto dressed for success and then locked himself in the server room for most of this arc so far. Maybe he’s just...really tired, I dunno. I don’t really blame the guy, he’s had a hard time.
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And then Yugi was like “DAMN IT MOKUBA, JUST ONCE CAN YOU NOT INVITE THE ILLUMINATI???”
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And we had a weird scene where Yugi just started talking to the ghost and it was while he was talking to everyone else, and the show didn’t treat it like that’s a weird thing to do...but it was a weird thing to do.
This show does that sometimes, where I guess they imply that Yugi’s Pharaoh conversations are split second conversations but...they’re not, right?
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Also this chick ain’t gone yet, and Mokuba is just failing at his entire job for not zeroing in on vibes coming off this chick like stinky cheeseman.
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So listen.
Did the Kaibas make like 3 types of Blue Eyes Caboose to one up Noah? Because Noah made one choo choo dragon, and then Mokuba and Seto were like “how dare” and then made sure that everyone ride every single version of the blue eyes caboose just to see how proud of them they were.
How many months of troubleshooting was the train? Like how long in development did Seto and Mokuba spend on these? A lot right? Like most of the time?
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I did not check the subs to see if Roland said Jumping or Champion but I like to believe that Roland thought it was a cool new name he gave him.
Then these guys all showed up.
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Hey so...can we talk seating arrangements?
Tea decided not to sit next to Yugi after complaining about not spending time with him for like how many episodes? Or was it too awkward to sit on top of what was probably Pharaoh?
Or did Mokuba go like “please, Tea, I cannot sit next to the others because I’m pretty sure one is a mole that is about to go cray” and was Tea like “Good, I need female friends, these ones are driving me crazy!” and then was Mokuba like peering desperately over the edge of his self made dragon train prison realizing he has to listen to Tea complain about boys for the rest of his ride across molten lava?
Headcanons abound about this weird seating arrangement that the animators drew for the reasons they did...but reasons I cannot fully understand. That and the Dayquil is making me overfixate on random stuff.
And also, Tea is kind of the Kaiba’s security’s understudy. Just there to always protect Mokuba with her ass because she’s the strongest woman alive.
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PS I missed the tumblr wars because at the time I was trying to like...run a proper business on blogger. When Blogger died and I jumped over here it was like a weird ruin where everyone was like “tumblr is the most toxic place alive” and...I’ve had a really nice time here, actually. Completely missed that civil war period and I have no regrets.
Now I was there for the Petz wars (warz, I guess) where people were very militant about Petz abuse (abuze?) where apparently people were using the spray bottle on their catz too much and people were very, very upset about it to the point that they were like campaigning about it on their angelfire websites with the most bizarre grassroots campaigns that I still recall, to this day because they were like...well they looked like this:
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PLAPA. Not only am I 100% positive that only this one guy ever called this movement PLAPA, but I’m 100% positive that not only are Catz not real people, but also this wasn’t actually happening and we never had any proof that it was. Either way, if people knew or suspected that you hadn’t deleted the spray bottle from your game (which at the time I had no idea how to do because I was a wee child) they would basically assume you were on a one way road to being a mass murderer in real life.
In real life we were 7 years old so like...thanks?
But that’s the closest I got to toxicity and at the time I was too young to make an email account and actually converse with these people. I was just there to download their Petz hexes, and I already made a post about how wonderful and incredible Petz Hexing was.
And y’all, I heard, just now after a little deep dive into the Petz Abuse debacle (which yes, is on the wiki), that apparently, like gardening, Petz Hexing came back in a big way during the epidemic--and I have found an active Petz forum in this the year 2021. The only problem is that I no longer remember how to use old timey forums...and I think I’m locked out of seeing most of these threads (and like this forum is so old I think I have to send them a letter in the physical mail to apply). But, I’m pretty sure they’re hosting a picture contest for who’s dogz poses the best. And I’m pretty sure someone created a hexxed Pickle Rick. Or it’s a photoshop that was made to look like a hexxed Pickle Rick.
Dammit why did it have to be Pickle Rick? That’s not worth re-installing Petz and getting it to run on Windows 10...
Guys is this the Dayquil? Is this really happening? I feel like I’m losing my mind for so many reasons...
Anyway, speaking about useless hexing it’s about time that our villain did something that was actually dangerous, so Zigfried decided to install a new virus that does more than turn off the lights. (it still turns off lights)
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the Spreadsheet Virus!
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Confounded by the spreadsheet software, it...um...it does this:
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Straight up how does Excel make a volcano erupt? Is that why I have to pay for Microsoft office now?
All this because Joey made fun of Zigfried’s naturally pink hair? Which is the most normal hair on this series outside of like...Tristan?
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Hey guys...Joey’s fine, right? Like how many times has Joey been on fire? And once in an iron cage next to like...a Fire Golem?
Joey’s fine.
MAN I miss Fire Golem. He had a good mug.
And then we just kinda watch chaos go across the park, chaos that includes: Too many ghosts in the haunted mansion (which honestly--you’ll get your money’s worth, sounds great!), the Ferris wheel goes kinda fast and thus might accidentally be fun, the lights turn off at some concert stage that only had 2 people on it (so it might just be motion detector lights and not even a virus), and um...literal fire and magma are going to set Joey Wheeler on fire.
Just...one of these events does not seem like the others. In fact most of these things sound like good improvements to the park and they should just hire Zigfried at this point.
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Roland puts down his microphone and jogs across the stage, about a mile through the audience bleachers, and into the staff lounge, to go and bother Seto Kaiba, who is in a room that has a hi-def classical painting copy-pasted on the wall and I can’t look away from it.
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I almost did a Google search on this painting but then thought better about it. There’s like...a billion classical paintings that look exactly like this, and they wouldn’t use like a Monet, they would have to do something that’s harder to catch to avoid copyright issues (because yes, even old ass paintings have copyright issues, but no one tell NFT’s which are going to be so freakin screwed and was such a bad idea, that I can’t even start).
Anyway, I have no idea who it is and it is legitimately driving me up a wall, but I’m on too much meds to do the effort of putting it in a reverse google image search.
Plus, a reverse google image search would only pull up Seto Kaiba.
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So Kaiba takes us on a little flashback to his weird ass past, a weird ass past that just...doesn’t follow any of the established timelines, but I assume was shortly after adoption but before Seto got into a phase where he wore his school outfit everywhere and tried to shove his MMO off onto his Dad as a business model.
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Seto is like 8 for some reason. I don’t know why, they kinda drew him younger this season anyway, like maybe they got a lot of fan mail and realized “Hey I think we made the 16 yo boy too sexy?” And they just toned Seto the hell down. That, and it’s a different animation team, and maybe they looked at Seto’s character design and were like “we don’t get paid enough to draw this well.” So...since Seto actually looks like a teen again, I guess his 12 year old self has to look like he’s in Elementary school.
Also, I only recognized this, because at some point in S3 as I was roasting Noah Kaiba’s weird fashion:
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I remember distinctly roasting that little bow tie. I don’t remember when I wrote it, I think there was a version of this outfit that was in color...but I don’t remember where.
Anyway, it’s not the same jacket...but man that’s kind of awkward, ya? Like the maid who dressed Mokuba deffo got fired?
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He um.
Turned the lights off a little bit.
Guys this villain is like...
...why does he think lights are scary? Like look at little Seto here. The boy is already bored. Seto duels on the edges of cliffs...he doesn’t care about the freakin dark.
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We had a guy who killed everyone on the planet last season, and this season we have a little fashion gremlin standing in the corner and flicking the light switch going  “wooooo you never catch me!” and it’s like...
...I’m starting to think this guy isn’t a witch.
Like we’re at Episode 6, there’s still time for this guy to be a witch...but I really am starting to think this guy is just...straight up not a witch. It’s everything Seto wanted, a rival who isn’t a freakin magic person...and sets Joey only fake on fire instead literally on fire like last time...
and Seto is just completely unhinged by it.
Anyway, I’m off to go drink a bowl of soup and pass out. If you’re new here, this is a link to read these in chrono order.
https://steve0discusses.tumblr.com/tagged/yugioh/chrono
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coyote1027 · 4 years
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No more lurking--yes...no...maybe. I’ll give it a shot?
I’ve pretty much been a ghostly little shit, lurking the MCR and frerard fandom for like....3 years? I basically live and breathe this shit in a permanently hyper fixated state. My only problem is, I am a balancing act of shy and lazy and socially anxious, meaning I rarely ever leave comments and I avoid all social media like the plague. BUT NO MORE. This is me trying. In baby steps. With some of the art I’ve done over the last couple of years but never actually shared publicly, a peace offering for all the amazingly talented writers and artists I’ve ghosted. I promise, I’m gonna try to do better, because you’re all amazing.
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Revenge Frank, prismacolor pencils on black paper, smudged a bit on medibang just cause I like it.
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Frank in his infamous striped shirt. I has a red pen and a black pen and really wanted to try the crosshatching thing. I was also going through a monster/all things creepy phase, so there you go.
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Another Frank, when I was still stuck in my monster phase. I know its not accurate, but it wasn't meant to be, its not a portrait, its a fictional living-dead impression of Frank. I think this one might be my favorite, I had a lot of fun taking inspiration from my favorite musician and trying to stuff it all into one zombie caricature. It’s done in prismacolor pencils, once again, smudged and blurred a bit in medibang, cause I like the blurry thing ok? 
Hope someone enjoys these. Maybe I’ll post some of the others too (I’ve got an obsession and a lot of spare time.)
~coyote
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eldonash · 4 years
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Orobas&Morelia - fated
Summary: Nearly killed by a slayer, Orobas is on the brink of psychotic break. Heavily damaged, he runs into Morelia-- the two strike a small deal and expose their true selves.
Location: Southern State Time Period: Flashback -- Untied States Civil War; 1863 Triggers: Gore, blood, body horror, injury, death
War was a constant energy in the world across all species and time. Orobas traveled with war, lured to it from South Korea into China, to Germany, and eventually into the United States. He moved often with his maker Haxian, the two inseparable and always with a body count behind them. It was growing tiresome in this city, a slayer had almost cut Orobas in half. It was probably the closest he’s ever almost perished, and the feast he required to heal from the damage had put him in disturbed mood. Haxian had left him only to seek out a place to lay low for a few days, the gun fire in the distance was a crackle of explosions, and the scent of blood in this war beaten southern town was heavenly. He moved from the darkness of an alleyway to the edge of a street. The streets pitch less lanterns strung up on hooks, as the dark sky randomly illuminated in bursts of firelight. People tried to scurry through the city to get to where they were needed. Unaware of the cloaked figure with a limp, arm almost hanging off his shoulder, and a thirst so deep anything would do.
Entangling herself with mundane matters wasn’t something Morelia did frequently. Finding herself in the independent nurse squadron hadn’t been a bad strike of luck, but rather the easiest way she’d found so far to relentlessly eat without fearing getting caught either by wardens or the same humans she so deeply desired. But despite having an all you can eat buffet to her disposition, the lampade still found herself merging with the shadows at night, waiting for the perfect victim. Many seamlessly walked past her without noticing, wondering why a particular spot felt slightly colder than others, the ghost of a hand touching the back of their necks. But it was probably their imagination, right? But it wasn’t the thrill of finding a clueless spellcaster what kept her in the dark alley, but rather a barely noticeable silhouette that had caught her eye. It took a while before she decided to move and, like a ghost, the woman lurked towards it, hoping she’d be lucky enough to find her dinner.
Orobas couldn’t remember what human hunger felt like. Emotions were a blurry crosshatch within his mind, that shifted with his moods and what he desired. Layers of simplistic understanding in survival were more pronounced, and likely why he’s survived as long as he has, being someone who killed so much. The monster didn’t entirely exist with the living, not caring for their needs, their ambitions, or their lives, but it was necessary to associate with them. Humans disgusted him, a vermin that he feasted on because it was all he needed to remain immortal. Right now, hunger was there, a swirling dull throb that made his eyes bleed to red as he limped forward again, the step excruciating as his middle slid out of place and seemed to barely connect. As he moved from the alleyway towards the building where people were laughing, and drinking their fill, a tavern it seemed-- he pulled out a long six inch, ivory handled blade with his only operating hand. Keeping it hidden within the folds of his long cloak, covering most of his injury and body. 
It was easy to sneak up on them without getting noticed, after all for Morelia was born from the shadows, and to shadows she would return. It was almost boresome how easy it was to prey on others, especially when a touch was all she needed to avoid starving to death --- human flesh wasn’t a necessity she required to survive, but rather just a delight she never wanted to let go of. She continued silently looking the way the silhouette limped next to her, pitying how completely unaware of her presence they were and how easy it would be to just snap its neck. It would be a favor, really, to help them get out of that suffering. Something was off, however. No smell came from the figure, which meant they weren’t human. And that was enough to peak the woman’s interest. If anyone had been watching into the alley, it would’ve looked like she materialized from the thin air. Morelia continued silently observing, her head now cocked to one side, and a dark smirk painted on her face. She wondered how long it would take the other to notice her presence, but the little show was too good to stop it.
Orobas didn’t notice the presence at all, his eyes were on his desires. The laughter on the other side of the windows, their cheer’s with tankards splashing ale over their fat fingers. Orobas shivered in want to hear them scream, to smell their blood-- but as his awareness caught up to him, though very delayed, something sinister curled a snarl to his lips. With a fast turn, he made to shove the person to the wall, the knife pressed to their throat, but he gritted his teeth as his injury moved and shifted, giving his upper body a disjointed, disturbing appearance. His eyes regardless were forward and on the woman. The scent sweet, and alluringly different. “Mhmm,” a throaty sound caught at the back of his throat. “What is so funny.” 
A short breath left Morelia’s throat as her back hit the wall, mostly in surprise. In all honesty, she hadn’t expected to be met with such force, but the blade pressed against her fake skin was a nice touch, and she couldn’t help but let out an actual laugh at his words. Not only he looked like he was struggling, but his voice confirmed her how emaciated he was. “Well, you, of course.” A blunt reply, the obnoxious smirk never leaving her face. Her eyes flickered slightly as she took notice of the fangs. The undead weren’t her favorite crowd as there was no magic to steal away, and to say she was disappointed would be the understatement of the century. But, for now, she wasn’t scared but rather very amused, despite the repulsive disfigured torso. The faint chatter coming from the other side of the street was a weird contrast to their current situation.  “Rough night, night child?”
Orobas grinned, a feral and stretching smile at her tone. It wasn’t often he was walked up on, laughed at, and also not instantly repulsed. This was why the supernatural should always know one another, they didn’t belong to the world on the other side of this wall. No, they met in alleyways during a war, damaged and grinning. His body groaned in further displacement as he slowly leaned forward towards her smirking face, eyes dancing across the shape of her lips, down the tendon line of her neck with a subtle inhale to the sweet aroma. His arm dropped slowly against his will, weakness a frustrating bolt through his dead chest. “Slayer--” he whispered, a compulsive edge to his tone. “They wanted to cut me in half. Stay still for me-- hmm?” 
Both of Morelia’s eyes squinted as the other leaned in, another laugh escaping her. Vampires were such entitled creatures, thinking they could just swipe in with their godly looks and get their way. This was probably her closest encounter with one, and it would be a lie to say she wasn’t curious, but she wouldn’t budge. Not when she could get something in return. Her own hand found its way to the man’s chin. At least that part of his body wasn’t gruesome, giving her a proper grip. Lampades weren’t really known for being exceptionally strong, but she guessed in the state he was it would be enough to keep his eyes at the same level as hers, ready to use her maddening gaze in case of emergency. “Oh, no no no, honey.” She mumbled, her thumb softly tracing his cold skin, careful to not get it bitten. It was a dangerous game she was playing, and she was loving every single bit of it. “Didn’t your master teach you? Everything has a price.”
Orobas’ lips twitched in glee, though she listened and didn’t move, she was good with her words, and weaved her way into more. He loathed he was in such a weakened state, but equally he didn’t entirely feel in danger. His maker was close by, and Orobas didn’t have qualms about putting his fist into someone’s abdomen. But she was beautiful-- and she seemed to be having fun, and Orobas didn’t actually remember what those things felt like. So caught up in his bloodlust night after night. “My, my. You must be so bored with life,” he nipped at her fingers anyway, wanting just the smallest taste. The lightest nic would cut flesh. “To bother me... what do you want, hmm? Why pay a price, when I take what I want, when I want it? Are you so unfamiliar with that feeling? Do you pay a price to feed?”
Feeling the nibble on her finger made Morelia’s smile widen more, the tracing continuing just to toy with him a little longer, realizing that the temptation was eating him alive. He had a way with words, yet he had been so dumb by asking what she wanted. An unknowing deal like that thrilled her, making her heart pump in her chest in excitement. What a twist of fate, she’d left her hideout for a meal and found a banquet instead. “You should know better than to ask me that.” She mumbled, finally dropping her hand. The desire to ask for a favor in return, binding him perhaps for how long to her was tempting, but the moment the sound of mundane laughter hit her again, the fae had other plans for him. “A drop for a body.” A pause, as she gave it more thought, before fixing her hair so her neck was exposed. “A bite for this whole building turned into a graveyard.”
Without warning. Without a single response less the sinking of his gray, thin skin along the hallowed points of Orobas’ face. The red hue bled from iris into the whites of his eyes. The moment her neck exposed, his jaw unhinged in an unnatural way, teeth elongated and sharpened into fine points. He rushed forward with a feral crunch through the tough skin, muscle, and into the ridgid artery with a pressured hiss as heat and blood pulsed against the diamond sharp incisors. In this position not a drop spilled, not even into his mouth, the suction and draw held still. Here is where it could feel good, as he leaned forward, slipping his leg between her own, wrapped the hand with the dagger around the small of her back and bit down with a gentle grind and sucked. The shift bubbled the blood up from the wound warmly, a careful draw that slipped down his throat. Fae. He hummed, never entirely enjoying anything but human blood. That wasn’t the point was it? He would kill everyone in that tavern and drink his fill. His body healed enough to take the hazed edge of permanent death away from him, and as he pulled back enough to sedate his immediate need and bring strength to his stance. He pulled back only to lick the blood from her neck, nipping the edge of her jaw, until his mouth warm with rare breath whispered into her ear. “I’ll kill them for you.” 
The feeling of teeth tearing the skin of her neck was something Morelia never, not even in her wildest dreams, thought would happen. She was a proud fae, afterall, and being used by another species for a quick snack was a blow to her ego she thought she could never take away. But still, what was a quick sucking next to the flesh of dozens of people? Her own personal rules could be bended for such opportunity, for her own personal buffet. Still, despite her willingness to let him take her, she found herself groaning in pain from the initial bite; but slowly and steadily, a warm feeling washed over her, and she was shocked to realize she was utterly enjoying the situation in more ways than one should, relaxing to the point that her antlers were no longer hidden. The feeling of his hand against her lower back combined with whatever he was doing with his mouth made her let out a soft moan that was quickly muffled by her own hand flying to cover her mouth, embarrassment taking over her. Thankfully, he was done as fast as he had started, but she couldn’t contain the shaky breath that left her parted lips when he whispered in her ear. “Make it entertaining.” She mumbled back, heart racing as if she had run a marathon, before softly pushing him away to fix her hair, covering his marking. “I’ll be watching, night child.”
He leaned forward, slowly-- blood just tinted flush and brushed the softest kiss to her lips. “Hmm--” He stepped back when she pushed him away, taking in her antlers and fallen glamours, the flush, and the racing beat of her heart. Orobas dropped the cloak off his shoulders, his torso healed enough to be put together again, but the gash had ruined his shirt and showed still as a nasty open wound along his entire chest proving just what that slayer had wanted to do to him. His body groaned as it healed, black veins filled with life essence filtering through to reawaken cells, and revitalize his system. Orobas inhaled an unnecessary breath and exhaled as his red eyes reopened to look at her state and grinned. With a flip of his dagger he walked towards the open door. The business was rowdy, a dozen or so people singing and having fun, and Orobas walked into the establishment looking dangerous, without hiding his true face. The swell of panic was immediate, and something exciting crawled under his skin, the scent of fear perminating the space. Some humans grabbed at one another, but a few made to attack him and he grabbed the wrist of the first person, pulling them in to sink his fangs into their throat, he yanked back with his teeth deepin their artery as a gruesome splatter and chunk of flesh dropped with a plop on the ground. The blood sprayed everywhere, almost comically all over him, and the floor. Orobas laughed, blood slipping out between this teeth as the place exploded in screams. “Ah,” he shivered. “That slayer should have killed me-- this will be on her. I’ll make sure her family knows.”
It was fascinating, to say the least, watching how a vampire recovered after consuming some blood. Morelia had a smirk on her face as she mentally traced his black veins, wondering how they would feel under her touch, before giving him a wink and disappearing once more in the shadows to watch her little circus commence. The screaming and panic made her feel whole, and she almost felt like destiny had given her the wrong set of cards by making her a fae instead of a mara. It wasn’t on her books to let other people do the killing for her; finding her own nails filthy with dry blood after a spree was probably one of her disgusting, secret pleasures, but it somehow felt right to watch someone else do it for her. Although she supposed it wasn’t really for her, since he looked pretty into the whole murdering scene. Still, the lampade walked a short two minutes after him, glamour on once more and letting out a laugh as she leaned on the entrance door frame. “So vengeful.” She teased, looking around the room in hopes of feeling the presence of a spellcaster to get her own taste, but sadly all the present were insignificant, magicless humans. Her gaze meet with the eyes of a young woman, and with the appearance of a twisted grin, her eyes flashed bright for a second, making the human scream in fear. If the vampire didn’t slice her throat, her own maddened brain would kill her. “If you’d died, then we wouldn’t be having this amazing first date, hm?”
Orobas chuckled, feeling better, and alive in pleasure as the humans cowered. The word ‘date’ rolled around in his head, clearly not attuned to such a saying. His hand released the body where is collapsed with a hard thud on the ground. Orobas walked forward towards the table, and the people ran on the other side, a few braver screamed at him to ‘stay back! Monster!!’ but Orobas only dragged his blade along the table, carving a long line into it. One frozen in fear near the ground trembled, and Orobas lowered himself, petting their cheek. His gaze bore into her mind, a nudge of compulsion that settled deeply into her mind Pressing his bloody fingerprints into her cheeks and squeezing her face. “Go out in the streets, shout the Park family is to cause for this slaughter. Tell everyone you know it to be true.” She nodded and ran out the door. Without a seconds more delay, Orobas attacked everyone, a scream filled horror show as people tried to climb out of the windows, only to be pulled back inside and meet their end. He was healed afterwards from drinking plenty, though exhausted from the entire night. Standing in the middle of the tavern, surrounded in bodies, his blade dripping to the ground, and his eyes on the other. Orobas grinned, closing his eyes and savoring. “Mhm--”
Morelia found herself watching the scene in deep awe, not doing much to contribute other than moving slightly from the door to let the human run out of it, and a perfectly arched eyebrow was raised in surprise. Letting someone go wasn’t technically part of their deal, but she supposed one body wouldn’t really make a difference when her system could only manage to eat one. And oh, there were tons, her feet moving her through the bloody room until she was sitting on one of the few tables left standing. Had this happened a century later, she would’ve felt like a Harley Quinn meeting her own personal Joker, but for now, she just wanted to take him to the front line so she --- no, so they could continue feasting. But of course, she only stared, letting out a laugh every now and then when someone tried to run away from him, letting him have all the fun he seemed to be having, and all the blood he so desperately needed. Vampires and fae didn’t really mix well together. Once the slaughter was over, Morelia jumped down from her seat, looking down at the nearest corpse. Any would do, but she’d just wait for him to leave to eat. “You did good.” She mumbled, approaching him. She stood next to him, curiosity still radiating from her body as she once more traced her finger over his lips, wondering if he’d try to bite again. “Thank you.”
Did she need such a show? Was this all a little clever fae game? Did she even know that he was immortal and could spend eternity seeking her out again? Orobas didn’t often run into the fae, but he knew enough to always find himself curious about them. “The slayer family’s last name is Park. They will hear about it, learn their daughter died, know I did this as a warning. But if you wish, so wish-- you can chase after her,” he nipped her fingers again, but also grabbed her hand with his, threading this own with hers, and kissed the palm. “In a few days and finish her.” He chuckled at her thank you. “You’re welcome. Tell me your name.” 
“There’s no need for that.” And it was true, despite everything. The last thing Morelia needed right now (or ever) was unwanted attention as it only made it more difficult for her to feed. It was doubtful that the human would remember her face, but paying a visit would only refresh her mind. “I’m sure you’ll cross paths with her again and finish your work.” She laced her fingers with his, mostly to take his mouth away from from her wrist. For some reason, she trusted him enough to share this unexpected intimacy; but she wouldn’t be a fool and let him near her blood again. “Thought you’d never ask. I’m Morelia. What is yours?”
“Orobas--” The name, however, didn’t come from the man in front of her, but the looming presence behind them. The voice filled with concern, jealousy, and frustration, enough to make Orobas chuckle darkly and look over at his maker. The vampire standing there looked to be in their twenties, beautiful with a boyish charm to them and seemed not be phased by the mess. “We’re leaving.” Orobas nodded, “okay--” he left her fingers with one last kiss, before he walked away, waving lightly while he did. “Be seeing you again, Morelia--” 
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oosteven-universe · 4 years
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Year Zero #3
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Year Zero #3 AWA Upshot Studios 2020 Written by Benjamin Percy Illustrated by Ramon Rosanas Coloured by Lee Loughridge Lettered by Sal Cipriano    A Japanese hitman, a Mexican street urchin, an Afghan military aide, a Polar research scientist, a midwestern American survivalist – five survivors of a horrific global epidemic who must draw upon their unique skills and deepest instincts to navigate a world of shambling dead. Year Zero wrestles with the weighty moral and theological questions posed by the pandemic and investigates its cause and possible cure.    I really think this one of the most unique takes on the zombie apocalypse I have seen since Train to Busan.  There are so many different moving parts happening simultaneously that allow the reader to see the past and the present playing out in a way that the more we learn the more we want to learn.  Whether it’s London or The Polar Research Station it’s those events that are the key to what has happened and considering the factors already in play it’s easy to see why something like this has happened.    The writing for this is utterly brilliant and how it engages the readers’ mind so that we can piece together a bit of what happened or extrapolate further than what we are seeing is something that keeps the reader returning time and time again.  It is a little bit funny, this feeling inside, i’m not one of those who can easily hide, that when we take former living things out of the permafrost or deeper that we are exposing the world to a myriad of potential diseases that we’ve never seen before.  So this kind of nightmare scenario, while only currently fiction as far as we’ve been led to believe, is one that could legitimately happen sooner rather than later.      The story & plot development that we see through how the sequence of events unfold as well as how the reader learns information is perfectly presented.  It is amazing to see how quickly factions have formed and who’s in charge in the areas that we see.  It has that ring of yes I can totally see this happening and it’s accurate, at least according to how I see the world.  The character development is interesting and while we focus on the main players some of those that surround them are stealing some of the spotlight for various reasons.  It will be fun to watch how all of this plays out as the story continues.  The pacing is superb and as it takes us through the pages revealing the twists and turns along the way it is easy to see how all this works together to create the story’s ebb & flow.    While the interiors are more along the line of classic comic books than I was expecting I have really come to appreciate the work Ramon does here.   His ability to utilise the varying weights of the linework to showcase this level of detail is amazing.  Granted I’m curious as all get out what would happen if he threw in some various techniques like crosshatching and such.  Yes I want to see backgrounds utilised more but I am being greedy here.  What we do see not only enhances the moments but it brings us this depth perception, a sense of scale and this overall sense of size and scope to the book.  The utilisation of the page layouts and how we see the angles and perspective in the panels show a supremely talented eye for storytelling.  Lee’s a master colourist and I have said this before and I am sure I’ll say it again.  What he can do with colour always amazes me and whether it is blood spatter, veining, camouflage patterns or the different lighting for different places the way he can utilise the various hues and tones within the colours to create the shading, highlights and shadow work is hard pressed to equal.   ​    This book defines what excellence in storytelling is.  The way the story is structured, how the layers within are both subtle and bold plus the general feeling that it gives the reader, adrenaline rush and other things, that truly capture the readers’ mind, imagination and curiosity like no other.
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sienna-writes · 4 years
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DELUGE - short story wip
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Right off the bat let me clarify that I am new to writing short stories. Generally my forte is flash fiction, the longest stories I’ve written maybe about 5000 words and primarily I like to focus on poetry. However! I've recently been very inspired to write longer prose and decided with quarantine cancelling everything that this was the perfect time to immerse myself fully in writing!
Don't take anything I say for doctrine as it is most definitely not! I am confident with my writing (to an extent, I have lots of room for improvement) but I would still consider myself an amateur when it comes to writing short stories!
My writing process so far —
Honestly, I thought it would be a very challenging shift from poetry and flash fiction into a 10000+ word story, but I've been having a lot of fun with it, and I'm proud of the quality of writing!
I am for sure a pantser.
I didn't outline, the ideas came to me quickly and relatively fully formed, and I did developmental edits all the way through so the plot remained tidy and coherent. As I wrote, more ideas came to me throughout the process.
Often I feel like not planning helps me progress the plot, because it leaves me constantly wondering what I need to do to reach the climactic point of it all. For me it helps to not know all the answers and figure it out intuitively, rather than write down all my ideas (even if I do have them in my head) because that way tends to leave me feeling trapped. I like to be flexible when I write, and live inside the characters as they are living inside the world I'm crafting around them. (I hope this makes sense...) Knowing all the answers off the bat also detaches me from the story in a way, I like to be actively seeking answers and thinking about my story.
This quote summarizes these ramblings perfectly:
“Writing is easy. You only need to stare at a blank piece of paper until drops of blood form on your forehead.”
- Gene Fowler
:)
Anyway! This approach has been working super well, and I'm so glad. Developmental edits as I go through have helped me keep on track and maintain a clear grasp of the pace and atmosphere of the story as I work through it. I’m really glad I wrote in this way.
I wrote 3000 words on the first day of writing, and about 2800 on the second. Then I went through it all, editing and mulling the plot over. The next days were a bit slower and I'm still working through a road block I have hit with the progression of the plot. Currently the story is just over 10000 words and I had a good brainstorming session this morning and a rough idea of how to work through my crisis.
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"I think it was the wind - torrents of it piercing and stabbing my face like pine needles - that set off the tidal wave. Boiling over, bits of brain formed mucus in my nose and my cheeks grew rain-washed with tears. The turbulent water roiled and churned, columns of it waved, welcoming my carcass and isolating my soul on the shoreline."
As you can see from this excerpt, the narrative is first person retrospective. I wanted an intimate feel so the audience could glean these intricate, slightly odd inner workings of the main character Charlie's mind. I think it works well for the style and helps her voice shine through effectively. She has a vivid internal world and this perspective makes the most sense as a way for this to be illustrated.
You also get some nice allusions to her oddness!
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When we meet Charlie, she is being fired from her job (a journalist) for “causing a scene” - we learn later what this is about as the story progresses. We follow her messy journey through early adulthood, she is 27 and reflecting upon her past, all the casual rips and tears of life that lead her to where she ends up.
Grappling with trauma from college after being sexually assaulted, the plot tells of how our pasts can shape us and the routes we take in our lives, it explores chance encounters and how those can blossom into lifelong connections, and also the connections formed from our youth that can be undying. It’s on the verge of being YA but I think it’s more leaning toward an adult fiction story. I’m not sure yet if I want to extend this story into a novel, as I’m becoming really attached to the characters, but we’ll see as it progresses!
Some more excerpts -
Potential TW - I didn’t want the flashback to the assault to be too explicit, but it is still about and mentioning the assault. Here’s a section from it! I experimented with changing the perspective, and second person worked really well to show how painful the experience was.
...Your waterlogged mind found itself thinking of anything but now, anything but his breath on your neck, his palms kneading your underbelly like a pig in a slaughterhouse. Of your mother and how beneath her fingernails little roses unfurled and dribbled down your arms, ridden with thorns and stinging your skin. That had hurt, but it had never been as painful as this. You thought of pavements and how they interweaved like crosshatching but here, here, they formed a hopscotch on our playground. How sometimes nature had a way of rupturing the dull floor tiles with swollen roots and bruised the tarmac. How this blemish made the tiles collide, violent and convulsive. Tectonic plates pressing against your lips. Suddenly, it’s him again. A serpentine hand sliding down your back. You are not a snake charmer. You writhe but can’t seem to get him to stop.
I like this one because it shows Charlie being bitter and angry. (does this make me a bad person?)
...There was a barcode on my forehead. My eyes shifted from face to face, they were bidding. I was an ornament at a fucking auction.
And this will be the last one I share for now! 
...Even in my dreams I lay on my back. Still. The striking and recurring illusion of spiders sitting on my chest, furry legs knocking on my heart, pedipalps searching for its rhythm. Talons snapping open, shut, open. Eight voracious eyes eager to gut me like a fish. Drinking my piping innards with a cocktail straw. When I woke the illusion faded, my pulse rising faintly, but arachnophobia didn’t grip me like it once had. I didn’t rise and scramble, frantic fingers ensuring I was free of the spiders. I just lay there. On my back. Still.
Hoping one of them would take the first bite.
Hopefully this was interesting!
Have a nice evening <3
Tag list: ask to be added or removed!
@nev-953 @quiet-storm132
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faveficarchive · 5 years
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In Sorrento
By Vivian Darkbloom
Pairing: Francesca/NotMel
Rating: Mature
Synopsis: After Mel dies, Francesca is left to her own devices in Sorrento, and meets another American tourist. If you don’t know who Francesca is, introduce yourself by reading Venezia and Coup de Grace, I swear you won’t regret it. 
You look at me as if you love me, but I know you do not.
In Sorrento, the first words of the book—her book—come back to haunt her. Not unlike the clouds that roll over the distant Vesuvius.
Francesca sips an Americano, watches another fat, happy cirrus cloud float ever closer to the volcano, and wonders if that was not what she was doing all along, in writing the book—obscuring the obvious, clouding over a dormant and distant empty wound.
In the hotel balcony overlooking the cliffs, Carlo, her publisher, rushes up the lobby steps with unexpected, joyous vigor, in his hands the book —fresh out of the battered brown envelope decorated with colorful rows of stamps, not unlike a weary wartime general arriving with news of impending victory. Greedily he had opened the package first and now, as he sits opposite her, he opens the book and almost immediately breaks its spine with the gentle reverence of a priest sacrificing a bull to Apis.
She knows about Apis now, had read those mythology books that she had inherited—or plundered, as some of the less tactless estate executors had implied. You said I could take as many books as I wanted. I wanted them all. I took everything. I took them because they meant everything to you and I thought if I owned them I would own you the way you owned me—but I was a possession you never intended to buy. I thought then I would mean something to you, more than a lengthy, comforting footnote. I have low expectations.  
Carlo smirks in his wily old man fashion. "Ah, Francesca," he coos. "If I cannot make love to you, I will make love to your book." He is a book man to his bones and his attentions, more fickle than those of any woman he ridicules, now focus on the book: the splendid font that indelibly anchors her words with their preening serifs—he chose it himself, Bembo of course, that venerable type first created for a Venetian printer—the thickly luxurious paper sibilant and alive against his dry fingertips, like the dress of a beautiful woman that begs for removal. In the end he praises not her, but her words: "Even in English, it is perfect. That first sentence, always—there is an undertow to it, like in the sea. It seduces and warns all at once. It—" He stops, shakes his head, looks at her. His mocking lust is gone, and with solemn, fatherly pride he hands the book to her.
She is 32 years old. One year short of crucifixion, as Carlo had said recently.
The town does not smell of lemons, as he had had promised. Instead the scents of beer, money, tourists, escape, destination, the sea—real and imagined, pungent and ethereal—crosshatched the air's dense, humid weave. She is a tourist in her own country, a fair-haired northerner to be mistrusted, as foreign to them as an American; her accent, a Venetian's cold and calculating tongue, bewilders them.  It does not stop them from looking at her, as both an affluent mark and an object of desire.
But whenever she goes on walks away from the town—following the gradual ascent of the main road that lifts into the hills, into a winding pilgrimage to the cliffs, the moneyed hotels, the remote villas—there, with the sun warm along her bare shoulders, she takes pleasure in the smell of the olives, silvery green and hard, easily within reach.
She thought that once the book was finished, printed, bound, and out into the world, it would be done. Here, in Sorrento, she wants to become another woman.
In Mykonos, you said, you became another woman. The sea made you wild, your hair was loose and rough from so much swimming, your body tighter. Your lover, who had fallen into complaisance, wanted you as much as she did when she first laid eyes upon you.
In the Piazza Tasso she sits, mimicking the life she normally leads: Sitting alone in a café with a book—this time her book—under a golden awning, surrounded by local men arguing, playing chess, reading newspapers, slurping soups and cappuccinos, trying, always trying, to claim her attention. Only the sun's memento-mori caress is different; after so many days her shoulders finally loosen under its blazing constancy. She tries to pretend that she is reading the book she wrote for the first time. In a manner, she is—this is the first time she has read it in English, and under the shimmering Sorrento sun.
It's when she looks up that she notices the woman, or at least, aspects of her: a lovely neck craning, a serious face parallel with her pages, tendrils of espresso-colored hair touching the edge of the book with an odd, proprietary intimacy.
Their eyes meet. The woman offers a broad, sheepish grin and the one word known to all tourists:  "Scusi."
"It's okay," Francesca replies softly. In English.
"It's been a while since I've seen a book—well, anything, in English." She sits at the empty table next to Francesca.
"Perhaps it's been a while since you have spoken English?"
"That too." The woman laughs nervously before her face falls in comic shock. "God, do I sound that bad?"
This confession and its subsequent horror unleashes the floodgates; the cappuccino Francesca buys her no doubt aids and abets the English tide. Francesca discovers that the woman—American, of course—has been traveling the continent for nearly a month now and, having lost her traveling companion to an infatuation with a boy in Prague, alone for over a week.
"Maybe I need an infatuation of my own," she muses quietly, and gazes into the now-empty cup as if the rich black grounds and milky dregs serve the same oracle-like function as tea leaves.
"An infatuation?" A smile threatens to break Francesca's reserve; only momentarily she fights the persuasive pull of her facial muscles, before surrendering to the flush of amusement, of pleasure.
"Yeah. Sounds very quaint, very Henry James, doesn't it?" She pauses and looks at Francesca intently, with genuine curiosity. "Have you read any Henry James?" The question lacked the usual American imperviousness.
Which pleased Francesca. "Yes."
"I'm being practically Victorian. An affair, if you prefer." A blush darkens her tan. The tiny table she's sitting at is dominated not by food or drink but a frighteningly large canvas bag brimming with sunglasses and maps, sun lotion and a bottle of iced tea, a book and a sweater. Her tanned thighs press into the metal frame of the chair. She seems one of those impetuous types, the one who scrambles to jump on the bus at the last second and only then gazes at the map to realize oh shit, I'm heading the wrong way. She is curious about every little thing in this sad tourist town, even the dreary little museum that Francesca could not bear to enter, even on a boring rainy morning—in fact, so bountiful and infectious is her enthusiasm that Francesca is not entirely surprised that the woman has utterly, completely convinced her that they must see the museum immediately.
Fortunately, it is open. At least the guard decides to amuse them and opens the door.
On the third floor of the Museum Correale di Terranova —they had decided to work their way down from the top floor—they walk gingerly among porcelain and majolica, a dance of dullness to Francesca, who thinks of the grandmotherly collection of knick-knacks she had inherited from Sofia and that now sit in a box in her dusty Venetian flat, but the American woman scrutinizes nearly every piece with the solemnity of the museum-going tourist. On the second floor they make fun of the Rubens paintings and the woman tantalizes with crumbs of information: "Sometimes my ex would tell me I was Rubenesque—I was bigger then, I grant you, but I swear I wanted to kill him every goddamned time." And Francesca decides that perhaps the artist was trying—and failing spectacularly—to capture the beauty of someone not unlike the woman who was standing next to her.
On the ground floor they look at a death mask of Tasso the poet, and Francesca's skin goosebumps with delight when the woman's knuckles brush her forearm, even though ostensibly the caress was meant to direct Francesca's attention toward one of Tasso's handwritten manuscripts—predictably, her gaze falls on lines of provocation: And now he sees a woman's face arise / and now her breasts and nipples, and below / where modest eyes would be ashamed to go. / So would a goddess or a nymph arise / from the stage in the theater at night.
On the way out they look at archaeological artifacts, both Greek and Roman in origin, and Francesca confesses that she once loved someone who would have loved this—both the artifacts and the manuscripts, the past alive in things and words. This she confesses, and not that she has written an entire book centering around that certain someone. Not to mention her former occupation. Nor that said book has been banned by the Vatican—a sure guarantee of success that had thrilled Carlo. No, that would be skipping too far ahead in the plot.
"Someone?" The woman's lips pucker playfully, mocking this attempt at gender neutrality.
The game is on. It has taken Francesca a long time to adjust to this: Sex not as a business negotiation, not as a bargaining chip with someone—yes, someone, yes you, Melinda—with whom she wanted so much more, but sex as pleasure, pursuit, acquisition.  
"A woman. Much older than I."
"Ah." In one agonizing syllable she leaves Francesca hanging as she walks away, her index finger performing evenly spaced arabesques along the metal edge of a vitrine case. But when Francesca catches up to her—with a perfectly formed, lighthearted retort at the ready to put the woman at ease, and in English so disarmingly smooth because she had spent months and years perfecting it to please someone incapable of love, to mirror her beloved's flawless Italian and flawless fucking—the woman's smile is, this time, quick and shy: "So we're on the same page then?"
"Oh, yes." Francesca pauses, disquieted at her lack of self-possession, evident in this breathless oh-yes. The book of disquiet. Which she had never finished. The book of breathlessness. This she was about to begin. She imagines the pages of her own book fluttering, marking the passage of time: A girl, a whore, a woman in love, a notorious writer. Now this—a tourist in her own country, wondering about the many shaded meanings glimpsed in the smiles of one American woman. What page was she on, really?
Outside, the disorienting sun burns away the musty aura of the museum. "I'll buy you a drink," the woman says, as she slips behind the mask of her sunglasses. "To thank you for playing tour guide. Or tour follower, as the case may be."
"And what else?"
"Dinner?"
Francesca presses her advantage. She feels blood beating through her veins. Or perhaps it is just the sun pounding down relentlessly on her bare head. "And what else?"
They stop meandering through the piazza.
An appraisal takes place behind the dark sunglasses—if Francesca learned nothing else from years of being a whore, she knew that calculated look of desire held in check. "You know, before I left for this trip, my friends who had been abroad warned me about how pushy and charming Italian men were."
"And my friends would assure you that, in comparison to them, I am as decorous as the mother of God."
"Why didn't you just say the madonna?"
"I did not want you to think of that terrible singer."
"Ah. Thanks."
They walk again, this time with a heightened sense of purpose.
There are no good trattorias in Sorrento; there is, however, enough wine to make one forget lumpy gnocchi and oily sauces. After that, after all the drinks that framed the flirtatious discourse in a bar that alternately blared disco music and a Manchester United game, Francesca pulls her into the dank, desolate bathroom and kisses her. Sorrento finally, begrudgingly unravels in their kiss, in the overpowering taste of limoncello—lemons sweet and strong, right there in this stranger's mouth, caught in the gossamer of alcohol fumes, the scent coexisting in the dark fine netting of her hair and the nape of her neck, in the tantalizing descent to her breasts.
Her hands fill themselves with flesh, every desperate motion dictated by the treacherous curves of hips and thighs. Desire again, she thinks. An undertow that seduces and warns.
The woman breaks the kiss. "Can we get out of here?"
Francesca laughs nervously, presses her flushed face against the woman's shoulder—as firmly unyielding and tempting as an underripe peach, so much so that she bites into it, then feels a burst of movement along her hands. "No," she murmurs into broken skin. "Yes."
"Indecisive, aren't you? If I wanted to do this in a bathroom stall, I never would have left Newark Airport."
"So who is waiting for you at this Newark Airport?"
She laughs. "No one."
"Why did you come here?"
"I don't know. The usual reasons—I needed a break from my life, I wanted to not be myself for a while. The usual reasons people run away on sudden vacations. I guess that's all a way of saying I don't know." Again, that beautiful grin. "But aren't you glad I did?"
In the dark of Francesca's hotel room the romantic view of the cliffs is a mirage, a blackened monolith only hinted at in distant, distinct moonlit etchings—like a nocturne that the artist abandoned in favor of the warming flames of absinthe. The perfect backstage for Tasso's theater at night. No nymph or goddess arises, however—just a woman, and for Francesca that is more than satisfactory.
Desperation, typically not a quality never worth seeking, takes on a different aspect in bed—that of distinct, heightened advantage: She fucks as if there's no tomorrow, as if daylight will not arrive, and welcomes every kiss and touch and fumbling entry, every thrust into her body that threatens to break her, but doesn't. It only makes her wetter, open and aching for that long-awaited moment when the woman presses her face between Francesca's legs, inhaling the salt of the sea, drawing her in and devouring her. In Sorrento, she becomes another woman.
In the morning Francesca awakens to find the woman still there, sitting naked and cross-legged upon the bed, nibbling at a thumbnail and reading her book. She greets Francesca with a sly ghost of a smile that, Francesca hopes, encompasses desire and affection, perhaps even expectation.
The ghosts will be there, always, in every woman. Francesca returns the smile.
"Tell me your name," she says.
End
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tysonrunningfox · 5 years
Text
Ripped: Part 10
This chapter is...so much, again, I...hope I didn’t mess a lot of things up but also I’m so excited for this to be out there
Ao3
Detective Eretson’s office isn’t roomy, but it looks bigger for the absolute lack of decoration. Snotlout has been complaining about him for a year, but there’s nothing on the walls except for a very official looking medal that Hiccup doesn’t recognize and the bookcase holds only a cardboard box neatly folded and marked “miscellaneous”. Hiccup can see Snotlout’s nametag on his desk out through the small vertical window, which is crosshatched with wire, the age old answer to bulletproof that actually makes it weaker.
Hiccup’s dad’s office had glass like that. They took it out after he died and replaced it with modern tempered glass, like there was no longer anything inside worth the falsely protecting.
Eretson brings Hiccup a cup of coffee from the breakroom, stale and obviously made that morning, but he accepts it anyway, taking the smallest sip he can while Eretson sits down and logs into his computer. The silence and clicking matches Hiccup’s speeding heartbeat and he clears his throat, fidgeting in the cold plastic chair. Something about the detective’s presence reminds him of his dad getting home after he’d done something wrong but it hadn’t been discovered yet. He learned young that confessing was easier than not, but his dad’s disappointment was heavier to carry than his own guilt.
“What? No bad cop routine this time?” He laughs, the sound echoing off of the undecorated walls, unwelcome.
“That was tired cop,” Eretson pushes his keyboard away and turns fully to Hiccup, eyebrows knit together in a heavy frown.
“What’s this then?”
“I’m good at my job, Mr. Haddock.” There’s swagger there but it’s buoyant, balancing. “And I’m good at reading people.”
“I’m guessing I say ‘won’t try to escape’?” Hiccup rubs one of his wrists and Eretson doesn’t flinch.
“This precinct lets you get away with a lot because of your father,” a jab that hurts worse than when Snotlout says it, “but not murder.” He flips through some photos from the crime scene and Hiccup swallows hard, trying to focus on anything but that flash of metal leg and regretting it. “People who do this don’t look at pictures of it like that.”
“I bet that’s true,” Hiccup remembers the guy who’d invited him over to see his collection.
“It is,” Eretson turns the photos over, “but that doesn’t explain why you keep finding the bodies.”
“So you think the cases are related?” It’s the only thing Hiccup has been able to think about for the last two hours. Or that’s not fair, it’s the only thing he’s been able to focus on.
He thought about his tour, and how it felt like the worst ever but he’s scared it’ll be his best reviewed. He thought about Astrid, one second blushing with her chin held high and the next pale and terrified, her shaky hand telling him to pull his foot out of his mouth and turn around. He thought about Dave and wondered if it hurt.
But he focused on all the reasons the murders can’t be related. Or all the reason, singular, and it doesn’t feel very reliable right now, sitting across the station from his dad’s old office, being lectured by strong, broad shoulders and an unshakeable scowl.
Lightning doesn’t strike twice until someone puts up a lightning pole.
“Your alibies check out. I talked to Gobber and he affirmed how you knew of the first victim. And I confirmed the tape—“
“What tape?” Hiccup can’t think of anywhere legal he’s been that would be taped and obtained by the cops.
“Right,” Eretson clears his throat and turns back to his computer, clicking again before turning the screen around. “This tape was recorded—“
“The back of the condos,” Hiccup nods to himself, watching grainy black and white footage of Astrid jumping and his arm curling her protectively into his chest. It’s a joke even here, she obviously doesn’t need his protection, but God he wanted to give it to her earlier as she shook, trying not to look into the alley and being unable to look anywhere else.
The memory twists his stomach, caught up in everything else. It was torture to see her scared after seeing her so passionate, defiant, happy. Embarrassed was his favorite, he liked it enough that he pulled off feigning confidence, even though the thought of her kissing him for revenge after trying to save his tour practically made him lightheaded.
Cameras. Astrid texted him that she’d talked to the police about cameras, this must have been why. He wonders what she thought when she saw it.
“This is approximately time of death, given the coroner’s statement and Miss Hofferson confirmed that you walked her home.”
“I did.”
“When does your first Viggo Grimborn tour begin?” He says Grimborn like an American idiom he finds deeply inferior and Hiccup wants to ask where he’s from, but the little Snotlout on his shoulder flicks him on the ear and reminds him not to yap without a lawyer present. He’s not sure when Snotlout got promoted to be both angel and devil, but now’s not the time to dwell on that.
“Seven or seven thirty, depending on the weather, and I try and get there half an hour before to let people know they’re in the right place.”
“Miss Hofferson says I can confirm with her coworker that you were at her job from five to six, approximately.”
“Sounds about right,” Hiccup wills his face not to move but Eretson’s eyes flash anyway, deadly like a predator that isn’t used to starving.
“So, the night of Jennifer Franklin’s murder, you’re attesting to the fact that you made it from 324 Harbor road to the alley behind the Ripped Tavern in less than half an hour, but you’re now claiming that being at the Berk Archives until six is enough evidence to say that you couldn’t have been killing this man at approximately six thirty, according to the coroner?”  
Eretson isn’t flip-flopping or changing his mind, he’s trying to steer his investigational sailboat with a strong lean and Hiccup’s lower back throbs.
His doctor doesn’t like him walking eight miles a day on cobblestones and his hips agree. His back is usually willing to compromise but the last week avoiding shortcuts at Snotlout’s request has done a number on its resolve.
“I’ve been staying out of the alleys,” Hiccup realizes all at once that there’s no way to know that Dave was wearing his old spare leg and the angelic-devil Snotlout on his shoulder applauds him for keeping the secret, “Snotlout—Officer Jorgenson, I mean, said it wasn’t a good idea after the first murder.”
“He did?”
“He’s not particularly confident in my ability to take care of myself,” Hiccup flexes an arm and laughs, the self-depricating sound less welcome in the office than the awkward one. “Ask him yourself.”
“You can’t tell me about it?” There’s frustration there but not disbelief.
“I uh…don’t talk much.” He clears his throat, “I’m shy around authority figures, you know how it is, I’m sure.”
“That’s the first lie you’ve told,” Eretson stands up and opens the door to his office, “don’t—“
“Don’t leave town, I’ve got it.” Hiccup walks out into the lobby, freezing when he recognizes a man in a crisp grey uniform talking to a man in a suit that makes Eretson stop short.
“Detective Eretson, I’ve heard that you’ve met Mr. Grisly—“
“I have,” Eretson answers stiffly, holding out a tense hand at the end of a flexed arm.
“My pleasure,” the man in gray shakes it, everything about him mocking and superior for no externally discernible reason. His accent is Bond villain and he raises a charcoal eyebrow at Hiccup. “It’s good to see you again, Hiccup, it’s been too long.”
“Has it?” Hiccup never thought he’d feel like he was backed against the same wall as detective Eretson by the same force, “I thought you didn’t enjoy your private tour.”
“Enjoyment isn’t necessary for an experience to be…influential.” He laughs, “you didn’t get my joke, by the way.”
“Joke?”
“It hasn’t been a long time at all, I caught you with your hands full the other night.” He’s having as much fun as Hiccup isn’t currently and as much as Eretson has never had.
“With unsanctioned cameras,” Eretson crosses his arms, respectfully glaring at the man in the suit. “I’m close, Sir—“
“The approval just went through this morning, we can’t have the media buzz right now Eretson, I’m calling in all the help we can get.”
“Then talk to another precinct, don’t bring in a civilian organization—”
“Other precincts don’t have anyone to spare,” Eretson’s boss is conclusive, leaving no room to wedge an argument in before he continues, “and Mr. Grisly’s help has the additional benefit of being free, so you’ll take the information he gives you.”
“I’m sure it’s unbiased,” Hiccup mutters under his breath and Eretson scoffs, their momentary agreement lingering as Eretson’s boss walks away.
“I look forward to working together,” Mr. Grisly’s smile is predatory too, but starving. A lion under a gladiator arena starved to amp up its ferocity, but something about the gleam in his eye makes Hiccup think he bolted the lock himself. “This case so far is of particular interest to me.”
Everything impulsive in Hiccup’s body wants to say ‘Grimborn’ but his stomach twists against it, the ghost of a gag keeping the words in his throat. If it’s Grimborn, that means at least two more murders and he doesn’t even want to think about it, especially given his recent luck in stumbling across them.
“Great, more hobby detectives,” Eretson gripes, dismissing Hiccup with a look at the front door and yet another reminder not to leave town. Hiccup wishes that was more of an issue, but he wasn’t exactly planning a lavish vacation before a second murder shut down his tours.
00000
The shelter is busier than usual, and Gobber lets Hiccup eat if he works, so he finds plenty to keep himself occupied through the next week. Plus, people at the shelter are scared, getting there earlier, every day with new complaints about the Neighborhood Watch Force flaunting badges they’ve been told mean something now. Snotlout is furious but for once, as helpless as Eretson, even though the phenomenon doesn’t seem to be forcing any kind of bond. If anything, Snotlout is angrier, but that could just be the fact that he’s stuck on traffic duty during an important investigation.
Home is quiet though, and Hiccup is restless. As much as his back appreciates the break, he doesn’t need the extra time to think. He could research, given his renewed access and enthusiasm about the archives, but he can’t think about Grimborn without thinking ahead like a meteorologist tracking Hurricane Death. That and as much as he’d like to hang out with Astrid, he’s not sure she feels the same and if she doesn’t, he doesn’t know if he can blame her.
She’s been texting him, mostly pictures from the Berk Enquirer. She found some article from the summer of eighteen eighty-five suggesting an earthquake was actually caused by a dragon fighting ring in a giant arena under the bay and asked for his thoughts on the topic. He said it seemed plausible, given that no one actually knows what’s under the earth as it hurtles through space like a Frisbee and she sent back a string of angry emojis that made him laugh, but flat earth jokes aren’t necessarily communication.
“Oh my God, dude, what are you wearing?” He barely gets two steps in the door after helping Gobber check people into the shelter on Friday night before Snotlout’s outfit accosts him from across the living room. “Or should I say what aren’t you wearing?” Hiccup pulls down the collar of his tee-shirt to mimic the deep V of Snotlout’s shirt.
“What?”
“You left the part of your shirt that covers your lack of tan in your closet, you might want to check on that before you blind someone.”
“Very funny,” Snotlout grabs his jacket, “I’m going to go get a beer, want to come?”
“Even I know I shouldn’t spend my last five dollars on beer.”
“If you want me to cover you, just ask, don’t be so cryptic all the time,” he chides as he rolls his eyes, waving Hiccup along behind him.
“I wasn’t asking you to cover me.” Hiccup clarifies on the way downstairs and Snotlout shrugs.
“Whatever, dude, keep telling yourself that.” He looks both ways before continuing, voice low, “they still don’t know it’s your fake leg, by the way, have you heard anything from Eretson?”
“Nope, apparently I learned how to shut up at a really convenient time, I just needed some pressure.”
“Well keep the pressure on, I doubt your closed mouth is permanent, and they’re no closer to solving this, even with Mr. Creepy skulking around the station.” Snotlout shudders, “the guy isn’t even helpful, he just looms over everyone’s shoulders. He caught me online shopping the other day and he just watched.”
“It’s a good thing I’m sure you were shopping for totally work appropriate stuff, as you always do,” Hiccup raises an eyebrow and Snotlout glares at him.
“Shut up, Hiccup.”
Gruff’s is busy but not packed yet, and they’re lucky enough to get a booth along the wall. Snotlout sends Hiccup to the bar to get drinks and Gruffnut jokes about his growth spurt instead of asking for ID. That’s something that wouldn’t happen anywhere else in Berk these days, the bars down on the main street that charge ten dollars for some locally made shitty whiskey usually end up asking Hiccup for two IDs if he makes the mistake of shaving too close to going. It makes him want to ask how Gruffnut manages to pay rent if Heather is struggling, but he guesses this is a worse neighborhood.
Or was, maybe murders happening so close to the condos will equalize property values a little bit.
Who’s he kidding? They’ll probably skyrocket. He saw his first article relating the current duo of murders to Viggo Grimborn this morning and couldn’t help but read it. It got a lot wrong, even ascribing to the theory that the third victim’s fiancé did it to first scare her into staying off the street and then to cover his tracks, but Hiccup gets the feeling it did what it was supposed to. Someone at the shelter was complaining about motel prices doubling nearly overnight and Berserker Tours added a RSVP tab to the website that Hiccup told himself he wouldn’t check, but when he did it was scheduling three weeks out.
Snotlout dutifully doesn’t listen to Hiccup’s rant about it, staring idly around the room like if he looks bored enough Hiccup won’t know he’s looking for a target. It makes Hiccup think about texting Astrid for what must be the hundredth time this week, and he sets his phone on the table where his pocket can’t accidentally make that decision for him.
“…absolute lying, thieving sack of shit!” The insult rises above the noise of the crowd mid-sentence and a few heads turn towards the end of the bar by the door. Hiccup turns in the booth to investigate and thinks he recognizes the blonde woman yelling at Gruffnut, hands planted on the weathered counter. “Don’t play dumb with me, I know exactly how dumb you are and you aren’t going to get away with acting any dumber than that!”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Gruffnut whistles, cleaning a glass with a filthy rag, “must have been Tuff.”
“Is that?” Snotlout frowns, talking mostly to himself. “I think that’s—”
“Ruff!”
Hiccup recognizes Astrid’s voice instantly and jumps to his feet, but Snotlout is already across the room, holding Ruffnut back as she’s trying to claw her way over the counter.
“Let’s calm down here—”
“I don’t need a cop to protect me from my dweeby little girl cousin, Snotlout.”
Ruffnut’s yell is primal and she elbows Snotlout in the chest almost hard enough for him to lose his grip.
“You absolute piece of shit, if you don’t find my money I’m going to kill you and claim next of kin, you creepy body snatching—”
“Ruff, calm down,” Astrid tries again, catching Ruffnut’s arm before she can take another swing at Snotlout.
“I don’t even have to hide it, I can just disembowel it in the street at a specific location and—”
“Hey!” Astrid booms, shoving Snotlout and Ruffnut out of the way and evidently taking the problem into her own hands. “Just give her the money, Gruff. And while you’re at it, I’d like my fifty bucks back.”
“You never loaned me fifty bucks, that was Tuffnut.”
“How about a free round,” Hiccup inserts himself, leaning elbows on the bar next to her and waving sheepishly when she cocks her head, surprised but not unhappy to see him. “Or I’ll tell Snotlout to release the beast over there.”
“He doesn’t listen to you,” Gruffnut narrows his eyes but starts pouring four shitty beers anyway.
“I might not have a choice,” Snotlout grunts as Ruffnut flings herself back against him, trying to kick at the bar, “fuck, she’s strong.”
“Flattery won’t work on me,” she grunts, yanking Snotlout’s arm off of her waist and turning to face him. Her posture changes instantly, hip cocked as she twirls long hair around her finger, “oh, yours might.”
“This isn’t even the first situation this week that my good looks have diffused,” Snotlout grabs two beers off of the counter and hands one to Ruffnut, smiling smugly at Gruffnut, “you should be glad to have me around.”
“Yeah, I’ll be glad to have you around the day it’s legal to charge cops ten percent more.” He grumbles, walking to the other end of the bar to serve someone else, “can’t even have a bar fight with your cousin these days. Fucking nanny state.”
“So…” Hiccup looks at Astrid as Ruffnut and Snotlout head back to the booth, “there’s a story here.”
“Yeah,” she tucks a lock of her hair behind her ear, ponytail slightly crooked, likely from her own attempt to hold Ruffnut back, “I should probably tell it, I doubt Ruffnut has the attention span right now.”
Of course Ruffnut and Snotlout are sharing one side of the booth and Hiccup tries to be casual as Astrid slides in next to him, accidentally bumping his shoulder as she takes off her jacket and sets it between them. It’s not much of a buffer because it smells like her shampoo, floral even above the cigarette smell ingrained decades deep into the wood paneling on the wall, and Hiccup tries to focus on anything but the memory of encyclopedias falling in tune with his pounding heart.
“Guess what?” Ruffnut is too pleased with herself to really look annoyed, “after all, it turns out that Snotlout wouldn’t have minded you giving me his number. All that arguing for nothing.”
“Not for nothing,” Snotlout stretches an arm across the back of the booth, “I didn’t mind holding you back, babe.”
“I mean I’d rather you didn’t hold me back,” she grins, “and we were wearing less or it was strategically pushed aside—”
“Oh my God!” Astrid chugs about half of her beer in a single gulp, cheeks practically glowing and a stern expression on her face. “I’m sorry about her, Snotlout, thank you for helping me save my friend from assaulting someone.”
“Again, I don’t mind,” Snotlout winks and Hiccup usually asks him how he thinks anyone could think that looks cool, but now he’s just remembering how stupid he must have looked doing the same at Astrid and asking her to kiss him again.
And then they found a body.
That’s still a change in tone he hasn’t found a way to navigate.
“I kind of do,” Ruffnut puffs out her cheeks and releases the air in a small, deflated puff, “the holding me back part, I mean. Free beer is my favorite, but it takes a lot of free beer to add up to a thousand dollars.”
“Less to fifty,” Astrid snorts, “I might be up to it.”
“That would be like sixteen of these on happy hour,” Hiccup turns his glass between his hands, “I’m not doubting your power, but…”
“After the week I’ve had, I might be up to it,” she shakes her head, obviously tired. It looks different than the kind of tired he saw when he showed up at her door too late or too early, or the kind of tired she was when she just had to wait for his eleven o’clock tour to yell one last theory down at him. It’s deeper and he hates that he knows why she can’t sleep.
“So, how do you guys know Gruff?” Hiccup changes the subject before it can drift naturally into Grimborn and all the ways its meaning might be changing.
“Are you kidding me?” Ruffnut points at her face and then absently over her left shoulder with a habitual thumb. “Oh, shit, Tuff isn’t here right now, that would be confusing.”
“He’s Ruffnut’s cousin,” Astrid explains, “and her brother’s doppleganger, it’s a whole long confusing story.”
“Well, I don’t have anywhere to be.” Hiccup tries to feel natural but Snotlout’s easy arm on the back of the other side of the booth makes his heart race when he even thinks about doing the same to Astrid. He remembers what she felt like against him, the strong set of her shoulders under his hands, the curve of her waist, and his entire body itches to pull her into his side now.
Not that there’s any indication she’d let him. She might see him and remember an alley she never wants to see again with him presenting it like Vanna White happily revealing the prize behind door number three.
“He takes my twin brother’s clothes and asks for money or stuff and when he gets it, he falls off the face of the earth again. Last time it was Tuff owing tax money so of course I gave it to him,” Ruffnut rubs her temple, “I’m too good of a sister, that’s the whole problem.”
“How alike could they possibly look?” Snotlout asks, grinning when Ruffnut is apparently happy to be blinded by his chest.
“It’s…kind of creepy, actually,” Astrid sighs, “I didn’t believe it until Tuffnut didn’t pay back some money I loaned him. He’s usually good about that stuff but he just kept insisting I never loaned him anything, and then I met Gruffnut.” She waves her hand towards the bar, ponytail swinging for emphasis.
“You know, babe, if you had a case for identity theft,” Snotlout waggles his eyebrows and Ruffnut pouts, crumpling into his side, head dramatically on his shoulder. He wraps his arm easily around her waist and Astrid sits up straighter, so rigid if Hiccup didn’t know better he’d think she was a wax statue.
A wax statue that had its post-forming makeup touched up by someone red-green colorblind trying to make an absolutely gorgeous Wicked Witch of the West, but still.
“I wish,” Ruffnut groans, “Tuffnut worships the ground the guy walks on.”
“I get it,” Snotlout nods, “that’s how Hiccup feels about me, some cousins just have that energy.” He grins, looking pointedly at Hiccup’s awkward arm, setting limply in his lap like he forgot how to move it. “Some don’t.”
“I get that you’re pissed, Ruff, I am too, but maybe it’s not the time for the disemboweling threats,” Astrid says it like the words are likely to bounce back at her so she doesn’t want to sharpen them too much.
“Why not?” Ruffnut snorts and gestures at Hiccup, “I’m in the right company.”
“Right, that’s me,” Hiccup nods to himself, “the disemboweled body guy. It’s good to finally officially introduce myself.”
This is going great.
“Oh, we’ve met,” Ruffnut raises an eyebrow, “how’s the tour business? I bet it’s picking up with some crazy mimic on the loose.”
“Babe, I’m not supposed to talk about it, but I can’t help myself around you so I’ll just say that the police have no actual reason to link the murders,” Snotlout tries to steer the conversation and Astrid glares at him. “Aside from, you know, some obnoxious weirdos or whatever.”
“If you’re not supposed to talk about it, maybe don’t talk about it.”
“I didn’t,” he rolls his eyes, “I said what we haven’t found, which is not the same as saying what we have—”
“How about none of us talk about it?” Hiccup tries, drumming his hands on the edge of the table, “anyone read any good books lately?”
“Nope,” Astrid looks at him helplessly then, wide eyes begging him to keep a secret. A bookish secret, apparently.
Oh, their secret. It makes sense that what happened at the archives would get lost in the whirlwind of finding a body, but Hiccup can’t quite stop himself from assuming she regrets it.
“Right, like it’s possible to avoid talking about it,” Ruffnut points at the TV over the bar, where the news is showing a juxtaposition of a picture of the alley from the Grimborn file along with a modern picture.
“…police response has been sluggish, given the repeated nature of the murders and the plausible connection to the Viggo Grimborn case—”
“I’ll put it on Sports Center,” Snotlout stands up and Astrid follows.
“What? So we can watch more Superbowl reruns?”
Snotlout grins, “not a Pats fan?”
“Don’t talk to me,” she shoves him hard enough that he stumbles and makes a bee-line for the tv.
“Is it because you’re a sore loser or what?” Snotlout starts in on his favorite argument.
“Well, there goes his night,” Hiccup tries to joke with Ruffnut even as he watches Astrid’s furious, irritated expression. She takes the remote from Snotlout’s hand and changes the channel, ignoring a few complaints at the bar. “Especially because it looks like Astrid has an opinion on the topic.”
Ruffnut narrows her eyes and Hiccup clears his throat, unused to the position of Designated Normal Person and unsure if he’s doing it right.
“So umm, football?”
“Did you do it?” Ruffnut whispers, leaning close across the table.
“Football?” Hiccup laughs, “yeah, look at me. I was a championship kicker, won the big game for the whole town and—”
“No, the murders,” she clarifies, shrewd even as she tries to look casual. “I’m just saying, it’s a little suspicious that you were giving murder site tours to my best friend both times they happened.”
“No, I did not murder two people.”
“Because I mean it, Astrid is my absolute best friend, and if you’re getting her entangled in some weird serial killer cult, she won’t be the one getting blamed for it.” It’s too matter of fact to be a threat, like the sequence of events already exists in a universe Hiccup really doesn’t want to get to.
“I’m not introducing Astrid to a murderous cult.”
“Well, I know you guys aren’t hooking up because if you were, she’d probably have something more interesting to talk about than stupid Viggo Grimborn.” Ruffnut looks him up and down appraisingly, “maybe.”
“I’m not introducing Astrid to a murderous cult,” Hiccup repeats the truth, willing his expression flat.
“HGTV?” Snotlout scoffs over the crowd, “right, for all the renovating you do in your shitty apartment.”
“It’s aspirational,” Astrid jumps and neatly sets the remote on top of the tv where Snotlout can’t reach it. “Unlike the NFL’s stance that their system is really totally fine even if the competition has devolved into who gets cheated by a bunch of—”
“That’s my cue,” Ruffnut drains her beer and stands up, “she gets on me for threatening my dipshit cousin and then she starts dissing the Patriots in a bar in the middle of Downtown Berk. I don’t know what she’d do without me.”
“Always a pleasure, Ruff,” Hiccup waves before slumping forward, smacking his forehead on the table a couple of times for good measure.
Astrid regrets kissing him, her best friend thinks he’s more likely to be into ritualistic murder than to have a chance with her. He’s broke. Someone might be a ritualistic serial killer and their shared interest in Berk’s history is making him more broke.
He expects Snotlout to start right in on making fun of his absolutely disastrous performance with Astrid, so he’s shocked when someone quietly slides into the booth across from him. He doesn’t expect to look up and see Astrid biting her lip and staring pensively at her beer.
“Where—”
“They just left together,” she cuts him off with an awkward laugh, “just so you know.”
“Ah,” Hiccup pushes his hair back, half-relieved and half-jealous, unsure where the feelings overlap. He’d love to not be here, but Astrid seems committed to being exactly where she is, so he’s committed. “So I’m stuck here for a while then.”
“I wouldn’t worry too much about it,” she shrugs a stiff shoulder, “you’ve met Ruffnut, it’s not like she’s shy about…well, anything.”
“Oh no, not—It’s not about her, it’s for my own good.” He laughs, wishing she’d sat back next to him at the same time as he’s glad to be able to see her face, slowly relaxing away from it’s coiled, anxious expression. “Snotlout’s a screamer.”
She snorts mid-drink, clapping her hand over her nose and coughing.
“Sorry,” he shoves a crumpled napkin at her before re-thinking it, “never mind, I wouldn’t trust anything on this table—”
“I’m fine,” she wipes her nose on her sleeve and pointedly changes the subject, “how have you been? Usually I don’t have to ask because I see you every night outside my window.” She doesn’t mention why he’s not doing tours and that makes it more obvious.
Or maybe it’s obvious all on its own and he’s just skirting the issue by making her snort beer out of her nose.
“I’m good. Fine. You?” He wouldn’t try to deny that he’s asking how traumatized she is. In fact, he probably deserves an award for not tacking on a rating scale. One means she needs a ride to a licensed mental health professional immediately, ten means she’s smart enough to never want to see him again because he’s obviously a weirdo dragging her towards the macabre and it’s not good for her.
He’s hoping for like a six, meaning she’d take a hug but won’t necessarily make him talk about it.
“I just said I’m fine,” her half smile accuses him of being a little bit stupid and he can’t help but remember how soft her lips were. How weirdly sweet she was when she tried to save his tour. How adorably embarrassed she was when she impossibly let it slip that she thought he did something sexy, like that’s a word anyone has ever associated with him, least of all someone like Astrid.
And then they found a body.
“Good.” As bad as Hiccup is at performing the role of Designated Normal Person, he’s even worse at having nothing to say.
“Thanks, by the way,” Astrid clears her throat, sniffing like there’s still beer where it shouldn’t be, “for not telling Ruffnut about…you know, the other day.”
“Which part?” Hiccup scratches the back of his head, “because I think she knows about the whole umm…finding a body part, given she thinks I’m the killer.”
“She doesn’t seem to get that people can have a shared interest and nothing more.” Her words sting but her blush doesn’t.
“Right, shared interests always lead to ritualistic murder,” he nods, elbows on the table as he leans a little closer to not have to say murder so loud, “I don’t see the flaw in that logic.”
“Either murder or the inevitable ‘sex in a murder alley’ she keeps insisting is a thing.” Astrid is either very cruel or has no idea of her ability to short circuit minds.
“Yeah, that sounds pretty morbid and drafty,” Hiccup laughs, his heart slamming around his ribcage apparently untethered, “plus, if ritualistic murder alley sex was on the table, your apartment is already a murder site so…” He swallows hard, wishing the floor would do the same to him. “Not a new one—"
“Don’t remind me,” she says seriously, clearly choosing not to hear the worst of what he just said, and he’s an idiot who can’t take an out.
“So no point in risking the public indecency charge, I guess.” He gestures between them and shakes his head, “not that ‘murder alley sex’ is a thing that exists at all, let alone with—you know, you. Or me. Or—"
“Don’t you mean my apartment isn’t a new murder scene yet?” Her laugh is humorless and heavy as she cautiously meets his eyes. “I hate to even say it, but do you think it’s a Grimborn thing?”
Hiccup’s stomach twists and looking into her tired face, he wishes he was a better liar, “I guess we’ll find out.”
“If it is,” she looks at him carefully, her assessment entirely perpendicular to Ruffnut’s, “if someone is killing people like Viggo Grimborn did, how can we just sit there doing nothing? If this—what are you going to do about it?”
He knows the correct answer to that question. It’s been drilled into him again and again since before he can remember. Hell, probably since before he could walk.
The police are dealing with it. The system works. Getting in the way only slows down the process.
But he can’t say that because Astrid knows that means nothing. It’s an empty thing he’d say to tell her to move on with her life while people are getting hurt, to pretend that mental blinders do anything other than hide suffering. And she’s too smart for that. Too smart and too honest to go along with it.
And she doesn’t scare easy.
“Probably something stupid,” he shrugs and she nods, apparently satisfied with the answer.
“Sounds about right.”
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the-stray-liger · 5 years
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Hey! Don’t know if this has been asked, but what inspires you to draw/create?
This one’s kind of a sad answer bc like. For the last 2-3 years I have not felt inspired a lot. 
Depression and burnout really have taken a toll on my creativity and artistic drive and I struggle so much with “inspiration” and “motivation” that I have had to rely in discipline and force myself to draw, because my BPD has warped my self image so badly that I only feel like I have an identity and count as a human person if other ppl aknowledge it (and since I don’t have any ohter ways of attracting positive attention. well. art). Lately, most of the time, I draw because I feel like I Have To Or Otherwise I Will Die.
I guess you’re not here to hear about why I’m ready at all times to jump into incoming traffic though so here’s a shorter, simpler, MUCH cheerier answer:
Other artists’ work. 
Literally most of my progress and all the fun things I did and created when I was still a person and not a bag of issues with legs were spurred because I saw art that someone else made and I fell in love with it: something about, say, the way they used simple lines and crosshatching to make a “sketchy” style come alive, the way they exploited the gradient map to make an already stunning painted illustration to pop and become super lively. All those were things I wanted to imitate somehow or posessed a quality I wanted to implement in my art, so I was inspired to try new things and draw.
Buying art books of big classic artists and not so big ones too keeps bringing to my attention things I never thought I could implement like color theory and composition! Impressionist and expressionist painters are my faves, but I am also very fond of barroque and flemish paintings. My mom’s a botanical illustrator and thanks to her I also have found a lot of inspiration and learned a lot from her art and other botanical artists out there.
Anime and manga enter in that cathegory too! All mangaka have different artstyles, and I have SO many favorites that are dramatically different. From Shinichi Sakamoto’s Innocent which is like borderline hyperrealistic, delicate linework, to Kaoru Mori, to Tite Kubo, they all have things in their art that makes them special and that I want to try and make.
so yeah, tl;dr, nothing is more inspiring to me than the art of others.
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isleofelsi · 5 years
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Basewood vs. Isle of Elsi!
If you liked my graphic novel Basewood, I think you will also really like my new book, Isle of Elsi: The Dragon’s Librarian which is crowdfunding on Kickstarter until May 2nd!  There are a lot of similarities between these two stories…
Before we go any farther: DRAGONS. There are dragons in both stories! Basewood: Wolf-Dragon Isle of Elsi: a more traditional fantasy dragon.
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Do you like hanging out in the woods? Me too. That’s what I spent my whole childhood doing in the Pacific Northwest. I can’t seem to draw a story without some coniferous trees in it! 
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But, like, what’s IN those trees?  How about an old dude in an elaborate TREE HOUSE??? Bonus point for Isle of Elsi: this time the old guy is literally a wizard! 
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How about dogs? You like dogs? (c’mon, who doesn’t like dogs?) Well... there’s technically only WOLVES in Isle of Elsi but they turn out to be pretty nice, in a similar way. Also (spoiler) I don’t kill them off this time! :)  
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I’ve always been fascinated by naturally-powered mills. In Basewood there was a windmill that the plot TURNED AROUND (pun intended), and in Isle of Elsi there is a water mill! 
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How about a home that totally gets destroyed, forcing the hero to go off on an exciting adventure, Joseph-Cambell-Style? Both books have got you covered!
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“Alec! Did you grow a big crazy beard while drawing Isle of Elsi?” Nope! Not this time. But I couldn’t resist sneaking in a big ol’ Rip Van Winkle beard.
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“Hey Alec! What about obsessive crosshatching and a totally depressing storyline about someone whose family was murdered and his inability to let go of the past, to the point of sacrificing himself? Does Isle of Elsi have that stuff????”
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UH...
NO! The size (18” x 24”) and style (crosshatching, textures, etc.) that I drew Basewood in was unhealthy and unsustainable. I draw Isle of Elsi at 11”x17” and it’s in full color. Even the most complicated pages are still much easier/faster (AND WAY MORE FUN) to draw!
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And Isle of Elsi has something I was not able to add to Basewood… JOY! Like, jokes! Puns! Wordplay! FUN! Basewood helped me process a lot of grief in my life, and I am now a happier, more productive cartoonist. I believe Isle of Elsi are the best comics I’ve ever drawn!
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If you’ve never read Basewood or Isle of Elsi and this stuff looks/sounds pretty cool to you, THERE’S A TIER FOR THAT.   The $75+s/h Fantasy Fanatic tier will get you a hardback, signed and sketched-in copy of both Basewood and Isle of Elsi: The Dragon’s Librarian!
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We’re heading into the last 10 days of the campaign, so please consider checking it out and telling your friends & family about it!
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THANKS!!!
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daresplaining · 6 years
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Some Thoughts on Daredevil #600
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    Here’s to 600 issues of Daredevil (not counting mini-series, annuals, etc.)! As usually happens at these landmark moments, Marvel and the DD creative team celebrated with a longer-than-normal issue, which sparked far-reaching changes to Matt Murdock’s world. 
    The situation set up by this story arc is a grim one. Wilson Fisk has been elected mayor of NYC. Matt has been keeping an eye on him (and vice versa) as Fisk’s deputy, but has struggled in his every attempt to sabotage him. However, he has recently discovered a crack in Fisk’s law-abiding facade: a meeting that he has planned with the city’s prominent street-level villains. Matt, as Daredevil, gathers together a gang of heroes to crash the party. 
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Matt: “We protect this city, we fight in its streets, we are New York. And now we’ll take it back from Wilson Fisk. Mayor or not, he has to go down. We agree on that.”
    Colorist Matt Milla still hasn’t quite gotten the hair color memo, because poor Jessica has lost her brown hair. It also would have been nice to see Colleen in this team-up, since Misty is there. But these are minor complaints. In a series that restored Matt’s secret identity and thus symbolically isolated him from many of his friends, it’s a powerful gesture, in this climactic issue, to see him engaged in this kind of a team-up... even if most of the people involved still don’t know who he is. It’s especially nice to see Maya (Echo) here, back in action alongside her former friends. Since her resurrection early in the run she has had a few really touching moments of reconnecting with Matt, and we hope to see more of her as the series continues. 
    Matt has pulled off similar plans in the past, and he has taken down Wilson Fisk in some thoroughly delicious ways, but in this instance, it ends up not being that easy. And we like that-- Fisk has been one step ahead of Matt for this whole arc, and it would have felt anticlimactic for such a simple, faulty plan to bring that to an end. Rather than catching Fisk red-handed, the Kingpin doesn’t show. The collected villains turn on each other, the heroes swoop in to prevent any unnecessary deaths... and then the cops arrive. 
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Matt: “Damn. Damn. So much for the plan. Need to get down there, before someone gets-- Wait. NYPD. But that’s... Oh, no.”
    This scene, as exciting as it is, features a reappearance of the less-than-stellar Garney/Milla radar sense, which we’ve complained about before. 
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    There has always been inconsistency, but generally, modern depictions of the radar sense don’t allow it to pierce solid objects. Here, we see Matt tracking the activity in the restaurant from outside, a blatant break with tradition that we’re not huge fans of. What makes even less sense is the arbitrary use of multiple colors. Since the radar depiction is a visual stand-in for non-visual perception, the different colors must represent something... but what? Texture? And in the panel where Matt notices the cops, his radar seems to be picking up on flat images and uniform details that he should have no way of perceiving. It’s a nonsensical, misleading approach to the radar sense, and a tragic departure from Paolo Rivera’s crosshatching design, which was used to great effect in volumes 3 and 4. We understand each creative team wanting to put their unique stamp on the comic, but come on... if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.
    The police swoop in and grab the heroes and villains alike. We learn-- in a neat twist that, again, fits with Fisk’s behavior in the issues leading up to this climax-- that the proposed meeting was a trap, designed to round up the city’s crime bosses and get them arrested. As Matt has done again and again in this arc, he assumed nefariousness on Fisk’s part, and ended up shooting himself in the foot. While we know that Fisk is still a bad guy, and probably has all sorts of things up his sleeve, it’s always fun to see him play the good guy, just to see how cleverly he constructs the facade. And even more compellingly, Matt’s failure to accurately read his nemesis backfires on his friends. 
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Wesley: “There were heroes there, too. Jessica Jones, Danny Rand, Maya Lopez, Luke Cage, Misty Knight and Marc Spector. Even Spider-Man.”
Fisk: “Spider-Man... and what is his name? Who is he?”
Wesley: “We don’t know. Just before the cops grabbed him, he sprayed that webbing of his around his neck. Sealed it up tight, like glue. They can’t get his mask off.”
    (Oh, Peter. He’s so... experienced at this secret identity thing.)
    It will be interesting to see how long they actually end up in jail, given the events of the rest of the issue. Hopefully, someone is babysitting Dani...
    One of our favorite moments in this issue is a little reversal. While Matt has failed again and again to properly read his opponent, Fisk knows exactly how Daredevil works, and where to find him. It’s a level of familiarity between hero and arch-nemesis that is highly compelling to us. It’s these kinds of details that make for the best hero/villain relationships. It also gives Matt a chance to do a badass pose on Fisk’s roof, which is always a plus. 
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Fisk: “It’d be just like him. Come along, Wesley. Let’s go up and say hello.”
Matt: “Fisk.”
    There have been so many iconic fights between these two over the years that it’s increasingly difficult to do anything new with them. This fight is certainly a good one... but then, they all are, and this tussle probably won’t go down in DD history as one of their memorable battles. But it’s still highly enjoyable, and is enhanced by Soule’s excellent dialogue, which highlights the core of their conflict, and emphasizes just how long they’ve been having these fights. 
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Fisk: “If my name weren’t Wilson Fisk, you wouldn’t have batted an eye. You’d be cheering that the mayor had found a way to get Owlsley and the others off the streets.”
Matt: “But you are Wilson Fisk. You are the Kingpin. And you’re the enemy of everything that matters about this city.”
Fisk: “No. I’m not. But I’m sick of trying to explain that to you.”
    But as was foreshadowed throughout this arc, Matt isn’t allowed a clean win. Fisk hits him with a sledgehammer so hard that it’s amazing he’s able to stand afterward, and then goes off to tell a crowd of adoring supporters how great he is. Again, we are given a look at Fisk’s faked (probably?) duality, as Soule is exploring it-- the idea of him playing the hero while still being a villain. This isn’t a new Kingpin concept, of course, but it remains a good one, and an engaging way of playing with the character’s complexity.
    Partway through the speech, the Hand arrive and shoot Fisk full of arrows, thus kickstarting the next story arc. The Hand are really neat when used well, so we’re excited to see where Soule takes them, particularly given their new connection to Blindspot. However, they are not this issue’s big surprise. We learn, as Matt is carted away by the cops, that with Fisk now out of the picture, the mayorship falls to his deputy...
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Steve: “Matt Murdock is the mayor of New York City.”
    (Heck yeah!)
    This is really exciting, not only because of its implications for Matt’s life, but also because it has been a long time coming. Kesel wanted to do it back in the 90s, but the idea was shot down by editorial. Bendis teased the possibility, but it never actually happened, thanks to the events of the rest of his run. 
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Guy: “They’re going to ask you to be the Democratic nominee for Mayor of New York City.”
Matt: “Huh.”
Daredevil vol. 2 #56 by Brian Michael Bendis and Alex Maleev
    And Waid’s speculative story in the 50th anniversary issue suggested that Matt had been/will become the mayor of San Francisco at some point, but we don’t get to actually see him in action. 
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Foggy: “They remembered him from his original tour of duty here, when he and the Black Widow made the scene. [...] So when he came back, they had your pop running for office in no time. Busy boy, he was. Made lots of enemies.”
Daredevil vol. 4 #1.5, “The King in Red” by Mark Waid and Javier Rodriguez
    But we are finally getting Mayor Matt Murdock, and we cannot wait to see how that works out for him. 
    The issue’s secondary plot thread is possibly even more interesting than the Matt/Fisk shenanigans, because it’s all new. This thread follows Sam’s final battle with Muse... who is essentially a Blindspot rogue now, rather than a DD one. Their relationship is fascinating, with Sam’s quest to understand the nature of his own heroism/lack thereof paired with Muse’s frenetic lack of morality. They are both raw, emotional characters, and their interactions in this issue are stunning. We’re gonna miss Muse.     
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Sam: “I need to understand, Muse. I need this to make sense. Why do you do what you do? Why do you hurt people? Why do you kill? Why?”
Muse: “You know why, Blindspot. It’s the same reason you want to kill me right now. It makes you better it makes you strong it shows them your power it says something it means something it solves your problems it gives you control you’re big they’re small it’s art it’s art IT’S ART!”
    This fight also hints that Sam’s connection with the Hand is far from over... and provides a glimpse at how his time training with them may have changed him.
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Beast: “You know my power. The power of the Beast. I will give it to you once again. Just reach out... and take it.”
    While Sam refuses to kill for the Beast, this relationship will likely continue into the next arc-- which appears to be Hand-centric. Sam’s continuing evolution has been full of surprises, and we’re eager to see where this story takes him. All-in-all, this issue didn’t stand out as one of the most earth-shattering Daredevil stories ever told, but it was still thoroughly enjoyable, and did a great job of setting up some very exciting things in the future. 
    As an extra treat, the issue also includes a short, Foggy-centric story called “They Also Serve” by Christos Gage, Mike Perkins, and Andy Troy. This is merely the latest in a long line of Foggy-centric stories that celebrate his relationship with Matt. And there’s not a dang thing wrong with that, because they never get old. Matt and Foggy’s friendship exists at the very core of the comic, and its power and poignancy only increases as the years go by. Give us all of the Foggy-centric retrospectives. We will get misty-eyed every time. 
    We have only one complaint about this story, which is that Foggy... doesn’t really sound like Foggy for parts of it. 
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Foggy: “This is gonna be so great! You have no idea how lucky you are, Murdock, ‘cause Foggy Nelson just happens to be the finest wingman in the history of wingmen. You just stand there looking handsome, strong, stoic... with a hint of tragedy, while I draw ‘em in with my oratorical virtuosity. Between my silver tongue, your looks, and the whole blind thing, you’re gonna need that cane to ward off the babes.”
    (Who... who are you, and what did you do with the real Foggy?!) 
    In fact, he sounds just like MCU Foggy. Which maybe shouldn’t have surprised us, because Christos Gage was also a writer for the first season of the Netflix show.  
    Despite this bit of weirdness, the issue is a nice look back at moments in Matt and Foggy’s friendship. It’s a trip down continuity lane, emphasizing just how long they’ve known each other and how much they’ve been through together.  
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    All told, it’s a pleasant way to close out the issue, particularly given the rocky state of Matt and Foggy’s friendship throughout this run. 
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[EBOOK] Figure Drawing for Kids A Step-By-Step Guide to Drawing People !^READPDF$
[EBOOK] Figure Drawing for Kids: A Step-By-Step Guide to Drawing People !^READ*PDF$
Figure Drawing for Kids: A Step-By-Step Guide to Drawing People
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[PDF] Download Figure Drawing for Kids: A Step-By-Step Guide to Drawing People Ebook | READ ONLINEhttp://read.ebookcollection.space/?book=1641527714
Author : Angela Rizza Publisher : Rockridge Press ISBN : 1641527714 Publication Date : 2020-1-7 Language : Pages :
To Download or Read this book, click link below:
http://read.ebookcollection.space/?book=1641527714
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Synopsis : [EBOOK] Figure Drawing for Kids: A Step-By-Step Guide to Drawing People !^READ*PDF$
Draw inspiration from everywhere and everyone--a beginner's guide to drawing people for kids.Grab a pencil and an eraser--it's time to explore the world around you and illustrate the people in it! Featuring a simple, step-by-step format for budding artists, Figure Drawing for Kids is a great way to start sketching friends and family, pop culture icons, and epic superheroes--one easy-to-draw exercise at a time.Along the way, you'll learn helpful terms and essential drawing concepts like proportion, negative space, point of view, composition, crosshatch, and more. Figure Drawing for Kids is an action-packed activity book that will surprise and delight kids at all skill levels. Drawing for kids has never been so awesome!All you need to know is in this drawing for kids' guide:Practice makes perfect--From sketching basic shapes and shading to advanced skills like perspective drawing, you'll master 13 figure-drawing activities at your own pace.Draw diversity--Get inspired by a wide range of human sizes, shapes, skin tones, and abilities.Photo fun--Discover how to draw from a photograph, how to set up a model station, and even how to draw the world around you!Dive in and let the doodling fun begin with this great beginner's guide to drawing people for kids.
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