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tkthrilla-writes · 11 months

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What was in that drink?

An Alastor x reader fic. Slight warning of possessiveness might be needed but only for that one scene

His smile was as strained as it could ever be as he watched and felt his darling host get ready. Checking themselves out in the full-length mirror in the corridor, making sure that the nice and neat clothes that they have not worn in a very long time. Patting down the sides that looked like they are creasing, making sure that they are presentable for the night.

“You know my dear,” Alastor’s shadow parted from his host and appeared in the mirror as if he was an extension of the human, “you could just stay here with me,” he tried to act sly by getting in his host’s face, as if trying to seduce them into staying with them.

“Oh come on Al, it’s my turn to be switched out tonight, and we barely go out as is,” the human now started to fixate on their hair, trying to make sure that it was properly parted and styled. “Besides, you know this is a work thing that I can’t exactly get out of,” they started, “and didn’t you say you had business at the hotel and that is why I got today to be switched out.”

Since he was an almighty demon with almighty powers and abnormalities, his smile became more strained, literally stretching ear to ear while his brows gave away the scowl that he would convey had he been there in person. But alas he was bound to the shadows. And he couldn’t show his darling host his blatant disagreement without saying anything so she could spend more time with him.

“Ok, I am done,” she said, this brought him down to Earth and brought him back to reality, “and I am heading off,” she ended with a brilliant smile on her face, clearly looking forward to the evening.

“Now now my dearest,” he motioned as she started to walk to the door, only stopping by the kitchen counter to wear the nice shoes that are practically new despite owning them for a good year or so, before making a grab for the keys and moving closer to the door, “why not have a ball here with me instead of those retched and filthy people you work with.” He tried to gesture as best as he could through his parted shadow, but all he looked like was a wispy black smog that was tightly bound together to make his outer shape.

“Hey come on, it’s not like I am going to be gone that long anyways, beside you got stuff at the hotel you said you needed to do aaaaand,” she prolonged it as if it was going to be the next main and great point, “you get to have a break from me and have time to yourself! I know how much you hate being cooped up for so long.” Ending with a gentle smile that shocked Alastor, making him take his hand back at very slight shock and rendering him speechless. “Anyways, I’m off! Good luck at the hotel and see you later!” she smiled, and that was that, she was out the door, only a single light on for his sake otherwise the apartment would’ve been completely dark.

“I don’t want a break from you,” if he were human, he could’ve sworn he sounded heartbroken, but instead they came out as plain words with a lot of emotion trying to be hidden as the main meaning behind them. A good number of beats had passed with him standing by the door like a lost puppy waiting for his owner to return before he realised a good hour had passed. It was time for him to head back down to greet and terrorise the citizens of Hell.

But first… a quick side stop to a certain bar wouldn’t hurt one bit.

So dispersing back into the shadows, he started to travel half way across the city just to go to this one specific bar where his darling host is. Surely enough, there she was, Alastor could see her from the under the streetlight across the bar. She was laughing, looking like she was having a good time. Slimy Dave on the other hand looked like he was trying to pull some moves on her, but blissfully ignorant she just kept on talking with Channel. She looked so adorable, while she still put a lot of effort in dressing up, she was still decent compared to her female coworkers who tried their hardest to wear revealing clothes.

“Someone is looking to be sinful tonight?” Alastor thought to himself watching everyone interact with you. “Should be sinful with me instead,” he continued, thinking of all the people they could be out killing together. All the fun and chaos they could bring together.

All these thoughts started to leave a sour taste in his mouth the long he watched you laugh and interact with colleagues. Having enough, and in a very bad mood, he slammed his microphone on the ground, and in a split second he was now staring at the walls of his room at the hotel. He sneered at them as if they had done something wrong to him. The smile he held being gracefully fake, as he had enough on being in his room, and barged out the door. Making his way down the stairs were everybody was and greeting them with a boisterous “Hello Everyone!”

The three hours later the work was done, denizens of hell coming and going, the princess of Hell skipping around all happy at her success, the moth following close behind her. Meanwhile the cat stood behind the bar, as was his post to clean the glasses and make the drinks, all while being hovered by the flirtatious spider. Alastor spent a good second staring at them before deciding to fuck it, and walk over to them. She is out at the moment so he will be too.

“Your largest drink of your heaviest, my good Husker!” he demanded, pulling out a chair to seat himself on.

“Since when ya sit with us antlers! Not that I’m complaining ofcourse,” Angel said flirtatiously, arms and hands spread out as he leaned onto Alastor’s side.

“Do not be ridiculous,” Alastor replied, using the head of his microphone to push Angel’s face away, “I am merely here to enjoy a drink.”

“Kid does have a point,” Husker glared while pouring the radio demon his drink and sliding it right into the demon’s hand, “You don’t normally drink here. What’s wrong with you?”

“Well you see, it certainly has been a long week,” Alastor exclaimed, beating about the bush because why would he do the healthy thing and open up as to why he is upset. Only person he would do that to is not around and out on their own.

Self-absorbed into his rant, he failed to realise Angel’s bored expression leaning into Husker and ask the classic question, “What ya give ‘im?”

Husker just leaned while cleaning his next glass, “Water with 2 shots of absinthe,” Angeldust had to visibly stop himself from spit-taking his drink all over Husker before an evil grin spread across his face, one that he didn’t bother to hide as he watched Alastor take sip after sip between rants. “Give ‘im a couple more minutes, he’ll start singing like a canary,” Husker continued eyeing the poor demon that is has now fallen victim to his bartending skills.

Surely enough, the winged cat was right, Alastor had started to sway and slur at his words, as he finally arrived in ranting on about his week that has gotten him upset, “And then she said yes!”

“No!” Angel and Husker yelled out in sync, now invested in the drama that is between Alastor’s host and Alastor himself.

“Yes!” Alastor swayed, shifting his weight onto the bar, “can you actually believe that she said yes to going out with that blasted Dave and those filthy people she works with!”

“This ‘Dave’ sure sounds like a sleazeball!” Angel jumped in absolutely loving the drama of Alastor’s life.

“The sleaziest!” Alastor yelled lifting his microphone up in the air so hard he threw himself off his seat, and scrambled to grab the bar to catch himself before he fell to the ground, “he cannot see one living being with legs without trying to seducing it!” Hands now outstretched, face planted down on the bar, heaving heavily from getting even more heated up and angry than he already was.

“Why would she go out with them?! She should’ve stayed with me,” he straightened himself out, now standing, hands still down on the bar, but his eyes started to turn into radio dials turning, his head started to twitch, static started to play in the background, “SHE LEAVING ME!” he yelled out, his hands clutched so quickly he scratch the bar, leaving behind claw marks, and now static filled the air.

“You know Al,” the static now cut, his eyes now back to normal and looking at Charlie who had overheard and walked in on the conversation, “maybe you should talk to her about this and how you feel about it,” she said now starting to stutter and feel nervous under the attention Alastor was giving her with his intensive gaze.

“Yeah,” Angel jumped in starting to light a cigarette, “don’t get your panties in a twist, the gal is allowed to have her own night on the town. Can’t she?” he side-eyed Alastor, depending on his answer he would have been judging, but thankfully he did agree.

“Yes she may, she is her own human being-“

“Then what is the problem!” Vaggie jumped in getting fed of his temper tantrum.

“The problem is-!” he was about to finally admit it, but he got interrupted by his microphone literally ringing like a regular phone. “Hello?” he turned around, speaking into the microphone to answer, acting fully sober despite the little sway that was very evident to everyone at the bar.

“Hey Al, how are you doing?” the star of the show replied back for everyone to hear. Angel sucked in and started to choke on his cigarette, Husker spit out his drink, and Charlie just to shake Vaggie out of sheer excitement, “Is that what she sounds like?” she exclaimed, so full of excitement that you could see the hearts in her eyes.

Alastor turned away even more as everybody started to crowd on his to try to hear what the two were going to say, “Quick hectic as per the usual my dear, although some rascals do not know how to mind their own business,” he nearly snarled, trying to give everyone a threatening look to leave him alone but obviously it went ignored.

“You think you’ll be home soon? Got some tea to spill,” she trailed off.

“And what other mess did you get yourself into you little fox,” Alastor spoke deeper into the microphone, walking away from the piling sinners and princess who trailed behind him, somehow Nifty had joined in on their fun on trying to overhear his conversation. Brilliant.

“Not me, more like Donna… with Dave,” Angel choked on air and started to laugh as soon as he heard that, “sounds like it’s going to be double D up in the office tomorrow…” Angel started to wheeze at the innuendo.

“Where are you?” Alastor started to sound desperate, trying to leave, the prying eyes of the hotel.

“I’m at home-“

“Goodnight everyone!” Alastor turned to announced, arms outstretched in the air, proceeded to slam his microphone to the ground, and in a burst of light he was back in the apartment watching his dear human pour a glass of water.

“Hey Al,” she said smiling ear to ear.

“Hello darling, you’re home early,” he commented shifting his shadowed weight to stand next to her by the counter.

“Yeah everyone started to get drunk and I figured since we have work tomorrow I might as well leave early, everyone is still at the bar probably getting wasted,” she explained, drinking her water and started to make her way to the bathroom to get cleaned up for bed. “By the way,” she started, ripping off her clothes and putting them in the laundry basket, “who or what was that on your end of the line?”

Alastor let out radio glitch sound effect at the sudden question, “I do not know what you are talking about my dear,” he lied.

“Mhm sure,” the human figured out quickly that it was a lie and probably one of the people he talked about that help run the hotel, “now come on and jump in, got some tea you might like me to spill and an early night calling!” she stretched her arms, popping her stiff joints as she walked down the corridor.

Eager for everything to return back to normal and for him to accompany his host to rest in bed, he eagerly fused back into her body. However, something immediately felt off for the both of them. She immediately rushed back to the bathroom and threw herself to the toilet, luckily it was open, and whatever was in her stomach was now being wretched up into the toilet.

“The fuck is happening?! That was a $15 fat ass burger!” she heaved and proceeded to vomit a second time.

“Maybe it was all the drinking you have been doing,” Alastor replied in a passive aggressive manner, mostly because he also was feeling its effects and definitely the thought of her getting drunk and drinking with those lowly being she worked with being absolutely irritating.

“That’s bull! I’ve been,” she paused the heave before continuing, “been chugging water the whole night!” she then coughed up. “Hell no this was you,” she accused after finally calming down.

“And why would accuse me of doing this to us?!” Alastor got agitated.

“Well we know what affects you affects me so spill it! What did you drink?” she heaved even more, both of them feeling a wave of nausea coming over.

“…I will need to ask Husker tomorrow…” Alastor said blankly.

“AAAAaaaaaaalllll,” she groaned, “guess we are going into work with a hangover,” she sighed, the both of them now feeling absolutely exhausted.

#alastor x reader #alastor #radio demon #x reader #charlie #vaggie #angel dust #husker #nifty #helluva boss #hazbin hotel #demon possession trope #not enough of these #demon #seriously let me have my alastor x reader venom like possession fics #up to me to deliver #host au

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chubs-deuce · 5 months

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Your art style is so satisfying!! I love the way you render faces!

When did you come up with the concept of Dawn?? Did you have different ideas of a charlastor fanchild before her?

sjlsdkfj thank you so much!!! ;A;

And I think I should give some insight about some of the meta context for Dawn to anyone who wasn't there for it before we go in-depth with my design choices lmfao

I received an ask about what I think a charlastor fankid would look like back in march and was basically all "yeahhh nooo I don't care about fankids so it's unlikely I'll dabble in that concept, at least I don't currently have plans for it" and it's true! I genuinely don't normally enjoy fankid stories (I have severe tokophobia and too many of these types of stories include pregnancy as a thoroughly explored topic)

However...

I ended up intrigued by the idea of the challenge that combining two characters into a completely new character presented anyways, so I ended up trying my hand at designing one after all.

This meant that when I sat down to design her, I had genuinely no prior ideas, since I didn't really think about the concept before!

I have however seen other people's fankids floating around in the past, so I had a bit of an idea of what other people designed theirs like.

And this is by no means an insult to any of them and their lovely work, but I just didn't really vibe with a lot of them, since many just kind of amount to looking like recolors of one or the other character with maybe bonus deer ears and antlers - and that works fine!!! It's a very servicable strategy!!! I just personally wanted to not fall into that same vein with my design since I personally don't vibe with that approach much, so I actually tried really hard to make Dawn look like her own character while also giving her a balanced mix of visual cues from both of her parents :'D

in-depth elaboration on my design choices under the cut! ⬇️

I for example looked at Alastor's and Charlie's ears (at least how I draw them in my art) and thus gave her ears that looked like a mix between both - more animalistic, like Alastor's, with similar coloring (except inverted), but placed on her head more like Charlie's. I also wanted it to vaguely look like goat ears when at a resting/lower position like this and more like deer ears when perked up.

Her hair is also cross between both - colors are from both, the fringe is a mix of both (in shape and how it sits on her head and around her face more like Alastor, in terms of texture and length more like Charlie).

She has a lot of Alastor's facial features in her, though her chin is a bit more rounded, her nose smaller and her mouth a bit more like Charlie's as well.

Even her colors are a more or less even combination of both characters! Here's my color palettes for all three of them and which colors I doubled from who:

I should also note that I had her adult design down first before I even started drawing her as a kid, though I think that actually added a lot to making her feel more realistic surprisingly enough?

Since I already had her key features down, that left me with a lot of room to toy around with other design aspects, and somehow kid-ifying an adult character is much more intuitive to me than designing an adult version of a kid character :o

I don't have a linear timeline order or something to any of my posts about her, but from left to right in this array of drawings I've made of her as a child her age ranges from a few months old to like? 8-9-ish?

There's no fixed outfit for her as a kid, though her adult design does feature one more specific outfit:

I wanted her clothes to reflect that she looks up to her parents quite a lot, so I gave her somewhat old fashioned looking pinstriped dress pants - the colors are taken from Alastor's pants, though inverted with added pinstripes for flavor - and once I sketched out the pockets I knew I wanted them to faintly remind of the inside of an apple, so I added white and yellow to it :D

Her blouse is meant to be a bit more flowy - less restricting than Charlie's blazer, but equally elegant.

And because her design is already red-heavy enough, I balanced it out with making the shirt dark, the shoes black/white and the bow around her neck yellow!

I think that's about everything I can say about my thought process behind her design haha

Thank you for giving me an excuse to talk about it, I hope it wasn't too rambly!!! If you read through the whole thing you get a cookie lmao

#charlastor fankid #charlastor fanchild #hazbin hotel oc #chubs ocs #dawn morningstar #character design #chubs answers #digital fanart #art #my art

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s-brant · 2 years

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okay for my steve girlies i’m just having some thoughts abt him as a boyfriend rn that i cannot get out of my head so you’ll have to put up with this.

as a partner i feel like he’d be the most touchy person on the face of the earth. constantly having his hands on you in a casual way whether it be holding hands, pulling you onto his lap to sit there even when there’s a spot open right next to him, standing behind you with an arm wrapped around you, playing with your hair/clothes/jewelry, and so on. he’s probably very touch-starved so i feel like he would be on you 24/7 and very shameless in terms of PDA because he’s just dying to have someone to love. robin and dustin would fake gag in the background but he could care less. also he gives me the vibes of someone who is just constantly warm. like the human incarnation of a furnace, so cozy and inviting in terms of cuddling.

boyfriend steve in season two was very cute to me (i.e: him coming to apologize with flowers even though he literally didn’t even know what he was sorry for because she was the one who hurt him, trying to cut her off when she was drinking too much/take care of her) so i can only imagine he’d be an even sweeter boyfriend in the later seasons with his character growth. i picture him being chivalrous for some reason, like always opening the car door for you, wordlessly taking off his jacket to put it over your shoulders when it’s cold and you stubbornly didn’t wear one, and not wanting you to pay for dinner even though his salary at family video is probably not that great. long story short he is a simp and very romantic. i feel like that’s just canon at this point but i digress.

anyway for the sexy stuff you’re gonna have to go under the cut

okay here we GO

i personally feel, despite my love for the kinkier fics, that steve is pretty vanilla in bed. at least, until he’s exposed to something new by a partner? like i feel that he would be open to trying certain things with you because duh you’re you and he loves you and why wouldn’t he wanna try slightly freaky shit with you, but it’s not something he just thinks up himself if that makes sense? but that doesn’t mean he can’t rock your world, let’s be 100% clear on that. this man eats pussy like it’s a five course meal and i will die on that hill. he’d get so into it, his eyes would close and he’d make soft little noises into you every time you pull on his hair UGH. you sitting on his face is probably his favorite thing you two have ever done because, honestly, suffocation between your thighs is a great way to go as far as he’s concerned.

also, it’s canon at this point that he’s hung right? did that originate from joe keery’s bulge in those tight ass vintage levi’s? probably, but it’s a steve thing now and i wholeheartedly agree with the fandom’s unanimous decision that he has unparalleled big dick energy. that being said, i also feel like he knows how to use it. a lot of well endowed guys aren’t that great because they’re like “oh i have big dick so sex with me is good already and i don’t need to do anything” but steve is a ladies man. he knows what he’s doing, and he doesn’t even need the buffer of kinks and shit to fuck you stupid. and he would be soooo cocky about it. i feel like he would be into degradation and dumbification a bit. he loves the fact that you are basically rendered useless when he’s fucking you open with his thick cock, caging you in with his arms by your head and cooing at you while the room is filled with the wet sound of him pounding into you. the filthiest he gets is whispering stuff like, “look at you. hardly even fucked you yet and you’re already a dumb little slut for me, huh?” like he can get nasty but i feel like it wouldn’t go far beyond dirty talk like that.

then there comes the hopeless romantic in him that cannot resist the opportunity to make love to you. i fully believe he is one of the people who seeks out that type of intimacy more often than the type in the paragraph above simply because he is so needy to be loved. his parents literally have never been in the show and never seem to care, he hasn’t had a steady girlfriend since nancy, and he doesn’t exactly get affection from other people in his life, so he would be absolutely insatiable with you.

his favorite kind of lovemaking is that slow, barely conscious morning sex when the two of you wake up right as the sun’s rising and he is faced with the realization of how much he loves you in those quiet moments. he’d be so sleepy, most of his weight would be let go if he’s on top of you, but you don’t even care because you’re caught on that hazy line between being asleep and awake as well, and the pleasure of him fucking you is heightened by it. it’d be full of sloppy kisses and heavy-lidded eye contact, both of your noses brushing with every deep thrust he makes into you. sometimes you’re on top though, and for those times he’ll just wrap his arms around your back to pull you down so you’re chest to chest while you do the work, albeit very lazily, and enjoy the sight of you. his favorite position for this lazy morning sex is when he’s spooning you tho. it happens the most often anyway, when he wakes up hard and naturally starts grinding into you from behind, which then escalates as normal. he’d keep a hand on your face to keep it turned for him to kiss your mouth and cheek though. just because he’s behind you doesn’t mean he won’t long to see your face and kiss you during.

i also feel like there would be a natural dominance to him that’s unrelated to any actual bdsm or dom/sub thing but rather his default disposition with you. he could definitely get down with being in a more submissive position sometimes and allow you to take care of/worship him—which would probably leave him with teary eyes by the end because of how overwhelming it is—but he gives me a lot of casually dominant energy. he loves sneaking into your bedroom in the middle of the night and fucking you with a hand over your mouth right across the hall from where your parents are sleeping, whispering to you that you have to be quiet and good. he also loves manhandling you, it turns him on unlike anything else to just toss you down on his bed and rip your clothes off because he can hardly wait to be inside of you. it’s also little sfw things like knowing what you like from your favorite take out place so he just orders for you or stopping to tie your shoe when it comes undone because he just loves taking care of his girl in the most innocent ways as well as a sexually.

he has a breeding kink by the way. it’s not something he acknowledges as a kink officially or even fully realizes, but considering that the man wants six children in canon, i feel like the idea of getting you pregnant, or even just coming inside of you whether or not you’re on a contraceptive, definitely gets him going. and if you are pregnant eventually once/if you two decide it’s what you want, forget about it. my god, he would be on you all the time. he’d love having you ride him with your breasts bouncing and a bit fuller from the hormones, your belly protruding with a bump as an undeniable piece of evidence that you’re his. it just checks all the boxes for him. i also believe that his chivalrous behavior would increase tenfold when you’re pregnant. in the later months, you physically cannot tie your shoes so he is right there to help you. he’s always extending his hand to hold while you walk, walking with his body closest to the street and yours closer to where it’s safer, and in general being even more of a simp than usual. if you thought he was a gentleman before, when he knows his baby is inside of you, he’s literally trying to do anything and everything he can for you.

now don’t even get me started on him as a dad. this has gone on long enough.

#steve harrington #steve harrington x reader #steve harrington smut #fem reader

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alexthefly · 4 months

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Did I miss the relevant prompt earlier in the week? Maybe. Shhhh...

In honour of FishTank Week, and particularly the prompt 💛"We're a team, always"💚 please enjoy this reblog.

*******

Green Wool and Sunshine

What is that?!”

“What is what?” asked Virgil through a mouthful of cinnamon roll.

“That! That…thing you’re wearing!”

Gordon sat up slowly from the sofa, his face fixed in equal parts grin and grimace as he pointed with his good hand.

Virgil looked down at himself and surreptitiously brushed a few crumbs off his sweater. “What’s wrong with it?” he asked.

“Dude, it’s hideous,” said Gordon, eyeing the offending garment critically.

Virgil looked again. True, it wasn't in the best shape. Pale green wool, striped with white and yellow, and all of it faded and bobbled to within an inch of its life. One shoulder had a loose seam so that it looked almost as if the wool were melting. And at the centre of it all, the distinctive shape of Thunderbird Two rendered clumsily in darker green.

"Where did you get it?”

“Grandma made it for me one Christmas. You remember that vintage knitting machine Dad got her that one year?”

God, it had made a racket, like someone flicking a giant comb over and over again. Thank goodness she’d finally lost interest in that particular hobby, although in hindsight Virgil wondered if her subsequent rediscovery of her old cooking books might have been too high a price to pay.

“Anyway, I just found it the other day in the back of the closet.”

Gordon’s mouth twisted to one side. “...Any chance you could lose it back there again?”

A deep grumble. Okay, so she might not be the best at the domestic arts, but she was still their grandma and he loved that she tried. Virgil had actually thought the sweater was pretty good, in a homespun, one-sleeve-slightly-longer-than-the-other sort of way; his girl’s big, friendly turtle-face was unmistakable, and Grandma had even included a little dark-haired figure in blue and green waving out of one of her windows.

“Lay off. It’s comfortable. Anyway, I didn’t see you criticising when she made you that yellow submarine one you wore down to scraps.”

Gordon rolled his eyes. “First of all, I was a lot younger then and not so refined.”

Virgil snorted.

“Secondly, yellow is infinitely better than green. And thirdly, I can carry that sort of thing off. You…” - he wafted his hand up and down at his brother in the manner of a bitchy ballroom dancing judge - “...unfortunately, cannot.”

Virgil grunted and took another bite of his roll.

“Really? Mr ‘Hawaiian Shirts and Sandals Go With Everything’ is criticising my fashion choices?”

“They totally do go with everything! They’re a completely universal outfit; the quintessential capsule wardrobe.”

He puffed out his chest to show off today’s offering, complete with large ketchup stain down the front.

“Anyway, why are you even wearing a sweater when it’s 80 degrees outside? I know you tend towards layers, tropical climate be damned, but this is a bit much even for you.”

“I was down in the hangars,” Virgil shrugged. “It was cold.”

“You doing some maintenance?” His little brother’s face lit up.

“Two’s left air intake’s doing that rattling thing again; I thought I’d give her an overhaul,” he said, brain shifting seamlessly into engineer mode, “And her injectors need a spruce up. Thought perhaps I’d have a play with that new neo-PEM cell Brains has been going on about.”

“D’you want some help?”

The enthusiasm in his voice was unmistakable, and cut deep.

Virgil bit his lip. “Aww, I don’t think so, Fish. You need to rest.”

“I could rest down there? I promise, I’ll just sit and watch you."

The desperation in his brother’s puppy dog eyes felt like knives in Virgil’s chest.These last few weeks since the Marindata Ventfields had been hard on them all. Even now, with Gordy finally home from the hospital, Virgil still woke almost nightly with the sound of that emergency signal echoing in his ears, the silence of his brother’s comms stretching out in his mind until…

No, don’t think about that. He’s home. He’s safe.

But obviously Gordon had been hit the hardest. His ‘bird was a total loss, his body not much better, and he still had months of rehab ahead, bringing with it all the oh-so-unwelcome memories he’d worked so hard to bury. Regular visits from Penny had helped, and their sunshine boy was trying hard, but it was like the clouds had gathered, dimming that indefinable brightness that made him…him.

Virgil wished beyond wish that he could indulge his little brother if it would make him happy. But…

“I’m sorry Squid, Grandma’s orders. There’s just too many hazards down there. Fumes and stairs and things to trip over… I wouldn’t be able to watch out for you properly.”

Gordon sagged, and Virgil felt his heart clench painfully.

“But hey, how about I leave the maintenance and come sit up here with you instead? We could watch an episode of Buddy and Ellie?”

Anything to bring back the sun.

A shake of the head, eyes fixed downwards. “Nah, seen ‘em all.” Gordon looked up and smiled again; this time it didn’t reach his eyes. “Anyway, you don’t want to be stuck up here. Not when there’s oil and grime to play about in. Better watch you don’t get that sweater dirty though, or Grandma might knit you another one.”

Virgil opened his mouth to speak, but his little brother cut him off.

“Stop worrying Virg. S’no biggie. I’m fine, see?” He shrugged. “I’ll just see you when you’re done.”

He lay back down on the sofa carefully, looking so much smaller than he had a moment ago.

“Actually, I’m getting a little tired now. You just go do what you gotta do - I’m gonna take a nap right here.”

And with that he closed his eyes; conversation over.

Virgil lingered for a moment, scouring his brain for something to say but coming up blank. Inside his heart burned with guilt and impotence: his little brother was hurting, and he couldn’t do anything to fix it. All he’d done was make things worse.

Perhaps he should go.

“Okay then. Take it easy, alright?”

“Yup."

“There’s cinnamon rolls in the kitchen if you get hungry.”

“Mm-hmm.”

Thus dismissed, he turned and made his way towards the elevator, mind no longer on his ‘bird but instead on her grounded, miserable co-pilot.

Oh Gordy. It will get better; I promise.

………..

As the sound of the elevator faded away Gordon opened one eye a crack to check the coast was clear. Then he slowly, painfully hauled himself up, intent on getting to the residential levels. No doubt his big marshmallow of a brother would be on the comms right now, asking someone - probably Scott - to come down and check on him, and there was no way he was hanging around for that.

Even if his body hated him for moving.

The journey from the sofa to his room used to take less than two minutes. Today it took him seven minutes twenty. What was worse was that objectively he should be pleased. Sub-eight minutes was actually an improvement on a week ago.

Goddammit.

Finally, he was able to close the bedroom door behind him and collapse onto his bed, aching and miserable.

This sucked.

He was lucky to be alive; he knew that. A few weeks ago he’d been lying at the bottom of the ocean with half a volcano on top of him. Now, because of his brothers, Penny and Parker, he was back in the bosom of his family, healing, getting stronger, gradually shaving the seconds off his bedroom run.

He should be grateful. He’d been through far worse, for God’s sake.

So why?

Why wasn’t he able to shake this off?

Why was it that whenever he tried to see the positive, all he could see was just how freakin’ useless he was?

He didn’t dare say that out loud, of course. His family would absolutely kick his ass if they heard him say something like that. Penny too. (Boy, would she!) He could hear them now, telling him to give himself a chance, these things take time, blah blah blah… Hell, he even tried saying that stuff to himself sometimes, like he would if it were one of his brothers in this position instead of him.

If only any of it actually worked.

Because no matter how much he tried to reason his way out of this funk he was in, it didn’t help, because this feeling wasn’t logical. It couldn’t be reasoned with.

It whispered to him in the dark.

You’ve let them all down.

Look at the slack they’re having to pick up.

Look how much they’re worrying.

Worse.

They don’t need you back.

They’re fine without you.

Every time his brothers went off on a mission without him, it hurt. Whenever someone else took his place co-piloting for Virgil - even Penny, who was only doing it for his sake - he felt cold inside. And when Scott had been the one to take his new Thunderbird Four out for her maiden voyage? The mission to recover the Zero X capsule, no less; the thing that had kicked off Operation Bring Dad Home? Well, he’d just wanted to curl up right there on that sofa and never move again.

The unfairness.

The guilt.

The fear.

He would never wish what had happened on any of his family in a million years. But at the same time, why was it always him that got hurt?

Perhaps he really was just useless.

Sad, exhausted, hurting in more ways than he knew how to handle, he turned his face to the pillow and let the tears come.

…………

The thing about uber-strength pain meds is that they can make a guy fall asleep in the middle of the afternoon and not wake up until the early hours.

He registered the dim not-quite dark as the world slowly came back to him.

Someone had drawn the covers over him at some point during the night, tucking them around him like he was a child, and didn’t that just sum up everything? Take a nap, take your meds, and maybe if you’re a good boy you’ll get a lollipop(!)

He shifted slightly and his hip complained. Gingerly he rolled over, tackling the manoeuvre in sections, trying to get comfortable. He was just settling again when something caught his eye on the chair by his bed.

A large package wrapped neatly in yellow paper.

Twisting carefully he reached out with his good arm and pulled the chair towards him. In the soft glow of pre-dawn, he recognised the paper as the same kind he’d had for his last birthday: bright yellow with blue seahorses and glittery bubbles. Scott had complained about the glitter getting all over his shirt, and they’d all spent the next hour randomly shaking the paper over each other’s heads until they’d sparkled like they were in a Las Vegas show.

He smiled at the memory and gradually pulled himself up until he was sitting, blanket wrapped around him in the cool, almost-morning air.

Holding the package on his lap, he delicately pulled it open at the seams, revealing unmistakable green wool underneath.

What the-?

In with the sweater there was a card written in Virgil’s big, swooping hand:

Seeing as you’re the only one who could pull it off anyway, you should have this, at least until you can make it back aboard the real thing.

She isn’t the same without you. V.

He read the card two more times, breath hitching on the last sentence each time, then he gently unfurled the sweater out in front of him to take a closer look at the design, now that it was technically his.

It took a few moments for him to notice it.

Something was different.

He squinted.

There, in the window of Thunderbird Two’s cockpit, carefully embroidered next to the tiny waving figure of Virgil, a second, blond-haired figure waved out at him in shades of blue and yellow wool.

How...?

...Virgil.

For a moment, he swore he could see the little co-pilot grinning. Or was that just his suddenly-blurred vision playing tricks?

He wiped his eyes and, discarding his blanket, pulled the sweater over his head. He couldn’t get his bad arm through the sleeve, so instead opted to keep it against his chest, nestled between the soft wool and his own thrumming heart.

Despite the way it looked, Virg had been right: the sweater was comfortable. So comfortable. Softened by repeated washing, with a clean smell of detergent and just a hint of Virgil’s cologne - sandalwood and bergamot, mellow and comforting - wearing it was like wearing a hug; warm and reassuring and just so snuggly.

Full of love.

Wrapping his good arm around himself and breathing in the calming, cozy scent, he picked his way carefully over to the window and opened the blinds. Dawn was just beginning to break over the horizon, painting the sky a hundred different shades of pink and purple and orange. As he watched, the sun slowly poked its head out over the gentle waves of his beloved ocean, bathing him in the warmth of its early morning glow.

It was going to be a beautiful day.

#fishtankweek2024 #fishtank #gordon tracy #virgil tracy #alexthefly reblog #fluffy hurt/comfort #thunderbirds are go #thunderbirds are go fanfiction #thunderbirds

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aralezinspace · 1 year

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Send Me to Sleep

Requested by anonymous: fluff with insomniac reader and the prompt "why are you still up?"

A/N: Here have some tooth rotting fluff, I am not responsible for your dental bills xD fun fact, the thing Dream does to help reader sleep is the same thing I do to get my tiny humans to go to sleep, made this slightly bittersweet to write b/c after next Friday I won't be working with tiny kids anymore i'll be working with college age kids ANYWAY hope you enjoy!! 💖💖

~~Requests are open!~~ ~~Current WIPs~~

Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock.

It was almost as if the ticking of your antique alarm clock was mocking you, loudly reminding you of every passing second you spent awake when you should be dead to the world.

Your insomnia was nothing new, it had plagued you since college. It was conditional on your stress levels, which was somewhat ironic: the more stressed you were, the less you slept. The less you slept, the more stressed you became.

Since figuring out that pattern your senior year, you had done everything you could to keep your daily life stress free enough for you to sleep, and it had been working out for the most part, aside from busy times of the year when work, family, and friends all collided in a few hectic weeks. Times of the year like Christmas, the height of summer, and for some reason, the entire month of April.

This week was not supposed to be one of them.

You stuffed your face into your pillow to muffle your frustrated scream. It was now going on 3:30am, and you had to be up and getting in the shower at 6. You sat up with a heavy sigh and ran your fingers through your hair. Sleep was obviously not coming tonight, so you decided to get some chores done around your apartment.

Under the hot spray of the shower two and a half hours later, you groaned as you felt the heaviness behind your eyes that indicated your body was ready for sleep. Of course it had to happen when you were getting ready for yet another busy day at work… which would probably stress you out to the point where you wouldn’t be able to sleep, or your body would just shut down out of sheer desperation.

“Ugh, Dream’s gonna kill me,” you grumbled into your towel. “Well it’s not like there’s anything I can do about it.”

If anyone else had been this invested in your sleep schedule, it would have been extremely weird. But the fact that it was your partner, the ruler of the Dreaming and Nightmare realms. Sleeping was kind of his thing, and once again the irony was not lost on you: a conditional insomniac, in love with the literal sandman.

Your day was just one thing after another, mostly phone calls. More than the usual volume at work, then a call from your dad, then another one from your aunt for some reason, then one from your brother that you sent straight to voicemail just to have a break. Future you thanked past you for that, turns out he just wanted to once again complain about his boyfriend.

When you got home, your mind was fuzzy with exhaustion, and your body jittered and shook from the after effects of the four cups of coffee required just to get through it all. You felt like crap, and probably looked like crap too.

You shambled through changing into your pajamas and making dinner, barely tasting the food as you chewed. You barely registered what episode you were on, thankfully it was a show you had seen before. Your “bedtime” wasn’t for another two hours; you were ready to drop, but fucking up your sleep schedule even more was a recipe for disaster.

You dragged your hands down your face and groused, “Ugh fuck me.”

“With pleasure.”

The rumbling chortle came from the shadows by your front door, making you spring to your feet. The rush of adrenaline rendered you wide awake, at least long enough to process who was currently standing in your apartment.

A smirk tugged at the corner of his mouth as Dream of the Endless strode into the light of your living room, hands in the pockets of his signature coat. It slowly dropped from his face as he took in more of your appearance: the blue, almost black bags under your eyes, the pallor of your skin, the slump of your body as if the immense burden of his responsibilities rested on your shoulders.

“My love,” he pressed, almost like a parent trying to get the truth of some mischief out of a child, “It has been some days since I have felt you in the Dreaming for longer than a few moments. Have you not been sleeping again?”

The way your entire body sagged in defeat was all the answer he needed.

He stepped closer to you, gently resting his hands on your shoulders. “Darling, when was the last time you had a good night’s rest?” You shrugged, your brain struggling to come up with an answer that you were allowed to give. Once again, your body language gave him the answer.

“Then why are you still up?” He didn’t sound angry, only deeply concerned. “Why did you not call for me?”

You swallowed hard before mumbling, “I didn’t want to bother you.” A heavy sigh pushed itself out of Dream’s chest and his hands moved to hold your face in his hands, taking the weight of your head off your shoulders. “Beloved, you are never a bother to me. “I would not be a worthy monarch of the Dreaming if I could not even ease my own partner to rest.”

You couldn’t help your chuckle; it was the closest you had ever heard Morpheus come to humility. Your smile brought a tiny mirror of the gesture to Dream’s face as he rubbed his thumb over your cheekbone, trying not to focus on the deep shadows beneath your eyes. He pressed a gentle kiss to your forehead, letting his lips lingered as he inhaled deeply through his nose, taking in your essence. It stuck in his nose, tainted by your exhaustion. He breathed his words into your skin, “Let’s get you into bed.”

Swift like quicksilver, he scooped you into his arms, drawing a startled squeak out of you, closely followed by a bashful giggle. Dream carried you to your bedroom, staring lovingly at you the entire time. Your bed was still unmade from this morning, and he gently deposited you in it before pulling the blankets over you.

You snuggled into the covers, drawing them up to your chin. You smiled at Dream as he sat next to you on top of the covers. Cool fingers brushed your hair out of your face. You murmured, “Gonna use your sand to send me off?”

Dream chuckled, soft and low and slightly smug. “No, I will not need it to get you to sleep. I need only do this.” His forefinger settled between your eyebrows (some would say over your third eye) and gently rubbed the skin there. You hummed softly, wiggling deeper into the comfort of your bed. Dream’s eyes practically glowed in the darkness of your room, distant, even though he was sitting right beside you.

You were more than bone tired, and sank easily into his soothing touch. Your eyes flickered and fluttered for a moment before finally falling shut. Dream’s touch on your forehead was the only thing that existed in the blackness behind your eyelids, safe and comforting. You could practically feel the stress leaking out of you and into the mattress.

In your last moment of lucidity before you drifted off, you heard Dream murmur, “Sleep well, beloved. I will see you soon.”

#The Sandman #The Sandman fanfic #morpheus x reader #dream of the endless x reader #Morpheus fanfic

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deadgirlwalking91 · 5 months

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new update - 'thank you for the venom', chapter 3: 'a killing spree through eternity, the devil stabs you in the back'

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter 3 Summary

A minor training accident lands Adam in hot water with Sera.

Author's note:

I have a confession to make - I lied. At the end of the last chapter, I teased we'd hear the first time we'd hear Adam call Lute 'Dangertits'. I grossly underestimated how long this chapter would be, so you'll have to wait until next time for Lute's nickname. It's worth it, I promise! To everybody who has read, liked, commented, reblogged - thank you so very much!!! I hope you're enjoying reading about these two as much as I am writing them <3

Slight content warning - this chapter is Adam-centric, so expect plenty of swearing and mention of sexual activity.

***

Sera’s Office, Exorcist Training Centre, Heaven

Adam hated waiting outside the door of Sera’s office. It usually meant one thing, and one thing only: he was in trouble.

Leaning against the wall, he turned his head and pressed the side of his helmet to the cool surface that separated him from the two occupants inside the room. Holding his breath, he remained still, trying to eavesdrop on the conversation he had been excluded from. If only he could catch a word or two, he could give himself something to work with when he was inevitably summoned before Sera to plead his case.

Shit.

Exhaling in frustration, he located his phone in the pocket of his robes, unlocked it and opened his favourite dating app. A fond smile tugged at the corner of his mouth at the sight of the first profile he came across. Ah, Layla. A gorgeous brunette Exorcist, her beauty would have rendered most angels speechless as they madly tapped on her photo, hoping for a chance to connect with her.

Not Adam, however. Well, not this time, anyway.

Fucked her - twice. Swipe.

Boring. Swipe.

Into pegging a little too often for my liking. Swipe.

Ugh. The same babes, same bodies, same personalities that he’d become so familiar with over the years. It almost felt like they were all beginning to morph into the same woman, into one collective being. It didn’t matter anymore what their name was or where they came from – there was no discernible difference between any of them.

Not that they were aware he felt like that, of course. After all, he was the First Man, the Original Dick. His title alone granted him an untouchable celebrity status of sorts in Heaven – women literally threw themselves at his feet daily. As a man with needs, this suited him just fine. After an introduction, the roadmap to his bed was simple, almost formulaic: he’d flatter them, then back it up with some light flirting – never too heavy, or else they’d get the wrong idea. He was after a good time, not a long time. After the usual small talk, he’d flippantly mention something about not wanting to go home lonely, and his new lady friend would be only too obliging to accompany him not only to his home, but to his bedroom too. His method was foolproof, to say the least.

And yet, if he was perfectly honest with himself, it was also a little…boring. Sure, the women he bedded were hot, their personalities were…fine, and the sex perfectly enjoyable, but they were all totally predictable. Lately, Adam found himself craving something new, something challenging and… dare he say it, chaotic.

Too bad Heaven was as far from chaotic as realms came.

He sighed and shoved the phone back into his robes. Oh well. Better luck next time, maybe.

An abrupt scraping sound suddenly caught his attention, a tell-tale sign that the conversation inside Sera’s office was finally coming to an end.

About fucking time.

The door to his right creaked open, and without looking he knew exactly who was about to walk in the hall where he stood. He could practically feel the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end as he felt the hall grow colder with her nearing presence.

Lute.

The bane of his existence. A permanent thorn in his side, if you will. He was sure she’d be the eventual death of him – and given her penchant for bloody theatrics, it would be a drawn-out, brutal, excruciating demise that would have him painfully suffering until he drew his very last breath.

Well, if angels could die, anyhow. Unluckily for him, they couldn’t, which meant he was stuck with the she-devil as his second-in-command for God-knows how long. For-fucking-ever, probably.

Play it cool, dude. Just ignore her. Don’t -

“Have fun running off and telling Sera about our little incident today, Lieutenant?” he found himself blurting out, against his better judgement. “Though, I’m not surprised – coming to me first like an adult isn’t really your style, is it?”

Lute didn’t bother acknowledging his question, opting instead to salute him with a stiff middle finger over her shoulder, her other hand supporting her lower back as she walked gingerly down the hall. Adam couldn’t help but notice the slightly unnatural way her right hip rose and fell with each step that she took. Satisfied at the sight of her vulnerability, he smirked to himself as he watched her limp out of sight.

Bye, bitch.

“Adam, can you come in here please?” Sera called, interrupting his joy at relishing in his lieutenant’s injury. Anticipating the lecture he was about to endure, he rolled his eyes and strolled into Sera’s office, shutting the door behind him.

“Heyyyyy, boss-lady,” he chirped, scooting into one of Sera’s sterile office chairs. Knowing he’d have to kiss some serious ass to come out of the conversation unscathed, he took his helmet off, shaking his thick, brown hair out of his eyes, before setting it down on the adjacent chair. He never took his mask off for anybody. Ever. In fact, only Sera knew what he looked like underneath it – and that’s only because she’d been around for as long as he had.

Without fail, the women he took home would beg and plead for him to remove it during more intimate moments, but he’d gently chuckle and deflect the conversation.

‘Babe, that’s what makes this so hot, am I right? The mystery of it all? Wondering what the First Man really looks like as he fucks you?’

The line worked, every time.

Still, perhaps showing some vulnerability might win him some brownie points with his boss. “How’s my favourite Seraphim? Busy day?” He flashed her a rare, charming smile, his golden irises twinkling, charisma oozing from every inch of his body.

“Adam,” Sera ignored his greeting completely, her interlocked fingers supporting her chin as she glared at the man opposite her. “Can you tell me about what happened in your training session just now?”

Adam’s smile faltered, and he knew by her matter-of-fact tone and pointed look that his suspicions were confirmed: he was in Trouble with a capital T. Fucking Lute, running off to tell Sera about their minor mishap. This conversation was going to be a real uphill battle if he had any chance of coming out the other end unscathed.

“Mmm, not really, no.”

“Would you like to try answering me again?”

“Ser-aaaaaaa.” Adam groaned and rubbed his face with his hands. Fuck it, he had no hope of escaping without some form of reprimand. May as well drop the act. “Why are you pulling my dick about this? It was just a little accident.”

“Your lieutenant doesn’t seem to think it was an accident.”

“Yeah, well, my lieutenant can go and get fuc-”

“Adam.”

He groaned and threw his head back, the nape of his neck resting atop the frame of the chair. “What do you want from me, Sera?” He squinted up into the fluorescent lamp directly above him, attempting to distract himself from the conversation at hand.

Ah, that’s bright as fuck.

“I want you to tell me what happened this afternoon.”

“Why? So you can lecture me on how I’ve supposedly fucked up – even though this was her fault - and then punish me by making me apologise to her? Nah, I’m good thanks, boss.” Blinking rapidly to rid himself of the dark spots that danced across his vision, he sat upwards again and crossed his arms, glaring at his superior.

Sera rubbed her temples, a tell-tale sign that a dull ache was beginning behind her eyes. Not an unusual thing to happen when she was in Adam’s presence.

“Adam, please. Lute can barely walk, she’s in that much pain.”

“I saw her walk out of here just fine, she’s putting it on. Come to think of it, she would be the kind to fake it.”

To his surprise, the word ‘fake’ stirred up a recent memory; one he thought he’d filed away. It was from when Lute had unveiled the new training plan to the Exorcists. More specifically, the sound Lute had made as she massaged her head after removing her helmet. A throaty ‘mmm’ totally unlike a noise he’d ever heard her make before as she’d closed her eyes, tilted her head back and arched her spine, clearly enjoying the satisfaction the feeling gave her.

‘That sound she’d made that day wasn’t fake though, was it?’, an unfamiliar voice in his mind questioned tauntingly, sending cool shivers down the back of his neck. ‘What if you could make her moan again like that? ’

What the fuck was that?!

Adam shook his head, pushing the unexpected image out of his mind. Whatever that was, it was fucking weird, and unwelcome and wrong and…and…

“I’m not going to ask you again. Please stop with the petty name calling and tell me what happened. Now.” Sera sat back in her chair, arms folded, waiting for him to fill in the gaps of the story Lute had told her moments earlier. Welcoming the rescue from his overactive imagination, Adam wearily eyed the faint outline of many ethereal eyes beginning to etch over Sera’s body. It wasn’t often that she lost her composure, but when she did her usually calm demeanour turned from ‘mildly annoying authoritative figure’ to ‘downright frightening, head-bitch-in-charge’.

“Alright, alright, fine. Jesus Sera, put your weird-ass eyes away, you know they scare the shit out of me.”

“I would have thought after thousands of years, you’d be used to them.” Sera motioned with her hands for Adam to begin before settling them back underneath her chin, her extra eyes fading back into her hair and clothes until there was no trace of them left. He ran a hand through his hair and exhaled deeply, glancing out the window, searching desperately for something else to focus on. He’d hoped for a distraction, but the quiet streets below failed to give him inspiration for a reprieve from his inevitable interrogation.

“You’re really gonna make me do this, aren’t you?” he scowled. Sera simply raised her eyebrows in response. “Fine, today was the first day the girls were allowed to start sparring with one another. No weapons or anything badass like that, just hand-to-hand combat. Like a shitty version of a catfight.”

“Why do you think it’s taken six weeks for that to happen?”

“Um,” Adam ruffled his hair again. “She didn’t think –”

“She has a name, Adam.”

“Fucking seriously, Sera?!” he exclaimed. “You know who I’m talking about!”

“I do, but if you’re going to move forward from this incident – and I’d think about this very carefully, Adam - you need to start to refer to Lute by name.”

“Ugh, fine.” Adam rolled his eyes. He usually found great entertainment in pushing the boundaries with other people’s patience, but Sera was one of the few people with the capacity to genuinely terrify him.

Plus being unmasked meant he was without his usual layer of defence.

Focus, Dickmaster.

“So for the past six weeks, Lute – happy now? - has been getting the girls to focus on improving their physical strength. Y’know, lifting weights, high intensity exercise, yada yada yada. Said she didn’t think they were ready to move forward until she saw they were fitter – mind you, I’ve always thought they were pretty fit myself, if you know what I mean.”

“Do you think they’ve improved?”

“Mmm…” Adam rubbed his chin, considering her question, shadowy stubble prickling his hand. “Look, they can run for longer periods of time, I guess? And she – Lute – isn’t dishing out as many burpees as punishment as she used to, so I s’pose they’ve also stopped fucking around as much during training. Anyway, this afternoon Lute got the girls to pair up and she forgot she needed a partner to demonstrate the manoeuvre on. ‘Coz there were uneven numbers, I was the sucker who ended up as her training dummy.

“So she starts telling the girls that if they find themselves alone and unarmed in Hell – which, can I just say, wouldn’t fucking happen under my watch - they need to know how to knock those demon cunts out – ”

“Her colourful language or yours?” Sera grimaced in disapproval at Adam’s word choice.

“Mine. Although I’m not sure if you’re aware, Sera, but your little pet project has the filthiest mouth –”

“Back to the point, Adam.”

‘She would be filthy, wouldn’t she? Bet she fucks nasty.’ That smug voice in the back of his mind whispered again tauntingly. Adam groaned.

“Shut up,” he muttered under his breath.

“What was that?”

“U-uh, n-nothing. Anyways - you interrupted me, remember, boss.” Adam waved a hand dismissively, recovering quickly from his outburst. “Lute tells them they need to know how to render a demon unconscious by beating the shit outta them so they can call another Exorcist for backup or escape the situation. Then, she has the fucking nerve to grab me and say, ‘allow me to demonstrate’!” He folded his arms. “She shows them where on the body to strike – can’t remember all of them, but I do remember one.” The corners of his eyes crinkled as he winced. “The groin.”

“The groin,” Sera echoed.

“There was no way in Hell I was letting her get her hands on this,” Much to Sera’s horror - but not surprise - Adam gestured towards his crotch in a downwards motion with both hands, spreading his legs apart for full effect. “Literally the goods that created all of humanity, and you think I’m going to let some tiny, psycho murder machine get her vicious hands on them? Not a fucking chance! Anyways, before she got the chance to manhandle me, I got to her first.” He crossed his arms again defiantly. “I tackled that bitch to the ground.”

“Adam…” Sera groaned, putting her face in her hands, her feathery, grey hair spilling around her face onto her pristine desk. “You do realise she wasn’t going to actually hit you, don’t you?”

“Sera, have you seen her in action? Like I know you’ve read all her boring reports and shit so you know her stats and whatever, but have you actually watched her tear a demon limb-from-limb? She’s like one of those animals that plays with their prey for fun before finally putting them out of their misery and killing them. She’s a bloodthirsty motherfucker. Tackling her - it was practically self-defence!”

“Self-defence is when you protect yourself after somebody attacks you first, Adam. Did she hit you at all before you decided to tackle her?”

“Well… no.” Adam admitted, fiddling with the sleeve of his robe. “I just have her figured out, and knew she would have used me as her personal punching bag.”

“Adam, I’m going to cut to the chase and be honest with you here.” An amber glow from the late afternoon sun now trickled into the room, and as Sera stood, drawing herself up to her full height, Adam couldn’t help but notice the reflection of the light flicker in her eyes. Creepy. “You need to figure out a way to work peacefully alongside your lieutenant. Fast.”

He eyed her wearily. “Why?”

What’s going on?

Sera narrowed her brows “I feel that over the years I’ve made it quite clear that I feel deeply conflicted about the yearly exterminations. Yes, it helps reduce the overpopulation problem in Hell, but given the falling numbers in recent years I can only conclude that your focus has shifted. When you pitched the idea to me, I was under the impression that it was a genuine attempt at population control. Now, it seems that it has become an excuse for you and the Exorcists to take a field trip to Hell once a year and slaughter demons for a little bit of fun. Then, when you return to Heaven, you throw a great, big, raging party and all you do for the next year is show up to work, until the next Extermination, where the cycle repeats.”

“O-kay… great story and all, but what’s that got to do with me getting along with Lute?”

“Everything. Lute’s training regime has been designed to dramatically improve stats, get back to basics and ensure we get the job done properly. If her plan is successful, and we bring Hell’s population back under control, I won’t have such a moral conflict with your yearly excursion because we’d be succeeding in what you initially proposed to do. If not…” She stared out the window, golden sunlight now illuminating her entire face in an eerie glow. “Then this upcoming Extermination Day will be the last. Which circles back to my point, Adam.” She looked him dead in the eye, holding his gaze. “If I cancel Extermination Day, you no longer have a job. Something to keep you occupied on a day-to-day basis. And I know you don’t do well with boredom.”HeH

Adam’s cheeks puffed as he exhaled deeply. Breaking eye contact with Sera, he ran a hand through his hair again. She was fucking strong-arming him. Either work with the most infuriating angel known to existence – well, second to Lucifer, or lose his job, the one stable, constant thing he’d had in his life for eons. The very job that he, up until mere moments ago, had been under the impression he’d been doing perfectly competently.

Turns out, he was a big, fat fucking failure and the future of said job rested on the tiny shoulders of his least favourite being in Heaven.

Fuuuuuuuuuuuck.

“Yeah, wow.” He muttered darkly, feeling his cheeks grow warmer with anger. “Cool. Way to make a guy feel valued after centuries – actually, no, millenniaof dedication, Sera.” The familiar sound of scraping metal filled the room as he signalled the end of the meeting. He reached down and grabbed his helmet, jamming it over his head and obscuring his face from view. Despite the electronic display, he felt a sense of relief that he now hid his glowering face from the view of his boss. “Does she know about this?”

“No. I’m not putting that pressure on her, she’s under enough stress as it is. I’d appreciate it if you didn’t mention this to her.” Her direct tone implied the matter wasn’t up for negotiation, either.

“Right. So you’re worried about stressing her out, but you’re happy to pull the rug out from under my feet. Got it.” He let out a hollow laugh. Fuck, he’d really slipped down the pecking order in a short matter of weeks. All because of that infuriating, antagonistic, mouthy little bitch.

“This isn’t a decision I’ve made lightly, Adam,” Sera said gently, “In fac –”

“Forgive me,” he interrupted coldly, “For saying that I don’t really give a shit how you’ve made the decision. You’re not fucking forcing me out of a job, if it’s the last thing I do.” The yellow eyes of his mask paused to glare at her, wanting her to meet his eye. Needing her to understand that he wasn’t going to take this shit lying down. He was fucking Adam, for Christ’s sake. Didn’t that count for anything anymore?

She didn’t even have the decency to look him in the eye, instead choosing to gaze at a spot somewhere above his left shoulder, her features set in a blank poker face. He scoffed, shaking his head in disgust.

Pathetic.

“I’m out. See ya.” Turning his back, Adam strode quickly towards the office door, desperate to put as much distance between himself and his boss as possible before the shock of the situation wore off and the rage kicked in.

“Where are you going?” Sera called, worry evident in her voice. Adam paused as he pushed the door open, the handle clattering slightly as he tried to suppress the anger that was beginning to radiate through his body like the fire of a thousand suns.

“To find my fucking lieutenant and get her to play nice.”

***

Next time: we really do find out how Lute earned the nickname 'Dangertits'. She should also really remember the importance of locking her door...

#hazbin hotel #adam x lute #guardrock #guitarspear #guitarspear fic #hazbin adam #hazbin hotel adam #hazbin hotel fanfic #hazbin hotel lute #hazbin lute

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cooking-with-hailstones · 2 years

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One day they will make a 3D Zelda with hair that doesn't mildly bug me.

I love Zelda, I love so many aspects of her character designs. She's such a cool character. But her hair consistently breaks my immersion in a way that many other characters just don't, so I am compiling a silly little list.

My credentials for this are the fact that I am a person with long hair who dabbles in hairstyling and I like doing my hair with braids and ribbons. I am also in theater, and purveyor of historical hairstyles.

This is a very unserious and rambling rant, so please bear with me! No shade and no harm meant. This is me having fun.

Alright, down to business.

CATEGORY 1: NO BUT SERIOUSLY, HOW THICK IS YOUR HAIR? OFFENDERS: BOTW/TOTK Zelda

That is a thicccc braid she's got there, but she simultaneously has long flowing hair (botw) that would need to be incorporated into the braid, OR her hair is shoulder length (totk) and you cannot physically make a braid that looks like that with hair that short. ALSO, the braid is very thick, starting from the crown of the head, while not incorporating any hair around it?

It looks like a fake braid headband (which is, I believe, what most cosplayers end up using). If you reeeally wanted to give her a headband, you could use a circlet or a ribbon.

Which brings me to...

CATEGORY 2: PHYSICS DEFYING RIBBONS OFFENDERS: SS Zelda and TP Zelda

I really do not understand this design choice at all. Ribbons are used to style hair in the real world all the time, but the only way I can conceivably see these ribbons staying in her hair is if they're made of velcro, or they're sticky. Either way, sounds painful. (Cosplayers how do you pull this off? I'm assuming glue?) Now, hair wrapping using string, ribbon or fabric is a common practice in many parts of the world, but you need strong tension, a full wrap around the hair, and these wraps usually begin at the scalp. An artist friend said that this was likely a way of getting around having to render braids. Which, fine, I am not an artist, but then why not just have those two locks of hair falling forward like normal? All you need to do is delete the ribbons. And if you insist on having that splash of colour, maybe you could give her some earrings or something?

CATEGORY 3: THE DE-BUTCHIFICATION OFFENDERS: OOT Zelda, Tetra

So I have no issues with the respective hair of any of these characters. My qualm is the immediacy of the transition, and the resulting sudden new length. Because I guess Zelda has to be super femme and that means she has to have long flowing locks when she transforms out of her pirate outfit/masculine sheikah disguise, so no more short hair for you! (Also, you can't be cute and femme and have melanin, apparently?? But that's a whole other issue...)

(And despite my beef with the overly chonky braids, I must give kudos to totk Zelda for righting this injustice. #shorthairzeldarights)

HONOURABLE MENTION: I REFUSE TO BELIEVE YOU CAN FIGHT IN THESE CONDITIONS OFFENDER: AOC Impa

I just had to include this, because I otherwise love the design for Impa in AOC, but the way I feel about this hair is similar to how most of tumblr feels about boob plate armor. You mean to tell me that this highly trained, stealth and combat expert fighter would wear her hair this long and this loose, when she is often in melee situations where someone grabbing and pulling your hair could absolutely be deadly?? Nah. (She also suffers from the same "how is your hair so thicccc??" issue as AoC/BotW Zelda)

Anyways that concludes my very silly rant. I will again add the disclaimer that I know dick all about character design, I just know how to style my thigh length hair with ribbons and braids. If you disagree, or you have any that I missed, I welcome your thoughts!

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foolsocracy · 3 months

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i wanna know how you learned how to render, it's so yum 😞💔

thank you!!! I'm glad u like it. I can try my best to explain my process but its very much a 'feel it with my heart' experience. This is gonna be long and incomprehensible but I'm gonna try:

If we're talking about the (above) garth & baby arthur jr pic or the bloody pete pic, I'd say i started to actually render like that in maybe high school art class (they were much worse then ofc because i have years more practice now)? Obviously my process now is different than it was back then, but before I actually started physically painting canvases with acrylics I usually just did line art and color without the blending-painting pizzazz.

Thats actually where I get my weird random interspersed colors in my coloring as well. Acrylics dry super fast and a high school art class is like 45 minutes so I'd have to totally mix a new pallet the next day. Not that I couldn't color match, but its annoying and having variations with colors or just mixing something up to fill in gaps looks neat if you get it right. If it looks bad just paint over it, but its worth it to try.

My process with these is almost exactly like my non painterly rendered ones, just with steps after. Also, you can get away with a lot when not fully rendering, but when i do render PHOTO REFERENCE is to die for. Specifically for the lighting. I can't emphasize this enough. By the time i'm done with a drawing my search history should be like "knees. Knees sitting. Knee anatomy. Harsh light photography. Curly hair. baby. J. C. Leyendecker new year baby" + 8 pictures of u doing whatever pose you're trying to do.

Anyway, the process for me is usually: vague sketch > carve out the lines/neater sketch > flat colors > basic shading/rendering > color adjusting sketch lines (usually from black to dark red) > collapse everything into one layer & get to WORK

I know the 1 layer thing is scary, but thats life. Its easiest to adjust things that way (for me). No need to worry about layers and blending modes cause its all right there. I usually duplicate the layer the drawing is in before I start on something crazy just to reassure myself that if I fuck it up I can go back. So a lot of the time my layers in procreate are progressively more rendered stages of the piece lol.

Now that Im here trying to explain this im blanking on how to actually express it. Lets see. I can run through some general stuff:

For both of those artworks (baby & pete) they're 100% made with HB pencil on procreate (a default brush! I've never downloaded any new brushes cause im lazy). I actually made a brush explanation for someone a few months ago I can put that right here:

hopefully those are readable. sometimes tumblr flops lmk if my writing is illegible

the eraser tool is your BEST FRIEND!!!! The way I get my lines and shapes and whatnot is by making big ass strokes and then erasing until whatever I'm looking for reveals itself. Here's a video of that process from the aquababy pic. Ignore the jerky pauses lol. also there's the reference photo!:

rendering itself is really hard to describe. Basically just throw color at it until it works out. (just tried to add a video but tumblr says only 1 video allowed

I hope this is helpful somehow! Just threw a ton of stuff at you. If you want anything more or the actual video or smth just let me know!

#this is A LOOOT #but there's gotta be something here thats maybe helpful #hope it makes any semblance of sense #asks #chooeychoco #feel free to dm me too for anything else lol #that goes for chooey and anyone reading this. id like to say im chill riiight 😋#and if dming isnt ur thing the ask box is right there #this post my self destruct w that video. hopefully tumblr powers through and can post it #sorry if this is crazy im crazy #*MAY self destruct. Lordy

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lemongogo · 11 months

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what's your process for coloring like? the look of that elendira is so textured and interesting, i can't figure out how you do it

AA THANK YOUU ^__^ !! textures & brushwork are my favorite things abt my art, so im happy you find it interesting hehe . its SOO cool to look at & so much fun to draw imo

i prefer to color by building in layers , if that makes sense 🤔!! hundreds of them !! such that i'm always drawing on Top of previous layers, working from big & messy blocks of color to, eventually, small and refined blocks of color until it feels processed enough. as a result, i rarely ever erase (!!) and i rarely ever draw lineart aside from the initial sketch

a rough, patchy textured brush is key here, as it'll give you dimension and variability w/ your colors. i recommend "Brush and various sets of fountain pen style (万年筆風ブラシと色々セット)" on Clip Studio (ID: 1679706) !! :3

im terrible with explanations though, so i'm going to show a step by step of that elendira drawing if you dont mind :3

sketch layer !! because i mostly render through color alone, i try to make this as close to the finished thing as possible . ^__^ i hateee drawing the same thing over and over and like the expressivity and movement of my sketches anyways , so the more i can preserve at this step, the better. if u were to look at a side by side of my sketches and finished pieces, youd notice a lot of those og lines are present in the final drawing :3

2. flats !! pretty self explanatory, but the solid background gives me an idea of where the figure begins & ends while the colors themselves help distinguish whats what . i stick to ambient lighting @ this point because im usually not sure what i want to do with the overall palette or lighting yet . having two tones (ex, dark and light in her hair or dark and light on her skin) can also help in identifying key features early on that u wanna preserve. as you build layer by layer, sometimes these areas will remain untouched and i think it makes for a rly lovely feel at the end

3. start blocking !!! to be totally honest with you, i dont really know what i do here HAHAHA. like i just scribble the shit out of it, usually focusing on what i might want to do with lighting (ex: grey areas to accentuate folds in her costume). i think i like to start "erasing" the sketch where possible by coloring on top of it .. like if you look at her hat or her arm , you can tell i'm starting to get a sense of the shapes i like vs the ones i dont. it's at this point that the final image starts to emerge in my mind , like im gradually pulling her from a tarpit of scribbles until shes recognizable lol. chipping away at the marble until i can free her. tbh.

4. keep blockingg...when u think u are done , block some more . as you can probably see, the brushwork becomes more intentional as i add more shape, with specific focus on line weight. this is also where the patchiness of that textured brush comes in - notice how none of the colors seem totally uniform (ex: the red cross or the original sketchlines for her waist). you can see bits and pieces of the layers underneath pushing through and i really like that !! ^__^ its very fun and sketchy to me, so i try to keep them around. those areas are also great to colorpick from, because it'll give you "new" colors to work w/ that are already part of your palette.

5. GRADIENTS & GRADIENT MAPS !! TONE CURVE !! COLOR PICKER !! this is the best stage tbh. flatten your image so its all on one layer and just go crazy with all the color settings in ur program. add gradient layers and set them to darken, or overlay, or subtract, orrr. lighten or dodge glow or divide or soft/hard light.! OR!! edit the hue, saturation, luminosity and contrast.and then color pick from these edits, block even more on top of ur image, flatten, color edit again, etc. etc. until u feel satisfied.

ANYWAYSS . i hope that makes sense @__@ sry i wrote this out and deleted it like 23 times trying to make it make More sense but thats what ive got HAHA i hope its useful though :3 !

#SRY I STRUGGLED 2 EXPLAIN THIS #dude its like my brain bcomes stuffed w/ cotton anytime i try 2 write #i hope it makes sense tho..#it also probably sounds so redundant to make new layer one after the other for just a few brushstrokes #but those brushes i linked have a multiply property so if you draw on top of prev lines they'll create dark patches #and so if im working over a large area ill generally need like . 5 layers each with one brushstroke :sob: if that makes sense #this one had . 84 i think. total. layers i mean. the merylvash one had 300+ HAHAH so it rly depends #like YEAAH i could just use a normal brush but i really like the way this looks #andd sometimes the multiply function works really well or will give me the proper shadow tone im looking for #anywas.wanywaysn anyways #asktag #anonymous #long post

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djthed · 1 year

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3D Test Animation of my Character!

Been once again super busy with work lately, but found some time to sneak in getting this little project done!

I've recently changed up my profile pictures to use a character design that I can actually credit to myself! I will always love Leafeon and will miss using them as a profile picture, but the biggest problem with using them as a way to identify me is that they aren't really my character or my design. And my own iteration of Leafeon's model isn't that derivative anyway, nor would I really want it to. And also considering how long I've been a FiM fan, I think it's a long time coming that I finally make a design of a pony for myself to use as a sona!

With that said, when it comes to this model, I started working a bit on it a few months back. Mostly in the coat coloring and headshape department. The head topology is the same as before, but now I have controls in the rig that can change the head shape to feel more "stallion"-like. For how I tuned the shape for my character, he's kind of got a shape in-between a full on mare and stallion head shape.

Work ceased for a while as I got involved working on a project called "Billie Bust Up!" (which I will talk more about later if that got your attention, don't worry!). It's been very busy, but the past week I decided to sit down and get this done on my own time. I did a few streams where I would work continuously on my model, like getting all the hair done, and working on all the animation. You can find all the VODs to these in the Live section on YouTube Channel. I really like doing livestreams, as it has a very VERY obvious affect on how I am able to focus, and makes working on things a lot easier and more efficient. I want to do them more again, I miss streaming a lot. Maybe for BBU I'll find a way, but only time will tell.

This animation was really fun to make. Haven't really done super dynamic quadruped animation since I was involved in the G5 pony game, so it was nice to get at it again to refresh my skills there. Didn't feel too hard, so that's a good sign I wasn't getting too rusty. And rendering was not nearly as bad as you might expect. Talked a bit about this during my Marina commission about my new methods of denoising renders that were done in Cycles. This entire render uses a flat 128 sample count, and using my new methods that keeps noise temporally stable and then denoise after, it produces a very VERY nice result. Once I rap up releasing this animation, I'll try to finally record a guide, or at least the process I take, on how I get this done, as it's definitely a viable option in a lot of cases.

Thank you guys for sticking around during my staggered activity on this channel! Once I started getting involved in real animation jobs, it's been tough finding a good balance between my own personal animation projects and actual animation work. And lately I've been feeling the urge to actually try to find that balance so that I can do both. Hopefully I find it, because I miss this!

Special Thanks to my Patrons!: interru Katharine Berry CyberPon3 Nathan Copier StableCoder SteveLynx Subserial Guillaume Troton

If you wish to support me, here's my Patreon link:

YouTube:

My Discord Server is now Public!: https://discord.gg/HvbDBxG6ff

Twitter: https://twitter.com/_DJTHED

Mastodon: https://equestria.social/@djthed

DeviantArt: https://www.deviantart.com/therealdjthed

TikTok (experimental): https://www.tiktok.com/@_djthed

#pony #mlp #animation #3d animation #blender #djthed #blender3d #blender animation

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koa-z · 1 year

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Nagito Color Study | Please do not repost, reblogs are welcome though! Brushes & Techniques & a progress pic below the cut

Uhhhh okay, how to explain this one. I was rereading “Logically Lucky” by PinkSweetSmoke and some of the visuals in the earlier chapters really struck me. The way that they write this relationship is pretty dynamic, and I wanted to see if I could use colors to talk about how Hajime and Nagito feel for each other and what they’re going through emotionally? So this is fanart for that fic, directly inspired by that fic based on the established vista(s) and also the style of writing their relationship, but it doesn’t really make sense unless I say all of that lol? But it wouldn’t exist if not for that fic, so I’d feel weird not mentioning it.

Brushes used (Clip Studio, Free):

Main: “ラフペン” from gyuukotu’s “Fill Set (塗りセット)”, content ID 1695210 Fill: Default India Ink brush pen - the rough pen is a little unpredictable, so I used this to flat the image and make sure that there were no gaps Cloud Flat: "荒筆" from gyuutoku's “Fill Set (塗りセット)”, content ID 1695210 Cloud Blender: I downloaded it from the internet instead of the app 2 years ago and cannot find, with certainty, where it came from, since I get rid of everything on my hard drive that's not art every year :( there are lots of good cloud blending brushes out there for free, though, and I typically use the gouache blender Misc. Techniques: Screen Distortion: I used CSP's free cloth texture clipped above the "blue" layers and then liquified it in places for the screen distortion effect Gradient Mapping: I cannot overstate how helpful gradient maps were for minor color corrections, you guys PLEASE try them on a finished piece of your own if you haven't used them yet. Click Layers > New Correction Layer > Gradient Map and then choose from the premade gradients before adding your own so you can see how they worked. I used a few different ones clipped to specific areas w/ lowered opacity & hard/soft light settings where I felt like the color was falling flat and it was SO helpful at giving it just that little bit more depth. Hearts: I've discovered that you can cheat at hair and clothing rendering by just making hearts. Try and see how many you can find lol Color Theory in General: The whole point of this piece, after it stopped being fanart (lol rip), was to be a color study focusing on the contrast between shadow and light and what I could do within the blues & the yellows to make them appear as if they're actually different colors. In the blue section, everything is p much blue, nothing is any other color. In the sunny section, a lot of the stuff is warmer variations of the standard colors, since I wanted it to be more vibrant and didn't feel like I could achieve that if everything was shades of yellow and orange. That being said, I stuck as closely to that as possible. But ANYWAY, juxtaposing the two starkly different color profiles also helps the blues in the blue side read as colors that they aren't, which was part of why I did this study. Sneaky sneaky: I just modified the diner a bit in order to get the colors I wanted, i.e closing the blinds bc I can. As an artist it's important to remember that YOU have full control over every single part of the piece, you just should ideally have a reason to create inaccuracies/ break rules or else it can end up being a bit messy and disorganized & details/ your vision can get lost.

Aaaand finally, the sketch from TWO AND A HALF MONTHS AGO:

#trusttheprocess 😭😭😭

#nagito komaeda #sdr2 #color study #super danganronpa 2 #nagito fanart #my art #october 2023 #jesus I started in july #but I also like let it sit for a good 2 months after the mockup #so shhhh #fav #komaeda nagito #character study #fanart

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ozwriterchick · 1 year

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Swimming Lessons

Characters: Dad!Bucky; OFC!Reader; OFC!Little

Content warnings: None, just some fluff

A/Note: This is my first post back since some health concerns in June/July. I've put off going back to writing but I'm hoping this serves as my reintroduction and to my mojo being back!

This story idea came to me at the gym last week. It kinda got away from me, to the point that the last paragraph is really the crux of what the story was going to be.

Anyway, I hope you enjoy, let me know your thoughts and don't forget to like/reblog.

Dividers by: @firefly-graphics

Masterlist

In the 7 years since you came to live at the compound with the Avengers, a lot had changed for you. Not just professionally, but personally as well.

Professionally, you’d risen to a management role with your team, which had you assisting and overseeing mission planning and comms. The team really respect ted you and your skills and appreciated your assistance in helping them out of tight spots on occasion. You thoroughly enjoyed your job and having such close friendships with most of the team.

Personally, you’d met the love of your life, dated for 3 years and have now been married for 3 years. You and Bucky had danced around your attraction for about 6 months before he asked you out after Sam pushed him one day by saying that if he didn’t ask you out, someone else would snap you up.

At the same time, Natasha and Wanda were giving you the same speech about Bucky. You still insist it was the best thing you and he ever did.

Your first date went so well, you two were practically inseparable from that day on. Dinners, coffee, breakfast, move nights, you name it the two of you were together.

Seeing him off on missions was hard, but being able to be on comms helped, because you could hear everything happening and it put your mind at ease, most of the time.

The biggest change, for both you and Bucky, came about 21 months ago when your son was born. Neither of you planned to have kids so soon, but a bout of the flu not long after you got married, rendered your contraceptive pill less effective that month and before you knew it, a little nugget was on the way.

That’s how Bucky christened the new life when he first found out. He was nervous that he wouldn’t be a good father, but you tried to assure him that by even being concerned about that proved already that he would be a great father. Those weren’t just words to you, you truly believed he would be the best father possible and you were so grateful he was going to be the father of your child (or children).

Your pregnancy went smoothly and thankfully Noah was a very placid baby who rarely cried, slept through the night from about 4 months old and just generally enchanted anyone who met him.

His big blue eyes sparkled and his dark hair, so much like his father, was longer than a normal toddler his age. You’d constantly be stopped in the park or on the street by people he grinned at who just wanted to compliment you on such a gorgeous baby. You had to agree, you and Bucky made a good looking baby.

You didn’t think you could fall any more in love with your husband, but seeing him being a father definitely did it. The way he looked after Noah and was so protective of both of you mad you want to have a whole tribe with him. He didn’t know it but the wasn’t totally out of the question.

One night at the dinner table as you were both watching him try and feed himself spaghetti, you turned to Bucky “Hey Buck, what do you think about swimming lessons?”

“Umm, sugar, I don’t know how to break this to you, but I know how to swim” he smirked at you.

He winced, dramatically, as you slapped his arm “Not for you doofus” you laughed at him “for Noah. We have a pool here at the compound and I know we’ve taken him in the water more than once, but I really want him to have water confidence just in case something happens and neither of us are there.”

��That sounds like a great idea my love. How about you look into it and let me know what you find? Now, do you want to bath the nugget or do the dishes?” He asked as he kissed you on your forehead, before gathering the dishes and taking them to the sink.

Later that night, you’re sitting in bed with your laptop in front of you, looking up local swim schools for toddlers. Noah was fast asleep in his new big boy bed, which he’d been so excited about when he saw Bucky putting it together. You smiled at the baby monitor, which had video as well as sound, nothing but the best for your baby boy.

All of a sudden you feel like you’re being watched and you look up to see Bucky leaning against the bedroom door frame, just watching you with a silly grin on his face. “What? Do I have something on my face?” you asked him.

“No my sweet girl, just appreciating your beauty and how lucky I am” he said moving to your side on the bed and kissing your temple. “What are you up to?”

“Just researching local swim schools. There are a couple in the area that have really great reviews. Maybe we can go visit them with Noah on the weekend?”

“Sounds like a plan” Bucky said, moving the computer off your lap and onto the bedside table. “Can I interest you in a different kind of research right now?”

Saturday came faster than expected. You had called both of the swim schools and schedule meetups for you, Bucky and Noah to tour and get to know the staff there, also observing one of the toddler classes.

The first school was called The Swimming Station. The director, Blanche Lee was an older lady, from the deep south who had moved to New York many years ago, but seemed to have retained her Southern accent. She greeted the 3 of you and paid attention to Noah who charmed her as was his usual M.O. After the tour, which you and Bucky were both impressed by, she handed you paperwork to fill out if you decide to join. She then introduced you to the teacher whose class Noah would be joining, who invited both of you to sit poolside to observe the class that Noah would be in.

As you got in the car after leaving The Swimming Station, your husband bucked Noah into his car seat and then slid into his seat behind the wheel. “So, what did you think?” He asked.

“I thought it was great, everyone was so nice, and they all treated Noah so well”

“But…?”

“I don’t know, let’s just go see the other one and then we can make our decision from there.”

Bucky put the car in drive and headed towards the 2nd swim school, Tiny Fin Aquatics. You liked the sound of that, also they were specifically designed for kids under 10 and that they had a sister-school called Big Fin Aquatics that the kids would graduate to, once they were old enough. It was a newer school than the last one and it had better reviews.

Driving up and parking out the front, you were even more impressed with the place. It was so bright and shiny and all the parents you saw turning up had big smiles on their faces.

Entering the school, you were met by the Director, Anthony Cooper. You’re not sure why you were surprised the director was a man, but you liked the vibe he exuded and when you looked at Bucky, with Noah on his hip, he nodded in agreement.

After going over costs and associated paperwork, Anthony took you both on a tour and introduced you to Noah’s instructor. You had a few minutes of conversation and then headed poolside to watch the class. Noah was eager to get into the water after being at the last school and then having his parents rip him away before he could get in the pool.

Bucky leaned over and whispered that you should have brought all of your swimsuits so he could have a quick swim. You promised that you’d be able to do that once you were home.

The class looked like it went well and, before leaving you let the teacher and director know that you’d contact them if you had any further questions and wished them both a great day.

You and Bucky discussed both options on the car-ride home. The pricing at the Swimming Station was better, but there was just something about it that you weren’t sure about. Bucky felt the differently, he liked both schools but the classes at The Swimming Station were smaller and it was closer to the compound.

You decided to have a swim with Noah and talk about it later, maybe over dinner. It was a shame you couldn’t ask Noah for his opinion.

You gave Noah an early bath and dinner after your swim and he was asleep before you and Bucky sat down for your dinner. It had been a big day for your little boy.

“So” you and Bucky both said at the same time.

Laughing you continued “We have to sort out which swim school we are going to send Noah to. They both have their positives, I just think that Tiny Fin has more positives.”

“Uh-huh, I hear you, I just think the smaller class sizes at the station would suit him better.”

Back and forth you talked it out for the duration of your dinner, in amongst remembering funny stories about some of the memories you made in the last 6 years that centred around swimming and water.

Sitting on the couch, snuggled into his side, you both ended up deciding on Tiny Fin for Noah. It was newer and the vibe was amazing and you were ok with spending a little more time and money to have the best for your little man.

A week later, on Saturday morning, you got Noah ready for his first swim class. You and Bucky played rock, paper, scissors to decide who got in the pool with Noah. Normally they didn’t do this for toddlers his age, but given it was his first lesson they had offered you or Bucky to get in the pool with him.

After 3 rounds, Bucky won 2-1. You should have known, he always beat you at rock-paper-scissors. Next time, you’d have to think of another way to decide - or you’d have to distract him some way.

You arrived at Tiny Fin, having set up the payment and membership information through the week online. As you picked up your membership tag, you saw Anthony, the director and waved as Bucky took Noah down to poolside to get him ready for the class. On your way to join them you saw the teacher and by the time you got to the pool deck, Bucky was already in the pool with Noah. Your breath hitched in your throat as you watched your husband, bare-chested with your baby boy in his arms. Noah was squealing with joy as one of his favourite places to be was in the water.

The way Bucky was looking at him and holding him and laughing with him near about stopped your heart. One thing was for certain, he was getting a tribe.

Tag list: @cjand10 @angstysebfan @psychictazzy76 @lovely-geek @samanthaneedsanap @kentokaze @void-imaginations @iheartsebastianstanstuff @yourmumsluke

#james bucky barnes #ozwriterchick #dad!bucky #bucky barns x reader #dad!bucky x reader #Dad!Bucky x Little

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g5mlp · 1 year

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Here's the entire My Little Pony 2024 Franchise Overview presentation. This was originally distributed online in mid-June 2023, and we reported on it then, but there are a couple of details that didn't make it into the post.

Download links 2024 Franchise Overview 2023 Marketing Plans Hasbro Brands Overview

Slides 2–4. Various random stats which are mostly not important or not properly contextualized. I have just a slight feeling that the stat on slide 3 implying that MLP is bigger than Barbie at the moment is cherrypicked.

Slides 5–6. Slide 6 is the first slide with specific data about Tell Your Tale viewers. It tells us that Tell Your Tale outperformed Make Your Mark on audience approval and toy purchase basket size, and that it outperformed other franchises on repeat toy purchase rate. There are a few more of these stats on slide 20.

Slides 7–9. Tell Your Tale Season 2 will be real, and will have four specials (the accompanying visuals don't seem to be related, other than the beach stuff for special 2). They didn't really explain what "hair play in every episode" or "more magical moments" will mean, although maybe the former is intended to encourage the purchase of toys.

Slides 10–12. This is basically a summary of things that have already been done within the MLP brand over the last few years. "LBE" means "location-based entertainment".

Slide 10 seems to indicate that there are about 7 songs left to be released in Tell Your Tale Season 1.

On slide 12, from left to right, the featured things are the VR book My Little Pony: Virtual Magic; the Sofia Carson-narrated Calm "sleep story"; the I Can Read Comics Level 1 book Sister Switch; the first issue of the G5 IDW comics; the MLP mascots at the Galaxyland theme park in Edmonton, Canada; a render of the lobby of the My Little Pony & Transformers Playlodge in Shanghai; and the "Flight to Equestria" ferris wheel at Galaxyland.

Slides 13–14. Mostly licensed merch, although the Izzy brushable on slide 14 still hasn't been seen anywhere other than this presentation.

Slide 15. Another indication that Make Your Mark won't get anything in 2024: the best they can say about it is that it will "live on Netflix" (i.e. won't be removed from Netflix), which was probably going to happen anyway.

Given the "new episodes weekly" statement, 328 minutes can be neatly divided into 4 22-minute episodes and 48 5-minute episodes, all for Tell Your Tale. Consistent episode lengths make sense for Hasbro, since they intend to license their shows out to TV networks with standard half-hour programming blocks.

"Linear and AVOD" probably refers to traditional TV channels and ad-supported free streaming sites. Some past MLP content is already available on "AVOD" sites such as Pluto TV.

It seems like G5 music will continue to have that generic pop sound.

It's implied that some of the video games shown will be updated in 2024. Maybe not all of them, though, since the MLP Roblox game (Visit Maretime Bay) was shut down in February 2023.

Slides 16–17. They want to grow viewership a lot and convert it to toy purchases. They call Tell Your Tale their "one & only ponable content series"; obviously, maintaining two ongoing animated shows would directly contradict this statement.

The Pipp, Misty, Sunny and Izzy brushables shown all seem to be new, as is the concept art for the accessories of the former three. The Izzy brushable is probably the same one as on slide 14.

Slide 18. They will do a bunch of promo stuff, including releasing a licensed console video game in Q3 2024. The first and third Tell Your Tale specials are to be the tentpole moments (i.e. big marketing focal points) of 2024.

Slides 19–20. Slide 20 features some more new stats on how well Tell Your Tale is performing; it has 177 million cumulative YouTube views, good repeat viewership and better repeat purchase rate than Make Your Mark.

This image is from a different presentation, "2023 Marketing Plans". This slide reveals the Secrets of Starlight logo for the fourth and final My Little Pony: Make Your Mark special.

The "album launch" could be referring to the My Little Pony Theme Song (Sped Up + lofi remixes) EP that was released today. Or maybe something else?

This slide is from the other presentation that was revealed, "Hasbro Brands Overview". It doesn't really reveal anything that wasn't previously known, although it does suggest that Bridlewoodstock will feature in more marketing content through the rest of the year.

Notes

Almost all of the text in the 2024 Franchise Overview presentation is shown in the Calibri font. It doesn't seem like it was originally intended to be that way, and I think it might be due to custom fonts not being loaded properly by whoever converted the presentation to PDF. In spite of this issue, the presentation is likely genuine, evidenced by the high quality images embedded in it, including a shot from a future Tell Your Tale episode on slide 8.

Slides 15 and 18 both note that future plans are subject to change. However, it's probably somewhat unlikely that Hasbro could return to Make Your Mark in 2024. Even if they were to commission more Make Your Mark episodes right now, and could justify the budget for it, it would probably still take more than a year before the first episodes could be completed. I could be wrong about this, but there's nothing to suggest that it would be in the interest of Hasbro, Netflix, Atomic Cartoons or anyone else (except maybe the fans) for Make Your Mark to be renewed after 2023.

While the TYT Audience Report and MLP Shopper Analysis by AIM & We Are Family both seem to be focused on 2- to 8-year-old girls, it's not necessarily an indication that Hasbro is focused solely on this demographic – they might just be the most lucrative demographic, or the one whose analysis produced the best numbers to show to Hasbro's investors and partners.

#my little pony #mlp g5 #mlp #my little pony: tell your tale #my little pony: make your mark

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