#edited this after a nap to hopefully be more coherent

[freakbullet]

so this video (it's pretty good, worth a watch) basically saved me having to clean up the big word salad post I was drafting but I'm gonna reiterate a few points -

firstly, this isn't mentioned in the video but I think it's so, so important: unlike the valentine author, Gaster has never, ever used a single contraction. Toriel is another character who never uses them, no matter how casual the context. for something like this to suddenly change for no reason makes no sense. Toby is meticulous. I genuinely believe this is a HUGE strike against it being Gaster, yet almost no one mentions it. next, the valentine author speaks as if they don't know us: "you seem reliable", "you are very odd". and as we know, Gaster's well acquainted with us by now, so it'd make no sense for him to speak to us this way. (but what it does lend credence to is this being a character we either haven't met before, or haven't extensively interacted with.) additionally, in all instances so far, Gaster's been keen, focused, sharp. why would he suddenly be so addled and confused? the author saying they forgot who they're supposed to help, and it possibly even being themself, doesn't point to Gaster either - in fact, just the opposite - because the idea of him being forgotten is pure fanon. the game explicitly states that Asgore took so long to hire a new royal scientist because Dr. Gaster's brilliance was irreplaceable. how would the king know that if he didn't remember? fictional characters, by their very nature, are presented to us in a deliberate and finite way; our interactions with them have specific purpose. this means that when we try to hold them to real-world standards like "I, a real live person, write differently depending on the occasion", it won't always hold up. we have to go by what precedents have already been set by the creator, in the context in which these characters exist. on occasions when characters in UT/DR have spoken in a different way than usual, the fundamental, anchoring traits of their speech still remain intact (see: contractions), which would not be the case if Gaster were the valentine author.

(and of course, this doesn't even touch on the Japanese translation highlighting how wildly different the speech styles are, which I personally put more stock in than they do in the video.) the last 3rd of the video is more opinion/headcanon-oriented but he makes his point well. even if you disagree with his perception of Gaster (I do to an extent), it's true that there's already no shortage of whimsical, silly, lighthearted characters in UT/DR, and surely, if Gaster were meant to be one of them, Toby wouldn't reveal it in a way that's so out of left field. I love silly goofy wingding man as much as the next guy, but I also agree that attributing this personality to him out of nowhere, when it's incongruent with everything we've seen so far, would only serve to undermine his character and the uniqueness of it. none of this is to knock anyone whose opinion differs from mine! I'm just laying my thoughts out, for whatever that's worth. I've seen an unfortunate tendency in the community to lump the valentine in with the tweets and gonermaker text as all being on the same level of "obviously Gaster", and then tout it as proof that their headcanons are real. (we all have our headcanons! just don't be a dick about it eh?) at the end of the day, personally, I try to absorb and cling to as much canon evidence as possible, scant though it may be. because what I really really want, is to know who Gaster is. in the truest sense, as he is intended to be by his creator.

(but isn't it wonderful how much we all love this character, no matter how differently we may see him? I mean ultimately if we're not having fun here, then what's the point, right?)

but yeah, give the vid a watch! it goes into more detail and makes more compelling points than my sleepless brain can atm. :p

[cellarspider]

26/?? PIE to the face

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We return to a movie that is going to linguistically hurt me again, Prometheus. You get to read a ramble about PIE. You’re welcome.

Content warning for MORE OF ME. I cannot be stopped.

So. Imagine you have found a sleeping alien. You believe that they were on a mission to destroy humanity as a disappointment. What do you do? Not waking them up is certainly an option. But what if you do? You’re going to want to not disappoint them.

One could, for example, study the records still maintained within the alien ship. Learn about their culture. Get more than one guy to learn their language, particularly since this translator you’ve got seems to be a little gung-ho on things like “seeing [his] parents dead.” That’s a bit of a warning sign.

And hey, something horrible happened on this ship, probably right before or right after this alien was put into hibernation. There’s a lot of dead bodies on the ship. Having a trauma counselor or three there would be a good call. People trained in de-escalation, definitely. Give you a chance to talk the alien down, and help them process stuff in what’s hopefully a culturally appropriate manner, given your xenological research before waking them up.

You’ll probably want to make sure to take the “kill humanity” button away from them too, that would be a good idea. And, preferably, not have exploded the head of one of their colleagues.

Am I describing a process that would take years? Yes. It should. This is the most important thing humanity’s ever done.

It’s been two days since the Prometheus landed.

As stated before, my faith in fictional humanity was not high in this scene.

David wakes the Engineer up. Rather than any of the measures I described above, the Engineer is met with David, Weyland, some security guys, Doctor Franenstein the head-exploder, and Shaw.

It took most of the humans a good hour or so to stop looking like death after waking up after a two year nap, and this Engineer’s been under for a thousand times longer. The poor bugger is visibly hung over and feeling sick, almost falling over on Weyland.

Shaw starts demanding David ask where they’re from, what’s in the ship’s cargo, why was it made for humans, all in English as Weyland tries to talk over her. They are speaking a language that only took its modern form 1600 years after the last events on this ship took place. The Engineer has zero clue what anyone’s saying.

The Engineer remains silent, and visibly disturbed by how Wayland orders his security guy to hit Shaw, which just makes the still unintelligible questions louder and less coherent.

And then David starts speaking to them.

There was a short dialog between them filmed, but in the final cut, the Engineer doesn’t speak at all.

The final cut also removes Weyland’s pitch for why he should have immortality–he created life in David. David is something more perfect than human. Therefore Weyland is a god, and gods never die.

This is, as you can imagine, not convincing. It would’ve made Weyland slightly more explicable as a character, but the movie hasn’t even done that for its lead, so of course it doesn’t for Old Man Capitalism.

In the full release, David only says a few sentences. To quote Anil Biltoo, who wrote the translation:

The line that David speaks to the Engineer (which is from a longer sequence that didn’t make the final edit) is as follows: /ida hmanəm aɪ kja namṛtuh zdɛ:taha/…/ghʷɪvah-pjorn-ɪttham sas da:tṛ kredah/ A serviceable translation into English is: ‘This man is here because he does not want to die. He believes you can give him more life’.

This is–okay. In the theater, I did not know precisely what this language was. But I was making a fair imitation of the Engineer's expression in response to this, because I was pretty sure it was PIE.

Proto-Indo-European, that is. A massive swath of world languages are all traceable back to one source, though we have no records of it. Linguistic reconstruction of how they evolved from earlier roots allows us to infer a language that must have existed, and we call that the Proto-Indo-European language. PIE for short. And this is a big ol’ slice of PIE right here. 

And I had a whole thing in early drafts of this post. I’d convinced myself over the years that my inexperience with PIE had led me astray in the theater. I’d convinced myself this was a PIE conlang. Meaning, I thought this was a language created for this movie that sounds like a cousin to PIE. That’s still howlingly weird, for reasons I’ll get into. But then I saw this featurette:

[Video description: A behind the scenes featurette for Prometheus entitled “Language Of The Gods”. It interviews Anil Biltoo on his work for the movie, in which he explains the concept of a proto-language, of PIE in specific, and what he did for the movie.]

It’s PIE. It’s a different reconstruction of PIE than the current standard, but it’s PIE.

And I feel vindicated, because that’s what I heard in the theater. David opened his mouth and out came PIE. 

I can actually read a few words in the excerpt. I could hear them in the theater. The word /hmanəm/ is clearly meant to be a root word of “man”, which standard reconstructions indicate is the descendent of PIE *ǵʰmṓ. /Namṛtuh/ is very clearly from PIE *ne-mért, “not-die”, because anything that looks like “mort” in an indo-european language probably has something to do with death. And “/kredah/” is close to PIE *ḱréddʰh₁eti, hence Latin “crēdit”, hence modern italian “créde”, “he believes”. 

PIE is just like that, sometimes. Some roots are unrecognizable, others are instantly identifiable. I’ll include my attempt at a gloss (a brief technical explanation of the meaning and grammar) at the end of the post.

The implication is that the Engineers taught their language to humans. That was Proto-Indo-European, which then spread from there. I almost started laughing in the theater at this. 

In the real world, we know a few things about where PIE came from. PIE was probably spoken by people north of the Black Sea, at least five thousand years ago. This guy who’s just woken up with a hibernation hangover went to sleep three thousand years after that. 

But, y’know what? Fine. Let’s say it’s a liturgical language. David’s done the equivalent of walking up to somebody and speaking to them in church Latin. Weird, but not impossible that it could be understood. Or maybe they’re just so damn long-lived and linguistically conservative that it’s more like talking to somebody in an old-timey news broadcaster voice. Still weird! But comprehensible.

But you know what we can’t possibly link back to PIE? Egyptian, Sumerian, Akkadian, Hawaiian, or the Mayan languages, most of the other ancient cultures the movie says the Engineers definitely contacted. Did all those come from the same ur-language? We don’t know. We can’t know, because our reconstruction methods are ineffective past a certain point. But if they did, then their root language had to have existed before the Bering Strait closed off the Americas from Asia, making any common ancestor at least twice as old as PIE. The movie’s implication is that it was PIE. The language of the gods is PIE. PIEngineer.

Apparently everybody who the Engineers talked to just forgot the language of the gods, save for the linguistic descendants of some nomads on the Black Sea Steppe.

And that’s before we get into the worse implications. We can’t tie East Asian languages back to PIE. Austronesian languages. American languages. African languages. Were these people just not contacted by the Engineers? Did they forget? Did they refuse to listen?

None of these are good answers! None! They’re all bad!

In Anil Biltoo’s defense, he’s an academic linguist, and, to my knowledge, not one who’s a conlanger. Ridley Scott specifically wanted to work in the oldest possible human language, and Biltoo delivered on that, based on modern scholarship. He did not make an alien language that evolved into a human language. If Scott had wanted that, David and Jesse Peterson would probably go feral for the project, but they weren’t asked. What would be the most naturalistic thing to do, if you wanted to get across the idea that humans inherited language from the Engineers?

You make a Proto-Human language. People have tried before, and others have argued their attempts are bullshit. This is one of those times that Wikipedia has a “the neutrality of this article is disputed” flag at the top of the page, because there are nerd fights everywhere on this. We don’t even know if a Proto-Human language ever existed–there could have been multiple independent origins of language–but if you’re writing fiction, sure, Proto-Human exists.

Come up with a vocabulary and grammar that could work for Proto-Human, have David speak it to the Engineer, it sounds alien to everybody, nobody gets to be the special children of the gods, and no linguistics dork in the audience will laugh at you.

They will definitely laugh at what happens next, though.

But the post is not done! Bonus linguistic nerdery below, including a sample of my constructed language and its script.

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Citations for alt-text rambles:

https://moomin.fandom.com/wiki/Stinky 

https://www.deviantart.com/pretty--kittie/art/Prometheus-Engineer-407327934 

https://www.uni-wuerzburg.de/en/news-and-events/news/detail/news/new-indo-european-language-discovered/

PIEngineer gloss

Alright, for the language nerds in the audience, I’ve put together a potential gloss, entirely based off of PIE roots available on Wiktionary and a shaky understanding of PIE verb construction:

/ida hmanəm aɪ kja namṛtuh zdɛ:taha/…/ghʷɪvah-pjorn-ɪttham sas da:tṛ kredah/ this.[singular neuter??] man.NOM [anaphoric demonstrative].1.NOM.MASC here not-die EMPHATIC/towards.3MASC.PRES(?)…life-many-[resultative or inchoative verb suffix? adjective of possession, accusative singular?] [genitive singular reflexive?] give.[middle 3S] believe.[stative(?) 3S] A more literal translation would therefore be “This man here does not (want to) approach death…he believes he (can be) given more life-having to himself.”

I am not good at figuring out suffix affixation for PIE verbs, so I probably missed or misinterpreted a few in there. I’m not sure how to break down /zdɛ:taha/ in particular, and /sas/ is a bit mysterious to me. Biltoo definitely created his own PIE reconstruction for this. Vowels are all shifted (ex *éy -> /aɪ/), there’s more palatal consonants (*ḱi-Ø -> /kja/, *polh₁-r̥-m -> pjorn), and other sound shifts I’m too scatterbrained to categorize right now.

PIEngineer to Tade Taadži translation

Alright. I previously mentioned that I have a conlang. I have yet to mention that it is distantly related to Prometheus, powered by the spiteful creative energy this movie engendered in me.

So it’s only fair I translate this passage into my language, write it in my script, and give a thorough gloss.

Jàà odormàà, hu sàà id aannãgu … midadjã kii jur kaas ʻus mogeso. /jɐː odoɾmɐː hu sɐː id aːnːãgu/ / … /midadjã kiː juɾ̥ kaːs ʔus mogeso/ This.VOC not-native-person.ALL, death.INST not go.ATTR want.PRES. Forever.NOM give this.ALL 2S.VOC ACC 3S.NEAR.ponder.PRES.3P.FAR.ACC

Translation notes:

I am assuming David is speaking formally, clearly, and respectfully in this translation, even if one of the people he’s being respectful about is Weyland. Both Weyland and the Engineer are thus addressed using the Vocative case when first directly mentioned.

Due to the formality of the speech, formal style glyphs are also used: these require significant planning ahead of time, to identify ligatures, aesthetic considerations, and, ideally, to select a total number of words that works out to a multiple of six, as this is culturally the ideal number for a line of text.

Formal ligatures can cross glyph boundaries, and are read every time you encounter part of them in the left-to-right, top-to-bottom reading order. The most common ligatures are between grammatical markers, as in this text, but can extend to whole glyphs or even individual components of them. If one is feeling particularly artistic, aesthetic ligatures may also be joined between thematically similar glyphs.

Gendered pronouns are not used in this context. Politeness dictates that any third person pronouns be replaced with the equivalent of “this” or “that”, unless given express permission to use more informal terms of address. This is especially true when referring to non-native speakers, as they do not have an equivalent social role to the five (yes, five) genders of Taadži culture.

The word for “non-native person” used to indicate Weyland literally means “thing that has a spirit”.

Following my shaky PIEngineer gloss, I tweaked the verb in the first sentence: “to die” would normally be “hur hybà” (lit. “to stand at death”), but this has been changed to “hu iddà”, “go to death”, indicating that Weyland fears even getting near the idea.

The word for “forever”, “midadjã”, is derived from the word for 66, or 46,656. Tade Taadži uses a base six number system, because I felt like taking Jan Misali up on his heximal advocacy.

The normal word order for the language is SVO, but in dependent clauses it becomes OVS, just to make things harder for everyone, including me, who muttered “ah fuck” when I had to check my notes to remember where to put an allative and vocative in there. It’s after the verb, apparently.

The language has verbal person marking in some contexts, and I deliberately bent the second sentence into a more poetic mode so that I could show it off while retaining formal speech, referring to Weyland’s belief as if it’s a person. The glyphs ligate the person marker to the tense marker, Both to save space and for aesthetic purposes.

I had no word for “believe” when I started writing this sentence, so I grabbed a verb already associated with thinking during unmoving meditation to stand in for it, to get across the idea that “this is something he has thought about a lot”.

It’s a shame David’s being polite, because while I didn’t have a word for “believe”, I do have a word for “to believe despite evidence to the contrary”.

Bonus citations:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daemon_(computing)

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[loveroftoomanyfandoms]

Cooking Up Love, Chapter 11

Pairing: Chef!Matt Murdock x F!Journalist!Reader

Rating: T

Story Summary: Here 

Warnings/Tags: Hallmark levels of fluffy, cheesy goodness (and speed that their relationship develops, lol), no use of Y/N, Matt is not a vigilante, idiots in love, Kelsie is her own warning 😈

Word Count: ~1k

A/N: Super short but super important chapter here! This is setting up our Mega Angst for the story, which will be coming next! 👀

As always, thanks to @theradioactivespidergwen for the stellar divider! 🥰

Tag List: @yarrystyleeza @hailey-murdock @mattkinsella @bellaxgiornata @danzer8705 @chezagnes @shouldbestudying41 @thepunisherfrankcastle @mattmurdocks6thscaleapartment @roseslovedreams

Ugh, why isn't this coffee kicking in, you thought to yourself while you sat at your desk attempting to proofread several articles for the Thursday digital edition of the paper later that morning. I've read this same sentence no less than 5 times.

You shook your head, trying to clear it. The unusual quiet in the normally bustling office definitely wasn't helping your sleepiness. Maybe some stronger coffee will help.

You stood up and walked towards the break room.  Skyler had brought a bag of espresso roast coffee in the previous week and you were pretty sure there was some still left. 

You paused as you spotted Ellison at the Keurig. "Copier's on the fritz again," you said, walking over towards the cabinet that held the coffee mugs. "Thought you should know."

Ellison nodded as he waited for his coffee to finish. "Hopefully there'll be enough money in the budget to replace it next year. Damn thing's probably older than I am."

He looked over at you and squinted. "No offense, but you look like shit."

You huffed out a laugh. "Gee thanks, Mitch. You sure know how to make a girl feel special."

"Rough night?"

You shook your head. "Just tired. I only slept about an hour last night." 

Ellison studied you for a moment. "Look, why don't you take the rest of the day off? Go home and get some rest."

You opened your mouth to protest, then thought better of it. You were still exhausted and a nap honestly sounded wonderful at the moment. "Are you sure?" you asked instead. "I was just going to get some more coffee and try to power through the rest of the day."

Ellison nodded. "Absolutely. It's been a slow news day, and besides, you've been working your ass off lately and deserve a break."

You smiled. "Okay. Thanks, I appreciate it."

Ellison shrugged. "Eh, don't get all sappy on me. I just don't want you burning out on me, otherwise who else would tell me if my editorial column sucks or not?"

You grinned. "Oh I'm sure people would be lining up for that privilege."

Ellison chuckled. "Seriously, go get some rest."

You nodded. "I will. Thanks, Mitch. Really. I'll see you tomorrow."

You walked back out to your desk and gathered your things, then stopped by Skyler's desk. "Ellison gave me the rest of the day off, so I'm heading home. I'll see you tomorrow, 'kay?"

Skyler nodded. "Okay. Get some rest."

As you headed down to the first floor and out the door, you considered stopping by Daredevil on your way home so you could apologize to Matt in person.

You headed towards your apartment building, sighing happily when you finally walked in the door.

You shook your head. You were so tired that you honestly weren't even sure if you could come up with a coherent apology. I'll talk to him after my article is turned in.

You peeked in your pantry and refrigerator, wrinkling your nose at the paltry options you had for dinner that evening. Instead of a choice between boxed pasta, instant ramen, or leftover Chinese takeout you wished you had Matt's spaghetti carbonara, pesto-parmesan linguine, and tiramisu. Maybe I could order something for delivery later, try something else on the menu.

You headed into your bedroom, changing into something more comfortable before climbing into bed. 

Your mind drifted to your article. You really didn't want to have to replay the last few minutes of the blind tasting yet again, but you needed to add a bit about it at the end so you could give it a quick read-through then send it to Ellison.

You sighed. You were a professional, dammit, and no matter your feelings, you were going to write a damn good article about Matt… Even if you never spoke to him again after it was all over.

I'm sorry if I made you uncomfortable last night… No, take responsibility for your actions, Matthew. 

I'm sorry for trying to kiss you last night… Actually, no, I'm really not.

I apologize for my behavior last night. I must have misread the situation and… Ugh.

Matt sighed as he rode the elevator up to the Bulletin offices, wishing he would have had time to make a fresh tiramisu for you. 

He stepped off the elevator, unable to detect your now-familiar heartbeat among those of the rest of the Bulletin staff.

"Can I help you?" said a woman's voice to his left.

"Uh, yeah." Matt turned towards her and asked to speak to you.

"She's not here."

Matt sighed. Damn it. He probably wouldn't have time to come back later and based on what Foggy had said about you looking miserable he wasn't sure if you would be willing to come by the restaurant either. "Do you know when she'll be back?"

"Actually ," the woman continued, "she's out on assignment for the rest of the day. You know those investigative types, always looking for their next big scoop."

Matt furrowed his brow. That had been the exact opposite of the type of stories you had told him you were interested in writing. "I thought she was in Features."

"Oh, yeah, she is, but she really wants to be an investigative journalist, you know, digging up the dirt on people, finding out their deepest, darkest secrets and publishing them for the world to see." The woman paused. "Nothing nor no one is going to stand in the way of her and a good exposé… even if she has to make one up."

She made a dismissive sound. "Anyway, would you like to leave a message for her? I'll make sure that she gets it."

Matt shook his head. "Oh, uh, no, that's okay. I'll… catch up with her another time. Thank you."

"Sure thing. Have a nice day!"

Matt walked back to the elevator then headed down to the first floor. He had thought that he was getting to know you, but after that surprise revelation from your coworker he wasn't so sure.

He shook his head. Could you have been lying to him this whole time?

[heartthumpnovel]

Heart Thump: Chapter 4

“Where Trouble Begins”

Word count: 5233

Jason messes up big time.

Thank you to those reading this and having patience for releases. I've been doing re-writes and actually have my boyfriend helping me edit my work. I've been gaining more momentum though and hopefully should be putting out more chapters sooner than later :'D cw: Minor claustrophobia Last chapter: Growing Imagination Next chapter: Carrying the World

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Ding. Going up. Jason moved his finger from the buttons of the elevator and placed them on his phone as his fingertip was shaking considerably. Swiping upwards through the search results of the page; ‘sudden growth spurt’ ‘growth spurt mid age?’ ‘Symptoms of elephant man syndrome’ ‘Alice in wonderland syndrome’ ‘cute kitten images’ ‘endocrine disorders’ ‘signs of schizophrenia '. Wondering page after page with his questions not revealing anything coherent or was completely unrelated to his little ‘problem’. Something wasn’t right about the day before- or the day before that one for that matter. 

Ding.

None of that could have possibly happened right? Of Course no one could just survive a lighting strike like that in such a coincidental way? Sure there might have been many survivors from many lightning strikes. He had a pretty bad one. It’s not like anyone up there could have heard Jason scream his mournful monologue into the cold late night breeze. He was drunk after all and it could've been an alcohol induced nightmare. But what about the pain he felt when he was struck by a force greater than anything he had felt in his entire 26 years of life? The screen of his phone turned dark as he pressed the home button and stuffed it into his pants pocket. Ding.

Nah, nah- Jason had felt pain in his dreams… strange but it did happen before. Constantly in fact. As sad as it may seem, if experience did equate to knowledge, Jason should be awarded for being an expert on night terrors. Plus having the room shrink around him just had to be regular strange dream stuff sealed the deal. Even if it all felt so realistic… it just had to be a figment of his imagination. 

Ding.

That decided it then. It was a dream. Nothing more, nothing less… Ding. How ridiculous. 

Dong.

                                                    ~~~~~~~~~

Jason gave out a sigh of relief as the elevator doors opened and he got onto the bustling office floor as workers left to right were rushing around trying to get work done with concerned looks upon their faces. It’s been a rough hour with tons of call-ins and more or less organized chaos going around. Jason had to slowly push through the crowd of coworkers to try to find his cozy cubicle so he could punch in for another day of work.

All the pushing and shoving made it difficult for him to get to his cubicle. Gripping and pulling the plastic divider had gotten him smooshed into his office as he barely had the space to push through all those busy people.  With his new found space he sat down at his desk and started to boot up his computer as he reached the time card machine and clock into work. 

As Jason entered his ten-digit password, he realized something was different. There was no cheery voice chatting on the phone or a particular blonde coworker peeking over the paper-thin cubicle wall. It wasn't until the office finally started to quiet down, and people became focused on their work that he decided to investigate. He stood up and went on his tiptoes to check on his neighboring colleague.

Plants were generously placed around the cubicle, with potted ferns and cacti on almost every corner of the well-used desk. It made the workspace feel cozy, with an odd bowl of discolored stones in the far corner adding to the homely atmosphere. 

However, there was no sign of the overworked woman who often napped at her desk, face smacked down on the keyboard. It was about time for her daily nap. 

Suffice to say, Ellie just wasn’t there. 

Jason wasn't surprised to find Ellie absent from her cubicle. She was an overworked master's degree student, constantly taking on an unhealthy amount of credits and sleeping irregularly. It wasn't uncommon for her to collapse into a never-ending coma-like sleep.

Jason assumed Ellie was having one of those days and didn't blame her for it. However, Anyone who worked in this place knew Natasha would cut her a break.

Turning back to his computer- which at this point was logged in and displaying a deep gradient blue default desktop image with a few important shortcuts neatly pushed into the left corner of the screen. It was time to bend down into the workload he was expecting as the room seemed to be beaming with people rushing to get stuff done in the last quarter. Upon clicking the mail shortcut he was met with.. nothing new. An eyebrow raised as he clicked his spam, trash and even sent to make sure there weren't any important emails hiding. Strangely, he wasn’t sent anything containing any replies he would have gotten from him sending out vitally important marketing data to the other sectors of the company. Surely someone should have gotten back to him? Even Natasha didn’t reply back to an email about a good time for another meeting with the department for him. Something tickled his guts wrongly, he frowned before trying to send out an email. 

Unable to send. 

“Fantastic.” Jason grumbled under his breath.

This wasn’t the first time that he couldn’t receive or send emails, though it always caught him off guard every time this happened. Jason turned to the phone on his desk, staring at it wondering if contacting IT again would be worth it. While they do eventually put duct tape on the issue, which Jason appreciates they can even fix it at all, it takes nearly a whole day for everything to go back to normal if he was lucky. “Now what am I supposed to do?,” Jason mused as he turned away from the phone, patting his fingers down on his knees. “Can’t really get any work done right now until things get back in order…” 

His eyes slowly moved away from his knees and drifted to his filing cabinet. His eyebrows rose with the metaphorical bulb in his head lighting up. Quickly, he peaked over on the wall in his cubicle with his knees pressed on the bottom of his chair in a frantic kneel. The whole department still looked busy with no one paying attention to the cozy cubicle smushed onto the wall. Jason lowered down from his observation as he thought, since he couldn’t work for a bit and well- Ellie was going to be late, he might as well catch up on some important reading.  He grinned widely.

His boney fingers fiddled the edge of the filing cabinet shelf and yanked it open with a forceful tug. Files upon files of the company’s past dues nearly overflowed the poor filing cabinet. If it weren't for the fact that Jason hardly ever touched these files due to the wonders of technology, he would have had to throw them out like he was supposed to have done the day he was hired. However the papers did have use to him as a clever facade to what was truly important there. He pushed the junk files aside to reveal his secret library of paperback novels of varying degrees of cover quality and romance plots. The smell of the aging pages had bubbled the excitement in Jason’s chest in glee as he pulled out one that still had a bookmark in it. 

Goodness, he was overwhelmed by emails and crunching numbers that he hasn’t been able to check into the exploits of the great knight dame Elisabeth and her star crossed princess lover Thaladortha. Normally he wasn’t too interested in fantasy rubbish but, this one did tug his heart strings so far as it was filled to the brim with wholesome sincerity. Plus it wasn’t completely inappropriate for a workplace environment, a welcome addition. 

The little office employee leaned back into his office chair comfortably and plopped his shoes on top of the filing cabinet half heartedly like a rascal. Flipping open the page, Jason flicked the tip of his thumb to the most recent paragraph and began to dive.

“Dame Elisabeth for gods’ sake let the poor man go!” Shrieked the desperate servant as they hung onto the bulky woman dawned in burning stainless steel armor. The weasel would scream if he could if it weren’t for his throat being clutched shut by a coiled fist. Rage blinded Knight Elisabeth to the point of nearly crushing his scrawny throat, her teeth gritting harshly. “ This shall be the last time I remind you; MY FAIR MAIDEN WILL NOT SETTLE FOR ROSES.” 

She dropped the frazzled noble onto the ground with him trying to grasp onto oxygen. “Only the most beautiful succulents will suffice for her wedding you fool.” she proclaimed.

The noble tried to stutter out an excuse of roses being the traditional choice for a wedding, however he was quick to shut up when the dame gave him an ice cold glare that chilled him to the soul. “She cares not for tradition. If she’s going to be forced to have a wedding- At Least have plants that will bring her joy!” She turned away from him and strutted down the hallway heavily. The servant trotted worryingly behind her. “M-madam I.. I think physical violence was going a bit far isn’t it? Just for some flowers?” they spoke up- freezing up when the knight stopped in her tracks.

She went quiet.

Until the servant could clearly hear soft.. Sobs? Coming from the dame herself? It couldn’t be. Dame Elisabeth turned her head- revealing tears sweltering down her cheek. Shaking her head in shame.

The servant quickly grabbed the dame's hand before she could hide her sorrow. "Please forgive me, my lady. This is all my fault. I didn't want to upset you so much." They bowed their heads low.

"Hmph... fine. You can stay here for now." Elisabeth said softly before she continued onwards.

The servant smiled warmly and thanked the dame. The Dame then told her sad tale to the servant, how she fawned over the maiden ever since they were small and how she wished she could be the one taking her hand in marriage that day. That's why she had no intention of settling for anything less than the best. Though at the same time, she didn't want to see her beloved maiden marry someone else just because of political gains.

"It is a cruel reality we must live with," Spoke the Dame in despair, "Even if we must never have our love for each other be seen by the world. " Her voice cracked as her eyes began to well up.

The servant felt awkward at first but decided to comfort the Dame by holding her hand. She gently squeezed her hand and told her everything would be alright. "I'll do what I can for you my lady." They stood there, silent for a moment.

"You really care about her don't you?" The servant asked as she wiped the tears away from her face.

"Of course. She's my best friend!" Elisabeth replied with enthusiasm, "And lover!"

Both of them chuckled quietly, though the servant was too nervous to say the next part.

"So um... Why not court her?"

Elisabeth's face went blank.

"What? Court her? What do you mean 'court'?" She was confused.

"Well.." The servant trailed off.

"That would put both of us in danger!" The dame crossed her arms, trying to avoid having to talk about treason.

"But... She'd be happy wouldn't she? And she's the only person who truly understands you," The servant pleaded.

"No, this isn't right. We should never act on our feelings... Though." The Dame continued, thinking of the times when her maiden would laugh in joy at her jokes, and the times when they kissed under the moonlight.

"Are you sure it's okay with doing this?" Elisabeth asked worriedly.

"Yes. I'm quite positive," The servant answered with confidence.

"I trust you. If you feel like we should do this, then I am all for it."

----

Jason let out a deep sigh as he melted back into his office chair, or at least he attempted to. He shifted side to side, feeling a bit uncomfortable in his chair despite being engrossed in the heart-wrenching story. He noticed that his knees were rising higher, and he seemed to be a bit higher up than usual. The armrests were hugging his hips tightly, which was odd for his petite frame.

Suddenly, it dawned on him that his chair was in the wrong adjustment. It wouldn't have been the first time that Motor had pulled this trick on him, nor would it be the third. Jason reached down and adjusted the seat lever to make himself comfortably leveled again before leaning back in his creaky chair to continue reading.

----

"And do you, Alice, take his hand in marriage?" The pastor asked the maiden, who was dressed in a bleak white dress.

Alice's heart pounded in her chest as she waited for the answer. Looking around the room filled with people. All of them eagerly waited for her response.

"I...." Before Alice could finish, Elisabeth shoved the doors open, loudly exclaiming, "I OBJECT!"

Everyone gasped, except the priest himself. He merely sighed and looked at the knight.

"Dame Elisabeth I suppose you wish to object?" He inquired.

"I do, sir. because... Alice wouldn't be happy marrying him! She should be with the one that SHE chooses!" Dame Elisabeth roared as the guards began to surround her and Alice's father screaming angrily at the Dame.

"Be silent! You are not to speak unless spoken to!" Alice's father bellowed in rage. "Now please leave, Dame Elisabeth."

Elisabeth growled and glared at the priest. Before she could continue, Alice spoke up for the first time in confidence, holding her hands to her chest and approached Elisabeth with tears in her eyes.

"Dame Elisabeth..." She whispered in awe, "I wanted to marry you. I always did. But... I couldn't. Because of my father, and you being a knight. Please...marry me. For real this time. Marry me, Elisabeth."

The knight fell into silence, staring at the young maiden. When she finally looked up, her face softened and she saw nothing but sincerity in those blue orbs.

"Then.. YES, I will marry you Alice," Dame Elisabeth said happily before she took the maiden's hand and kissed it passionately. Alice burst out laughing as everyone in the room cheered and clapped.

----

Jason was yanked backwards with a sudden force, causing him to fall onto the aging carpet. His swivel chair came down with him, and its wheels spun helplessly in the air, no longer in the safe grasp of the floor fibers. He groaned, struggling to get himself off the ground as he felt a strange bloated sensation throughout his entire body. He wondered what caused his chair to suddenly give out, but the answer he was looking for came quickly as he realized his cubicle was feeling a lot more cramped than usual. The plastic walls were slowly closing in on him, and his computer seemed to be … shrinking? ‘No. Nooo no no no.’ It couldn’t have been happening again. That whole thing couldn’t have been real, he had to be asleep in his bed still. It’s much more possible that he just missed his alarm this morning than whatever this crazy sensation was. His hands scrambled to grab hold of the desk but his fingers kept slipping off of the smooth wooden surface and he desperately tried to get off of the floor. Breathing had gotten much harder to do- it felt like his chest was about to explode.

Jason almost stood up to get his bearings, but then he noticed that he was getting taller than the cruddy plaster cubicle walls. Everyone who wasn't buried in their own work was going to notice him, and public humiliation would be his worst nightmare.

 The red-cheeked office worker bent down on their knees as he saw that his body was still keen on getting bigger. Was he actually growing, or was he losing his grip on reality? He wasn't sure which one would be worse; Jason would have preferred being late to work.

His heart felt like it was going to fall out of his chest from the rate it was beating at. The office chair that was currently laid on the floor disagreed with the notion that he was going bonkers and that this impossible body fluctuation was the real deal. Drat. If he had to make a quick scientific guess from someone who majored in business, he had about 50 more seconds until someone would notice that little 5'3" Jason wouldn't be so little anymore with the rate at which he was growing. ‘Why did Ellie have to sleep-in today?’

Finally, his long forgotten survival instincts kicked him in the backside and he decided it would be for the best if he could find a good place to hide, somewhere roomy and quiet preferably. It was the best he could think of right then. Calming down until he was normal again seemed to work last time but.. He didn’t have anyone there to guide him now. 

Jason went on hands and knees, giving him a chance to peek outside the cubicle entry way, which was now starting to barely graze his shoulders and slowly sink into them. The work rush seemed to be in full swing as his fellow coworkers were in their own little cozy spots making phone calls and typing away. Strange no one noticed the crashing sound. The ignorance of loud noises was a little concerning to Jason but, at the moment he didn’t have much time to worry about that. 

Fortunately, it seemed that someone was smiling down upon him as Jason spotted the largest conference room on the entire floor, which was conveniently empty. The oak double doors were wide open, beckoning him to safety. Despite some hesitation, Jason managed to clamber across without breaking the cubicle he was escaping from. He quickly slid into the conference room ungracefully, feeling a bit of carpet burn but otherwise unscathed, even though he was now as large as a Honda civic. Adrenaline continued to pump through his veins as he sat up and grabbed the door knobs, but he immediately paused when he realized his palms were nearly 30 times larger than the knobs and still growing. Jason yelped as he gingerly took the tiny knobs and quickly pulled the doors shut.

Right. Immediate crisis over. For the moment anyways. He still was having the issue of his heart beating faster than light and he was getting taller by the second. Inch by inch. He closed his eyes just trying to grasp at something to calm himself down. He usually took those slow breathing exercises when he was with Ellie right? Well, trying to recall exactly how to breathe calmly turned out to be harder to remember than one would imagine. His fingers brushed through his hair thinking about the technical bits of that exercise. Okay- four squares. Wait did it include the inhale and exhale or were those things separate states. Wouldn’t it be technically two square breathing? Who even decided that calling the stages squares anyways? Wouldn’t that just be counting? This scattered thinking was soon interrupted by the feeling of something pressing on his head and snapping him out of it with a scare. Jason fell back onto his backside again and realized he was definitely pressed for time. 

Jason thought for a moment what made him happy, surely something that makes him feel better might make his head calm down right? The first thing that came to mind on the subject of happiness was the thought of his hands being held gently by Natasha’s soft fingers. “OW!” Jason yelped as his height suddenly doubled and he smacked the back of his head on the wall.

To his horror, even the thought of Natasha's soft, meaningful gaze was making his heart beat more pronounced. The supposedly massive conference room, meant for department-wide meetings, was now feeling just as claustrophobic as his shrinking cubicle. Jason's head lowered, and he was left speechless as the walls seemed to close in around him. His leather loafers scraped along the carpet, unintentionally taking some wooden chairs for a ride. His heart couldn’t help but to race, how was this happening and more importantly why was it happening? Jason’s heart felt like it was going to claw its way out of his throat and hop out to go on a paid vacation because god did it deserve a break. Jason’s face felt like it was lit on fire and it was getting harder to stop and breathe. Things can get any worse from here? Right? 

A knock came from the miniature door in front of him with a sickeningly sweet voice coming from the other side. “Jason, are you good?”

The overpriced deco chandelier got him right in his temple as he suddenly felt a jolt go through his system as he felt an explosion of gigantism hit him harder than an oncoming freight train. His shoes basically pushed the whole table to the other side of the room along with all the tiny chairs falling over onto the floor. 

Quickly, Jason tumbled over onto his stomach and slapped his palm right on the front of the door. It was just his luck that Natasha had to hear his pathetic yelp. As his fingers were eclipsing the door- he could feel tiny pushes on his palm. There was no way Jason was going to let her see him like this. In fact he wouldn’t want anyone to see the horrific transformation Jason was going under. 

                                                                  ---- “You okay lil guy- wait. Why’s the door locked? Jason.” 

Natasha, try as she might, couldn’t get the door to push open. What was he up to? Pink hair pressed on the oak wood door to try to decipher what his groaning and panicked British mumbing meant. Natasha’s worry got worse as the thought of needing to call an ambulance was going to be called. Eventually she did get a response- a rather loud one at that. 

“Y-yeah the door locked. Uhm- I am not.. Feeling that great. I felt under the weather and HUGHk- … I might have made a really-really big mess in here.” Jason half-truth as he was facing the challenge of not screaming in agony when he felt the talons of the pure gold chandelier pierce into his mid back. His hair was getting squished down by the popcorn ceiling and the room was quickly becoming his coffin. 

Natasha scowled with her nose rising a bit as she pulled her head away. “Why didn’t you call in then?!,” Natasha retorted back as she gestured her hand. “ You shouldn’t be working when you have the flu! You could get everybody here sick! For God's sake, I didn’t send you home yesterday just because I was giving you a day off.”

 She waited about five whole seconds for some sort of explanation and when she did get a response it was just a really sorrowful “My bad…” mumbled its way through the oak. 

Natasha brushed her bangs forcefully from her face with a long sigh. “It’s fine.” It wasn’t fine. She muttered before she turned to look at an elevator that finally arrived on their floor. Natasha turned to the door once more with a soft voice, “Go home Jason and see a doctor, Call me up later to let me know how long you need to rest alright?” Natasha didn’t bother to stick around for a response as she started to walk towards the elevator. However she had to step out of the way for a sleep deprived college student that rushed out of the cases with papers literally flying out of her grip and nearly caused a foot traffic collision with Natasha. “Woah-WOAH ELLIE-” Natasha sputtered out when she managed to side step out of the way. Ellie’s heels came to a shrieking halt and nearly hauled over from exhaustion. However she didn’t let herself waste time by catching her breath and began to conjure a whole rant of apologetic lyrics. “OhmygoshNatI’msorryIwasstudingreallylatelastnightandIlosttrackoftimeandIgotreallytiredandIsleptin!Iknowit’sbeenthethirdtimethismonthbu-” Ellie whipped out in a panic before her tongue got twisted by a hard pat on the shoulder. 

“It’s alright, Ellie. You’re not that late. Just clock in, hun,” Natasha said with a stern yet sympathetic smile. Ellie let out a fluttered sigh and grazed her fingers on Natasha’s wrist, nodding slightly in a blissful silence and letting her shoulders relax. “Thanks a ton,” Ellie commented as Natasha swiftly pulled away from her and they made their way into the waiting elevator. “Oh yeah and could you let Motor know he’s needed in conference room A113? Jason ain’t feeling great. Thanks~” Natasha added.

As the elevator doors closed, Ellie's brief moment of calm shattered.

---

Crisis averted- for the most part. Jason grumbled in this tight box he was shoved into and the increasing pain he was feeling wasn’t making things any more comfortable. Not to mention the creaking noise he was hearing wasn’t making him confident either. Now that he wasn’t about to be exposed- he wondered how in the world he could get out of this room and more importantly, not be an impossibly giant human that defied science.

Frantic knocking came from the oak door- who did Jason have to lie to next? “J-Jason, are you okay in there???” Ellie whispered, “Did … it happen again?” Ellie spoke more quietly at the last statement to not raise an alarm in the office room. Thankfully it seemed there was quite a buzz in the office due to a sudden flow of work and calls. So no one was noticing the commotion happening in the conference room. 

Ellie tried the door but she was also denied entry, However Jason this time was at least willing to at least come clean. “It-it got worse Ellie.” Jason murmured as to not drag attention to them.

 Ellie’s demeanor changed like a lightbulb getting shattered by a baseball bat. She frowned as she plastered her body against the wall and lowered her voice to a solid whisper.  “Well bud you’re going to have to let me in and help you.” Ellie replied back with a worried grin plastered on her face, wondering what he meant about it ‘getting worse’. 

“I don’t think I can literally let you in…” Jason spoke solemnly. “I can barely fit myself in here.” “Uhhh… what do you mean by that?” Ellie tilted her head as she took a double take at the door. A voice didn’t respond to her but loud jostling as if there was a moving crew pushing around furniture on the other side. Noticeably however, the door no longer had any pressure on it and the handle became turn-able again. When Ellie managed to discreetly push the door open slightly ajar- she wasn’t greeted by her best friend, but a huge, looming, hazel eyeball staring worriedly back at her. 

[Image Description: A big hazel eye is staring at Ellie as she pushed open the door. Ellie is covering her mouth.] Its lids twitched sporadically and grew more watery as Ellie had to cover her lips to not scream in abject horror and alert everyone in the room that there was a giant occupying the room. What did come out of Ellie’s mouth however was a high pitched whine that could have broken glass if uncovered. 

“This is a bit awkward, innit?” Jason quietly mumbled- trying to be inconspicuous as he possibly could be in his situation.  Though his leg was becoming more numb and fuzzy the longer he sat on it. Shifting it to the side might do the trick, but as he tried to move his leg over- his heart dropped as he suddenly heard an ear piercing shriek moan from the overly stressed floor boards below him.  

...

clink

“Sick.”

Another abandoned plastic bottle was slammed into the trash can for 50 points and Motor was just killing it in his little makeshift game. However, even with his high score, he still couldn't compete with his reign as the grand champion of disposing of all abandoned cans, which was never-ending and filled with sticky glory. He then noticed a helpless Sprite that had been left behind and without hesitation, he grabbed it and threw it into the recycling bin at the other end of the room.

clink   

“Nnnnnnice!” Sizzled the janitor under his breath that was followed with a victory pump. That sick dunk called for another celebratory soda. Motor turned to the vending machine, popping in his quarters as he jammed out to the ear-splitting majesty of electric guitar riffs and the lead singer screaming about his personal problems, which he probably needed therapy for.

How relatable. 

Right as he was about to chuck another can, his aim was thrown off by the ceiling shaking above him. The can flew onto the wall beside the trash with a disappointed thunk. Motor was baffled and took a few steps back to check up on the ceiling. “... Swear to godzilla if the goddamn pipes broke again, construction is going to have their bones twisted into pretzels -”   The room suddenly collapsed in on itself, and Motor narrowly avoided losing his head by falling debris. He let out a string of curses and had to pause to process what had just happened. After collecting himself, Motor got up to inspect the damage and see what had caused the catastrophic event. … Leather? Motor had to stare at the large boulder of dark brown leather that was accompanied by a chunk of scuffed rubber. Before Motor could look into the destructive object further, as fast as it arrived- it lifted back up in the air and nestled into the hole it made. With a careful ear Motor could now clearly hear Ellie’s and that one stuck-up coworker’s voice. It only took him a few seconds to connect the dots and he got this emotion where he was full of confusion and anger but strangely enough, excited.

Finally, a cure for his boredom. 

It didn't take long for Motor's thunderous footsteps to reach the service stairs and ascend to the floor above. He pushed past shocked suits and cubicle rats, determined to reach the source of the commotion. As he approached the crowded door, people were starting to panic and wondered if they should call for emergency services.

Motor elbowed his way through the crowd and joined the group of water cooler guys who were trying to force the door open. Despite their efforts pulling it, the door wouldn't budge.

"Relax, bozos. I'll see what fell over. Probably just a light fixture," Motor said sarcastically, trying to calm the onlookers. He gave the guy at the door a stern look, causing him to back away a few meters. Then, with ease, Motor pushed the door open.

Due to his large stature, no one could see what Motor was witnessing. The conference room was in ruins with the whole fancy light fixture crashing into the floor. Right in front of that light there was a sight of Ellie holding onto a hyperventilating Jason’s shrinking hand. Seeing a man that was the size of a truck become Jason sized was more than surreal. Ellie was the first to notice that they had an onlooker right as she was finished with calming Jason down with a wide terrified look and color draining from both of their faces. 

[queeenpersephone]

For @littlemsstark3000 : hi love!! I’m so sorry to hear things aren’t great right now - hopefully this brightens up your day a little. I don’t really think jealousy is one of Tony’s serious flaws, but I think I can dream up a quick scenario for It anyway. (i literally edited none of this and i’m about to pass out from exhaustion so i’ll made sure it makes coherent sense in the morning lol

(background: Tony and Nat are on the verge of starting something. While visiting an old anthropologist friend of Bruce’s, Natasha and Bruce save an island from a genetically engineered sea monster. After, the indigenous people honor them through a ceremony that looks a lot like a wedding. Bruce’s friend tweets a picture, the media goes crazy, and when Bruce and Nat return to the Tower, they have a lot of explaining to do.)

Steve’s Disappointed Dad Face is the first hint that Natasha gets that something is very wrong.

“Congratulations,” he greets evenly when she walks into the kitchen to grab a snack before she goes to catch up with Tony. Bruce has gone back to his rooms for a nap; this weeklong excursion without technology to work on their friendship had gone perfectly, and they had saved a village. That must be what Steve’s taking about, though his expression does not match his praise.

“Thanks - it was an easy decision,” Natasha replies, watching her friend’s face carefully. After all, it was. They are heroes - they’ll always help people in need.

He clearly winces. “I guess I just always thought - well, doesn’t matter. As long as you and Banner are happy.”

Natasha fights to keep a neutral expression on her face. Is he really suggesting that Bruce and she don’t have the same commitment to the safety of others that he does? “I don’t usually like to speak for others, but Bruce was thrilled,” she tells him, letting a little bit of smugness seep into her tone. “The Hulk was on his best behavior, too.”

Steve coughs, turning a little red. “I’m sure - I mean - I have to - mission plans, I’ll talk to you later.” He practically runs out of the room, ignoring the way that Natasha stares after him.

She spends about thirty seconds dissecting their conversation before shrugging. She’ll talk to Tony, then she’ll figure out Steve. As much as she doesn’t want to admit it, she’s missed him. A lot.

-

When she walks into the lab, Tony does not turn to greet her. He’s not dealing with any loud machinery, so she knows he heard her enter. There is a tightness to his posture and a droop to his shoulders that tells her more than words ever could.

Something’s not just wrong à la Steve. Something is very, very wrong.

“Hey,” she ventures, approaching him with a confidence to her stride that she does not feel. He still doesn’t turn, and her casual approach falters. “Tony-“

“I’m happy for you.”

It’s barely a mumble, with anything but happiness oozing from his tone. It’s not his ordinary kind of lie - with false bravado and carefully concealed panic. No, there’s a helplessness to this lie - a grief that makes her heart skip a beat.

“You don’t sound very happy,” she observes. “If there’s anything we need to clarify, I-“

Tony’s breath hitches, and his hands move to grip the edge of the table. He still doesn’t look in her direction. “No - no, no, no - you don’t owe me a - I mean, there was never really anything,” he sighs, looking like he wants to drop his head and bang it against the table. “I’m happy for you,” he repeats robotically, knuckles turning white. She can tell his fingers are probably numb.

She exhales, narrowing her eyes. There’s a game going on here, and she doesn’t even know the name of it. Time to stop playing. “Listen,” she tells him, reaching out for his hand. “You need to tell me exactly what you think-“

The moment her fingers brush over his, his body lurches into action. He turns to her, eyes dark and pained and angry. It’s an unfamiliar look, and it pins her briefly in place. His hand darts out, grasping her wrist, and she lets him. Any other man would have already lost all his fingers, but this is Tony. She’ll allow him this if he needs it to speak.

“What I think?” He repeats, beginning quietly. A shifting rage hovers underneath, and Natasha instinctively catalogues all the weapons on her person before discarding the premise. He would never hurt her. “What I think?” He half-shouts this time. “I’ll tell you what I think: there is no universe that supports this conclusion. You two. It makes no sense! It’s the opposite of sense! It’s - it’s non-sense,” he concludes, and if his anger wasn’t so serious and real, his fluster would be adorable.

“Tony-“ she begins, low and soothing.

“See?” He interrupts, gesturing to her with his free hand. “It’s even - in that. In the way you say my name. I thought it was only a matter of time for you and me. I thought we were a law of motion - that we were frictionless.”

Her eyes soften. She might not understand the context, but she knows a confession when she hears one. She’s been waiting for this for weeks. “Tony, we are-“ she says, pressing her free hand over his against her wrist.

“Then choose me,” he replies, gravelly and earnest and heartbreakingly pleading. “He’s not right for you - I know that you two are close - hell, I love him like a brother - but I’m going to fight for you,” he swears, twisting out of her grip to take both her hands in his. “It might be selfish, but I don’t care. I love you, Natasha Romanoff, and I won’t let you go without a fight.” Natasha, for the first time in a very long time, is in shock; she can’t do anything but listen for some clue as to what the hell is going on. “He can’t possibly love you like I do - it’s not possible.”

“Who?” She manages, shaking her head wordlessly. She knew that Tony liked her, that a relationship was imminent, but in love? It altogether feels to soon and perfectly timed.

He scoffs. “Your husband? Giant green rage monster slash genius biochemist? You’re not even wearing a ring, Nat - what kind of half-baked proposal did he-“

Nat pulls back with an efficient twist that leaves Tony grasping at nothing but air. “You think Bruce and I are married?” She realizes, her voice going higher than she intended.

Tony shrugs. “The tabloids caught your private island ceremony,” he spits. “What, were you ashamed?”

Natasha freezes, and all the pieces fall into place.

She can’t help the smile that fights to spread across her face, even though Tony still looks half angry, half desolate. “Tony, Bruce and I are friends. We are not and have never been married.”

Her certainty makes Tony pause. “I - you had a wedding,” he says, but it comes out more like a question.

She shakes her head, chuckles finally breaking through. “There was a ceremony - we saved the village, they wanted to thank us.” She pauses, remembering. “I can see where the confusion might have come from,” she admits, “but it’s a little bit of a stretch.” Her tone turns teasing, and she steps up to meet him toe to toe. “I thought my feelings were clear to you - at least they were a week ago.”

Tony searches her expression for half a minute before he evidently finds what he is looking for. His whole body relaxes, and his frown molds into a smirk. “They were,” he replies, cupping her face in his hands. “You just make me crazy,” he admits. “Bruce is one of my best friends, but the thought of you and him…” he trails off, a brief darkness crossing his expression.

“Hey,” Natasha says. “None of that.” She slides her hands over his shoulders and around his neck. “I’m not a fan of jealousy,” she warns. “I’ll give you a pass here, because the situation is extreme, and I’m sure you’ve been… overwhelmed with how in love you are with me…”

Tony chuckles. “I have no problems admitting that - my ego is already fit to burst.” He turns serious for a moment. “And you’re right - not cool. I’m sorry.”

“You’re forgiven,” she says slowly, “on two conditions.”

Tony brushes his thumb against her jaw. “Name them,” he says, low and throaty.

Natasha tilts their forehands together. “One, you take me out tonight and we set the world straight. I would like a bit of privacy at first, but I don’t think Bruce could take the media attention,” she says wryly.

“Done,” Tony agrees. “And?”

She pulls him so close that their lips brush. “Kiss me,” she requests, scratching her fingernails through his hair.

“Gladly,” he murmurs, kissing her hard and deep, the way he’s been wanting to kiss her for much longer than he’d care to admit.

Suffice to say, they barely make it to dinner that night.

[erogenousmind]

NEEHU Sunday: Mind Control Cookie Fantasies

Time blurs in the strangest way during cons. Hours will compress into minutes, days will spontaneously change order, and things will happen twice which never happened at all. You find little markers in your memory to tie events and times together; X was wearing a corset, so it was Saturday night. Y was there, so it couldn’t have been Friday. Z had three arms, so that probably didn’t actually happen. This distortion makes even recounting what happened when quite difficult after the fact, to say nothing about writing it down so that it is coherent to others. Someone once tried to give a recap of a single day of NEEHU as it actually was in their memory and it came out written in a long-dead script which drove any who read it mad.

What I’m saying is that you should appreciate the work that goes into writing and editing recaps and scene logs (and I don’t just mean mine...particularly not mine).

What I’m saying is: This all happened, more or less. That fact is amazing enough on its own without those annoying constraints of linear time and causal relationships. At some point, when I am older and wiser, I hope to be able to express or even understand just how improbable that can feel, and how cathartic reality can be when the impossible decides to happen.

Sunday: @sebsteerpike and I were teaching at noon. I am sure things happened before noon, but between the vicious tyranny of daylight savings time, and the fact that a full night’s sleep is something that happens only hypothetically, I am not really aware of what they were. Which is a shame because there were classes I wanted to attend in both slots before that. Hopefully I will get the chance to attend future versions and hear more about the wonderful fun that was had in them.

Our class was on mind control fantasy vs the reality of hypnosis. The class went well. Actually, that’s not quite accurate. I think Seb and I did well presenting the class. The class itself was fantastic. This would probably have been true regardless of what the two of us did. This is thanks to our amazing and talented demo-subjects: @meltinggoldanddippingthingsinit and @fayvie. My most pithy takeaway from classes so far over all the cons I’ve been to is that good demos make for good classes, and good subjects make for good demos. I’m really looking forward to expanding the class in the future (in terms of both duration and content), and coming up with new demos to share. And returning to old favorites (everyone loves parasites, apparently).

This is where the order of events may begin falling apart. There was lunch. And at some point I got to help someone experience their first handshake inductions. I’m usually happy to give people those trance experiences if they need someone to help out. But this is particularly true for kinesthetic inductions because opportunities to play around with them are so limited outside of cons. Also they are a lot of fun regardless. Also they are really effective.

Round 2 of the lightning uncon was in there somewhere as well. As was a very nice trance with @fayvie. I ranted about this a little in my last recap, so I won’t dwell on it here, but it was really satisfying to have a plan (such as it was) work. We had said beforehand that we wanted to get to do something. We checked in, scheduled, rescheduled, re-rescheduled and just generally made sure we were both on the same page that we were going to find time at some point. And we did. And it was a lot of fun.

At some point the con ended. What’s nice is that it didn’t really end then. Most of us are still there not wanting it to be over, and since NEEHU is, in essence, just a bunch of like-minded people getting to be in the same place, it wasn’t over. So after an urgent need to nap was taken care of, there was dinner, and friends, and no pressing need to get out of bed before check out the next day at noon. And so we had silly moments, and intimate moments, and hypno-egg battles of will. And you go to buy some cookies (of course you buy more cookies!) and find out that some anonymous benefactor has gifted you cookies and your icy heart melts a little and you can’t help but smile for the rest of the evening, and you realize that no matter how improbable or how absurd, you are where you are supposed to be around the people you are supposed to be with. And at some point there was a bed, and no alarm set, and zzz...

Song of the Day (c/o @gentleboop and @flowerobeys):

[survivorinternational]

Episode 2 - "I couldn't believe I heard God wrong the third time" - Sluggy

Jacob: I have no idea for the video Me: I have an idea Jacob: its shit oh okay... give us a better idea before you shut mine down would you? 

So for the past 2 days ever since we won the reward challenge and got the chance to get a clue to the hidden immunity idol, the info had been passed around among everyone in the tribe that it was on the beach. I was waiting for the next opportunity to search for the idol because I know everyone's gonna go for it, and today I was busy beforehand and couldn't search for it until 4 hours after the challenge. But the first day I came here God told me specifically it was at the beach and in the headlands, it just wasn't on the cliff. So i go there and search and search and i cant find it, and im about to give up... 

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...and something falls on my lap, I open it up and here it is. The hidden immunity idol. I couldn't believe I heard God wrong the third time. HAHA! I'm so grateful for this. After all the Asians having idols in the psst seasons of survivor man. 

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So this sucks but I have to keep this idol as hidden as possible even from my closest allies. It's gonna be a big target on my back and if its possible i dont want to use it all the way until the final time I can use it. So even though Michael and Jacob asked about it, I couldn't tell him and err I don't want to lie anymore so it's definitely tough :( Whatever it is I have to keep humble and continue to stay under the radar. 

This challenge will take a lot of confidence which I completely lack but I will do my best and everything what I am asked to. I am kinda pressuring Vilma into being the director/editor of this since I know she is into stuff like this but I might have put too much pressure. Will try to work something out better in that regard. 

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Ginger's constant bullying of the ghost of Emils will get him into deep shit.

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This challenge has been a real coller coaster for me. I hate filming myself in videos but seeing the confidence Vilma (and others) have is really inspiring. We are doing "Toy" by Netta which is a pretty fun song to lipsync to. I am not the best but I am having fun with it and getting some exercise in the meanwhile. I will still undoubtebly hate any of my bits but at least I have the courage to participate and do my best. 

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About hour of recording myself. I shall not edit it from a cringy mess into a slightly less cringy mess. Wish me luck.

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I do not know if it is because I am slightly slick but I am editing my clips into a more coherent structure and my stomach genuinely hurts from cringe

A week in and I received my 1st message from Dean/Dylan :D how lucky. I also have slightly more newfound time coming up in the next few days so I can spend more time building trust with Tyler, Stephen and Dean/Dylan

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I just saw Tyler's part in the music video. How can 1 man be that hot. Like wtf did he do to get those kinds of genetics. I'm so fucking jealous rn. This confessional will contain no actual substance, just me shit posting about how fuxking AWESTRUCK I am at this man. Go to 2:15 of our music video to see... Damn! 

Right so this day was um interesting. I highly doubt i'll cover all the boring ass t but watevs. Ok SO, we had our first cheeky little game talk with Michael who much to my recent surprise is like 33 years old. pop off grandpa. Love him tho. So we had a fun little chat about who we liked, highkey like Stephan the most but didnt want to say that cause he had already said Stephan seems distant, so i pretended i was chill with other people just to be fun :). ANYWAY, he wants to create a majority with Jacob and Dean but honestly like no, those kids r the REAL crackheads. I want to work with Sluggy and Stephan so it was a tee bit awkie for me. But i smiled and waved anyway cause thats ALL im good at. If Michael was to try and create a majority with those 4 i'd highkey flip 🤭. Dean was just... how to put this... slop, and im not having slop in my house MY APOLOGIES. While planning for the challenge he was annoying and then throughout the challenge he was annoying. OK SO i am NOT mean and this challenge is clearly AWKWARD for everyone and everyone is being out there BUT deans video... like i used two seconds of it. Im sorry my love i dont know how to introduce that pillow possession story line into the video... . I think half way through he needed a nap? and started having night terrors, geez i hope he's ok. RIGHT anyway. I finished the video, i hope my editing and also telling everyone that they're part was really helpful and easily the best will grant me safety regardless! O also Jacob told me the idol clue BUT i dont know whether to believe it or not   :((( so he says its at the beach, im like well what was the actual clue? was it cryptic? then he said 'you inhaled smoke and it was hidden there' wtf u mean THAT was the clue. Absolutely not, get that SLOP out of MY face. RIGHT but i looked at the beach anyway to NO PREVAIL. Michael and Jacob both told me where they looked tho ;) Throwback to last confessional where i didnt think i was making an in roads with people, well i THINK i could be much better off now! Jacob says he only really talks to Stephan which is GOOD because i want Dean out and i thought he was close to dean. Also Jacob starting having game talk to me which was a HOOT because i thought he DIDNT like me. obviously my piercing eyes got the better of him. Im close with Stephan, Jacob, Michael and the singaporian one. OOPS thats all of the tribe but Dean. I've been whip whop wheaving my way through these relationships as best i can and forcing myself onto people without them realising. All i need is 1 or 2 STRONG connections and ill smile :) O also Jacob said i was hot and asked if i was single! LOVELY, amazing LOVE compliments, will use this child if need be but if he's trying to use me, sucks for him because im self conscious and DONT believe his compliments anyway. I THINK im setting myself up in a mildly good position, just gonna be more pal'y. I hope people LIKE me. 

We gave our best but our Basic White Boy music video is totally gonna lose, and I’m taking some responsibility for that too. I knew we should’ve chosen something gayer.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1KBaGOCmiwLknXyQoaaeyqZ0isdVOFUV2/view here are my clips :eyes:

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I am not saying I am aiming for it, but I am totally aiming for most confessionals. So fun story here. Whole summer not a single time I was bitten by a mosquito. Then this survivor starts. What is survivor known for? Tropical islands with mosquitos and such. So I was riding my bicycle yesterday and sat on a bench for a bit to rest up. 5 minutes. I sat for 5 minutes on this damn bench. 7 mosquito bites all on my legs, 3-4 split. I was fuming. Apparently that opened the pandora's box of mosquitos because I have been bitten 4 more times since them. I am full of hate. In other news: http://prntscr.com/od5qry This is really nice to see. Vilma's the best <3

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I CAN'T STOP TYPING IN ALL CAPS OUR VIDEO IS SO GOOD HOLY SHIT

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my life is now a meme 

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oh wait it already was

CURRENTLY FREAKING OUT BECAUSE!!!!!!!!! IM EDITING THE MUSIC VIDEO BUT LIKE I HAVE SUCH LIMITED TIME!!!!! I ALSO HAVE TO BE FORTY FIVE MINUTES AWAY FROM MY CURRENT LOCATION IN AN HOUR AND THAT MAKES I ONLY HAVE FIFTEEN MINUTES TO EDIT WHICH I DEFINITELY CANNOT FINISH IN TIME. ALSO HAVING HUGE FUCKING PROBLEMS BECAUSE MY OLD METHOD OF DOWNLOADING VIDEOS IS NOT WORKING!!!!!!!!!!! AND IM REALLY FREAKING OUT ABOUT IT LOL SO IM SCREEN RECORDING OUR VIDEOS BUT I ALSO DON'T HAVE THE ACTUAL AUDIO FOR AMERICAN BOY AND IM STRUGGLING TO DOWNLOAD IT I MIGHT NEED TO BUY IT ON MY PHONE LIKE FUCK FJLKDJASLKFAJDSKL THIS IS SO DIFFICULT AND IM TRYING TO KEEP IT TO MYSELF INSTEAD OF WORRYING MY TRIBE MATES BUT OMG WHY I HATE MY LIFE 

I feel so guilty that I didn’t help my tribe with this challenge, I really hope we win! If we don’t win honestly I will probably just tell them all they can vote me off- I hate to go without a fight but they all participated in the video and I feel like it would be the fair thing to do. Hopefully we don’t have to worry about that and my tribe wins!

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Me putting my life on the line for my TRIBE? Must be the drugs this is not really in my character but I feel really bad and want them all to thrive

I spent my entire day doing that music video and I'm gonna cry if we lose and go to tribal again ughhhhhhhhhh. I really tried my best and am super proud of my tribe mates too they did a great job. I really like the video.

Yes! Another win for Ala Mai! I'm loving this tribe and loving this game! I want to get to the merge with as many of my tribe mates as possible because we all have very similar timezones so I need that in my game. 

I am so happy we won the challenge ! I offered the Toy idea but then couldn't participate myself because of real life reasons ugh. My tribe tho did an AMAZING JOB and Im glad we chose Netta 

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Ok so just now I have realized these are not the during-game published confessionals. So I'm gonna confess: I was so fucking nervous not to be able to participate in the video challenge. I wanted to take part and it's risking eviction if we lose. On the other hand, I kinda knew I would be fine even if we lost. First, I offered the song for the tribe. Second, my alliance with Vilma and Veni is controlling the tribe, I have Clash from the side and we got majority. So I'd probs be fine anyway. Glad we won tho ! 

Uh I’ve been so busy for the past few days I can’t socialise and am very worried 

Day 4: Video editing challenge. This will be fun. Make a music video. Tribe chat is just going in circles with choosing a song. Song is finally chosen, Lonely Dance. Its a strange song, would have prefered something more campy or darker but oh well. I dont have time to do a video edit, i also want to take a back seat of this challenge. Searched for idol, No luck but i now have a good list of where to look narrowed down to 3 locations. Think im going to trust Tyler more. 

http://prntscr.com/odkz7k

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idk if i made a confessional about this but holy shit Lord is in this 

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I realise I spam so many messages to people at once. Shoutout to Vilma for always replying (although slowly) to every single one

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Quiet day today, barely spoke to people. Please no swap.

Well I'm sad to go to tribal this early, but it's probably needed. I didn't like my participation in this challenge but I was really short on time, it sucks but oh well, at least Ruthie told us to vote her and hopefully it isn't a hard vote 

Whew! Thank god we won immunity. I honestly think we tried so hard so it felt nice to be recognised for that (and by we I mean those of us who actually helped out with the challenge......). Vilma worries me a bit. I really like her and she gives off a great energy but I feel like she could use that to lead a big alliance further down the line. I definitely won't be targeting her anytime soon and hopefully I can get in that alliance at some point, but she's someone to keep an eye on.

Hello this round was boring we had shitty judges yet again woo we lost immunity woo now we have to look like bad people and vote ruthie out because shes sacrificing herself woo

WE WON!!!!!! NO TRIBAL!!!!! FUCK YESSSS And the judges were so nice to me I legit almost cried I love everyone ughhhh my heart Music video challenges are so amazing I don't care if what placement I get anymore we made that video and that's all I care about really I hope we're swapping soon! 

Okay so whew I had tribal for this game and I was nommed in a BB game so it's been a busy day today! I thought I might play my idol no matter what tonight, but Ruthie has been going through some stuff and volunteered to be voted out. Unfortunately it is uneventful for the viewers and for the hosts but I hope it is nice and easy and I can save my idol for later. Also, tribe swap anyone? Idk I haven't really clicked with anyone yet...Wow my social game sucks I'm sorry hosts, give me comps I can win, ty.

[gaildaley]

I started this year in Review in December of 2015 because that’s when I think the year really began.

Dec 27, 2015

Wow! Its only four days until another year begins. I’ve made a lot of changes this year. I began writing novels again and wonder of wonders, I’ve actually finished book one of the Handfasting Trilogy, A Year And A Day, and I’ve began on book two Forever And A Day. This story is about three sisters who live on a planet called Vensoog and the choices they make to help their colony survive the aftermath of a galaxy wide war.

February 8, 2016

This was a good week to get some work done. I am more than halfway through Forever And A Day, the second book in my Handfasting trilogy and I have covers done for both of the first two books. Rather than painting a cover in acrylics, I decided to go with some digital artwork so that I could make them very similar.  I think I will go ahead and use Amazons PDK system. It will mean that I can’t put my book up anywhere but Amazon, but its price is excellent—free. And I really don’t have money to pay a regular e-book publisher. My son’s book at Outskirts Press cost almost $2,000. He did get a lot for it, hard copies of his book and it’s marketed in I-Books and Nook as well as Kindle, but sometimes you have to cut your coat to suit your cloth.

I also got my two latest Acrylic paintings done, Cat Napping and Street Vendor and framed. I think I will put at least one of them in ACA’s membership show. Of course entering one of their shows is always problematic, as many times the judges they select don’t seem to care for my art. I used to worry about that, but not anymore.  Having seen some of the art ACA’s judges deemed worthy in the past, I killed any feelings of inferiority I used to have art wise.

Now that I have my enlargements back from the printer, I can also start on the three longhorn paintings I intend to do for the Old West Art show in April.

February 28, 2016

Well, so much for good intentions. I DID manage to get the three paintings started. Unfortunately, I also started a bladder infection; my husband came down with the flu (which he shared) so I haven’t done anything else yet. The medicine the doctor gave me for the infection has caused an almost constant migraine and nausea. Hopefully, however, March will be a better month. Here are three canvases.

March 13, 2016

For the last three weeks, I have had three unfinished paintings for the old west show sitting there glaring at me from my art table. Not really my fault I haven’t been able to work on them: I developed a bladder infection for which I went to the doctor, had a bad reaction to the meds he proscribed, and then I came down with Vernon’s flu he brought home from the Pool Workshops. This Thursday, I was finally able to start on Home on the Range and I got part of it blocked in. Unfortunately, after I sat there and looked at it for a while, I decided that I needed to get rid of the clay cliffs I was using as a background because they were competing with what I intended to be the focus — the Longhorn cattle resting in an almost dry river bed. I painted over my entire mornings work on the cliffs with grey and then had to let it sit long enough for me to be able to work it. I confess I really don’t understand why other artists complain about how fast acrylics dry because at some point in a painting, I will have to stop and let it sit so it will be dry enough not to make mud! I substituted some rolling hills for the cliffs with all those dark, cracked clay lines, which looks better, but I still need to cool off the background hills so that I can push them back or maybe I will add a structure or a tree line; I haven’t decided yet. I will be using pieces of the same dry streambed in all three of the paintings. I have one more day to work on it before I have to stop and do Vern’s invoices for this month.

March 22, 2016

Today I finally managed to start on Chilsolm Trail. I got most of the background done and the horses and men drawn up with white pencil. The background took more time than I thought it would, especially the riverbank.

March 23, 2016

Today I was hoping to get all the cows and the cowboy blocked in, but all those horns and legs took a lot more time than I expected. I finally left one of the cows un-blocked and worked on the horse and rider. I used ultramarine blue and powder blue underpainting on the horse. I will go in tomorrow and finish it off with black.

  March 24, 2016

Well today, I feel as if I am finally making progress; I do still have quite a bit to do to finish this one though. I think adding a second cowboy and more cows was the right thing to do. Five cows just didn’t look like a trail herd! Tomorrow I am taking a break to do housework, but hopefully by Monday I will be able to go in and finish off the foreground. Then I get to start on the 3rd one—The Bozeman Trail!

March 26, 2016

Saturday morning and I still have to finish off my household chores. Put up the laundry washed yesterday and do the dishes so I will have a clean sink to rinse out my paint brushes. (I say I’m only doing them every other day to conserve water, but the truth is I loathe housework). I’m pretty satisfied with the way Chilsolm Trail is coming along. For Monday I will need to finish off the foreground grass and then put in some shadows and highlights to identify which direction the sun is coming from. Details…

Tuesday March 27, 2016

Well Monday turned out to be a wash. It’s wonderful how other people seem to fill up your day without asking you first… Oh, well. Today I got the foreground grass done on the Chilsolm Trail done, and the background and drawing done on the Bozeman trail. I also got the backing prepared for four paintings. I use contact paper for backing and I reinforce the edges with clear strapping tape and use thumbtacks and Gorilla wood glue on the edges to fasten it down. This is easier to clean than plain brown paper, which seems to absorb dust. No surprise that the back of a painting gets just as dirty over time as the front!

The Proof copy of my first book in the Handfasting series came today, so I will be spending the next few days going over the proof for errors. I am a speed-reader so it should only take me about nine hours. I’m very pleased with the front cover design. The image I designed looks great.

Saturday, Vernon is going to be gone with some friends to the desert so I will have that day free to paint. He is actually very supportive, but the more people in the house when I am trying to work the more interruptions there seems to be…

April 12, 2016

I spent the weekend at the Columbia Inn (wonderful atmosphere, and they use real art bought locally in their room designs!) with my husband. It rained non-stop but that did not stop him and other members of CVP from enjoying panning the dirt brought in for them. They did this in the parking lot under pop-ups so that shows how dedicated they are to their notion of fun! We had a community dinner inside the 49er Mining Supply shop and Rob and Cheryl were wonderful hosts. Vernon has commissioned me to do a painting of the Inn and shop so I will be working on that later this year.

A Year And A Day, has been published on Amazon and Kindle and in May I will be making the rounds to advertise it. FYI, if you plan to use Amazon’s free publishing services; start with the printed edition on Create Space. I started with the e-book and ended up with two e-books (different covers but same book). In order to make the covers match, I took the first one I made off-line. Unfortunately, I had set up a pre-order on it, so Amazon has forbidden me to do any pre-orders for a year. Live and learn.

April 21, 2016

Well, the show and reception for Clovis Art Guild’s Old West & Rodeo show came off okay, despite the low amount of entries. I didn’t win anything this time, but that’s the breaks. The show comes down on Sunday. The next two weeks promise to be full also. Monday through Wednesday, I will need to get back to writing on my book and hopefully start my Safe Harbor painting. Andrew will be working with his Dad on Monday, so that will be the best day to paint. I also need to do some housekeeping on some of my POD sites (FAA, Pixels, and Red Bubble). Thursday, I need to change out my art at the Water Tower Gallery, and on Friday I take down my art from the Sunnyside Library Gallery (I also need to prepare a summer schedule for the library), then Saturday I plan to put up a couple of paintings in the Alliance of California’s membership display for the next two months.

I actually sold one of my hand painted keepsake boxes I have down at the Water Tower (Yaay!) So I suppose that this summer, I need to prepare some more for Christmas and Easter, which means developing some designs. Flower designs work well here as I am hopefully marketing these to women or to men buying for women! I ordered some Acrylic paint pens from Amazon and I plan to use them for the actual design after I paint the boxes. (Target date to do these is in June so they will be ready.)

June 10, 2016

Wow. Has it really been two months since I posted anything? Time flies I guess. I won’t say it has all been fun, but it has been productive. Sadly, I did not win anything at the Old West Show, but all the art was wonderful this year even though it was a smaller show.

I have finished two large seascapes and started my entry for the Miniature works show.

Forever And A Day is done and going through the editing process (this means I print it down at the local printer and go over it for errors. Fun). All Our Tomorrows is about halfway through the first draft. Because there are so many characters involved by now and the story moves from one group to another to remain coherent, I have to bounce back and forth between where the character focus is. I wish I could find another way to tell this so that won’t happen, but so far no dice.

Facebook kept rejecting my ad for A Year And A Day, so I ran it as a regular post and they blocked me out for ‘suspected illegal activity’ for two days…Big pain in the A to get back on. They won’t help you when you need it, but they sure do punish users who try to get around their system…

June 23, 2016

I’m trying to do better at posting to this journal. I just finished Vernon’s invoices for June, so I have had time to edit Forever and A Day three times, and I am starting on the fourth just as soon as I pick it up from the printer. I am in the process of writing All Our Tomorrows that I have already revised twice and it isn’t even finished yet! And I sold a copy of A Year And A day in April, for which Kindle will pay me around the end of June. That tells me if my ad campaign bears fruit in June, I won’t see money from sales until around the End of September.

My only entry I painted this year for the Miniature show is almost finished as I got to work on it today. Right now, it’s sitting on a little easel waiting for me to decide if I’m finished with it. It’s a night scene and those are always a struggle to split the difference between accurately showing that it’s at night and still making the paintings features visible…

August 7, 2016

Wow. I have gone an entire month without actually creating art. Well, not true really; I did five color studies for my Vensoog Handfasting series. I started to do a landscape of it also, but I ended up tossing it out (a rarity for me but it was just awful.) I actually have 4 small paintings drawn up (one 8×10 and two 5x7s). I also have two of my hand painted keepsake boxes started. They only need the painting done on the lids and then put together but there they sit…

Next week won’t be productive art-wise either tho’ because I will be starting on our Income tax. Ick. Migraine coming as always…

October 1, 2016

Wow! I’ve had a really busy summer! I have been working non-stop on getting the second book in my Handfasting Series published, and on top of that Clovis Art Guild had an art show and the Guild had to make arrangements to shuffle things around (our meetings, getting our 501(c) submitted to the IRS, etc.), so I confess I have neglected to write here in this journal. I went to a professional cover designer at fiverr.com to re-design the covers for my books and I am really pleased with how they turned out. I also finished the 2nd draft of the book “All our Tomorrows”. It’s currently being beta read by my son Andrew and a couple of good friends. My hand painted keepsake boxes are selling really well at the Watertower Gallery in Downtown Fresno, so I have also been busy making six more of those (actually a pretty time-consuming project). I start with a raw wooden box that I get from a local craft store, seal it, and then paint the base coat on the bottom and the lid. Then I draw a design on the lid and paint that. Then a varnish coat to protect the box is put on the outside and felt lining is added to the inside bottom and lid. Then I put the jewelry back on (hinges and clasps) and finally it is ready to take to the Gallery!  So I have been a busy girl. I also have six smaller paintings prepped (undercoat done and the image drawn up). I hope to have at least one of them ready by Christmas.

I had Pismo Beach critiqued by Master Artist Dennis Lewis at the Clovis Art Guild meeting last night. He confirmed what I was afraid of—those dratted cliffs in the back are still too bright. Considering how many times I repainted them trying to soften them, doing it over again is no big deal, but I wonder if I should also darken up the front. He also had some other suggestions for improving it, so since I have a month before the Fall Open where I intended to enter it, I will probably re work it.  Of course, that does mean re varnishing, but what the heck. I think I will re-wash the back with several layers of light grey and add some yellow to raw sienna for the sand front of the beach.

I also need to get in touch with my friends Betsy and Ron who volunteered to Beta read All Our Tomorrows for me and find out what suggestions they had. Andrew already made several, which I have implemented. It does make the book longer as he said I had rushed through several climaxes and through the chapter on the festival so I have added several pages there that involved re-ordering how the chapters were presented. I admit it does make the book seem less choppy. Beta Readers are a blessing… And just think, I haven’t started the editing for format errors yet! Still hope to get it into publication by Christmas…

December 7, 2016

Well, I did it again—missed an entire month of writing on this. In my defense, I should say that during this month, we adopted a new kitten. She was all alone out at one of Vernon’s commercial accounts. The manager had been feeding her but only twice a day, and a cat or puppy that young needs to be fed at least four times a day. We think Mab’s mother must have been killed and she couldn’t come back for her kittens. We never found the others, and it’s my opinion that Mab survived as long as she did because she is one stubborn feisty cat.

We also put on an art show at the Art Hub. Going to be taking it down later today. Yes, I know it’s raining, but sometimes you have to do what you can do.

All Our Tomorrows will be going to print in about 3 weeks. Yay!

I was hoping to get back into my regular artwork, but I caught a sore throat and it has turned nasty. (Can’t get the flu shot until after this clears up. Ick!)

December 15, 2016

Writing my 4th book in the Handfasting series. It’s a Cozy mystery set on Vensoog. Using Jayla (Gideon’s niece from Forever And A Day) as my heroine and Luc’s best friend Jake (All Our Tomorrows) as the hero. The story centers around the theft of the royal family’s Crown Jewels on planet Aphrodite. The thieves escape to Vensoog to try to fence them. There is a planet wide festival on Vensoog that draws interplanetary traffic so it makes good cover. The fence (Lipski) is killed and the jewels disappear. Jayla innocently buys the Lipski’s shop and then finds her body on the beach while she is out jogging.

I have got local, Royal and interplanetary cops who are suspicious of Jayla’s involvement. I have the original thieves, and the local mob who want to find the jewels.  A housekeeper robot who was programmed by the original owner as a gigolo and a sales bot who likes to run around naked (haven’t quite decided exactly what I’m going to do with them yet-maybe just comic relief).  Then there is Jayla’s nosy, interfering family, and her bossy boyfriend Jake who all trying to help her clear her name and getting in each other’s way.

Note to self: I think I have a form of writers block. I have to decide which of these plot lines to use as the main one, which ones are going to be red herrings and which ones are secondary. My problem is I like all of them so I haven’t written a thing on it that hasn’t felt forced for at least a week.

  A Year In Review I started this year in Review in December of 2015 because that’s when I think the year really began.