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space-blue · 2 years

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1, 2, 3, 8, 9, 11

Great selection, this took me a long while to hunt down the answers! From the Fandom end of year ask.

favourite fandom you joined this year

Bit of a cheat because it's a 'sub' fandom, but I'll say Andor (star wars). Avatar is right there, yes, but it doesn't have the oomph of Andor. Avatar has a ton of missing character development, and if the world were more approchable, I'd see myself doing a lot of fix its and missing scenes. Andor is difficult on the other hand because it's so perfect. Hard to feel like I have anything to add to the fandom. But it's the one show I've been rewatching to death and having so much respect for.

favourite fic of the year

This is basically impossible to piiiiick.

I'll mention Fathers & Daughters, even though it's my own, because you have to goddamn love a fic to spend more than a year slaving over it. And I dooo, and yes I AM working on the final chapter still, soz lol

The hottest smut I've read was Boundaries by Spiced, and well, I did nag about it when we discussed the idea, and it's a gift, but that doesn't change the fact it's the best :3 Very happy with it. It's hot by my ace standards. Basically very mindfuck focused. Fandom is Andor!

And then for multi chapter, I'm going to mention this absolutely insane and amazing FE3H complete fic To Those Who Are Never Going Home by MadameHyde. It's set after the game in an Empire win, where a lot of the Blue Lions find themselves teaching at Garrech Mach. I didn't read the tags so some reveals blew my little brain out of the water, it was amazing. Super prose, very character driven, really enjoyed it.

favourite fanart of the year

I thought this would be hard to answer, and then I realised it wouldn't be, actually, even if I'm cheating. BOTH these Maliketh fanarts have been my screen backgrounds for MONTHS. This one is on my phone and on my better Discord :

And this one is my laptop background :

They're dope and Maliketh is top pubber and I'm still obsessed with him. He's peak design and radiates blorbo energies. He's broken and I wanna fix him and pet him and--

favourite author of the year

@spicedrobot That one isn't too hard. I've read a LOT of their work this year, by vertue of doing a lot of beta swaps, and because they write some very delicious ships. They are responsible for 99% of my smut intake in 2022. Also I think it says a lot about an author that you can beta them every other day and never get tired of their unhinged content. They're just that good. (They are in a constant state of wrangling me over my terrible comma game, so they're also very patient and could have strangled me a long time ago, yet they didn't!)

favourite creator of the year

Very hard choice, especially when it's so broad and I've already struggled with the fanart one… But I'm going to go with :

@aromansoul. I just really love their art, and finding them through a shared Silco obsession was delightful. They have a very unique style, with colours that seem to float and come in and out of focus. You'll be staring at a super rendered area and it's perfect, and then you look elsewhere and realise half the drawing is just broad strokes… Absolutely tricks my mind, it's delightful. Also they have some fantastic unique designs of their own content that I think are dope.

favourite OC you met this year

Ah, finally an easy one! Meet Rain Drenched Mountain. He's @scuttlebuttin's Predator OC and he's very sweet. I love his design, his lore, and I think he has great taste. Very handsome lad and each time I see more art of him I feel like a little kid. I mean, Scuttlebuttin is a big favourite artist, and where they're not in a very very distressing blood-gore-clown period, I'm always thrilled to see what they post. Just check out their Odin fanart for the new God Of War, it's out of this world!!

#phew lots of gushing #fandom #fanfic #fanart #anon ask #ask game #fandom ask game #fic recs #art recs #predator #elden ring #maliketh #rain drenched mountain #silco #andor #fe3h

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gladlypants · 1 year

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Hello again! Person always asking WoW questions here! :P This is a super random question but I'm having such a hard time using my reshade on WoW. Well not the reshade itself, I just can't for the life of me make my DOF focus where I want it to! I use Cinematic DOF and everything is always in focus or out of focus! :( If you have any tips regarding that I would be forever grateful! Feel free to message me privately if you'd like. :D

Hi! Yes, I've noticed that sometimes DOF can be much more difficult to use in WoW than it is in TS4. (Especially in WoW Classic!!) I think the biggest part of that is we can't pause the game and make everything be still like we can in Sims lol, but there may be more to it than that. I've never read up on adjusting settings specifically for Wow, but here are my tips and a couple of links below the cut.

I wrote a big paragraph here and then decided it might be better if I made a list, so here goes:

Turn off the game UI with Alt+Z (sorry if you knew that already! ♥)

Pick an area without a lot of movement in the frame/background so DOF isn't constantly trying to refocus on something nearby. Patting NPCs, floating books, other players clumped up nearby, etc. If you have armor pieces on your character with animation or special effects, this could also cause some issues. For example, this shot I took of my Yumyum in front of the inscription work table took me ages to get perfect because of all the scrolls and feather pens and things magically moving around in the background. And in the end I just had to be quick on the draw snapping the shot before it started refocusing.

But this shot I took of this statue was much less of a hassle because there wasn't a lot of movement on the screen. The NPCs at the base were mostly just standing there chatting and not causing me any grief. (Hope that makes sense!) Also first person zoom screenshots for landscapes etc are just much easier.

Use mouse-driven focus for DOF instead of auto focus. For example, even with this waterfall moving around in the background of this shot, focusing on the plants to the left with my mouse did the trick. (I've always personally found Cinematic DOF to be a bit more fussy with mouse focus than other DOFs, even in Sims.)

Experiment with different angles and zooms

Try other DOFs and see if one of them works better for your location (MartyMcFly, ADOF, etc)

The addon Narcissus also has something like a free camera mode that can be really helpful! I think I used it for the first shot above. Or also their other modes that will render the model of your character so you can drag it around and change the background, etc, might help you get the shot that you want. That's what I used for this shot:

Check that your Reshade preset has effects in the correct order (amoebae's post here is a good reference) -- I doubt that is your issue, but you never know!

Try adjusting settings underneath Cinematic DOF. I don't have any suggestions for this because I never mess with mine, but I did find this forum post that might be helpful for you.

It may be more complicated than all that and have something to do with the way the game renders depth vs Sims that I don't understand, I've just never taken the time to research it. There are some folks who have shared presets made specifically for WoW as well, so you may could take at look at some of theirs and see what they have done with their individual settings.

I hope something here helped, and of course I never mind talking WoW or answering questions if I can ♥♥♥

#nonsims #ask #thegirlwhosims #world of warcraft #reshade

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whoiskt · 2 years

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Evolution of my art. Made this for myself because I wanted to see my own progress but I accidentally just made myself sad with how much of my art I've lost and the years when I hardly drew anything.

2011- One of my first digital art pieces. Redraw of a photo I found on Google. Eyebrow and mouth are immediately off-portion, but as a fully colored piece I think it is pretty good for a beginner. It was really small tho, I didn't understand resolutions yet!

2012- Homestuck phase. A year full of art to choose from, this was one of the last drawings I made that year, and honestly I still think it looks really good. The way I drew eyes back then was totally different.

2013- Supernatural phase. I was doodling a lot on homework and notebooks, but actual finished pieces are hard to find now. I've lost sketchbooks from this era. Perhaps even burned them, haha. This was done on whiteboard.

2014- This self-portrait was my magnum opus at the time, done for art class. There was a level of detailing textures here that I'd never care to revisit and this piece easily could have taken me 50 hours or more to complete. The nose/mouth feels so off to me, now, although I clearly broke my bad habit of drawing small pointed chins with this one. Each year I look at it hanging in my parent's house it makes me cringe more. Charcoal.

2015- Mostly MIA. I have some pen drawings from this time but I thought they were skippable and I only had room for 10 years here. I went to film school so I was focused on that creatively.

2016- Got into watercolor this year. Wasn't done on watercolor paper so it warped a lot. I don't really mind. End of my vanity era. I was in an art class, animation class, and character design class this year. Maybe got a little burnt out on art.

2017- Height of my pen drawing obsession, although most of the drawings I did were at work, and were hung up at work, and may still be there even though I am long gone now? Sorry about the weird crop it was a horizontal piece.

2018- Yes, similar to the previous year, but I see improvement in pen technique. I rarely took time to just sit down and draw other than in-class doodles.

2019- Wedding gift for my sister of her and her husband (although I cropped her out lol). Large watercolor piece where I was rushed and had to finish the background as an abstract fall leaves. I'm still on the fence about it overall.

2020- My digital art renaissance. This was the year I started to really realize I was utterly incompetent at backgrounds.

2021- I was really focused on photography this year, although I did do some sketching here and there. My laptop became mostly unusable for digital rendering so that cut down on my motivation.

2022- I discovered watercolor brushes, my beloved. I closed the door on many of my other creative outlets which seemed to bring back my love, passion, and motivation for drawing again.

Hopefully I can share a 2023 piece with you soon to show my improvements 🤗 I've been sketching a lot like I did back when I was 13 and it feels good!

#lifeblogging #my art

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emcscared-whumps · 10 months

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we gettin on the sweat tonight lads

i'm sick without really feeling sick (test results pending lol), so tonight, we're gonna see just how fast i can bust out a finished piece >:)

there will be no consequences! because i wont be infecting my client at work tomorrow!! :D

im talking a bust portrait of a character with a simple face angle, simple expression, simple lighting, that otherwise fully rendered and polished

and im going to log-- (OH GOD I SPELT LOG WRONG WHAT THE FUCK)-- the *actual* time i spend on the piece because i found out that clip studio can tell me how long ive had the canvas open, but i'm sure that i leave canvases open for entire days without touching them, so... that is not accurate enough for me

anyways; the reason? a friend and i were talking about art commission pricing and the habits we've noticed in the art community, and i got curious: what would *i* price my stuff if i were to hypothetically sell it?

through some basic maths and reasoning between us, i have discovered that the key to making a good rate is skill at speed

(it's not as bad as it looks, my american friends, i am using aud :) currently, 1usd = 1.50aud, 50aud = 33.28usd)

we talked about how much is a fair price for the product vs how long it takes to make, and i discovered that if you're quick at making a character bust lineart of moderate quality for $15, and can do one in 30 minutes, accounting for *only* time spent drawing, you'd be making $30 an hour, which is pretty cool considering it'd only be bust lineart. ($20 for bust lineart would yield $40/hr, but i'd only charge that of my skills and precision were reliable and en pointe. it could even be pushed to $25, but i wouldnt go more than $30 unless some super complex shit was happening and i happened to be very very good. at which point you still want to be as fast as physically possible)

there was a plot twist though: rendering times.

hypothetically, if i charged $20 for bust lineart, extra $10 for flats, extra $10 for shadibg, and extra ($5 to) $10 for extra finishing details (little backgrounds etc), that would be $50 total for a fully rendered bust. if i took 4 hours to do it (which i think is reasonable time (for me) to do most things by hand), all of a sudden, that's made my $30-40/hr into $12.50/hr.... which is kinda (very) shit lmao

with this in mind, i have one question: just how fast can i make stuff, and what quality will it be? what would i theoretically be paid for my fully rendered bust pieces?

i usually an very VERY slow partly coz i cannot stay focused on a piece for long enough chunks at a time, or, if i can, i will stop halfway through and leave it for several weeks or months, leading to a turnaround that is at such a leisurely pace even *snails* would be envious

ALTHOUGH. last year, my friend (same as above) alerted me to a built-in time-lapse feature in clip studio. i was intensely curious. for whumptober that year, i had a very clear vision of a piece i wanted to do for one of the prompts, so i used that to test the feature. i sat down at about 1700, stopped only for dinner, and had the whole thing exported and posted to tumblr at around 0100, about 7 hours. i have a sneaking suspicion that was the fabled beast called hyperfocus lmao. the [piece] was a roughly rendered full-body shot with a dynamic pose, both hands exposed, and a more complex expression, not bad considering that my pride piece took 10 months :)

bust portraits are my most comfortable style of piece, so i will experiment with those, especially since my character profiles need them, and also i want them all to look cohesive, which means i will re-draw all of my current ones (rip pete, timmy, and kate lol)

(hm, if i took 3 hours instead of 4, that'd be $16.70, if i took 2, it'd be $25... still not even close to that tasty tasty $30-$40/hr... so the solution would be to up the price of rendering since flats are easy. extra $20 (instead of $10) for rendering, since it's as complex as anatomy with lineart, bumping the total price to $60 (which is starting to *really* push the envelope of what i think people would pay for my art). so if i took 4 hours at that price, that'd be $15/hr, 3 hours would be $20/hr, which is better but still kinda shit for all that extra work, and any faster might reduce the quality to a point where it isnt worth that extra $10...)

......... i'll let u guys know the results lol

#emc's shit #not whump #procrastinating from the thing im using to procrastinate from the other thing 💯

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lumilasi · 2 years

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A character designed together with my friend/mostly by my friend @mad-hatter-rici, though unlike Chiyuri who I consider “joint-custody” character, she fully belongs to her! I just wanted to post her ref after finishing it, given she’s part of my Telepaths story. Also I’ll have access to it then even when I’m not on my laptop, in case I want to draw her traditionally for example.

Her bio below (also based on what my friend told me)

Name: Rouna

Nicknames: Oneechama (Youko)

Age: Unknown, somewhere around 200

Height: 184 cm

A Chimera with a mission to extract revenge on those who betrayed her clan & find a way to potentially resurrect them

Role: Member of Amalia’s sect

Family: Niece Youko, sister Shika

Love interest: She has a “friends with benefits” type of thing going on with Angus Jaeger, a doctor/Reverence Demon working under Amalia’s GF Belladonna

Friends: She’s fairly polite and cordial with everyone she works with, but doesn’t particularly consider anyone a close friend.

Rival(s): She also has a friendly, playful rivalry with Angus, given they’re both pretty much among the most intelligent people in the group, the two mad scientists with plenty of knowledge about poisons due to their powers.

Powers:

She is very skilled in necromancy, specifically resurrecting beastly creatures she’s killed as zombie servants. She does know other spells and curses too.

Rouna can excrete poison from her nails, lips, and her snake tail’s bite. She can also exhale this poison in gaseous form.

Rouna is very agile fighter, and good with different sort of blades; she’s also fairly stealthy given her background as an assassin.

She can use her tail to see behind her and sense danger

Weaknesses:

She is naturally weak to light magic, which can render her spells useless, and even damage her zombie warriors. As a Chimera, her blood is her major power source, so if she loses too much of it she’ll become powerless, even if physically she’d still be perfectly fine. (so basically no, it is not just case of anemia, anyone with blood would suffer from losing too much of it lol)

Personality:

Rouna is very calm and collected person most of the time, not showing her emotions openly. This often makes her seem distant and cold to others, although she does remain polite and cordial with everyone, sometimes even teasing them lightheartedly. She is very protective over her niece, and would do anything for her sake. She can be a bit touchy about the subject of her sister, Shika, not liking her being mentioned randomly.

While Rouna isn’t searching for a relationship, too focused on her own goals, she doesn’t mind satisfying her physical needs with someone she finds attractive/intriguing enough. This works with Angus, given he’s not expecting it to be a relationship either, as he in turn is more focused on his own research.

While Rouna seems mostly fearless, she is probably the most cautious/fearful towards their Master, Hanzoku, having a far better understanding of what he is and what he is capable of than anyone else. She also sometimes ends up in his cross-hairs, with her experiments not always matching with his twisted-but-existing moral code. (she doesn’t show her fear openly of course, but it is there)

BG Story

Rouna was one of the 12 children of their village’s chief. One of her sisters, Shika was banished from the village due to being against their father’s experiments on their other siblings (giving them a lot of blood and different beings to devour, as Chimera’s abilities base on the blood they drink), which had led to the deaths of 5 of them already.

The village had a pact with other nearby human/other spirit & mythical folk ones to protect their secret home from threats, but the Chimeras end up being betrayed due to bias and fear towards their kind, the clan getting wiped out apart from Rouna and his niece, Youko. (and the banished Shika)

Rouna spends the next years providing for her niece as an assassin, until a woman named Amalia Marek approaches her, offering her a chance to take revenge on the traitors, and perhaps find a way to resurrect her clan. Rouna agrees to it, mainly to have a safe place for Youko to live in.

Fun Facts:

Rouna is a good cook, and often aids their actual chefs despite not being part of the sect (Taiga’s) who are usually responsible for day-to-day things such as meals.

To relax, she likes to polish her weapons and is often seen doing it sunken in thought, typically spooking most onlookers.

Despite being her aunt, Youko prefers referring to her as a big sister.

She’s really good at yoga and can do even the most difficult of poses.

While she seems very in control of her emotion usually, her tail tends to give away what she’s feeling if its more intense (such as fear and anger)

While Youko’s friendship with the corrupted Moth spirit Chouma is a bit peculiar to her, she does not mind it given he doesn’t seem like a threat to her niece. She also isn’t bothered by the fact Angus also has a bit of a physical thing going on with him. (It’s different in nature from theirs, though)

While he seems pretty cold and uncaring outside his sister, Angus tends to be among the first to defend Rouna, whenever she ends up on Hanzoku’s bad side. Not out of any sort of emotional attachment however, but simply because he finds punishing her over her antics a waste of time, given they don’t typically hindrance the group’s goals. (Also Youko’s crying is tiring)

She keeps getting called “scary” by Yoruga, another moth spirit within the group. Rouna can tell however, that peculiarly this one is not actually scared of her at all, despite not even being corrupted.

#oc design #friend's oc #digital art #oc reference #character bio #lumi's art scribbles #sheep mom #Rouna Chimera #Telepaths #villain oc

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martuzzio · 3 years

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Love your drawings how do you make them?

Thank you for the compliment! I haven't done a digital drawing tech/process update in a while so this is going to be so long, sorry in advance! HUGE disclaimer: I have a steady income and like buying art supplies so my setup is NOT broke art kid friendly. However, I do have worthwhile and sometimes free suggestions!

Software: Adobe fresco and photoshop (I get them for free through my job as a graphic designer, don't come for me). More affordable options I like are CSP (one time purchase), Procreate (I've never used it, but I can't leave it out), and Krita (free!). All of these are awesome and let you do a LOT, including animation!

Hardware: Huion Kamvas 24in on an articulated monitor arm (college graduation gift to myself). In the past I've used a Wacom 13in (bought secondhand from a friend for super cheap), a surface book laptop/tablet (very generous Christmas gift from parents), and my iphone. Finding affordable options for hardware is more difficult than software, but if you have the money for it, looking for a drawing tablet on a secondhand site like ebay or facebook marketplace is worth your time.

Other drawing supplies: a random drawing stylus for my phone, a scanner, a sketchbook, pinterest, colorhunt, unsplash, dafont, and my gigantic 4gb folder of textures on my laptop. I also signed up for this freebie thing from creativemarket (and haven't been charged any money yet so that's cool) which will send me stuff like new digital brushes and cool textures to download. It's definitely more graphic design focused than illustration, but I'd still check it out if you're interested. :D

My art process in bullet points, for pieces I actually spend time on:

Sketch my idea in my sketchbook or phone, sleep on it, then actually start drawing the idea the next day

Make a tighter sketch from the loose sketch I drew the night before while using a million references from pinterest (for really funky poses) or unsplash (for scenery and background ideas) so I'm not drawing completely from my mind/memory (this is important because your mind is prone to remembering things wrong. Always always always use references)

Completely skip over actually lining my art and instead clean up my tight sketch until it looks okay enough

Fill in flat colors using a textured brush (gasp) while sometimes using color palettes as inspiration

Render colors with more textured brushes (plain hard edge circle brush users fight me /j)

Shade in a cel style on top of the rendered colors with a bright mid tone purple/blue/pink set on multiply at 50%

Clip a layer on top of my "lineart," color all of it a dark blue or brown, then start coloring different parts of it with various colors (ex: for a diamond sword, I'd color the edge hitting the light with a bright blue/green/pink. For the edge in shadow, a purple/dark blue/brown)

Forget to sign my name, close the drawing program, then have to reopen it

This is SO LONG, but I hope this gives some insight! If anyone has more questions, let me know. :)

P.S: I have so many art resources saved in my browser that I kind of want to make a whole separate post for it. Let me know if that's something you'd like to see! I might just make it lol

#asks and answers

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bang-tan-bitches · 3 years

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Soul Meitu has become something of a comfort fic to me. There's a lovely soft focus to it that I really enjoy and it's a feel that you often don't showcase in your collected works, so I think it should be pointed out. This fic has that sort of loving feel that your favorite blanket has, or your tee shirt that's been washed so many times that it has achieved peak softness, but in written form.

Even the angst has a soft feel to it. It's not the hard and rushed feel of devastation, more like the feel of being in water over your head. You're floating, you're fine... but are you really? It's an ache, not a ripping or rendering of flesh.

Having said that I want to teleport into this fic to do a run by head smacking of each and every boy while screaming: "SHE HAS NO FUCKING IDEA SHE'S SOULMATES WITH YOU! PUT YOUR BIG BOY PANTS ON AND HAVE A CLEAR CONVERSATION, OH MY G-D!"

Two things that really stick out for me:

1. Once again I enjoy that Seokjin doesn't vanish in this as he does in so many 0T7 fics. He is my eternal favorite and he often gets left squarely in the background in these sorts of stories and as per the usual, you guys don't do that.

2. Often times the female Y/N in OT7 content exists is this bizarre male only world where she has zero close female connections. You know, the "I'm not like other girls and I only get along with guys!" toxic, internalized misogyny feel? I love her interactions with her best friend, they make me so happy! They give Y/N a real feel, like she actually has a life and motivations of her own besides being a passive receptacle for the boys.

I hope someday you come back to it, but even if you don't I will still enjoy my frequent rereads. It really does make me happy whenever I do.

🌹

I saw this last night and couldn’t do more than cry 😭 so I’m sorry it took so long to answer but, dear heart, thank you so so so much for sending this. I love everything about this ask and it makes my heart happy to know that you love Soul Meitu as much as we do.

I do plan to come back to this fic, it’s one of my favorites and every time I re-read it… well… I just love it more lol. And I’m so happy you love it too!!

I also want to shake them sometimes!!! I swear they are all dense. I’m convinced they share one brain cell and it’s so focused on Y/N that they forget to use ACTUAL words!!!!!!

We both love Seokjin and also hate when he disappears in OT7 fics. If you’re writing OT7, you gotta have all 7 or it doesn’t count IMO.

It’s weird because … when I started writing this I couldn’t imagine Y/N without her bestie. The Best Friend is based off of us… and we would never leave our girl hanging 😉

Thank you again so much for both reading and sending this ask. It honestly made my week and has reminded me that these stories are still worth writing and reading

Thank you

-A💜💜💜

#btb: asks #honestly cried reading this the first time #so sweet

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komahinasecretexchange · 4 years

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Title: A Royal Screw Up

Author: @emmakoneko

For: @keisethsattic

Pairings/Characters: Hajime Hinata/Nagito Komaeda, A few background + mentioned SDR2 characters

Ratings/Warnings: G, None

Prompt: “They want to join the rest of the group but their vehicle breaks down, they’re stuck under the rain, by the road, in the middle of the night, bad day overall.”

Author’s Notes: This was actually a really challenging prompt, lol. I hope it turned out okay.

It was a bad day which meant good things were coming.

Nagito tumbled out of bed that morning, jarred into motion by a fading nightmare that settled into the shadows of his mind. He stood and rubbed his back. Beside him, Hajime snored obliviously, his rough features softened by sleep. The sight calmed Nagito’s stiff limbs with fondness. He fell back asleep as the sun rose.

At breakfast, he spilled Hajime’s coffee, burned his hand, and broke the handle off his favourite mug. He meandered towards the sink and sluggishly screwed on the faucet.

“Tired?” Hajime knelt on the floor with a rag.

“How perceptive of you, Hajime.” Nagito said. “I had a nightmare last night. I’m afraid my luck is in a downswing. Maybe you should go alone to the gathering.”

“They’re your old classmates.” Hajime said. “I’d feel awkward.”

“You were closer with them than I was.” Nagito turned off the sink. “They’re probably looking forward to seeing you more than me.”

The coffee mishap left Nagito’s cereal a gloopy mess. He studied it, played with it, but didn’t lift it to his lips.

Hajime, meanwhile, swore at his phone. “My battery didn’t charge last night.”

Nagito raised an eyebrow at him as if to say ‘what did I tell you’.

Hajime glared back, determined. “We’ll have to use yours.”

Nagito’s brand new iPhone was already in a sorry state. A massive crack ran through it and each corner was smashed to varying degrees, rendering almost all text unreadable. Hajime persistently nagged Nagito to replace it, but Nagito couldn’t be bothered. He hardly used the thing anyway.

He handed Hajime the sad device and shoved a soupy spoonful of cereal into his mouth.

Hajime’s car was old, beat-up, and ugly, but it was his. Early in their relationship, Nagito had offered to buy him a new one, but Hajime emphatically declined.

Nagito himself, of course, didn’t drive, afraid that the world would end in chaos if he so much as touched a steering wheel.

The door to the driver’s seat was jammed. Hajime clambered over the passenger seat, Nagito waiting dutifully behind him, gracious enough not to make fun of him for how poorly he climbed.

Heat hung heavy in the air, clinging to Hajime’s skin and making him sweat through his shirt. Nagito, meanwhile, wore his favourite ratty jacket, as if he was immune to heat.

The car started with a rumble and Hajime’s fingers flexed on the steering wheel. He turned them onto the road.

Nagito produced a container of crisps from the bag at his feet. “Want one?”

“You’re already digging through that?” Hajime said. It would be a long trip to Sonia’s place in the countryside.

“I didn’t exactly have a wonderful breakfast.” Nagito crunched on a crisp. “And you didn’t have anything but coffee.”

Hajime wordlessly stretched his palm out, intending to only have a few.

He ended up eating half the bag.

The downpour started as they exited a gas station an hour from home, but it continued well after that, thunder roaring in the distance.

Nagito despised storms. They were an example of how a singular event could bring a lifetime’s worth of disaster. He smiled as a flash of lightning struck in the distance. “Looks like it’s coming down pretty hard.”

Hajime was quiet for a moment, seemingly focused on the road ahead. Nagito assumed he wasn’t going to respond, and didn’t mind it, content to listen to the raindrops pelting the car and ignore his own rapid heartbeat.

“Are you okay?” Hajime finally said. He shot him a concerned glance. “You’ve got that smile on your face.”

“I’m fine.” Nagito reached for the radio. “What do you want to listen to?”

“I don’t really have a… hey!” Hajime whipped his head around. “You really are bothered, aren’t you?”

Nagito folded his arms together. “It’s nothing. Focus on the road.”

Hajime switched on the radio and said nothing more. Giving him space, Nagito supposed, or avoiding an argument. It was something he never used to do, but he’d learnt and adapted. Nagito found it dreadful at times like this.

Their car broke down an hour from their destination. The storm had worsened, or maybe they were just closer to it, and the sun was setting.

Hajime swore and slammed his hand on the steering wheel.

“It’s okay.” Nagito reached for his battered phone. “I’ll call Sonia. We’re not too far off, right?”

Nagito dialled Sonia’s number with another of his smiles, nerves frayed from the storm and the car breaking down. He held the phone up to his ear and waited. His hands trembled. He knew something would go wrong.

The dial tone sounded. There was a rumble nearby. And then the world was flashing white and Nagito’s breath was stopping and the phone was falling out of his shaking hand, right into the space between the seat and the glove compartment.

Nagito froze, then wedged his thin fingers into the crevice, but to no avail. “We have to move the seat.” he said.

Hajime shook his head. “That seat doesn’t move anymore.”

Nagito wondered if anything in Hajime’s car actually worked, but didn’t say a word about it.

“Well,” he said instead. “It could be worse.”

Hajime shot him a deadpan look.

The effort to retrieve Nagito’s phone was quickly abandoned, as Hajime suggested they wait for someone to find them. He turned the hazard lights on.

“I don’t think anyone is coming.” Nagito said. “The road seems dead at the moment.”

Hajime sighed and retrieved a map from the glove compartment.

“There are a few places nearby where we could ask to use a phone.” Hajime said. “Including a gas station - once the rain clears up, we could go there. It’d be nice to get some food, too.”

Nagito frowned. “With my luck and this weather, I don’t know if I trust what could happen to you out there.”

“We don’t have a choice. There’s nowhere else we can go.” Hajime opened the door. “You can stay here. I’ll bring something back to you.”

“You’ll be soaked and you might get hit by lightning.” Nagito said. “I’ll go.”

Hajime opened his mouth as if to protest, but something stopped him from doing it. He slumped back in his seat and closed the door.

“Okay.” he said. “I trust your luck.”

Nagito beamed at him, warmth blooming in his chest, and left.

Hajime drummed his fingers along the dashboard in time to the rain. With his phone dead and the car broken, he was alone with his thoughts and nothing to do.

The sun had set fully, starlight winking overhead, blurred by the raindrops dappled across the window. Nagito had been gone for too long, although Hajime didn’t have a clock to tell him. Perhaps the gas station had been closed, or Nagito was lost. Perhaps he’d been struck by lightning.

Hajime was contemplating running after him when he heard a knock at his side.

Nagito’s jacket was pulled over his head to cover from the rain and he looked rather silly, and there was a bowl in his hand. Hajime opened the door.

“Kazuichi is going to take a look at our car.” Nagito said, passing Hajime the bowl. “We’re lucky - he just passed us.”

“Is this… shaved ice?” Hajime said incredulously.

“It’s hot, despite the rain.” Nagito shrugged.

Hajime laughed.

When they made it to Sonia’s mansion, Mahiru scolded them for being late. Mikan regarded Nagito’s damp jacket with concern in her eyes. Sonia welcomed them politely.

Everything was as it should be, but Nagito caught Hajime as he walked in and murmured - “I’m buying you a new car.”

#komahina secret exchange #komahina #fanfiction

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ghost-town-story · 4 years

Text

chazzawrites challenge 12

Day 12. Have you ever abandoned a WIP? What do you think of it now?

*stares at the 210 documents in my “side stories and randomness” folder, of which less than 20 are finished and/or fit into the randomness category* *nervous laughter*

So we’re not here all night, I’ll keep it simple and stick with the 4 stories set in my og universe. The first book, [TITLE REDACTED], is the only one that was ever finished, so we’ll ignore that for now.

The sequel, The Legend of the Shadow, is stuck at a point where I could never figure out how to bridge the gap between where I was and the point where I could easily finish it. On one hand, the concept isn’t.... bad, per se. At the very least, there’s far less of the deus-ex-machina bullshit compared to the first book lol. On the other hand, there’s still some of that cringe factor that young-teenager me seemed fond of. I will give it points tho for Jared’s half-a-nervous-breakdown about being unable to fully cope with dreams of the future, and all the sibling sassery going on.

Book 3, When You Wish on a Star, is a kinda dumb title, but not dumb enough to need redacting unlike the first book lol. While [TITLE REDACTED] and The Legend of the Shadow focused on my first gen characters (Mel, Finn, Will Hayden, Jared), Book 3 is the adventure story of my second gen, mostly Jazz, Alex, Hayden, and halfheartedly Jason. First off, considering I changed Celia’s (Alex’s mom) background, that therefore renders this entire story moot. Ignoring that point tho, honestly it’s about on the same par at Book 2, which makes sense considering they were being written at the same time lol.

Book 4 never got to the point of being able to post it, and therefore never got a proper (and potentially bad) title other than “Summer and Will”. This was gonna be the third gen story, focusing mostly on Summer and Will Daniel’s relationship. Therefore, there was really never much of a plot, and since Summer was the main POV, the magic took one hell of a backseat. It was also my attempt at writing one of those “typical high school romance” books that I kept reading on Figment. In terms of how I feel about it..... Honestly I can’t be super fond of it because Will’s characterization was..... very bad back then. So was James’s tbh, but Will’s was worse. The only redeeming factors are 1, for chapter intros, I had these cute little interactions between James and Malai, and 2, this text convo for Will being an absolute shit about James’s sweet tooth:

Will: Gpa wants me now, so I gotta go.

James: Tell him I say hi, and if Gma makes cookies bring me like, ten!

W: Fine, I’ll bring you half of one.

J: Fucking tease

W: :) bye.

J: [Stupid teasing related to aforementioned bad character designs]

W: A crumb.

J: NEVER MIND

W: :)

There’s also technically a Book 5 that I just remembered exists, but we’re not even gonna go there considering how terrible and unfinished Book 4 is lmao

So yeah! In general, I can mostly look fondly back on my old og stories, with the exception of whatever the fuck James and Will Daniel were going through. Like, I cringe reading them all regardless, but I also recognize I was a kid just starting out, so of course my writing was going to be blatantly tropey and deus-ex-machina-y. Would I ever go back and rewrite them? *stares at the og story rewrite I’ve been toying with* ....... I’ll get back to you on that one lol (though honestly? Band AU is basically a rewrite of what I was aiming for with Book 4, just with bands added and shifting the focus more onto James and Aiden, so *shrugs* make of that what you will)

#writing #writeblr things #chazzawrites challenge

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bigskydreaming · 5 years

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With the meta gen thing in the young justice season 3, i started to wonder, which power would each batfam member have?

Okay, so Dick’s is a bit of a cliche, perhaps, and I’m not the first person to think of this for him, its just….its necessary, lol, as nothing else even comes close to being as good a match. So for him, gravity powers….able to make himself lighter than air and thus massively boost the height and distance of his leaps or just float in the air, reorient himself so he can walk straight up walls or upside down on ceilings, multiply his own mass so his punches or kicks do ten times the damage, toss out out gravity grenades or pulses that wipe out the gravity in an area and make everything weightless, unanchored and floating, unable to find any kind of footing anywhere, or perhaps the opposite, tossing out gravity pulses that intensify the gravity in an area, weigh everything down until its impossible to move.

Jason’s power would be something he calls blowback, or maybe a ‘damage bounce.’ Basically an extremely localized reality warp which causes the actual harm or damage caused by someone that’s fighting him or fighting someone nearby him, to be shifted back onto the instigator. So shoot him…you end up the one shot. Beat up someone in his field of view, and all the damage you would otherwise be inflicting on that person ends up displaced onto you. Etc, etc.

Tim’s power is to make leaps forward and back along his own individual timeline. Its not true time travel, he can’t change events that have happened or anything like that, its more like he can at any given moment swap himself out with another version of himself that exists at a different moment in time. So he can kind of shapeshift in a limited, unexpected way…by swapping his current self out with an older version of him from much further along his personal timeline…..with most people unlikely to recognize him with an extra ten to twenty years added to the age and appearance they expect him to have. Or he can heal quickly in a combat situation…by changing places with an uninjured version of himself. And so on and so on.

Cassandra’s power is to piggy-back on the senses of anyone she’s close enough to, effectively letting her see and hear anything they do. She’s not really a telepath despite it involving a psychic component… essentially her power lets her overlay her own mind and senses on top of someone else’s, so from her POV she’s basically seeing through their eyes….but its purely about increasing or adding vantage points for her….she can’t read the thoughts of whomever’s senses she’s sharing, nor can she influence them………..though she can still read body language via someone else’s borrowed senses, just as easily as with her own. She’s begun experimenting with the possibility of reversing the feedback loop….letting someone see through her eyes instead, as a kind of destabilization technique, rendering an opponent temporarily wtf-y, or like, to loop her siblings in on the same intel page, etc.

Damian’s power is switch teleportation. Like castling in a game of chess…he can effectively teleport anywhere within his field of vision….but only by exchanging places with something or someone at the end point he’s aiming for. Used strategically though, this power is as much a tactical advantage as it is a means of transportation or a quick getaway. It affords him a variety of ways to end up inside a location he’s trying to infiltrate even while simultaneously leaving the guard locked out on the wrong side of the door he’s meant to be guarding….he can sow enormous confusion with this in combat, randomly switching his way through a crowd of enemies all trying to cut him down and just ending up doing more damage to their own allies instead….and by combining it with his grappling hook and the right timing, he can launch himself off rooftops and halfway down, just lock eyes with someone like Bane, standing at the roof’s edge far above him….and now the one falling in his place, moments later, instead,.

Stephanie’s power is something she calls her spoiler punch (haymaker, uppercut, anything else along those lines). She’s not a precog herself, capable of seeing her own future, but via skin to skin contact, she can deliver a vision of anyone’s future to them. She has no control over what they see, and only gets the vaguest glimpse of it herself, via a kind of psychic echo - and its not always set in stone. Some of the visions end up coming true, some are averted, some accidentally end up fulfilled by attempting to avert it. However, the visions are always intense, a shock to the person’s system, so as a Hail Mary measure, just slipping off a glove and punching an opponent bare fist to bare cheek can give her all the distraction and advantage she needs, at the very least….and in some cases, such a punch isn’t merely distracting to them, but downright demoralizing.

Duke’s power is essentially just one aspect of his canon power….just pushed further. Instead of his ghost vision, here his power is just the amplifying aura he manifests, that boosts the powers of other metas nearby. Except in this version of it, that amplifying aura isn’t just limited to boosting meta powers….he can focus and channel it to amplify any energy source near him at all. Amping up the ambient light in the atmosphere to create blinding flashes as a diversion…..amping sound waves so a carefully and deliberately boosted snap of the fingers can rattle walls and shatter windows. Boosting temperatures so the heat generated by friction in just the right time and place ends up sparking an actual fire, or just boosting the electrical impulses firing off in a person’s nervous system as just part of its regular synaptic activity….now amped up enough to cause a surge those synapses weren’t prepared for and overloading a person’s nervous system, just enough to knock them out.

And last but not least, since I’m still stumped on something for Bruce….Barbara’s power would be a kind of telekinetic programming. Broad spectrum telekinesis that can perform any number of feats….but that rather than exercise it consciously, like Jean Grey or other telekinetic superheroes are most known for doing….Babs’ telekinesis is run by her subconscious, even as her conscious mind focuses on her hacking and information gathering as Oracle. Essentially, Babs writes ‘code’ for her telekinesis….programming various activities, feats and routines for her telekinesis to accomplish….while her telekinetic programs are being run and enacted by just her own subconscious mind.

This way, Barbara is able to devote her conscious attention to her duties and routines as Oracle, the same as she typically does at various points in canon…..while at the exact same time, in the background of the Clocktower, her telekinesis is going through the motions of conducting various investigations all at the same time and without any requiring her conscious oversight. Her ‘pre-programmed’ directives and the code she’d written for her own psychic powers to use as its operating system, are more than capable of handling various minutiae and the physical activity portion of sorting through the piles of evidence and categorizing it properly, etc.

And thus even while busy as Oracle, Babs can have all of that happening behind her, with her subconscious and her telekinetic powers basically acting in concert as though her Clocktower is a fully staffed and busy precinct, as active as any actual precinct might appear….with just the difference that this particular ‘precinct’s hustle and bustle was the work not of actual manpower, but rather, more like an army of invisible, intangible robots dutifully fulfilling her objectives…..orchestrated by nothing other than the machinery of her subconscious mind, and the psychic powers she’d programmed to need nothing more than that in order to accomplish whatever tasks she set for them to accomplish.

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sailorshadzter · 5 years

Text

soon you’ll get better.

part 2 to my taylor swift lover album inspired jonsa series. (<--- thats really a mouthful lol)

im really excited to get further into the album, but recently, it was one of my best friend’s mom’s birthdays, though she passed away about nine years ago now. she was like a second mother to me & i miss her a lot. there were so many days i spent with her while she was sick & a lot of time i spent with her daughters. her younger two girls are like my little sisters.

anyways, i originally wasnt even going to INCLUDE this song in the series, but thinking about this “second mom” of mine inspired me to write this instead.

also, next time, i’m not certain ill follow this same set up.

it might be a time skip, it might be an “inspired by” rather than using the lyrics themselves. who knows! we’ll see what happens.

hope you guys enjoy. :)

It's been several long, grueling weeks without seeing her.

Jon frequents Seasalt Tavern, even on trivia night, if only to catch a glimpse of that shiny red hair. But each night, he's let down. Even now, he hears her song in his brain. The echo of her words, soft and true, sing him to sleep when he closes his eyes each night. She haunts him, in a way no woman has ever done before.

Lunch break. It comes every day, a glorious hour where Jon steps away from his desk if only to stretch his legs. He joined the Westeros Special Forces unit only six months ago, a transfer in from the Northern faction, deciding to head South for a change of scenery post break up. Ygritte had been... Well, a spitfire, to say the least. And hard to forget. Their relationship had been as fiery as her temper and her hair. Yeah, he has a type, so sue him. While he didn't miss the fights and the theatrics of the relationship, he missed being with someone. Ygritte cared about him in her own, weird sort of way, and he misses the companionship she had provided him for nearly three years.

Jon sighs as he steps out into the afternoon sun, deciding the local coffee shop would suffice for lunch today. It's only a short walk up the street and Jon finds himself stepping inside within minutes, the blast of cold air refreshing. Six months in of living in the South and Jon still hasn't quite adjusted to the heat. He misses the icy cold air of the North- somehow, it felt cleaner up there. That ache in your lungs you felt when you took in the first breath of cold, morning air... He misses that almost as much as he misses the fiery warmth of a woman in his bed.

The girl behind the counter smiles and offers a wave- she's a University student, Jon has learned in his time coming here, eager to graduate the following spring and step into a new world as a nurse. "Hey Jon," she greets as he approaches, "the usual?" It's Jon's turn to grin as he nods and turns to head towards his usual table, but is surprised to find it already occupied.

And just like that, there she is.

She's surrounded by notebooks and a textbook or two, though she seems focused on a single notebook. Her red hair is twisted back into braids and tucked up with pins, though a few strands have fallen free to frame her face. Jon sucks in a breath as he watches her for only a moment more, for she looks up then and notices him staring. At once, she sits up straighter, squinting her eyes as recognition spreads across her face. "Hey," she says after a moment, folding her arms over the tabletop as she leans forward. "Jon, right?" She says, though she's not forgotten his name. She's recited it over and over and over again since the night they met. "Nice suit." Her eyes trail him up and down and Jon feels warmth spread to his cheeks, her lip gloss lips curving with a smile. If she notices the gun strapped to his hip, she doesn't mention it.

"Call it a drawback to the job," Jon jokes a moment later when he finally finds his voice again, the sweet sound of her laughter ringing in his ears. His heart soars. "I haven't seen you, at the bar I mean." He says and at once, he regrets it. She sits up straighter, those ocean blue eyes widening ever so slightly as she regards him closely. "I-I mean, they're talking about you. About your song, your voice." Smooth, he thinks as he can only hope a hole opens up on the floor and swallows him up. Just then, the barista appears with his steaming drink, to which he grins and gives his thanks before the girl is gone, leaving him there to probably continue to embarrass himself. But to his surprise, she does not send him away with a scowl or cruel words, rather her face softens and she gestures for him to sit.

"If you want," she says, an offering, her head tilted to the side, the stray strand of hair falling just across her forehead. He wishes he could push it back, he wishes he could feel it between his fingers. It takes him only a moment to take the seat across from her, his to-go cup warm despite the cardboard slip around it's middle. "I've been busy," she says by way of explanation, a fleeting look of sadness crossing her features as she looks back at him. For some reason, despite not knowing him, Sansa feels as if she can trust him. His dark, solemn eyes give her a sense of hope she's not felt in a long time. "Besides, I couldn't come back without another song."

"So there's another one?" He asks, taking the first sip of his coffee. It's a simple order, a caramel macchiato with an extra shot of espresso, one which he never deviates from. "Open mic night is next week, isn't it?" She grins and nods, telling him she heard from her friend Margaery about the next date and that she would be there.

"Margaery has been trying to drag me out for weeks now, I haven't-" she stops, realizing she's about to dump something on him that's probably beyond a normal talking point for a first real conversation. As if Jon senses her uncertainty, he offers her a smile and encourages her to go on. "It's my mother..." Sansa shifts in her chair, absently swirling the last swallow of coffee in her mug as she looks anywhere but Jon's face. "She's sick and I... Between taking care of her and my little brothers and sister..." She looks up and it's written all over Jon's face- sympathy, yet understanding. There is no judgment, there is nothing but warmth. Somehow, it's as if she's known him all her life, not a single conversation in a dark bar. "Anyways, Margaery says it's good if I get out sometimes, you know? So I let her drag me out every now and again." She smiles as she thinks of her friend, who she knows loves her dearly. Margaery was a good, no a great, friend and Sansa reminds herself to give her friend a hug.

"I'm sorry... About your mother." Jon says after a moment, knowing the pain of losing a mother, though he doesn't mention such a thing to her. The last thing he wants to do is remind her of what she certainly worries about often. "You have siblings?" He asks instead and is delighted to see the smile brighten up her face as she nods.

"Three of them. Two brothers, Bran is thirteen and Rickon is nine. Arya is fifteen." Her little siblings are her entire world. They have always been close, the Stark children that is, especially so in the four years since Robb had died. But even as kids, even with the years between them all, they had always been close. And with her mother's illness and her father's business, it left much of raising them to her. She could not remember a time where she was not with the little ones, though now that they're older and mostly taking care of themselves, she wishes she could go back. It hadn't always been easy, but she loved every moment spent with those little siblings of hers. "What about you?"

Jon smiles when he shakes his head. "I don't have much family at all, well aside for a distant cousin who lives in Essos." He had never known his father and his mother had died when he was just a kid, leaving him to be raised in foster homes until he came of age. "It's just me and Ghost, honestly."

"Ghost?" She asks and Jon can't stop from reaching for his cell phone, pulling up the most recent photo of the big, white dog he means. "A wolf dog?!" She blurts without warning, excitedly reaching for her own phone, which lay beside the notebook she'd been writing in. She taps the screen and shows him the background photo- a family photo of five kids with varying shades of hair, each proudly standing with shaggy pups that were as colorful as them. She draws the phone back towards her and when she hands it back, there's a photo instead of a beautiful gray wolf like dog, who's eyes are more gold than yellow. "That's Lady."

"You all have them?" Jon is surprised- he's never met another person with a wolf dog like Ghost, let alone a family of them.

"My father... He found an entire litter when we were kids," she explains, the memory burned into her brain as if it had happened only yesterday. "My family's sigil is a direwolf, so my father said he couldn't just turn them away. He said they came to us for a reason." For a litter of pups to be born, five pups for the five Stark children, it had surely been a sign from the Old Gods, and so despite her mother's wishes, all the puppies came home to the children. The way he's leaning over the table, he can see the soft curves of her handwriting on the paper- small and neat, her handwriting fits her perfectly. She must notice him looking for she grins and slides the paper towards him. "Next week's song," she says, tapping the top where she's written the apparent name across the top. "I think it's finished... I hope it's finished."

Jon reads only the first few lines before he pushes it back towards her. "I want to hear it when it is," he says and drains the last sip of his drink. "Listen, I have to head back to the office now but I uh... I'll see you next week." He rises up to his feet, the scrape of the chair against the floor the only noise in the room for a single moment. Sansa smiles and yet again, Jon is rendered breathless by her. If only this moment could last forever.

"Yeah, next week," she replies, barely breathing herself.

When Jon approaches the desk to pay for his drink, he tells the barista he wants to pay for her drink too. Though she's surprised, the young woman does as he's bid and waves to him as he takes the receipt and his change and heads for the door. Just as he goes to toss it into the waste bin, he peaks at the receipt and to his surprise, sees that she must have ordered the very same drink as him.

[ x x x ]

The bar is quiet as Sansa climbs up to the stage again.

Again, accompanied only by her guitar, she gazes out into the crowd of people, smiling down at her brunette friend before she speaks into the microphone. "I had an entirely different song planned for this night a few weeks ago, but my mother... She's sick and she's relapsed so I wrote this for her." In the long nights beside the hospital bed, the beeping of the machines her only melody, she had penned these lyrics. She had scribbled these lines onto napkins and the back of her hand. She had written this song to remind herself that in the end, her mother would step out of the hospital and home would become home again. Taking a deep breath, she strums the guitar and finds the right note.

And then she sings.

"The buttons of my coat were tangled in my hair In doctor's-office-lighting, I didn't tell you I was scared That was the first time we were there."

Jon sits at the bar again.

It's his usual spot, with his usual drink in hand. He had saw her come in- red hair in curls and her impossibly long legs wrapped in denim- but hadn't got a chance to talk to her. Her friend, Margaery he thinks it is, sits where she sat the first time, but this time the guy she had been crushing on sits beside her, arm around her waist.

The song Sansa sings... He recalls reading those first few lines in the coffee shop but hearing her silky voice singing them makes all the difference. She's stronger this time- less nervous than she must have been the first time around and Jon is surprised when from across the room, their eyes meet.

And he swears his heart must stop.

"Ooh-ah, soon you'll get better Ooh-ah, soon you'll get better Ooh-ah, you'll get better soon 'Cause you have to."

Those words are the soft plea of a daughter to her sick mother, the simple view that there was no other option than to recover. Jon glances around the room and can see there are at least five others in that room who know the feelings she's singing about.

Yet again, Sansa's song is reaching people.

"I know delusion when I see it in the mirror You like the nicer nurses, you make the best of a bad deal I just pretend it isn't real I'll paint the kitchen neon, I'll brighten up the sky I know I'll never get it, there's not a day that I won't try."

One of the women Jon had noticed earlier is openly crying at her table now and he recognizes her as the one who had lost her mother only a month before. Jon recalls that pain himself, despite the years that it's been since he lost his own mother. He can still recall the sweet scent of her perfume, but he's forgotten what her voice sounded like or how warm her arms had been whenever she hugged him. It's been many years since he lost his mother, but the pain of it never goes away. Not entirely.

On the stage, Sansa too sees the woman that cries softly at her table, the man beside her wrapping his arm around her in comfort. She wishes she hadn't made her cry, she feels bad about that, in truth, but there's no stopping now.

"And I hate to make this all about me But who am I supposed to talk to? What am I supposed to do If there's no you? This won't go back to normal, if it ever was It's been years of hoping, and I keep saying it because 'Cause I have to."

As she breaks into the final chords, the final repeat of soon you'll get better, she looks out into the faces around her, wondering just how many of them out there got the message. How many others besides that single woman understood the pain of watching someone they loved go through an illness? Probably too many, she realizes.

When her hand finally falls from the guitar and silence descends, she lets out the breath she's been holding and her heart skips a beat when the first claps begin. And then it's every person in the bar that's clapping, some even cheering as she smiles for them and descends down to join Margaery at the table.

Jon watches as she escapes from her friend and instead crosses the room to approach the other crying woman. They embrace and when Sansa pulls back, the woman holds her at arm's length as they talk. When they finish their conversation, Sansa does not return to Margaery's table but to his shock, she comes towards the bar to stand before him where he sits on his usual stool. "Buy me a drink?" She asks with a grin and for a moment, Jon is too stunned to say anything. But then he nods and she slides onto the stool beside him, so close that again he catches the scent of her sweet perfume.

They talk for what could be several hours, Jon seems to have lost track of the time as he sits there with her. It isn't until Margaery approaches her, a touch to her shoulder, a quick but silent it's time to go home. "I have to go," she says, brushing a curl behind an ear, revealing the three little studs she wears in her lobes. "Maybe we don't have to wait until the next mic night to see each other," she grins as she slides a piece of paper towards him as she hops of the stool, a little wobbly after her three drinks. Before Jon can speak, she's rushing after Margaery who waits at the door for her, her guy already out in the lot to fetch the car.

Jon lifts up the piece of paper and he finds his heart is racing as he realizes it's her phone number written there. Pre written, he realizes, meaning she had always intended on giving it to him. He feels warm and it's not just because of the four drinks he's consumed sitting there with Sansa. Okay... That might be partly to blame, but mostly he's just beyond happy. He reaches for his phone and adds her into his contacts list, clicking the new message icon, though he hesitates for a moment. Was it weird if he texted her so quickly? No, he decides, she gave him her number, which meant she wanted him to text her.

And so he taps the message space and begins to type.

Sansa is climbing into the backseat of the car when her phone beeps.

She fishes it out of her purse and her heart skips a beat when she sees it is a number not yet saved to her contacts. "He texted you? Already?" Margaery is excited in the front seat, the one who had encouraged Sansa to talk to him that night, the one to write down her phone number for Sansa to give to him. "I told you," she mumbled as she turned back around, smiling to herself as she thinks of the way the dark haired, brooding sort of man had been staring at her friend both last time and tonight. After the last relationship Sansa had been in, she deserved someone who looked at her like this Jon looked at her.

On Sunday's I take Ghost to the dog park. Maybe Lady would like to join him?

Sansa smiles and types a quick reply.

Just as he's sliding off the stool that his phone lights up on the bar. Jon can't help but to chuckle when he sees her response.

Lady would love that, but I hope I'm invited. 👀

When she reads his response, she's grinning, a strange warmth filling her up, threatening to spill over. Sorry, I forget how to act when I think about cute dogs owned by cute girls. Another text comes before she can reply to the first. I'll see you and Lady both there, say noon?

She nods, though he can't see, and hits send on her own message.

Jon climbs into his car and hears the beep of her reply. We'll see you there. :)

He drives himself home and it isn't until he's settled into his apartment that he realizes his phone went off without him noticing. Unlocking the screen, he's surprised to see it's a picture message, rather than just a normal text. This is how she looks at me when I tell her we have plans tomorrow. The picture is of Lady asleep on the couch, or at least pretending to be, as she has one yellow eye open looking up at Sansa who must be leaning over her to snap the picture. We're going to bed, see you tomorrow. I promise she's as excited as I am. Her next text comes a moment later and Jon grins down at Ghost, reciting the message aloud to the dog. "She's excited..." He murmurs as he sinks back into the couch, not fully prepared to head to bed.

In her bedroom, stripped down to nothing but a t-shirt, Sansa is climbing into bed when her phone vibrates on her bedside table. Reaching for it, she blinks against the brightness of her screen so she can read Jon's last message. Ghost on the other hand... A pause and then the photo comes, making her smile as she clicks it to enlarge it. It's of the great big white wolf, grinning like only a dog can, clearly excited by something Jon is doing or saying. Sleep tight, girls, comes last and as Sansa curls up beneath her blankets, she smiles to herself, not yet daring to believe that this is entirely real. Jon seems almost too good to be true. Though, she supposes there's only one way to figure it out. She hasn't dated in well over a year... Not since Joffrey... But something tells her Jon is the farthest type from Joffrey that could ever possibly be.

As she closes her eyes, she thinks of him, of those deep set brown eyes, and falls asleep.

#jonsa #jonsa au #modern au #jon x sansa #taylor swift #album: lover #now i really want to write their date at the dog park lol

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tellywoodtrash · 5 years

Text

Sanjivani - Weeks 4 + 5

Overall Plot

Heavy in terms of the background stories for Sid and Ishani and their deeply ingrained emotional issues. Their relationship though, phew; such highs and lows, that I'm almost dizzy with how quickly they fight and make up. Though the Juhi/Shashank/Anjali/Vardhan track remains good to watch on the basis of performance, not much progress on that front plot-wise, other than Shashank unwillingly approving the luxury ward and the fallout from that.

The Medical Stuff

Still boring for a medical procedural junkie like me; it seems like they just flip through a medical textbook and pick some two, three randomass illnesses, but then barely go into depth about it. It’s like they pick these things just for the novelty of the name and nothing else.

The Acting

Needless to say, the seniors reliably turn in the best performances. Namit continues to get better, fewer missteps each week than the last. Also nicely compelling in some scenes where he emotes quietly with his face. Surbhi on the other hand seems to be a see-saw; it's just bewildering for me to watch her all over the place like this, after seeing her be nicely measured in the first 1.5 years of IB. IDK if it's the character or the direction or what, but she seems so messily uncontrolled in this role compared to what I've seen of her as Haya/Anika. The supporting cast - Rashmi, Jason, Robin, Kunal, Rahul - got marginally more to do these weeks than previously, and they were pretty good; especially Rashmi who got some nice scenes to do.

The Characters

Sid: Still the character I'm most invested in. He has major existential angst about possibly being naajaayaz and not knowing who his father is. They also brought back Fuckboy Sid; well not really, but his "past" catches up with him when 3 girls he was seeing at the same time show up together to beat him up. He's definitely a charmer alright, seeing how he gets out of sticky situations like these. As a doctor, I truly like watching him in his element; he’s smart and focused and has wonderful bedside manner; gentle and compassionate, knows how to get patients to open up to him, and how to comfort them in turn. He's the best at his job among the residents, and we can see why Shashank likes him so much. Also, like Shashank he’s a good mentor, the way he guides his juniors not only in matters of medical stuff, but also in interpersonal stuff like self-esteem, and things like basic human empathy, that’s oft-forgotten in high-pressure situations. WRT the romance, I find how besotted/concerned he is for Ishani pretty adorable. Like it's an appropriate amount (for the time they’ve known each other) and comes from genuinely liking her as a person, even with all her quirks and unlikable traits. And thankfully there’s zero creepy slo-mo staring or having intrusive romantic thoughts while working or anything like that (side-eye at Armaan/Riddhima.) Like, he's in tune with her emotionally, despite all their innumerable differences and genuinely cares for her in a selfless manner, even with the constant ups and downs in their dynamic.

Ishani: Continues to be diagnostic genius but in the dumbest fucking way. A ex fling of Sid’s making a threatening gun gesture with her hand at him led Ishani to deduce that the kid had swallowed bullets and thus had lead poisoning???? She diagnosed a patient that NINE SPECIALISTS couldn't diagnose?!?!?!? (Like, either she's the best diagnostician in the goddamn world, or Rishabh was lying and/or Sanjivani's specialists are hella bad at their jobs.) Her diagnoses kinda come outta fucking nowhere; till date, only the Refsum Disease one seemed legit, coz she actually looked into a patient's chart AND ran multiple conclusive tests for it; nahi toh random tukkebaazi se hi chal rahi hai iski career. Also, I sympathise with her on the subject of her parents, but after a point, her reactions are so damn extra. Like, I’m not a fan of the fuckery that is organizational hierarchy, but she’s just TOO FUCKING MUCH, from slapping Sid, to getting some senior doctor suspended for sleeping on the job, to undermining senior specialists in front of their patients. Like god sis, you've barely been here for 2 weeks or so. Would it kill you to simmer down and lay low for a bit? You’re a first year resident for fuck’s sake; save this nonsense for at least the third year. Idk how or why anyone puts up with her, honestly.

Asha & Aman: Still genial, still best in small to medium amounts. Aman is kinda hilariously self-centered but pretty dumb (I have serious doubts as to how he got into med school/Sanjivani. He's rich, so maybe influence?) Asha is better knowledge-wise, but super competitive and always wanting to be on every single case, which gets annoying; but they gave her a good reason for being that way, which Rashmi performed quite compellingly. What I love most about Asha is that she doesn't carry her momentary irritations with Ishani into their overall relationship. That's work stuff and outside of it, she's very affectionate and fond of Ishani, even fiercely protective and supportive of her when the latter is rendered weak by the poster drama. Good. I'm here for tight friendships between girls. Aman's a pretty good friend too; misguided in his attempts coz of his dumb self-centeredness, but he's intrinsically a good dude whose heart's in the right place and tries his best to comfort his friends when they’re disturbed.

Dialogue of the Week:

Asha [re: Ishani/Sid]: Arre in dono ka jab dekho marad-lugaai jaisa jhagda hi chalta rehta hai; yeh ghar-grihasti waale jhagde baad mein na kar sakte?

Rishabh: Continues to be The Fucking Worst. Chalo, Ishani ke baare mein Vadhan fed him the gossip, but how the fuck does he know so much about Sid's personal life????? I'd forgive his fuckery if he was at least a good doctor, but he's not; he's just an annoying character with zero redeeming qualities whatsoever. I honestly wait for his biweekly roughing up by Sid, coz by god, bada mazzaa aata hai jab is kameene ke saath pitaai hoti hai.

Neil: Ok so it turns out he's a doctor who's just really really squeamish when it comes to blood. My question is, then why is he in an area that involves an abundance of it in the first place? There's plenty of specializations in medicine that don't involve seeing blood/other gross stuff (psychiatry, neurology, physiotherapy/physical rehab, radiology, nutrition, nuclear medicine......) Why not go for one of those? Like, the end of MBBS/internship should have been long enough to figure out this issue with blood and pick an appropriate specialization no? Is he a surgical resident too, like the others? In that case, it’s just truly bizarre how/why he chose this field. Other than that minor issue, I love him, he is softest and purest boy. Give him a dancing scene every few weeks, coz I wanna watch Jason groove!

Rahil: The most likable person on this show. WHY THE FUCK WON'T YOU GIVE US MORE OF HIM, HUH????? He's so sweet and genuine and soft (to the degree of stupidity - he took time off and became an ambulance driver to help Sid sort out his issues with Ishani???? Lol boo, I get he’s your best friend/boss, but yeh thoda too much ho gaya.) Hopefully he’ll be proving Rishabh is behind all the posters next week, and thus we all win - Sid coz his name is cleared, Ishani coz she’ll get the name of her culprit/learn to trust that she’s got friends who have her back here, and me coz I’ll get more smartypants cutiepie Rahil!!!!

Shashank: They're not really giving me any meaty Shashank/Anjali stuff (other than what they’ve already shown us in the last few weeks) so thank god they're giving me the next best thing: Shashank being an excellent “dadTor” (dad + mentor) to Juhi, Sid, and Ishani. Esp. with Sid & Ishani, I genuinely love how he minces no words and is always forthright with them, but never ever in an unkind way. He's always gentle and soft and puts it in a way that guides them to introspect and be better. That's what good parenting/teaching is; not solving the problems FOR your kids, but enabling them to come up with the solutions on their own, thus making a lasting impression/change in their psyche.

Juhi: They've kept her all tied up in admin stuff than medical, and I'm kinda ehhhhhh about that, but it's always a balm to my heart when she appears with her gentle smile and calming demeanor. I genuinely feel so bad for her that she’s stuck in between Shashank and Anjali, and feels responsible for fixing their relationship, even though it doesn’t really have anything to do with her. Also lol, the best scene in this fortnight was her ‘BITCH WTF????’ face when Vardhan was getting handsy with Anjali in front of her. BUT ALSO TELL US WHAT THE ISSUE WITH RAHUL IS ALREADY?!?!?!?!!!!

Anjali: I don't like this show's up/down writing of Anjali. On one hand they have her being compassionate towards that patient's husband who slapped her, but then she goes and makes multiple hurtful comments to Ishani? Surely she, of all people, whose biggest issue in life is being unable to break out from under the shadow of parents in the same profession, would understand and empathize with Ishani? Also, it’s clear that Ishani has a family connection with the Guptas and has been visiting them since she was a child, so why does Anjali have zero familiarity with her? Like, you’d have some kinda fondness for a kid you’ve known for 15-20 odd years no? I really don’t like the way they’re portraying her as a person who’s got no real human feelings for anyone or anything beyond her job/dad’s approval. #JUSTICE4ANJALI

Vardhan: Ugh, like Rishabh, continues to be a gross slimeball. Like honestly, doesn't a CFO of a major hospital have more to do than pettily making two residents keep fighting amongst themselves? Get a life, dude. Go visit that son of yours whom you're always talking to on the phone, or something. And for the love of god, please stop hitting on Anjali in this gross manner. (Guessing he’s divorced, and the wife has the kid, and thus these shenanigans.) Also another totally petty gripe, I really hate how the hair at the nape of his neck is always sticking out weird. Can someone put some gel on that shit for him????

Overall Rating: 3.5/5

#sanjivani #sanjivani (new)#tt reviews

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