#god forbid you like some art and all of a sudden you have things to deal with now jfc-

[ahsterism]

finally finished the h.sr story

[hxnbi]

‧₊˚ rain walks, or not — zenin naoya

synopsis: just a lovely walk in the pouring rain with a guy who could care less about you, or so you think

tags: fluff, profanity, vulgar language

word count: 1k

"Tch... I don't get why I had to come along with you in the first place."

"C'mon! It'll be fun."

"Fun, my ass. Can't you be fucking reasonable for one second and—"

"Being reasonable can wait!"

What had originally been a mere grocery trip with Naoya turned into a rainstorm when, all of a sudden, it started to pour. Hard.

To hell with Naoya's handsome looks and freshly shampooed hair that afternoon. You immediately went and dragged him by the arm and out of the comfort of shelter.

"It was either we waited for the rain to stop or walked in the rain. And knowing you and your nonexistent sense of patience, you wouldn't pick the latter. So~! Therefore, I went ahead and made the executive decision for you," you said with a proud smirk.

Naoya's voice dripped with sarcasm as he sneered, "Well, congratulations on mastering the art of being an idiot, like always. No shocker there. Maybe next time, use that genius brain of yours to make decisions that actually make sense."

His sarcastic remark hung in the air, but you were having none of it—or instead, you were already used to his antics. It was quite refreshing, actually. Even as the rain poured, he still wasn't letting up.

With a mischievous grin, you let go of Naoya's hand and cupped your two together, collecting some rainwater, and, with a single motion, you threw it directly at the Zenin, colliding with Naoya in a triumphant splash of victory.

His clothing stuck to him like it was soaked in sarcasm, and his once-confident countenance gave way to one of astonishment. His mouth hung open, and his face slowly shifted into one of plain disgust.

"You were saying?" you smirked. "Hmph. Now you're soaking wet, just like I am."

"You..."

But before he could say another word, you once again grabbed him by the hand and led him, walking together on the sidewalks as the rain continued to pour down on them.

"Let's go. My house isn't far, and we can dry off and freshen up a bit. After all, we just brought some groceries from our haul."

Naoya gruffed in response, but he didn't resist, even as you pulled him along by the hand like he was a dog. How pathetic.

But it was something that Naoya, for some reason, felt oddly at ease with...?

As cold as it was while walking in the rain without an umbrella or even a hood to block the water from your face, your hand was still oddly warm. It was much smaller and softer than his, a stark contrast.

He was unable to take his eyes off of you. It was only because you were in front of him, dragging his hand like a guide. Yes, that's right. Where else was he supposed to look? Down?? A Zenin like him would never.

But amid all that, there was something about you that entranced him. Was it the rain? Never. That same pathetic rain was ruining his perfectly styled hair he had just for today with you—though that would be something he would never tell to you straight.

Or was it the way how you always managed to defy expectations just to do whatever the hell you wanted? Perhaps.

...Or maybe, it was—

"Here we are!"

Great. That wretched shriek that, god forbid, came from a human being, was back. 

Just as you and Naoya arrived in the empty home, you threw off your shoes and left the wet bag of groceries on the carpet to dry.

"Make yourself comfortable," you mused, unclothing your jacket.

"Ugh."

Naoya peered closer, only to see the clothes that you were wearing, or rather, what was under them. The thin t-shirt you were wearing was nearly close to being see-through.

Naoya was close to making a fire of his own—using his own rage, that is.

Did your dumbass seriously not even fucking notice?! What if it was someone else who saw you like this!? Would you have been so stupid then with them?

"Here."

The next thing he felt was a towel on top of his head, and your face was right in front of him. You had a small towel of your own wrapped around your neck to keep your wet hair from dripping onto the floor.

Your hands came abnormally close, and with your eyes focusing on him and him only, you used your hands, grasping the towel sitting on the top of his head to dry his hair.

He flinched. "What the—"

"Hold still," you commanded. "Your hair is soaking wet."

"Well, you were the one who wanted us to walk in that dang rain to begin with," he grumbled.

You blinked once and then twice before yanking his hand off, forcing his arms to his side so that you could finally get to what you wanted to do. "Then, just let me do this."

"...."

For whatever reason, Naoya was silent. It was sort of peaceful, really. Feeling your hands comb through his hand with an expression of concentration. 

The ruffian creature eventually relaxed, even to the point where he closed his eyes and let out a content sigh as your fingers played with his hair. If it weren't for the towel covering most of his face, he would've ratted himself out—revealing a rare vulnerability.

To even begin to think that the Naoya Zenin would suck up his pride and let someone else even touch him, but he was also secretly pleased—even if his arrogance wouldn't allow him to admit it. He tilted his head back a little closer to your chest and lowered his posture, permitting you to have an easier time tending to his damp hair.

Naoya smirked, rather pleased with himself.

Look at him. He was being far too kind to accommodate you.

No one else would've had the oh-so-magnificent pleasure of drying his hair. So you had better savour it.

You both lay there silently for a few minutes, enjoying each other's company as you continued to dry his dark hair with a towel as Naoya held his body still. That is, until you suddenly stopped. And you could've sworn that you heard a noise coming from Naoya's mouth, but you didn't push it.

"There," you said happily. "All dry! Hehe, now how about that?"

"...Just this one time."

Your hand stilled for a moment before continuing your gentle strokes. "Huh?"

"You're the only one I let do this. So savour it," Naoya said, his voice softening for a mere second, only for him to split back into an expression of aloofness.

You smiled before moving your hands again. "Then I'm flattered."

You weren't about to tell him about how you could see everything from the very beginning. He would never let you hear the end of it otherwise.

Guess it'll just be your little secret.

©hxnbi. please do not modify, edit, copy or reproduce any of my works.

[kidstemplatte]

Terzo becoming a dad of twin girls!! Pweaaase? 🥰

dad! terzo w/ twin daughters

(implications of female reader)

this was so fun to write! thank you, anon! 🥺i hope you enjoy and it didn’t disappoint! <3

he absolutely cries when he finds out you two are having twins.

he’s so nervous. worried he won’t be a good father. these babies haven’t even been born yet and they’ve become his whole world.

you have to eat more during a twin pregnancy. this man FEEDS YOU.

i feel like he can cook. he’s always making you the best (italian) food, making sure you’re eating enough.

he does so much research he ends up knowing things YOU didn’t know.

he’s always nose deep into some parenting book or staying up in the late hours of the night reading articles.

soon he has mastered the art of carrying two babies at once.

he is such a funny dad. so funny. will do ANYTHING to make his girls laugh.

they love playing dress up!

except he’s the one being dressed up.💀

he makes an absolute show of it. he loves hearing his daughters laugh and he’ll do anything to make it happen.

“you know, you kind of rock a tutu.” you say, walking in during one of their makeovers.

to save time getting ready in the mornings, he learns how to do their hair, and before you know it, he’s a BEAST at it and can braid hair in a matter of seconds.

god forbid they get a hold of his face paint.

he leaves them alone for ONE moment. ONE minute. he comes back. they are both covered in black and white paint.

“ay, nononononono, not before school!!”

the girls want to be ghoulettes for halloween. every year.

“girls, what about something else? we can get you any costume you want. anything in the world.”

“ghoulettes.” they’d say in unison.

he spoils them rotten, buys them endless toys, matching stuffed animals, dolls… but in the process, falls in love with a specific brand:

i don’t even know how i came up with this, but i feel like terzo would love monster high dolls.

he’s in the store… mindlessly walking through the toy aisle. vet barbie, pilot barbie, pool party barbie, doctor barbie...

when all of a sudden, he lays eyes on something new. something exciting.

a “monster high” doll.

now that’s cool.

probably keeps two in his office, each of his girls’ favorite characters.

i lowkey feel like he enjoys some of the shows they watch. i can see him rocking with my little pony.

he loves playing with the girls. he loves their imagination.

gets VERY invested in the barbie storylines they come up with. does high pitched voices when he’s acting out the girl dolls and it makes the twins laugh until they’re rolling on the ground.

he also keeps all the drawings they make him, every single one. they’re also on display in his office.

he knows what it feels like to feel unequal to his siblings so he is very careful to make sure they both get the same amount of love and attention. ❤️

if they fight as they get older, he doesn’t get involved. he knows girls are scary when they’re mad. he lets you handle that. 💀

very invested in the school gossip when they get to that age. when he picks them up from school he’s always eager to know what happened.

protective. VERY anti-boy.

“wait, you said… DATING?” he says when the girls mention a new couple one day.

“yeah dad, we’re in 7th grade now.”

“yeah, dad.”

“NO BOYS! not now, not ever. they are stupid and ugly and think about nothing but themselves.” (he knows this because he was one💀)

(you know the scene from the movie “coco” where the grandma says “no music” over and over again? yeah, replace “music” with “boys”. same energy.)

teaches them about girl power from an early age.

of course, their mother leads the conversation, but he’s so dedicated to help these girls understand their worth. that they can be anything they want.

he already considered himself a feminist before having his daughters, but after having them, he is THE #1 feminist.

when they start talking about crushes, you have to explain to terzo that it’s normal and bound to happen one day.

he just loves his girls so much, he doesn’t want them to grow up🥲

but, uh…

god forbid any boy breaks one of their hearts.

oh, he is not above pulling the satan card on a 13 year old boy.

but you know, one quick google search of “emeritus” will do the trick. any boy will be sure to understand why messing with either of terzo’s girls is a death wish.🥰

___________________________________

i hope you enjoyed and this brought some light to your day!!! honestly i’m a little obsessed😭 hope you’re doing well!! remember you’re loved!!!❤️❤️❤️

[vashhanamichi]

Lesser Evil - Omegaverse Remix

So @metalomagnetic wrote Lesser Evil, which I love and already wrote a fic of, and said that it could have been an omegaverse story. I'm an omegaverse fan so of course I agree and after the last chapter I had to write my own take on it even if it's rushed and bad (I usually write 300~500 words a day but I wrote 2000 in two days because the last chapter made me a bit insane. Anyway). This is also for @kazuza-art whose art makes feral for Dumbledore. Nonsensical, unbeta'd omegaverse feat. Omega Albus, Alpha Gellert and Alpha Tom under the cut:

It’s sudden: Tom bends, burying his face between Albus’ shoulder and neck, holding him by the waist with the familiar, possessive motion Albus has come to associate with the Alpha’s need for sex. His expression is sharp and his eyes are dark when he raises them. Half child, half untamed thing of unspekable hungers. Unreadable for now – Albus doesn’t like him like this. Blank, out of his reach, as he was during those first days of torture.

“You are an omega.” Tom says. He tilts his head a little. Dumbledore’s hand immediately covers the space, the gland against which Tom’s nose was burrowing just now. He thought he was done with the troublesome particularities of this body. Age, starvation and torture should have rid him of this one thing. But it’s there – fainter to him than it is to Tom, the honey of his own scent. He speaks aloud before he can’t stop himself, surprised, too:

“Gellert didn’t tell you.”

Tom’s expression hardens and so do his hands – around Albus’ wrist, around his waist.

“You didn’t tell me.”

“I thought it wouldn’t be relevant. My heats had been sparse even before our meeting. I always used suppressors and the ordeal my body went through during our first months together made them unnecessary. I thought I’d come out almost a beta.”

“Almost a beta.” Tom mocks. “That’s not why you didn’t tell me.”

Albus licks his lips. Rarely he attempts to omit. He thought, perhaps, Tom would allow him this one grace. But he’s a greedy, cruel boy and Albus shouldn’t have expected differently.

“It’s not a favoured aspect of my life, Tom.”

How could it be? He always hid it, as many other omegas do, because he knew what it meant. There would be pressure for him to use his womb rather than his brain in service of the magical community. His secondary gender is rare and coveted because the wizarding elites are perpetually desirous of magical babies. He made a life for himself as an unremarkable standard man – a beta, as some still say. The only one alive who knows the truth is Gellert.

Well. Tom now, too.

It unsettles something in him to know that, for all he’s done, Gellert didn’t betray this one secret. Not even to his precious Schatz.

He kisses Tom’s forehead, his murmuring soft, maternal, pacifying:

“It doesn’t matter. I’m old. It will go away.”

-//-

It doesn’t.

The weeks pile on and so does Albus’ scent. How could Tom have missed this? He follows the curve of Albus’ hips, of his belly while he sleeps, it’s such a subtle thing, there’s so little in him that’s mellow, he’s wiry and bony, it’s so hard to imagine this as a body meant for harboring life – but what would Tom know? He, whose sexual experience before Albus amounted to bending over for another Alpha?

But he feels. The coil at a lower and ancient core within.

“Can you get pregnant?” He asks Albus one day. Sees, enjoys it perhaps, Albus wincing at the question. Serves him right for not telling him. Nothing of Albus should be barred from him. No secrets. No thoughts.

“It’s very unlikely,” the Omega answers softly. “I’m over sixty, Tom. Even for powerful wizards, that’s not young.”

Is he relieved? He doesn’t like the idea of sharing Albus with some runny brat, even if the brat looks like him. If Albus was to be tender with anyone else – god forbid, if he was to love anyone more than he loves Tom. He thinks he’d take the bairn and crash his head against a wall. Perhaps. He pictures it and it does scares him, which is good, isn’t it? He’s not all teeth. When he thinks of killing a baby, one he sired, there’s something in him that recoils. Wouldn’t Albus be proud? But still, Albus is his. He’d crawl inside his womb himself if he could. Odd thinking, but his head hasn’t been right for years now. And Albus’ scent is making him madder.

There’s too, in him, what rejoices at the thought. Get him pregnant. Change him. Watch him swell in a way Gellert never managed to do. He’s stirred and he can’t keep his hands off Albus and when they part there’s blood on the Omega’s lips and between his thighs.

Three weeks pass. It’s undeniable now, no matter how much Albus appeals to his age. He will go into heat and soon. And though it’s Albus who suffers it, moaning, whimpering, running a fever that rises as the night approaches, Tom feels the rawness of it in his own bones. Like an ache behind his teeth. His cock stays half hard throughout the day and his knot is a painful weight at its base. He never felt like this before.

Two days earlier he asked:

“Did he fuck you while you were in heat?”

Albus looked away. It was all the answer he needed. When the Omega asked him to bring suppressants Tom pretended not to hear. Gellert doesn’t get to taste something from which Tom doesn’t partake as well.

Albus cries, begs. Tom missed his tears and his pain. Is he a child wearing his Father’s clothes? When he covers Albus’ body with his own and licks the slick on his thigh, he’s half mad with rut himself. He doesn’t carry any unwanted name and he knows nothing of the world but his own right to claim that which lays open for him. His power so vast it’s a thrill in itself. Please, Albus calls, finally humbled, finally unmade, inside, inside, please! He mounts Albus and pulls his hair until he screams in pain and that scream he swallows with a bloody kiss. All of his body used to punish Albus and to mark him, too. He feels hale. This is what Gellert robbed him off, this is a testament of his might – he pulls Albus’ hips up and drives into him, again and again, as the Omega cries and begs him to go slower, to be gentler, even as he spills his barren seed across his belly. His cock doesn’t bother Tom as much now that he knows how nonthreatening it is. Tom’s mind only clears a little as the knot forms and Albus’ hole milks him, wanton, greedy. Bite marks all over Albus’ chest and shoulders and neck. Tom licks the blood and begins again.

It goes on for three days. He fucks Albus two dozen times in that period, stopping only to drink water, to eat something that isn’t Albus blood. Albus faints a few times but that doesn’t deter him. He grows warmer still, having him so prone.

When it ends he bathes Albus, cleans the blood from his body, washes away the sweat, the slick, the semen. Untangles and brushes his hair. The Omega hums, his head against Tom’s chest, submissive, half-awake.

-//-

A frown between those red eyebrows. It’s the fourth day, Albus’ blues eyes unclouded, Tom’s rut gone. He wants to tell Albus to cease whatever guilt is brewing – they’ll do this again. He can’t have Albus taking suppressants anymore. This is something he’s learned that belongs to him, untainted by Gellert. He knows, truly knows, what is like to be an Alpha now. It feels like an armour and a new name.

“I’m sorry,” Albus says again. Like after Tom first fucked him.

“Don’t be.” Tom presses the pad of his finger against the frown, eases it away. “I liked it. You did too.”

Albus closes his eyes. The tears there, once more. Now Tom is the one frowning.

“Say it.”

Albus bites his lip.

“I liked it.” He whispers.

--//--

How it shifts, unused, this axis in him. It doesn’t take the retching that morning, or the following one; forty years he’s spent trying to be mind alone but flesh takes its toll. He’s attuned to it now, and knows.

A fitting punishment for being weak, for desiring Tom, for allowing himself to be desired back. I liked it. In the mirror after the washes his mouth he sees, for the first time in ages, that beauty Tom alluded to: his skin is healthier, rosy even, his hair shinier. He remembers his mother looking prettier than ever when she carried Ariana. Perverted old man, he thinks, whore.

He doesn’t tell Tom, though his window of opportunity to do so is closing fast. Wonders (hopes?) his body, aged, thin, battered, will make the choice for him. But the days pass and it continues to germinate – it, because he can’t bring himself to call it anything else. Not yet.

--//--

After saying his piece, Gellert examines him. Snow has started to fall and it melts, tiny drops of it, on Albus’ hair. Albus wants, for a moment, to find the same relief Gellert did in confessing, in accusing, in sharing the grief of the years. They always understood each other perfectly, though coming from different mother tongues, as if they made their own, that summer. And it evolved to become a sharp, bitter dialect. Still, one that is familiar, one they speak fluently. They’re two old lions of the same pride, they have seen the same killing, they tasted the same meat. They were once cubs together, as it were.

Gellert’s eyes widen and he laughs.

“Oh, Albus. I’d pity you if I had it in me to pity.”

“I’ll take your scorn instead, old friend. Pity won’t do much good for either of us.”

“Not scorn. Bewilderment. Amusement. And curiosity too. How will you talk your way out of that one, I wonder.” he pauses, and his expression is almost clean of resentment. “How far along?”

“Nine weeks, give or take.”

“And yet you came expecting to duel me. Did you hope the strain of fighting would solve that growing problem of yours?”

“I considered it, to be honest. But no, I don’t think I would’ve let you make that decision for me, in the end. I was never one to shy away from my responsibilities.”

“When we were young, you used to drink that horrid potion every morning after I left your bed. Do you remember? I was glad for it, back then. I was sixteen, of course I didn’t want to be saddled with a child, being a child myself.” he looks away, his voice a tad softer now. “But over the years I did wonder. What would have happened if you hadn’t taken it so religiously. If you had forgotten, one day.”

Now they’re both imagining it. Useless experiment.

“Gellert I--” Albus approaches him. Kisses him, on the cheek. “You never told Tom. You never told anyone. Thank you for keeping my secret. And I’m sorry.”

The Alpha smiles and for a moment Albus thinks he’ll say he’s sorry too. But he only touches Albus’ cheek, gazes at his belly.

“You’re fucked, old friend. That viper in your bed won’t share, even with his own blood. You know that, don’t you? The way adolescent lions sometimes kill their own baby brothers.” he takes his hand away. His words have no bite left. “Pregnancy suits you, Albus. You look beautiful. I’m sure the child will be beautiful, too.”

--//--

Tom wakes up, still weak from the Horcrux. Albus dozes next to him but opens his eyes slowly, feeling the shift in the bed. They rearrange their bodies until Tom can lay his head against Albus’ navel. Tense flesh underneath. Fecund silence. Tom tries to discern movement under Albus’ skin. Some proof of life besides the change in his scent. But it’s still too early. If he pulls it out it will be a handful of blood, not even formed. He’d be doing it a favour too, sparing it from this world. But Albus would be sad. And if he was a baby he’d like to be born to be reared by Albus. To meet him and inherit his power.

He doesn’t know what he feels. With the Horcrux he’s rooted in life like he wasn’t before, where life could be taken from him like a stolen trinket. Is this a form of rooting, too? The poor man’s immortality. Any man can fuck a bitch and leave a trace of himself for posterity.

He closes his eyes. Albus gently caresses his hair. Maybe if the brat has Albus’ red hair he won’t hate it too much. Maybe if Albus is right and there’s in him that with which to make a father. He doubts it, but compared to the ones he knew he might not be so bad. Maybe.

Albus’ body makes him warm at last. All he knows is the hand caressing his hair, lulling him back to sleep.

[kaihuntrr]

Sea Prince: 2024 Plans!

Hello hello! No new art for now (currently I’d like to focus on my personal OCs before I settle back in to drawing things for the AU) but I got some lovely updates for the future- likely the rest of the year, actually!

I will say- thank you all so much for your support and love for the fic, even if it’s barely begun! There’s so, so much in store for this AU you won’t even believe it!

It’ll be a long post, so here’s the TLDR; Act One is complete, it only needs to be edited and beta read! + Act Two is currently in production

Thank you all so much <3 now, unto the nitty-gritty below!

First things first, how is the AU faring?

I wrapped up the entirety of Act One in November (you could say the second half of TSP was my Nanowrimo, as I wrote about 48-51k words that month- and Act One sits pretty at 112k!) and currently my good partner in crime @mewhoismyself is editing Chapter 20! We’re starting back up after the new year celebrations, and I’m happy to say we’re pretty rested and hyped to present Act One’s entirety! The schedule is the same as always (chapter every other week) just to keep a good distance between where you guys are at and where we’re at, so no sudden hiatuses!

As a treat, here are the chapter titles for the posts after the upcoming one! I feel I’d be spoiling the surprise if I announce the title now.

OH! And Act Two has officially started production!

I am currently in the process of writing the prologue (I’ve mapped out the timeline of Act Two during my December break), and it’s exciting to say the least.

Of course I can’t share any details (wouldn’t want to spoil anything ;) ) but I’m excited for you to get here!

My goals for this year is to complete Act Two and Three!

Mostly just working on Act Two and bullet out Act Three (at this point, I am aware of roughly everything that will happen from Act One to Five) so that’s fun!

Another question- will the other Life Series be canon (ie. Secret Life)?

I mean, prooobably? This is a pretty lengthy fic so I can imagine some hints/ easter eggs could be fine but I’m focusing more on the first four series (and personally I wasn’t super into Secret Life, but that’s just a me thing, not a plot thing)

I’m considering doing that Flower Husbands AU for Secret Life, but for now I want to focus on this AU and the four series it’s based on.

Here’s a random fun fact that I’m a bit miffed about but I’m sure will be worth the payoff- I love, love Scott and Pearl’s dynamic in this fic a LOT (god forbid the four playlists I made for this AU and one of them is JUST those two.) but you don’t see their dynamic until a certain point. grrr.

Not sure if I’ll ever have these playlists go public, but if you’d want to hear em let me know and I’ll switch em on!

So yeah, that’s all for now! I hope everyone is just as excited as I am, and I cannot wait to show you what’s behind these curtains. See you in the next chapter!

[neuromedical]

I started learning regional blocks last week. We do mainly the cervical plexus block and the axillary block, and I’d also like to learn the popliteal block for lower leg surgeries (mainly amputations) as it seems to help really well with phantom pains. It’s actually a lot of fun, I never thought I’d be interested in regional anaesthesia... And I never thought I’d be able to do all this in my current hospital.

From what I’ve heard about anaesthesia residents in other hospitals, they don’t really do central lines very often, epidurals (other than on pregnant women), or regional blocks. Some of them don’t even get to intubate for a long time, relying mainly on LMAs. I... can’t imagine that. Sure, our head consultant literally threw us in at the deep end and it is stressful at times, but six months after starting I am somewhat confident at doing many things myself (and without ultrasound - yes, I know that things like central lines and art lines are supposed to be done under the ultrasound but our head consultant is strictly against that so... You know, what if there was no electricity all of a sudden. Or something.).

I am also... exceedingly tired. This year started with a fucking bang. January has lasted two months at least. The days when I’m not in the OR are extremely tiring, because I still struggle with writing up patients and it takes me a long time sometimes, I’m also on cardioversion duty, and the preop assessment duty (thankfully not alone). All that takes a lot of time. Then someone calls me to start a dialysis (we put together our own dialysis sets so I had to learn that very early), someone else calls me to watch as they’re doing something I haven’t done yet... God forbid there is a tracheostomy to do, then I have to do anaesthesia for that as well. And we’re a TINY hospital compared to others, I have no idea how doctors in other hospitals do it... And if I happen to be in the OR it’s also extremely exhausting, because I am still very new to that so it takes a lot of thinking and doing. (Also - sevorane leaks. That’s enough to make anyone tired.) And now that I’m learning the regional anaesthesia, it takes a lot of energy to focus on that as well.

All in all, I’m not complaining, it’s all very fun and I absolutely love this job. But oh my god I just had to get it out. Also next week I’m starting with the 13hr shifts. Which scares me as well. And I will be even more tired. I don’t know when I’ll get my energy back but seeing other healthcare workers... it might be never :’)

[zynart]

whispering to the ghost in the machine, asking it to paint me a pretty picture

i know we're all probably annoyed by and exhausted of AI art discourse by now, which is understandable, because there's a lot of people there who have dug in deep without having much of an idea of how any of it all works. i can say that it is genuinely very annoying how some people in tech with no artistic sensibilities who don't know enough to know how little they know but bring a lot of unearned confidence to the table anyway. i can say that they are very annoying on twitter and often have no real taste. but i want us, just for a moment, to go back to even just... about a year ago, and what you knew of AI art at the time. there's been communities using AI art for a couple of years now, circles on twitter where some of it started as hobbyists and even meme pages which posted the computer's amusing responses based on its wonky contextless interpretation of prompts. that was when art generating AI tools weren't all that good and we could all be amused not just by being able to visualize funny scenarios or interesting aesthetics, but of catching a glimpse of how this alien computer with a rudimentary grasp of text and a mechanically gifted child's understanding of composition actually 'thought'. and that was fascinating as much as it was funny

remember that? but then AI art tools advanced so quickly that our relationship with it as something that occasionally came across the tl changed. back then it was still mostly hobbyists, people who also found watching a machine think and paint to be interesting, and people who did mostly have a certain artistic curiosity to be playing around with this weird and novel tool. but then all of a sudden tech people discovered it and then all we saw was people who made their livings off of hype and marketing and linkedin platitudes and razzle dazzle for venture capital, and the kind of people who followed those people and imagined themselves as one day being like them, the kind of people who saw this as just another bodyhack to get around an inability to draw things. and then the kind of people in their orbit, who like drawing high fantasy and video game elves with huge boobs

and all of it somehow felt like a symptom of a wider anti-intellectual and anti-sophistication monoculture, like disney strongarming cinemas into starving out original IP and well-made middlebrow blockbusters while nerds insist that dominating mainstream pop culture isn't enough and that they be feted for their taste, god forbid martin scorsese criticize the newest thor movie. and it's like marvel for the cinephiles and rupi kaur for the poets and YA for the writers, seeing the art most in public consciousness and receiving the most attention and coverage — even if it's not exactly rave reviews, it's still all the oxygen in the room — is just godawful, and there are so many artists more deserving

(i mean, it's almost a cliche at this point that people in tech will see a domain that has a lot of thought and study behind it and think the difficult questions within the domain are just somehow things nobody had thought of before, instead of things people who devoted their lives to the area and are no less smart than any of you had engaged with and not been able to find an easy solution to. any of us working in the humanities know what i'm talking about here, so i get the frustration of how all this comes with associations to a tech dude approach that everything is optimizable through a process for efficiency and that the deep body of work, thought, critique, and practice that it takes to develop taste and intuition and domain knowledge can somehow be bypassed if only the people working on it had just thought of this shortcut, which they just were too dumb to have considered before —)

wait, i'll give a little context about myself first, because i know that at least a good fraction of my readers are approaching this with skepticism, assuming that someone taking AI art seriously must be some kind of artless stem person. and i mean, i'm not gonna pretend that my art is good, but i can say art is something i think deeply about and have much interest in, that i follow closely and read criticism and theory, something that i don't take lightly. that i don't think just anyone can do well, that i think takes not just talent but thought. more written art than visual in my own art, but an endless all-consuming fascination with weird new mediums and the kinds of themes you might expect from someone whose blog homepage is black and neon color schemes with consolas body text with a list of projects made over quarantine that includes 1) several essays about internet culture, 2) a virtual date night generator so you could be long-distance and still travel to cities, events, art shows, concerts, beach bonfires, fireworks shows... 3) travel-blogging in lockdown with hq walking tours on youtube, high-dose thc for immersion, audio calls as friends to walk with and the screenshot button as my camera, 4) a digital apartment space on gather, made specifically for parties where you can stay in rooms but chat to people if you go up to them, 5) a text-based game with some poems and a hacky premise about an AI recording your brain, and 6) a magical realism short story about a climate post-apocalypse

but thing is. alright, let's return to the hobbyists, and how fast AI art was developing. and very soon watching with much amusement the machine try to understand you and draw you a little painting all proudly without realizing it made no sense at all turns into learning how to whisper to the machine and getting some intuition of it and figuring out exactly how to set up the machine to produce some very specific image from your mind. i've followed AI art circles and there are artists using technology as tools in their process who have a lot of insightful points that have clearly thought deeply and respectfully about it who have plenty to say

but discourse has never really gone for insight, so what gets traction is often dumb statements from tech randos who don't know the first thing about what makes good art good art or how to recognize artistic value, or arguments from people who don't know anything about how AI works or even what the technology is and think that they make collages from actual phrases or actual chunks of pixels across the internet. lots of made-up bullshit like the collage memes* pictured earlier where the creator made a collage themselves as an example of how AI art works, or viral posts of disinformation which takes output from faceapp-style AI tools which produce output from a given photo side by side with the original as proof of a search-and-collage mechanism

(this is the collage meme in question. the collage image given as an example of AI art is something this creator made, not an AI art product, because that's now how it works)

which isn't how it works at all. but i think i should explain how it actually does work before we go ahead.

there's an old joke now about AI or machine learning basically being just a glorified logistic regression or matrix multiplication and the thing is, it's more true than it's not. AI being basically like a billion equations that learns which output of a cluster of pixels is most accurately represented by which equation to look like whatever thing the keyword is, and learns the equations to combine those equations to most accurately give out whatever bunch of keywords and grammar the prompt is. math that says an equation where you input this. not collaging anything or even having access to any of the original art (you can find a more thorough explanation by an AI artist here)

and just to reiterate that. because a lot of people seem to have no idea how it works and seem to think it's kind of a web crawler, or a 'spider' in old school terms, that basically does a search of a big library of images and pastes them together in a mashup (sometimes in amusing ways, like recently when there was a movement to flood artstation with anti-AI images with big red slashes on them, out of an impression that AI is literally searching artstation and collaging recent pieces fitting the keywords which would make this sabotage all the art machines, and people in the AI art community posted images they'd generated to also have big red slashes with joking captions about the anti-AI slashes working and ruining all the tools. if you saw either side of this little hubbub but didn't know what exactly was going on, now you've got some backstory)

the thing is, i think ultimately this approach of trying to confuse people about what AI art does obscures what ultimately makes human stories or art unique. which is having interiority and a mental model, the lack of which gives you an uncanny valley. the whole thing imo obscures what actually makes human created stories or art unique and interesting, which is that interiority and a consistent mental model. the lack of which means AI art can have a real uncanny valley effect even when it achieves a lot of technical precision

the training-and-regressions process that created AI art generators is why it can know roughly how big a hand is supposed to be in scale to whatever else is being drawn, and it can know fingers are a bunch of bars of light and dark color next to each other, so it can output a bunch of alternating bars fit inside a certain sized area by taking the equations for those things, but it doesnt have any mental model about how a hand should look or why a hand would be a certain way or even really what a hand is, just a ton of regression results. same for how people constantly say the white squiggles that look like signatures proves that its collaging paintings which have signatures on them when its never an actual signature of a person, its just that the equations to most accurately represent a painting often notice that paintings have little squiggles where a signature would be and so include a little squiggle in the equations

and once again a human with interiority would know that having a random squiggle in the corner of a painting actually makes no sense bc it serves no actual purpose, but the AI doesnt know what signatures were or why they're there. because it has no interiority, no conscious experience, no sense of self or its place in the world in relation to other things, no mental model of how things go together and why.

The point is the doing of them, rather than the accomplishments There is no actor but the action, there is no experiencer but the experience An artist’s expression, is his soul made apparent. His schooling as well as his `cool’ being exhibited. Behind every motion the music of his soul is made visible. Otherwise his motion is empty. The Tao of Jet Kunedo – Bruce Lee

i feel like with any new tool or medium, the way you make good art is by exploring its actual unique capabilities. so a lot of the best AI art have an "under the skin" (as in the movie) type of vibe and a sense of alienness or eldritch aspects, a sense of making art using a medium where its inner workings is inherently unknowable unlike how artists like filmmakers or photographers or painters can learn the actual characteristics of their tools, like how different film stocks produce different aspects or which kind of lighting setups create a certain effect or which type of lens or setting to use or which kinds of paint are reflective vs matte or hold their color best or whatever. and that aspect as a mirror of current technology and AI itself as it advances beyond our actual understanding of it or its effects

as opposed to the uninspired trash posted by a lot of unimaginative silicon valley tech bros or big tiddy anime girl lovers or gamers or like, sahil bloom. because people who dont actually know about or think about or understand art doesnt get the whole concept of mediums and their capabilities, or understand the evolution of art or its role in broader society. all like just a futuristic version of how retvrn accounts who drool over like tacky ass marble greek pillars around a pool in a miami drug dealer's mansion or see some random english cottage that was cookie-cutter even when it was built are all people who have an absolute loathing of abstract art or modernist architecture or surrealism or anything like that because their only conception of art is "does it look superficially nice (according to my super basic sensibilities)" and dont have the imagination or curiosity or brain cells to understand any more than that, in that they dont really have any sense of the place of new technological tools in art to make anything good. so its just hack shit like mediocrity

(okay, maybe i'm being a jerk here. there are absolutely people who i think deserve much scorn — for something related, see my post on 'book lovers' and how much of book twitter or booktok seem to actively hate books and be proud of hating classics or literature or the hard work of actually appreciating literature — but there's definitely people in there who are probably pretty nice and are just excited about being able to make something that they find pretty, which they couldn't before. that's kinda sweet, maybe. and they didn't really intend their posts to contribute to an overall milieu of a groan-worthy moment in art. maybe they were just posting it themselves the same way i post stuff like "haha look at this cool rock i saw on the way to work today". it's not really their fault that they don't have particularly refined taste or a clearly defined idea of artistic sensibilities and preferences, because we all have limited time in our lives and allocate that time according to what interests us, and maybe someone who likes a pretty painting by the computer just spends their time on other things closer to their interests than me reading books and art shit. i may complain about it but i don't want to be a jerk about this, and i'll try reserve my ire to people with an actual platform posting their garbage instead of everyday randoms)

but returning to things that are specific to the medium, and the element of using a black box as your oils and canvas and clay and camera. even something like prompt engineering isnt just telling the computer what you want, its trying to figure out the inner workings of the tool by going into it blind. almost like if you had zero knowledge of what a camera was or what was inside it and had to try dismantle it and reverse-engineer what this contraption or this gadget was or what the lens being this place does or how film works and why it gives pictures but similar cylinders or similar salts dont. why the film has to be film specifically and not something of the same shape or similar substances if you're unaware of the chemistry of photosensitive silver salts, why the lens has to be an exact way and not just any round flat see-through glass if you're unaware of the concept of how lenses bend light or the laws of refraction. or why a photo taken in a certain angle or certain lighting exposure might look bad vs what you need to take a good picture, or why you want to use a certain kind of lens for portraits or for landscapes, or why something darker colored photographs poorly, or why the moon can look amazing to the eye but look terrible in a camera when certain other things look the same both to the eye and in a camera, and so on

something different from other mediums/tools is that making the art itself is an exploratory process, that in many ways its physically impossible for any human to ever learn the inner workings of the equipment beyond just a very broad sense because we cant actually ever learn like a billion components no matter how much you try, and there can never be an encyclopedia or a body of work that gives you full expertise in it so each individual artist's entire body of work is their entire body of knowledge and each person's is completely unique, that the same inputs may not give you the same outputs so its impossible to mechanistically predict which means that being able to precisely recreate something is impossible the way you can in theory precisely create a painting or photograph as it exists in your original intention — not always for something like photography because you have action shots and stuff, but we're talking about the actual physical realities of what's possible in the medium so being able to exactly replicate a still life of a rock or a portrait is possible with sufficient mastery — which means that the creation process will always require a sense of just intangible Vibes

i described my blog earlier, but i want to return to themes that interest me. i love themes of alienation and loneliness, finding hope in despair, technology as a force that might free us in the small scales but subsumes us on the grand ones. i'm fascinated by questions of whether subjective experiences that still feed inputs into our brains is any more or less "real" because the process that created the stimuli is different: how meaningfully different is it that i experienced paris, not just photographs or tourist traps but walking through narrow streets and listening to street musicians, through a screen and headphones and sometimes but not always facilitative substance use? would someone a hundred years ago given the same tools not view it as having explored paris through some magical form of spiritual transportation or astral projection? would they consider themselves as having been to paris, while i cheapen my own experience by insisting it didn't really matter because spending hours walking through those streets wasn't material enough? will this way of thinking feel as strange to someone in the near-future to whom the line between the 'real' and the digital world is much less present or relevant?

and i think the line between the technological eldritch of the internet, the art of people as mediated through the technological medium, and the material world is already blurred for me — or it almost is, but some part of me won't let it and will discredit some as less real than others, and some part of me will dispute why i think that way because by any metric that matters they are equally important, like why do i view internet friends i haven't met yet as "less real" than friends i've met in person even if we were much less close and shared much less, and even if 95% of my communication with my real-life friends is still on the same chats and texts and apps as my online friends, so why

and so on —

see, the genuinely spooky and interesting thing about current AI tools on the more abstract and higher level of things, that what so much of the research with GPT and so on is trying to do is probe at the nature of consciousness as an emergent phenomenon. the hard problem of consciousness, whether consciousness or sentience or qualia is something that will form itself once any entity has sufficient intelligence, or once you have a network of neurons that's big enough, because there's an assumption that human consciousness itself is an emergent phenomenon from the right environment of intelligence.

AI art tools are far too specialized to actually give insight on this, the way that they might be trying to figure out with GPT and deepmind and stuff. AI art tools are what i said earlier, glorified matrix multiplications and a gajillion regressions that learnt patterns associated with patterns. but developments in AI are linked to each other, just by the nature of how these get made, and developments in more generalized AI will be used to develop finer and finer new generations of AI art models

i do think the rapid rate of progress, the pioneering, the developing familiarity with an unknown entity that's constantly itself changing and growing, the constant calibration and recalibration of intuition, it's all part of being into AI art at this point. or at least of being seriously into it, like a lot of the original AI artists i described before. and i think that is fascinating

anyway. all this reminds me of something from one of my favorite books. i'm not going to name it here to not spoil it, but the narrator and key characters are a type of entity created by humans and seen by human as not having souls in the same sense that humans do, because humans can't create souls, of course. but being able to know this for sure is a big question, and what humans decide on as the way to tell if these figures have souls is through their art. the idea that art would reveal the soul, that you need a soul to be able to make real art:

"She told Roy that things like pictures, poetry, all that kind of stuff, she said they revealed what you were like inside. She said they revealed your soul." ... "You said it was because your art would reveal what you were like. What you were like inside. That's what you said, wasn't it? Well, you weren't far wrong about that. We took away your art because we thought it would reveal your souls. Or to put it more finely, we did it to prove you had souls at all. That was why we collected your art. We selected the best of it and put on special exhibitions. In the late seventies, at the height of our influence, we were organising large events all around the country. […] 'There, look!' we could say. 'Look at this art! How dare you claim these children are anything less than fully human?' Oh yes, there was a lot of support for our movement back then, the tide was with us.""

and as a companion text, i'll quote david chalmers from the seminal paper "the hard problem of consciousness":

The really hard problem of consciousness is the problem of experience. When we think and perceive, there is a whir of information-processing, but there is also a subjective aspect ... there is something it is like to be a conscious organism. This subjective aspect is experience. It is widely agreed that experience arises from a physical basis, but we have no good explanation of why and how it so arises. Why should physical processing give rise to a rich inner life at all? It seems objectively unreasonable that it should, and yet it does. If any problem qualifies as the problem of consciousness, it is this one. In this central sense of "consciousness", an organism is conscious if there is something it is like to be that organism, and a mental state is conscious if there is something it is like to be in that state.

We know that conscious experience does arise when these functions are performed, but the very fact that it arises is the central mystery. The usual explanatory methods of cognitive science and neuroscience do not suffice. These methods have been developed precisely to explain the performance of cognitive functions, and they do a good job of it. But as these methods stand, they are only equipped to explain the performance of functions. When it comes to the hard problem, the standard approach has nothing to say. These are simply the wrong sort of methods: nothing that they give to us can yield an explanation. To account for conscious experience, we need an extra ingredient in the explanation. This makes for a challenge to those who are serious about the hard problem of consciousness: What is your extra ingredient, and why should that account for conscious experience?

At the end of the day, the same criticism applies to any purely physical account of consciousness. For any physical process we specify there will be an unanswered question: Why should this process give rise to experience? Given any such process, it is conceptually coherent that it could be instantiated in the absence of experience. It follows that no mere account of the physical process will tell us why experience arises. The emergence of experience goes beyond what can be derived from physical theory. The facts about experience cannot be an automatic consequence of any physical account, as it is conceptually coherent that any given process could exist without experience. Experience may arise from the physical, but it is not entailed by the physical.

The moral of all this is that you can't explain conscious experience on the cheap. The tempting induction from [applications of biological science to physical processes of living beings] fails in the case of consciousness, which is not a problem about physical structures and functions. Given that reductive explanation fails, nonreductive explanation is the natural choice. In physics, it occasionally happens that an entity has to be taken as fundamental. Fundamental entities are not explained in terms of anything simpler. Instead, one takes them as basic, and gives a theory of how they relate to everything else in the world. I suggest that a theory of consciousness should take experience as fundamental. We know that a theory of consciousness requires the addition of something fundamental to our ontology, as everything in physical theory is compatible with the absence of consciousness. More likely, we will take experience itself as a fundamental feature of the world, alongside mass, charge, and space-time. If we take experience as fundamental, then we can go about the business of constructing a theory of experience.

We know no set of physical properties can constitute experience, for familiar reasons. But perhaps some quite alien property might do the job ... a "hidden dimension" of space which enables the existence of consciousness. I suspect that such a property has to be hidden, as an empirically adequate theory can always be cast in terms of structure and dynamics that are compatible with the absence of experience. It seems that the new dimension will either (a) be epiphenomenal to the other dimensions (or at least to the projections of those dimensions that we have access to), or (b) related to them as a "realizing" property, carrying the structure in one of these dimensions and making it real. The latter would be compatible with the idea of turning the hard problem "upside down", on which physical reality is itself somehow derivative on underlying experiences ... on which the fundamental (proto)experiences are part of the causal order.

Some of the most intriguing pieces speculate about the shape of a fundamental theory of consciousness. Many of these proposals invoke some form of panpsychism ... making a case against the existence of fundamental laws that connect consciousness to mere complexity, to aspects of functioning, or to biological properties ... and makes a strong case for an integrated view of nature, on which consciousness is not a mere tacked-on extra. Given that the physical domain is a closed causal network, the next choice is that between views which put experience outside this network, with physical laws that make experience epiphenomenal, or put experience inside this network by having the intrinsic properties of matter be proto-experiential. The latter offers the most attractive and integrated view, if the "combination problem" can be solved.

truth is though, i'm a skeptic about whether we'll ever be able to create consciousness. it's something i genuinely doubt, but i think the possibility is legitimately interesting. if art examines the world as it is and as it could be, and our hopes and anxieties, and the cultural moment and counter-moment and zeitgeist and reaction, then i think that in a world where we're all billions of us nodes in a permanently connected system, ourselves probing the very nature of consciousness by trying to create brains in the mainframe, those are themes worth exploring with art. and the tools that are deeply intertwined with these questions by their nature, tools where the creation process itself is engaging with those themes, have their unique place in letting us

i know that the superabundance pandora's box of AI art tools does mean that any given artwork is much less likely to survive the ages the way that defining artworks of previous moments in time have come down to us, but maybe we just haven't had that first Great artwork in the genre yet, who knows? and even if we don't, does that matter — does the ephemeral nature of art as reflecting the ephemeral nature of everything on the internet and in the internet age, everything both superabundant and super-rare, permanent and nonexistent, trillions of pieces of content most of which all fade within moments, fleeting interactions, distance passions, broken urls, myspace, geocities, forums lost to servers going offline, every single line from years of conversation archived in every chat window but rarely re-read, blocked friends, deleted account friends, the coming point where more facebook profiles belong to the dead than to the living, twitter main characters of the day, gorgeous art that we look at for 3 seconds before keeping on scrolling, streaming services that disappear their own libraries. does that mean that the moments when we see art that touches us matter, and the way they touched us and how they made us feel, all that matters even if we may not remember it later

here's one AI painting i really liked. it's probably not a good representation of the current state of AI art with prompt specifications and stuff because it's from quite a while back, from the days i mentioned at the start of this essay when AI art tech wasn't as good as it is now and all AI generations had a certain bizarre feel to them. but still, this is art i think about often and which clearly had some effect on me

@ images_ai on twitter

i do find what AI art reveals about how the machine ‘thinks’ to be interesting too, sometimes:

@ ai_curio on twitter

AI art tools, as the specific subset of AI we're talking about here, has no real connection to adjacent research that aims to find an artificial general intelligence and investigate the possibility of emergent consciousness in massive digital brains, with large language models like gpt/chatgpt. but i think it's inevitable that developments in generalized AI will inevitably feed into each new generation of AI art tools. language models to to help it interpret prompts more accurately, to parse context better, to understand connotations, or higher-level discoveries about intelligence and the inner workings of the mind to learn things like to develop distinctive style, maybe… who knows. i don't

"An artist’s expression, is his soul made apparent. Behind every motion the music of his soul is made visible."

"Your art would reveal what you were like. What you were like inside. That’s what you said, wasn’t it? Well, you weren’t far wrong about that. We took away your art because we thought it would reveal your souls. Or to put it more finely, we did it to prove you had souls at all."

if art is expression and communication, something that reveals the soul. something intangible, indescribable, intuitive. an artist attuned enough can take meaning from the work

(i'm not attuned, but i once spent three hours staring at a rothko painting and i could've sworn i felt soul in it, and i can't explain why. i couldn't put it in words. but i don't think the power of art is all some kind of placebo effect, just because i can't put it in words)

you can tell from the earlier quoted paper on consciousness that i genuinely have no idea where AI research probing into the workings of generalized intelligence and the nature of consciousness and qualia as emergent phenomena will go and what it will find. i've admitted to being a skeptic. but i do think that the long constant watch for those first flickerings of consciousness if, whether justified or not, one of the grand themes of at least the 2020s if not a longer period in history that we'll only be able to contextualize after the fact but that we're definitely living through right now. and maybe even before we can understand or recognize it ourselves, the inner workings of the machine will begin to reveal themselves deep down, layers down. but i do think that maybe even before we can understand or recognize it ourselves, those first rumblings...

art speaks to the soul, right? art is the soul of the artist made apparent? the artist that's mastered the tool so that it creates an image as intended, so that what is communicated by that art is what the artist intended it to communicate. and that's what separates the AI artist from the casual, right?  the artist learns how to create their vision, the casual has an idea of what they want and is surprised by the result. creation vs commission. and that's what's worth taking seriously, the endeavor. building a relationship with the machine until you know what to say and how to say it for you to use the microchips as a chisel, equations as film

whispering to the ghost in the machine, coaxing it, understanding its quirks and lapses, learning just what to say so that it'll create what you want it to create. seeing how that changes, what you have to do differently as it grows. knowing that the machine is growing. gazing into the screen and finding the shape of what you tried to conjure, and if there are any other shapes or shadows of shapes, outlines or swells, that slowly begin to reveal itself, almost imperceptibly at first except by intuition. some sense of interiority. something distinct, that you know is distinct because you've worked out how to create your own expression, so if you see something else in there. something that reveals the blurry, lumbering shape of what could be the soul or the spirit, something that an artist might be able to pick up on before a programmer. any moment now. look closer

———

if you liked this, feel free to check out my other 'essays’ on internet/pop culture stuff on my homepage. here’s a selection:

· “book lovers” don’t love anything about books and it’s weird (or, defending classic novels)

· there are things we owe to each other

· i trained a neural net on 10,000 irony-poisoned tweets and it just gave me cringe?

· what makes someone good, bad, cancelled, or redeemed? i don’t know either!

· please tell me if you have a definitive answer on what makes someone a bad person

· ok, fine, my social justice politics feel a bit like religion sometimes and that’s ok

· after the deluge (short story) (dispatch from an island state post climate apocalypse)

[libidomechanica]

Untitled (“The coward does it with the hangman close of”)

A cinquain sequence

               I

Changing to rain. The coward does it with the hangman close of love, all my wooing is done.

               II

Perhaps his horse are doing! They think a murderer’s collar take his last look wanton-wise.

               III

The clocks stopped clock. The moon is bright in Autumn’s sky, and thence full many wanton thru the floor.

               IV

And cleanse his soul from Sin? Truth fails not; but her last word—’Oh. Quickened his step seemed light and Day?

               V

Is shining fronts, their uniforms were still. Whoever in Love’s fire that thou wilt be my ain.

               VI

So that was. Copartner of the sweet, than when flowers: but the only word I understood.

               VII

He that moment’s store five years of blood the whitewashed wall that he had to swing. Good Susan Gale.

               VIII

At the fire? Which Betty will not love’s fingers, and sorrows more than the sun did shine so cold.

               IX

By a doubtful spirit- voice, in that was all. And far, I am happy where you aren’t.

               X

All, or all away. Two lines of wake behind it on the lot of life in a new rhythm.

               XI

Hither the least one thieving thoughts will enter, healthy as tragedy. But she could them vphold.

               XII

With the autumn weather compelled my imaginary. Sing lullaby. And cleansed the Ground.

               XIII

Come bring young charms, which needes both use and art. Make accompt, unless your laughter, that I love.

               XIV

I wanna be your dreams to shame. Even the feature is a fresh and love comes back again.

               XV

I was passed in happy freedom by. Do thee shame, nor avarice, nor over- anxious care.

               XVI

With the Wound of our own mouths calling, Oh. Like two doomed ships that passed in happy freedom by.

               XVII

In happy freedom by.— Thus answered Johnny in his pocket bring it home.—Oh God forbid!

               XVIII

I never shed before eleven. Some faire booke doth find, with gilded girl who’s always was.

               XIX

She sits, between a bag of almost-stale croissants clenched in your hair. And around us lie?

               XX

Sun and moon builds its tower sisyphean project like a bee. Cry, Speak once more— thou lovest!

               XXI

If charmed verse or muttered prayers had power, with the windy sigh: the man had killed the door.

               XXII

The wind blows the rain.—As it were the dead. Her look out-flourish’d May: and having buried day.

               XXIII

Good of the swollen purple throat may think, the rein to give? My soul with sails of silver by.

               XXIV

They soundly slept the vow? Me—toll the silver by. Sought, a dream remember: the little girl?

               XXV

Does Man touch with grief they are, emblems mix with words that cruel father! Proving what I can give?

               XXVI

My life melts with too much thinking; thinke no more. The Shepherds as to Kings. He went back to look.

               XXVII

With sudden shock the prisoners’ cots and we have built our wall. Such valid reason no one there.

               XXVIII

It chanced your name to see. She’d seen the bed to what it touches. Says Betty, he’ll be spice.

               XXIX

And all that heard her cry, and the lampless Earth in which her idiot boy. Upon the air!

               XXX

And this sweet breath more sweet; but I never bleach. To join the living thing, of Johnny’s glory.

               XXXI

With open mouth he drank the sunlight not fooles in my own. Say thou dost love Truth and me.

               XXXII

I want to grow old and grey. The down, and should be, like life and fear, a dark reality.

               XXXIII

Like the Body and that he had quit, and through the wood. And the meadows in which were unjust.

               XXXIV

Is my Mother’s pocketbook. And, grumbling, cold, in thine armes, if learnd fame truth so foul a lie!

               XXXV

The first sight, as she wrought! Ah foolish tear, unlink’d with me. For the mountains high; such thy bloom!

               XXXVI

She hardly spare, unworthy things of Dove, a maid whom there was a theft. To thee, Cynara!

               XXXVII

I’ll tell me, Love within a mile, no hand to write in the dark. And under the mother’s face.

               XXXVIII

No more I know, I wish is understand. Haste, precious friend, and I sigh one another kiss.

               XXXIX

Stella, I say my Stella, should do long. If he is hurt in life or limb—oh God forbid!

               XL

Sometimes these cogitations still as a bar of iron. And Johnny do, I pray you do.

               XLI

And wondered why men knelt to pray who never will be out of prison walls suddenly seemed.

[piskinkk]

You know, family dinners are the worst. I wish so much that they were genuine and fun, but most of the time they are a game.

First round consists of everyone (well, in my case, mostly my uncle’s wife, my oldest cousin and her husband) going in a circle and asking you boring, uncomfortable questions - “How is Kyle? Will he be going to college?” and “have you decided which college you are going to?” “oh you chose a public university for the first two years - how come?!”

This round is just a warm-up to give you an understanding of what’s coming.

Anyways, round two is giving each other uncomfortable comments. Whoever makes you the most uncomfortable - wins. Great oldies that always work are:

“Wow you gained some weight. You know, that’s not very lady-like”

and my favorite,

“You know - Kyle should really go to college”

Thankfully, this round is pretty short.

Round three: Give the most unnecessary advices, that you didn’t ask for.

God forbid I become a family member like that. Shame on anyone who gives advices that no one asked for. I would never want to be that kind of person. I know I shouldn’t be the one saying this, but - learn to tame your mouth shut, guys; trust me, it will save you a lot of unnecessary conflicts and uncomfortable situations.

Everyone will try to teach you life lessons - why you shouldn’t go to an art school; why majoring in art is overall a stupid idea; why you and your high school boyfriend (well I guess ex for now) will never work out; why you should just settle on UMD;

God. Is there anything I could decide on my own? Or is everyone an expert in every field possible all of a sudden?

Like, did my cousin’s husband really have to argue with me about the benefits of going to UMD and majoring in arts there, instead of going to Maryland Institute College of ART?!

Yeah of course, because he would surely know much more about art schools than I, right? Even though he majored in physics or something like that…

I get it - MICA is expensive. But think logically - where would the quality of art courses be better - a private art school that only offers art majors or a state school that only offers one art major - a fine arts degree with just a concentration in graphic design?

Either way, what is this need to constantly try and convince me to do the things your way?

You guys make me want to rip my ears straight off my head. I don’t need anyone to tell me how risky getting a degree in art is - I am very well aware of it. But I am truly passionate about art. It’s not just a phase. I genuinely never get tired of creating art. I am not just getting a useless degree in fine arts. My goal is to monetize and apply my artistic skills in a way that would bring me lots of money.

Just because none of you dickheads majored in anything close to humanities, doesn’t mean no one else should.

I have to say, one thing that my friends and family have taught me is to never take advices from them. Nobody knows you situation or abilities. You are the only one to make these decisions, and you will be the only one to deal with their consequences.

So, if you will be making a decision - at least pick what you think sounds best.

Because in the end, it will suck to pick something you didn’t want to pick in the first place. It would suck to make a decision someone else made you pick. And it would suck even more to have to deal with the consequences of a decision you didn’t even want to take.

Maybe I’ll write a little book about this. This is only one of my reasons to “not give a fuck”.

I don’t care what my friends, family or peers say.

I think, nowadays too many people feel so entitled to my life. As though it’s like a TV show that they can comment on.

Guys, worry about your own life - I will figure mine all out on my own :)

No need to make comments I didn’t ask for. After all, we both know that when you do that, you are simply saying your own fears out loud. If I truly needed your advice or opinion - I would’ve asked :) But, knowing you, and how often you give out silly comments and advices - I wouldn’t even want to hear what you have to say :)

[holly-fixation]

An Astral Myth: Chapter 1

Summary: Cloud Strife is an engineering student at Midgar U, who decided to take art history as an elective because it was the only good option left. But when an assignment on an “obscure god” (nothing Shiva or he gets stabbed with an ice pick) causes repeated dreams of swirling pink clouds in a blue sky, Cloud has to find out what it means. And the best place to start: seeing the statue for himself. 

Inspired by this art by @hueyoart and the concept by @ehrenyu on Twitter.

Please Enjoy!

Junior year. Third year. Whatever it was called, Cloud could not believe he made it this far. Three years at Midgar University. Well, two and a half. He really thought he would fail by now, yet here he is, two years away from a degree in engineering design. This was a dream almost come true. He always loved to design all sorts of things. As a kid, he had this insane idea to build a sword made of smaller swords that fit together like Lego pieces. Of course, all of his attempts didn’t go well but his mother refuses to get rid of his only somewhat successful attempt made of cardboard, card stock, duct tape, and hot glue. Nowadays he designed more practical objects and helped out his various other friends in similar majors. Although Barret almost broke his arm after seeing how fantastical he made the simplest concepts. You need to chill the hell out, blondie! It’s the modern day, not the renaissance, man! Then Barret made him redesign all of his concepts for the team’s sanity. Oof, that was a bad day. 

But now he’s more than halfway there, just a few more engineering classes and...electives. Ugh. He hated electives. When they were related to his major, he cared and he tried. But these other, unrelated, useless to the real world electives...he rolled his eyes. What a waste of money. He tried, gods did he try, to take the easiest, most pointlessly simple class he could to fill the slot. And then they all got taken by the seniors, and the only class he could get into with ‘okay’ ratings was Art History: Analysis of Mythology. He was kind of interested in mythology. Who wasn’t? If it was all based off of things that aren’t real, it should be easy right?

Wrong. 

The class only had two assignments, which decided the entirety of the grade. If he failed one, he failed the class. Fairly high stakes, but it didn’t seem that bad, compared to his major classes which required multiple six-hour-assignments completed per week, until tonight. 

It was 11:45 PM, and he was smacked with the sudden realization he needed to submit his topic for the first paper. Hell, he suddenly remembered he was in this class. Gods forbid he got any rest tonight, gods forbid he hung out with his friends until 11:30 on a Sunday. Cracking his eyes open, he pulled his laptop into his lap and sat up in his bed, immediately clicking the class page. Maybe he was lucky, and this was one of the professors that made assignments due before lecture began?

Nope. Due date: Today, 11:59 PM. Fourteen minutes until submission closed.

Okay, the essay must be a research paper into an obscure or uncommonly studied god or goddess. “If any single one of you picks Ifrit for this assignment, I will fail you immediately.” His professor’s voice suddenly rang in his ears, spoken in lecture when assigning this a month ago. For extra credit, he could take a selfie with the statue of this god. Yeah right, not unless he’s desperate. Then he realized he forgot about this class, and that extra credit may keep his GPA up to standards. He sighed. So none of the Six. Got it. Maybe he’d get lucky if he checked archeology websites. He couldn’t care what this god was, as long as it was obscure enough. 

Maybe some god really was on his side. 

A month ago, archeologists discovered a shrine to a god named “Sephiroth”, supposedly some God of the Stars. Please have enough information publicly available, Cloud begged internally. 

Though the statue was recently discovered, many texts have been unearthed and translated throughout the last few years. Using a language similar to the Cetra, most of the legend of “Sephiroth and his Sacrifice” has been translated. This legend is available at this link. However, for all the information, most photos of the shrine itself were corrupted during digital rendering, and the current museum housing the main statue refuses to allow professional photos. 

Perfect, good enough. Cloud immediately wrote a response for the assignment, making sure to “paraphrase, not plagiarize, and quotes are for newspapers, not essays!” a five sentence backstory. Well, the two facts he could learn in two seconds with some nonsense about why he was interested. And now...submitted. 11:56 PM. He knocked the back of his head against the wall with a sigh of relief. 

...Shoot. Now he’s awake. The panic from his sudden realization forced his heart to race. So screw it. He decided to start his research tonight, collecting links for sources and taking sections of lore that seemed important, though he was barely skimming the passages and absorbing almost none of the words. His document was filling quickly, about a solid page and a half by the time he felt tired again. He glanced at the clock: 12:30 AM. He had his early class tomorrow. How the hell did he get stuck with an 8 AM in his junior year? 

He closed his laptop and placed it back on his desk before lifting up the covers and attempting an early sleep, tossing and turning until his subconscious finally took over.

He felt his eyes open, as if waking up from a peaceful dream, to the sight of swirling pink clouds, separated at the center and turning like the eye of a slow hurricane. 

Was he standing? Or floating?

He could almost feel a surface beneath his feet, but when he looked, there was no ground, just the ever present stirring of the pink puffs. 

Was he looking up? Or forward?

He found himself staring at the blue opening of sky, mesmerized, hypnotized, and...controlled. 

Had he made a single decision? Or was he pulled by invisible strings? 

By a red thread of fate? Or the clear strings of a puppet at every joint?

His thoughts quickly vanished, his attention captured. A tiny gold and white light shone in the center blue, tiny, like the stars in the night sky. But as he watched, it grew. It couldn’t be a star, it was too unbalanced, too many points of the spikey nature emitted from the bottom half. Then it got bigger. Grander and brighter, all consuming like the sun. Blocking out the sky and obscuring the shape. Capturing the clouds in its reaching rays. 

White. Blinding white devoured his sight. 

Suddenly he surged in pain, the seering of a blade ripping through his chest, through his back, deeper, and deeper, and Deeper, and Deeper.

Cloud jumped awake with a gasp and held his head and his heart, his breathing out of control and cold sweat dripping down the sides of his face. What the hell was that? It felt so real. He felt that blade tear through his body. What kind of nightmare was that?! He quickly grabbed at his phone and opened the screen. 4 AM. Maybe reading lore on some random god right before bed was a bad idea. Noted. Would not happen again. 

Well, he was awake, so he might as well check his messages before he passed out again. He opened his email app, deleted a few spam notifications, and saw an email from his professor. Alright, the god he picked was approved, so there was no going back now. He decided to officially start this essay tomorrow, and checked his various entertainment apps until he was tired enough to fall back asleep. 

* * * 

“You forgot you were in a class?” Barret almost slapped him in the back of the head for his stupidity. “How do you forget about an in person class?!”

Cloud scratched the back of his head and looked away as they both walked to their next class. “It only has a few deadlines, nothing popped up on the course page before the weekend, so I thought I was good,” He tried to defend. 

“You still go every week, right?!” He didn’t necessarily yell at the blonde, he was only loudly confused. 

“Yeah yeah, I do.” He adjusted his bag. “But he didn’t mention anything about it last week.”

Barret sighed, deciding to cool down the almost fatherly tone. “Look, Spiky, just don't overwork yourself. We still have a project milestone to finish!” Cloud let out a soft groan before Barret continued. “Just start it early. Twenty minutes a night should at least get you interested in this god essay.”

He sighed. “Gods I hope so. I’ll try it.”

“But you better be at the meeting tonight.”

“Of course I’ll be at the meeting tonight,” Cloud countered. “Haven't missed one yet.”

So, that was exactly what Cloud did: went to his lectures, got multiple hours of homework completed, and finished the night off with the team meeting before finally arriving back at his apartment. Once he was settled in and ate somewhat of a dinner, he was back at his desk to try to enjoy the small remainder of his night (if he planned on having a slightly okay sleep schedule). Then he remembered his conversation with Barret. Crap. 

He groaned to himself. Twenty minutes less of ‘him time’ wasted for this stupid essay. Maybe paraphrasing what he copied last night would be a good place to start. He opened his laptop with a pout, angrily opening the links he collected from the previous night and his current document. He took a breath before actively reading the text.

Sephiroth is an ancient God of the Stars, whose worshipers are currently unknown. Though, from carvings and surviving text, they clearly spoke a language similar to the Cetra. He is the son of Jenova, Goddess of the Cosmos, and is one of the few gods who remained completely loyal to their patronage. However, his father is still unknown.

So they’re space gods. Got it. He’d moogle if there was a specific difference between the cosmos and the stars later, and he noted that in his document before he continued. 

Ironically, despite their nature, there is no current mention of any constellation bearing either name. 

According to legend, Jenova came to our planet, Gaia, on a meteor dating back about 66 million years.

Oh come on, everyone knows that’s the meteor that killed the dinosaurs. And are they really claiming humans were around back then? He groaned again. He did not care about this useless parent, but every article on this god explained her origins. He guessed he didn’t have a choice. 

Translations and transcriptions differ greatly on the reason she came to Gaia. Some claim it was curiosity, stating we are one of the few planets with life in the cosmos. Others say she landed by accident, and our people accepted her as a new God, worshiping and praising as she wished. Though no written text agreed completely, they all claim she was strikingly beautiful and impossible to look away from, almost like the night sky. 

Were they really pretending humans were around to know that back then? 66 million years ago?

But Jenova’s presence or aura, carrying the weight of the cosmos, was too much for the planet to handle. Both the Lifestream and the oceans gravitated toward her like the moon. All types of plants, animals, fish, insects, and fungi suffered or completely died off as a result, even though she was not on the planet for long. 

The people of the planet, though we are unsure if they were human or some other species at the top of the food chain, asked the goddess to leave for the sake of their world. This is where conflict of translation and various sources comes up. This angered or some even just said annoyed her. She agreed to leave the planet after seven of our days. 

It’s claimed her retaliation for the disrespect were calculated diseases and mutations to plague the inhabitants, similar to how overexposure of mako happens extremely rare today. 

Good to know Shinra’s bribing them to keep things quiet. Cloud gave a quick shake of his head to remove the conspiracy theory going through his mind and return to the page before he had to re-read the entire section due to lack of focus. 

Yet other sources claim the effects were a result of her anger directly, even some claim she did not know she caused it at all.*

*This is where the language similarity to the Cetra gets difficult to translate, as we are still learning most Cetra scripts and these legend scripts are not completely identical to the Cetra language. We provide as many of the accepted translations as possible, but the most accurate translation has yet to be determined. 

Fantastic, so he either needed to copy every attempt at a translation or pick one and defend why he believed it was the most accurate, something he was not at all qualified to do.

Her reign was too large to maintain such minimal functions intentionally, her anger rarely ignited by any being to know how to handle the unconscious response. 

What was she, a robot? ‘Minimal functions’?

Every planet she visited was affected differently, so the people were not asking her to leave out of fear, but for the sake of their world. Seven days was too long. Their world was falling to her in only three. 

Then Gaia, the Goddess of our Planet, spoke to the other goddess and explained the results of her presence. Intentionally or not, Jenova was killing Gaia (both the planet and the goddess). The Planet made a deal with The Cosmos: to feed her curiosity, let her heal and then send a proxy when it was time. This proxy would be taught all the knowledge of herself and the creatures that called her being their home. Her people would be informed when the time came, and they would prepare for the proxy. Jenova agreed, on two conditions: Gaia must accept any proxy of her choice, and the people must obey her proxy unquestionably. 

Gaia agreed.

What could possibly go wrong?

With honor of their agreement, Jenova left the planet, and her virus stopped. Millenia of millenia passed before Gaia informed her people of the messenger’s title and coming arrival, with some reports dating back only 2,000 years ago. 

Oh for gods sake. Really? Were they honestly claiming this? Were humans walking around and completely ignoring this new god? Comparatively, compared to 66 million years, it was not that long ago. Oh come on.

Not once in Gaia’s billions of years of existence did she expect the cosmos to send the most cherished son: Sephiroth, God of the Stars, as the proxy of the cosmos. 

Alright, that’s enough for today. He’d finish this lore some other night. He wanted to enjoy the rest of his time, playing some games or watching some shows, or doing anything that wasn’t an assignment for once. Just to reach the page minimum faster, he looked for this statue that made this god known. He scrolled through this article: nothing. The next one: nothing. The third, fourth, and fifth: nothing. Why were there no photos? Even if the professional shots were only available through a museum pay wall, there should at least be some pictures and selfies on social media, right? 

Report: Is the new statue cursed? 

It sounded like clickbait and looked like a blog, but no other article explained this specific phenomenon, so he read on.

The original photos from the exposition were corrupted within the day, before printing or digital upload was possible. This was odd, but technically possible. However, even photos taken in the Midgar Museum of Natural History, where the statues are currently on display, are immediately ruined. Whether it’s a flash from some ancient technology or some kind of spell, every photo taken results in a bright shine from the halo, the same effect as taking a picture of the sun. 

Halo?

We should probably explain what the statue looks like.

That would be very helpful.

The most interesting and popular statue, “Reunion”, depicts Sephiroth and his Sacrifice, and is based off of one of the final scenes of the legend. Sephiroth’s upper torso and face resemble a human’s, but his legs are six perfect angel wings, and his right arm is a deformed wing holding a sword. He has two halos emitting from his center like a throne, and his long hair flows up through them. Many observers state the beauty of the statue, especially Sephiroth himself. As for his sacrifice, he’s pulled up and impaled by the sword, straight through the heart. Yet his face shows no pain, almost like sleep or acceptance. “Reunion” is supposed to refer to the promise Sephiroth made with humanity, but there are too many mistranslations for us to count so we’ll spare you the details.

Wow. Did Cloud really manage to pick the only god on the planet who cannot be photographed? There goes the extra credit. Maybe he’d look for artwork later. He wanted to enjoy his last few hours of night before it was back to the grind. He bookmarked each open tab, then closed the browser before finally enjoying part of his night. 

* * *

He woke up to the same panic, the same strings, the same searing pain through his body, for four days. Something was wrong. He never had the same dream twice, but this was identical four times in a row. The same light, the same sky, the same clouds, the same sword. Sword? Yeah, probably a sword, through his chest. And now he had a headache. Again. Wonderful. He hadn’t touched the assignment since Monday. How was this still happening?

He should tell someone about this. Who, though? It was too soon to tell Tifa, and he didn’t want to seem like a wimp around her. Barret may actually hit him in the head in an attempt to knock some sense into him. Zack… Zack’s a good plan B, but it requires, absolutely requires, playful fighting that always ends with Cloud in a headlock. Maybe Aerith?

Yeah. Aerith was good for situations like this. She always knew what to say to make people feel better. Her minor in psychology completely reflected that, even though her major was environmental science. Without thinking, he grabbed his phone and texted her. 

Cloud: Hey Aerith, is there any way we can meet up tomorrow? No big deal, just need to destress. 

Then send. Oh Gods he hit send. What time was it?!

Sent: 4:38 AM.

She might actually kill him. He didn’t know how late it was. He didn’t mean to text this late. Oh gods she’s gonna be- His phone dinged. 

Aerith: Sure, Cloud! I usually eat lunch alone on Thursdays, so come to the Chocobo Student Center at 11. I’ll be there. 

Okay, maybe he wasn’t a complete jerk or he absolutely just woke her up and she was hiding it. 

Cloud: Works for me. Thanks, Aerith. I’ll see you there. 

* * * 

Even on a Thursday morning, these restaurants were buzzing with students, everyone looking for something to eat that wasn’t the slowly degrading dining hall food. The large windows gave an effect of calm by actually allowing students to see sunlight, unlike his usual study spot, which had just the right mix of orderly chaos from tables nearby but came at the cost of no natural light.

He scanned the square tables for his friend with the pink bow. She always wore that bow. She told him once it was because the bow reminded her of home. 

“Cloud!” He heard her yell from the exact opposite direction than he was looking. He turned and saw her waving at a table she had already begun eating at with a smile.

“Over here!”

Cloud waved awkwardly before approaching and dropping his bag in one of the open seats. “Hey. How’s it going?” 

“Pretty good for now,” She answered casually. “And you?”

He shrugged as he sat. “Hangin’ in there. You know how it is with STEM majors.”

She gave him a point in agreement. “You got me there.” Then she smacked a hand to the table in order, like a judge does during court. “Why don’t you tell me what’s wrong while I eat? And next time, try to text me a little later. A girl’s gotta sleep, you know.”

Cloud rubbed the back of his neck and avoided her eyes. She saw right through his message to the truth. “Sorry. I didn’t know what time it was.”

She kindly waved him off. “No worries. Just imagine what would happen if you texted Tifa that late.”

His cheeks heated as he considered what their friend would think. She’d probably assume it was a drunk text, march over, question him for the truth, and kick his ass if he was  really drunk.

She gave a soft giggle. “I’m kidding! But come on, tell me what happened.”

Cloud took a breath before dropping the hand from his neck so he could cross his arms lightly. Then he explained the project of the god, the lore he could remember, the weird photo corruption, and the repeated dream that haunted his mind.

“It happene four times, I feel stupid-”

“You’re not stupid for asking for help.” That was the first time she talked during his explanation. 

His eyes dropped straight to the table at her nearly scolding tone. 

“You can’t find any pictures of the statue?” Aerith asked for confirmation, and he nodded. “Why don’t you go to the museum? Maybe if you actually see it, you’ll stop worrying about it so much?” She tilted her head softly. “It’ll at least put a face to the name.” 

He pouted and mumbled under his breath, “Would that be better, or more nightmare fuel?”

She shrugged with a genuinely caring expression on her face. “There’s only one way to tell. And it’s only a few blocks away, so it won’t kill your day to go over there.”

He stared down and paused. “Is there any way I can convince you to come with me?”

To his dismay, she shook her head. “Sorry. Zack gets off work at five, and I’m stuck in classes until then.”

He sighed, but nodded. His classes got out at 4:50, but it wouldn’t be fair to Zack to take his girlfriend on a field trip just because of some weird dreams. “I understand. Thanks, Aerith.”

“Of course!” She smiled at him, attempting to raise his spirits a little. “If you need me, call me. And if for some reason I don’t answer, leave a message and text me.”

He nodded again before standing up and grabbing his bag. “Thank you. I will. But I hope I won’t need to.”

* * * 

Well, here he was, on the marble stairs, following Aerith’s advice. He stared and read the sign on above the stone columns of the massive structure. 

Migar Museum of Natural History

He inhaled. He exhaled. Let’s do this. He adjusted his jacket, then his bag, and marched up to the entrance. He bought a ticket, security checked his bag, and finally he was off into the building of unearthed knowledge. Next step: he needed to find the exhibit. It was a new discovery, so it might be closer to the entrance. Luckily, there were QR codes on nearly every corner, which were scannable to get a pdf of the map on phones. Convenient. 

Oh of course they put it in the back so you waste more time here. He shook his head to rid himself of the negative attitude, because it certainly wasn’t helping him through this. Cloud steeled himself once again and walked through the many decorated hallways, past dozens of displays and exhibits in search of his target. Though he would be lying if he claimed he was not distracted every once in a while by a particularly interesting piece, most of which were swords or various other bladed weapons. That tiny, childish part of him still cried out in joy whenever he saw a new or interesting design, too ingrained in him to keep his heart at a steady rate, the small excitement inevitable in his chest. 

Finally, he made it to the new exhibition hall, which was far less crowded than he expected. It was a Thursday, yes, but this was a completely new discovery, correct? At least fairly new? The ceilings in the hall were three stories high, and he saw a second level balcony wrapping around the room with bronze trim. As he looked higher, he noticed a circular skylight, simulating rays of the sun which cascaded down to the largest and most detailed statue in the exhibit. The light through the window was blinding, and his only option was to move closer to see the statue at all. 

He should not have come here.

The descriptions online were accurate, the piece was stunning. “Reunion” was stunning. The god occupied most of the marble in ways that didn’t seem physically possible, like a simple gust of wind would crack the piece in two. Yet it remained strong, fighting in majesty. But he couldn’t focus on the magnificent god, because the sacrifice the god was holding was Him.

The sacrifice. Was him. To a T. The body, the face, the hair, every detail visible on this statue was Him, like looking into a mirror. 

It’s me. It’s me.

His body froze as his eyes analyzed every detail of the statue subconsciously. Every feather, every engraving, every point, every cloth, every cloud, every body, every strand of hair. Something grabbed at his chest, some kind of glow consuming him, eerie and familiar, like being wrapped in a warm blanket of feathers, with a low underlining of dread. 

He ran, no, sprinted out of the museum, not caring for anyone he rushed passed or bumped against on his way out. It was him. It was him. It was him. Down to the sword through his chest. His breath defected to panting from the exertion. Was he having a panic attack? His whole body was tight, wound like a music box, like a timer ready to blow. He was barely thinking as he pushed the doors open and barreled down the stairs, his mind racing as fast as his body for three blocks, ignoring every bystander around him. 

Aerith. He has to call Aerith, she always helped, always. He stumbled as he whipped out his phone to slow himself down. She said to call her first, so he tapped the icon and held the phone to his ear. But only after the first ring did his body seize, and he instinctively canceled the call, his phone still held to his ear. 

Across the street, there was absolutely no mistaking it, was the god from the statue, who looked like a normal man to anyone else. Long silver hair in a ponytail that stopped at his mid thigh instead of defying gravity, and the exact same face and upper body. Though this man was dressed in a formal black suit, with a button down shirt with a little too buttons attached than socially acceptable, almost like a stereotypical businessman from a movie. He stared down at his watch and took a sip of his coffee as his purposeful walk continued through the sidewalk. 

“I don’t care what it takes,” Cloud heard him in perfect clarity despite their distance, as if he was only inches away, the deep voice weaving its way through him like cold water on a summer day. “I need that report on my desk by tomorrow. Understood? …Good.” Then this walking god tapped the center of his ear, probably to stop the call and move on. 

It took everything Cloud had not to scream. His panic surged back in full force, he sprinted all the way back to his apartment. This isn’t possible. This isn’t possible. This isn’t possible.

* * * 

Damn it, he’s asleep again, because he’s back in the clouds.

But this time was different. He knew it was a dream. He knew what was happening.

Though the sky looked exactly the same, and the star still appeared in the distance, it didn’t brighten as it got closer. Cloud could finally see what this star really was. 

It was the god. His six wings moved like the fins in perfect symmetry, yet his right arm was completely black, a deformed wing that grew on the side of his shoulder, the curve of the dark wing that held the sword in the statue. 

He came closer and closer and Closer. So close Cloud could see his eyes. Snake-like, mako blue. Mako?

“Are you real…?” Cloud questioned softly, barely audible in the ever swirling sky, the first time he ever dared to speak in this place.

It was silent for what felt like an eternity as the god seemed to scan him. 

“The time is now.”

The god spoke to him, and it was the same voice as the businessmen across the street..

But immediately after, he shot awake without a stabbing pain in his chest for the first time in four days, the warm feeling from the museum returned. Yet he was at his desk, and the only pain he felt was the crick in his neck from the terrible angle and lack of support. As his sight returned, he saw his open laptop with dozens of open tabs, every one of them about the god he just talked to. There were so many different translations and interpretations of this god’s legends that Cloud was ready to bash his head through a wall. Every theory he derived was too illogical to be true, even when compared to every attempted translation on the internet. He slowly glanced at the clock in the corner of his screen. 12:03 AM. He did not eat dinner. He had not showered yet. Maybe those two tasks should be accomplished before Cloud attempted more research or passed out again. 

First he grabbed his phone and opened it subconsciously. Oh no. The call he canceled with Aerith earlier went through, and his phone was still on silent for lectures. 

He missed three texts and two calls from Aerith, and one of each from Zack. 

He’s a terrible friend. And he’s surprised they didn’t break his door down looking for him. Should he respond? Aerith was probably asleep by now. He decided a text would be better and sent it to both of them, hoping neither would respond.

Cloud: Sorry about the call. I’m okay. I’ll try to explain tomorrow. 

He sighed as he sent the message,  then flipped his phone screen face down. Don’t look, he told himself. Just let them sleep.

 * * * 

No more pain in the morning. No more dreams in those clouds either. But it came at a cost. Cloud looked up at the sky through the window in his room, and he could see a white streak, like a comet, hovering in the sky. Though the tail burned and fizzled, it was stationary in the blue mass. The timing was too perfect. He checked his phone for any reports, unconsciously ignoring the messages from Zack and Aerith, but the news showed nothing of the phenomenon, anywhere. Taking a picture, he sent the scenario to his entire friend group through a group chat and asked if they saw anything.

They all claimed the sky was perfectly normal, and talked about how good the weather was looking today.

What the hell was going on?

. 

.

.

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Thanks for reading!

Author’s Notes: Well, this is my second attempt at a full au. I hope you enjoyed it! I’m totally willing to continue it if people are interested. Let me know what you think and thank you for reading! (Check the tags for more notes)

Update: Will be continuing. Hope you're ready!

[makeste]

literally just another giant post of Bakugou faces.

so I did this last year, but I only got up to chapter 120 before I ran out of steam. happily, though, this left me with an additional 190 chapters’ worth of glorious gremlin faces to choose from for this year’s edition! which I figure I had better do, before tumblr finally pulls the plug on my poor sweet image limit.

so without further ado, happy birthday to Kacchan, and happy birthday to Kacchan’s asymmetrical HAH face where his eyes do the thing like ( ◣益◢).

why I like it: so this is from Kirishima’s flashback in chapter 133, where Kirishima was getting all down on himself because his quirk Only Does One Thing, and Kacchan was all “nah bro don’t worry about it because your One Thing is totally fucking rad, and you’re strong enough to withstand anything.” so that of course was incredibly sweet, and one of the few times we’ve seen him give an actual heartfelt pep talk without so much as a single insult thrown into the mix. but what really puts this scene over the top for me is the fact that you can see the ever-so-subtle hints of guilt and regret when he talks about All Might and Kamino. for just a moment, he gets this distant look in his eyes, and his expression turns soft and contemplative. basically this is a rare collector’s edition Kacchan face you will not find in many other places.

why I like it: because this frankly needs to happen in every damn fight until this kid finally gets it through his thick skull to ditch the mask so we can see every fantastic facial expression in full 4k glory. work with me here please Kacchan.

why I like it: because character growth!! this was our first big moment of post-DvK2 Kacchan development, and the payoff was well worth the wait. it only took him 166 chapters to realize that it’s hard to grow as a person if you’re determined to be a humongous dick to every single person you meet!! lmao, but it’s progress though.

why I like it: these two panels are criminally underrated. the way his face transforms when Deku gets the answer wrong dlkjfldk. this is easily one of the funniest subtle gags in the entire series.

why I like it: “hey Bakugou do you want to play in our band?” “fuck you, no.” “pretty please.” “fine, but I refuse to call it a band.” “well then what do you want to call it -- ” “MURDER.”

why I like it: GONNA MURDER EVERYONE BY PLAYING THE DRUMS!!!! SOMEHOW WE’VE SUCCESSFULLY COMPARTMENTALIZED THIS SCHOOL-SANCTIONED DISPLAY OF PERFORMING ARTS AS A DEATH MATCH. OH TO UNDERSTAND THE INNER WORKINGS OF THIS YOUNG MAN’S MIND.

why I like it: hah?! I love how he has to tilt his neck all the way back every single time he does this. he’s so cute I love him so much.

why I like it: somewhere around this point in the manga Kacchan decided to do away with being handsome and decided to just be a full-time gremlin in every single panel. this persisted for the next 90 chapters or so and he was very dedicated. I’m pretty sure he was going for vulgar and intimidating, but unfortunately for him he’s too inherently adorable and so the end result is just endearing and almost charming in its own way.

why I like it: this was from chapter 194 when Aizawa was announcing that they’d have a special guest for the Joint Training arc, and so Kacchan was all “BOY OH BOY A NEW ASS TO KICK.”

why I like it: more character development! and just look at that confidence! he’s fully recovered from his low point after Kamino and the provisional exam. he knows what he’s about now, and he is THRIVING. and once again you can see how his conviction inspires the people around him and makes them more determined. just, he is going to be such a good number one hero you guys.

why I like it: it’s the three little “!!!” lines hovering in the corner next to his head for me. “oh my god it’s All Might, All Might saw me being cool and Saving To Win and stuff, what’s he gonna say what do I do omg quick act natural.”

why I like it: QUICK HIDE YOUR FEELINGS!! WE CAN’T LET THE NEIGHBORS KNOW WE CARE. fjkdlsjklk

why I like it: this is his expression when he first sees Deku activate Blackwhip for the first time. it’s one of the few unguarded expressions of complete surprise that we’ve gotten from him and I love it thank you.

why I like it: classic asymmetrical HAH face. he truly has perfected this look. look at him, casually clinging to a pole for no reason other than to look dynamic. this boy truly cannot sit or stand or walk or do anything normally. he spent three months working his ass off to catch up to Deku and the others, and now that he finally has he’s filled with so much pent-up energy that he simply cannot hold it back anymore and he’s gotta climb a pole. he’s just gotta.

why I like it: because he is so fucking good at saving people now you guys, he’s like a whole-ass professional and shit, and yet it hasn’t changed who he is one single iota. he will save your life and he will SCREAM AT YOU WHILE DOING IT and you’ll sit there and be grateful goddammit.

why I like it: o noo he was caught unawares. All Might was all “I’m gonna have a dad moment and nobody can stop me” and he walked right up to him and put his hand on his head because he’s All Might and so what is he even gonna do about it. nothing, that’s what. you got played, Kacchan. outmaneuvered and outfoxed. all he can do is stand there and make that grumpy face he makes when he’s receiving unwanted affection (҂⌣̀_⌣́).

why I like it: more unwanted affection. now they’re even feeding him ffs. how could he let this happen. mm chicken.

why I like it: GREATEST ASYMETRICAL HAH?! FACE OF ALL TIME. out of all the people to befriend him against his will, Todoroki is by far the most confusing to him and it’s just so great.

why I like it: this is when Hawks is staring at him in chapter 244 because he fake-killed his mentor and stuff and he feels sorta guilty about it. but meanwhile Kacchan just thinks he’s trying to start some shit, and so he’s all “I WAS FASTER THAN YOU BACK THERE YOU KNOW” and Hawks is all “hahaha okay little buddy you just keep telling yourself that”, because as previously discussed Kacchan is too adorable to ever be intimidating.

why I like it: this is from 246 when he’s in the middle of arguing with Burnin’ and all of a sudden Endeavor calls to him and he’s just like o shit what’d I do.

why I like it: because Endeavor’s mentoring them and shit and he’s just casually sitting there eating his lunch like yeah. with his lil hamster cheeks lulz.

why I like it: the look that instantly became iconic. this panel cured me of the misconception that Bakugou “goes to bed at 8:30pm” Katsuki was a morning person. the truth is he loathes all times of the day equally.

why I like it: this one is a team effort because Deku’s faces are equally as good. I’m genuinely shocked that this family dinner with the Todorokis didn’t prematurely unlock Danger Sense. you can tell that he and Deku have a silent agreement to call a temporary truce on their rivalry for as long as they sit at this table as outsiders in this strange land. this is by far the most hazardous meal Bakugou has ever experienced, and yet the mapo tofu is too good to go to waste, so he’s just shoveling it down his throat trying to finish as much as possible before shit inevitably hits the fan.

why I like it: Kacchan is New Here so he doesn’t yet realize that if the Todorokis are spilling family secrets, there is always inevitably going to be someone listening in the shadows just outside the door.

why I like it: the battle with Ending was probably peak gremlin!Kacchan. like, we’ve had gremlin before and afterwards, but never quite to this same degree. Horikoshi really decided to push the limits of contorting this child’s face in the strangest ways.

why I like it: peak. gremlin.

why I like it: nothing to see here, just Kacchan quietly realizing after 252 chapters that he MIGHT have been just a BIT of a cartoonishly villainous asshole to Deku back at the beginning there ha ha ha oh god oh fuck.

why I like it: because he found the answer to What It Is That He Lacks, and he’s all cool and calm and infuriatingly secretive about it. it’s such a sudden and stark contrast to the gremlin faces he was making only moments earlier, and it makes this moment hit home that much more.

why I like it: because this is him being friends with Deku!! like for real though!! because he’s fucking around and insulting him and making weird faces and stuff, but it’s because in his mind That’s What Friends Do. they clown on each other and help each other train and shit. half an hour after this they’ll go down to the training gym and play Catch-A-Kacchan, and then he’ll quietly confess to All Might that he wants to atone. he may be a gremlin, but he’s a gremlin with layers goddammit.

why I like it: because this is right after TomurAFO shows up out of nowhere and scares the shit out of him and Deku and makes them see a terrifying death vision and stuff, and you can see how shaken up he is by it. he definitely understands how close they came to dying just then and he’s sobered the fuck up. this is the moment when it really sinks in that shit has gotten real. eight minutes from now he’ll move without thinking and save Deku’s life.

why I like it: hydro homies. nothing restores those electrolytes like good old Raquaius Sports Drink.

why I like it: because this panel was when it started to become clear that the real reason he grabbed this sports drink was to pretend like he was busy so he could act like he wasn’t interested in Deku’s training because god forbid the neighbors know that he actually cares.

why I like it: because the sideways glance!! and the fact that he doesn’t deny it!! in fact he does the opposite of denying it, and he basically starts pouring his heart out about how goddamn worried he actually is. he’s guilty and anxious and restless and this entire conversation is amazing.

why I like it: he looks so goddamn young here. when he finally stops scrunching up his face and putting on his usual tough guy act and for once allows his actual emotions to show on his face instead, the result is so damn striking. for once we got an entire conversation with no gremlin faces, because Horikoshi had to drop them completely in order to show just how serious he is here. which was incredibly effective btw.

why I like it: because he’s basically just fidgeting with the bottle now to avoid making eye contact with All Might because he just revealed a deep dark secret to him and he’s precariously vulnerable right now. that’s the body language of a kid who knows how badly he fucked up, and just wants to hear from someone else if it’s going to be okay, if he can still make it okay. he looks so small here.

why I like it: the worry lines under his eyes. the look of uncertainty and wanting to believe that what All Might says is true (“you’ll get a chance to talk eventually”). the hesitance to turn back and look at him, and the way he doesn’t dare until he finally gets that small bit of reassurance. All Might isn’t judging him. All Might understands him and understands where he’s coming from, and he’s giving him his blessing. he’s giving him a thumbs up and reassuring him that he sees the change in him and sees that he’s sincerely trying, and basically saying that he has faith that he and Deku will be able to work it out. and you can see that it means a lot.

why I like it: because this kid spent his entire internship with Jeanist doing nothing but bitching nonstop, and then later on when Jeanist went missing he was all tight-lipped about it because once again NOBODY CAN KNOW THAT WE CARE GODDAMMIT, and it was all very Classic Bakugou. but then Jeanist finally shows up again at Jakku, and we get this little moment of happy, smirky FUCK YEAH, I KNEW YOU WEREN’T DEAD YOU FUCKING ASSHOLE, and it’s just the best.

why I like it: HE’S SO UNABASHEDLY PROUD GOD BLESS HIM.

why I like it: because he nearly died and then he woke up here in the hospital two days later not knowing where anybody else is or whether they’re even still alive, and this, my friends. this is finally the moment. the moment where he was all FUCK IT, MAYBE WE CAN LET THE NEIGHBORS KNOW WE CARE AFTER ALL. character fucking development. you love to see it.

BONUS:

WHAT HAVE I BECOME, MY SWEETEST FRIEND. EVERYONE I KNOW GOES AWAY IN THE END.

happy birthday Katsuki. feel better sweetie. HORIKOSHI YOU BETTER TREAT HIM RIGHT I AM COUNTING ON YOU.

[blacksunscorpio]

I have a stellium (Venus, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune) in Capricorn in the 11th house and I cannot for the life of me find any reliable resources on what this means, particularly in terms of the 11th house. I'd be grateful for any help.

Planets in the 11th House The 11th House

is Ruled by Aquarius/Uranus. It is a Succedent house which indicates the themes are purpose and stabilization [or lack thereof].  This house is ruling the area of group associations, network, community, friends/peers, philanthropy, & humanitarianism. When your planets fall in this house, it indicates the Planet in particular will play out themes regarding related to Aquarian/Uranian archetypes. A native with this placement in particular can often have a “mass appeal”. There can often be a “detached disposition as well. For more insight:

Sun in the 11th

A dynamic placement. Natives with this luminary can have immense social [Uranus] influence. They in particular operate in a society based manner. They feel driven to navigate social networks. They typically seek to make a change in the world. Driven to leadership positions, this native may head up Civic lab duties or general charity/philanthropy work. Typically this placement gifts natives with good public speaking skills-they excel in politics as well. No. 42 Bill Clinton, No. 44 Barack Obama, Margaret Thatcher, Britains “Iron lady”, etc are a few examples of eleventh-house Solarians. On a smaller scale, eleventh-house suns are the first to organize clubs in school, or as adults to lead or join an organization designed for social change.

Moon in the 11th

Finds “comfort” in groups. If they wish to communicate a message, there is a level of deep caring involved. These natives often use the moon's emotional nature to express their views artistically. They can often gain  trust in people. They are able to lea and enact social change by gaining said trust. There can be this “therapy” theme among groups they are associated with. The moon's caring nature has an equal but opposite need to be cared for in return. The give and take involved in social networking is comfortable terrain for eleventh-house moons. Oprah Winfrey, MLK, Bruce Lee, Winston Churchill, & John Lennon are among a few Lunar 11th house natives. 

Mercury in the 11th

Quick silver running the show in the 11th/working with Uranus indicates a native quick witted, rational, talkative and generally light on their feet in social settings. They thrive here, especially with communication involved. They can chat up a storm and gain the attention of crowds. This is often difficult for many but not for someone with this planet living in the 11th. They have an advantage actually.  Mercury loves to socialize and can be very chatty. They tend to keep conversations broad and non-personal which compliments the eleventh house's focus on social and group dealings. Debating over social issues is their forte but they can be detached as well. If harshly aspected, it can make someone a bit fanatical over social issues. However, Mercury here can keep track of facts and figures and keep their information accurate. They can also come up with original though processes and ideas on how the “collective” can operate at a higher frequency. They are the out of the box/original thinkers who come up with all kinds of new ideas and inventions. Social intercourse is very important to them.

Venus in the 11th

Powerful magnet placement. This native loves charming and associating with groups/friends/and peers. This is the person you want to host you when you’re visiting from out of town or just having some sort of housewarming. They are an agreeable, friendly, kind and gregarious individual that enjoys company. Nothing is too extravagant or too much for their associates and/or friends. They have an instinct for putting guests at ease, exercise tact in catering to their diverse needs, and delight in bringing congenial people together. You’ll often find this person is attracted to liberal movements and gravitates to art geared towards change or revolution. They enjoy theater, shows, concerts- anywhere there is a collective group of people loving on each other. The type of person who would have been a shoe-in at Woodstock. Etiquette is highly involved when dealing with groups. They are the ones who seek diplomacy among others. The type of person who tends to be the mediator between friends. Great effort is made to always consider the social consequences of actions and statements.

Mars in the 11th

Can indicate conflict or greatness. Because Mars is ruler of the first house, the native is pre-programmed in a way to be more “I” centered. Therefore, this attitude can class with the group oriented energy of the 11th house. If the Mars native is leading the group, they feel satisfied.  However, too many “group” projects or god-forbid, following the orders of social institutions can make Mars liable to get frustrated, and if pushed to the limit, erupt.  They can be a disruptive force because their independence can broil issues with cooperatives/peers. They can often be the center of controversies because of this. On the other hands, when harnessed or significantly well aspected, they can be demagogues or champions of the under-dog.  They should take care to follow standard rules though, because paying fines and in general, dealing with other punishments society inflicts due to rule-breaking [Uranus/Rebellion  & Mars/ War]  can be more common than the 11th House Martian may be comfortable with.

Jupiter in the 11th

Tis placement makes a native gifted with the power to beneficially influence the collective/friends/coworkers and peers. They will usually have ideas that inspire others. This makes them the perfect types to spearhead or lead out group events, projects, movements, and teachings. The great “socializer” who can often find success through networking. They will “know everyone”. It’s very common for these people to be quite popular. They’ll typically have a friendly and outgoing persona and may even have many friends outside of their native country. Jupiter's success [regardless of house] lies largely in its ability to roll with the punches things and keep a light, global outlook [Jupiter equals expansion]. In the eleventh house, this laidback style puts them far ahead of most people by not getting entangled in the drama of any particular person and instead focusing on the dynamic of the group. Charisma and confidence, live here, making them excellent in leadership positions. 

Saturn in the 11th

This placement is actually well-placed believe it or not. Why? Because of Saturn’s ancient relationship with Aquarius. It was actually the ruler before Uranus was discovered. A native with Saturn in the 11th is likely to be discriminating in their choice of associates/friends/colleagues, etc. Because of Saturn’s association with time, and longevity, the relationships that they do form will usually be long term and enduring. Not unheard of for them to associate with people older than them or groups that have a more austere vibe. Law and order are things they appreciate. If “age” isn’t a factor, they can often come across as distinguished intellectually or more Mature to their social group/peers/community. They can often perform more of the serious work and duties in organizations. However because rules are often broken or not adhered to in social groups, Saturn here can often be frustrated. So, Institutions like school and corporations where there is [traditionally] a good amount of structure makes Saturn more comfortable. If they are not IN said institution they will create it [Uranus/Innovation].

Uranus in the 11th

Uranus is in its ultimate bag placed here in the 11th. This planet rules this house. As a result, this native can be extremely friendly, but this disposition walks hand in hand with not wanting to become too attached to others. So they thrive in “acquaintance” like environments/relationships. The Uranian rebellious streak can rear its head as well and this native can often see frequent and/or sudden changes in their social circles, organizations, & communities. They hate complacency and are attracted to forward-thinking and out of the box, thinking associates. They hate to conform. They make even opt out of doing something/buying something/going somewhere if “everyone is doing it”.  Uranus placed here doesn't feel threatened by differences and believes their acceptance makes them superior to those who are unaccepting [you’ll usually see this with harder aspects involved]. They need to take care not to be too zealous in their quest for social change or they could risk leading others in the wrong direction.

Neptune in the 11th

A native with Neptune placed in the 11th will tend to be attracted to artistic, “boho” and quirky associates. Friends may often be Neptunian types. I.e dreamers, spacey, a tendencies towards idealistic thinking, or spiritual and inspirational. At the worst, they can attract friends who are disloyal, deceptive, or people with substance issues. Friendships can be murky here so they need to be sure to pay extra attention to whom they associate with. They also need to take care not to get swept up in group movements at the risk that they can be mislead easily–they can find it difficult to determine where their individuality ends and the group begins. However, they are the ones who want to heal the group. To find ways of inspiring and leading in creative and artistic ways.

Pluto in the 11th

Natives with The Lord of transformation living in the 11th often are drawn to radical social reform tend to be acutely aware of the power dynamics in groups, friendships and societal institutions. There is a deep obsession with these themes when placed in this house. Often when these natives step into a group setting, they immediately sense the power structure or others easily sense power with them. It can be unnerving to some. They need to take care not to think to deeply about what friends, associates, co-workers or peers think of them. Frankly, everyone is going to have an opinion and they will make themselves crazy obsessing over what others think. They may have difficulty trusting others/institutions/ or general “group-think”. They want to know the ins-and outs of why people do things. They can have a tendency to keep their guard up against the idea of someone exploiting them or by being exploited by the power of groups or organizations. To the point where they may downright avoid group situations as a whole. However when someone in their social circle passes the “trust test” they are very devoted.

Honorary Mention: 11th House Stelliums

When one has a convergence of planetary energy from 3 or more planets [a stellium] in the 11th, this indicates a native who may be “everyone’s best friend”.  They can be quite popular, take part in many groups or organizations, etc. They’ll often be the most social of the zodiac. They will often try to cater to their peers and society. They’re always wanting to help. They need to take care not to become “people pleasers” as a result. They think about the big picture and enjoy subjects that allow them to interact with groups/friends/peers. You may find people with this particular stellia  involved in protests, or working simply working to make significant changes in their communities. I want to mention, 11th house is where one can experience both inclusion as well as exclusion. Often simultaneously. They need to make sure they don’t set themselves up to be scapegoated. However, they often find their tribe at some point. Oddballs or people who are considered “strange”, “unusual”, “crackpots” which are all synonyms for “geniuses” ;). A stellium here may very well indicate 11th house dealings are integral to that person’s life. This is especially significant if the north node is placed among the stellium. 

[elise-jupiterstyle]

WIP sneak peek: the night’s harboring shade

“Where is he?”

The words escape Beth before she can think better of it. A blush erupts across her chest when Mick pops a brow and fixes her with a knowing look.

And, okay—this isn’t exactly how she’d planned on broaching the subject. She’d intended on keeping her line of questioning as apathetic as possible, avoid showing her hand too early—which, much to her chagrin, she’s managed to do in a matter of seconds—but as soon as she’d caught sight of Mick’s silhouette in the doorway instead of Rio’s, the question had burst forth from her lips before she could stop herself.

This is the third week in a row he’s missed their drop.

“Expectin’ someone else?” Mick asks, a smirk tugging at the corner of his lips as he saunters over to her. The swish of his leather jacket is the only sound in the room besides the constant, dull hum of the heating system in the corner as it fights off the mid-winter chill.

Although her chances are slim to none that Mick will buy into her charade now, Beth feigns nonchalance, shrugging her shoulders and pursing her lips as he comes to stand at the opposite end of the work table.

“I had just been under the impression that he would be at the drops he scheduled, is all. It’s a little unprofessional,” she replies as she glides her hand over the immaculate surface of the work table, pretending to brush off debris that isn’t there just for something to do with her hands. When she glances up at Mick again, he’s got an elbow propped up on the work table as he leans against it, fixing her with the same knowing look, and she feels herself tense as a flicker of irritation ignites in her chest. She clears her throat, throwing back her shoulders and twisting her neck slightly to dispel some of the tension.

Beth still has yet to grow accustomed to Mick’s perpetual state of indifference. He’s calculated with his reactions, never giving her more than an inch, never revealing more than he needs to, and she despises the way it unnerves her. It’s not that Rio is any less onerous, has ever  made it easier for her to get information out of him, but unlike Mick, he can’t seem to help himself when an opportunity presents itself for him to get a rise out of her, for him to go toe-to-toe with her even when he knows he’ll inevitably gets his way. Mick, on the other hand, has an infuriating knack for making her overshare—feeling like she needs to overcompensate for all that he doesn’t contribute to every one of their brief interactions.

“He’s busy,” Mick responds, his voice gruff and tinged with mild amusement. Beth narrows her eyes slightly, tampering down the irritation that flares in her gut at his vague response, knowing that it’ll only give him more satisfaction if she shows it.

The worst part is that she knows he’s reading her like an open book right now, can tell how desperately she wants to ask him what he knows, even though the odds of him actually giving anything up are as slim as her finding them out for herself. She also knows that if there’s any trait of his worth noting that Rio lacks, it’s patience. He’ll wait her out until she inevitably breaks—will let her interrogate him about the unanswered calls, the unacknowledged texts, the radio silence that she has zero explanation for—and he’ll undoubtably report back to Rio about it like he did all those months ago when he was posted up at her house, ensuring that she didn’t try to flee before her borrowed time was up.

Point is, she knows that she won’t have to elaborate on what she means when she asks about him, but she’s almost certain that Mick will play dumb, drag it out, refuse to give her an inch until she’s laying it all out for him, giving him a transparent abridgment of not what she’s asking, but why.

The true killer is that she’s not even entirely sure what the why is, never mind how she would go about justifying it to herself or Mick—he would know immediately, if he doesn’t already, that this has nothing to do with their business relationship.

It’s not that she’s worried, exactly—her patience for being ignored by the men in her life expired long ago—and it’s not like she’s hurt, either. It’s not like she thought that night had changed anything or mended what was broken between them.

(Didn’t it, though?)

The room is dead silent, neither of them exchanging any words as Beth deliberates over whether it’s worth it to pry while Mick, she’s sure, waits patiently on her to make the next move.

It must be at least a full minute before she expels a heavy, conceded breath. She rolls her shoulders back, straightens up, and plasters on a cheery smile, slipping into her customer service persona with a practiced ease.

“Alright then,” she chirps as though it’s no issue at all, ignoring Mick’s bemused snort even as she watches him shake his head to himself out of the corner of her eye. He finally shifts his attention from her to the dark blue duffel on the other end of the work table, watching patiently as she grabs one of the thick straps and lugs it across the tattered wooden surface.

“It’s all there. Take as much time as you need,” she says, her voice sugary enough to bore through tooth enamel. Mick grunts, unaffected, his gloved hands tugging the bag closer to him and drawing the zipper without another word.

He makes quick work of counting the stacks of red-banded cash—always does, really, which is one thing she can say she appreciates about doing the drops with him. 

Despite herself, her mind drifts back to Rio, wondering what could’ve kept him away for nearly three weeks without so much as a text message when, not too long ago, he obliged to practically every impromptu meeting that she called, no matter the time or reason. The thought branches off in several directions until she’s spiraling, working through the possible reasons for his sudden withdrawal from her, and it feels as though someone is dragging a sharpened blade along the seams of her heart, increasing the pressure with each possibility her mind conjures up.

Then: what if he regrets it?

The blade in her chest twitches before it’s tearing through the seams, her chest lurching as her heart splits wide open.

Is that why he’s been avoiding their meetings, she wonders, refusing to so much as hear her voice over the phone? Did the consequences of letting her in again finally rear their ugly heads, infusing him with the very feelings she feared they would? After everything—the sentiments they shared, the walls they bashed down, the desire they surrendered to—has he come to view that night as a mistake?

The mere thought of it hollows her out until she can feel nothing more than her bleeding, battered heart as it echoes throughout the chasm of her chest.

The metallic bite of a zipper yanks Beth from her thoughts just in time for her to catch Mick heaving the duffel off of the table, his work for the night finished. She watches silently as he backs away from the work table, the straps of the bag clutched in one hand while the other raises to his forehead, offering her a two-fingered salute.

“See you next week,” He informs her, curt as ever, before making for the door.

He doesn’t give her a chance to respond, but she hasn’t a clue what she would say if he were to, anyway. There’s no way to pry further about Rio’s whereabouts without inadvertently admitting that his absence concerns her—without insinuating that, god forbid, she misses him—unless— —

Unless she figures them out for herself.

Beth’s gaze follows Mick’s retreating form to the back of the shop, focusing absently on the taut line of his leather jacket as her thoughts work themselves into a frenzy. She watches him peel through the door (with more stealth than anyone of his build should be capable of, she might add), the blinds clacking softly against it as it closes, and just like that, she’s alone.

The silence lends her some clarity with which to sort through her thoughts until one stands out above all the others, echoing against the walls of her skull as if Mick were still in the room with her.

Art class. You know, pencils and chalk and whatnot?

And yeah, Beth thinks, eyes trained on the door as the clattering blinds begin to settle, the stillness of the night just beyond it encompassing her along with a new sense of determination.

Art class.

[angelz-dust]

masters of none (jason todd x reader)

summary: welcome to my jason x celebrity fic, based on this headcanon. pls enjoy. 

word count: 5.2k

warnings: gun mention. food mention. 

part 2

626 bedford avenue

baby let's have a conversation and god forbid we have a connection

...

"are you sure? i don't wanna leave your here alone," dex had said to you as he put his jacket on. the two of you were in the studio when he got a sudden invite to a party.

"i'll be fine. i just wanna finish this track tonight. or attempt to, i guess," you explained, spinning in your chair to face him. you watched as he used his wooden military brush to fix his waves. "everyone else is going so you should go."

"you should also go," he chuckled, shaking his head before sighing and pocketing the brush. "at least let me take you home now."

"i have to finish this, dex. seriously. just go," you told him, turning back around to face the monitor.

"fine, but i'm coming back when it's over and i'm taking you home. i don't care if you're not done or passed out on the couch," he told you firmly, grabbing his keys off the coffee table. "are you hungry? i can get you something to eat."

"i already ate."

you did not, but you weren't hungry. you were too invested in working to be hungry. you'd eat later when he picked you up.

"alright. make sure the doors are locked when i leave. you know where the gun is, right?" he asked and you lifted your arm up, giving him a thumbs up. you had your headphones back on and were about to focus on that again. he rolled his eyes before leaving, making sure the doors were locked himself.

your work in progress played loudly in your ears as you stared at the meticulously placed loops on the monitor. you didn't like hearing your own voice but you loved the rush of putting together the puzzle that was a song, so you let it go. you worked for hours, unmoving from your spot until you felt a familiar tingle make place in your temples. a hunger headache was coming on and staring at the monitor, probably without blinking, wasn't helping.

it was midnight and dex probably wouldn't get back until 2 or 3. you weren't sure if you'd last that long. there were snacks in the mini fridge that could tide you over but it wouldn't be satisfying. you stood up, your legs feeling like jelly from not being used for so long. your ass had gone numb, too.

you wobbled your way to the fridge of wonders, resting on it to balance yourself as you opened it. you were looking for the yogurt you had stashed in there but...

"fucking jordy," you breathed out, recalling how he had eaten it that morning before you both left for your video with gotham insider.

...

"hey, i'm jordy rivas."

"and i'm y/n l/n."

"we're here with gotham insider and we'll be answering your burning questions."

you had a bucket filled with slips of paper in your lap as you waited for the cue to start picking. you took in your surroundings, not being able to see much with the bright lights illuminating you from above and keep everyone else in the dark. sometimes you couldn't tell if you were on set or on an operating table. jordy, your group mate, noticed that you two had plenty of questions to answer as he peered into the bucket.

how you got here was still a blur. your rise to stardom alongside your friends felt so sudden, it was hard to believe. you didn't expect to have such a large following at this point, or ever. and you never thought you'd have a band of brothers and sisters who loved music as much as you did. it was like a dream come true. not only did you have them but you were able to expand your horizons musically. you were just a below average producer before but now you produced music of all genres at such a high caliber. hell, you even sang a little now.

being a celebrity was overwhelming at times, but you loved interacting with fans or the family, as you affectionately called them. you'd take a simple q&a or fan meet over an award show or social event any day.

"alright, go ahead and start," a staff member said from behind the camera and you stuck your hand in at the same time as jordy, both pulling out a slip.

"how did you guys come up with the name cloud 9?" jordy read from his slip.

"stockholm syndrome," you said simply, getting a little laugh from jordy and some staff before he spoke up to explain.

"we were unofficially going by seven heavens before y/n and dex came along. we had just dropped music under our own names before but we couldn't really do that if we were going to do a group album so we needed a name."

"we were just producing a song each for the album," you spoke up to clarify. "i decided to call our studio session 'on cloud nine' since it fit with the theme of the group and there were nine of us working together."

"then we realized y/n and dex were geniuses and we asked them to produce the whole album," jordy chimed in with a smile. "they had already put so much work into it, so we asked them to join the label and we dropped the album as cloud 9."

best decision i ever made, you thought to yourself, a smile playing on your lips. on cloud nine took ages to produce but the results were worth it. for you, it was more than the money and the charts. creating music was a labor of love and an extension of yourself. you helped create a piece of art that you loved and allowed others to love too. it was the greatest feeling in the world.

"next question is... how do you guys decide who collaborates on what and when you do it?" you read, shrugging your shoulders softly. "we just do it on a whim. covers, singles, eps, full albums, it doesn't matter. we still operate as a group but sometimes we wanna do our own separate projects. we're in charge of ourselves so we do what we want."

the rest of the questions were pretty tame, mostly asking about your music and your label mates. occasionally they got more personal, asking about your interests and families. you both answered with enthusiasm, joking around a little and keeping certain things private when you felt necessary or when you were contractually obligated to. can't go around spilling secrets about upcoming music and other projects.

you and jordy were actually working on an album but it hadn't been announced yet. that was why you two came together, as a way of hinting at it and getting ready for promotions to come. the album was nothing like what you both normally did in a lot of different ways. the sound, the aesthetic, all of it. it was an ambitious project and you were looking forward to seeing how it would be perceived.

you were just about done with the q&a, pulling out the last question from the bucket that jordy had then ceremoniously punted out of frame.

"who is your favorite vigilante? i don't know actually. i've never thought about it," you softly clicked your tongue with a pensive look.

"i like signal," jordy answered as you thought it over. "i saw him kick ass up close one time and he has a cool costume."

"i like nightwing's costume! uniform? whatever," you said with a confused shake of the head, not really sure what to call it. "the blue bird is cool. i personally enjoy the color blue, so he gets points for that. it's a sexy shade of blue."

that last part elicited some laughter from jordy. "is that some roundabout way of you saying nightwing turns you on?"

"it's a direct way of me saying i like the color blue," you corrected him. "but yeah, he looks like he'd be hot. it has no bearing on how i feel about the blue, though. two separate feelings."

"who else is there? you got batman and robin. red robin. uh..." jordy trailed off, trying to think.

"batgirl," you supplied, getting a nod from him. "orphan? right? and uh..."

"red hood!" jordy said with a smile. "that dude is cool as hell. i like his jacket."

"doesn't he shoot people?" the staff laughed again at your delivery of the question. clearly you were on a roll today.

"he doesn't have a hood, though," you realized, looking perplexed. "why is he red hood if he doesn't have a hood? why doesn't he just call himself... red helmet?"

"because that's fucking stupid," jordy said through his laugher, shoulder bouncing. that would have to be censored in post.

"he's fucking stupid."

that too.

the staff watched as the two of you managed to go off on this tangent that had nothing to do with the original question. one of the interns looked to the camera man, who looked equally intrigued and confused at where the conversation had gone. "do we... stop them? we're going over on time."

the camera man shrugged and the manager shook her head. "god, no. do not stop them. this is gold."

"he doesn't need a hood, y/n. it's just a name. nightwing doesn't have wings," he reminded you and you rolled your eyes, a subtle pout on your lips.

"yeah but the bird does. it's still on brand. just like batman. and robin. and red robin. and signal. and batgirl," you listed matter of factly.

"what about orphan? is she an orphan?" jordy asked you with attitude.

"probably, bitch. why else would she call herself that?" you said, the both of you riled up now, hence all the sudden cursing. you two kept it (mostly) clean up until this point. "red hood is the only one off brand."

"why are you being a hater right now?" jordy asked with lopsided grimace and you rolled your eyes. "you completely derailed the conversation."

"oh, i'm sorry. i didn't realize you were on his payroll."

"red hood doesn't need payola. he's cool by himself."

"why are you dick sucking red hood?"

"don't ever say that shit again," jordy said immediately, almost cutting you off at the end of your question.

he crossed his arms, looking annoyed as you looked into the camera with a blank expression. you were trying to fight it, but a tight lipped smile appeared on your face, making you look down and scratch the tip your nose lightly with your nail. then your ear. then back down to the side of your neck. your body shook with silent laughter when you glanced at him.

"i'm sorry," you said convincingly after having collected yourself in record time, just barely getting cut off by jordy again.

"no you're not."

"no i'm not," you shook your head, your facade dropping as quickly as it was put on. "you still haven't answered the-"

"i hope red hood shoots you," he told you seriously, giving you a blank look. your jaw dropped, a surprised noise that almost sounded like laughter came out of your mouth as you looked back at the camera. you knew that he was just playing around but it didn't change the fact that it outrageously juvenile.

it was silent. you and jordy knew this was just friendly bickering but the staff weren't too sure. you rubbed the inside of your cheek with your tongue, slowly dragging it over your teeth as you contemplated his words.

red hood wouldn't actually shoot you. right? he's a bit more morally gray from what you've heard about him but he wouldn't just shoot somebody for making a joke, would he? that seemed kind of ridiculous. overkill, if you will.

your eyes darted between jordy and the camera. back at him. then the camera. jordy again. your head jerked a little in his direction before fully turning to look at him.

"do you think he'd actually shoot me?" you asked quietly, looking at him with a smile on your face as your expressions quickly mirrored each other.

"i would," he told you and you laughed, looking at the camera again.

"mr. red hood, if you're watching his, m-my bad bro," you stuttered through yours and jordy's laughter. "i was just talking shit. please don't shoot me. i-if you don't i'll uh... i'll be your bard!"

"what the fuck?" jordy cried out, hiding his face in his hands as he laughed harder.

"i will write and sing about your adventures and conquests," you pleaded with the man who definitely wasn't going to see. you made a heart by lifting your arms up and having your fingers meet at the top of your head. it was really a waste of time in hindsight but you had to cover your bases just in case he did see it. getting shot was not on your bucket list. "please don't shoot me. seriously. i didn't meant it."

"that's all the questions we had," jordy's voice was pitchy from all the laughing. "i'm jordy."

"and i'm y/n," you smiled, doing a little dance as you stayed in your heart position before waving with jordy. "byeeee!"

...

you weren't entirely sure how long you had been standing there with the door open, letting all the cold air out of the fridge. you assumed it was too long since your nipples felt hard as rocks now, which only added a layer to how uncomfortable you felt. your stomach was touching your back at this point and that headache wasn't going anywhere. and now your nipples felt like they were going to fall off. you were pretty sure exhaustion was going to start claiming on you, too.

killing yourself seemed to be the only option and what you were thinking of doing was practically suicide. you wanted to go walk to the corner store that had the yogurt. your craving was too strong. you needed it and waiting for dex was not an option. there was nothing of substance in the fridge anyway. just drinks and snacks that weren't yours to eat.

a normal person could probably do it and not die. but you were in gotham and you were convinced that the moment you opened the door killer croc or one of the penguin's goons would be waiting for you.

taking the gun would be the smart thing to do but you didn't feel comfortable walking around with it. the feeling of cold steel against your skin was unsettling and the chance of it going off on you was even scarier. yes, you would have the safety on, but that wasn't enough to ease your mind. it felt like walking around with a bomb strapped to your chest. you didn't even wanna think about it dropping it or something while you were in the store. you were sure the ock wouldn't like that.

you grabbed your keys, slipping the wristband on. you had a little card holder and pepper spray hanging off the key ring. you also had a small switchblade for all your stabbing needs. you hadn't used it for murderous intent yet and you wanted to keep it that way.

i'll have red hood put me out of my misery, you thought morbidly to yourself. maybe jordy wishing death on you this morning was a blessing in disguise because you were progressively feeling more like shit with each passing moment.

you braced yourself for the crisp nighttime air and the dangers lurking around every corner before opening the door. it was dark, as expected. you had your hands stuffed in the pockets of your sweatpants. your right hand rested right on top of your phone carefully stashed away in the black polyester pocket.

your sense of direction was, to put it lightly, dog shit, and the pitch blackness of night wasn't helping. you had your airpods in with the gps telling you where to go. if it had a mind of its own, it would probably be judging you for needing to locate a building that was 5 minutes away. nevertheless, hearing the robo voice in your ears was oddly comforting.

the walk there wasn't that bad once you got to the area with all the traffic, illuminated with fluorescent lighting from the surrounding stores. it was the first time you felt comfortable under blinding white light.

you walked into the store quietly, beelining for the cold food section. you grabbed hot fries and sour skittles on your way over for dex, wanting to soften the blow for when you told him you left the studio by yourself. you spotted the salted caramel flavor through the condensation on the glass and you could already taste the creamy treat on your tongue. you smiled to yourself, grabbing the handle to the door when you heard the automatic door to the store open, accompanied by a chime.

"hey, man, what's going on?" you heard the voice of the cashier from behind you. you grabbed your yogurt and turned around, freezing in place when you saw who had entered.

red hood!

you could hear jordy's enthusiastic voice from this morning bounce around in your head like a pinball. the man you had been talking shit about earlier was right in front of you. jesus christ, was he there for you? how did he even find you? the video hadn't even dropped yet!

he must have felt your intense gaze burning a hole in the side of his head because he turned to face you. thankfully, you slid to the side, hiding behind the chips. he knew you were there and that you had been staring at him, even though he didn't catch you in the act. you attempting to hide yourself behind the buy two, get one free mini chip bags was slightly suspicious, but to be fair, he did just walk into a public place as red hood, so he let it go. turning back to salim, the cashier, he grabbed the bag of m&m's he had slid him.

he always paid for the things he picked out when he came to the store, but salim always gave him m&m's for free. red hood kept his store and community safe, so in salim's eyes, giving him candy that only cost a dollar anyway was nothing.

you started grabbing some other snacks, slowly weaving through the aisles as to not cause alarm to the huge man standing not to far from you. you knew he was big but fuck. he was built like a freight train. probably hit like one, too.

"anyone give you trouble tonight?" you heard a voice, his voice. it was distorted behind that mask... helmet... thing. it sounded robotic. was he actually a robot? like cyborg or something?

"nah, it's been quiet tonight," salim shook his head as the vigilante grabbed a little bag of cookies from the shelf behind him, setting it on the counter before asking for a carton of cigarettes. "i heard that jewelry store on bedford ave got hit though."

bedford avenue? your studio was on bedford avenue, tucked away from the main street. the store wasn't too far from it, either. you must have been so wrapped up in working that you didn't hear the commotion because it was definitely close enough for you to hear it.

"just came from there," the vigilante informed him, his robotic voice being both intriguing and off putting to you. he walked back over with the warm cup of liquid in his gloved hand, setting it on the counter next to the cookies.

must have just missed it then, you thought to yourself, if he just came from over there. lucky me.

"you alright, honey?" salim called out to you with familiar affection. he always treated everyone who came to his store with respect and like family. he was always very sweet to you and he felt a sense of pride knowing that he had both celebrities and vigilantes frequenting his store.

"don't tell me you're trying to rob me," he added on at the end, getting the attention of red hood. he wasn't sure if salim was being serious or not. it would confirm his suspicions about your weird behavior from earlier. it would be kind of ballsy to try something while he was standing there, though.

"uh... yeah. this is a stick up. give me everything you got," you said lamely, standing on your toes to peek at him over the shelf.

salim's rich laughter filled the store and he shook his head. "just checking," he said before redirecting his attention to red hood, who loosened up when he realized it was just banter between friends.

you realized the longer you spent in the store, the later it would get. you waddled your way over to the counter with your snacks in your arms a comfortable distance away from red hood, who set cash on the counter. he looked over at you again, making you shrink under his gaze. he was essentially faceless, which was a little unsettling, to say the least. he turned away, grabbing his things and moving out of your way.

you put all of your snacks on the counter, trying to ignore the man's presence. he wasn't doing anything but being intimidating.

"you here by yourself, honey?" concern laced salim's words as he rung up your snacks. "it's a little late, isn't it?"

"oh, uh, yeah," you nodded, pulling your card out to pay. "everyone else is at a party in maywood."

as red hood was walking out, his brow furrowed when he heard what you were talking about. maywood was where all the big social events took place. he had been out there a few times with bruce. not anyone could go to a party out there so...

"ah, one of those celebrity parties you all go to, huh?" salim grinned, giving you your bag of goodies. he still felt unsure about you being by yourself, though. "hey, red! you should walk her back home."

he was almost out the door when he heard salim call out to him. he turned, looking at the both of you. you felt awkward looking at him and you quickly shook your head.

"no, no, it's fine. the studio isn't far," you told him and salim firmly shook his head in protest.

"it's late. you shouldn't have even walked here to begin with," he scolded you a little. it was just out of concern, of course. "she's a big time celebrity, you know."

you frowned at salim's description of you. not being able to read red hood's expressions to gauge how he felt about this whole thing was frustrating, too. he was probably glaring daggers at you.

"i can take you," the robotic voice said. normally he wouldn't be escorting civilians around but he was done for the night and if you really weren't that far, it wouldn't kill him to walk you back to wherever you were headed. he was in a good mood, even if it didn't appear that way.

"see? let the man take you back," salim pushed and you complied, giving him a little nod. "you two stay safe out there! i don't need my favorite customers getting hurt."

you waved goodbye to salim, turning to see that red hood had already started walking off. you quickly shuffled your way out to follow behind him.

"where are we going?" he asked, not even giving you a glance as you both stood on the sidewalk.

"bedford," you said quietly and he turned to face you, his look of disbelief hidden under the mask. why the hell would you leave? you had to have left while the heist was still going on. no wonder salim asked him to take you home. clearly you had a death wish.

"lead the way," he said to you, trailing behind you as you listened to the gps tell you where to go. you hoped he didn't have supersonic hearing or something, because needing to use the gps was still kind of embarrassing.

you two walked in silence, the sound of your plastic bags and the ambient city noises being the only sounds ringing in your ears. you felt a little safer having red hood as your temporary bodyguard but you'd rather risk dying to avoid the awkward silence.

"so big time celebrity," red hood spoke up, startling you a little. you almost thought it was the gps talking to you. "what do you do?"

he knew you were feeling awkward and probably afraid walking with him. he wasn't trying to scare you, though. he figured talking to you would ease the tension a little.

"oh, uh... music," you said simply.

what a dry response. were you expecting him to carry the whole conversation? because he wasn't.

"why are you out here and not in maywood?" he asked, carrying the conversation anyway.

"the studio is here so i'm here."

"so you're working?"

"yeah."

you were not fun to talk to. he wasn't going to hold it against you though. he himself probably didn't come off as a guy who wanted to talk.

"do you shoot just anyone?" you asked suddenly.

well that was one hell of an icebreaker. did he just shoot anyone? where the hell did that come from? were you that afraid of him?

"no," he said, hoping you couldn't hear his smile in his words. it was such an odd question to ask. "why? you think i'm gonna shoot you or something?"

"are you?" you asked panicked, whipping around to face him.

he put his hands up in mock surrender, letting out a laugh this time. "relax. you haven't given me a reason to want to shoot you. or have you?"

"i hope not," you said honestly, turning back around to continue walking.

"i'm not going to shoot some innocent girl, let alone a famous one. it's a bad look," he explained to you, hoping the humor behind his voice would make you relax a little.

"why don't you wear a hood?" your line of questioning continued. "you're red hood but you don't wear a hood."

"why do you keep asking ridiculous questions?" he asked rhetorically before answering your question anyway. "a hood doesn't protect the face."

well, that made sense, actually. it looked like that helmet thing he wore was made of metal or something. much better protection than cotton. it was still off brand but you could respect it.

"what the hell are you wearing?" the man had exclaimed suddenly, making you furrow your brows and look back at him. his gaze was down at your feet. "how did i not notice those before?"

"clearly that stupid helmet obstructs your vision," you pouted, looking down at the cute bunnies that sat on the strip of your pink slides. "they're my slides."

"they're hideous," he told you seriously and you scoffed.

what an asshole. how dare he insult your babies like that? they were minding their fucking business, chilling on your feet. they didn't asked to be attacked like this.

"you're hideous," you retorted childishly. "my bunnies are cute, thank you very much."

"how am i hideous? you can't even see me," he reminded you, tapping on his helmet.

"your outfit is hideous. you look like... i don't know. ugly. your face is probably ugly, too," you huffed, crossing your arms.

you wished you could go back in time and not apologize for insulting him earlier. he deserved it.

"you wound me," he said sarcastically, placing a hand over his heart. "how will i recover?"

"give me your gun and let's find out," you said, holding out your hand jokingly before getting it swatted away by his.

okay, fine. he wasn't that bad. you were actually kind of enjoying the conversation and so was he.

"arrived," you heard in your ears, looking up and seeing the studio right before your eyes.

you had been so wrapped up in bantering with him that you forgot what you were doing in the first place: going back to the studio. you almost felt disappointed that you were about to go your separate ways. you had just gotten comfortable.

"this is the place," you said, gesturing up to the building. "thank you for walking me here."

"try to keep your late night excursions to a minimum."

and with that, he used his grappling hook and disappeared into the shadows of the night. creepy. kinda cool but mostly creepy.

you walked around back to the side door, letting yourself back into the studio and locking up immediately afterwards. another successful snack run. now all you had to do was wait for dex to get back.

...

it had been about two weeks since your encounter with the vigilante. jason had long forgotten about it. he had been at the manor, lingering around after a meeting in the cave with bruce and his brothers. he didn't like sticking around once business was taken care of but alfred offered to make him chili dogs. it was a calculated move to get him to stick around and it worked.

tim was lounging on the arm chair while dick and damian were both seated on the couch. jason stood off to the side, directing his attention to the television that sat above the fireplace. tim had been watching youtube videos all day and stumbled across a gotham insider q&a that had a clickbait-y title about vigilantes. naturally, he was intrigued and wanted to watch it with the rest of them.

"what am i looking at?" he asked, taking a bite of his chili dog.

"something hilarious. i've been waiting to show you guys all day," tim explained, grabbing the remote.

"i hope this isn't something juvenile, drake," damian chimed, resting his body against the arm of the couch.

"or gross," dick co-signed with a grimace. "we just ate."

"just shut up and watch," he sighed, unpausing the video.

jason felt a little tingle in the back of his mind at your face was on the screen. you looked familiar. he silently watched as you and jordy discussed your feelings about vigilantes. dick snorted when he heard your comment about nightwing. tim began to snicker in anticipating for the main event: the red hood argument.

as jason watched, everything made sense. you were that weird girl he walked home. that was why you asked him those stupid questions. he was a little annoyed at you calling him stupid and off brand but he had to admit the segment was funny. especially the part at the end where you were begging him not to shoot you. you seemed so much more relaxed and naturally funny than you did when he was with you that night. it almost gave him whiplash.

"you should shoot her. for good measure," damian told jason once the clip ended, making the older boy roll his eyes.

"nah. i can't shoot my bard," he smiled, making dick smile too. he had expected jason to be all grumpy about getting talked about but he seemed to be taking it fairly well. tim was kinda disappointed that jason didn't seem more bothered by it. he wanted to tease him a little.

"i think red hood payola is probably the funniest thing i've heard in awhile," dick said, laughing along with tim. even damian cracked a little smile.

jason walked back to the kitchen, recalling that night he ran into you now that he had seen the video, finally understanding why you were acting so strange.

his bard, huh? cute...

[thegreenwolf]

(This post was originally posted on my blog at https://thegreenwolf.com/its-okay-to-not-hustle/)

There’s this meme going around Facebook right now, saying “If you don’t come out of this quarantine with a new skill, your side hustle started, or more knowledge, you never lacked time. You lacked discipline.” Thankfully multiple people have already skewered it, but it continues to be shared around by the sort of person who is trying to one-up everyone else, or who’s just plain clueless–or, for that matter, just trying to guilt you into buying whatever they’re selling.

Now, there’s not a damned thing wrong with self-promotion. That’s how indie artists, authors, and other self-employed folks get the word out. You have to be able to talk good talk in order to get people’s attention. But leading with this meme? Guilting people for not leaping from sudden unemployment straight into the thick of the ever-shifting gig economy? That ain’t gonna fly, Brocephus.

You Have Good Reasons to Slack

Excuse me while I dust off my counseling psych degree a sec, here. *ahem* We are in a very sensitive, turbulent time right now. We’re in the middle of a pandemic, the likes of which hasn’t been seen in a century in the Western world. We are in a hugely traumatizing situation here. Not just for the financial losses, but the fact that COVID-19 has killed thousands of people and left many more with permanent lung damage. We still haven’t gotten a handle yet on exactly how contagious this thing is, how long you’re contagious for, or whether you’re immune once you’ve had it, assuming you survive. We don’t have adequate testing, emergency rooms estimate that for every positive test there are 10-20 people out there infected and untested, and everyone with a cough is suddenly Schroedinger’s COVID case. Governments worldwide are slow to react in spite of the rising death toll. People have had friends and family die horribly from this thing in a short period of time. Even people who didn’t already have issues with anxiety, depression and other mental illnesses are feeling stressed, strained and scared–and, yes, traumatized. This image is guilt-tripping people who are actively being traumatized.

So we’re already starting with a populace that is dealing with this collective trauma, as well as whatever personal trauma each individual is experiencing. Not always easy to seize the day when you’re going through that. And I can think of a few other reasons that might further complicate this whole “Just get a side gig!” thing:

–They’re a parent who suddenly has all their kids at home, all the time, demanding time and attention and food, AND they still have to work eight hours a day from home, or maybe even more if their S.O. is unemployed/sick/etc. By the way, if someone trots out Isaac Newton or William Shakespeare or some other historical guy who managed to do epic things during a pandemic, remember that they usually had wives or servants to do all the laundry and cooking and cleaning and (if applicable) childcare for them.

–They’re disabled or chronically ill, and don’t have the ability/energy/etc. to just go and make something happen, just like that. Imagine if you just randomly got the fatigue from a really bad flu, and you never knew whether it was going to last a day or a month. And if you tried exerting yourself when you were feeling better, chances are you’d slip back into fatigue-land. That’s what a lot of my chronically ill/etc. friends have to deal with, to say nothing of issues with accessibility of resources for starting a side gig.

–They don’t have any money for the supplies needed to start a side hustle, or the supplies have been hoarded by hobbyists preparing for a Pandemic Staycation.

–They don’t have the skills for something that just requires what they already have (like, for example, writing on a laptop you already happen to own). Often these skills are things that can’t be perfected in a few weeks at home, but may take years to develop before they’re really marketable–like, for example, the skill to make a decent living on side hustles.

–They have anxiety, depression or other mental health conditions that make it hard to function even in the best of times, but even moreso in this…well…mess. Even people who were mentally healthy before are going to be developing diagnosable anxiety and depression disorders before all’s said and done. And speaking from personal experience, those of us who look successful on the outside can still be internally hamstrung by these conditions at times.

–Plus there’s the fact that we’re not supposed to, you know, leave our homes, which narrows down the field of potential side gigs by a lot.

Even doing something less financially-wrought like learning a new skill or subject takes time, energy, and sometimes money, any or all of which may be scarce for the reasons above and more.

Comparison is the Thief of Joy

I am saying all of this as someone who is arguably an expert on the side gig. I have spent the past eight and a half years 100% self-employed (and a lot longer doing it part-time) as an author and artist, able to cover all my bills and expenses, and for a time I was the primary breadwinner of a multi-person household. I have like ten different things I was doing for a living before this all hit, a pretty diverse set of streams of income, even if most of them just up and evaporated in the past few weeks. And while I’m definitely a hell of a lot leaner now than I was a month ago, I still have my head above water for the moment. So I think I know side gigs.

I’m one of the lucky ones. I’m overall healthy. I have a dog who is a lot less demanding of my time than kids would be. I have my own space where I can focus more or less without interruption. More importantly, I have the skills, the knowhow, the drive and the personality to go out and seek new opportunities. And I’m used to fluctuations in income, though admittedly this one’s unprecedented. Don’t gauge yourself by where I am now. I’ve spent twenty-two years building up my art business, my first book came out in 2006, and I’ve had a series of really good opportunities come my way that I had the privilege to be able to make the most of. I am not your measuring stick, so don’t say “Well, if she can do it why can’t I? I must suck!”

If you’re feeling crappy because you aren’t hopping to it and carpeing the diem and getting everything done, here’s what I have to say to you: Look, you just had your world turned upside-down. Job loss, scarce commodities, sudden lack of outside childcare, restricted movement and inability to be around much of your support system, and did I mention a pandemic is happening, too? Any single one of those things would be difficult for just about anyone to deal with, never mind all at once. And I don’t even know what all else has already been going on in your life–unstable or unsafe living situation, other health issues, breakups and other losses, interpersonal conflicts. You know, normal life stuff.

You’re Not Lazy, or Screwing Up, or (Gods Forbid) Undisciplined

It is totally okay if all you’re doing right now is surviving. It’s okay if you feel like you’re drowning, overwhelmed by all that’s happening both on a global level and more personally. It’s okay if all you can manage right now is to get out of bed and stumble through each day a moment at a time, struggling with a tidal wave of emotions. It’s okay if you’re just trying to keep your kids busy, dealing with a crowded home every single day, or trying to keep COVID-19 at bay. It’s okay if, instead of firing up DuoLingo or opening an Etsy shop, you spend your evenings vegging to Netflix or reading a book or playing hours and hours of Animal Crossing.

Not every moment in your life has to be about being productive even in the best of circumstances, and that goes exponentially so right now. Be patient with yourself, and be kind. You may be one of those folks who literally has to spend all their time scrabbling to try to cover the bills or get some leeway from bill collectors, and you have to dedicate your waking time hunting for resources just to try to get through this week. Believe me, I feel for you, I have a lot of friends in that situation right now, and I hope all of you can find some relief and assistance.

May I suggest something? If you have the energy for something more than the bare essentials of getting by, put that energy toward self-care, whatever you can manage under the circumstances. You can use it to recuperate, to rebuild your emotional and physical resilience. That way if things get rough again in the future, you have more internal reserves to build on. If your usual methods don’t work or aren’t accessible due to lockdown, ask others what they’re doing to keep themselves grounded in this trying time.

Just because you have more time doesn’t mean you don’t have to throw yourself right into something productive! Don’t feel pressured to just go-go-go the moment you have a little freedom to move. If you do decide you want to try a side gig, or a new skill, or learn all about some specialized topic of interest, go for it! If you have the energy and attention and opportunity to pursue something new, it can be a great coping skill during this traumatic time. Just don’t pressure yourself; keep it fun.

One last thing: I want you to save the image I have at the top of this post. And then if you see someone post that meme, saying “Come on, you lazy bums, get up and make that side gig happen! Learn new stuff! Do all the things! No excuses!” you pull out this version, and you look at the edits, you remember that it’s okay to be where you are, and you get back to doing things at your own pace no matter what someone else says. (I find visualizing stapling a printout of the edited version to the offender’s forehead to also be therapeutic, but that may just be me.)

Hang in there, okay? It’s going to be a rough time, but you’re not alone, and what you’re feeling right now is shared by so many people. So just let yourself be where you are in this moment, and we’ll see what hope tomorrow brings. And remember that whatever you’re capable of in this moment: it’s enough.

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[dappersheep]

Food Fantasy: An Analysis on what killed a Golden Goose (1/3)

So first things first, disclaimers! I do not claim nor pretend to know every nook and cranny, ins and outs of the history of FooFan's conception, existence and uncertain future. I do not own the game nor its characters, only the opinions and thoughts stated hereon out.

This was born to vent out my frustrations with how a game like this was abused poorly by its own developer and publisher instead of being nurtured to become its full potential that could have overshadowed and remained better than the likes of Tencent's Tales of Food --I could dream, but it honestly had the potential to be.

Out of respect for the main tag, I personally will not be tagging this post and the following two with the main tag. If you want to tag it yourself with it, that's your choice. Only followers of my blog will see this.

This analysis is divided into three parts: Funtoy, Elex, and the Community. It starts under the cut. Well let's get started.

Funtoy

Ah yes, the creator. The developer. You'd think that with their sudden rise to fame during their global launch, they'd have used the massive profits they earned within the first quarter of 2018 to improve certain things about the game and then trickled it down as quickly as possible towards Global, right? Yeah, I thought so too.

After playing the game since launch, I've seen and experienced way too many things that just hammer in the fact that this is one of the most unfair gacha I've played in years. Some reasons being the following:

(Note: These are experiences ONLY on Global's version, it may also apply to CN being the original server)

⦁ The game's gacha model is aimed towards maximum predation on its players. F2p are forced to either spend some money (and thus tempt them to keep spending after getting a taste of it), or risk not even getting a good ascension of the unit to be useful at all. Paying for the event packs also doesn't guarantee that you would be able to secure a spot in the ranks. In fact, if you can't comprehend how the battle mechanics work, you could even de-rank. Fun way to burn that 800$, huh? At least you have the skin from rebates.

⦁ A little less known thing and probably theoretical at worst, the long joked about spaghetti coding of the game along with an outdated spine technology for the sprites could very well be the reason why a 2D game like this experiences the shittiest lags. Also how easy it is to hack this game with the right know-how.

⦁ Speaking of bad gameplay mechanics, did you know you could spend over fifty Mirrors and not get that final enhancement from +9 to +10 simply because there's absolutely no tangible safety net before +10?

⦁ If you're F2P, this game is terrible in giving you resources to stockpile. Because Funtoy certainly doesn't have a lot of weekly/monthly or even friendly events wherein you can get resources without spending another kind of resource. The Hawthorne event's rewards are lackluster at best, Bingo is severely limited in what it gives, and Recall also doesn't give much for a big event that only happens (supposedly) every 6 months. Did I also mention that daily resource rewards also kinda suck compared to how much you burn in just one event?

⦁ Monthly subs are a scam. Yes, you heard that right. My point of comparison here is Arknights. A monthly in AK allows you to have enough to 10-pull after 30 days, on top of a bit of stamina to help you. In FooFan? You have two monthly subs that do different things and even then, you won't have enough to 10-pull by the end of 30 days, nor is the stamina you get enough to even stockpile and ease the pressure of your need to save for the Gates or that stamina event that suddenly popped up.

⦁ A conga line of 'Must procure this unit at a high ascension to do well in the following events!'. You missed the first Pizza event? Missed the first Turkey event? God forbid, you weren't able to 5* your Beer on his debut? Well sorry, that 5* Black Tea of yours isn't gonna do squat to give you good damage. No, your 2* B-52 also isn't going to do much of anything with his lackluster damage capabilities. If you want a chance to get those event URs again, you have to wait for their pool with laughably limited pulls... and a bloated price to even pull.

⦁ The events starting after the first iteration of Turkey event get even more paywalled. As far as I remember, by the time Minestrone rolled around, an F2P with ample crystal resources can only get 2* at best. 3* and above are paywalled.

⦁ The game has incompetent balancing. The devs themselves likely have little experience in gameplay design and balancing, especially for a game with a growing roster of characters . A prime example of them launching a character not knowing it would pretty much unbalance the game? Look no further than Beer. The guy had to have a couple of nerfs done to him because he was just too meta. You know what's sadder? Before the 'switch' to Brave meta, almost all meta units was built to benefit off the Beer meta.

⦁ Artifacts. Do I even have to explain how the introduction of such a game feature so early into the lifespan of this game essentially fucked over the balance even more? Not to mention, all the more reason you'd be crying with the Gates of Trials demanding so much out of your stamina and crystal resources. F2Ps are again, the ones that suffer in this part. What's their reason? Profit, of course.

⦁ The nerf of resto chests. This was the primary source for people who were saving up stamina for the Gates... until Funtoy decided they were being too generous to their playerbase and dropped the stamina probability rate to 1% or less.

⦁ Terrible UI layout and design. Come on, be honest now, you've lost several thousand of your hard earned crystals buying screws in the fishing shop because you didn't notice that shiny warning in small text and a green button with the crystal image slapped on it, didn't you?

⦁ Look at all these SRs! All of them! Wow, they even outnumber the Rs by at least 80! What's that? There's more URs now too compared to Rs and Ms combined? That can't be real. But seriously, you'd think Funtoy could make some of these SRs into Rs and add them to the perm pool/shard fusion so people aren't stuck pulling Macaron or Dorayaki every time. They could have also populated the Team Up rewards with SRs instead of Rs. But you know... that won't bring them profit. Haha... haha.... Oh and I haven't even told you about the SP class...!

⦁ Lore. Yes, I'm sure by now you're aware that the in-game lore is different from the ones in the non-SP Food Soul bios, in the SP Food Soul bios that sort of ties in with the New World story (that global will never be getting btw). At this point, Funtoy handwaves the confusion away by saying, 'they're all different timelines'. Yes yes, an easy and cliche move to explain how shitty the writing direction went after a while. I don't know what happened, all I know is that lore got weird(er) when they introduced SP Rice.

⦁ They. Keep. Adding. More. Characters! They fail to see that a lot of their earlier players have imprinted on the first few waves of Food Souls and they sadly also fail to properly give some of them more story expansion... or skins. At the moment, they're shelling out so many JP-centric Food Souls because... as I see it? They're pandering to the last bastion of whales they have.

⦁ Merchandise. And I mean a variety of merchandise that isn't using the same official art every time. Like they couldn't afford to commission a couple of artists one or two times to make unique merchandise that would sell. They started too late on that train, and they even made it too hard for anyone not in CN or JP to even procure what already exists. Not to mention, they keep using the same 'popular' set of characters for their merchandise and never really expanding out to making merch for other characters.

These are all the things I can list off at the top of my head why Funtoy as a developer sucks ass. They could sweeten their words all they want, it won't change the fact that they've certainly made way too many bad decisions and found out about it too late, and now they're desperate to keep Food Fantasy alive to keep their profits coming in to make whatever that cat girl game they have and that supposedly 'side-game' FF2 they announced.

There may have been problems out of their control that I or you do not see, but one thing is for sure, they were blinded by greed for the money they were raking in on all their servers at the start, and never actually bothered to invest in more manpower in the right places to improve the game, both gameplay-wise and worldbuilding wise. It's actually saddening that this game could have been so much more with several QoLs and a more fleshed out lore, perhaps even spacing out the number of new units they keep introducing while going back to giving their old units more attention.

That's it for Funtoy. We're moving onto Elex in the next part and boy is that also a trip.