#i drew agnes!! finally

[faneth]

do you ever hear your own voice call out to you?

[aiiambdraws]

🍰

[witchwhaat]

barks at you

[hocuspocusbabyy]

A ring of bright light: Chapter 1. ‘It’s happening again.’

Eloise Bridgerton x Female OC.

Description: Eloise Bridgeton is to marry Lord Brennan this upcoming season, following a residency at her familiar home Aubery House. Their betrothal is to be announced in two months. If all goes to plan…

Warnings: None?

Word count: 1k (just an opener don’t panic loves.)

Next Chapter

Eloise tightened her gloved hands on the balcony wall, partially to resist the temptation to leap ahead and greet those who waited on the other side and partially to wake herself from the nightmare to come.

Winter air cools against her skin, the long gown doing little against the harsh country noir exterior that was Aubrey House at night. Buried deeply into the evergreen stitch of her corset, her heartbeat ragged against the confinement. If birds were not built for cages, surely the same logic would be applied to herself? Bare feet making a swift sloshing sound aggravating the gravel below, debris digging into the pads of flesh deeper than any weapon she had known before.

The gardens seemed alive with light as every inch of ground bubbled with people and for a fleeting moment, as more carriages approached the castle. A warmth raised within her chest as undeniable anxiety, familiarity. Turning her back to the on coming guests, the small of her back pressed deadly against the barrier. Shadows filtered through the historic windows, as the dust licked walls still seemed to cling onto the fleeting light of Friday as though an old friend they had yet to have finished talking to. A shaking breath escaped the mouth, caught in a brief moment of admiration towards the dripping sun - for out of all the fires she had seen this hideously biblical form was one she had grown fond of; or rather the flashes of red from within its last moments as through snippets of the passing day mere memories now. Only the future night was imminent.

She was running unusually late, she could tell by the main entrance to the building growing peacefully desolate; as the other inhibitors congregated within the ballroom. Her eyes squeezed shut, desperately clinging to those final moments of silence.

“You’re not considering jumping are you?” A voice asked the approaching footsteps drew closer, heart edging to her throat.

“What would that help? Death has no use for me yet, although I do wish he would.”

“What makes you so sure death is a man?” The voice asked again, their body finding rest beside Eloise.

“Surely only a man could be so cruel, as to hover such a fate in my peripherals.”

“I see.” The voice hummed as though mulling the conversation, “And clearly you see so much with your eyes practically melted closed.” Eloise’s laughter was a welcome sight to her visitor, the brunette's eyes finally opening as her head found rest against the woman’s shoulder. Her mother – Violet. A buoyant woman; complimented heavily by her Angelically crow-like features - coils of ash tamed in a formal updo so different to the style had grown accustomed to as she usually pottered away her hours within the castle greenhouse. Fingers never without the soil beneath them, a relationship with a ghastly old nail brush that lay upon the kitchen sink heavily established. She'd always lecture upon the importance of soil, on how each particle of the earth somehow held its own story and origins - for soil had seen more love, more pain than any human. As she'd place lumps of the material within their hands "Rub it in then the memories never leave you".

It was reminiscent of her father, of his death. Violet hadn’t allowed anyone to tend to the lilacs since.

“Is everyone here?” Eloise asked after a moment, basking in the comfort of her material figure.

“All the ducks are in rows my dear, now they await a leader.”

“You’re their leader.” mumbled the familiar scent of gardenia flowing past her, upon the open air.

“Now for long my little swan.” Violet sighed, a perfectly delicate hand raising to card its way through the princess’ hair.

“Is he here?”

“Your suitor? Yes dear unfortunately for you he has shown” The queen laughed hoping to lighten her daughters mood.

"We have a nasty habit involving men in this family" her mother would often say whilst winking at her father Edmund across the room. He had passed on almost ten years ago; he'd been the best hug giver and secret magician, never failing to pull a coin from an awaiting child's ear. A sometimes overbearingly traditional yet progressive man, his head still surprisingly full of hair till the day of his early demise. Collins is seemingly thinning already.

His passing had wrecked the family. His wife, all the more scornful and ironically loving; the clone of her mothers, and the replica of herself - Lady Violet was no elementary being, her voice like bathwater, every syllable effortless and wise. She played the piano as though it were second nature to breathe air; embraced few but loved many under the guise of something to be feared. Eloise’s most loved and favoured person in the entire world… unless you asked Benedict.

Then there was Eloise, Lou and 'Flower' on the not too rare occasion, for as her mother was prone to say and the people continued, was the "one of the most precious examples of life to ever grow within these gardens.” with her uncontrollable ripples of dark hair, ill radiance and sea filled eyes, the procurement of two fine specimens to create the most poorly formed swan the world was ever to behold.

“I wish he were here.” Eloise mumbled gently, Violet’s lips falling to kiss the crown of her head.

“I know my dear, as do I.”

Father had died in these very Gardens during her seventh year. Leaving behind Anthony as the elder brother to ascend the house.

“Come now. Best to hit the ground running, keeping your guests waiting is a terrible introduction.” Violet stated, stepping towards the balcony doors.

The set of grand doors that almost shook with vigour with the level of presence behind it, the noise and voice of many locked behind it. Eloise came to her mother’s side – she could not run from this, this was her home.

The doors were opened with one swift movement of the awaiting footmen, revealing a ballroom, many familiar inhibitors of the neighbouring families huddled around in festivities, laughing. Drinks not far from hand, and children in clear scheming mode begging their respective guardians to stay up late; while others could be seen playing games in each corner, the low light shining on each face – new and old.

“Introducing The Dowager Viscountess Bridgerton and Miss Eloise Bridgerton.”

[galacticspaceguy]

Here’s a little TCOC Drabble

“Fine!” Ayah screamed. “Then I’ll leave and you’ll never see me again!” She pulled her suitcase off the ground and trudged out the doors. “I bet you all would just love that!” She was halfway down the steps at this point, the suitcase hitting every single step as it dragged behind her.

“Miss Vallance-“ Maid Agnes- a sheep/goat like alien- followed the child. She lifted her dress above her ankles, being sure not to trip. “Miss Vallance, please come back!”

Ayah ignored her calling, and continued making her way down the steps.

Agnes stopped in her tracks. She huffed, frustrated and angry at Ayah's outbursts for the first time in years. “You have nowhere to go! No one will take care of you out here!” She yelled.

Ayah drew to a slow stop. The suitcase fell from her hands. She sat on the steps, arms wrapped around her knees. Agnes took this chance to finally catch up with her.

Ayah sniffed. “What if he comes back and I’m not here…?” She asked, face in her arms.

Agnes' heart was filled with guilt. If only she could tell her- “Miss Vallance… there’s something I have to tell you-“

“I don’t wanna hear it! I don’t!” Ayah screamed into her sleeves. “I don’t…”

“No. You need to hear this.” Agnes stood up, and stood in front of Ayah. “Miss Vallance, you are a smart girl. You are a brave, very brave, girl. But now-“ Agnes' voice quivered a bit. “You need to be very, very brave, a-and very, very smart, because…”

“Because…?”

“You’re… brother has been taken into navy custody.”

[trevosinhotrans]

School :D

A custom of mine at school is that, when I finish my exams and if there is still time left, I draw a picture on the back, this time I drew Morro, and i really like how cool he looks!!

He's saying "Lloyd" because it's the only thing I've memorized as written in the Ninjago alphabet (STILL! I swear one day I'll memorize the entire alphabet!! Stay tuned!!)

I drew a Doodle of Sora with a cat too since the rest of Dragon Rising recently came out (I still plan to draw more of this new part that came out!!)

That cat is just so silly idk lol

And finally, in English classes, as there was a holiday here where I live and almost the entire class was absent, the teacher (thank you Agnes<33) let me draw on the board, and I really love drawing on the board.

He's so small😭🩷

I have a lot of drawings, I was thinking if I should post them here, because every time I posted something on any social network it always flopped. Anyway, I hope you are well Don't forget to drink water. Sorry for by bad english

kisses kisses :D

[dismaldonut]

Exerpt From Ch3 of "Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Doctor Crowley"

“...So where’s yours then? This ‘Doctor’ whoever-he-is?” 

“Out there looking for me I reckon. Sorry about earlier. It’s just what he and I do. We try helping people.”

“I’m not regular people,” Crowley winked, wordlessly forgiving her. “What’s keeping you?”

Her eyes rolled. She could use for an apology, but whatever. “Well the rain, for starters. Secondly I haven’t a clue where to start.”

She moved to the front door and opened it. The smell of rain filled the air along with the heavy sound of it rolling to the ground. It was a proper thunderstorm, made worse by Crowley’s emotions. “Hold on,” He sighed, dragging himself out of the comfortable leather chair. Standing beside her at the door, Crowley peered out to the sky. He held his hands up a moment then concentrated. The rain slowed. “Stop, stop stop…” He muttered a growl towards the sky. He had to be careful to not accidentally trigger a drout. 

The rain finally stopped, going from a heavy downpour to nothing.

Rose stared at him trying to not seem impressed. It was brilliant, what he just did! She had seen weather changing devices, a human stretched out so thin she was transparent, the true end of the world with the Sun’s expansion… But never an entity controlling the weather on command like that. He was the real deal. Still not her Doctor. 

“Thank you.” She said flatly, looking back out into the road.

“Any time.” He shrugged.

It only took a few moments for her to hear a familiar whirring sound. It was a sonic screwdriver. 

“Rose?” A familiar voice. It was him! Finally!

Crowley squinted from out in the distance as a man shrouded in the dark came in running for them. Rose’s face lit up and she darted out to greet him. “Doctor!”

The Doctor was grinning ear to ear. He found her! They ran for each other and met in the middle. She lept into his arms and he chuckled, twirling Rose around once. “Good, the teleport worked! I was getting nervous, parallel universe and all. The TARDIS is working somehow here and I don’t know how, but gift horse.”

Rose giggled and drew back to look up at him. “Let’s just be glad it is.” She sealed her words with a kiss.

He hummed contently afterwards as the rest of this alternate world fell into the background. For just a moment. They continued holding hands. Their relationship had blossomed as of late. There was no darkness threatening to consume the multiverse. No Daleks. She had slipped, by total accident, into a secondary parallel universe. With endless branched off parallel worlds, Rose Tyler managed to find him. He wasn’t her original Doctor, but he was close enough, and she was not going to let him go. Never again, especially after hearing the end of his sentence. What he had tried saying back on the worst day of her life.

Crowley made his way onto the soaked and empty road. He was intrigued, wondering who this woman mistook him for. 

She heard him walking towards them at a distance. “There’s someone you should meet, Doctor.” Rose turned towards Crowley and beckoned him over. The Doctor locked onto the stranger, smiling with cautious optimism.

“Who is this?”

Rose spoke quietly to her Doctor. “Anthony Crowley, a demon. Not an alien but… Here I think angels and demons are real. Also, I think he needs our help. He mentioned something about the end of his world. There’s to be a war of some kind. That is what this Agnes Nutter wrote down? Some sort of psychic from the 1600s, it’s connected to now somehow.”

If there was a world that needed saving, perhaps they should stay. Or not. He wasn’t sure if this was something they could handle on their own. 

“Aliens and demons are typically one and the same, Rose, what is he really?” The Doctor frowned.

“You must be the Doctor. Heard tons about you.” Crowley greeted with a tight smile. He locked eyes with his own face.

The Doctor grinned nervously. “I hope they were all good things.”

“The best. I see now why Rose here mistook me for you in the dark. Still, the eyes are all wrong, too… Brown!” Although it was night and the only things illuminating the streets were lamp posts, Crowley could see like it was day. Both of th em tilted their heads to the side like pups. 

The Doctor stopped first and looked to Rose.

“No fair, he has red hair. I told you, I would look good as a ginger!” He rambled on, referring to when he first regenerated past being bald. Rose giggled again and patted his chest. “What again about my eyes? What color are yours ?” The Doctor asked as he squinted, unable so see through the demon’s sunglasses.

“..Not the most..-” Crowley started when someone grappled him from behind.

 All three were abruptly flanked by a group of demons. A strong demon had a vice grip hold on Crowley who thrashed. Another had taken hold of the Doctor and Rose was pushed aside. 

“Rose!!” The Doctor cried out. “Let go of me!”

Shax strolled in forward between Crowley and The Doctor. “I told you that we need you, Crowley.” She mused, looking to the Doctor. 

“I’m right here, you idiot.” Crowley sighed, barely putting up a fight.

The Doctor glared daggers at the demon. “Let. Me. Go.”

“Oh, sorry. My mistake. The similarities are uncanny .” Shax chuckled dryly.

The muscular demon holding the Doctor didn’t let go. “What if this is a trick?”

“Yeah he’s really good at weaseling his way out of things, like the last armageddon,” The smelly demon holding Crowley added.

“This is not a trick! Miss, look at my hair, look at my eyes. Can Crowley change his appearance at will like that?” The Doctor pleaded, throwing logic Shax’s way.

She pursed her lips and thought a moment.

“Yeah think about it. I’m not that good.” Crowley said.

“Quiet, I am thinking.” Shax insisted, looking between the two of them. “You. Not-Crowley. You don’t smell human nor wield the same energy. What are you?”

The Doctor took in a breath. “I’m a Time Lord.”

“A time what?”

Meanwhile, Rose was being held back by Melted-Face Demon. It had to be the ugliest creature she had ever seen. “Let me through!” She insisted. Melted-Face didn’t let her budge. She was ready to gut him with her elbow, but she was worried her arm would get stuck.

“A Lord of Time. I am not a demon, I am of no use to you.”

Shax squinted at the Doctor. “Does that mean you can forsee the future?” A wicked grin began to rise over her lips.

“No, time doesn’t work that way.”

Crowley groaned and gritted his teeth, stoping his foot like a child having a tantrum. He knew what was going to happen next. The sky grumbled threatening rain again. “Rose, find Nina. She works that coffee shop over there. Hide in the bookshop 'till morning.” He called out.

“Who??” Rose replied in confusion.

"AUGH I don't like repeating myself. Nina!"

“If you’re a ‘Time Lord’ whatever that is, perhaps you might be of use to us. Bring them both down.” Shax declared. “Let the girl go. I’m in a gleeful mood.”

“What? What no, NO!!” The Time Lord panicked, thrashing hard as he could against the strong demon keeping him still.  He just found Rose again. The TARDIS was parked safely, but she didn’t know where it is and he was too focused on trying to not get dragged to Hell to think.

“Shax! Keep this Doctor close to me, I need him.” Crowley belted out as the ground disappeared for all of them. "For what?" The Doctor asked.

They all fell into the earth, save for Rose Tyler standing alone. Full Fanfiction is on AO3 here:

Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Doctor Crowley - Chapter 1 - Haunted_Wallflower - Good Omens (TV) [Archive of Our Own]

[lowkeyerror]

Agatha Harkness x fem! Reader where they fall in love in middle of the Westiew event… please 🙏

Real

Word Count: 1k

Warnings: None

Masterlist

Falling for Agnes shouldn't have been in the cards. She was a married woman, a nosy neighbor, but something about her just stood out to you. How could you have allowed yourself to fall for an illusion of a woman.

Though you knew Agnes not to be true, that didn't stop you from having brunch with her every Thursday. It didn't stop you from inviting her over to your house for dinners on Sunday. Dinner's that Herb never attended, much to your delight.

It didn't stop you from staring at every chance you got. Enticed by her beauty and charm. Agnes was wonderful.

If falling for Agnes was a misstep, then falling for Agatha was a true mistake.

It was dinner on a Sunday. The two of you had eaten like you normally did. Then talked with the tv on as background noise. You were listening to Agnes, you really were.

However, your eyes were trained on her lips. You couldn't help it. In the middle of her talking, you moved quickly, pressing a kiss on her lips.

She sat shocked for a long time. A million thoughts raced through your mind. Why had you done that?

Before the thoughts could consume too much of your mind, her lips were back on you. You hadn't imagined her kiss like this in your mind. It was a contrast to the woman you knew.

Her lips moved hungrily against yours. She hovered over you, forcing your back against the couch as she controlled the kiss.

It made your head spin.

" Please tell me you aren't affected by the hex," Agnes breathed out against your lips.

You let out a small gasp," I'm not, but I was certain you were."

She laughed, and it was music to your ears," I'm a good actress, what can I say?"

" Y/n."

" Huh?"

" My real name, it's Y/n."

The woman on top of your smiles," Agatha."

From there on, there was a safety you found in Agatha. A part of this weird town that was finally real. You told her that you were a witch that had settled in Westview, your house was protected by your ruins. That was the main reason the hex didn't affect you.

She told you that the hex is what drew her here in the first place. She didn't hide her intentions from you. Nor did you hide your apprehension towards her idea.

If Wanda could hex an entire town, unintentionally, her powers were beyond any witch you'd ever known.

Agatha insisted she could handle it. You two didn't discuss it anymore. Too wrapped up in each other. Most nights you convinced her to stay at your place.

You loved lying next to her at night. Her arms wrapped securely around you, a secret promise that she'd keep you safe. Wanda's magic was unstable and though you were safe in your house, it was dangerous.

Life with Agatha felt domestic. It was something you had always secretly craved. It had been too long since you'd been romanced. Agatha was the most charming woman you had the pleasure of knowing.

She'd bring you gifts every time you saw her. Whether it was flowers or small jewelry, she said she was always thinking of you. She'd cook for you without asking. You hadn't felt so cared for.

As her plan started to work more and more, the nerves inside you built up. She was in the final stages, and you could see subtle changes in her that scared you. You weren't scared of Agatha, but you didn't want her to choose the power of you.

" Aggie?"

You drew patterns on her arm as she held you in bed.

" Yes, darling."

You sighed," I'm- please be careful out there."

She placed a kiss on the top of your head," I'm always going to come back to you."

The battle was worse than you could imagine. There was too much going on; between the fight between the two Visions, the special agents, and Wanda and Agatha, your head was spinning.

It was hard to follow. Yet you were trying. Agatha made you promise not to get involved, but the more you watched the two witches fight, the more your nerves began to act up.

Just being around Wanda, you could feel the power radiating off of her. Maybe she didn't know what she was doing, but with power like that, it hardly mattered.

The more unstable the town got, the louder your heartbeat was in your ear. You'd lost track of the two in the sky. It felt like an eternity, but it was truly only a few minutes until they were back on the ground.

Agatha was on the floor and Wanda stood over her. You were within ear shot. You heard what Wanda had planned to do, you heard Agatha begging.

You couldn't stand by any longer. Before you knew what you were doing, you ran straight for Wanda. You placed your body between her and Agatha.

The red head was caught off guard by your action.

" I won't let you take her from me."

Your body trembled, but your eyes were locked on hers. At this moment you'd do whatever it took to keep Agatha.

Wanda's gaze moved between the two of you a few times. She didn't say anything. Her exterior deflated and she glared at Agatha.

" Don't ever come looking for me again, Agatha. She won't be able to save you if there is a next time."

The witch calmly walked away from the two of you. When she was out of sight, your legs became unstable. You dropped to your knees, your eyes welled with tears; a mixture of anxiety and relief.

Agatha wrapped her arms securely around you, holding you as tight as she could. Her own fear craved something to ground it.

Once the tears stopped, you went home. Agatha was quiet, but her hand latched on to yours.

" You saved me," was the first thing Agatha said as she walked into the home.

You reached to grab her other hand. With both of her hands in yours, and you're staring into hers, you spoke, " I love you."

Agatha’s breath hitched for a fraction of a second," I- I love you too."

You nodded," Run away with me?"

" Ok."

" Really?" You asked, checking her certainty.

She pulled you closer to her," Yes, really. Now shut up and kiss me."

[jgmartin]

THE AFTERLIFE SEQUENCE

How does it work?

Death, I mean. How does it work? That was the point of the study– the trial. What happens when we die, where do we go, what does it feel like, and is it even worth the hassle? Is there a heaven? A hell?

We didn’t know, but we wanted to. I suppose that’s where everything went wrong, right out of the gate. We wanted to play God, or at least learn the rules of the game. To see behind the curtain for just a moment, if only so we could know what to expect when the lights went out and we said that final goodnight.

I’m telling you now, swearing to you that we never intended for things to go wrong the way that they did. The people that lost their lives knew what they were getting into. They signed releases. Paperwork. They agreed to let us do what we did, just so long as we promised to handsomely compensate their families. And we did. We held up our end of the bargain to the tune of 13 million dollars.

But things like this, they never work out the way they’re meant to. I knew that. I did. I think that on some level all of us did, but the people who were funding us had no idea. They wanted results. Be messy, they said, if that’s what it takes. Do whatever you need to do to figure out what happens in the sequel to Life, and make it snappy because this funding is running on an hourglass, and that sand is slipping.

So we cut corners. We pushed people in ways that, in retrospect, were irresponsible. Dangerous. But we did it for the common good. We did it for you– for all of us, for the benefit of future generations who could look death in the eye without the horror of not knowing what came next.

It was a good thing. It really was.

The first death went smoothly. An older woman, 87 years old and dying of liver failure was hooked up to our state-of-the-art equipment that had one job and one job only: to bring them back. To let them taste the cold kiss of death, and then tear their soul back into the land of the living long enough to give us a play-by-play of what happened while they were away. I know, I know. This has happened before. People have come back from clinical death plenty of times, haven’t they? Sure. That’s true.

But never after three days.

The three-day timeline was a tricky one because even though the corpse was dead, even though the cadaver was cold and beginning to cellularly decompose, we needed to keep it fresh enough to host life. Don’t get me wrong, the life it hosted didn’t last long, but it lasted long enough. I still remember the pulse of excitement that shot through the room when the old woman opened her eyes. Her first rancid breath drew applause.

“Agnes,” Roger, our research lead said. He stood by her bedside, craned over her wearing a toque and gloves. “Can you hear my voice?”

The woman nodded. More applause. We watched the two of them from behind a layer of one-way glass, all of us in our lab coats while Roger communed with her breathing corpse in what was practically a freezer. Their voices carried over a loudspeaker.

“Where… am I?” Agnes gasped, her throat trembling with the strain of vocalizing. “I’m… tired.”

“You’re with friends,” Roger said. “Safe.”

Roger turned to us, grinning with a thumbs up. We’d successfully brought back our first subject, and not only was she alive– she was communicating. Lucid. He turned back to her, likely knowing we had a limited window to extract the information we needed.

“Do you remember the study you agreed to be a part of?”

Agnes’ eyes opened wide, and her pupils seemed to jolt around like ping pong balls. “Death,” she muttered. “Death.”

Roger nodded, running a hand through her thinning hair. “That’s right, Agnes. We wanted to know what happens to the soul after death, and you agreed to take that journey and return to us. You’re the first human being to have done so. Congratulations.”

I’ll never forget what happened next. She gazed up at him, those rolling eyes and that absent voice, and she gripped the front of his shirt with a shuddering, frail hand. He leaned closer to her, no doubt thinking she wanted to speak into his ear.

“We belong…” she said, her chest beginning to heave. “To them.”

Roger, looked at us, his expression confused. He shook his head. “Agnes, I’m sorry. To whom are you referring?”

Her legs jerked sideways, her spine arching as she began to thrash on the slab. Blood leaked from the corners of her eyes. Roger, concerned, attempted to hold her body so she wouldn’t injure herself and compromise what little time she had left to communicate. He ordered more of us in. I hurried to his side with three others.

“We belong,” she said again, and this time her voice was stronger, as though empowered by her agony. “To the… forgotten...”

Even with four of us on her, each holding a limb she was rioting with a strength that could only be described as inhuman. It took everything I had to hold her scrawny blue wrist to the slab. Beside us the machine monitoring her vitals began to beep violently, indicating levels grossly out of range.

“What comes next,” she hissed, and smoke began to drift up from her mouth, “is worse… than any hell.”

Before we could ask further– before we could subdue her and help her pass peacefully, she went still on the slab. Her limbs fell limp. Her buzzing pupils stilled. Her mouth ceased to smoke, and her head lolled to the side.

Agnes Mick had died for the second time.

We had her corpse carted to the morgue for an autopsy and discovered that her brain showed signs of hemorrhaging, her heart had partially ruptured in her chest, and most bizarrely of all, her vocal cords had been seared. As if something had lit them aflame.

Her results were ominous, to say the least, but we were intelligent enough to know that a sample size of one does not a conclusion make, and so we eagerly awaited our second subject. This one was a young boy named Jacob. He’d been struck by a vehicle in a hit and run and fallen into a coma. His parents never had an opportunity to say goodbye, and so they agreed to allow us to perform our study so long as they were there for his revival.

The process was similar to Agnes’. Jacob lay unmoving on the slab in the freezer room, wires and diodes hooked up to his chest and temples, a white sheet draped across him. By his side stood Roger, and both of the boy's parents, all of them clad in toques and gloves.

“Are you ready?” Roger asked.

“Yes,” they said. We all waited behind the glass with heart-pounding anticipation. Roger clicked a few keys on the computer console, and the machine began its mechanical song. A moment later and the screen flashed green as it initiated its AFTERLIFE sequence, filling Jacob’s unmoving cadaver with a myriad of electrical pulses designed to shock his brain into functioning.

The boy's feet, dangling outside the white cloth, began to twitch. Then his fingertips. His mother and father looked at one another, grasping hands as they waited for their son to return to them. Hopeful tears leaked from the corners of their eyes, their lips mouthing silent words of affirmation as they prepared to say goodbye to Jacob.

Screaming filled the room.

It burst through the loudspeaker like an explosion, causing all of us watching to jump and scatter, our primal nervous systems fleeing while we attempted to uncover the source. But the source, I think, was always obvious even if we didn't want to believe it.

It was coming from Jacob.

He lay there, his toes and fingertips twitching as his mouth hung open in an ear-splitting scream, his mother and father crowding him in horror, doing their best to calm him. Assuage his pain. His confusion. His horror.

It’s difficult to describe the sound of Jacob’s scream. I’m hesitant to say it was human, let alone the sound of a nine-year-old boy. It was most similar, I feel, to a drowning sheep. It was an anguished bleating sound, one that seemed never-ending, and yet it told a terrifying story all on its own.

Eventually, Jacob’s parents made the decision to pull the plug on their son. It was the second time they'd made the decision in a little under a week.

The last subject was the one that stuck with me. The one that haunts me to this day, and the reason I’m writing this now, sharing this with all of you. It was a woman named Charlotte. Young. Vibrant. In the prime of her life. Charlotte was an eccentric woman from a wealthy and educated family. She had spent her mid-twenties traveling the world, primarily across portions of South America as she researched content for her book The Meaning of Life.

A self-described shaman, Charlotte put great stock in the spiritual practices of different cultures. She’d participated in hundred of rituals across dozens of tribes. She’d tried everything from peyote to DMT, leveraging any drug she could get her hands on that promised psychedelic insights. Despite the heavy usage, Charlotte appeared to be perfectly clear-headed and not at all negatively impacted– to put it simply, she was as healthy as could be.

That’s why we found it strange when she approached our small project and asked to be included. When we informed her it was only for those suffering from terminal afflictions, she asked if she could be added to the list anyway. Sort of like an organ donor. We agreed.

Charlotte killed herself the following weekend.

Bullet through the skull. Quick and likely painless, though it’s impossible to know for certain. Many times such acts of suicide last longer than the subject intends. Either way, we had our third volunteer, all thanks to the round narrowly missing her brain.

Charlotte’s parents were initially opposed to the idea, but we informed them that we had her written, legal consent. They asked to meet us halfway, to be there when she returned. After the situation with Jacob, however, we disallowed them from participating in the trial. The science is new, you understand. It's possible that emotional catalysts like family figures may have an adverse effect on brains so far removed from life.

No, we said. We’ll bring her back and we’ll tell you everything that she says, and that will be that.

So they relented. No lawsuit. No drama. We were free to bring Charlotte back from death in three days' time, and that’s exactly what we did. The scenario played out like the others before. The freezing room. The beeping machine. The diodes sprinkled across her body and the white sheet draped over her torso. Roger stood beside her, operating the machine while we monitored the readings. His fingers danced across the keyboard and the screen glowed with the words AFTERLIFE SEQUENCE INITIATED.

Once again we watched from behind the glass. Once again Roger waited patiently, a hopeful smile on his face. Twenty seconds passed and nothing occurred– not so much as a twitch of a toe or a flick of an eyelash. Charlotte’s corpse remained every bit as dead as the day we carted her in. A minute went by and we still saw no sign of resurrection.

Roger looked back to the machine, shaking his head and he removed his gloves, evidently wondering if he’d hit a wrong key with his mitts. He began the sequence again. The machine buzzed and words flashed green across the screen once more, but Charlotte lay still.

“Elliot,” he said to me, his voice ringing out over the loudspeaker. “Can you come inside and check this out? I think it might be malfunctioning.”

I swallowed. I’d triple-checked the machine and made sure it was functioning to specification, just as it had the last two times. Still, I nodded from behind the two-way glass and opened the door to the freezer. As I stepped inside the -30 room, I pulled a set of gloves and toque from the wall and began my appraisal of the system. The wires checked out. The program was running to spec. All the diodes were in the correct place.

“I don’t see any issues here,” I said, shivering.

Roger frowned, looking back to Charlotte’s cadaver. He placed his hands on his hips and cursed, wondering if somehow we’d encountered a dud. “Maybe some people can’t be brought back,” he theorized.

I opened my mouth to respond but something about Charlotte caught my eye. It was her lips. They were pulled into a thin grin, and black fluid was leaking from between them. “Have you… seen… it?” she muttered.

Roger and I exchanged looks and he slipped me a wink. “Well done,” he whispered. “Now get back behind the glass.” I obliged, not wanting to impact the experiment any more than I already had.

“Charlotte,” Roger said. “Do you remember the study you agreed to participate in?”

She took a deep breath, and her body rolled upwards into a sitting position. This was new. Neither of the last subjects showed anywhere near that level of physical control. Her blond hair fell down around her as her cloth slipped onto the floor. “I remember… putting a gun to my head and pulling the trigger.”

Roger looked back at us uneasily, as though unsure how to proceed. “Yes,” he said after a moment. “Your parents were wondering if they had hurt you in some way or–”

“No,” she wheezed, and her head snapped sideways to look at Roger. At the time I didn’t think anything of it, but looking back there was something decidedly twisted about her eyes. Much like Anges’ there were buzzing around her skull, her pupils darting about like ricocheting hockey pucks, but this time her mouth was a tight smile. This time she appeared to be in control. Aware. “I killed myself because I needed to know that my nightmares… weren’t real.”

Around me, researchers were hastily recording details of her interaction– her words, her appearance, her biological readings. I gazed on in abject horror. I think that even then I knew that something awful was about to happen. I had that feeling, the one deep down in your gut that appears just before a car accident, or just before somebody’s about to fall.

“And what was that?” Roger said, his voice breaking as he stood next to Charlotte’s buzzing pupils. “What came next after you died?”

“Everything,” she muttered, sweeping a leg off of the slab, “...that I feared.” Her pale foot hit the linoleum floor with a dull slap. Then the other followed. She took a shaking breath and then pushed herself off of the table until she was standing naked in front of Roger. “What do you think happens after we die….doctor?”

Roger looked sidelong at us from behind the two-way glass, his expression somewhere between nervous and fascinated. “I’m not certain,” he said. “We all believe different things, I suppose. We were hoping you could answer that for us, Charlotte.”

Charlotte laughed, I think. It’s hard to say, but she threw back her head and started choking irregularly. “We believe… believe… believe…” she repeated the word as though tasting it. “We believe so many different things and we so desperately want them to be true, but the only truth… is that we return to the forgotten.”

The forgotten. It was a phrase we’re heard before from Agnes. One in which I’d assumed it referred to human beings, like those who died in meaningless wars or in periods of widespread misfortune, and yet the emphasis that Charlotte placed upon it…

“The forgotten?” Roger repeated, taking a step back from Charlotte’s hunched-over body. It was miraculous that she was standing at all, but that she remained living after several minutes was something neither of the other two subjects managed. “What are the forgotten?”

“Not what… but who.” Charlotte reached out, placing a pale hand on either side of Roger’s shoulders. We watched with our breath held. She lurched forward, planting her blue, decaying lips on his. They touched only for a second before Roger instinctively pushed her backward, causing her to stumble against the metal slab. She laughed again in that choking, rasping chorus, sliding onto the linoleum floor.

Roger rushed to her. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to but–”

“Our minds are finely made,” she wheezed, not seeming to care. “They evolved over… millennia to mask reality. To mask the bitter… bitter truth of the universe.” She spat black bile onto the floor, wiping at her lips with a shaking hand. “You want to know what happens… when we die? We return to the abyss that birthed us.”

The room around me began to murmur, some in interest, others terror. I merely watched on, my heart racing and my mouth dry.

“I put a bullet through my skull,” Charlotte continued, “...because I had a vision of the end. I saw our makers, and they were dressed in… dying stars and empty space. They were hopeless. Empty. But just like us… they wanted medicine. A way to feel.”

Roger knelt beside Charlotte as her voice grew quieter with every agonizing word. “We are their medicine,” she rasped. “Our minds are primed for love, for joy, and for pleasure… and when we die, they feed on us. They leave our souls empty and rotting until we’re rebirthed into the next human, a little less whole… a little less complete.” Once again that thin smile twisted its way across her blue lips. “...a little closer to putting a bullet through our skulls.”

Roger waved at us, indicating that he wanted to make sure every second of this was being properly recorded. Then, he turned back to her. “What else can you tell us?”

“That we began with… meaning. But as they fed… and they fed, we grew emptier…more incomplete. Collectively, the human soul… withered.” Black bile poured from her lips now. It streaked down her pale body, pooling around her trembling legs like blood from a butchered lamb. “Look around you. Do you feel… the rage? The… hatred and the pain? It’s consuming the human race like a… plague, and bit by bit… we’re getting worse. Not better. Soon we’ll have nothing left to feel. No love… no joy. Just… emptiness.”

Roger's mouth hung open. His voice stuttered as he attempted to formulate a response, to articulate why she must be wrong– at least, that’s what I had hoped for. I’d hoped for anybody to stand up and say this was all a farce, and the experiment had been compromised and none of this could be true. But nobody did.

Charlotte reached up and gripped Roger by the front of his shirt. “If you want to know what comes next… I can show you.”

Roger looked at us then through the glass, his eyes wide with shock and fear. He looked at us one last time and I think he was waiting for somebody to shake their heads, to tell him that no, that was a bad idea. That he should decline. But we were all too shaken, I think. We weren’t thinking straight.

So he nodded. He nodded and leaned into Charlotte, and then the lights flickered and the freezer and our observation room were both plunged into darkness. The blackout lasted for just a second. Maybe two. But it was long enough for everything to go wrong.

When the light returned, the glass was cracked and the machine was wailing a metallic tone. Roger lay in front of Charlotte’s naked corpse, his head face-down in the pool of bile, smoke drifting up from his slack-jawed mouth. Charlotte’s eyes were no longer buzzing. Her chest was no longer heaving. She had died for the second time. Roger had died for the first.

After that, our funding was pulled. Our donor abandoned the project and scrubbed his involvement from any and all corporate records. As far as the scientific community was concerned, the experiments never occurred, and the findings didn’t exist. But I remember. I remember because there’s simply no way I could forget the haunting look in Agnes’ eyes, the hopeless agony of Jacob’s screams, or the final message that Charlotte delivered in black bile on the linoleum floor.

It was messy and easy to miss. To the others, I think it must have looked like a common splatter, a simple side-effect of her legs spasming in the pool of dark fluid. But I know what I saw. The letters, though crooked and barely legible, were scorched into my memory like a cattle brand. They weren’t so much a warning as they were words of advice– perhaps an answer to the question we set out to ask, and the question that Charlotte had set out to answer in her book.

The meaning of life, she wrote, is to avoid the agony of death.

[general-du-vallon]

Aramis and the babies, 3

part one is here.

‘So here I am’ turned out to be some sort of accidental under statement. Aramis bumped into Porthos everywhere, and every time got steadily more awkward. Passing on the stairs, coming out of the flats at the same time (Aramis pretended to have left something inside to avoid an awkward walk down together, Porthos did the same, and they walked down together in awkward silence), arriving at the front door together the time Aramis lost his key fob thing (the council charged for new ones, Porthos admitted to losing his within a week of getting it and usually just broken in, he was apparently ‘okay at locks’). In the supermarkets, at the playground, at the community food project the estate collectively ran out of a community room that was coming to bits around them.

“Papa, look,” Hugo said, one day. “Cat.”

It wasn’t a cat, it was Porthos, just at the next table. Hugo bounced happily in Aramis’s arms and waved to Porthos, he loved the car boot sale he was in a really sociable mood. Louis was at Anne’s and Rochelle had a sleepover, Henry and Agnes were with them, and Marie was staying for a little while. She was very very quiet. Aramis was worrying because he didn’t know where Luc was, usually when Marie got passed to him Luc came along too, but this time it was just Marie, and the social workers told him he knew as much as he needed to. Marie tucked herself behind his knees and he nearly tripped backwards, Porthos had come reluctantly over since Hugo had waved.

“Morning,” Porthos said, waving. He waved with the hand that was holding coffee. He looked bewildered when it spilled everywhere, Hugo laughing at him and waving a third and fourth time.

“I’m Henry,” Henry said, at the same time as Marie tugged at Aramis’s trouser leg.

“Ah, yeah, Henry, Agnes, Marie,” Aramis said, pointing them out.

“Cat!” Hugo said.

“She’s doing great, keeps climbing the curtains and sleeping on top of doors and things,” Porthos said. Hugo nodded seriously, waiting for more information about the cat. “Tried to get out the window the other day, probably after a bird.” Hugo’s eyes widened. “She didn’t get out, I keep the windows on those hook things.”

“The windows don’t open wide enough to climb out, we know that don’t we, Hugo?” Henry said, grinning. He was missing a tooth and looked rakish, white-blond hair even blonder from sun, long and plaited like Elsa from Frozen. Specifically like Elsa. He was obsessed with Elsa. Not the whole movie, just her.

“Yeah,” Hugo agreed. “Can’t sit out there.”

“Out where?! It’s just sky!” Aramis said, turning on the two boys, Henry was laughing at him, setting him off on purpose. Marie was tugging again. “Yeah, pipsqueak?”

He crouched to hear her, putting an arm around her since she could no longer hide behind him. She whispered her curiosity in his ear, quite a few questions about who Porthos was.

“He has a cat,” Hugo said, too loud, Porthos had been answering a polite query from Agnes, but his gaze came to rest on them instead.

“Are you a giant?” Marie asked, at a whisper but bold enough to be heard.

Porthos shifted. He seemed pleased about her misapprehension, chest swelling, standing taller in his boots. They had little heels, his jacket was big and leather and padded out his shoulders through sheer bulk, he was already big but he was dressed even bigger, and he drew himself taller and held himself wider and beamed down at them the bright day behind him, like some sort of benevolent sun god. He really was gorgeous, Aramis thought, regretfully, remembering that they’d so far found nothing to talk about.

“I won’t eat you,” was the answer Porthos finally settled on, then bent forward, widening his eyes, face quite serious, “yet.”

Marie kicked him, which Aramis thought was perfectly fair. He pretended he hadn’t seen a thing, ignoring Porthos’s surprised yelp. Hugo giggled, climbing out of Aramis’s arms and heading for Porthos. Aramis hoped Hugo wasn’t going to kick him as well, he’d have to either tell Marie off or wait and see, though, and he chose the second option. Hugo patted Porthos’s knee solicitously, looking up at him, singing wordlessly. Aramis opened his mouth to explain but Porthos was nodding, crouching down so Hugo didn’t have to crane up. Marie leant back into Aramis to watch.

“Tell me that again, kiddo, I was too high up I didn’t understand,” Porthos said.

Hugo groped for words, failed to find any, patted Porthos’s knee again, and sang incy wincy spider, showing Porthos the hand gestures he was learning at school. He tugged his jumper.

“He wants to tell you about his spiders,” Aramis said.

“You got spiders under there?” Porthos asked. “Not real ones, surely? On your shirt?”

Hugo flopped into the grass. He wasn’t much for standing up today. Aramis scooped him up and Marie clambered onto his back, Henry linking arms with them and Agnes, ready to get moving. Porthos stood as well and gave Aramis a helpless shrug.

“Ah, Agnes is staying with us at the moment,” Aramis said, not finding anything to talk about but not really quite finding a way to leave. “For a bit.”

“Philippe’s having a routine operation,” Agnes said, “my husband.”

“Oh, I hope it goes well,” Porthos said, very genuinely, body language softening and opening up somehow. 

“If you want to. Um,” Aramis stopped. What he wanted was to have sex with Porthos. Quite a lot of it. Preferably at Porthos’s house, tonight.

“Yeah, alright,” Porthos said. Aramis forgot for a second he’d not actually said outloud about sex. “There’s the pub?”

“Yes, alright,” Aramis said. The pub could definitely be a step on his way to having sex. Aramis could go with that. He smiled, and Porthos grinned back.

“Your passengers look about ready to be off,” Porthos said. “Are we friends, Marie?”

“Promise not to eat me,” Marie said into Aramis’s shoulder. “If you do eat my brother will come.”

“Tear your arms, boff!” Hugo called, which Aramis wished he’d never said. It was sticking.

“Alright. I like my arms, better just stick to eating cake,” Porthos said. “Maybe a biscuit now and then. A little bit of pizza.”

“And vegetables,” Henry said. “Some are quite nice, Aramis makes them so they don’t taste yucky.”

Aramis squeezed Henry’s arm, grateful for his off kilter wingmanship. Porthos clicked his tongue and looked around, faltered, asked if seven was a good time, and then wandered away. Agnes leant across Henry to squeeze Aramis’s arm, delighted by the whole thing. She asked him so many questions as they meandered the last few tables and ended up, as always, at the ice cream van, pleased as anything that he’d found someone to flirt with.

Aramis spent the afternoon tracking down Luc and checking he was okay and not going spare worrying over Marie. Without, of course, talking to Luc. He wasn't going to leave a trail. And then he was late to the pub because he spent the evening having a nice chat with Marsac and setting up one or two very little, very subtle things. Just a tiny little bit of manipulation, a miniscule amount of machinations. It wasn’t that he disliked Marie and Luc’s father, he wasn’t a bad man. But regardless of school being important and Luc not needing as much care as Marie and being able to stay, for their overall wellbeing, Aramis decided he’d just do a little bit of poking and prodding.

He was halfway to the pub at a jog when he got a call from Luc’s social worker. Then outside the door he got another call from Marie’s social worker with a stern telling off. Aramis admitted nothing, said he had no idea what she was talking about, made bewildered noises, and ducked into the pub. He saw Porthos holding up the bar, eyes on a darts game, and then he saw Porthos go over to tell the huge bloke playing that he was cheating, and then Aramis saw the huge bloke square off with Porthos.

“Hi,” Aramis called, going over, not sure if his intent was to break it up or join in. He’d see which way things went. Either or.

Porthos relaxed, though, and after a charm offensive the huge bloke was introducing himself as Amyot and offering to buy Porthos a beer.

“I’m on a date,” Porthos said, “he might think it was a bit funny if I let you buy the drinks instead of him.”

“What?” Aramis said.

“Seeing as he was late, I assumed he’d be paying,” Porthos said. That was to Aramis, not to Amyot, who’d quickly lost interest and gone back to cheating at darts. “Come on. We can sit out the back, the garden’s shut because of a mishap-”

“You and Flea breaking patio furniture is not a mishap,” the barkeep said, appearing all of a sudden and giving Aramis a start. He recognised Christoph from the community larder thing, but didn’t know him well. “You’re paying for your drinks until I’ve fixed that.”

“I’m paying tonight,” Aramis said, leaning on the bar.

“Aramis, right? I’m not letting any friend of Porthos open a tab, just a friendly warning,” Christoph said, Aramis had got distracted watching Porthos put on a chagrined ‘aw shucks who me?’ performance. “What am I getting you both, then?”

Aramis ordered whatever cinder was on tap, and whatever Porthos had been drinking already, paid up front, and headed them out into the closed garden. There was a broken table, a broken pot, a clearly repotted sapling, a couple of broken chairs, and a sturdy bench set against the wall of the pub which is where Porthos headed, sitting in a comfortable sprawl, long legs stretched in front of him, pint resting on one strong thigh. Aramis sat too close and took a sip of his cider.

“Why’d you ask me out?” Porthos said. “We’ve been doing the awkward shuffle as if we’ve already had awful sex and found out we sort of hate each other.”

“I wasn’t actually asking you out,” Aramis said. Porthos’s head came up and he froze. “I was about to suggest we had sex, but then I realised I was literally swamped under my children, and it might be a little inappropriate, and then you were suggesting the pub. I thought I might come along, do some flirting, do some wooing. I’m very good at flirting and wooing. I’m a romantic.”

“I see,” Porthos said, and his hand dropped to Aramis’s thigh and gave it a squeeze. “Alright then. We paid Christoph for his shit beer though so we should drink it. You want to smoke your terrible herbal things?”

“Not really, they are a balm only to be applied when the children are particularly baffling,” Aramis explained. “I love them more than my own life, and probably anyone else’s life too really, but my god they can be loud and unreasonable.”

“To be fair, so can adults,” Porthos said. “I like them.”

“Adults?”

“Daft.”

“Children?”

“Your children.”

Aramis preened as if it was a compliment, which it was since it was him who taught them manners.

“My specific children,” Aramis said, sighing happily.

“Yeah, although you seem to have an awful lot,” Porthos said, brow furrowing.

“I have three,” Aramis said, a bit surprised. “Hugo, Louis, and Rochelle. You met them. Louis lives partly with his mum, but he still counts.”

“And Henry, and Marie, and Marie said something about another brother, unless she meant Hugo was gonna tear off my arms,” Porthos said. “I mean maybe she did. Or Louis. Or Henry. And! You had a baby the other day.”

It sounded like an accusation and made Aramis laugh. He couldn’t remember for a second which baby Porthos might mean.

“Oh! Raoul. He’s Athos’s baby. I missed a lot of Louis’ baby years, and of course Roch’s, not so much Hugo but he was one when he came. So Athos lets me steal Raoul away sometimes, I think he has quite kinky sex when I have Raoul,” Aramis said. “Athos is a friend.”

“So Raoul isn’t yours. But I still count… six.”

“Henry is Agnes and Philippe’s kid, I’m not his Dad. They lived with me when he was a baby, him I got the baby years he was lovely, really lovely. They got their own place when he was five, they just come to stay when Philippe’s away nowadays. Or for fun. Or Philippe and Henry come down for the football, Philippe grew up around here.”

“Five,” Porthos said.

“Marie and Luc are on a foster placement,” Aramis said. “They come and go.”

“I know how that goes,” Porthos said, and raised his glass. “Alright, three. But to be fair, it still sounds like you have a lot of kids.”

“Yeah,” Aramis said, beaming, “I do.”

“I just have Grace,” Porthos said. “Charon and Flea’s kid. Sometimes… anyway. Bit complicated.”

“You moved down to be closer to them?” Aramis asked.

“Sort of. Not really. I was in the army. Not recent, it was back a while now, I didn’t like what I was being asked to do so I whistle-blew, and it didn’t go so well. Had a bit of trouble getting work, I was doing those oil rig gigs you know?”

“Vaguely,” Aramis said. “I’m sorry. I think it is admirable to stand by your convictions, especially in a situation like that. You’re talking around a lot, but I think that it sounds like you did something pretty impressive.”

“Sometimes it feels like it, sometimes it feels like it was stupid, and sometimes it’s more like I didn’t have any choice,” Porthos said. “Doesn’t matter. I decided to go back to school, I’m getting a degree. Doing some shifts at Tesco, and I get bits for a few construction companies, I know a few guys.”

“Army guys?”

“Sort of. Adjacent,” Porthos said. “You’re impressive too, you know. Giving kids a place that’s safe and home and good.”

Aramis shrugged and to his surprised Porthos went all intense, sitting forward, pint put aside so he could hold Aramis’s face. Aramis met his eyes, surprised, and then he was being kissed fiercely, wonderfully.

“It matters. It’s important,” Porthos said, low and gravelly. “It matters to me. I don’t know what to say.”

He kissed Aramis again instead of saying more, and Aramis was fine with that. He got a grip on Porthos’s leather jacket and pulled, getting a good angle.

parts:

1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 [complete]

[honeybyte]

So I know that you love to talk about your OCs. So I had a question about OCs in general and figured I'd ask. I have two little guys rn, they've existed for a few months now. I am currently obsessed with them in a way I haven't been able to achieve with my other attempts. But when I drew them it was just a silly attempt to make characters loosely related to some fan art that was so far from canon it had become something else. And now I have these two characters Soliel and Amaris (I suck at naming things😭) but they're evolving. So now I'm kinda redesigning them? Their outfits and proportions really as again they were made on a 2 am whim. So here I ask:have you ever changed one of your characters designs? Like a full on reboot kinda thing? A more gradual change perhaps? Have all your amazing sixty some characters stayed fairly similar since conception? I'm curious as to how your creative process works in this regard as I don't see many artists talk about changing characters and I feel like I'm never satisfied with what I make.

P.s. I really enjoy your art and I'm sorry I don't have enough energy to show it as often as I want

OOH okay so 1) im so happy that you finally found some lil guys to be obsessed w ! its a lot harder than people think to design smth you're really passionate abt (and even harder to name them, you picked good names!)

2) i absolutely have changed every oc i have roughly a dozen times

some just evolve that way -- the more developed they get, the more tweaking gets done so that something makes sense or their story affects them a certain way and now they have a new scar they didnt have before (super small example). stuff like that. i have ocs that i built, retired, and dragged back out of retirement to redesign or tweak in some way. i have ocs who look completely different from how they were originally.

i think Agnes is my best example of ocs that have completely changed as they evolved. she was originally a political mercenary and goliath's keeper. now she's a sweet academic

Lovelace is another good one! the tweak looks less drastic but she went from a self-love cupid to a robot

ultimately, what it comes down to is this: am i interested in what im making? is it something that makes me really think abt what it is that im doing, do i wanna draw for it in the first place? if the answer is a resounding "no" and stays that way, i usually retire the character, if not the whole verse.

Lovelace as a cupid didnt interest me at all, so she disappeared within days of her creation BUT. when i wanted to add another character to red heron (Yuma, another retired design), Lovelace went with him. Yuma was already a robot, but redesigning Lovelace? now that was interesting to me. esp bc i was obsessed w Killbot! by chloe moriondo at the time, i had this image of Lovelace w faulty wiring. the idea that she was a sweet little girl who's tampered w and turned violent really gripped me long enough to make her a lasting character in red heron, along w Yuma.

tldr; i change and retire and reboot ocs all the time. it's not abt getting it perfect, it's abt what interests you, and if your interest in that character is high enough, they'll usually adapt to what it is that you're creating. overall, have fun with your creations! they'll follow you longer if you do

[procrastinatorproject]

I needed something fluffy tonight, so I continued on the next chapter of Meadow (the story with the giant round hover-cows. Because that is bound to cheer anyone up :D)

---

“Heads up!”

A thick rope landed in front of Raffi with a thump and drew her out of her silent observation. She looked over to the hoversled where Soji was already attaching the other end of the rope to a purpose-built tether. Behind her, Agnes and Seven were working on a bit of anti-grav plating that kept malfunctioning. If they wanted to get safely over the river, they wouldn’t want it to break down halfway across.

Seven had taken off her jacket and the warm morning light was glittering off the metal running up her right forearm. Her shoulders tensed as she tried to pry off a bit of plating that Ian had clearly soldered in place with great care. The contours of Seven’s muscles were clearly visible through the light fabric of her shirt, and Raffi wondered if she’d be able to see the implant on Seven’s bicep through the short sleeve. The strength of muscle and metal had something deeply alluring and it would be a long time before Raffi would get tired of admiring it.

After a few moments of intense struggle, Seven managed to break apart the recalcitrant bit of plating. She yanked the offending piece off with a grunt and chucked it over her shoulder.

Raffi sighed. That did not bode well for their primary mode of crossing the river…

“How’s that rope coming?” Rios had apparently decided he was done arguing with Elnor. While the young Romulan was still perched on his rock, looking back in the direction of the ship with a pensive frown, Cris had grabbed one of the anchors they were supposed to attach to the rocks and headed over to her.

“I’m not sure it’s gonna be enough.” Raffi gave the knot she’d been working on a final, firm tug, then sat back in the grass. “I’d really rather we didn’t make someone swim through this.”

Rios sat down on one of the large boulders next to her and took a drag from his cigar, pondering the waters in front of him. “Strange to think something this small and innocent-looking could be so dangerous…”

Raffi snorted. “Have you met your girlfriend? Doctor ‘I have never done anything suspicious in my life’?”

Cris gave her an annoyed look. “Agnes isn’t dangerous.”

“I’m not saying it’s a bad thing,” Raffi said, raising her hands in defence. “But look at her! You’d never think she could disable an entire Romulan frigate in fifteen minutes with nothing but a data rod.”

Cris looked over towards Agnes, who was currently half-dangling over the edge of the sled, doing some  upside-down repair on its underside, adorable face scrunched up in deep concentration. Cris’s expression softened, eyes brimming with love and adoration. “Fair enough.”

Raffi smiled. It was wonderful to see her best friend so taken by someone. (And it made her feel a little less bad about constantly getting distracted by her own partner’s thrilling feats of strength…)

Raffi cleared her  her throat and turned away quickly, looking for a topic to steer the conversation into safer waters. “And Enoch was sure this was the only way across?”

Rios sighed and turned back to ponder the problem at hand.

The river they wanted to get across was small enough in places you might call it a creek. It was a band of crystal-clear water, shimmering in the sunlight, burbling over rounded rocks in a way that fit perfectly into its picturesque surroundings. At this particular section, which they had chosen for their crossing, the waters got wider and more shallow, forming something akin to a ford. Except for the middle of the riverbed, where, for a couple of metres, the ground suddenly opened up to a veritable chasm. The unexpected loss of footing and accompanying extreme current had nearly cost Agnes her leg.

“Enoch said the river never gets narrower than four metres across and the fissure runs along its entire length. At least here, the insane currents are slower because the water has so much room to spread out.” Rios took another drag from his cigar. “Crossing anywhere else would be a death sentence.”

“Unless you’re a hover-cow.”

Raffi started and looked up at Elnor, who had walked over to them without making a single sound, even on the gravelly path leading towards the waters.

He was pointing to somewhere further downstream now. “Look!”

When Raffi followed his gesture, she saw a group of hover-cows lope towards the river. As soon as they got to the edge of the waters, the round beasts pushed off the ground with a characteristic gurgle that Raffi had grown to fear, and soared across the obstacle in an elegant arc. On the other side, they continued their bouncy run as if nothing had happened.

Raffi shook her head. “No wonder the locals don’t try to keep them penned in. If not even a deadly river can stop them…”

[ginevralinton]

8, 10, 18, 20?

Thank you for the ask!!

8. Is what you like to write the same as what you like to read?

I think so! I tend to write more for the characters and relationships that I enjoy most, and I wouldn't write something I wouldn't want to particularly read. Still, I think I probably read more broadly than I write?

10. How would you describe your writing process?

Generally it goes:

I get an idea and make a note of it

I make a really rough plan (unless it's going to be super short) and scribble down any sentences/phrases that I've already got

If I don't start writing then, I tend to 'write' the piece in my head as I go about my normal day

Then, I sit down to write it, with varying degrees of success and speed

Finish it, leave it for a little (a few hours or days or weeks or months, depending...) and then edit

18. Do any of your stories have alternative versions? (plotlines that you abandoned, AUs of your own work, different characterisations?) Tell us about them.

There were several alternative/abandoned ideas for House Share:

In the first plan, when Mike makes the pet cemetery for Fanny, he makes a mistake or something isn't precisely right, Fanny criticised, but later Alison tells Mike she's seen her visiting it and admiring it. I decided to ditch that because it felt too negative

Mike was going to introduce Thomas to some new poets (that he'd just googled - or asked a friend about) and Thomas might or might not have hated them. I just wasn't really feeling that in the end

For Robin's chapter, they were going to go stargazing outside at night and then Mike ended up with a cold, but it felt a bit too expected, unexciting, and again, negative, which wasn't the vibe I was going for. I was discussing it with @thelastplantagenet who gave me a lot of the actual idea (thank you!!)

With Julian, I was considering a games night, Mike creating a night club type thing, them exchanging music suggestions (and listening to the worst songs). I tried writing all of them, but kept getting stuck so I scrapped it and started over

Oh, and in general, it was supposed to be a one chapter fic, maybe 4k words with a short section for each ghost (a bit like Hard-earned privileges) however, well, you know how long it became...

20. Tell us the meta about your writing that you really want to ramble to people about (symbolism you’ve included, character or relationship development that you love, hidden references, callbacks or clues for future scenes?)

This Feeling and Inheritance both mention Julian taking Rachel out to a restuarant and going against Margot's wishes and letting her have one of those fancy sundaes that are always on the menu for kids but which the kid never actually eats - so naturally Rachel doesn't eat it and steals from Julian's cheeseboard instead. This is now some kind of core memory for both of them in my head

Talking of This Feeling, it mentions 'that ice-cream based uproar at the local hospital, involving smashed bowls, screaming arguments and no willingness to compromise on either side' - which er... was a thing that happened when I was in hosptial

There are some fun references in Still the same girl. I say fun, they are fun only to me and are mostly literary since I drew a lot from Victorian novels for this one! The references include: Middlemarch by George Eliot, Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte, The Grey Woman by Elizabeth Gaskell (which seemed fitting, considering Fanny's ghostly appearances in photos), Agnes Grey by Anne Bronte, Great Expectations and Bleak House by Charles Dickens and Dracula by Bram Stoker. It also mentions Mrs Greville, who owned Polsden Lacey (which is a National Trust place these days) and also Royal Holloway College/university, which is where I went and did indeed open for women in the 1880s.

Don't let them get you down, you're the best thing I've seen is, in many ways, my dissertation in the form of a story, including all the extra details/paragraphs that I had to cut from my final essay (as in, they didn't even get written, because halfway through the original plan, I realised I was already 5000 words over the word limit, which...yeah)

Okay, that got very, very lengthy - thank you to anyone who actually reads that. (I could expand further but I do not think that would be read 😁)

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

The Real Article

THE OTHER PART OF my experience as a Christian that I tried to deal with in The Final Beast was the experience of prayer, and . . I drew directly from an event in my own life. 

A year or so before writing the book, I took two or three days off to attend a series of seminars on prayer conducted by an Episcopal laywoman named Agnes Sanford, who was recommended to me by a friend as a fascinating and deeply spiritual woman who had had remarkable success as a faith healer. "Spiritual" was another of those words that I always choked on a little, and faith-healing was something I associated with charlatans and the lunatic fringe; but since my friend had only recently left the college chaplaincy to become a Jungian analyst, I couldn't dismiss him as easily taken in, so I decided to accept his recommendation and go.

I saw Agnes Sanford first in the dingy front hall of the building where the talks were to take place, and after no more than a few minutes' conversation with her, I felt as sure as you can ever be in such matters that if there was such a thing as the Real Article in her line of work, then that was what she was. She was rather short and on the plump side with a breezy matter-of-factness about her which was the last thing I would have expected. She had far more the air of a college dean or a successful businesswoman than of a Mary Baker Eddy or Madam Blavatsky. She seemed completely without pretensions, yet just as completely confident that she knew what she was talking about. She had an earthy sense of humor.

The most vivid image she presented was of Jesus standing in church services all over Christendom with his hands tied behind his back and unable to do any mighty works there because the ministers who led the services either didn't expect him to do them or didn't dare ask him to do them for fear that he wouldn't or couldn't and that their own faith and the faith of their congregations would be threatened as the result. I recognized immediately my kinship with those ministers. A great deal of public prayer seemed to me a matter of giving God something that he neither needed nor, as far as I could imagine, much wanted. In private I prayed a good deal but for the most part it was a very blurred, haphazard kind of business—much of it blubbering, as Dr. Muilenburg had said his was, speaking words out of my deepest needs, fears, longings, but never expecting much back by way of an answer, never believing very strongly that anyone was listening to me or even, at times, that there was anyone to listen at all.

That was the whole point, Agnes Sanford said. You had to expect. You had to believe. As in Jesus' parables of the Importunate Friend and the Unjust Judge, you had to keep at it. It took work. It took practice, was in that sense not unlike the Buddhist Eightfold Path. More than anything else, it took faith. It was faith that unbound the hands of Jesus so that through your prayers his power could flow and miracles could happen, healing could happen, because where faith was, healing always was too, she said, and there was no power on earth that could prevent it. Inside us all, she said, there was a voice of doubt and disbelief which sought to drown out our prayers even as we were praying them, but we were to pray down that voice for all we were worth because it was simply the product in us of old hurts, griefs, failures, of all that the world had done to try to destroy our faith. More even than our bodies, she said, it was these hurtful memories that needed healing. 

For God, all time is one, and we were to invite Jesus into our past as into a house that has been locked up for years—to open windows and doors for us so that light and life could enter at last, to sweep out the debris of decades, to drive back the shadows. 

The healing of memories was like the forgiveness of sins, she said. Prayer was like a game, a little ridiculous the way she described it, but we were to play it anyway—praying for the healing both of ourselves and others—because Jesus told us to and because most of the other games we played were more ridiculous still and not half so useful.

We were to believe in spite of not believing. That was what faith was all about, she told us. "Lord, I believe; help thou mine unbelief," said the father of the sick son (Mark 9:24), and though it wasn't much, Jesus considered it enough. The boy was healed. Fairy-tale prayers, she called them. Why not? Jesus prayers. The language of the prayer didn't matter, and her own language couldn't have been plainer or her prayers more unliterary and down-to-earth. Only the faith mattered. All of this she spoke with nothing wild-eyed or dramatic about her, but clearly, wittily, less like a mystic than like the president of a rather impressive club. And you could also get too much praying, too much religion, she said, and when that happened, the thing to do was just to put it aside for a while as she did and do something else....

[Frederick Buechner]

[tkc-info]

Just a Kiss

Day 11 - tale

@wagner-fell @chibi-tsukiko @littleturtle95

“‘No one shall be my wife but she whose foot this golden slipper fits,’” a faint pause “Then were the two sisters glad, for they had pretty feet. The eldest went with the shoe into her room and wanted to try it on, and her mother stood by. But she could not get her big toe into it, and the shoe was too small for her.”

Alice stopped behind the door —left ajar most likely by one of the younger kids— and peeked inside the drawing room. Aunt Agnes, the owner of the storyteller’s voice, was sitting on a Victorian rocking chair, her unending sea of mourning-black skirts the perfect mattress for Alice’s two-year old brother Augustus and Ziba, also two, to nap on.

Nada and Kay, four, and Kannan and Ira, seven, sat on the floor facing Aunt Agnes in a semi-circle. Each of their childish eyes reflected eagerness to hear the unraveling of a story they were well-acquainted to, as well as that lingering terror you ought to feel when Aunt Agnes related one of her twisted tales. A few steps away from them, Esfandiyar sat on a high-backed settee. And beside him, his boyfriend. Yitian.

Unlike Esfandiyar, Yitian was laying on the couch. His head was on Esfandiyar’s lap, at one extreme of the settee, while his legs hung off the other extreme. Yitian was tall; it was the second thing Alice had noticed about him, having been his unparalleled kindness the second.

“Then her mother gave her a knife and said, ‘Cut the toe off; when thou art Queen thou wilt have no more need to go on foot,’” Aunt Agnes continued. Alice was accustomed to the duality of her, but she supposed people who weren’t would be unnerved by her gentle voice paired up with her full-mourning Victorian attired and choice of child entertainment. Yitian certainly looked unnerved by her “The maiden cut the toe off, forced the foot into the shoe, swallowed the pain, and went out to the King’s son. Then he took her on his horse as his bride and rode away with her. They were, however, obliged to pass the grave, and there, on the hazel tree, sat the two pigeons and cried— oh, Alice, dear, you’re here!”

Alice’s back straightened. She’d been staring at the line of poorly-concealed disgust Yitian’s mouth drew along his face, and had thus been unable to notice Aunt Agnes gaining notice of her presence. Now everyone but Augustus, who slept still, had their eyes turned on her.

Yitian smiled brightly. Esfandiyar arched an eyebrow at her; ‘I’m here on babysitting duty, what’s your excuse?’ his expression let on. Alice paid him no heed.

“Do you need someone to play the pigeons?” she asked, unfazed, with a wide grin “I make wonderful pigeons.”

Amid high-pitched ‘yes!’ from the kids, Aunt Agnes clapped her hands together in delight. “Please, do. Your characterisations are brilliant.”

From the corner of her eye, Alice caught Esfandiyar huffing. He bent down to whisper something into his boyfriend’s ear which made Yitian focus on Alice. She could practically feel his curiosity piercing her back as she entered the drawing room. Alice morphed into a bat —the abrupt shift in her anatomy so easy it struck her as sinful— and swerved to the chandelier, where she hung down from, and then, finally, re-morphed into her humanoid form. The whole room turned upside down, Alice felt she possessed enough confidence to look Yitian in the eye.

Yitian smiled, and she smiled back.

Aunt Agnes cleared her throat. “As I was saying: ‘the maiden and the King’s son were, however, obliged to pass the grave, and there, on the hazel tree, sat the two pigeons and cried,” she flicked her blue eyes to Alice.

“Turn and peep, turn and peep; There’s blood within the shoe; The shoe it is too small for her; The true bride waits for you,” Alice recited.

She made her voice part in two: high-pitched and shrieking, and low and wise at the same time. All while rocking forward and backward, and letting her row of teeth and mouth and jaw elongate to give her face a touch of monstrosity. Just to add a little bit of drama to her intervention.

Yitian looked appalled.

Aunt Agnes continued telling her story, and Alice offered her voice wherever was due, and Yitian continued looking perturbed.

“Afterwards, as they came back, the elder was at the left, and the youngest at the right, and then the pigeons pecked out the other eye of each. And thus, for their wickedness and falsehood, they were punished with blindness as long as they lived,” Aunt Agnes finished “The end.”

The kids rose one by one. Ira begged his mother for another story, while Kay shouted at Alice to repeat the pigeons’s chant. Aunt Agnes intercepted the later boy and shushed him down. “You can’t expect dearest Alice to be with you all the time.”

It took Alice a moment to realise her aunt had said that because Yitian was making his way toward her. Of course, Alice would rather spend time with a boy his age than with little siblings. Of course.

Yitian had closed the distance between them in two gigantic steps, and she —still hanging upside down— felt something within her stir. An echo of Someone whispering that she already knew Yitian, that she’d known countless Yitians all throughout her life.

Alice pushed those thoughts aside.

She arched a brow at him. “You left your boyfriend on the settee,” indeed, Esfandiyar hadn’t moved from his seat. Although he was staring at them with a hint of curiosity in his brown eyes.

Yitian shrugged. “I never thought I’d be afraid of an imlium, but you’re positively terrifying.”

“Am not. I was simply raised by Aunt Agnes.”

He looked at the woman in question for a brief moment. She was kneeling on the ground, offering a now-awake Augustus a taxidermic rat. “Sometimes I wonder how she and Madeleine can be twins and yet so different.”

“You haven’t met twins that are truly different,” Alice argued. Neither had her, but the echo at the back of her mind said she had. Her throat constricted around an invisible object, a feeling of fear she knew all too well. She grinned in an attempt to hide it “Really, they’re strikingly similar at core.”

She moved to nudge his chest with a knuckle, and when she did, it was like a trigger being pulled. A thought crossed her mind: what if I give him just a kiss?

[delicate-little-honeysuckle]

💕if you get this, answer w/ three random facts about yourself and send it to the last seven blogs in your notifs. anon or not, doesn’t matter, let’s get to know the person behind the blog!

Aah I got this ask many days ago but my tumblr was glitchy until just now, so I'm finally answering!

1. I love drawing! I've always found art to be relaxing, especially when it's more repititive and I can think less and just use muscle memory. I fill around 3 or 4 small sketchbooks a year, and have for 5 years so far! My drawings tend to be small and messy and overlap a lot, which I enjoy lol. I drew my current profile pic of Kakashi!

2. I cut my own hair, and have done so for over 4 years now! It's very easy, because I don't care about my hair looking neat and even past what I want. I love a choppy hair look, especially more than a perfectly cut look (for myself, you do you!). I get someone to help make sure it's even all the way around, but that's usually the most help I get and I haven't paid for a haircut in years. I'm proud hehehe

3. I LOVE music that makes me sad. I don't often cry from music, but I love when it happens! Some songs that fill me with despair in an addictive way are "Missing Mr. Cat / The Milk Carton Reprise" by Madilyn Mei, "Agnes" by Glass Animals, "DADS BED" by hobo johnson, "Donna" by The Lumineers, and "Expert In A Dying Field" by The Beths. I know that's a handful, but they're all incredible and gut wrenching in different ways!

I spent way too long overthinking what to write, but this was very fun to do! Thanks for the prompt <3