#i drew me and my friends as the mystery gang! :D

[ciao-pomodoro]

Zoinks! Like- how did we get into the backrooms, Scoob?!

[2nd-drop-me-safely-in-this-hell]

ladytrish pre-dmc 1 meeting au?

"A Premature Meeting"

Characters

Lady (Devil May Cry)

Trish (Devil May Cry)

Relationships

Lady x Trish

Premise

A sinister plot unfolds to lure the son of Sparda to his doom... But you know that story. This time around, however, a key player visits an old ally of Dante's just before events go into motion.

Content Warnings:

Firearms (Magically Resisted)

Explosives

Dismemberment (Magically Healed)

Canon Divergence

Author's Note:

This is actually a really good idea, thank you anon. I may actually write a follow-up to this, no promises though.

Lady flopped onto her couch, clutching Kalina Ann in her arms. She hadn't even bothered to change out of her riding suit, but all discomfort and soreness was outweighed by sheer exhaustion.

Her respite was cut short by a loud crash from the far wall. At once, Lady jumped behind the couch and took cover, peeking over to see her own motorcycle lying in the middle of her apartment, leaving a trail of glass and other rubble in its wake.

"What the hell?!" Lady roared.

As if to answer her question, the culprit made herself known. Landing behind the motorcycle was a tall, blonde woman, dressed in black leather boots, with skin-tight pants and a corset to match. Her hair was done up in a pony tail, and her eyes were hidden by a pair of sunglasses.

The woman looked fit, but there was no human explanation for throwing a motor vehicle into a second story window, then leaping in after it. Lady slung Kalina Ann onto her back, and placed a hand on her pistol - the human-sized demons tended to be too fast for Kalina Ann.

The mysterious woman turned, and met Lady's eyes. "Hm... One red eye, one green... Scar across the bridge of her nose... You're the one, alright."

"Tell me why you're here. Now." Lady drew her pistol. "Or else."

The intruder smiled. "Well well... You are a ferocious one, aren't y-"

Lady fired her pistol, hitting her right between the eyes. Even as the bullet crumpled and bounced off, leaving only a bruise, Lady's target grunted. "...That was rude." She hissed through gritted teeth.

Lady scoffed. "I don't know what's considered polite in the Underworld, but up here? Throwing motorcycles into people's windows doesn't exactly say 'I come in peace'."

The stranger chuckled. "I'll remember that next time."

"I won't ask you again." Lady cocked her pistol.

The woman smiled "I just need to know where I can find your friend, Dante."

Dante? Lady thought to herself. This woman knows him... Could she be another family member? Her hair isn't white, but she has his tan, and maybe his nose too...

"Who's asking?" Lady barked.

The demon glared. "No one's 'asking'. You're going to tell me. What's up to you is how much I'm going to hurt you first."

"Wrong answer." Lady fired her pistol again.

This time, the stranger dodged, and in an instant, she tossed the couch aside. "Right back at you." She then seized Lady by the throat, and lifted her off of her feet. "Surely you know by now that your only choice is to cooperate?"

"Think again." Lady retorted. "Look down."

The demon looked down to find that her right foot was planted on top of some sort of metal disk. "What's this?" She inquired.

"That's a landmine. Calibrated to fuck up demons like you." Lady answered.

The demon grinned smugly. "You've never faced a demon like me. I like my chances."

"But do you like mine? If you step off now, we'll both be caught in the blast. And I can't tell you anything if I'm dead." It was Lady's turn to look smug.

The woman's eyebrows raised, and her head cocked to the side. "Well played." At once, she tossed Lady over her shoulder.

She landed right beside her motorcycle, her leathers thankfully shielding her from the broken glass. Lady quickly got to her feet, and pushed the motorcycle upright.

"Oh, no you d-" The demon was cut off by a loud gang, and covered by a puff of smoke.

If this were a regular job, Lady would have stopped to make sure the demon was finished. Instead she climbed onto her motorcycle, and rode out of what used to be her window, landing in the street below and tearing away.

Who the hell was that?! Lady thought to herself. I better get myself to Dante's office. To warn him, and to get some answers.

* * *

"Agh, fuck me..." Trish came to, and looked down at herself to assess the damage. Her right leg was reduced to crystalized ichor. Nothing that wouldn't regenerate, and not nearly as painful as anything Mundus would bestow if he had witnessed this failure, but it was still a surprise.

As the stump began to extend into a complete leg again, she laid back down, and laughed to herself. Looks like I underestimated you, hunter. I hope this isn't the last we see of each other.

[azurityarts]

Your Pmd OCs are really cool! I know one is called Skye and one is called Brooke, but what are all their names?

Daily Doodle #77

An Improper Proper Introduction

I spent. Way too much time on this.

MEET THE GANG!

Rescue Team

Arcas

Liselotte (Lilo)

I'm going in order of the games, but I actually played Explorers before Rescue Team! Gotta say, I absolutely loved the Friend Areas; they definitely made the world more engaging and expansive!

As for my team though, Arcas was actually an adaptation from a D&D character I made; a Dragonborn monk iirc. I don't quite remember where I got the name Lilo for a Cyndaquil from, though I recently retconned it to be a nickname of sorts. Names are fun!

In terms of playtime, Rescue Team is definitely the lowest for me. That being said, I've gotten more attached to these two little shits over the course of my doodles and shitposts than I ever thought I would.

Explorers

"Silent"

Arina

Explorers was my first ever Pokemon Mystery Dungeon game, though not my first exposure to the series. Specifically, I managed to pick up Explorers of Sky some years back, and that copy holds as my oldest PMD game.

And the fact that it's "old" helps explain my team's names; unlike my other teams where my initial goal was turning them into characters, my Explorers roster was just named after me and my old best friend. I just put our old usernames, but I still find it ironic that my old name is still appropriate given the "silent protagonist" trope PMD games usually run. Due to personal reasons though, both are now characters!

Explorers holds the title for the time I've sunk into PMD games, and it isn't even close. Incredible story, postgame, music, characters, and more; there's a reason why Explorers is considered the best entry in the series. Over 70 hours I've put into the game, and I don't intend to stop anytime soon!

Gates to Infinity

Brooke

Axdrew

Gates to Infinity was my first exposure to PMD? Is this a shocker? I'm not actually sure, but yep, the first time I had set my eyes upon this series was Marriland's playthough of GTI. I loved his voices as a kid, and I'm very happy to have finally gotten to play the game I idolized as a kid.

I had originally planned for Brooke to be another "quiet type" protagonist, but I noticed that the hero in GTI talks a lot more than in previous installments, and is also a bit sassier? Really glad I got the opportunity to give someone a more lively, snarkier personality that I don't often give my characters. Axdrew was a name given by a friend, and I've recently considered "Drew" as a hypocorism, but I'm still debating on that one.

Gates to Infinity gets so much flak, and maybe I'm just biased due to my history with the game, but it does NOT deserve the amount of hate it does. (There seems to be a theme with Gen 5 getting bashed before getting beloved tho...) I've sung the praises for GTI in old posts, so I won't be going on another rant (this is already the longest section here), but even if everyone pulls up with pitchforks and torches, I'll still hold this game close to my heart.

Super Mystery Dungeon

So, uh, this is awkward? I haven't actually played through PSMD yet. ^^; Between school, life, art, and other stuff going apeshit recently, I haven't had the time to start a new game. I'm excited for when I do though, since it apparently links all of the previous installments together. (Although I am still particularly upset that nicknames for recruits aren't a thing anymore ;-;)

Bonus!

Skye

Azure

Original OCs anyone? Yeah, I'm not too sure anyone's that interested in a random Absol or the 3817th Umbreon OC, but I've had these two for the longest time, even before I started playing Explorers! I guess it doesn't count to include them in this list, since they're not explicitly PMD-related, but I've been trying to write a story of sorts with 'em for a while now (though I've not got a clue if it's any good lol). Both of them have gone through a lot of changes and tweaks over the years, but they're definitely here to stay. :)

If you've made it to the end, thank you for reading! I've been meaning to introduce these fellas for a while now; my original plan was to showcase each of them individually through reference sheets, but that stuff takes way longer than I anticipated. ^^; I've always been nervous when it comes to really explaining the who for my OCs, but I'm really glad this ask came through to push me to make this. Thank you! If anyone's interested, y'all can ask my OCs things! I've seen a bunch of different PMD ask blogs and they're really cool- I'm completely new to this kind of stuff, but I'm willing to experiment! :D

Credit to Nicely Olo for the PMD Badges used in the background!

[yulin-pop]

Hello! ₍ᐢ. ̫.ᐢ₎ ♡

Can I request a matchup please?

I'm short, about 5'1-5'2 almost like an IKEA nightstand and slightly plump like a padded bag chair. I have pale pink dyed hair and brown eyes. I also have a lot of moles on my body and barely noticeable freckles. Usually i wear comfortable loose clothes, something like sweatpants and some kind of oversize T-shirt, not super luxury :D

I’m gemini, ISFP and i can describe myself as a person who have trust issues, so it’s hard for me to open up to people at first. Despite of this i love affections in various expressions. Compliments, hugs, smooches - I really like to show attachment to my family and friends! Even if it seems so clingy tbh.

Sometimes i'm overwhelmed by emotions and i became rude and harsh in communication, for which I later regret. Let's says my mood always changes by unexplained reasons, yeah…

I'm a bit sarcastic and also unconsciously criticize myself by making self-destructive jokes, thanks to my past, but however my small circle of closed friends says that I mostly looks like a chihuahua - just as small, chaotic and bitey in a good way tho. Even if i more on introverted side i'm eccentric and active in some ways. I mean who one day came to university with invoices mustache and beard just because wanted to? Yep, me. A little weird me.

I have specific tastes in everything from eating french fries with ice cream as sauce to non-standard combination of clothes and colors. It maybe sounds oddly but i like strange and absurd memes, dumb puns and black humour, and i quite often use them in conversations.

I adore astrology and mysticism. Some kind of mystery of the world attracts me, gives me ground for reflection, thereby forcing me to spend almost all my free time on it, and I find it really interesting. I also like everything related to maritime culture and mythology. Warm rainy days, autumn season and evening time of day when the sun slowly sets over the horizon. And I also really like such simple little things as cute pebbles that can be found not only on the beach, but also on an ordinary street, key rings and other seemingly unnecessary trinkets.

What about dislikes? Well, at first it’s wasps. Thank God that I didn't have to come into close contact with them. In my opinion, it's better to run from a flock of geese than from a gang of wasps. The second is acute. I can't and don't like too spicy food and dishes. One day I ate very spicy noodles and my lips cried from burning for half an hour. Not a very good feeling, especially when they are cracked...

When I was a little girl, I attended every school circle, but I didn't stay in any of them due to my frequent variability in both character and interests, and it's a little difficult for me to understand which hobby has sunk into my soul more, heh. I knitted, drew, and excelled in sports - everything in a row, but a little. If singing in the bathroom is considered a hobby, then this is one of them that stayed with me throughout my growing up, ha ha. I will give preference to drawing and writing more, perhaps.

Since no one has ever shown romantic feelings towards me, for me it would be something unusual, perhaps shocking. At first glance, this may also scare me, especially if I don't consider this person not only as an "object of sighing", but also just as a friend (I mean a ordinary acquaintance with whom you don't really communicate due to various factors by type of interests, life position, etc.). Although, to be honest, even if a very good, close friend suddenly began to show me loving attentions, I would also be confused and puzzled due to the fact that I simply am not familiar with this and do not know how to react to it heh.

I'm sorry, if it came out quite a lot, but I was happy to share! Thank you for your work, I hope you have a lovely day! ( ⸝⸝´꒳`⸝⸝)❤️

↛ ❀ Match up; @Idontknowwhatwritenow

I match you with Jade Leech

He’s good with all sorts of people. He’s always calm and composed and very trust worthy. He may be intimidating at first but things will work itself out. He’s used to people being harsh with him and he reassures that it’s ok when you apologize for your outbursts. He can handle your emotions well, but he might be a bit puzzled with your affection towards him. He’s used to Floyd harshfully hugging him in a playful way but with you, you’re just genuine.

He’s come used to aggressive people, with Floyd being Floyd and Azul’s outbursts. He can handle you well and can calm you down.

He listens to you talk and talk about all sorts of topics out of curiosity. He doesn’t really care for the things you’re talking about but he wants to see how passionate you.

He wonders why he’s so… careful with you. He can’t think of a reason until he arrives at the conclusion he’s extremely fond of you, more than anything he’s ever felt. He gets flirty, making jokes about you getting special treatment from him, him being your “servant”. He notices that you it’s difficult to take a hint that he views you in that way so he gets progressively more forward with his teasing.

He plans out when he’s going to confess extremely carefully and strategically. He makes sure it’s the right moment, atmosphere, location. He thinks it down to each second. His confession came out a bit more bashful than he intended.

He gives you time if needed but will get impatient after a while, in that waiting time, he will continue flirting.

He’s playful with the ones he likes. Him teasing is his own way of showing affection, hopefully you don’t mind.

[an-american-teen-against-crime]

Why You Should Watch CW: Nancy Drew

Now hear me out- if you’re reading this post, you’re either one of three people. 

1. You’ve already seen the show! So you can either skip this or read it to reminisce about the show

2. You don’t give a flying fig about this show and haven’t really interacted with it much

3. You’ve seen some stuff about the show, at least enough for you to decide it looks like crap 

Well, allow me to recount why this show is actually amazing and you should give it a chance/second chance :) (heheh since that’s...that’s yakno....second chance...okay im sorry) 

Preface:

Now, I was really skeptical about this show at first too, don’t get me wrong. When I heard it was going to be on the CW I was like “.....good luck with that.” I have watched a lot of CW back in the day and they are certainly deserving of their reputation. I saw the casting and I was like WHAT !?!??!!? 

When the trailer came out, like everyone else I was salty about the inclusion of ghosts/the supernatural and hoped this wasn’t just another Supernatural taking on the name of Nancy Drew. (I enjoyed the first few seasons of Supernatural but not after and also these are two very different stories)

However, the trailer was indeed intriguing and made me decide to give it a chance, despite it having that darker undertone. 

I watched the first episode, and while still a little skeptical, I was hooked. 

The Actual Show Content:

Writing:

The actual structure of the show is really well done. It has an overarching plot, in fact, several plots, two intertwined mysteries, as well as character and relationship development. There is a balance of answers given to the viewer over the course of the season, while still leaving questions to keep you intrigued so that it doesn’t get frustrating while also not revealing everything at once, so every reveal feels earned. 

The mysteries are also very well written, leaving clues along the way, that helped me solve what was going on but on the times I missed the clues I could re-watch and see what I missed. They are set up well in a way that the viewer can figure it out themselves, but not so much that it’s crazy obvious. And honestly making theories and predictions about this show is one of the many fun parts. The ending to the mystery is ultimately very satisfying which made me happy.

Sure, you have your classic CW relationship drama, but I think it was actually toned down for this show. There are a lot of changes, but the show has a very distinct feel to it, and I think ultimately holds the core feelings of what makes Nancy Drew such a special character. They have so many references to the books, and show so much care for the character’s lore and despite the changes, there were so many times I really felt I could see the original character coming out in them- it’s a different version, but honestly ever form of Nancy Drew media is different- this is just this specific version. 

Before I get into characters, I would like to mention the fact that while there is an additional element of the supernatural, it works really well for the plot and ..... no spoilers but I’m actually so glad they put it in. Despite the supernatural angle it still very much works as a mystery structure which is the most important thing to me.

Characters:

I love Nancy so much in this version. Kennedy McMann is what I think of when I think of what Nancy’s face looks like. She’s a lot colder than the Nancy I’m used to, but that’s understandable considering her circumstances- and I think you see her grow and open up over the course of the show. 

She IS Nancy though in my mind- her witty remarks, putting the case above her own well being, the breaking and entering, the clever tricks to find information, putting the pieces together, all that. And the emotion Kennedy is able to portray is amazing- this show made me cry. You really feel for Nancy. 

One of my favorite things about this show is the classic “I work alone” and a bunch of friends being like “do you now”. But it works so well as you see the group grow to trust each other and work together and care for one another. I am a SUCKER for found family stories and the Claw gang is wonderful. 

Bess is her usual bubbly self, probably the casting I was the most disappointed with, but the actress does a wonderful job. Her whole story is a lot different and she’s not George’s cousin, but the personality??? Is perfect. 

George is probably one of my favorite characters to come out of this show. Well... I love them all so much but she really sticks out to me. She had a completely different arc from what I was expecting and at first I was like “really...this is what they’re going for...” but honestly I think they really turned it around and.....I just love George and I care about her and want her to be happy. Also she does seem a bit different but she has that brash, kind of tough personality that I feel is classic George. :) 

Nick/Ned: I still forget to call this man Nick, but oh well. I love him. Probably one of the best actors on this show. He’s so sweet. Like so many times there are things he says and I’m like OMG THATS NED!!!!!!! Like one time they ask him what he found out from following someone and he just replies “that I don’t like following people.” Like tell me that’s not something Ned would say. He’s. He’s a great man. I would date him. He is a comforting soul.

Ace is a new character for the show that made me so confused I was wondering why he was here- but the Claw gang...Claw Crew would not be complete without him. He’s got some of the best lines and is basically this show’s version of Joe Hardy. He’s also really smart,,,,, and got some secrets but I’ll leave them for you to find out. ;) 

Also side note Carson is amazing and honestly perfect. On point. Very solid characterization. 

Anyways....I love this show. If you wanna try it out before season two comes later this month, it’s free to binge the full season on the CW website, or you could probably buy or rent it if you’re feeling boojee. 

Please go watch the show and then come talk to me about it!! Or live blog your reactions. Either ways, just please get in on this great piece of content. :D

Also I wanna tag @naancypants and @nancydrew-onthecase queens of this show and the Nace ship :3 

[livlepretre]

So what happened with the ghosts? If you want to share. 🙂

at first I thought you were asking about one of my fics and I was like ???? but now I realize you are asking me about my actual terrible time living in a haunted house in good old Dublin. 

okay. so, to begin, I’m not particularly skeptical about ghosts. New Orleans is a really haunted city and my grandfather’s house which I spent a huge amount of my childhood in was pretty haunted-- newspapers mysteriously sitting in the foyer in the morning even though the doors are all locked and the alarm is on, hearing your name being called all throughout the house and it turns out you’re there alone, a gardener who used to never go out at sunset because there was a man in a planter’s hat who would walk from the corner of the house to the pecan tree and back every night at the sun was going down-- honestly I knew A LOT of people with similar experiences growing up so I just,,,,,, accepted that ghosts were pretty much a benign part of life sometimes. (and there may have also been an incident where that same gardner pulled up an old flagstone and a woman popped out of the ground and he came inside white as a sheet, but my grandfather’s house pre-dated the civil war so it didn’t surprise anyone that it was super haunted.) 

well. when I was in college I had a JYA in Dublin, and I moved into a townhouse with a group of other Americans. something like day 3 or 4 in the townhouse, I knew for a fact I was the only one home, but I had this intense feeling standing in the upstairs hallway that there was someone standing right behind me. I can’t describe it as anything other than absolute certainty that there was another presence in the home. at the time, I was like, chill, there’s a ghost. and I went on with things and didn’t worry about it, as my own personal experiences with ghosts were pretty much that sometimes they’re just their and they’re harmless, and I kept this insight completely to myself since  I also suspected that my roommates were likely to be skeptics and I didn’t want to come off week 1 as Ghost Girl. 

Well, end of week 1, little did I know, but the gang who lived on the 3rd floor of the townhouse (I was on the 2nd) decided to make a ouija board on a lark. I have no idea where this idea came from, since I specifically did not mention the ghost to anyone... other than obviously it was on a lot of other people’s minds as well. well. they do the ouija board. the power cuts off in the middle of their fucking seance. it comes back on after a few minutes, and they decide to be done with trying to contact anything, but that night all of my roommates who were involved with the ouija board incident had.... like,,,,,, suicide fuel nightmares. like the worst most vivid nightmares they had ever had in their entire lives. 

that was also the night that the fire alarm started going off at 3 am. each floor had this old fashioned red metal bell with a mallet, and it would go off 3, 4 times a week for no reason at all... it was one of those things where at first we just chalked it up to an annoying old building. 

but there were a number of weird things that happened-- door slamming shut by themselves with no possible explanation, the fire alarm bell going off all the time, a mysterious fire that none of us could figure out, just a lot of little things that were interesting to me and which I was like ghost! I was super interested in the ghost and talked about it a lot because I was fascinated. Big mistake. 

I didn’t understand at the time that some ghosts are malevolent. I didn’t understand that there were times where it’s best to ignore the ghost and pretend it doesn’t exist rather than to talk about it where it can hear you. 

we had this big heavy mirror that hung on the wall at the top of the stairs. big sturdy thing, weighed a ton, must have been hanging there forever. 

one night I was standing under it talking to one of my roommates and the thing came off the wall and nearly landed on my head-- I was really lucky that I jumped back in time. The whole thing shattered. It probably could have killed me. I was freaked, so I went back to my bedroom, where my laptop was open and in the middle of my queen sized bed. I remember that it was in the middle specifically, because I had noticed it was sort of weirdly slipping off the edge of the bed for some reason when I had it over to the left, so I put it smack in the middle of the bed. well, I walked into the bedroom immediately after the mirror had nearly fallen on me, and honestly describing this still nearly breaks my mind. literally less than two minutes after the close call with the mirror my laptop gets hurled against the wall-- like four or five feet-- to land smashed up on the ground. 

At that point I realized that I had been talking about the ghost and it had noticed me and my only hope was to shut the fuck up right that second. 

I never talked about the ghost where the ghost could hear me again. 

Not to say there weren’t still ghost issues. The fire alarm continued to go off at the witching hour all the fucking time. There was an incident where my whole bedroom started to mysteriously v i b r a t e ??? Like, thundering. I thought that the gang was upstairs in the bedroom above mine dancing or something, but they were all on the other side of the house. (I later found out the fucking ouija board had been long-term stored directly above my bed, w o n d e r f u l ) 

There was also the time I was sitting on the floor in my friend’s room down the hall from mine, and I said to her, “why is there a pillow stuffed up your chimney???” naturally, she was like, “what the fuck” -- so, slowly, we pulled this throw pillow out from the chimney (realizing that the pillow was the one missing from the sofa upstairs??) and there, on the throw pillow, was a bird with a broken neck. 

there’s probably more that I can’t recall anymore because it’s been like a decade. I mostly remember being really afraid a lot of the time, as were like half of my roommates who were feeling similarly.... oppressed by the ghost, and being kind of helpless about it because I was a poor student and honestly that ghost wrecked me financially that semester when it wrecked my laptop so maybe it did get the upper hand at the time. idk. 

fun fact I actually met my husband because he was one of my roommates during all of this, so there were positives?? he’s a very rational person though so he just stuffed a book between the bell and the mallet on his floor so the fire alarm couldn’t torment him and ignored the ghost. 

I’ve had a couple of other ghosty experiences since then, but this is the one that stands out as the most personally harrowing. it was pretty wild to realize that some ghosts mean harm and that this one had it in for me in particular. I had a friend (actually one of my roommates who drew the fucking ouija board back in Dublin) go through something much much worse that honestly I can’t talk about, but has decently fucked me up for life just knowing about it. The funny thing is that he basically didn’t believe in the ghost back in Dublin (I think he was blacked out most of that semester though), but he reached out to me about his frankly horrific situation all because he remembered me flipping the fuck out in Dublin. 

Anyway. that’s the story of how ‘don’t talk about the ghost where the ghost can hear you’ became one of my lifelong rules to live by. 

[asch2inspire]

Since your ask box is still open, and haven't posted a billion of asks, so I might as well take the opportunity. If I didn't ask this before, what are all your au's for Rayman? If I already asked that (which I do apologize if I did,) what are your opinion of ships with Rayman and the Nymphs? I don't ship it, but it's a little controversial topic in the fandom. I hope you had a wonderful day, I haven't been sending much asks lately, so I took this opportunity to check up on ya! ^^

I believe you have already asked me this, but I would be more than happy to answer once more!

-Rayly AU 

(basically my art blog, but with arcs in between, following Rayly’s relationship and the Dream/Nightmares’ antics in the Glade, supposedly 

Comedy, Adventure, Drama)

-Robot Ray AU 

(A reality where Rayman was never born into the Valley of Dreams, thus the dark forces took over and turns the globe into an eternal night, 20 years later, when lum-magic is scarce but is constantly being devoured by Nightmares, Betilla acts desperately and builds Rayman as a robot, gives him a Lum-induced heart, and sends him outside the Dreams’ Sanctuary to find her Sisters, survivors and to put a stop to the evergrowing chaos, before all light goes extinct. 

Action, Drama)

-Nymph-Switch AU 

(This was a “what if” kind of thing, exploring how the Glade would be like if Rayman was born under a different Nymph-Sisters’ Magic, or if the Sister would take over as the lead Nymph in this reality, example, with Holly Luya, the realm would be music-art based, with cultural cities surrounded by deserts. Rayman would be a Tribal Music and art lover, and his powers are based on his talents.

Casual)

-Mafia AU

Newly announced in your recent ask, (1940′s Mafia aesthetic, Rayman is a police officer who finds himself tangled into a Gang-related case, this leads to him being targeted by the Gangs’ elite, as he tries to solve the mysteries in the City’s dark side.

Mystery, Drama, Comedy)

............

I believe I have scrapped the others, since they were too silly to develop, or that their art were unpopular upon posting.

My newest idea, following an art request I drew for @illegal-d on instagram, has been a fairyfolk theme for Rayman, might not develop it, but it is an adorable concept, no?

Plus I’m currently typing down a fanfiction featuring some OCs inspired by my recent Fandom+Word Drawing challenge, and of course, inspired by @raygirlramblings‘ blog.

..........

As for the Nymphs, I imagine them as his Family: Aunts or guardians outside of Betilla, so the ships are considered incest to me, and is therefor unsettling.

.......

Thank you for asking, I have been on instagram lately, and has hosted an art request in my story, it’s been so much fun drawing for people and hearing their feedback and words of gratitude, sadly, its over now, and I’m still working on the leftover requests, next time I host one, feel free to participate! 

Instagram-Aschvoided

................

If you are not aware, there are other amazing AUs regarding Rayman, such as @slightly-gay-pogohammer‘s I’m Only Human AU, featuring an adorable art style of a Humanized Rayman’s creation and the adventures, and dangers, he faces in the glade outside of Betilla’s care.

Next is @starflethegreat��s RaymanSwap AU, which is an adorable concept of Rayman and Globox’s personality switch, but the little bean tries to conquer his fears to save his home, while being greatly supported by his much Braver best friend.

@titenoute also posts comics and with a hilarious sense of humor as @titenoute-comics .

Thank you again for asking!

[fanghuas]

"I, too, love panicking at the neon disco" with whoever you want? You said send prompts so here I am to support :D

You’re the real MVP, friend. Sorry this took so long and also if you were expecting anything like…quality?? I don’t know what happened here.

The manor’s ballroom had not seen much use in recent years. The amount of galas and fundraisers and functions and what have yous that Bruce Wayne threw on a yearly basis was not negligible, but rarely did they take place in his own home. Intellectually, Bruce knew that the chances of someone wandering off and finding the entrance to the Batcave were low, but no risk was always better than a little risk.

Besides, his home was not for public consumption. Once upon a time, it had been almost like a haunted house to him, but his children had remedied that, filling it with life and laughter and yes, the unmistakable sound of fighting and priceless china shattering. He wouldn’t trade it for the world. Even if most of them didn’t live in the manor anymore, even if at times one or more of them refused to step foot inside for months on end, it belonged to all of them. Gotham’s high society had no place there.

Initially, Bruce had fought to keep the house untouched by time, more mausoleum than home, but all of that had gone out of the window the moment Dick Grayson had come into his life. First it was just Dick’s room, transformed from a neutral guest room to something as vibrant and full of personality as Dick himself, then a framed picture of Dick and Bruce in the study, then the little Batman magnet Dick bought and stuck on the fridge.

And it didn’t stop. More change came along with Jason, with Tim, with Damian and Cass and Duke. Even Stephanie and Barbara had left their mark, despite never having lived in the manor. Pictures in the hallways, books moved around in the library and new ones added to the collection, a drawing room slowly turned into a home cinema, pets and all the equipment that came with them, socks left in the most incredible places.

Bruce was wary of change, but that was one development he could live with.

It was on a late evening when Bruce – after a particularly rough night of patrol and an early morning WE meeting – had just woken up and stumbled into the kitchen for a cup of coffee that he heard it. Faintly, from across the manor, a sound he couldn’t quite identify but that immediately put him on alert. In his half-asleep state, he was at once convinced that it was intruders. None of the kids werehome today besides Duke and Damian, and at this hour the two of them could usually be found in the cave, sparring. Then the mysterious noise couldn’t have come from them. Bruce changed course and took off towards the source of the sound in a sprint.

As he drew closer, he realized that it was music, loud, pumping music, but his mind hadn’t quite registered the implications of that by the time he threw open the ballroom door and barrelled inside. The sight that greeted him was incomprehensible. He stood at the doorway, panting, all of his kids plus Barbara and Stephanie staring at him in varying degrees of concerned amusement.

Fighting to smooth out his expression, Bruce ground out, “Why does the ballroom look like a neon disco?”

It was truly a sight to behold. A bright pink disco ball had been attached to the ceiling. The long, rectangular table that usually adorned the unused dining room had been dragged to one corner of the ballroom, every inch covered in plates and glasses, a pair of glowing lava lamps on each side, Tim’s laptop – the source of the music – balancing precariously in one end. Bruce idly noted that the song now playing was Fly, Robin Fly.

Dick was wearing his old, affectionately dubbed discowing suit. The rest were clad in bell bottoms and spandex jumpsuits and patterned or nylon shirts, paired with platform boots and mismatched jewelry. Even Damian was wearing something that could vaguely pass as a disco outfit. The various styles at play clashed enough to give someone whiplash and the large room with its polished marble floor, high ceiling and tall glass windows made for a rather strange discotheque.

“Oh my god, you should have seen your face,” Jason said, delighted. “Looked like you were having an aneurysm.”

Dick elbowed him in the ribs.

“I was not –”

“It’s alright, Bruce,” Tim cut him off with a snicker. “I, too, love panicking at the neon disco.”

Bruce pinched the bridge of his nose and sighed. “I was not panicking.”

“You burst in here like caveman spongebob,” Duke informed him, matter-of-fact.

Bruce really hated it when his kids ganged up on him. “I don’t know what that means.”

Cue another round of snickers. God, Bruce was not awake enough for this. He was starting to think the imaginary intruders might have been easier to deal with.

“Ballroom,” he repeated flatly. “Disco. Why.”

Barbara spoke up, taking pity on him, “Cass wanted to know what the disco was like. Some people decided this meant we ought to throw a party.”

“And we were so right,” Stephanie declared, bumping her fist with Dick’s.

The explanation somehow did not make any of this easier to take in. He felt foolish and wrong-footed after the way he’d reacted, mind instantly going into fight mode. He was used to his kids causing a ruckus around the manor, but he was even more accustomed to danger awaiting in every turn, and coupled with his disorientation, it had been easy for instinct to take over.

“You could have mentioned it beforehand,” Bruce grumbled.

Damian snorted. “We informed you of our plans twice this week, father.”

Bruce squinted. That didn’t seem right. Cassandra had mentioned something about dancing, but disco was not the first thing that had come to his mind, and now that he thought about it Damian might have talked about a possible family gathering later in the week, but –

“I’ve told you guys,” Dick said, exasperated. “You’ve got to tell him once, as soon as you come up with a plan, and then again at most two days before it goes down. He’s old, he forgets things.”

“He probably was around when disco became popular,” Jason said.

“I was not,” Bruce said with great dignity.

Disco was the child of the late sixties and seventies. He was born in 1982. There was a respectable gap there. All of them looked at him with great skepticism. Stephanie disguised a giggle as a cough. Bruce was surrounded by family, and yet he stood among traitors.

“Join the party, Bruce,” Dick urged him with laughter in his voice. Bruce knew something was coming. “…You’re never too old to boogie.”

Bruce turned the full force of his glare on him. Betrayed. Utterly betrayed.

“Oh my god,” Barbara wheezed, throwing her head back with a laugh. “Dick, please never say ‘boogie’ again in your life.”

Bruce’s lips twitched. As perplexed as he had been to wake up to this, he had to admit that it was nice. All the kids together, messing around and having fun. No screaming matches, no brawls. The most dangerous thing in the room was a glitter marker that Stephanie was wielding, Tim and Damian already sporting smears of glitter along their face.

“I’ll stay for a bit,” he said, stepping farther into the room. Then, in a deadpan, “If you’re sure you can tolerate having an old man in your midst, that is.”

(Send me prompts!)

[nicol3houghts]

STOP WATCHING THE OFFICE:   other things to watch this summer

Don’t get me wrong, I LOVE ZIE OFFICE!! But as much as it pains me to say, the office isn’t a personality trait, so I’ve decided to make a list (e.g. Buzzfeed lists) of my top 16 recommendations for TV and podcasts to watch and listen to—since we all need to stop being basic bitches and FOCUS! 

I hope you listen to me when I say these shows are amazing and actually watch them if you have the time. I'm doing this because I care about you and your TV preferences.

I'll break it up by streaming service, starting with Netflix then Hulu, YouTube, then Podcasts last.

*I apologize in advance for the lousy grammar and lack of editing, but also not really sorry bout it.

-----------------------------------------

On NETFLIX:

1. Arrested Development

Number of Seasons: 5

Number of Episodes: 91

Hours to Binge: 35

Okay, number one on my list is Arrested development. A lot of people I talk to, especially in my age range, don’t know what the fuck I’m talking about, but this show is GENIUS... on G*D. I’ve watched it around four times now, and each time it gets better and better. I read somewhere that it was created as a satire of Bush-era incompetence and idiotic hanky-panky during the Iraq war. But at its heart, the show’s about a rich family with four adult children—who are all goofy and quirky. Their dad get’s thrown in jail for doing business with terrorists or something like that and Micheal Bluth (Jason Bateman) has to get them out of weird ass situations.

Above is one of my favorite scenes  (Best clip I could find on youtube!!).

This show has a LOT of jokes and long running bits that you kind of have to pay attention to to get the storyline. It’s hella META, and at times, can be really weird (see George Micheal Bluth and Maeby Fünke’s little Les Cousins Dangereux). In conclusion, however, Jason Bateman is hot, Micheal Cera is hot, and Tony Hale is ~super~ hot.

P.S. a lot of memes come from this show that you would know but don’t know that it’s from this show.

2. The Haunting of Hill House

Number of Seasons: 1

Number of Episodes: 10

Hours to binge: 9

Scary as f*ck! Do not watch yourself or u will die. I warned you.

I'm not going to spoil it too much, but it's about a family living in a spooky house and crazy ass shit keeps happening to them. They eventually move out, but even 20 years after--when the kids are all adults--the haunting of the house follows them.

There's even a 17 min scene that they shot in one shot!!!!!!!! That's wiLD.

3. Schitt's Creek

Number of Seasons: 5

Number of Episodes: 66

Hours to binge: 25

Yet another show about a rich family loosing all their money. A bit different than Arrested Development. This show is about a rich ass family loosing all their money and resorting to live in Schitt's Creek--a town in Nowhere, U.S.A. the family bought as a JOKE. It's a really easy watch. The characters in this show are SO un-relatable and mean it's hilarious--only if u f*ck wit dry humor tho.

Here's my favorite character, Alexis Rose just being iconic:

Give it a try, the first few episodes are rocky, but it gets better. That's a guarantee.

4. American Vandal

Number of Seasons: 2

Number of Episodes: 16

Hours to binge: 9

A lot of people already probs watch this show, but it's honestly so beautifully written. The show is an homage to Making a Murderer, a true crime mockumentary of sorts. It follows two guys, Sam and Peter as they try to figure out a mystery: WHO DREW D*CKS ON THE TEACHER'S CARS?

Also, JIMMY TATRO!!!!!

Season 2 follows a different crime and it's... it's poopy.

5. Mindhunter

Number of Seasons: 1

Number of Episodes: 10

Hours to binge: 9

YUH. Just started this, already on ep. 8, very interesting. Mindhunter is about the first FBI agents to use profiling to catch serial killers. THE CHARACTERS IN THIS SHOW WALKED SO THAT HOTCH AND REID COULD RUN.

This show is no joke and based on true serial killers like the coed killer, the shoe fetish killer, and BTK, it's very.... very creepy.

ALWAYS carry pepper spray on ya, that's fer sher.

6. Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt

pinot noir, caviar

7. John Mulaney: The Comeback Kid

eat ass, suck a dick, and sell drugs

8. The Good Place

is it really the good place?

---------------------------------------------

On Hulu:

9. Broad City

Number of Seasons: 5

Number of Episodes: 50

Hours to binge: 18

One of the greatest television series of all time about two baller best fraaands who get into the schemes of the century in New York City. Illana, a ferocious kween wit ZERO f*cks, and Abbi, an aspiring artiste with a great ass. The two work min-wage jobs in NYC (so they're broke) and they're just trying to find luv and a good bacon egg and cheese.

Think Sex and the City but fresh and new and wild. Abbi and Ilana's dialogue and schemes are relatable af, it makes it seem like you're there with them. Their co-dependency is so powerful... yet at moments, a lil destructive. I once had a friendship like this.. and let me tell you... co-dependency is a wild ride.

Some of the funniest scenes in this show is just of them talking on the street. Sometimes, when I'm walking with my friends, I pretend like I'm in the show lol.

I recommend you start from beginning to end because of the endless callbacks and running gags, but if not start with season 3, episode 7 B&B-NYC. Blake Griffin is in it.

10. Community

Number of Seasons: 6

Number of Episodes: 110

Hours to binge: 41

What can I say about this show to make you watch it? Well first of all the fact that Childish Gambino (Donald Glover) is in it should already have you clicking over to Hulu by now.

Community is about seven quirky misfits: a disbarred lawyer, a failed housewife, an activist everyone hates, a racist old man, a stupid jock who lost his sports scholarship, a high-strung know-it-all who took too much adderall, and abed. They all end up at Greendale Community College with a phsyco spanish teacher and a colorful dean. 

This show is kind of a parody of a sitcom, and it is VERY meta--often referring to themselves as TV show characters. The seven get into hilarious adventures and obstacles along the way. The show also genre hops from time to time. For example, they have a whole pillow fort vs. blanket fort episode (Pillows and Blankets, season 3, episode 4) in a Ken Burns documentary style, an episode in claymation for Christmas (Abed's Uncontrollable Christmas, season 2, episode 11), and a bunch of paintball episodes in style of Quentin Tarantino and StarWars.

Again, you should start at the beginning, but if you want to get into it quickly, I really loved Pillows and Blankets (season 3, episode 4).

11. The Mindy Project

As a "petite asian woman" who is not petite, this show is very relatable. About finding love and eating good in the big apple.  

P.S. If you don't like Kelly from the office, you're dead 2 m3.

12. Brooklyn 99

Cool. coolcoolcoolcool. Jake Peralta is the greatest detective/genius.

13. Superstore

If Walmart and the office had a baby and it was incompetent.

---------------------------------------------

On YouTube and Facebook Watch:

14. The Real Bros of Simi Valley

Number of Seasons: 2

Number of Episodes: 14

Hours to binge: 4

You straight up know these guys, fool. Four stoner/burn-outs who think your hometown's Mexican food is the best in the world. Amazingly written and surprisingly good acting. Lightweight lowkey thought they were speaking another language at first.

Jimmy Tatro, Cody Ko, Getter, and Nick Colletti. What more do you want? LITERALLY WHAT MORE DO YOU WANT?

The unnecessary drama and endless quotable jokes in this show leads you wanting more with only 14 episodes totaling at around four hours.

Watch the first season YouTube here:

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ybcPQVipNAw

---------------------------------------------

Podcasts:

15. Tiny Meat Gang

Aha hah bro last night was a movie bro ON GOD.

Noel Miller and Cody Ko talk about literally anything, but goofy. I can listen to them talk for straight up hours.

I usually listen on Apple Podcasts, but you can also watch on YouTube:

https://youtu.be/ZCMs4FrC_c0

Just start listening, bro.

16. My Favorite Murder

No shade to Codel, but My Favorite Murder is my all time favorite podcast. Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark  are two hilarious women who love murder. Not murdering, but the psychology of murderers and survivors. Each Thursdays each of them tell a story about a murder. They don't make fun of murders, but it's their banter that makes it fun to listen to.

If you're a fan of true crime at all, please listen so I have more people to talk about it with. shouts outs Jenna for putting me on to the show!

Here are my favorite episodes!

*tip: skip the first 15-20 min to the first murder when first listening.

150: How Dare You Kill Kelli

The Hanging of Alice Riley and The Murder of Reyena Marroquin

131: The Uninhibited

The Murder of Standford White and The Case of the Boys on the Tracks

[smokedcapybara]

I feel like you'd have absolutely excellent D&D characters because your imagination is great.

I actually struggle a lot with making D&D characters, in fact I think I’ve only ever made one character specifically for D&D

my brain just can’t create a character out of nothing, I need something - a setting, a plot, even just a line will work - to create them off of (though I will specify that numbers, like character stats, are not something I can create a character off of)

so usually I take pre-existing characters of mine and convert them into D&D characters and then they often grow into separate entities from the originals

but I am good at role-playing and I have some D&D characters who became very loved by my fellow players

my brother has actually said he likes to have me in his campaigns because while I’m not good at the numbers and stats and all that I’m one of the best role-players he’s dmed and most of the other people he dms are better at the numbers and stuff than the role-playing so I’m usually there to even it out and keep things interesting

anyway, now that I’ve got the humility out of the way I’m gonna take this as an opportunity to rave about my favorite D&D characters I’ve had over the years

Inigo - everyone’s favorite gnome

a gnome fighter, the original Inigo - a mercenary in a book I might never publish - was created to be a mix of Inigo Montoya(Princess Bride), Puss in Boots(Shrek), and Reepicheep(Chronicles of Narnia), and boy did that come out well in role-playing

he infuriated the other characters with his sort-of catchphrase “we are brothers of heart, and soul, and mind!”, but also was the first person his friend and adventuring companion Zephyr went to about a crush on one of the girls who helped them(Inigo’s advice was “whatever you do, be yourself” cause he’s a huge romantic who believes if someone doesn’t love you for you then they aren’t The One)

one of the funnest characters to role-play and apparently everyone else’s favorite of my role-playing characters

Damian - my first good D&D character

originally the wise and mysterious cleric in a superhero team styled after rp adventuring groups he went through a couple variations before my first ever D&D campaign, which he was my second character in after my first ran off with my brother’s rogue’s dead body(I’ll explain later)

a noble’s son who was essentially forced to be a cloister cleric, Damian literally snuck away to adventure, and was somehow the most prepared in his party despite 1) it being his first ever adventure and 2) him being like 16 and having lived in a library/church/thing practically his whole life

he was also incredibly shy and fairly socially awkward but a very good ally once I found out I could just hold an action during fights to heal my party members the moment they got hurt

that campaign was the campaign of lucky rolls, like when he got hit in the arm by an arrow and I said he’d just pull it out and heal himself and the dm made me roll for it - I got a 20(imagine little book nerd 16 year-old pretty-boy literally pulling an arrow out of his arm without wincing and just healing it and moving on) - or when we walked in on a group of goblins burning books and I rolled a 20 on attack and one-shot one of them with a freaking throwing dart(never let a book-nerd cloister cleric see you burning books)

also he knew more about the campaign than our bard did with bardic knowledge(she knew we were looking for these fruit and she knew what they were called, Damian knew the exact conditions they needed to grow and why they were called what they were called and some other things I’ve forgotten)

Drew Quinn - Doctor Scratch-n-sniff

my first ever D&D character, he’s not a favorite but he is a good example of my loyalty to character in role-play

he was a doctor from a secluded village who left to find a cure to a deadly illness and kinda lost his morals along the way, since his village was purely humans(with some distant dragon ancestry that was relevant to the campaign but never revealed cause he took off with the rogue’s body) he had never seen any of the other D&D races before leaving so he joined the party for the sole purpose of studying their anatomy(especially those of the gnome and halfling - adult anatomy in such small bodies??)

so when they got into fights he would just stand to the side and take notes and only step in if it looked like they’d get too disfigured for studying. the one time he did step in he ended the fight with like two/three sentences. and then when the halfling rogue got killed by rats Drew decided the body was more valuable than following the rest of the party wherever they went and took off with it to study

Laea - The Barbarian

the first incarnation of Laea was 9/10 years ago - she was a gang member in a story about a gang of teens who discover they’re all secretly gods. the second was in a role-play game me and my brother did before we started D&D, roughly 6/7 years ago, in which her personality was established in the very first scene when she punched one of the other characters right after waking up and yelled ‘pervert!’

her other most iconic moment was yelling “pansy little wizard boy” when the party wizard went invisible when the party all first met

a druid barbarian who’s only actual weapon was a spiked gauntlet(her other weapons consisted of a crowbar, a chain, and a battering ram) and who’s more likely to punch her allies than to actually fight(mostly cause I started getting bad anxiety around her finally becoming a D&D character and relying on dice is very hard) she was another favorite of my friends’

Buttercup - Secret B.A.?

Buttercup was introduced as a kind, friendly, cheerful bard who always used Inspire Confidence or Inspire Competence(through dancing) instead of fighting

then almost one-shot a boss with a circlet of blasting(after pretending to not know what it does)

(she had the best stats in the party)

Darkness - Buttercup’s dorky older brother

the only awesome moment of his I can remember rn is when he successfully hid behind the invisible ninja

Stefon - the very angry captain

originally a quiet military strategist from an old story I considered making into a comic, he somehow morphed into the most done character I have ever played, and a captain of a scavenger(?maybe smugglers?) airship

then again his crew were kinda useless. he spent most of the campaign telling them how not to mess up only for them to do exactly what he told them not to do

Antonio - the other kick-butt book nerd

a member of The Fools Guild, the entire first session all I did was show gifs of Legolas making disapproving faces anytime Antonio was supposed to react to something, or I said “he continues reading”

so he was a bit of a background character to the rest of the party

until he threw his book at a bugbear. and then pulled out another book and went back to reading

but then when the party were attacked by soldiers shortly after defeating the bugbears he was literally the only one to actually kill anyone. with the crossbow the fighter had left in the cart. it was a one-shot kill

he went back to reading as they ran away and returned to not doing much until the party had to compete in a tournament to win some magic object or something

he was paired with the party artist(sorceress, but she refused to admit that) in the 2 on 2 fights. first fight he won with just his books. second he won with the daggers hidden in his books. each fight he brought out another weapon he’d somehow hidden on his person and each fight his teammate only got like one hit in before he beat the opponents. he quickly became the tourney favorite(it didn’t hurt that the gay orc couple who were doing the announcing and commentating thought he was really cute)

Slythus - the ancient weapon of mass destruction

an old character who’s gonna be in my Eternity comic, I used him for a space-age villain campaign

possibly the only time I’ve ever had him flirt with anyone ever, at all

there were lots of fun shenanigans in that campaign but there was a Main Player Character who the campaign revolved around and it was pretty obvious so his only great memorable moment was when one of the party members said “we’d need an ancient weapon of mass destruction” and he responded “I am an ancient weapon of mass destruction!”

Mane - the one made for D&D character

orc barbarian who acted more like a monk than the actual party - his introduction was stopping a barfight cause he may be a barbarian but he doesn’t like fights

best moment: when the other party members had all failed to get this locked door open and told him “it’s all yours” and so he just ripped it off it’s hinges and carried it around on his back the rest of the campaign, I think he used it as a shield at some point

he also kept an empty treasure chest they’d found cause he cared more about having a treasure chest than the treasure

sorry for the super long response, as a writer, D&D player, and lifelong role-player I’m very passionate about my characters

[quills-and-spills-blog]

A Good Environment

For this I used the prompt: “Write a piece about a school club” from @dropkickwritersblock​ (find the prompt here: x ). Thanks for the inspiration!

Warning: this text discusses anxiety, implied animal attacks, scarring, panic attacks, and descriptions of pain. It is, however, a happy story on the whole. Stay safe kids!

The character of Vi belongs to @evanescencerps​ and the character of Adam belongs to @artsy-mcbang​. If you like Gus, he’ll definitely be back in future writing pieces!

Enjoy!

“And what exactly would this club being doing?”

Gus looked up at Miss Fenwyck, eyes wide and nervous as ever.

“Um, v-volunteering at the, um, animal shelter, M-Miss. And m-maybe, uh, f-fundraisers? To h-help the sh-shelters g-get b-by…”

His English teacher’s neutral expression drew into a small frown. Gus grabbed the hem of his shirt and fiddled with it nervously. His already considerable anxiety level soared with every silent second she spent studying the application he’d handed her. She cleared her throat.

“Gus,” she began, rolling the word slowly as if she was using the time to carefully plan out how best to to break bad news to her already unstable student, “I appreciate your desire to help our furry friends, especially after...”

She paused for a brief second as she studied his face, giving him a sympathetic smile. It ended up  being more of an awkward grimace. Gus returned it with a nervous smile, wincing a little as the still-tender marks on his face puckered uncomfortably. Miss Fenwyck continued carefully.

“...However, this application does not have much to do with the school itself. It’s also incredibly specific, which is a club feature that tends to work against its formation.” She bit her lip. “Do you have any interested students?” She looked back to the application.  “Or a representative teacher?”

Gus shrank into himself a little. “Um...n-no,” he said quietly, “I...th-this was...um, I was hoping...m-maybe with a c-club...um...”

Miss Fenwyck stopped him with a sad smile. Though the expression stung a little, Gus appreciated not having to admit his lonely state out loud. “I see,” Miss Fenwyck sighed, “And I sympathize, Gus. But you need at least three more members and a teacher overseeing your activities before I can authorize a club. Perhaps you can join one that’s already been formed?”

Gus’s large front teeth chewed at his lip nervously. He felt his chest tighten and his vision swim a little with his growing anxiety. “I um...I w-waited a l-little l-late to j-join any, um, clubs, so...m-most p-people have k-kind of s-settled in? With f-friends and s-stuff? And I d-don’t w-want to interru-”

Gus jumped as the door to the classroom swing open suddenly. It hadn’t slammed into the wall, but the whooshing assaulted Gus’s senses strangely. He spun, ducking a little as he did so out of reflex. He’d been on high alert the past couple of days, but hadn’t thought much of it. He’d just chalked it up to his accident paired with the all the psyching up he’d been doing to hand in this application.

A shaggy head poked into the room, lighting up with a grin as the man who owned it strode in with long, lanky strides. He adjusted the large overfilled binder in his arms before looking down at his colleague. “Ah! Miss Fenwyck! Crushing another grand club pipe dream, it seems?” Miss Fenwyck’s face pinched into something between a pout and a scolding glare, but the man just waved a big hairy hand good-naturedly. “You know I’m just kidding.” He looked down at Gus with an easy smile, his grey eyes soft and reassuring. “Right?”

Gus felt himself smiling back automatically. A piece of Gus’s brain tried to puzzle out why his panic begin to ebb away the more the man remained in his presence. His mounting anxiety could never be completely erased, but the level it was at now was an all-time low in a matter of seconds. He decided not to question a good thing, choosing to shake off the feeling in favour of a reply. “Ha, um, yes Mr. Gilani.” The biology teacher just chuckled in response.

“I did come to do a little brainstorming about a student we’re both having trouble with, Olivia, but two birds and one stone and all that.”

He studied Gus’s face, his nose twitching slightly. Gus caught a strangely musky scent in the room as well, like wet earth. He wondered what it was. “Well, if this boy can’t found a club, let a club find him!” Patting the cover of the binder he held as if to affirm his statement, Mr. Gilani pulled a piece of paper out of the back pocket and handed it gently to Gus.

“If you don’t mind tramping around in the outdoors, the environmental club would be more than happy to have you!”

Gus blinked at the club member application in his hands and then up at Mr. Gilani.

“I, but...but isn’t everyone already...together? Like, with friend groups and stuff...”

The biology teacher brushed his worries away with another sweep of his big hand.

“Don’t be worried about making friends! We’re a small and tight-knit group for sure, but I guarantee you’ll fit right in and be part of the gang in no time.”

Gus stared at the application skeptically, but felt a surging tug of heart-tearing hope in his chest at the thought of finally finding friends. Mr Gilani took his silence as hesitation.

“If it’s any help in your decision, we have a sleep away trip planned for next week with all expenses paid thanks to our super successful bake sale the other week. Nothing like a good campfire-and-cabin situation to spark friendships!”

Slowly Gus nodded, the movement becoming more enthusiastic the longer it continued.

“Yeah...um, yes, I mean, I’d love to. Do, Um, d-do you have a pen?”

He scribbled down his information while the teachers talked shop and waited politely for them to finish speaking to hand in his application. Returning the completed sheet to his binder, Mr. Gilani rewarded him with a thumbs up and a grin. “Good to have you kiddo!” he said enthusiastically as he followed Gus out of the classroom. He snapped his fingers suddenly.

“Oh, Gus! I don’t mean to pry, but how long ago was your...”

He pointed gingerly to his own face before continuing.

“I just want to make sure it’s healed enough to be running around in the dirt, you know?”

Gus touched the scars on his face.

“Oh, um...it’ll be a m-month by the c-cabin t-trip? Is th-that okay?”

A strange look crossed the biology teacher’s face; not unfriendly, but something between concern and sympathy.

“Of course! But Gus? Do come to the trip, please. It’s important you come. For your sake. Promise me?”

Gus looked at the taller man, puzzled, but nodded after only a brief hesitation. Mr. Gilani’s returning smile seemed tinged with relief.

“Good man. Well, see you in class!”

With a wave he turned back the way he’d come and disappeared down the hall, leaving Gus to mull over the conversation on his walk home.

Gus’s nerves were as frayed as his backpack straps, his fingers picking at the fabric. He stood alone in the school parking lot, the first to arrive for the club trip. Not even the bus had pulled in yet. Gus eyed the sky as the light bled out into evening. He would have come at a more reasonable time - his brother Theo kept trying to convince him to arrive at least a couple minutes late - but even a month later he was hesitant to walk anywhere in the dark. He rocked from his heels to his toes and back again, channelling his nervous energy into kinetic energy. He was focusing so much on this simple task that he almost didn’t realize another person had shown up until he caught movement out of the corner of his eye. Already in motion he sprang a into the air, projecting himself away from the mysterious figure. He almost turned his ankle on the landing. Surprised laughter tickled the air, and he felt his face heating up.

A girl he’d seen in his math class studied him with raised eyebrows and a small smile. With her straight black bangs pulled back it took him a few extra seconds to recognize her. She normally hid behind her hair in math class as if it were a protective curtain from the numbers and formulas.

“Um. H-Hi,” Gus said sheepishly. The girl snorted.

“Hi. Don’t be nervous. I won’t bite.”

She laughed again quietly at her joke. Gus looked at the ground. Biting was a bit of a sensitive subject for him at the moment. He looked back up to see her smile falter a bit, her eyes looking away awkwardly, her hands coming up to worry a lock of her hair. Oh no.

“Uhhh, I’m G-Gus!” he said a bit too loudly. They both cringed. He tried again, more softly. “S-Sorry. But y-yeah, um. Gus. Th-that’s m-me.” He gave her a half wince, half smile, his brain running through a list of insults aimed at himself. The awkward burst of introduction had brought her little smile back, though.

“Vi,” she said simply, then frowned in thought. “...Math class?” she said finally, tilting her head a bit to the side.

Gus felt like he was falling down an elevator shaft while his heart exploded simultaneously.

“I! Um! Yes!”

He didn’t mean to sound so excited, but he couldn’t help the goofy grin that spread across his face and the happy little bounce he gave at being remembered. He watched as the expression was echoed in Vi’s face, her eyes glinting mischievously as though his excitement was catching.

“Man, you know math can actually be really interesting, but a goldfish could teach it better than Mr. Harbour. It’d be less dry, at least.”

She grinned wider at the pun. Gus felt an honest reply almost spill out of his mouth

”Maybe the material, but I’d rather find a teacher that could...express his thoughts a little less wetly. My desk is kind of in the splash zone.”

Vi’s laughter was sharp and loud. Though it hurt Gus’s ears a little, it was well worth it. His nervousness was being converted into a euphoric frenzied excitement that was somehow helping him speak candidly, as he would with his brothers. It was as if the connection of math class had erased the usual awkward social barrier. Or maybe there had never been one there in the first place. He’d forgotten how good making friends felt.

The bus pulled in as they traded banter back and forth. Mr. Gilani strode out to greet it with his own duffle bag and a clipboard, sporting a more casual, campy outfit of a simple blue t-shirt and brown cargo shorts. The biology teacher waved them onto the bus as he checked their names off on his clipboard. As Gus passed on his way up the bus steps, Mr. Gilani caught his eye. Raising his own eyebrows Mr.Gilani smiled, as if to say a gentle, “I told you so”. Gus was so engrossed in the first long conversation with a stranger he’d had in awhile that he almost didn’t notice the long gnarled scars wrapping around Mr. Gilani’s knee.

Four more students piled onto the bus after them, and each was just as easy to talk to as the last. Gus was starry-eyed, feeling drunk with happiness. His conversations with them seemed almost second-nature, as if Gus had been friends with them for years and was just catching up. They shared snacks and played card and road trip games as the bus lumbered along the highway towards the camp.

Nightfall brought a more tense atmosphere. Gus first assumed it was sleepiness settling into the bus, but agitated looks and rubbing of exposed skin made him realize everyone was experiencing the same strange itchy feeling as himself. He saw Mr. Gilani look around at the students. Concern painted his face, but not worry. Gus decided it was best to try to ignore it.

Arrival at camp saw the kids splitting quickly into their cabins. It was near midnight by the time they’d reached the camp, and the gentle rocking of the bus had left the club members sleepy. Though they tried valiantly to have the late-night discussions camp is famous for, most fell asleep within fifteen minutes of lying down. It took four times that for Gus to finally drift off. Left in the awe of being someplace so remote but so comforting all at once, he scratched at the the strange itch growing in strength as the night stretched on.

Gus had never been to camp before. His family couldn’t afford it, and his mother had always been at home when he was a child. Though the dark woods gave him a constant dull buzz of fear, the activities were enough to keep him relatively distracted. The camp staff sent them off on everything from plant identification hikes to kayaking on the lake to capture the flag. Gus was a fairly small, slight boy. He’d never been particularly physically active, but he had some happy memories hiking through the forest with his dad and brothers. Going into the first few activities he was afraid he’d make a fool of himself, but he was pleasantly surprised. For what a team member lacked in one skill, the others found skills to more than make up for them. No one was left out. Gus supposed there was a benefit for such a small group of people to be friends. It was much easier to keep track of everyone’s well being, and that made it even easier for them to find success individually and as a whole.

Gus’s self esteem had never been great, and had only fallen as he failed to make friends. He had a hard time finding anything about himself that he liked, let alone any discernable skills. So when his capture the flag team pointed out that his smaller body could move quieter and hide easier than his larger counterparts’, Gus felt something shift in his chest. It felt lighter, somehow. As a particularly hulking, athletic boy named Adam bolted around and drew the attention of the opposing team, Gus snuck into the enemy territory and stole away with their flag to win the game. The grin he had plastered on his face when his team greeted him with hoops and hollers and hugs was so intense he felt like it might break his face in two. Even the intense and moody Adam offered him a little smile and a clap on the back that almost sent him flying face first into the dirt. So when the mood changed to one of anxious apprehension as shadows stretched across the camp Gus’s anxiety remained two-fold, and along with it the strange itch.

Gus stuck close to Vi and Adam as they made their way to the mess hall in the gathering dark. He felt a small sense of relief that the huge older boy had been paired as his cabin safety buddy. Even though Adam’s occasional angry outbursts reminded him of his terrifying stepfather, something about the quiet demeanor and the surprisingly gentle and instinctual way he would place himself between the forest and Gus made him a surprisingly comforting force. It was almost as if he was reading Gus’s fears straight from his mind.

Gus wanted to ask about what was happening, why everyone seemed so apprehensive as if they were sensing some sort of natural disaster, but he’d just become friends with them. He was waiting for the moment when he screwed something up as per usual. He wasn’t about to fast forward the situation by dragging uncomfortable thoughts out of everyone. Instead, he focused on keeping his small legs at enough of a trot to keep up with Adam.

As they reached the mess hall the tense silence increased tenfold. It felt almost solidified in the air.

Gus took a seat in between Adam and Vi, the person sandwich making him feel a little more comforted. He scratched his arm idly. Conversation at the table was already weak at best. When the food came it was enjoyed in silence. Gus frowned a little as the flavour of his food burst strangely in his mouth. There was a spice - or maybe a mixture of spices? - in here he didn’t recognize. The sour flavour was a weird choice for spaghetti. Thinking it was a safe enough topic, he nudged Adam softly and mentioned the strange taste with a nervous smile. Adam just blinked at him slowly, cool face not betraying any expression. He finally replied with a grunt and a gruff, “just remember to finish eating all of it,” before rising to take his own empty plate to the kitchens. Though Vi offered a few awkward but nice attempts at conversation, Gus stayed relatively quiet the rest of the meal.

A half hour before sunset, Mr. Gilani gathered everyone in the mess hall. On the table were glasses and a couple pitchers of water, as well as some small pill bottles. Gus eyed them warily, but everyone around him seemed to look a little more relieved at the sight. As they milled about, Mr.Gilani signaled them all to line up in front of the water table. His panic level steadily rising, Gus considered what this all could mean. Scenarios blurred through his head at top speed.

Was there something in the woods?

Was it coming to hurt them, and those pills were in case of injury?

Or had he jumped into some weird cult situation?

He felt his breath coming faster and faster, the itch under his skin getting worse by the second. He felt his chest constrict and his knees buckle. Adam was close enough to catch him before he hit the floor, but the closeness made the attack worse, confining, constricting. He curled in on himself, shaking uncontrollably as his vision tunnelled. Mr Gilani was suddenly beside him. The biology teacher’s voice was telling him to breathe, giving him cues to do so in a measured way. He sounded so far away. Slowly the feeling subsided, and Gus felt the usual extreme fatigue set in. Mr. Gilani helped him up and over to a pop-up cot in the corner of the mess hall, and Gus fell onto it. The biology professor disappeared from Gus’s vision for a second before returning with a glass of water and a couple of the pills. “Painkillers,” he explained, but Gus was already pushing them away, his panic returning. “No, Gus, You’re going to want them, just - ” Gus was so frantic to escape them that he knocked the pills out of Mr. Gilani’s hand, the hard capsules skittering off across the tile floor. Mr. Gilani sighed.

“Okay, okay! I’m sorry. I didn’t want to scare you. You don’t have to if you really don’t want to.”

Gus felt relief wash over him, his eyes drooping closed.

“I just want you to be as comfortable as possible,” Mr. Gilani continued, “We should have probably been more forthcoming about why we’re all here - ”

Gus heard him get cut off by an incredulous Vi questioning the reasons to keep quiet. As much as he wanted to stay awake, sleep took Gus under.

He woke up to his whole body itching furiously. He groaned, scratching his leg as he came to. As his sleep-blurred mind took a grip on reality, he heard strange sounds from all around him. Something wasn’t quite right. He blinked his eyes open.

The mess hall was dark, but his night vision slowly came into focus. People-like forms littered the hall. Some stood, but hunched a little as if they’d been sucker punched. Some were on the floor, writhing and jerking. All of them were making a strange groaning sound, punctuated with cracks and yelps of pain. Was something in here with them?  Was something hunting them?

Gus struggled to sit up quickly, giving a quick yell in pain himself. He became aware of a dull, a body-wide cramping ache throughout his entire person. It built steadily, along with that damned incredible itch. He scratched at his leg more furiously.  He realized it felt a lot hairier than he remembered before the pain reached a boiling point, leaving him in  the screaming wake of his own crackling bones.

As suddenly as it started, the pain subsided. Gus raised his head blearily and looked around the mess hall, breathing hard and achy joints creaking. It took a few minutes for the shapes to focus; his eyes had teared up during his episode. It took a couple of seconds for his brain to make sense of what slowly came into view.

The hall was filled with glinting eyes, fur, and sharp fangs.

Gus screamed, memories rushing back as he tried to scramble backwards. A chorus of voices exploded around him.

Someone who sounded like Vi shouted, “Hey wait!”

A gruff voice that seemed like Adam said “Whoa man.”

A Mr. Gilani voice was calling gently, “Gus, stay calm”.

His body felt strange, like someone had popped his legs off and put them on backwards. In his confusion he slipped and slammed into the floor, bringing his hands up to shield his head as he hit the ground. He rushed to get up and caught sight of his hands. He froze.

They were covered in brown hair, and his fingers were more claw than anything.

He felt panic rising, but a strange sense of calm settled over him as a large wolf with scars across its back knee trotted over and nudged him with his nose. “It’s okay,” the wolf spoke in Mr.Gilani’s voice. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you earlier. I wanted you to enjoy your time here without worrying about the change. It’s the last time you were going to be able to.”

A huge tawny wolf snuffled and added gruffly in Adam’s voice, “You’re like, super nervous man. You would have gone bonkers if we told you.”

A chorus of sorries followed the admission. Gus blinked at all of them. A smaller black wolf trotted over and nudged him. If the voice didn’t give away that it was Vi, the mischief in the eyes definitely did. “But, hard part’s over. Now the real fun starts.” With a few whoops and hollers, the small group of wolves raced towards the mess hall doors and slammed into them, knocking them open easily and taking off into the night.

Gus sprang to his four feet, his nervousness forgotten in his scramble not to be left behind. He ran after the frenzied pack on clumsy legs, his newfound paws tripping him up as he tried to figure out the right rhythm in which to move them properly. Gus felt his common sense click back into place as the group barrelled into the woods. His panic rose as he slid to a sprawling halt at the treeline. Now alone at the edge of the forest he stood, shaking, trying to piece together all these broken pieces of what he knew about himself and the world. Whimpers escaped his mouth, further alienating his mind from his body. Something stirred in the forest ahead of him and his heart leapt into his throat. However the sight of the three loping wolves that would have sent him to a panic state earlier that day calmed him slightly instead. The small black wolf moved to stand at Gus’s right side while the towering tawny took the left. Both stood protectively close, their calm reassurance unchanged with their altered forms. The scarred-kneed wolf dipped his head at Gus gently.

“Don’t be scared. The bit of wolfsbane in your dinner tonight will let you keep your wits about you, and the whole pack is here to take care of you. We can’t stop what happened to you,” he pointed his snout at Gus’s face, “But we can be your support system.”

He let his tongue loll out in a goofy manner.

“And friends of course, if you’ll have us! We’re protective of our own. Besides, I know a few who have already grown quite attached.”

Gus felt the two bodies on either side of him press close. His chest warmed with the contact, the fear loosening its constrictive grip on his insides. This was all still so new to him, so frightening and confusing and daunting for what it meant for his life from here on out. But for once, he didn’t have to figure it out alone.

He stared into the dark trees, the snatch of wilderness echoing all the dark places that had given him so much anxiety in the past month. He stood on calm legs and nodded. “It’s weird, but...it a sort of strange, backwards way this is everything I ever wanted.” He let his tongue hang from his mouth in a silly smile, mimicking the expressions around him at his admission. Mr. Gilani dropped down into a play stance before jumping up, letting out a bellowing, joyful howl, and darting back into the forest. Vi and Adam moved after him, taking up the call. Gus felt himself move with them, hurtling with unbridled excitement into the very thing that would have before sparked a panic attack. As the swell of wolf song rose around him he threw back his head and added to it eagerly, his notes finding a place in the woodsy symphony.

[ebonyquillhand]

Talk to The Quill Tuesday: Why Do I Write?

Writing for me is as vital as food is for the body. I am nourished through the beloved written word. With my mind, it feeds the creator within me and I have loved it since the moment pen touched paper. 

Indeed I dare say, my first romance was that of written word. I loved the fact that not only could I be whoever I wanted, but I could build whoever, be wherever, exist however I destine something to be. I could create worlds from nothing, I could BE the big bang in a characters theory, and it was and is a beautiful thing. 

What drove me was being inspired from frequently reading other works such as the Holy bible (recently, I confess), Danielle Steele, James Patterson, Stephen King, J.k Rowling, R.L stein, Edgar Allen Poe, Stephene Myers and many more contributed to my style and voice as a young writer. 

When I first began, it was with poetry, I was a terribly lonesome thing with not a friend in the world, so...I made one :), a small purple spiral notebook, 80 page count :), I filled the pages with my every thought and unspoken world until at last I did not feel so alone in my existence. I would open the pages of epics, fairy tales, adventures, horrors, thrillers, mysteries and such, to explore and be apart of their world as they pulled me in, I felt Invited and understood. It’s safe to say God brought the love of writing and literature into my world, it saved my young life. 

After poetry, I felt I had a bit more to say. My favorite Genre at the time (8-13) was horror, thriller and mystery, I begged my mom for anything Nancy Drew related and sharpened my skills by solving mysteries and puzzles posted in the daily papers or in coloring books, helping shaggy and the gang solve their problems to, around this time I wanted to be a detective. With this, I began writing short stories. 

A couple of years after this (13-16) I was introduced to the feelings of romance, my pages were littered with exes and o’s, roses and violets, it was my most favorite feeling at the time and I wasted not a moment of ink to jot down every stomach with butterfly syndrome moment I could, I was moved by stories of princesses and the knights that saved them, and so, I began writing longer stories, but this time, fairy tales. 

At age (17-19) I began working on my first book. I was proud of it, I loved it, I worked every day and night to make it the best that I could. 

It was then that I discovered the hardest reality of them all, no one would love my work as much as I did (or so I thought) or appreciate it in the same manner, my work was all child play in the mind of an adolescent, and for the first time I was greatly discouraged and dropped my pen. 

(20- present day) I am proud to say I have written and completed three books that are currently in their editing process. I still enjoy a bit of poetry for my own nostalgia every now and then, short stories are still a favorite, I have now grown into prose and monologues as well as script writing, I love it more now that I did at 8 and it grows every day. Of course I still face opposition, but I expect it all the more in my line of work, a profession that is taken advantage of every waking moment yet its pen bearers and typers are shunned as a waste of time and energy, my what ignorant world we live in. 

I currently post my work on www.booksie.com under the name Jasmine Howard, right now there is only poetry, prose and monologues, I also dabble in Fan fiction for the fun of keeping my blood going, my username is Jasmine D Howard. 

As far as the genre in which I write, I consider myself multigenred as a novelist, poet, and children's author. Thriller, mystery, adventure, Spiritual, a bit of romance here or there, sci-fi and children's are my favorites at the moment. 

I can truly say that my objective as a writer is to inspire as I had been, and to invite others into my own worlds of wonders.

To all my writers out there, what’s your story? what motivated you to write? why do you still do it, and where do you want to take it? 

[july-19th-club]

The Roommate, Pt. 2

(Part 1 HERE)

I’m figuring that I’ll update this thing at least once a day (maybe more if I get some really major ideas that I just gotta put out there) - maybe less if I’m busy. This is my first time writing a fanfic that’s a) longer than like a few pages and b) read by more people than just a few friends and my girlfriend. I’m very new, in that sense, to fanfic/fanfic culture (don’t have an AO3 or anything like that but if I’m satisfied with how this turns out, my gf has offered to let me put it up on hers, which I will take her up on :)) There are some original characters in here, cause it’s a fic where Adam’s at college, but also most of Maggie’s gang, either in person or in passing. Other than that, nothing to add, really, just that I’m really happy about the support this fic has gotten so far :D 

IN WHICH: Adam Avoids Personal Subjects, We Meet A Very Strong Young Woman, and College Students Share Some Existential Confusion

The orientation routine of the next few days was hectic enough that Tanner only saw Parrish before breakfast and after dinner, but Parrish had apparently decided that he was okay with talking to Tanner, and that eased some of the tension. He never said much, and a lot of it was just Parrish politely asking if Tanner minded him doing things – mind if I leave the door closed? Care if I use the phone? – but it helped calm Tanner’s worry that the guy really disliked him. He seemed like the focused type, not exactly chilled-out but definitely not here for drama. He’d finally gone out one day in the middle of the week and gotten himself some laundry detergent, but still no hamper: he left dirty clothes neatly in the suitcase, there under the end of the bed.

He spent most of the time he was in the room reading his textbooks, or on the phone with unknown individuals. Tanner had guessed by now that there were more than one of them, but they never seemed to be his family. One was a girl – Tanner could hear her voice over the phone sometimes because she seemed to have a tendency to shout – and Parrish asked her a lot about how her family was. She seemed to have a lot of aunts, but also seemed to be on an extended road trip with either a boyfriend, or a brother, or one or two of each.

The other caller wasn’t, in point of fact, strictly a caller, because they rarely spoke unless Parrish called first. Tanner gathered that they liked talking to him, but didn’t like the phone. Parrish’s voice drawled softer when he made these calls, and he asked questions about a farm, and a little girl (a sister, maybe?). He ended these phone calls with what might’ve been an endearment, or maybe it was just “goodbye” in a language Tanner didn’t recognize. Whatever the words were, they held something in them and drew out a smile.

On Monday, when he and Parrish happened to be heading to the lot at the same time, Tanner made a comment about the Beemer. It was a compliment – “she’s pretty sick,” he’d said, or something, just offhand appreciation – but Parrish had stopped with his hand on the car door and taken it really seriously. For the first time, Tanner saw him fumble for words. “It’s Ro – it’s my b – it was a gift,” he said, eventually settling on something he seemed willing to admit. “Hoping to turn it into a loan.”

Hoping to turn it into a loan. Parrish had sounded proud, saying this. Growing up, Tanner had been taught that thinking about gifts as things you had to pay back was bad manners: it said you thought the gift-giver thought they were doing you a favor. It said you saw it as a transaction, rather than a friendly gesture without required trade. His own car was a used Subaru – not too used, and not too stupid-looking for a college freshman – but it had to be said that next to Parrish’s car’s shark-nosed class, it looked straight-up dumpy. If someone had given Tanner a gift of a BMW, he would not have considered turning that gift into a loan.

Still – he didn’t get the sense that Parrish was trying to be rude. Only that Parrish’s understanding of gifts was something Tanner’s mother had never taught him.

***

On Friday, undecided students went to a decision-suggesting seminar. Tanner’s seat partner was a girl named Julia, pronounced Yulia. Julia was his height and had cropped curly hair, a strong nose, better arms than Tanner had ever hoped to have, and he introduced himself and sat back in an over-casual sprawl to prove he was feeling unbothered. Julia had played lacrosse in school, and Tanner had done it for about two years, although he hadn’t been good at it. Julia wondered if he’d like to join her group at the gym?

Tanner nodded and insisted he’d be there, and wondered if it was possible to catch up on months and years’ worth of sedentary living so you wouldn’t make a fool of yourself in front of a girl who looked like Athena, and who knew him as Shawn because he’d introduced himself by his first name in a moment of mental fumbling and had to stick with it now. Athena wanted to know if he had anything he wanted to focus on at school. She herself liked sports medicine, but didn’t like the medicine aspect, as blood was often involved and the iron smell tended to make her vomit. He explained about his own misgivings on medicine. “But there’s nothing else I’m really good at. I don’t know,” he admitted. “Probably business.”

“Do you like it enough to get good at it?”

He didn’t know.  

“You should come running with us,” Julia offered again.

“I will, I’ll make sure,” he promised. His breath, climbing up the hill to the dorm, was thin in anticipation. Victor was in class, and then would be planning for weekend entertainment, and therefore was unavailable to listen to Tanner talk about Julia-pronounced-Yulia. In the room he shared with Parrish, Parrish, surprisingly, was – sitting on his bed with his legs crossed and a deck of playing cards in front of him. When Tanner entered, he stacked them up quickly and neatly in a cardboard box, set them in the backpack and zipped it. See, he has a hobby, Tanner thought. He plays solitaire.

Tanner sat on his own bed, and told Parrish about Julia, the athletic and daunting. “You like her?” Parrish asked.

“Yeah, yeah, I think,” Tanner said. He wished he had a photo to show Parrish – maybe he’d have some insight, maybe he’d seen her around. He described, in detail, and when he got to the part where he thought he’d seen the leafy edge of a tattoo beneath the edge of her t-shirt’s sleeve, and what was it of? Parrish actually smiled. “Mysterious,” he said. That was it – he wasn’t a real elaborator – but if even Tanner’s reserved and near-stranger roommate liked the idea of Athena, then she was probably something good.

He deposited his bag on the desk, scattering papers. “They’re opening lunch, come get a sandwich, man, let’s walk and talk.”

“Oh,” said Parrish, as if he’d been surprise-invited out to dinner. “Thanks, I will.”

They went to lunch. Parrish, while finishing a plain turkey BLT, both asked and answered questions. He was from Virginia, miles south of Winchester. Did Tanner know that area? Oh, Tanner’s family lived half an hour from the college. Was it cheaper, did he think, to live at school or commute from town? What was his major?

Then – why enroll in college if you didn’t have it all decided?

Why take the risk?

[tacomacity]

What I did and what I learned (pt 1 of 2 in the summary of events).

Here is the total 6 mile route (I took several laps around Wright park, not shown here) that I took from my house to wright park. The main factors controlling the path getting there were how well lit the roads were, and how busy they typically are.

As you can see, I wandered around wright park a lot more than is clear in the above map. Here’s the wright park route map, in more detail, with some additional notes about what some of the more memorable parts are (note: due to tumblr’s image compression, the note text is unreadable. I’ve included big red letters that correspond to a parenthetical below):

(A is the approximate location of the park bench I tried to sleep on, B is the only 24hr bathroom available along my route, C is a location I walked through after some reading about where muggers and violent criminals tend to hide, and D states that I walked around the perimeter a few times because according to the crime map, most of the wright park area crime occurs along the roads it borders)

I left the house around 2 AM with nothing other than a few safety essentials, a camera, a bus pass, and a blanket. I took a few pictures along the way that I’ll share and explain in another post, but other than that I mostly tried to keep moving and stay warm (and ignore the knots forming in my gut from a bad blend of stress and dairy). The entire route was well lit and eerily free of human activity, although the few cars that passed immediately gained my suspicion. the worst of these cars was at a point early along my downtown walk through pacific.

 A car pulled over a little in front of my path, and as I passed it, it began to slowly inch towards me from behind. I clutched the one self defense weapon I had on me, keeping it in my pocket, and turned and began walking towards the vehicle. I had decided that if this was going to happen, it wasn’t going to happen while my back was turned. If someone wished me harm, they had to do it to my face.

The car sped off about a block down the road, but sadly stayed along my route. It sat and idled until I got up to it, then quickly sped off another few dozen feet. My mind began to race towards the worst. Was I being followed? Toyed with? Were they waiting for me to get off the main road and move on to somewhere more private, where they could do whatever horrible things they wanted in peace? A few hundred feet down from where this stalking began, my adrenaline raced as I decided to put an end to this. “Are you alright?” I shouted at the car, this being the first thing that popped into my head. One of the tinted windshields rolled down a crack, as the terrified woman clutching her phone inside managed to quietly reply “what?”

I repeated the question, and she nervously told me “no” before rolling up the window and staying in place. I realized at that point that I had nothing to worry abut from this part of Tacoma, or really any part of Tacoma. I scared that woman, and as far as she knew I was the scary one. If you’re reading this mystery driver, I’m sorry for scaring you, but the feeling was mutual.

Nothing else of note happened until I was next to Frost Park, and saw the single worst accumulation of hostile architecture I have ever seen. I had been seeing benches along the way that had center arm rests, a design that the city had put in to prevent people from lying down, so the comfortable looking wooden armrest-free benches at the top of the park drew my eye. As I got closer however, I began to notice the high pitched whine of a Mosquito alarm. 

For those of you that don’t know, you loose the upper range of your hearing as you age, so some folks that were sick of teens and young adults congregating in public places designed a device, called a Mosquito alarm, that plays a high pitched whine tuned specifically to be loud and irritating to kids. As I sat on one of the benches, I noticed that they were the single most illuminated things on the street. It’d be nearly impossible to sleep with all of that light focused on you, even with my eyes closed it was irritatingly bright. The city really didn’t want people to sleep comfortably.

The final nail in the coffin for these benches came as a loud chirp that startled me the rest of the way awake. A few more minutes of sitting there revealed that they were evenly spaced, and always plenty loud and startling to wake you from your rest. Overall, these benches were the single most infuriating thing I  would see at any point in the night. The idea of designing a part of the town to be hostile to the homeless angered me plenty, but designing a segment of a public park to make life worse for homeless youth boiled my blood.

The majority of people that I saw sleeping along the way slept with only a thin barrier between them and the cement. For those of you that have never had the full range of sleeping experience, let me explain to you how much worse than it sounds that is. At one point, I crashed at a friend’s dorm. I had a sleeping bag, a blanket, and a layer of carpet between my body and the cement. I even had the advantage of sleeping not only in a heated room, but directly next to the heater. Even with all this, I woke up a couple of hours later shivering harder than I had ever shivered in my life. All the heat was gone from my body, and it took the rest of the night sleeping upright in a chair for me to feel close to normal in the morning.

If I can oversimplify thermodynamics for a second, I can explain the three reasons why cement is among the worst things to sleep on. First, you can think about temperature as energy per mass. That is to say, the heavier something is, the more energy has to be used to warm it up. Second, whenever two things are touching, energy is exchanged from the warmer thing to the colder thing until the two things are the same temperature. Third, the more dense something is, the faster it moves heat. So in a sidewalk (or the cement floor of a dorm), your body has to try to heat the entirety of the cement and anything touching it, and it has to do so fast enough to not drop to the temperature of the cement itself. Cement will, given half the chance, suck all of the heat out of you and kill you, and does so to people regularly. To sleep on cold cement is hell.

Arriving at wright park was terrifying, despite everything I’d learned beforehand. I kept glancing around, walking as quietly as I could so that I’d hear anyone coming before they came. However, I found the park completely empty. As I walked around, I found even the darkest parts of the park well lit and the brightest parts of the park brighter than the city. Some of the benches had a bar down the middle to keep people from sleeping on them, but there were still quite a few wooden benches in dim enough areas for me to try to sleep. I pulled out my blanket, lied down, and looked up at the best view of the stars I had ever seen in the city. The small wooden bench felt cool, but not nearly as cold as I knew the cement or bare ground to be. I closed my eyes, and tried to drift to sleep.

Sleep never came. The park seemed to intentionally play off of it’s reputation to intensify my paranoia, and I arrived late enough for frost to grow more intensely than it had before. As the warmth that came from the night’s walking began to wear off, I became more and more uncomfortable. The adrenaline from before didn't help either, as the park’s lamps were arranged such that your shadow made it look like there was someone about a foot behind you, and the park’s squirrels and water feature created rustlings that continually jolted me alert. Twenty minutes of trying to sleep through the cold and fear later, I felt alert with a new energy and walked through the rest of the parts of the park that I knew to be high risk.

First, I walked the perimeter. Both high profile cases, the first degree murder of a man a gang of local kids had robbed and beaten to death and the attempted rape of a jogger, as well as the vast majority of incidents shown by the crime map, occurred either at the roads at the perimeter of the park, or the outermost paths. I walked through both loops, and found them to be a shockingly pleasant walk. Perhaps it was the proximity to houses, the change in lighting, or just me getting used to the area, but despite knowing these areas to be more dangerous I felt far more confident in my safety than I did on that bench. 

Next, I thought over the violent crime prevention tips I read right before leaving the house. The specific warnings I remembered were to avoid dark areas, bushes, narrow paths, and areas that were easy to block off. The bridge over the pond satisfied all criteria, so I walked over it a couple of times. Nothing happened other than a good view.

The rest of the night was uneventful, although the early 5:00 AM joggers scared me worse than anything else that night had. Wright park’s reputation makes a man running towards you full speed something of a nightmare. I walked to a nearby bus stop, and within a half hour I was home in bed. 

Honestly, this was something that I’ll probably try again, next time getting over there around sunset to try to see more people and activity. The view of the night sky was almost enough to excuse the cold, so a warm summer night’s sleep in the park is something that’s coming in my future. Next, the photos I took.

[gokinjeespot]

off the rack #1189

Monday, November 20, 2017

 Ottawa ComicCon put on a special edition Holiday con this past weekend so I went to check it out because it was FREE admission. Still had to pay $8 to park at the EY Centre though. The main reason I went was to pick up the book D&D&D (D)ungeons & (D)ragons & (D)oodles The Tabletop Fantasy Art of Tom Fowler since Tom was there. Much to my surprise Craig Taillefer was sitting next to him on one side and Ronn Sutton was on the other. I spent a happy half hour geeking out and swapping stories with them. After Tom signed my copy and generously drew a sketch inside I walked around the venue checking out the booths. It's been years since I've attended a con and I was impressed by some of the set-ups. Still, the comic vendors looked like the ones that sold stuff 30 years ago. Same tables of long boxes and makeshift walls for the wall books. I saw a lot of old Snail customers that I haven't seen in years. Some I recognized and some that I didn't. They all knew me though. The reaction of some folks was "what is he doing here?" looks that made me grin. I ended my sojourn hanging out with my Jee-Riz partner Chris as he helped at a friends booth. I can't say that I'll go to another con but I'm glad I went to this one.

 Action Comics #991 - Dan Jurgens (writer & breakdown art) Viktor Bogdanovic (pencils) Viktor Bogdanovic, Trevor Scott & Scott Hanna (inks) Mike Spicer (colours) Rob Leigh (letters). "The Oz Effect" concludes with the question of whether Mr. Oz was Jor-El or not left unanswered. Throw in a mysterious super powerful villain and it's more than enough to keep me reading. I liked Viktor's slimmer Superman. He looks more natural than the muscle bound version that Nick Bradshaw & Brad Anderson drew for the cover.

 Runaways #3 - Rainbow Rowell (writer) Kris Anka (art) Matthew Wilson (colours) VC's Joe Caramagna (letters). It's time to catch up with Karolina Dean as Gert tries to get the team back together again. Karolina used to be one hot mess but she's a lot better now thanks to therapy.  I am really looking forward to next issue when the gang goes to find Molly, my favourite Runaway.

 Wildstorm: Michael Cray #2 - Bryan Hill (writer) N. Steven Harris (pencils) Dexter Vines (inks) Dearbhla Kelly (colours) Simon Bowland (letters). Michael's first assignment is to kill Oliver Queen. Yep, that Oliver Queen, the Green Arrow guy. His next assignment is to target another well known name. These characters are bad guys in the Wildstorm universe and I think that's cool.

 Spider-Man Deadpool #23 - Robbie Thompson (writer) Chris Bachalo (pencils) Tim Townsend, Al Vey & Richard Friend (inks) Chris Bachalo (colours) VC's Joe Sabino (letters). Spider-Man tries to arrest Deadpool and mindless mayhem ensues. So a typical issue of Spider-Man Deadpool. But wait, what's with this lovely art that looks like the old Doctor Strange comic book? Why yes, it's Chris Bachalo. I am so happy and will be ogling the rest of "Arms Race" with glee.

 Star Wars #38 - Kieron Gillen (writer) Salvador Larroca (art) Guru-eFX (colours) VC's Clayton Cowles (letters). "The Ashes of Jedha" starts here. We've got Luke, Leia and Han trying to contact fighters against the Empire on the planet Jedha. That's where the Empire wants to strip mine the planet's Kyber crystals. The partisans appear to not want to play nice though. We'll see how the gang gets out of this fine mess.

 Not Brand Echh #14 - It was difficult finding every issue of the 13 issue run of the original series on the spinner racks back in the late sixties but I bought and read every one that I could. This title made fun of my favourite Marvel comic books back then and this latest issue doesn't spare the House of (sometimes bad) Ideas. It got a couple of genuine chuckles out of me so that's about $2.50 Canadian per chuckle. Here are the comedy sketches and their creative teams. Secret Empire Abridged: Nick Spencer (writer) Scott Koblish (art) Nick Filardi (colours). Better Than Canon: Katie Cook (writer& art). Gwenpool Absorbs the Marvel Universe: Christopher Hastings (writer) Gurihiru (art). Marvel Behind the Scenes: Nick Kocher (writer) Brian Churilla (art) Chris O'Halloran (colours). Love Can Be Nuts: Ryan North (writer) Erica Henderson (art). The Not Next Issue Page: Chip Zdarsky (writer & art). Forbush Man Returns parts 1 to 4: Jay Fosgitt (writer & art). The whole issue was lettered by VC's Clayton Cowles (letters).

 Batman #35 - Tom King (writer) Joelle Jones (art) Jordie Bellaire (colours) Clayton Cowles (letters). "Rules of Engagement" concludes with a terrific sword fight between Catwoman/Selina and Talia, Batman's ex. The verbal repartee was great and just as great was the one between Damian and Dick. My question is "where the heck did Holly come from?". I hope that this family adventure theme continues because I really like having Selina, Damian, Dick and Alfred around.

 Maestros #2 - Steve Skroce (writer & art) Dave Stewart (colours) Fonografiks (letters). This is a beautifully illustrated Game of Thrones and Wands with wizard warriors plotting against each other. There's a rekindled romance and a shocking twist that makes reading the next issue a must.

 Champions #14 - Mark Waid (writer) Humberto Ramos (pencils) Victor Olazaba (inks) Edgar Delgado (colours) VC's Clayton Cowles (letters). Worlds Collide part 4. He's no Blue Fairy but the High Evolutionary pulls a Pinocchio on Viv Vision and all seems lost. The heroes fight through but there's still a ways to go to prevent total destruction. We'll find out what happens when Avengers #674 hits the racks on December 6.

 Aquaman #30 - Dan Abnett (writer) Stjepan Sejic (art & colours) Steve Wands (letters). Atlantis Uprising. The revolution starts here. Orin joins the rebel forces and King Rath becomes more unhinged. Meanwhile, Mera is in deep water. I am enjoying this book again. You should give it a try.

 Mech Cadet Yu #4 - Greg Pak (writer) Takeshi Miyazawa (art) Triona Farrell (colours) Simon Bowland (letters). It's all-out action as the four cadets and their robos fight against giant alien crabs and orders from their superiors. The General is not pleased. Let's see what happens to keep them in their mechs and not get kicked out of the program.

 Deadpool vs. Old Man Logan #2 - Declan Shalvey (writer) Mike Henderson (art) Lee Loughridge (colours) VC's Joe Sabino (letters). This issue tells us why the two heroes are teaming up. Makes sense. I like these straightforward good guys versus bad guy stories with witty repartee that don't tax the brain pan too much.

 Superman #35 - Patrick Gleason & Peter J. Tomasi (writers) Travis Moore, Stephen Segovia & Art Thibert (art) Danei Ribeiro (colours) Rob Leigh (letters). Hey, I thought Lex's armour was mostly green. The battle for the throne of Apokalips continues with Lois and Jon's lives still hanging in the balance. I still think that Lex will save the day in the end.

 American Gods #9 - Neil Gaiman (writer) P. Craig Russell (script & layouts) Scott Hampton (art & colours) Rick Parker (letters). This is like reading the novel again but better. The art enhances the story so much.

 Defenders #7 - Brian Michael Bendis (writer) David Marquez (art) Justin Ponsor & Paul Mounts (colours) VC's Cory Petit (letters). This is the funniest comic book on the racks for the week. Yes even funnier than Not Brand Echh #14. Brian has a great sense of humour. I'm wondering now if all the great artists that he works with are also going to work for DC. That would be ideal for me because he really clicks with David Marquez and Sara Pichelli. The five page fight scene between Elektra and Iron Fist is the best I've ever seen. Just as good as watching Bruce Lee in Enter the Dragon.

 Wonder Woman Conan #3 - Gail Simone (writer) Aaron Lopresti (pencils) Matt Ryan (inks) Wendy Broome (colours) Saida Temofonte (letters). Some sorcery is added to the swords this issue.

 Mighty Thor #701 - Jason Aaron (writer) James Harren (art) Dave Stewart (colours) VC's Joe Sabino (letters). I must have missed Mangog's origin story back when Jack Kirby first drew him but Jason recaps it very well here. Mangog isn't the only long unseen character to pop up. The Odinson's best buddy reappears too. This issue is one awesome battle. The visuals are so striking I could feel each punch. What a great fill-in by James Harren.

 Super Sons #10 - Peter J. Tomasi (writer) Jose Luis (art) Scott Hanna (inks) Hi-Fi (colours) Rob Leigh (letters). I like the contrast between Jon's youthful enthusiasm and Damian's grim cynicism. The three year age gap feels like decades but each one is subtly influencing the other. This issue sets it up so that the two lads will be spending even more time together learning how to be heroes. This is one of my favourite comic books on the racks right now.

 Amazing Spider-Man #791 - Dan Slott (writer) Stuart Immonen (pencils) Wade von Grawbadger (inks) Rain Beredo (colours) VC's Joe Caramagna (letters). I am enjoying this point in Peter Parker's life where things are going well for him. His relationship with Mockingbird is sweet and chaste. His new job is challenging. The super heroics aren't too over the top and he comes out a winner this issue. I know the good times won't last but I will feel good while it does. My fanboy crush on Bobbi Morse is even bigger now because of the way Stuart and Wade draw her. Sigh.

 Incredible Hulk #710 - Greg Pak (writer) Greg Land (pencils) Jay Leisten (inks) Frank D'Armata (colours) VC's Cory Petit (letters). Return to Planet Hulk part 2. Hulk has to survive a gauntlet to save lives and he smashes admirably. It looks like next issue swipes scenes from the Thor Ragnarok movie. I am looking forward to that guest appearance.

 Peter Parker: The Spectacular Spider-Man #297 - Chip Zdarsky (writer) Adam Kubert with Juan Frigeri (art) Jason Keith (colours) VC's Travis Lanham (letters). Totally different Peter Parker. Totally different life from Amazing. The two titles aren't even trying for continuity and that's okay. I just want to read a good story and this one where Peter and Spider-Man are being pursued by the authorities is a good one. Throw in recent revelations involving Jonah Jameson and this fan is anxious to see what happens next. According to the next issue tease T'Challa will come calling.

 Star Wars: Darth Vader #8 - Charles Soule (writer) Giuseppe Camuncoli (pencils) Daniele Orlandini (inks) David Curiel (colours) VC's Joe Caramagna (letters). We are witness to some Jedi rage this issue along with finding out what the stakes are for the good guys. Wondering what Vader is going to do keeps me coming back.

 Weapon X #11- Greg Pak & Fred Van Lente (writers) Marc Borstel & Ibraim Roberson (art) Frank D'Armata (colours) VC's Joe Caramagna (letters). The Hunt for Weapon H concludes. Will Hulkverine be a good guy or a bad guy? The jury is still out on that. I like this team and am enjoying their adventures so far.

 Spider-Men II #4 - Brian Michael Bendis (writer) Sara Pichelli (art) Elisabetta D'Amico (inking assistant) Justin Ponsor (colours) VC's Cory Petit (letters). Miles's search for his evil twin takes a terrible turn but he's got the Amazing Spider-Man helping out now. The two webslingers should be able to figure things out but you never know.

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