#i have more of the comic sketched out but not sure when. they’ll be finished so sorry about that | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

after-valiant-hero-ask · 4 years

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Soooo, somehow the "keep reading" Thing on tumblr kinda beoken for me, so I can't really post this with the keep reading, but also, I made a post about going to make a fandic of After Valiant Hero that takes place BEFORE the main event onthe comic, sooo, here it is!! I hope you all enjoy it! (And also, it's 2.000+ words long, so, it's kinda long^^)

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"TONIGHT"

by LovelyPink2005

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Summary:

This takes 2 months after the valiant Hero ending, right when the toppats decided to celebrate their fully recovered airship and the clan, but something is up with sven that made him missed the whole party.

Note:

I'm not that good on english, so, I'm so sorry if this fic came out bad^^"

And also, this is a fanfic I wrote about the story of the messy doodle/sketch comic I did of sven and Charles on whiteboard, so, uhhh, yeah^^"

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It was the day after they did their first heist after recovering their airship and their clan, which is 2 months after the Valiant Hero ending. It also charles's first time too, he feels strange for doing that, like there's something wrong with it but can't quite put a finger on it. He decided to forget about it. "It's probably just the side effect."

The toppat clan wanted to celebrate it for their success, they talk to talk, share to share about having a party for it, until it delivered to charles and sven who is on their room. "A party huh?" Sven said as he put his hand on his chin, thinking about it. "Suits yourself, If you wanted to celebrate it, then go for it" He continue with a smile on his face. He turned his head to charles to see his face full of excitement for that party, like he never had them before.

"Sven" Charles called as he put his hand on sven's shoulder. "Let's have it tonight!"

"Yeah, sure..." Sven paused, looking down for a second, and lifted his face back to charles. "Sure!".

"Are you sure?"

"Yeah, if you all want it, then go for it."

"Alright, I'll go inform the others about this." He gives sven a pat on the back before leaving the room.

Sven waves and wanted to say "c'ya" to charles very badly, but charles already left them room. Sighed, and sits back to his bed, and looked up on the ceiling, smiling. "Hey, are you ok there..?" His face could easily shows you a bit of sadness, and pain. Sven was talking to himself, but really, he just missed his old friend.

Someone who used to be around him, a friend who ALWAYS around him ever since he joined the toppat clan. Burt Curtis. That's his name. Sven and Burt joined the toppat clan on the same day years ago, they even meet right before entering the airship. They keeps on running into each other as their relationship grows, until they become the best of friends. Even after Sven become the leader, their relationship or friendship still is the same.

But… sadly… He died at the orbital station when it exploded. got left behind because he was trapped on a room and couldn't get out. Sven wish he could found him, but the other toppats dragged him with force to the pod.

He couldn't save him. He failed to save him. The last thing he even heard from him was a when he called sven after the luxury pod has escaped.

"We're having a party tonight... Wish you could join us burt." A tear runs down on his face.

He wiped it as he rubs his eyes. "Ugh, c'mon sven, pull it together!" He palmed both of his hands on his face and falls on his bed.

"He's gone! Just.. Try to—– uuggghh!" He sighed to himself. He quickly sits up and try to pull his act together. A forced smile on his face, but it's not that obvious.

Take a deep breath, and let it out as he then go outside to also inform the others about the party. Yeah, let's just focus on that, focus on the clan. Maybe the other could distract him from his mind.

---

Charles straight up go to the cafeteria since most toppats usually just hang out there. He saw one of the toppat he usually talk to if sven wasn't around. He called him.

"Harold!" Said charles as he waved his hand at him and the other toppats that's with him.

Ah yes, Handsome Harold. Charles usually hang around him since he's the second person who ever talk to him after he woke up and got amnesia.

"Oh, Charles" Harold rise his hand up as high as his face.

"Sve— uhh, Chief said that we're having a party to celebrate the fully recovered of our clan!"

Harold and the other toppats look at each others as their eyes widened open.

What?? "Really?"

Charles nodded. The other toppats slowly having their face with smiles.

"Alright lads! Let's prepare things up for the party!" One of the toppat called Wallace Dagwood, yelled as the others on the cafeteria then cheered.

A couple of hours has passed, and the party is almost ready. The whole cafeteria was full with a lot of stuff, Charles just can't wait for sven to see this. There's a bunch of food and snacks on the food table, such as pizza, chicken wings, tacos, cupcakes, cake, and other food that usually on a party. There's also a berry punch, and some alcohols on the drink table.

Beside the foods and drinks, there's also a lot of decorations and other stuff that changed on the cafeteria. Like a small stage for anyone who wanted to perform anything. Blue carpet on the whole floor of the room, and disco light-ball. Charles can't really describe everything, but all he could say is that everything is going to be awesome!

Huh?

In a flip, he realized something. He haven't see Sven around to help since he know that Sven likes to help around.

Is he not feeling well?

He did startled for sometimes today whenever he talks… is there anything wrong with him?

Charles can only feel worried about him. But he hopes that non of his thoughts are true.

"Oi Charles!"

Sometimes tapped his shoulder. He jumped a bit and making the "eep" Sound as he surprised.

"Hmm? Oh, it's you" He signed, It was of course Harold.

"What were you thinking? I saw you were excited a view second ago, but then you immediately worried" Said Harold.

"What's wrong?"

"I- huh? No no, you guessed it wrong, why would I be worried when there's a party right in front me?"

How the heck did he know? Can he read face expression that good???

Harold sighed. "Charles, it's all over your face."

Shoot, Right. Knew it.

"O-oh, well, you're right" He smiles. "But I only worried because this will be the first party I'll ever have, since, you know.." He scratched his head.

He lost his memories. He can't even remember everything, how can he remember the last time he even go to one, right?

"Yeah, I know, sorry for that" He wrapped his hand around Charles.

"But they'll all come back! Even if they won't, you can always create new memory!" Harold just trying to cheer 'em up. "Just don't forget to have your medicals, 'kay?"

Charles smile and nodded.

Both of them then go to help t he others finishing some stuff for the party.

---

Sven was outside of the security room, the place where he get to see outside and have the winds in his hair (the place where henry got in the airship when we choose the grapple gun (PBT)).

Just standing there, watching the sun setting down. He looked at the sky.

Thinking to himself. Wishing that all of this was just a really long dream, and when he wakes up, everything was still… Normal. Burt still there, the orbital station was save and sound. And Reginald never got arrested.

He's been there for a hour now, until Charles contacted him. His phone buzzing.

"Hmm?" He picked his phone. It's Charles…

He takes a deep breath, and then answer the call. "Hello"?

"Sven! Where are you? I can't find you in your room, or the cafeteria!" Said Charles in a little worried tone.

"The party is starting in a hour!"

"Oh, really?" He responded as his eyes widened a bit. He didn't thought it'll be starting that fast. "That was fast"

"Yeah, and— wait, Sven! Are you at that place again??" Charles could hear the sound of the winds through sven's phone.

"... Well, yeah?"

"What's wrong?? You only goes there is you're down, you know that you have your greatest friend hereto help you!" Charles raised his voice, but not in an angry way, but more like in a worried and abit of disappointed tone.

Huh? Oh right, he knew.

"No, it's fine Charles! I only looking for some fresh air!"

Hmmm, that sounds convincing alright.

"Okay, but you HAVE to be here when the party started! It'll be the greatest time, truste!"

Sven chuckled on how silly Charles is. "Yeah yeah, I'll be there".

He closed the call as he sighed. He closed his eyes and smile as he shakes his head.

"Charles Charles, guess there's different between you two after all" He chuckled.

Sven then make his way In. He walk through the security room, the hall of portraits, and finally, the kitchen. He stopped there for a bit, looking at the drawer. He then turns around and open up the drawer where he knew a bottle of alcohol would be there. He takes it and looks at it for a while. His face seems like he had no emotions, it's pale, but you could see through his face that he's… tired.

Sven continue walking and bringing the alcohol. He's going to his room.

---

An hour and a half has passed, and there is no sign of Sven yet. Charles keeps on looking around. The party already going since around 30 minutes ago. Charles bit his lips for a bit, worried if there's really something wrong with sven.

He takes a sip of the berry punch as he holding one cup of it.

"Sven, where are you?" He whispered to himself.

A toppat named Carol Cross approach Charles from behind. "Where's sven?" She asked.

"Oh! Miss Carol!" He waved his hand to her, and then immediately scratched his head. "I uh, not sure, I haven't see him anyway around this place".

"Hmm, you should go and find him, don't wanna make him missed tonight."

"Yeah, maybe I should" He put his cup on the table. "Cya around Miss carol, and enjoy the party!". Charles immediately left the cafeteria and try to look for Sven everywhere. It'll took him a while since the airship is really big, he could be anywhere.

After a while, he still couldn't find him, until he walked over to their room.

"Sven? Are you here?" Charles opened the door to their room and look inside.

As he though, he was on their room, sitting on the chair right in front of his small desk beside his bed. But is he drinking by himself??

"Uhh… Sven, are you drunk?" He asked as he approach him. He saw a bottle of alcohol beside him that's almost empty. Sven usually can't handle to much alcohol, a couple of small cup can already made him drunk alright.

He sits next to him. "Are.. you ok? You shouldn't drink by yourself sven".

" O-oh… burt, you're here—"

Burt?? Who is he talking about? He's clearly brunk very badly.

"Uhh, sven, it's me, Charles. You're ready drunk, aren't you?"

He then takes the bottle from sven to prevent him from drinking more. "You should stop now, you don't even recognize me that well" He put the bottle away.

Sven looks at sven, his face really looking like a zombie who just came back to life. He smiled as he saw Charles.

"S-stop joking around—– I know that's you Burt-" He hiccups every now and then.

"Heh, you're so silly Burt… I know it's you.." Sven turned his head back to the cup he's holding.

"You'll always found me whenever I'm like.. This—- I know I've only saw you a couple hours ago…But for some reason… i missed you.. So— much.."

Charles has no clue what he's talking about. But then he somehow remember something. Sven once mentioned he used had a friend from high school maybe? He said they're really close friend. One thing he know that sven missed them too, so, Charles assume he think he's the old friend of sven???

A sob could be heard from sven.

"I…Always wanted to tell you something… b-but— I'm always to coward.."

Charles kinda feels bad for him. He then patted sven's back. "Sven, snap out of it, it's me, Charles, you should get some rest and—–" Before he finish his sentence,he could feel that Sven is about to pass out in any moment. "Woah, sven-"

"I know I know… but B-burt.. Before I Pass out, at least let me tell you h-how I—–"

Without any warning, sven grabbed Charles hand and dragged him really closed to him.

"S-sven!?"

Again, without any warning, sven pulled Charles closer as he kissed him on the lips for like 5 second.

What. The. Heck!?!?!???? Did he just..!?

Sven then immediately fall as he fainted. Charles quickly grab him before he fell to the floor.

Charles's face became RED. He didn't know what the hell just happened. Did his friend just kissed him!? That was unpredictable. He couldn't believe that.

"Wh— what was that…!?"

He never and didn't have that kind of feeling towards Sven, so that's not the reason he blushed. Sven literally just took Charles's first kiss. And that's at least how Charles feel about it. He rubs his mouth as in, he wish that never happened. He didn't want his first kiss to be from his great friend.

But at the same time, he still feel bad for Sven. He once mentioned that he used to have this friend on high school and rhat they've separated from each others for so long, with sven still have this feeling for them. At least that's what Charles assume.

Charles sighed. The blush on his face started to fade away as he calmed down.

"W-well, guess sven will missed tonight's party."

Charles then picks up Sven and lay him down on his bed. He put the blanket on him.

After that Charles tried his best NOT to mention that even happened or even slipped through his mouth as he foes back to the party.

---

The sun is rising, another day has come.

The party was a blast last night, but to bad sven missed all of it.

Sven slowly opens his eyes ashe waking up. Yawning and rubs his eyes before sitting down. He feels a bit dizzy, but can't quite remember what happened last night.

Oh wait, think he did, he remember that he drank by himself on the room until he passed out. At least that's how he remembers it.

As Sven was still sitting on his bed,Charles came in the room while having himself a cup of coffee. He then saw Sven.

"O-oh, morning there sven!" He waved his hand at him, highly hoping he didn't remember what happened last night. He sat down on his own bed.

"Morning Charles, didn't expect you to wake up sooner than me" Said sven as he stretched his arms.

"Oh, yeah, uh, well, you were really tired yesterday, so, that's explain why you over slept?" He takes a sip from his hot coffee.

"Heh, pretty much, I was kinda uh, drunk last night and passed out"

Phew, He didn't remember THAT. Charles relief.

"Yeah-" Charles then change the topic in a second to prevent him from trying to remember that night.

"H-hey sven! You totally missed the party! As I said, it was the greatest!" He said as he smiles brightly.

"Oh really?" He smiled back to him. "Tell me about it then.

Charles then when on telling Sven everything that happened on the party, really detailed. From where Charles went off to inform the others about doing a party, until the party ended and everyone have to clean them up after it.

Days has passed, and Sven haven't remember what has happened that night. So Charles decided to keep it a secret to himself, until now.

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Welp, that's all of the fantic! I hope you enjoyed this, and tha k you so much for putting your time to read this all t he way down here! I really appreciate it!✨✨✨

#after valiant hero #henry stickmin #the henry stickmin collection #the toppat clan #henry stickmin valiant hero #charles calvin #henry stickmin charles #sven svensson #henry stickmin fantic #henry stickmin AU #burt curtis #sven x burt #sven x charles???

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high-tidethunder · 4 years

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so long lives this, and this gives life to thee

inspired by this post!

Act I: SCENE I: Holly. The main stage at the Michigan Renaissance Festival. Enter QUỲNH, wearing a long red velvet gown, her hair draped over her shoulders and braided with gold and strings of pearls. She is backlit by string lights on the stage that surround her like a halo.

QUỲNH:

This is a story of two men,

A thief and a knight,

Whose lives are inexorably entwined,

Wherever, and whenever they meet.

This is the story of a years-long fight,

The lost hope of one,

Amidst the search for the other.

This is the story of the power of a young girl,

And her empathy.

This is the story of a family,

And the ties that bind it, which will never break.

This is a story of a love, everlasting.

They might just need a push to get there.

~~~

Joe finishes belting his sword to his back and pushes his way out of the canvas costuming tent and onto the stage, where a crowd of families has already gathered. He smiles at them, waves, sits down at the table on the stage’s corner and pulls up the copy of yesterday’s newspaper that sits on it, studiously focusing on the photograph of Governor Whitmer that graces the front page.

Andy misses their cue by five minutes. Joe has to cough four times, stomp twice, and slam down the wooden tankard he’s been pretending to drink from before they tumble out of the costume tent, adjusting their silk doublet and the circlet twisted into their hair. He is going to kill Quỳnh.

“Yusuf! It has happened again!” they call, and he’s not entirely sure the frantic thread of their voice is an act. At least they remember their lines. “That scoundrel can’t keep getting away with this,” they growl, pacing the stage, pointedly ignoring the audience. They stop in front of his chair, folding their arms across their chest. “Another carriage has been raided, in the eastern wood. He made off with the whole load of silks and what gold the driver had.”

“And what do you wish from me? Years, this has been going on. He is like a shadow, melting away into the night, I cannot find him. I am lost,” Joe retorts, and stares forlornly into the empty mug in front of him. “That blackguard Nicolò di Genova is a thorn in my side that I cannot dig out.”

Andy straightens, then, and finally turns out to look at the audience. They notice the young girl in the first row and crouch down to look at her, smiling kindly when she ducks her head shyly. “Hello there, sweetheart,” they start, voice warm. “My name is Andromache, what’s yours?”

The girl looks up at her parents for a moment and waits for her mother to nod encouragingly before looking at Andy again. “I’m Aisha,” she says, barely loud enough for Joe to hear.

“Hello Aisha, I’m the queen of this realm, and I think that you,” they look up now, “all of you, might be able to help out my knight here. What do you think?”

Aisha’s eyes widen and she stares up at Andy. “Maybe,” she says, still quiet.

Not one to pressure audience participation, Andy stands and steps back, turning to look at Joe before addressing the crowd again. “I bet, if Sir Yusuf here shows you a picture of the man we are looking for, you would be able to tell us if you’ve seen him,” they say, giving Joe a sidelong glance.

He takes the charcoal sketch of Nicky he’d done the week before the festival started out of the pages of the newspaper and stands, walking to the edge of the stage. “This man,” he starts, jumping down in an area in front of the stage clear of any people and gesturing with the sketch, “is called Nicolò, and for many years he has evaded our capture while ambushing our trade routes.” Joe begins to walk up and down the length of the stage, holding the picture out all the while. “He has stolen many goods and deprived many tradesmen their hard-earned wages. We cannot let this stand, and I don’t believe any in our kingdom would think we should.” He stops, “There is a reward on his head, and should any of you be brave enough to join our scouting party, you will be well compensated.” They would get a $20 credit at a select few stalls. One per family. “Will anyone here join our cause?”

Aisha steps forward, a small step, accompanied by an encouraging smile from her mother. “I will,” she says, and the rest of the crowd breaks into a cheer of assent.

Joe grins and kneels down in front of her. “I think,” he starts, looking her in the eye, “that you would make a fantastic second-in-command,” he says, folding away the sketch of Nicky and tucking it between his chestplate and his shirt.

Right then, the stablehands bring out his and Andy’s horses and he stands, mounts the horse, and looks down at Aisha. “Would you like to ride with me, m’lady?” he asks, waiting as she looks to her parents for their agreement before nodding vigorously.

Her father lifts her into Joe’s waiting hands and he settles her in front of him on the horse before signaling to Andy that he’s ready to go when they are. They nod and lead their horse to the front of the crowd to address them, explaining that they and Joe would be leading the group through the fairgrounds in the search. They wait for everyone to situate themselves between the horses, then head out towards the costuming stalls. Joe waits for everyone to clear out before bringing up the rear, making sure to keep pace with Aisha’s parents.

~~~

About halfway through the “search”, Aisha asks to see the sketch again and Joe switches the reins to one hand, pulling the paper out and holding it in front of her. He notices now that he’d gotten Nicky’s nose wrong and he tells Aisha so with a fake-somber shake of his head. In truth, it is a little disappointing. Nicky had willingly sat for an hour for Joe to get the sketch done instead of just handing him a headshot like anyone else would have done. He’d wanted to get it right.

She pats his hand consolingly, stares at the picture for a moment, then asks, “What if he’s hungry?”

Joe is a little taken aback, but he can see her parents smiling next to them and would never try to discourage a child’s empathy, so he responds, “Well, then we would feed him. But, if he takes others’ wares, they’ll have nothing to sell, then they might go hungry.”

“Why couldn’t you feed them, too?”

“We could. We would. But it is difficult managing a kingdom, Aisha, we can’t know everyone who’s hungry all the time. We can only do our best to stop those who are taking advantage of other people, so that they have no reason to go hungry.”

“But when we find him, if he is hungry, you’ll feed him?”

Joe can’t help the smile that’s spreading across his face. “We will, sweetheart. Queen Andromache wants no one in this kingdom to suffer.”

~~~

When Andy finally leads them to the blacksmith’s stall, a little boy in the crowd is the first to spot Nicky where he’s half-hidden behind Booker, the smith, and the new girl, Nile, who are deep in a conversation about metalworking.

Joe hands Aisha back to her parents, then dismounts and draws his sword, handing the reins off to one of the stablehands and approaching the entrance to the shop. “Nicolò di Genova!” he calls, and Booker and Nile step out of the way as Nicky looks up from where he’d been pretending to browse the scabbards on one wall.

“And who are you?” Nicky spits out, shifting on his feet into a fighting stance.

“I,” Joe starts, and wastes no amount of grandeur as he looks out over the crowd amassed before them and continues his speech, “am Yusuf ibn Ibrahim ibn Mohammed al-Kaysani,” here he pauses and looks at Nile, standing next to him with genuine delight on her face, and winks at her, “called al-Tayyib,” he says, swiftly turning and bowing to her, taking her hand in his and pressing a gentle kiss to it. “And you,” he says, standing abruptly and swinging back around to confront Nicky, pointing his sword at him accusatorily, “Nicolò di Genova, are a thief.”

“And by whose authority do you make this claim?” Nicky asks, quirking an eyebrow. “I am but a traveling merchant, here with the sunrise and gone with its set,” he says with a saccharine smile. A taunt.

“Peddler of stolen wares,” Joe bites back, advancing as Nicky steps backward, eyes widening in apprehension in an expression that is almost comically exaggerated to anyone who knows him.

Joe remembers the countless lunch breaks that had been spent rehearsing after Nicky had come to him after their first week of shows together and asked for help making his performance more believable.

He can’t help but be a little proud of himself for the result.

“You have not answered me,” Nicky says, buying time as he makes his way further into the smithy and towards the rack of swords on the far wall. “By whose authority are you making this claim?”

“I am making this arrest under the authority of the Nomad Queen.”

At this, Nicky turns to look at Andy, sitting horseback behind the crowd, drawing their attention to them. They straighten their back, their delicate gold circlet glinting in the sun, and stare down their nose at Nicky.

Nicky takes this moment of distraction to lunge at the rack of swords, grab his blunted prop one they’d planted there that morning, and deftly pull it free. “It is not an arrest you will make without a fight,” he snarls, once again settling into a fighting stance.

“I did not imagine it would be,” Joe counters, coiling his own muscles like a spring.

It’s Nicky who attacks first this time, lunging at Joe as he swings his blade at him in a sweeping downward arc. Joe quickly checks that Nile and Booker have cleared the crowd to a safe distance away before allowing himself to fall back, his own sword raised over his head to protect himself from the blow. He forces Nicky’s sword to the side, inadvertently pushing the two of them chest to chest, and makes to draw the dagger at his hip before his arm is twisted back and Nicky ducks away from him. He growls and advances again, Nicky blocks his first blow but stumbles over a divot in the ground at the second one and falls, dropping his sword to fling out his hand and break his fall. Joe’s hand darts out to grab the fallen blade and he throws it in the direction of the smithy before standing over Nicky, settling the point of his sword under his chin.

“Do you yield?” he asks, panting slightly.

He’s suddenly acutely aware of the way Nicky’s Adam's apple bobs when he swallows.

For a moment, Nicky’s eyes darken into an emotion that isn’t there quite long enough for Joe to recognize it, before hardening into steel once more. “Never,” he spits, then reaches up and, in one swift motion, twists Joe’s sword out of his hand and rolls to his feet. And then, Joe finds himself with his own blade to his neck, staring down it to that same dark look in Nicky’s eyes.

He’s about to say something when Booker calls to Joe and hefts Nicky’s sword his way and they’re in the thick of the stage fight again until Nicky yields.

~~~

“Why did that little girl remind you to feed me?” Nicky asks when they’re back in the costuming tent, and Joe huffs a laugh.

“Aisha,” he responds, “She was very worried that the scoundrel we were looking for might have turned to crime because he was hungry.”

Nicky smiles at this, one of those barely-there smiles of his that Joe first read as a reluctance to tolerate his presence but now sees a kind of beauty in. “Good for her,” he says as he makes his way through the tent to his cubby, undoing the clasps of his leather jerkin as he goes.

Joe goes to his own cubby and sheds his heavy leather armor before tucking it away. He grabs his phone and wallet and is about to leave to grab them lunch when he hears Nicky let out a curse and call for him, and turns to see him tugging helplessly at the last clasp on his jerkin. “Need help with that?”

“Please? I think it caught on the undershirt and I don’t want to tear it if I don’t have to.”

“Yeah, okay, I’ll see what I can do,” Joe says, walking over.

He takes the stubborn clasp in his hands and Nicky lets his own hands fall to rest on the wooden chest behind him as Joe messes with the fabric of his shirt, trying to figure out where it’s caught.

“Sorry,” he says, still holding the fabric taut as he kneels to put his phone and wallet on the dirt floor at Nicky’s feet to free up his hand, “I think I see where it’s caught, but-” he looks up from the ground and cuts himself off when he realizes just exactly what position he’s gotten himself in.

Nicky looks down at the same moment Joe looks up at him and barely gets out a ‘what?’ before his eyes widen ever so slightly and he clamps his mouth shut, the tips of his ears turning pink. Joe clears his throat and Nicky’s jaw tightens and he tips his head back, staring steadfastly at the ceiling as Joe goes back to twisting the fabric of his shirt out of the clasp of his jerkin.

“All good!” Joe says when he finishes, forcing cheer into his voice and pulling down the shirt. He very nearly pats it smooth before he catches himself.

“Thanks,” Nicky says, almost clipped, and Joe hazards a look up at him as he blindly reaches out for his phone and wallet.

“Well, I’m not going to ask what you two were doing in here, but I will remind you that this is a tent and does not lock, and I am going to ask if either of you know where my wife is because I believe she owes me $50 now,” Andy says from behind them, and Joe whips around to look so fast that his neck hurts. They wave, phone in hand, then duck out of the tent.

“It’s not what it looks like!” he tries to call after them, raising himself up on one knee towards the tent entrance in some half-assed, desperate attempt to stop his reputation from being ruined.

A hand lands on his shoulder, then, and he feels Nicky’s hair brush at the side of his neck, a sensation that probably shouldn’t send a shiver through him but does anyways. “I think,” he says, voice low in Joe’s ear, “I would very much like it if it was.”

Joe stands so quickly he slams his head into Nicky’s chin, and the other man lets out what Joe assumes is a truly impressive string of curses in Italian, although his semester abroad in Rome didn’t quite teach him whatever it was Nicky had just said about a pig.

“Oh, shit, I’m so sorry, fuck, Nicky, are you okay?” he gets out in one breath, turning to see Nicky with a hand pressed to his mouth and a wild look in his eyes.

“That,” he says pointedly, tightly, muffled by his fingers, “was not the outcome I was hoping for,” he finishes, taking his hand away from his mouth and revealing his lips, smeared with blood.

Joe’s heart plummets and he jerks forward, grabbing for the box of tissues he knows is on top of the cubbies and tearing one out. He crumples it in one hand and holds it to Nicky’s bleeding lip before he realizes what he’s doing.

“Sorry,” he says again, not quite sure if he should keep holding the tissue to the cut.

Nicky makes the decision for him, bringing his own hand to take hold of the bloodied tissue and shaking his head. “I should be the one apologizing,” he says, eyes downcast. “I shouldn’t have said that, it was unprofessional and,” he stops, frustration flooding his features, as though the words he wants to say are evading him. “I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable,” he finally says and looks up at Joe. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be,” Joe says, shaking his head. “It’s not a big deal-”

Nicky cuts him off at this, “I’ll just take this as a ‘no’ and leave you alone,” he says, and the tone in his voice twists Joe’s gut.

“Wait, Nicky, no. Don’t,” he protests, reaching out for Nicky’s wrist. “Take it as a ‘I don’t have any dinner plans tonight, and I did make a promise to feed you’?” he offers, hoping he sounds as sincere as he is.

The tension melts from Nicky’s face, the worried lines at the corners of his pursed lips turning up in a smile. “You’re a terrible cook,” he says, raising an eyebrow.

Joe laughs, and it feels like letting go. “I am,” he agrees. He’s perfected three dishes that aren’t sandwiches or cold cereal, and even with those, they’re half-burned half the time. “But I’m really good at picking good restaurants because of it,” he says, and Nicky snorts.

“I like the sound of that,” he says, and warmth blooms in Joe’s chest.

“6 sound good?” he asks, a time that should give them both an hour or so after their shift ends to get cleaned up. “I’ll pick you up.”

“Sounds great,” Nicky says, just as Joe hears his cue line for his next performance coming from the stage.

“Who knows where the night might go, huh?” he says, looking Nicky up and down and winking before turning and running for the stage.

#the old guard #the old guard fic #tog fic #userlyde #as i did with the fight gym au...i will more than likely write more of this on a whim #it's about...the found family...#the freedom from restrictions of Research because these are things im Intimately Familiar with #my fic

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taliaquinn · 4 years

Text

Why Me!? Chapter 11

True Bee: I have been abandoned Betrayed UNLOVED

Maribug: I haven't even been gone for FIVE minutes, Didn’t Juleka confiscate your phone privileges?

True Bee: Right now she's occupied keeping the class from killing each other

Maribug: You should be helping her!!!

True Bee: I am, I'm giving the others the glare

True Bee: Wait Aurore and Kagami just stormed in

True Bee: ooooo now Kagami is yelling at Adrien

Maribug: Does she have her Saber? Please TELL ME SHE DOESNT!!

True Bee: Aww Aurore pulled her away before I could check :(

True Bee: Wait No, Now Aurore is yelling at Adrien

Maribug: Why the heck isn't Bustier doing anything!?

True Bee: Man I should’ve brought popcorn

True Bee: Oh Snap Mendeliev just walked in to pull Aurore and Chloe away

True Bee: Oop she’s glaring at Bustier and Alya now

True Bee: Lila is being Lila

True Bee: Not even 10 minutes and the class is already in Chaos without you

True Bee: Speaking of DUPAIN CHENG I EXPECT A MORE THOROUGH EXPLANATION!!

Maribug: Woman keep people from killing each other and I’ll Tell you soon

Maribug: Actually no keep the people we like safe, I Don't care about the rest

True Bee: Yes Ma'am

True Bee: KAGAMI HAD A SWORD I REPEAT KAGAMI HAD A SWORD

Maribug: Good Luck

True Bee: TRAITOR

Marinette felt bad she really did. But then again now the class wasn't her problem anymore and she felt joy. She prayed Chloe could keep the class together for a while. With a sigh, she walked up to her room to finish her packing. Her Maman was now busy calling Mr.Wayne to ask about the arrangements. Dick said that if Bruce wasn’t ready she could stay with him at Bludhaven in the meantime. Damian was texting her about the “rules”.

No mistreating his pets, Don’t try to become Graysons Favourite sibling “because that spot is already filled”. Don’t try to seperate Tim Drake from his Coffee, Cassandra Cain is dangerous but awesome and Jason’s Existence was to not be mentioned outside of the manor.

What was even that family? Seriously she knew that they all had interesting backgrounds but Wasn't Jason Todd murdered by an Arkham Crazy a few years ago? Seriously that family sounded like a perfect base for a Buzzfeed Unsolved episode. Huh maybe her secretly being a superhero won't be the strangest thing in the family.

Marinette quickly packed her sketchbook and made sure to put the horse miraculous box into her purse. Master Fu was updated to an extent that she was going to be out of the country, out of continent really, for a few weeks. Luckily she had Kalki to help with teleportation. She didn't have to panic about customs or anything. Mr.Wayne had a Private Plane. She’ll be flying over to Gotham with her parents and they'll be staying at a hotel for a few days. Get her “acclimated” to an American city and the customs. Paris will have to go without delicious sweets and treats for a few days.

Taking a final glance around the room Marinette was suddenly filled with a sense of homesickness. Didn't matter that she hadn't left,she didn’t even know when she'd come back. Sadly she had to leave some of her sewing and designing things. She had made sure to finish all of her commissions. However only a quick glance at her emails and her MDC website revealed that a lot of purchases and commission inquiries were being made. As soon as she gets to Gotham she will have to try a good fabric store and buy a new sewing machine and mannequin. She wasn’t a fool, she is definitely taking some of the expensive fabrics, Alexeis Fencing uniform was safely packed along with her saber.

With a final glance around she crawled down. And let the door shut with a final click.

Gotham City U.S.A 2:30 pm

“Sabine Sabine Sa- Of course, Marinette can stay with me for a bit longer. Yes yes, Dick already told me the basics about the situation. Are you sure you don’t want me to get involved? You really should get the police involved. I don’t like bullies or liars.” Bruce stated. Seriously Bruce was really tempted to fly over to Paris and press charges against those little demons. Heck, he wants to press charges against the foolish teacher and idiotic principle.

“Bruce calm down, trust me I will handle the school and the bullies, right now I want to get Marinette away from them” Sabine stated with a growing smirk. Oh, don’t mess with her. Bustier and Damocles are going down. However, she had to be a little patient and play the long game. She knew Marinette wanted to handle her classmates.

“Fine don’t worry about it, what are you two planning to do about school?” he asked, a bit concerned. Seriously another one of his kids was getting bullied and harassed.

Bruce was having flashbacks to the bullying and harassment Dick and Jason went through when they went to school. Dick dealt with months of being called things like gypsy trash, charity cases, and circus brat before he finally built up the courage and told Bruce. Jason on the other hand, Bruce found out really quickly about his bullying. Mostly because Jason would get into fights. Tim didn't deal with bullying that bad, sure he got called a nerd and orphan trash but Bruce handled that very quickly because by then he was an expert. Bruce wasn't willing to put Cassandra through school. No one dared bully Damian Al Ghul Wayne.

“We actually haven’t thought that far,” Sabine admitted sheepishly. “But we have the necessary paperwork prepared”

“Why not enroll her in Gotham Academy along with Damian?” Bruce suggested

“It's a private academy, the tuition is in the 30,000’s” Sabine suggested exasperatedly.

“You’re kidding right?”

“I’m just saying I don’t think Marinette would be comfortable with going to a school like that.”

“She went to school with a Model, The Mayor's Daughter, and a comic book artist”

“Bruce!”

“I’m just saying Gotham Academy has already been the school where all of my older kids have attended, plus it has the best security due to the fact that I funded it.” Yes, Bruce was an overprotective parent. Sue him.

With a sigh Sabine couldn’t help but give in she was also an overprotective parent. “Fine but You’ll be the one to deal with her freakout over the costs”

“Deal”

Orly Airport Paris, France 5:00 pm

With a quick hop, Marinette couldn’t help but gape at the private jet with the blaring WAYNE INDUSTRIES on the side. Once they were inside they made sure to get comfortable. It was going to be at least an 8-hour flight. Marinette took out her sketchbook and quickly sketched out a few new future designs. however, she took a quick glance at her parents and saw that her mother had dozed off on her father's shoulder. She quickly flipped a page that revealed a few ideas for an altered ladybug outfit. She needed a redesigned outfit. No more skin-tight suits or pigtails. She's doing a loose outfit and braids, being a superhero with loose hair was plain impractical.

Seriously there is a reason why all superheroes either have short hair or have their hair tied back. With a few final touches, she was done with the redesign, now all that was left was to show Tikki the new design. That's another worry for Marinette. Finding time to talk with Tikki was easy enough to do with her parents. They were bakers who had to wake up early so they usually went to sleep really quickly and early plus she was also an only child, which made it easy for Marinette to slip away for her Ladybug nightly adventures and talk with Tikki. How is she gonna manage that in a house filled with a bunch of people?

Marinette flipped to another page and decided to start sketching a new dress design. She’s curious about what type of colors she wants to use. Maybe Marinette should make it all black? No, too dark. Maybe a few touches of blue? Nah. Red? Nope, she has enough red clothing. Purple? Yuck. Red and Green? Nope, she doesn't want to look like a traffic light. Gold!! Black and gold would be perfect!! Cape? Wait no, Edna Mode the animated icon made a good point on why capes should be banned.

Taking a quick glance around she finally risked taking a peak on Tikki. Tikki was comfortable situated and munching on a bunch of sweets. Marinette softly closed the purse and decided that sleep was the perfect course of action. Wrapping her sweater around herself she allowed the warmth and darkness to overtake her.

Cesaire Apartment Paris, France 7:30pm

“Okay listen up gang since Marinette abruptly dropped out, it’s up to us to raise the money for the school dance and the end of the year field trip which is a few months away,” Alya said.

Lila was quick to point out how horrible and awful it was for Marinette to leave them with all the work.

Alya couldn’t help but notice that only a few people showed up to the meeting. Noticeably absent was Chloe, Juleka, Sabrina, Max (who said Markov needed a reboot or something) and Ivan. Alya couldn’t help but be concerned by the absences. They needed their help to get all the planning ready and everything.

Rose was squealing at a thought of being able to decide on planning the theme of the dance. “Oooohhhh I can’t wait for the dance, do you think Marinette would still make me a dress?” Rose asked while glancing around. Sudden realization seems to hit them all. This year they will most likely have to pay and buy their own dresses and suits. Marinette always made them their outfits and that was part of the reason that they became the talk of the school after a dance. They always looked stunning.

“Rose Marinette wouldn’t dare not make you a dress, you’re one of the sweetest girls in the school if she refuses to make you one then she is Heartless” Lila stated fervently. Oh, Lila was making sure to get her claws completely in the class, she didn’t have an obstacle anymore.

“Lilas right, Marinette would always help you no matter how mad she is at you.” Adrien chimed in. All of a sudden their phones started pinging. Adrien quickly took out his and gaped at what he was reading in the class group chat.

Sabrina has left the Chat

Ivan has left the Chat

Juleka has left the Chat

Max has left the Chat.

Chloe B: Max, Sabrina, Ivan, Juleka and I have made the collective decision to transfer to Ms. Mendelievs Class, Our Transfers were approved quickly, thanks to yours truly :)

Chloe B: Have fun figuring out how to pay for everything Your end of the school year class trip :) :) :)

Chloe B: Oh Marinette is no Longer doing free commissions, have fun with dress and suit shopping :) :) :) :) :))))

Chloe B: Toodles~ you will all haunt my nightmares for years to come

Chloe B has left the chat

A/N:

Hi guys, I don’t know what happened but suddenly theirs more of you :D. Thanks for taking a chance on me. Hope y’all like today's chapter. I wanted to quickly post for my insomniacs. Please Like,Reblog, comment and Follow :)

Taglist:

@damianette-is-life @amayakans @parallelparabox @miukiiu @valeks-princess @toodaloo-kangaroo

#miraculous ladybug #marinette dupain cheng #marinette deserves better #maribat #dick grayson #damian wayne #tim drake #jason todd #bruce wayne #lila salt

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homebody-nobody · 4 years

Text

you’re a part of me

(WHAT?? Jax wrote ANOTHER fic?? THREE FICS?? in TWO WEEKS?? I know, I’m shocked too. We’re gettin closer and closer to bein a Real Fic Writer lads.) How many juke first kiss fics will you write, Jax? all of them. as many as I want. I dunno. you're an adult obsessed with a tweeny-bopper show. shut up. who even has the patience for 5 +1s in this house it's 3 +1 and only barely bc I don't know how structured fic works so it's not even separate like it's supposed to be. anyway enjoy some dumb teenagers falling in love if the dialogue is cringe sorry lol I was trying to stay in the tone of the show and may have gone a little bit too disney channel (Also if you see typos/the same adjective used twice in one sentence/paragraph, no you didn't I don't edit it makes me nervous) ------------------------------- (ao3) ------------------------------ '... Luke has thrown out any semblance of personal space. He orbits around her just as closely as the others, no longer threatened by or hyper-aware of the consequences of his proximity. Basically, he’s getting entirely too comfortable.'

(3 times Julie and Luke almost kissed and 1 time they did) ------------------------------------ Luke is overly physical. Theoretically, Julie already knew this. She’s seen him with the boys, the way he lives in other people’s space, hanging off Reggie and lurking next to Alex, not caring where his lanky limbs or knees or elbows end up, even if it’s in other people’s ribs. He was never like that with her, too afraid of the crushing disappointment that came when she phased through his hands. But now, there isn’t the strange, tingles-up-her neck way-weird, way-wrong sensation that came when she accidentally brushed through him. So even though Julie’s used to keeping a respectful distance, Luke has thrown out any semblance of personal space. He orbits around her just as closely as the others, no longer threatened by or hyper-aware of the consequences of his proximity. Basically, he’s getting entirely too comfortable.

She notices it the first time during rehearsal, when they’re hashing out the particulars of a melody -- Luke wants it to go down, and Julie thinks it should go up. She plunks herself down at the grand piano to prove that her idea will sound better, fanning the half-finished sheet music out across the top, pointing out the measure they’re arguing over, smudged and crinkled from repeated erasings.

Luke narrows his eyes at her from across the room, his face set in his trademark (adorable) grumpy expression. “It just sounds better!” she argues. “Listen.” She puts her hands on the keys, left hand hitting the chord, right dancing over her proposed melody. “So please, keep chasing me…” she sings, building to the last word and sliding her voice over an intricate run ending in a step up. Looking up, she tilts her head, her wild hair piled into a tenuous bun, curly tendrils framing her face. Luke’s stomach does an interesting flip. “See?”

He stands up, swinging his guitar strap down across his chest before walking around her, putting his right hand over where hers had just been on the paper. He stands just behind her shoulder, sending goosebumps down her spine. “It should go down,” he insists. “It’ll flow better with the next line and then the break before the chorus makes more sense. Listen.” He puts his foot up on the bench and swings his guitar back up like it's an extension of him, playing a riff and singing the line they’re arguing about before dipping in to the next. “So please keep chasing me,” he sings, his voice gracefully stepping up and then back down, “Cause even though I’m runnin’, I know you’re the one I need.”

“You’re making it too simple!” she cries, slamming her hands down in her lap and turning to face him. She opens her mouth to continue the argument, but when she looks at him, she starts, finally realizing just how close he is. The toe of his sneaker brushes her leg, and he leans over the sheet music, closing her in against the piano. His dark eyebrows pull together, mouth slightly pinched as he concentrates, solid and strong and very much in her space. “Um --” she says.

He shrugs, shaking his head a little bit. “What,” he says, not understanding what she’s having a problem with. Julie’s eyes drop to his mouth, close and stupid kissable, and he notices the motion. The air crackles as both of them unconsciously draw closer, song forgotten, focused only on each other. Luke leans in, half an inch, and Julie’s breath hitches in her chest. This is stupid. She knows this is stupid. Luke is dead. Full ghost. Not real. Well, real, but not a viable option. He might have a physical presence now -- a very strong, very warm, very attractive physical presence -- but that doesn’t make him any more possible. And yet, here she is, pulled into him like he has his own gravitational field and she’s helpless to it. Luke licks his lips, and Julie tilts her chin up, fractional motion tiptoeing toward something irreversible and dangerous.

Just as she’s about to step over that uncrossable line, there’s an almighty crash. Both of their heads whip up in time to see Alex topple off his stool -- he’d fallen asleep as they were arguing. The noise wakes Reggie, whose head was lolling against his amp. “I didn’t do it!” he yells, flailing into sitting up straight.

Julie clears her throat and turns back to the keyboard, stretching her hands over the keys. “You’re, uh --” she says, glancing at Luke out of the corner of her eye to find him smirking in an infuriatingly adorable manner. “You’re right. It should go down.” He stands up straight, mildly surprised at his easy victory, and backs off from the piano to show Reggie the chords. They sketch out the verse and Alex adds a backing beat, the moment forgotten.

That is, until Carlos comes in to nag her to eat. Alex poofs out and Reggie dives behind his amp. Since the whole discovering-corporeality thing, they’re not totally sure if Julie’s the only one who can see them still, and they’d rather not have to explain to Julie’s dad what three teenage ‘holograms’ are doing living in his garage. Carlos delivers his message and then darts back inside, eager for dinner, and Julie stands up from the piano, gathering the half-finished song and tucking it into the folder she keeps her in-progress projects in.

Reggie emerges in a comic mess of limbs and grins at her, Alex poofing back on to his stool. “I’ll be back after dinner to finish this,” she says, hoping they don't notice the shake in her hands as she tucks the folder away. Luke pops his chin over the edge of the couch, behind which he’d taken cover.

“Hey Julie!” he calls, and she turns back to look at him. “Just remember; KISS.”

Her brain short-circuits, heart tripping over itself as she remembers his eyes on her, his shoulders and his hands and his stupid concentration face. “I, uh -- What are you --” she sputters.

A shit-eating grin spreads across Luke’s face as he puts his elbows on top of the couch and pushes himself up. “Keep it simple, stupid.”

Julie practically runs out of the garage. Alex raises an eyebrow, his gaze arcing from the door to land on Luke. “That was uh…” Luke schools his expression into one of false innocence. “Bold.” Luke rolls his eyes and brushes him off, but Reggie gives Alex a knowing look. Their friends are idiots.

It happens again one afternoon when Carlos has a baseball game and Julie has the house to herself. Or, so she thinks. She’s lazing around on the couch, avoiding her history homework spread out on the coffee table, Adventure Time babbling on the television. She’s slowly working her way through a bag of gummy bears and m&ms (her favorite candy combination), wearing an enormous hoodie that used to be her mom’s, home alone; life is fantastic. Until --

“Oh, sweet, cartoons!” Luke poofs into existence directly next to her on the couch, and she starts violently enough to shake candy into the couch cushions. Some of it lands on his chest, and he holds up a green gummy bear with a wistful expression. Julie just stares at him, still mildly in shock, definitely still annoyed, and really not in the mood to endure his moping about food when she was having a perfectly nice time by herself.

“Hey,” he says, either ignoring or unaware of what he’s just done to her heart rate and her peaceful afternoon. “You think now that I’m corporeal --” (he over-pronounces the word, having just learned it from Flynn days before) “I can eat like, regular human food?” It isn’t until he looks to her for an answer that he realizes what he’s just done. “Oh, sorry,” he says, that same stupid-ass grin settling on his face, not sorry even a little bit. “Did I spook ya?”

His glee at the pun, which he definitely stole from Reggie, sparkles in his gray-green eyes, and Julie’s heart, which had just started to recover from his sudden appearance, trips over itself one more time. Emerging from the shaken-up snowglobe of her brain, she blurts out her first thought. “You’re the worst,” she says, even while thinking the opposite.

He looks genuinely hurt for about half a second before turning the gummy bear towards her, too, and speaking for it. “You should be nice to Luke,” he says in an absurd voice. “He’s so handsome and talented!” He laughs at his own joke and pitches his voice up to continue with the bit, but she snatches the candy out of his hand and pops into her mouth, grinning. He feigns shock. “That bear could have had a family, Julie.”

“If they did, they’ll all be happy together in my stomach,” she says, eating another one to punctuate the statement. Luke laughs, and the sound has a heart-stopping melody of its own. It’s comfortable, the relationship that they’ve developed with each other. He always laughs at her jokes and is the first to offer her a compliment after rehearsal, and she loves his dorky sense of humor, even when she gives him a hard time about it. They write music and goof around, and even with the (very strong) undercurrent of romantic (she hopes) tension between them, a friendship sits comfortably on top. He’s only been in her life for a short time, but she can’t imagine it without him. Her feelings for him endanger that, so she does her best not to let it show. He asks her what she’s watching, and she explains the basic premise of the episode so that he can understand what’s going on.

She’s hyper-aware of him as they watch the show, and she envies the ease with which he occupies her space, his shoulder brushing hers, their knees occasionally bumping. He slouches all the way down on the couch, one foot kicked up on the table, turning the remote in his hands and messing with the battery cover, completely at home. (He’s always fiddling with something -- a pen, his necklace -- or bouncing his leg, or clicking a guitar pick between his teeth. It’s a habit that’s mostly adorable and only sometimes annoying.) If he notices her staring at him, he doesn’t say anything.

It takes a couple more episodes, but she finally relaxes, and the distance between them -- already spare -- vanishes, her shoulder tucked under his, her head angled toward him, their feet bumping on the table. Half her attention is on Finn and the land of Ooo, and half on the boy beside her, who doesn’t seem to give any indication that he’s thinking about this as much as she is. Luke has a way of pulling her in until she’s closer than she ever planned to be, like she can’t help but touch him. Ever since the night they played the Orpheum, he’s become magnetic, his presence a force she can’t resist. If she tilted her head down, just a fraction, it would be resting on his shoulder. What would he do? Would he shrug her off, or rest his head on hers? She watches his hands play with the remote, imagining what his strong, slender fingers would feel like laced with hers. She’s had crushes before, of course -- she liked Nick all the way from seventh grade up to this year -- but nothing so real and powerful as this.

“Don’t you think Finn sounds just like Reggie?” Luke asks, pulling her from her thoughts. She looks up at him, and he looks down at her, and -- oh.

He’s very close.

His eyes always remind her of an overcast sky, swirling with unknown depth, and they widen when they meet hers, filled with awe. Blood rushes in her ears, muting the TV, tuning out anything that isn’t him. Her heart is beating so hard and so fast she wonders peripherally if he can hear it, and then that thought fizzles out with the rest of any kind of logic when his gaze drops to her mouth. He’s going to kiss her. He’s going to kiss her!! Panic and elation and anticipation all scramble in her chest. She’s never kissed anyone before, and even though she’s never asked, she knows he probably has. What if she’s bad at it? She’s half freaking out and half telling herself to shut the hell up as he turns his entire body towards her, his hand reaching up to hold her face and --

The front door slams open, announcing Carlos and Ray. “Mija!!” her dad calls. Luke jerks back from her like he’s been burned, eyes filled with absolute terror, before he disappears.

“JULIEEEEE!!” Carlos hollers, launching himself across the living room at her and landing on her stomach, knocking the air out of her. Her arms come up around him automatically, despite all the sweat and the diamond dirt sticking to it. Feeling mildly shell shocked and like she’s been hit by a hell of a lot more than her little brother, she barely listens as Carlos and their dad babble over each other in an attempt at telling the story of Carlos’ game-winning home-base slide. She’ll be happy for him once her heart rate slows down.

Luke stays away for almost a full twenty-four hours after that particular mishap, long enough she almost asks Reggie and Alex if he talked to them about it. There’s about a thousand reasons not to, but mostly, she doesn’t know if she can even explain just what happened. She does tell Flynn, who launches into a very confusing monologue that starts with her admonishing Julie for thinking anything good can come from involving herself with a literal ghost and ends with her gushing about how many cute love songs they could write together, zero percent of which makes her feel better.

The only reason he doesn’t continue avoiding her is rehearsal, which, of course, he would never miss. She’s hoping to talk to him before they get started, but then the bus gets stuck in traffic and all of her boys are already set up with their instruments and having an impromptu jam session by the time she gets home. “What --” she hisses as she heaves the doors shut behind her. “Did I tell you guys about playing in here without me?” Alex shrugs and apologizes, and she can’t really be mad at Reggie, at least not for long.

But Luke -- he barely looks at her, nervous fingers dancing across a complicated riff even as the other boys stop playing. It takes a second of silence before he looks up to see the rest of his band staring at him. “Oh,” he says, the phrase ending in the discordant sound of fingernails on steel strings. “Yeah, right. Sorry.”

They get started, but nothing sounds right. Luke rushes the tempo and refuses to make eye contact with anyone, spinning off into fancy riffs that have no place in the song they’re working on. Reggie keeps trying to keep up with him, tripping up Alex and frustrating Julie, and when the song grinds to a cacophonous halt for the fourth time, she stands up from the piano. Reggie takes a step back.

“What is your problem?” she practically yells, stomping over to Luke. He’s been surly and unusually stubborn, and the shift from his usual cheerful, passionate demeanor builds her own stewing anxieties to a dangerous head.

“It’s not my problem you can’t keep up,” he says, and then, after watching the words register in Julie’s expression, immediately regrets it. Alex’s eyebrows shoot up and Reggie makes a very soft ‘ooooohhh’ noise under his breath.

“It’s not keeping up if you can’t hold a steady tempo,” she says, too upset over his refusal to cooperate to catch the reaction from her bandmates.

“Okay, so maybe I was rushing,” he admits, trying to walk it back. But Julie’s on a roll, and once she gets started laying into him, she very rarely lets up.

“Thank you!” she yells, the sarcasm clear in her tone. She’d been especially fond of the product so far, a song she thought embodied the perfect blend of Luke’s harder edge and her singer-songwriter roots. His sudden, uncharacteristic left turn is as much an interruption in their rehearsal as a knock to the tenuous pride she’d been building in the piece. “And what are all those riffs you’re tossing in? You have to hear how they don’t fit.”

“Oh come on,” he says, proud in his ability and therefore less willing to step down. He rolls his shoulders back and moves toward her, the challenge set in his spine. “I was shredding and you know it.” Luke is sweet and kind and silly and compassionate, but he’s also a musician, and a lead guitarist at that. His ego, though it rarely becomes an issue, is far from insubstantial.

“If you want a solo, fine!” she cries with exasperation, her hands flying through the air like they always do when she’s upset. “But you have to say something so we can give you room for it!” Her annoyance has turned down the sensitivity on her Luke-nonsense monitor, caught up enough in the trouble that she can’t see that he’s riling her up on purpose.

“What, you afraid of a little improvisation?” He’s smiling now, and his obvious glee, such a stark flip from where she thought this was going, throws off her tirade. He starts walking toward her, and his newfound physicality gives him an ability to fluster her to a much greater degree than before.

“No --” she stammers, stumbling backwards, distracted out of anger by his sparkling eyes and the power in the body approaching rapidly. “That’s not what I --” There it is again, that power he has to turn the rest of the world into radio static, her vision blurring and her hearing dulling until it’s just Luke filling up the world in front of her.

“C’mon Julie,” he says, and right now she hates his stupid smirk and the stupid way he rolls her name around in his mouth before letting it out. “you have to take risks once in a while.” She’s backed up against the piano now, her hands wrapped tight around the lid, and he’s still pushing it, strong and warm and undeniably, frustratingly male in her space.

But Julie isn’t one to let him intimidate her into silence, no matter how cute and well-muscled he may be. She takes a breath and looks him in his ridiculous sparkly eyes, poking him in his absurdly firm chest.“I am not afraid of taking risks, mister,” she says, “Let’s not forget who performed in front of her entire school to get back into the music program --”

“My idea,” he scoffs, not backing up. Why isn’t he backing up.

“Or who fronts a band of actual ghosts!” she continues, her voice increasing in volume again, and the speed of her heart tripping over itself could be from the argument or the boy who’s collarbones are less than a foot from her face. Both are entirely possible.

“Less ghost now,” he reminds her, tilting his head, his weight leaned one one leg, his hand resting on the head of his guitar, relaxed when they’re supposed to be arguing.

“You just get to poof out after we perform!” she says, only about two-thirds of her mind still focused on the fight itself, the other third completely wrapped up in the feeling of Luke in front of her. “I’m the one who has to stick around and ask questions!”

“So you’re saying you take chances,” he says, diabolically diplomatic instead of challenging. He leans forward, putting his hands on the piano behind her, caging her in with his arms. She refuses to back down again, even though his face is now inches from hers. “You’d take a leap of faith?”

“Yeah,” she says, only half-certain, because she’s not totally sure they’re still talking about music, and her heart is in the base of her throat and her stomach is somewhere around her shoes, and suddenly her hands are sweating when they definitely weren’t a minute ago. This definitely isn’t an argument about the song anymore.

“Oh yeah?” he says, and there’s the challenge again, except this one sounds more like a dare, and he’s definitely looking at her lips this time, not even trying to be subtle about it, and her hands are braced on his forearms and when did they get there? And Luke is warm and when she looks up, his eyes are on hers, and despite all that bravado and provocation there’s still a question there, and all she would have to do to answer is lift up on her toes and finally, finally press her lips against his, and --

Alex coughs. The oxygen goes out of the room like someone opened an airlock, and Julie feels herself sink, just barely, back down on her heels. The world fills back in, colors and sounds suddenly too bright, too abrasive. Tearing her eyes off Luke, she glances over his shoulder to where Reggie and Alex are, still with their instruments, watching them intently. Alex looks politely put out, his eyebrows tilted up with incredulity, like he's asking if they seriously just made him watch that. Reggie, on the other hand, hides nothing in his expression, shock and amusement there in equal parts as he glances between Alex and the two of them still tucked close against the piano, jaw askance in a surprised smile.

"Are you done?" Alex asks, in a tone that sounds less like a question. "It’s not that I mind…" he gestures between the two of them with a drumstick. "This, but like, time and place, dude." He's not talking to Julie. Luke clears his throat, appropriately chastised, but still looking smug as shit.

"Um, sorry," she mutters as he returns to his spot next to his amp.

Alex shrugs. "Not your fault," he says, "from the top?"

"Uh," she says, frozen for a moment in embarrassment and confusion. She looks to Alex, and he gives her one of his soft, kind smiles, the sort that makes her feel like everything is going to be okay. “Right, okay,” she finishes, as her hands twitch and she settles back into her body. Rushing back around to the bench, she flexes her hands over the keys, curling them into fists and then back out again when they tremble. “From the top.”

The rehearsal goes -- okay, after that. The magic is missing; therefore, while she usually feels inspired and courageous and empowered walking out of the garage, she just feels exhausted and drained. She eats dinner with her family, and her dad definitely notices that she’s uncharacteristically quiet, but saves asking about it until after Carlos is safely sequestered with his iPad. “How ya doin, kiddo?” he asks as she helps him clear up the dishes. “Everything okay?”

Julie looks at her dad with mild alarm, wondering what exactly he knows. He does his best, he really does, but it took him a while to even notice she was in a band. Not to mention, he still believes they’re holograms. “Um,” she says convincingly. “Yeah?”

He smiles kindly, in the way that means he’s very politely calling bullshit. “Alright, mija. What’s going on?”

Heaving a sigh, Julie keeps her eyes on the dishwasher she’s loading, trying her best to plan an escape route out of this conversation. “I promise, Dad,” she says, “It’s nothing.” and then, what she thinks are the magic words. “Boy stuff.”

But Ray’s been prepping for this, had conversations with Rose about it before she passed, while the cancer slowly ate her alive. She knew she wasn’t going to be able to be there for her daughter through the time in her life a girl needs her mother the most, and she wasn’t about to let him hide behind toxic masculinity and leave Julie to figure it out on her own. “Okay,” Ray says, trepidation clear in his voice but also not unwilling to approach the topic. “What’s his name?”

Julie almost drops the pot she’s scrubbing. “Does it matter?” she asks, her voice crawling up several octaves.

“Just trying to learn who is in my daughter’s life,” he answers diplomatically, sitting down at the counter to make it clear he’s not letting her out of this one easily.

“I promise, Dad,” she says, doing her best to frantically dodge the interrogation she knows is coming, regretting she brought it up at all, cursing herself for being so obvious. “It’s dumb. You don’t even know him.”

Ray nods slowly, pretending to believe her. Julie goes after the pot a little harder, because maybe if she just finishes the dishes she can go upstairs and bury herself in her bed and not have to have this conversation anymore. “It’s not that guitarist, is it?” he asks, and her spine goes stiff as a ramrod. Ray’s her dad, but he’s not blind. He’s seen the way they look at each other when they perform, the way the boy follows her around the stage like a puppy, desperate for her attention, disappointed when she jams with the other members of their band and not him. He’s an excellent musician, but Ray knows too many stories of near-legends gone sour with misdirected young love.

“No!” Julie cries immediately in an obvious lie. “Of course not!” She turns, half-laughing, explanations falling out of her mouth “We’re just friends,” she insists, lacing her fingers in front of her and nodding exaggeratedly. “Just friends. Only friends. Uh-huh. Friends. And!” she continues, gesturing widely, “he doesn’t even live here! So that… wouldn’t even make sense!” she laughs awkwardly. “So no way. That it’s him. No way it’s him.”

Ray sighs out a laugh that Julie’s too panicked to hear and leans forward on his elbows. “Alright, nina. Just be careful, okay?” She’s nodding along, edging her way towards the stairs. “You and your band…” She looks like Rose, in that hoodie that practically swallows her, hair piled messily on top of her head. Her mom was also a terrible liar, he remembers fondly. “You have something special. Don’t throw that away for a boy.”

Julie nods rapidly and then bolts, thundering up the stairs before throwing her bedroom door closed behind her and diving headfirst onto her bed, burying herself in decorative pillows. How does everyone know?? First Flynn and then Reggie and Alex and now her dad? Is she that obvious? (Um, yes.) She flops onto her back, staring up at the colorful tapestries slung across her ceiling, the string lights and posters and art. Usually, she loves her room, the feeling of her creative mind as a space she can inhabit, exploring her heart and the things she loves without having to shut out the outside world. But tonight, she feels trapped in her own head, so she grabs her notebook and squeezes out the window, perched on the roof outside her room.

The evening air is cool and crisp, the gentlest bite warning the oncoming winter, as much as there is a winter in LA. She spends a while scribbling down half-baked lyric ideas and doodling angry black scribbles around the edges of the pages when nothing comes out right. It’s harder to write on her own, now, without the steady pulse of Luke’s genius behind her, the electricity that flows between them as they create impeccable harmonies. Sometimes, it feels like music belongs to the both of them together, a joined force, like they’ve given up their individual melodies for something greater. It’s thrilling and terrifying all at once.

Eventually, she just ends up holding the notebook open to ‘Perfect Harmony’ with one hand, the other arm wrapped around her legs, her chin propped on her knees. She still hasn’t shown it to Luke, afraid of how real it feels, how clear it makes her feelings for him. Also, it’s a ballad, which they haven’t even approached yet, and she has no idea how Reggie and Alex will feel about such an explicitly romantic duet. She’s thinking that maybe she might be able to vague it up, maybe even make it a solo piece, when Luke appears next to her, like thinking about him draws him to her. (Which might actually be true -- she hasn’t examined that very closely.)

“Hey!” he says cheerfully, all awkwardness from the evening’s rehearsal ostensibly disappeared. He plucks the notebook out of her hand, using the other arm to hold back her immediate demands for its return. “New stuff?” he asks. This is not normally such a grievous invasion of privacy. Ever since they started writing together, their songwriting journals have become common property, and half the pages in hers are marked up with his handwriting and vice versa.

“It’s not ready yet!” she cries, pushing against the (stupidly strong) arm he has across her collarbone, willing to climb bodily over him to snatch the notebook back. Luke’s face very slowly falls as he reads it, the lyrics sinking in, and her protests trail off as she stops scrambling to grab it out of his hands.

He stands suddenly, pacing across the roof. “Did you --” he starts, breathing shallowly, his tongue tucking his teeth between his lips, nostrils flaring before he speaks again. “Why did you copy this out of my songbook?” It’s not accusatory, only a question, born of true confusion.

“I didn’t,” Julie replies without skipping a beat, equally baffled.

“I wrote this after the garage party,” he says. “How is it in your notebook?”

“I wrote it at school before the garage party,” she replies, doing her best to keep down the memory of the Luke in her imagination and the song coming to her fully formed in the form of a Patrick Swayze-esque daydream. She didn’t even tell Flynn about that part.

“At school…” Luke repeats, studying the lyrics with a furrow between his eyebrows, and as much as Julie is also reeling from shock at the mystery, it’s kind of adorable to watch him try and solve it. “This doesn’t make sense,” he says, looking up at her, signature grumpy expression in place. He tilts the notebook flat, like he’s presenting it to her, hoping she has the next steps. Like he’s reached his conclusion, and it’s that he’s confused.

“It doesn’t,” she says, and it comes out as half a laugh unintentionally, just looking at his ridiculous, adorable face.

“Why are you laughing?” he demands with exasperated urgency. “This is super weird!” He rushes over and collapses next to her, a mess of flannel and limbs and beautiful dumbass. He shoves the notebook back into her hands as she folds her legs underneath her, relinquishing her grip on her knees.

“Yeah,” she sighs, unable to wipe the grin from her face. “Yeah, it is.” Luke looks like he wants to ask her what she’s smiling at, but then he starts smiling, too, because her happiness is his happiness. Julie’s already past the strange coincidence, lost in the joy of his gray-green eyes and the feeling of him next to her. She’s too used to strange, to the ever-changing rules of the afterlife and the constant uncertainty that Luke and her boys bring to her life. Yes, it’s strange, but she’s in a ghost band and her crush is dead and still manages to look at her like that so she has a certain level of perspective when it comes to things like this.

“What are you --” Luke tries to say, but her eyes are on his and they’re warm and brown and kind and he’s finding it a little hard to form sentences.

“This is ridiculous,” she says, and he’s nodding without knowing what he’s agreeing to. “We wrote the same song on the same day,” she laughs, and he nods again, half-listening, half lost in her. She’s excited now, about the possibility brought on by magic and her connection -- their connection -- souls tied together with passion and music and love. “That’s impossible!” It cements something for her, the feeling of coming together, of sliding into place. They’re so solid, tight, together, on the same wavelength… musicians have put it a thousand ways throughout the years, to communicate the feeling of a co-writer, a bandmate, a partner, reading your mind, singing the next line, playing the next riff that was just in your head. Julie and Luke get the added bonus of being inexplicably spiritually linked. Nothing can break that, or replace it. She’s not scared of it, anymore.

“Impossible,” he echoes. He always feels a little bit stronger, a little more alive whenever he’s with Julie like this, just the two of them, hanging out or writing music, and he’s in her immediate proximity, soaking in the warmth of her brown skin and brown eyes and the chaotic energy of her wild, incredible hair. She pulls him in, without knowing the power she holds or the light that she emits, casting a golden glow over everything around her.

“Luke,” she says, and he tunes back in, realizing that he’s steadily leaning toward her as they sit on the roof, Julie cross-legged, Luke angled toward her, one leg stretched out, his elbow propped on his other knee. “Are you listening?”

“Um,” he swallows, “Yeah?” but he’s looking at her lips, not her eyes, and he’s thinking about kissing her, just once, just to see what she tastes like, remembering the smell of gummies and m&ms, hoping she’ll be just as sweet. She doesn’t say anything, mostly because she forgot what she was going to say in the first place, watching his eyes watch her mouth, breathing him in. He’s too close again, closer than any friend or bandmate should be, and there’s no mic between them, and the door to her room is closed, and there’s no bandmates or brothers or dads, and her heart pounds in her chest.

When she tilts her chin towards him, she feels ready, finally, knowing what he means to her. Only a breath separates them, but they both stop, waiting for the inevitable interruption, the door slamming open, or someone calling up from the yard below, but it doesn’t come. Realizing what they’re both waiting for, they breathe out a simultaneous laugh, their foreheads dropping together. The tension fades, and Julie’s smile feels uncontainable, demanding every inch of her face as this beautiful, goofy, genus, talented boy adores her while she sits there, falling in love with him.

It’s easier, this moment, than the one before, because it feels less laden with the weight of someone pulling away, unsure or unwanting. This moment is comfortable, joyful, the two of them acknowledging every minute of want and disappointment and hilarious misfortune over the past few days, acknowledging what they would have asked for instead. And when Luke finally reaches up, pulling her in gently with his hand on her neck, his thumb sliding over her jaw, it’s with confidence and tenderness, reassured that she wants this, too. Julie leans easily into the touch, and when their lips meet, the spark and rush is better than any performance, any screaming crowd drowning in lights. They kiss each other, moving together, leaning in as one, harmony made in the movement of mouths and the press of lips, and this moment -- it’s perfect.

#jatp #juke #julie and the phatoms #julie x luke #luke x julie #jatp fic #julie and the phantoms fic #fic #fanfic #fanfiction #my writing #my stuff #homebodynobody #julie molina #luke patterson

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chessdaze · 4 years

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Since I outed myself with an ask to phoenix about an event I’ll go ahead and post something about my schedule for three wishes here. I won’t put this under read more just for visibility, so sorry ahead of time for clogging your dashes.

As a note ahead of time THESE ARE ALL SUBJECT TO CHANGE, I DO NOT GIVE ANY DATES CAUSE I’M NOT PUTTING MYSELF ON A DEADLINE. I’m doing this for my own enjoyment and hopefully, others as well but please don’t rush me. I’m sharing this just to be open about my plans and what I’m working on, and perhaps for the motivations / reminders it’ll give me - not to give anyone a reason to come at me. Okay? Okay.

Not counting small comics or misc posts of art and info or fics:

First order of business is for me to finish drawing all of Silas’ outfits and Design the Enchantress. I have Silas almost completely done sketch wise, so I’ll work on the sketches of the Enchantress next and then line/color and post those. I might also do some side character designs as I have a few that might show up here and there (but they’ll just be like the ghosts in canon, occasionally there and then you don’t see them for fucking ever). I WOULD do outfit design sheets for EVERY character BUT....that would be a lot of work. I might end up just making polls like ‘who would you like to see outfit references for’ and then work on them at my own pace. That way you guys get what you want first and I still have fun designing everyone’s outfits regardless.

Second order of business is my event I mentioned in the ask to phoenix, BATTLE OF THE BANDS! I accidentally went full game dev on the documentation (because if I’m not gonna use all that documentation homework I did for that game art degree NOW then when am I going to??), but I’m actually pretty far along planning wise since I’ve been working on it when I needed break from art things. Right now I have about half of the main story of the event outlined. My order of doing things is Summary of Story > Outline of items / mini games > Figure out what characters were going to be in the event > Main story outline > Card Story outlines > Finalized story and Card Stories > Art Assets. So it might take awhile before I post any art for it. But if people show interest in me posting some of the in progress things feel free to send me an ask every now and then and I can update you! Because of the ask and permission given, Evonie from @phoenix-manga ‘s Diamond Crown Academy will make an appearance in the event, as well as Three Wishes OCs made by @tsukikoayanosuke (Bridgette) and @missnekonyan (Donelle) as the clubs their characters are involved with the event overall. I’m really excited I got permission from all of them to be able to reference their characters! They won’t be big rolls but I’m happy to give all of these creators spotlight by adding in their characters.

Third thing, Regular Card Stories and Art for Cards! I am already making documentation to have these noted down, Will probably do them one dorm at a time but I do have a few ideas already. I will say that my R-SSR order of the cards is a bit different from canon. R’s are School Uniforms and PE outfits (will be slightly different depending on which PE course is taken by the student, since there’s three at three wishes), SRs are Dorm Outfits and Fundraising outfits - as Dorm outfits are different per person i didn’t think they were special enough for SSRs but still worth some highlight, and Fundraising / Volunteering is a mandatory class at Three Wishes so that gets another SR spot. Then lastly their SSRs are their Ceremony outfits. These are also different per character but they will all have a matching color scheme so that’s why i wanted these to be the SSRs. I also already have like four future events planned and which characters will be getting cards / what rank the cards will be for those characters! None of these events have any kind of outline yet, only general concepts and characters possibly involved, so the characters may change but I have them written down so I don’t forget and I can add to the event outlines as I find inspiration.

Maybe the fourth thing is actually designing the dang school. I SUCK at environment art, I’m not going to lie. It’s why alot of my comics up until this point has had minimal or no backgrounds at all. But one of the reasons why I’m drawing comics is to maybe get better at backgrounds cause I’m already sick of them not having one so progress I guess. But this is why this is kind of last on my list, as I definitely need the practice. If there’s a dorm or location I have listed that you would like to see art for or just described in better detail, Feel free to send me an ask!

And the thing I’m kind of working on while all of that is going on is of course, the Main Story Outline! I have all the chapter names picked and I have at least the Prologue - Second chapter bullet pointed as a first draft - I already know some places I wanna go back and change things but for now I’m just trying to get the general ideas for each chapter down. As of now there are eight chapters in total - including the prologue and the finale, so six major story chapters over all. I’m still not sure how I want to tell this story in all honestly. Part of me REALLY REALLY REALLY wants to make these full blown comics in all honesty. I’ve been wanting to draw actual comics since I was a kid and I’m closer now than I ever have been to being able to do so. But I also know how much of a time sync that is and know that I haven’t quite grasped all the shading tools in CSP to really give it the effect I want to have - which is one of the reasons I’m working on the mini comic pages here and there so I can slowly improve - but I can’t promise anything. If nothing else, I’m semi confident in my writing skills so I will maybe end up writing it out.

As a treat TM, I’ll list the chapter titles I have down below. THESE ARE SUBJECT TO CHANGE, but I am pretty happy with them right now - they’ll only likely change if I end up changing my entire idea for the chapter or changing the order of chapters. Anyone care to give me some theories on what you think each chapter is about? :thinking:

Prologue: the start of an actor's life Chapter one, Nightingale: by the stroke of midnight Chapter two,wondrous: a queen among thieves Chapter three, diamanttobar: the wishing well Chapter four, guardian: a dragons curse Chapter five, lapinhole: tipping the golden scale Chapter six, servireu: the guest has arrived Finale: when the last petal falls

If you read this far, thank you so much and I hope you look forward to more three wishes content! <3

Also I ask that this post isn’t reblogged, not gonna come at you if you do but it’s just a to do list really lol idk why anyone would want to reblog it.

#three wishes institute #twst fanschool #twisted wonderland fanschool #twst #twisted wonderland #schedule of project #kind of #just really a long winded to do list lmao

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love-killed-the-superstar · 4 years

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super late but here is day 6!! also: if the cottage was actually destroyed i’m sorry, but i combed through TOTS a LOT and couldn’t seem to find any proof it was actually fully destroyed so... please just suspend your disbelief for this one, lads

CASSUNZEL WEEK DAY 6 - TRUST AND HEALING

Interior decorating is something Rapunzel never figured she and Cass would have in common, but somehow, here they are.

To be perfectly honest, when Rapunzel decided to return to Gothel’s old cottage (or what was left of it, anyway) she wasn’t really sure how Cassandra would take the news. How exactly does one explain that they’re rebuilding your nearly-destroyed childhood home that may or may not hold a boatload of trauma inside its walls? In the end she had taken the coward’s way out and written her to break the news, fully expecting to be met with silence on Cass’s end, as so often happens when she receives news that’s hard to swallow. The fact that she returned to Corona less than a month after the letter had been sent surprised Rapunzel to no end.

(“So, we’ve got our work cut out for us,” she had said nonchalantly, climbing off of Fidella’s back and rolling up her sleeves as Rapunzel stared in shock. “Where should we start?”

“I-I didn’t think you’d actually – well, hang on a moment,” Rapunzel had replied, chickening out of the tough conversation. “Let me just find my clipboard.”)

Cass has been… a little quiet on the matter, to be honest. It’s been easy enough to keep distracted by the house; the foundation and floors have been rebuilt where they’d been torn through by black rocks, and Rapunzel had the roof rethatched several weeks earlier. Cassandra has thrown herself into repairing furniture, refitting the window panes and getting the water mill back up and running again, while Rapunzel has taken to repairing torn curtains, scrubbing mould and mildew and moss from the walls, weeding the cracks where plant life has inevitably sprung up from and filling them in afterwards. The effort to seal up the entrance to Gothel’s strange underground mirror lair takes the both of them, and although neither of them have much to say, it gives Rapunzel a grim satisfaction that the burned, smashed up hideout can’t be reached any longer.

This part of fixing the house takes just over two weeks of dawn-til-dusk of hard work, and each evening they ride back to the castle and fall into Rapunzel’s bed, too tired to really talk about it. Eugene finds the whole thing bizarre and doesn’t shy away from telling them so, but Rapunzel kind of got the feeling that he wouldn’t understand it from the moment she mentioned the idea to him.

(“Why are you dragging this ordeal out?” he had asked her one night, just two days before Cass showed up at the house without warning. “And why bring Cass into it at all? I don’t want to police your process, but isn’t it time to put Gothel behind you both and… learn to let go of the past?”

Rapunzel hadn’t known how to answer him. “It’s just something I want to do,” she had said instead. “And Gothel hurt her too, Eugene. I can’t keep it from her.”)

They don’t need to talk about it; not if they don’t want to. Rapunzel and Cassandra seem to have come to a silent agreement that they won’t push for some big heart-to-heart that ends in tears, or an argument that eventually turns into a greater understanding of each other’s pasts.

When it comes to the house that Gothel built, nothing really needs to be said at all. Right?

…

“I can’t believe we’ve done this, Cass.”

“Tell me about it. What exactly ignited this passion project of yours, anyway?”

“I wanted to breathe new life into this place, I guess.”

The two of them stand back and stare at their surroundings in satisfaction. There’s no more cobwebs or ivy or moss covering the walls, and where there are stains Rapunzel has thrown on a cream wash. The floors and ceiling and roof are repaired, the windows are no longer cracked and smashed, and the creak of the water mill can be heard faintly from outside. The salvaged furniture is stacked up in the centre of the room, and Rapunzel has decided that tomorrow they’ll take a trip to the market to replace the items that were too far gone to be saved.

Today, they’re focusing on the walls.

Rapunzel’s vision is a little… eclectic. Pale, neutral walls might be best, and perhaps they can be accented with floral imagery, or maybe even a mural of the cottage itself. Another part of her, however, dreams in full colour; cerulean walls, or perhaps celadon, with bright sunny yellow flowers and trees with purple leaves – and why stop there? She could paint some horses in a meadow, or birds soaring through the sky. Why not paint fairies, unicorns, dragons? Make this house its own storybook experience?

“I’m so torn on my vision,” she confesses to Cassandra as she stands between buckets upon buckets of paint, an entire rainbow of choice laid out in front of her. “I need a better idea of what to paint before I can even think about washes. Any thoughts?”

“I’m a little creatively stinted, Rapunzel,” Cass deadpans. “I thought you had a clear vision of this place when you started out?”

“I can’t narrow it down. Do I want to go simple, or do I want to completely transform this place?”

Cass shrugs listlessly, sitting down cross-legged by the stacks of furniture. “You just have to listen to your gut.”

Oh, if guts could talk, Rapunzel would be all ears. Her frown deepens as she contemplates her options. Maybe she should find a compromise. Pale walls, vibrant art? Maybe that will work best.

Hesitantly, she reaches for a muted green (the bedroom area can be a forest mural now, she’s decided, or maybe a marsh) and heads over to a wall in need of a fresh coat. Cassandra joins her, a comically large paintbrush in hand, and they paint in a sullen silence.

“So, Cass. I’m… I’m glad you came back to help me out with this,” Rapunzel ventures. “You didn’t have to.”

“You sounded afraid in your letter,” Cass says coolly, with a long sweeping stroke. “Like you thought I would be angry at you for doing this, so I thought I should come back. Besides, I… I wanted to see it for myself.”

Cassandra can be frustratingly hard to read sometimes, and now happens to be one such instance. Rapunzel isn’t sure what she wants right now. It was easy enough not to talk at first, but something about pouring some of her own flair into these walls makes her uneasy – has her overcome with this urge to get everything off their chests before she proceeds. What memories does Cass have of this place? Does it hurt to be here, even if she refuses to show it? Is there some good left in this place, parts that Cassandra might not want to let go of?

“Do you like what you see?” Rapunzel asks quietly.

“...I don’t know yet. I need a fuller picture before I draw any conclusions.”

Rapunzel feels like – hopes – she has some insight into how Cass might be feeling right now. Returning to the tower for the first time since reuniting with her family had given her all sorts to think about, and watching it fall had filled her with a nauseating combination of crisis and catharsis. After all, there were some good memories amongst all the long, drawn out days of agonising boredom and walking on eggshells around Gothel, always so afraid of saying the wrong thing and making everything worse. It wasn’t love, and her world was so small before she left the tower behind.

Even if her time with Gothel was far briefer, Rapunzel can’t help but wonder if Cassandra holds echoes of fond memories somewhere in there, as few and far between as they may have been.

“You know, when I returned to this place, I didn’t think the house would be salvageable,” Rapunzel confesses to the silence. “Given the spike tearing through it, and the way the mountain crumbled inside, I figured it would probably have fallen apart. So seeing that there was still a chance to restore it… I don’t know. I couldn’t really think about anything else, for weeks afterwards. In the end, Eugene just told me to get it all out of my system. He’s not exactly happy about it, but…”

“Well sure, the wedding will suck if you’re too busy thinking about complimentary paint colours to focus on your vows,” Cass points out dryly. Rapunzel laughs.

“Yeah, you have a point.” As she goes to dip her paintbrush again, she glances to the wall adjacent; cream, blank, inviting.

“...Do you have a date in mind yet?”

“Not yet. We’re thinking spring or summer though. We need time to get all the arrangements together, after all.” Rapunzel purses her lip. “You know, I think I’m going to start on some detailing. Mind finishing this off?”

Cass nods, and carries on in that same long silence. Rapunzel moves onto the wall. She envisions a recreation of that cottage. She’s been sketching it a lot, lately, and goes to retrieve her journal.

“You’re making a mural of the cottage?” Cass wrinkles her nose as Rapunzel leans the journal up against a beam at the edge of the wall. “So you step inside, just to see the outside all over again?”

“Well, it’s picturesque!” Rapunzel says. She lingers, paintbrush trailing in the beige she picked out for the base of the house. “Unless you don’t want me to paint it?”

A pause. “No, go ahead. Paint it. It doesn’t matter to me either way.”

Rapunzel begins slowly at first, glancing between the wall in front of her and the woman two metres away, still listlessly dragging the brush. She’s changed a little; her hair is getting longer, scraped back into a slightly lopsided ponytail to keep it out the way. Rapunzel is tempted to drag a comb through and tie it more evenly, but judging from the tension in Cassandra’s shoulders, it would probably be met with resistance.

After a while, however, Rapunzel soon falls into the trance of painting – absorbed into the gentle strokes of the brush, planning the subtle lighting and how to translate the details of the house in simple splotches of paint. She even forgets her original plight to talk things through with Cass, losing her awareness of the world around her until it is simply her and the brush and the wall, coming together to paint this fairytale home, where from now on only good things will happen and happy memories will be made and no child will ever feel abandoned or unwanted or hurt ever again–

“Rapunzel!”

Cass grabs her arm and Rapunzel jerks out of her vision, staring at her in confusion. Her paintbrush, dripping jade, is just inches from the edge of the beam in the corner. The stretch of grass she was in the middle of painting now has an uneven glob that slowly rolls down like a teardrop. Cass grips her arm tight, eyes bright with alarm.

“Cassandra, what’s wrong?”

“I…” Her grip loosens and, brow furrowing, she releases Rapunzel’s arm. “Nothing, nothing’s wrong, you just…”

“I just?” Rapunzel prompts, bewildered.

“The beam. You were – you were going to get paint on the beam.”

“Oh. Uh, good reflexes! I didn’t realise.” She laughs nervously. “Guess I got a little carried away, huh?”

“Yeah, well.” Cass mutters, stepping back. She sets her paintbrush back in its bucket and runs her fingers through her hair, uncaring that she smudges green paint against her scalp in the process. “Just be careful, Rapunzel, all right?”

“Uh, sure.” Rapunzel frowns. “Cass, are you sure you’re okay?”

“I’m fine, Raps.” She turns her back. “Look, I’m going to get some fresh air.”

She heads towards the door without looking back, leaving the door wide open and swinging as she goes. Rapunzel watches after her, thoroughly confused, before turning back to the wall. Maybe Cassandra does hate the mural. Maybe she hates everything Rapunzel is doing right now, and is just here to intervene when things get too much? After all, things have been strange between them since she returned. They’ve barely hugged or kissed or held hands, and Rapunzel knows they’re not in the giddy, starry-eyed closeness stage of their relationship anymore, and Cass has never been huge on big gestures of affection, but still… it’s impossible to ignore this atmosphere any longer.

As she sets her own paint brush aside, dejected, something catches the corner of her eye and she pauses. There’s something on the beam. When Rapunzel looks, she can’t work out at first why it grabbed her attention; it’s just a chip in the wood, a scrape maybe, but it’s fairly deep. She only noticed it from bending over, it’s not too far off the ground… and that’s when she sees more scratches. Some are shallower than others, some more controlled and some extremely wobbly and veering off to one side. But she can make out that they’re more than just someone chipping away at wood when they’re bored. There are… scribbles, wonky bodies, twigs for arms.

The lower part of the beam is covered in a child’s carvings.

The longer Rapunzel stares, the colder she begins to feel inside. This beam isn’t the only one; there are dozens of wooden trimmings, as her feet carry her across the room, and each with the same cast of characters – a tall scribble and a shorter scribble. Mother and daughter.

She needs to find Cass.

Rapunzel doesn’t need to look hard. She barely takes two steps outside before she sees the glint of Cassandra’s sword as it slashes through the air, sparring with herself. If she hears Rapunzel approach, she doesn’t acknowledge her until Rapunzel offers, “I saw the carvings. I’m sorry, Cass.”

“Why be sorry? You didn’t know they were there,” she mutters, swinging again, and again. “Nobody did. Even I didn’t, until we started the wash. Once we were standing there, the memories kind of hit me all at once.”

“They were yours, then.” No response. “...They looked quite advanced, for a four-year-old’s drawings.”

“Well, what else was I supposed to do to pass the time, once the floors had been swept and the beds had been made?” Cass snaps. Another swing. “I had nothing but free time with the house to myself, after all.”

“Cass, can we please talk about this without the deadly weapon thrown in?” Rapunzel pleads. Cass ignores her. Another swing.

“I’m just lucky she was never around long enough to really pay attention to them. I mean, can you imagine how she would have scolded me? Or worse?” Another swing.

“Cassandra, please. Put down the sword. Let me near you.”

“I don’t get it, Rapunzel! Why did… why did I just – why did I ever let Zhan Tiri fool me into thinking she might have loved me?”

“Cass, stop!”

Cass raises her sword to strike again when she feels arms wrap around her waist, halting her in her tracks. Rapunzel clings on, pressing her cheek to Cassandra’s back and feeling her erratic breathing as she stands still, finally allowing the sword to lower gently.

“...Why did it have to be this cottage, Rapunzel?” she croaks. “Isn’t it better to leave it all buried?”

“I don’t think so,” Rapunzel whispers. “Darling, I don’t think that will work forever.”

Cass sinks to her knees, taking Rapunzel with her, and they kneel in silence as the breeze rustles the trees around them.

“I feel sick,” Cass says dully, setting her sword down in the grass. Rapunzel presses her forehead to the space between Cassandra’s shoulder blades, breathing in her smell, trying to soothe her somehow.

“This is too weird, isn’t it?” she murmurs.

“Rapunzel, it’s so fucking weird.” Rapunzel winces. Cass does well not to curse in front of her, but, well… maybe now isn’t the best time to comment on it. “You never even lived here. Why do you have this need to mold it to your worldview instead of letting it rot away quietly like everybody else was happy to do?”

“This is a beautiful place,” Rapunzel protests. “Isn’t it beautiful? Why should it have to die because of the terrible things she did? You were born in this cottage, Cassandra, that means something! Gothel was a horrible person and she made both of our lives miserable, but – but that doesn’t mean we can’t still find something beautiful in this place.”

“Not everything has to be beautiful, or even saved. Fixing a house isn’t going to fix us, is it?”

The sharpness of her words cut right through Rapunzel, and pulls away from Cass, stunned. Cass cranes her neck to face her, regret already written all over.

“You’re right. I’m a fool, aren’t I, Cass? Because I – I actually hoped it would.” Rapunzel buries her head in her hands. “Darn it, I… I want to move on, just like you do. I always think I’m over the tower and Gothel, but then when I found this place… I just thought about how good it would feel to take it away from her and make it beautiful and then some new family could live here, a loving family who take care of each other and don’t b-belittle their kids…”

Cass turns around fully, and reaches over to squeeze Rapunzel’s shoulders.

“Don’t, Raps. You’re not foolish for wanting those things, all right? I just… I don’t think painting some walls will bring you any closure. And being here, surrounded by all these things that remind us of her, isn’t helping either.”

“I shouldn’t have written to you. Eugene told me to leave you out of this because he knew this was a bad idea and we’d both get hurt from it, but I didn’t listen, and now-”

“Seriously, stop. Do not give Fitzherbert the satisfaction of being right about something.” Rapunzel peeks up at her, and Cass offers her a small smile. “I didn’t feel like this the whole time. It has been kind of fun, repairing things and putting it all back together, but then I’d remember where we were and wonder why we were doing this, and – and I didn’t know how to even talk to you about it.”

“I thought you just didn’t want to talk, so I didn’t try to push it.” Rapunzel smiles faintly. “Eugene is going out of his mind, trying to understand the logic of the situation.”

“He’s not the only one.” Cass leans forward and kisses Rapunzel softly. “Look, if you truly believe that redecorating will somehow cleanse this house of Gothel forever and give us some catharsis, I’ll trust your judgement. But only if you trust mine when I say that this isn’t the only way to do that.”

Rapunzel nods, leaning over to kiss her back.

“I’m sorry Gothel hurt you,” she murmurs. Cass sighs sadly.

“I’m sorry she hurt you too.”

“I wish Zhan Tiri hadn’t forced you to remember all of this, but… do you regret knowing?” Rapunzel asks, running a thumb across Cassandra’s cheek soothingly. Cass leans into her touch, eyes fluttering shut.

“No. I always knew something was missing, so even though it hurts, at least the pieces are all there. I just – I wish it had gone differently, that’s all. I wish she had been different.”

They sit in silence, neither sure of what else to say, and Rapunzel glances back over at the house. It stands stout and quiet, charming on the outside, but somehow she can't bring herself to go back inside. “...You know, maybe we should leave it for today.”

Cass quirks an eyebrow in confusion. “Really? It’s barely noon, and the walls won’t paint themselves.”

“It’ll still be standing tomorrow! Besides, we’ve been perfect strangers since you came back. I want to take a moment just to be with you.”

She flops back, stretching out on the soft grass and staring up at the cloudless sky above. It truly is beyond beautiful out here. Cassandra’s face hovers over hers, presses a kiss to her brow, and then she lies back beside her.

“You know, when you take Gothel out of the equation, this place is really peaceful,” Cass comments.

“If we have our way, by the time we’re done no one will associate it with her ever again,” Rapunzel agrees. “Wouldn’t it be nice?”

“Paradise,” Cass remarks, and Rapunzel can hear the wry smile in her voice as she speaks. “It would be just paradise.”

When it comes to the house that Gothel built, they’re going to build it back up, better than ever before. Nothing else needs to be said. The clouds drift on and they lie there, hand in hand.

#cassunzel week #cassunzel week 2020 #cassunzel #tangled the series #tts #writing

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stry-someone-to-remember-you · 4 years

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Plan(ed) to Have Something Ready, By The Ball Drop &/or Tomorrow!!! If Everything Works out...

Hey Everyone,

HAPPY NEW YEARS EVE!!!

Wow, this is the second message without any art added or anything... LOL... Seems odd really to do this without having something up by now... By the way, yes the current avatar pic is related to the comic as you’ll come see soon. It’s and early sketch so some kinks aren’t worked out in the current image. But it was the one I was ready to have when I made this blog so there was at least something...

So as you probably can see by this title, I do plan on having something posted... I just don’t know to what extent. Due to some family drama, and continually piling on work I wasn’t able to get my Christmas Pic out to you guys, which was just a static scene with a few of the characters to get us started here. But... well family got in the way, continually decorating till Christmas day... a lot of things going on, bickering (though we all love each other) it’s just... you know life. I fully expected this as well, which is why I promised something before New Years, but didn’t specify as to what.

I postponed that idea to be released today or tomorrow, after seeing how I was completely unable to get to the work by Christmas Eve. But, by the looks of the progress I made on it and my families continually need of me till we get some things done in this house (that always has something to be done in it... LOL, at least things are coming fairly together). So lets just say, I may not have anything out by tomorrow. But with hopes I want to have something out. So We’ll see. I could release early the character sketches. But I want to keep this blog clean as possible, so I feel releasing the character profiles, cards and blogs together prior to the Prologue, would fit better and keep this page having a cleaner look to it at the start.

Maybe even by midnight tomorrow PST I could have something... But that again depends. I need to clean stuff for the internet/cable guy and I’m seriously allergic to dust... So the next few days I may be in an almost sickly comatose state regardless of the precautions I take. If dust gets kicked into the air at all and isn’t properly vacuumed up, than I’m often sick for days... I feel like all I’ve been doing the whole month is cleaning or working story wise on this comic... Mostly cleaning if you ask me, but at least after Saturday things should be more relaxed and I can have a better work schedule planned out. So yeah, that’s my life...

But DIDNT’ WAN TO LEAVE YOU HANGING with this Negative Nancy Talk ;D ;P ;D lol....

I want to tell you what I have so far:

I have the Christmas Image at least with the basic building blocks to complete it. Like I’ve drawn where I want things, but not detailed anything... So that’s why it may be a day or so... Technically its a Happy Holidays and New Years piece, but with the Christmas Tree in it I have the habit of calling it such...

I may have plans to detail it a bit more then I plan on having the comic, but that also depends on things. I may just leave it in the same style and not fully decked out to make it easier to finish...

~Several Characters for the beginning have their final forms created. These are major characters that will be scene in the prologue. I’m just having to figure out out little things with background characters in some instances.

~The prologue is almost completely written out. I had a change of heart a week ago on some things and had to change it around, which is why the written format for the prologue isn’t complete as it initially was. I just felt some things didn’t fit, so I added and took away some things so it flows better and also works both fanfiction wise for the story, but easily mixes for the Ask AU... I also have at least the beginning portion of the Intro script written, the parts unaffected by the changes. However, parts of the intro will be written out, depending on the questions you ask the characters in this prologue so these portions I’m leaving open on purpose. It’s the plot driven portions I’m mentioning that I’ve changed slightly. ;) I have fun plans for the prologue. Remember this story has a clear direction I’m taking it with plot. But the Ask portion will be a part of it, I have such a fun way of Ask’s being tied into the plot driven story, and it will change depending on the context, person and setting which makes this really fun to plan out.

-With that said, here’s an early heads up, that for Ask Questions, I will allow any sort of asks, but if it has potential to spoil a part of the story, then I won’t answer it. Alongside this, I’ll allow Anon magic to a small degree. I won’t include Asks that like spoil something for a character, or tell the character where someone is, give away what someone else is doing to another character, etc... Unless it may fit the context, but generally I won’t use these types of asks. I will allow Anons to appear occasionally rather then just be unseen voices, as I have fun ways of incorporating Anons into the story that also works with different points in the plot. I will accept things like... say a dog or cat to appear for ex. amount of asks. I already know who they’ll be and have been planning out their designs, but I may draw the line at other animals (e.g. horses, fish, racoons, squirrels, lizards, etc.) Although, I do really love rabbits, I chose to make it concise to just two animals that if asked could appear. It’s not because I can’t draw them but I don’t want things getting out of hand. Types of anon magic I’m not going to use if put in the Ask portion, are things like giving people certain powers or items that may completely effect the tone or plot of the story, accept maybe if I did a non-canon AU to this au for fun one day. I will go more in depth in the general rules later. In no way is this to discourage anyone from asking such things. I may set reminders at times if I get to much of something. But, in general I’ll do what I can to make this a fun Ask blog all the same.

~The Larger Summary, I promised like a trailer would be in the comic form I have rendered the Script for, and have two slides so far drawn out, just not completed. (for the time I didn’t have around the Holidays compared to normally I actually surprised myself with this)

~The story itself is really coming together, I already have a starting and stopping point (which I had prior to this blog) as it will have several Acts and Arcs, some which have greatly changed and take on new depth since the point I started this blog. The themes and story in general are drawn out pretty well. I don’t have all the chapters I’d want fully written. As I have my plan, but I also want to get the prologue in first, just to see if there’s anything I should change with my concept. It’s just a precaution, something I’ve learned well when taking on something new. So I don’t have things that are written in stone and hard to change if the form I’m hoping to take doesn’t work out and needs to be retooled or something. But these are minor and shouldn’t change the overall scope and plot I’m taking this story on either.

~I’ve created several of the character bios, many in fact are already written in true Henry Stickmin fashion. But as I took inspiration to make this into a AU as well, I will possibly make both the bio cards and show a static shot of the characters alongside it or something... It’s an idea, but I want this to also be the easier comic. But, considering that I’ll always have a static shot I use as reference for any character I make, this is what makes this more realistic to occur as well. ~I’ve nearly drawn out all the characters for the intro portion. And already know how I’ll handle Anon’s in the story. In the Prologue itself, I’ll actually have you Anon’s being referenced as audience members in a conference of sorts. Think of it like those conferences when a new Apple or Microsoft product is first advertised as something new to the news conference, those big rotunda’s where someone's being interviewed and presenting the hot new item. Think of the opening to the prologue being something like this scenario. So the questions directed at the character in there, who... *cough* I will introduce later after I fully render both their character profile and have their character bio(s) fully done. Which considering how fun and easy it’s been to do this so far shouldn’t be to long now... Although to keep from getting questions to soon on them, I may hold off on posting the Characters and Bio’s till I have that Intro/Trailer completed... I’m still considering which to do first actually. But top on my list out of all of these is having my cover art for the top completed. That’s something I admit though I have the layout I have hardly started on and should focus on first.

~I’m also taking close looks at how to properly make the rules for this group. When I posts either the Character Bios, Holiday Pic, OR the Trailer Comic... Maye even just the cover art... Then I will try to have out an official Rules list. The one I have on the group posts is just general stuff... But I’m reconsidering some rules I already wrote... Basically keep things family friendly, be kind an courteous, nothing vulgar or disturbing.

I may change this from a PG-13 comic to maybe PG-15. I’ve realized recently, there are some points that some characters do swear... sometimes more then once. I’m not someone who talks with vulgarity myself, but I sure can write characters with it.... Let’s just say I’m going to see if in those scenes I might just bleep out words and see if the dialogue still comes through. But, I dunno... LUCKILY, we don’t have to worry about many of those scenes till way further into this comic. So lucky for either of us, this isn’t a major concern at the moment. And on the plus side it’s not the crudest words I could have chosen so... it may still work as a PG-13 work... I’ll make this decision soon as possible.

Another reason for the sudden change, came as I realized as the story goes, and even in early chapters there will be scenes where blood is shown and physical mortal danger and peril is experienced by the characters. I do have heavy theming sometimes, later on it may seem constantly about. As this story is heavily Drama/Mystery and some suspense based. As the story progresses it will become less Drama/Mystery and more based around the drama/suspense itself. This will obviously be some more intense scenes that showing less blood would allow me to make PG-13, however I also don’t want to undercut the certain tones using representations of a mortal wound would bring. I also want to look at things like these future scenes realistically. Which is why I’m mostly considering changing this story to a PG-15 or at least more certain I am. I just don’t want people shocked that I’m doing this. I don’t feel this story will be R, there was a time where I heavily considered it. But for once I decided no, I didn’t want that. I just didn’t want to open the door for scenes I didn’t intend to have in this story. There will be heavy themes that my have TW for some people. But I didn’t want some TW’s that having a R rated story could potentially have. I mean certain themes people are free to write fanfictions for, and depending on the content can make art for. But again this will be family friendly group... As You can see I’m considering more then a little here when it comes to the official rules. These details will be followed up on the official rules post.

~~~~~~

Now I apologize for the length.

The structure of this and the previous Authors Notes will probably fall under their own category for length. I’ll work to make sure posts in the future won’t be so long and hard to read. It is early morning for me when I woke to write this, and I found once much of the day passed that I still wanted to include the stuff I did into this update.

I have more to tell you, but I think this post has spurned the energy in me out. Anything that I missed in this post, I’ll try to remember to update in the next post (hopefully after I get some art on here). What I can’t do at the moment is promise dates right now till I’m more certain of schedule to work on this or can promise that my general allergies won’t cause me to delay this at all. But I can confirm that I should have several things coming out this next month, including the comic Prologue I hope. Depending on the traction the comic and fanfic gets, I may try to work on it quickly, or take my time with it. I may do a mix of both as my perfectionist self won’t let me just shoot something out without giving it my all first. I’m shushing that side slightly so this comic will be easier on me then the more detailed one I have planned. All the same, I’m planning to work on this one more at the moment till I can get an idea of my work flow. Sometimes the easiest route of work is better for planning, rather then diving head first into the deep end right away. You don’t learn to swim by jumping head first into the ocean. Piece of advice that it took years for me to learn myself ;). Anyways, I figured since I did promise something hopefully by today or tomorrow, I’d give you a formal update... Also... Well I can’t promise that updates won’t be like this in the future. I’ll try to keep them concise. But as people who know me, well have learned when it comes to personally talking I tend to write or talk out epistle. So... When I give updates, I may have lengthy ones... I’ll try my best to keep this side of me out of updates, if I can help it. Anyways Happy New Years Everyone!!! I hope everyone's Christmas and Holidays were extra special, despite the state of the world!!!

HAPPY NEW YEARS EVE AND DAY!!! Sincerely, <3 (Mod) Sweet Heart Blaze

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jazzypizzaz · 4 years

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that reminds me that a million years ago, I started writing a trans!Ginny fic... I stopped for the same reason I abandon any fic, ran out of steam, also because as a cis person I felt I needed to read/listen/learn, but I actually wrote way more here than I thought?? anyway caveat that this is half-sketched

I Told You So or A Witch Knows Best

February 1981

“This one’s a girl, I can tell,” Mrs. Weasley says offhandedly, rubbing her stomach as she conducts pots and pans into and out of the soapy sink.

Mr. Weasley peeks up from his Muggle Monthly Magazine, confusedly. He looks around and sees no one but the two of them.

“Sorry, wassat?” he says.

“This one’s a girl, I’m certain of it this time.”

He notices her hand resting on her stomach and jumps up at once. “Oh! a baby! Mollywobbles!” He makes his way over to her, rubs her shoulder, and kisses her cheek with a delighted smile.

Molly smiles back, then twists her mouth in concern. “I know we’re stretched thin as it is, but Bill will be off to Hogwarts next year, so that will free up the top bedroom, as well as some of the chaos...”

"I know it shouldn't matter, but…" She clasps her hands together with a wistful smile and continues, “just think! A quiet, clever little daughter! A sensible confidante in this houseful of messy little boys. Of course, she be more mischievous than the twins, a more reckless flyer than Bill, and Merlin knows the Queen herself is messier than Percy, and I'd love my little tomboy all the same, but -- a daughter!”

“A daughter you say? But… generations! and darling you did think the same of Charlie. And Percy, and Ro--”

She kisses his cheek, and he immediately stops talking. Molly smiles indulgently. “And! just think! Tiny dresses and little bows… It’s like I know her already.”

He opens his mouth, thinks better of it, and with an adoring shake of his head and a grin says with full sincerity, “A daughter! Another baby. That’s wonderful news, Molly. And you know-- we’ve been making real headway on the MPA-- there’s a good chance I’ll be promoted once we can push it through approval. They may be opening up a whole new department, part of Magical Enforcement, and I’d be first in line for a junior position.”

“Oh that’s wonderful news! I’m always saying they’re wasting your talents as a legal cleric, but I knew you’d make the best of it.”

“We’ll be fine, love, we always are,” Mr. Weasley says, giving her a squeeze then letting her go. And you’ll be fine, if it’s another son, hangs between them unsaid.

He gazes longingly at the upturned magazine, then wanders to his briefcase and takes out some papers for editing, pensive.

******

August 1981

“Molly, Mollywobbles, darling, it’s all fine now, you can hold him,” Mr. Weasley says, pushing her limp hair off her face with his free arm.

Mrs. Weasley opens her eyes groggily, and Arthur, silhouetted against the bright white of the hospital wing, comes into focus gradually. She shakes her head, trying to clear her mind of the Sleeping Serum and pushes herself upright.

“Are you alright love? It was tough-going there for a bit, but everything’s fine now. He’s beautiful, look at him! Another perfect Weasley son.” Mr. Weasley emphasizes several of the words slightly, hoping not to add to her disorientation.

The usual pain-numbing Birthing Potion had some strange side effects-- including filling the room with bright blue bubbles which gleefully bounced around the room, causing Molly much distress-- so the Healers had to dose her with an emergency sleeping potion to finish delivering the child, which was a son, a beautiful darling son, but a son nonetheless. Or so the Healers said.

He held out the small blue-wrapped bundle in his arms tentatively.

Molly glanced at it-- blue was for boys, whose child was this?-- “Another what?” She cleared her throat, glancing from the child’s tuft of shocking red hair sprouting out from beneath the blue, then back up to Arthur’s balding red head.

“Another son, love,” He says gently and hands the baby to her, “Ginalto Weasley is pleased to meet you at last.”

“Her name’s supposed to be Ginerva,” Molly says absently, stroking the baby’s head. It coos and hiccups, and a loving, wistful smile breaks out on Molly’s face. “Oh darling child, but I suppose Ginalto will suit you just fine.”

Arthur watches her carefully. I told you so, he thinks, but doesn’t dare voice aloud. “I know you thought… Are you sure--”

“Now Arthur, don’t you start apologizing, because I knew those crackpot Muggle superstitions wouldn’t work, it just seemed so important to you to try, but you know a witch always knows best--”

“That’s not what I--”

“And don’t you dare ask me if I’m disappointed in this lovely child.”

“Of course not! Why would--”

“Our darling, perfect baby, I’ve known you for some time, but now you get to meet the rest of us. Welcome to the family.”

Mr. Weasley shakes his head with a chuckle. “Welcome.”

********

(scene about Mrs Weasley’s parenting style, being a worrywart, Ginalto is a delicate child but even-tempered or surprisingly resilient?, molly is protective)

********

July 1987

“Mummy, Ron keeps calling him Ginny, make him stop it’s not his name,” Percy whines, tugging on Mrs. Weasley’s skirt. “I think Fred and George put him up to it.”

“Calling who what now?” Mrs. Weasley says absently, sorting through the next load of laundry with one hand as a flick of a wand in her other puffs dry a clean pile of towels.

“Ron’s calling Gino by a girl’s name, but he’s a boy, that’s not allowed,” Percy says resolutely.

“You’re the older brother of both of them, so why don’t you explain to Ron that it’s proper to call people by their names?”

“I tried, but I think Fred--”

“Percy, hon, when you leave to Hogwarts next month, Fred and George won’t be there, but I’m sure-- Merlin help the prefects-- there will be other such troublemakers, and you won’t have me to sort out every squabble. How about you ask Ron if he would like it if you called him Ronda instead of his actual name? You can show him what a smart big boy you are.”

“I did, I tried, but George said that--”

With a misplaced flick of her wand, a towel exploded into a mushroom cloud of steam with a hissing wizz-WHOOSH!, interrupting Percy’s insistence. Mrs. Weasley sighed, resignedly.

“Where is Bill when I need him… Merlin, another two years before the twins are Dumbledore’s problem, oh goodness I’ll be getting owls every week... Sonorus!” She pointed at her throat and her voice magnified. “FRED! GEORGE! Everyone to the laundry room! NOW!”

A few minutes later, Fred and George skidded to a halt with Gino and Ron following at their heels at the door of where Mrs. Weasley and Percy stood waiting. “Mum! We were just de-gnoming the garden like you asked us! We even taught both of them how to help--”

“Yeah! Ginny’s really good, gets the gnomes straight through the window into the oven everyti--” Ron jabbered excitedly, as Gino gave a shy, proud smile.

“I told you! I told you they were calling him--” Percy interrupted.

Mrs. Weasley placated Percy, gave a tired smile to Gino and Ron, then turned on the twins.

“Your brother’s name is Gino, and I think he would appreciate it if you called him by his real name or so help me I will call you Fred and-- George--” She said angrily looking from one to the other. One twin opened his mouth, but she interrupted him. “Or rather George and Fred, then, the one that's not your own name, yes I know I know hardly proving my point here, but honestly it’s different, there’s no way to confuse Gino with anyone besides maybe Ron--”

“But he likes being called Ginny, he wants to be just like Ginny Gynnoficz when he grows up, you know Martin Miggs’s girlfriend in Fred’s comics, he told me himself!” Ron insisted earnestly.

“Gino is five years old, so maybe he only says that because you are his older brothers and are supposed to be ROLE MODELS instead of teaching him how to fling GNOMES into the KITCHEN.”

Mrs. Weasley ignore Ron’s further protests and turned back to the twins. “The oven, honestly. Don’t think I don’t know you two put Ron up to this! Stop teasing Gino, he’s a kind boy and doesn’t deserve you two making fun of him--”

“I do want to be called Ginny, it’s lovely, and Ginalto tastes like mothballs.” Ginny said, speaking up for the first time in a quiet, tentative voice.

Silence hung in the air for a moment, for the first time all morning. Percy frowned grumpily.

“See mum! Ron told you--” Fred started.

“What a good kid, that Ginny, sticking up for all of us like that--” George continued.

“True and loyal Gryffindors, the both of them--”

“Although Ron’s still lousy at gnoming, you know they’ll fail him out of Hogwarts if--”

“That’s enough,” Mrs. Weasley said, silencing them with a glare. “Now you two are going to finish with the garden by yourself. Percy, just… mind your own business please. and Ron, honey, be a dear and get Hadna Hellump’s Household Hexes from downstairs, I don’t think this drying spell is working right.”

They scampered off quickly, leaving Ginny behind, before Mrs. Weasley could realize that the oven was still full of gnomes.

Mrs. Weasley knelt down, so that they were face to face. “You’ll tell me if the twins call you anything you don’t like, right darling? You don’t have to let them boss you around.”

Ginny nods solemnly.

Mrs. Weasley smiles, kisses her youngest child's cheek, her last child, then stands up. “We did almost name you Ginerva, you know. Ah well, my little Ginny then, why don’t you help me fold these towels? There’s my good one, my sweet baby.”

*********

scenes:

Arthur-- shopping, wistful, stolen glances, corner of the eye Ginny

1st year, TOM RIDDLE, holy shit so much potential with this, Ginny spilling her secrets, the first time she's told anyone or even realized herself

the fact that ginny goes from shy/small/nervous and presumed boy, to outspoken clever ferocious tough girl...

hair, Bill Weasley grews his out!, Ginny wants to also

harry potter???

mrs. weasley finds various make-up potions missing then replaced… dressing up in skirts/etc? mrs. weasley thinks f/g are pulling a prank, but obvs they’re not. ginny later doesn't even like dresses that much, just what they signified.

mrs. weasley always wanted a daughter and is overjoyed to realize she was right all along. percy is obstinate at first but defends her at school, F/G have called her their sister for years, ron is just confused & supportive in a clumsy way. (bill and charlie say good on ya! but ya know they’re not around much, all adults and such) arthur researches muggle methods (hormone blockers, etc)-- wizarding world charms are patchy at best although there's old magic resurfacing

#jazzy writes fic!

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paulisweeabootrash · 4 years

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2020 mini-review pack

Di Gi Charat (1999)

Episodes watched: 7

Platform: VRV (Hidive)

Di Gi Charat (pronounced like “carrot”) is a series of fast-paced 4-ish-minute shorts nominally about Dejiko and Rabi-en-Rose, rivals trying to be Earth’s greatest idol. Who are, respectively, a catgirl and a bunnygirl. Oh, and also they’re aliens? That’s... uh... certainly a premise, I guess. The actual show consists of self-contained gag-filled episodes with no ongoing story, in almost a sitcom kind of way, throwing the characters into situations without context, but with a stable “baseline” situation (unlike, say, Pop Team Epic, where the characters serve more as stock personalities playing different roles in different sketches). Dejiko is a snarky schemer. Rabi-en-Rose is a snarky schemer whose main activity seems to be bothering Dejiko at work. Puchiko is a small and quiet child and behaves accordingly. And Gema is... something? I have no clue, honestly, and neither does the fan wiki. Other recurring characters fill stock roles such as “manager” and “otaku”. A lot of the humor centers around poking fun at fandom. It’s a show by, for, and about otaku from an era before our current internet culture, and since I’m a millennial and not from Japan, that makes it unusually hard to evaluate.

W/A/S: 8/2?/5?

Weeb: Chibis. Catgirls. Idols. Kappas. Kawaii verbal tics. Akihabara. Low-detail background characters who look like blobs or thumbs with faces. Kanji left on-screen but untranslated. Particular sorts of highly-exaggerated facial expressions we may have become familiar with through emoji, but which still haven’t made their way into American media generally. This is ludicrously Japanese.

Ass: This really isn't that kind of show. Although it is certainly designed for adults, as evidenced by the presence of phrases like “naughty doujinshi”.

Shit: The art is fun. It has style shifts from comic strip to watercolor painting to mainstream 90s anime, and looks better than some of its contemporaries that were, uh, “real” shows. The opening takes up about a quarter of the total runtime and gets annoying quickly (but that's because it’s clearly designed for being part of a broadcast block, not binge-watching). Still, unless I’m missing hidden cleverness on account of not having the background knowledge, there’s not much to it. It’s just okay.

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First Astronomical Velocity (band, active 2011-present)

Platform: Spotify, surprisingly

Okay, this one is a bit different, and I’m jettisoning the whole format for it. Remember how I said the music-centered episodes of SoniAni were actually pretty good, even though the modeling-centered episodes were so offputting I never finished the show? Well it turns out that First Astronomical Velocity, Sonico’s band, has released several IRL albums. Physical copies may be a little hard to come by, but official uploads of a lot of their music can be found on Youtube and Spotify. Do your musical interests include at least two of: string arrangements that would be at home in a particularly sappy movie soundtrack, 90s-00s alternative rock, synthesizer beep-boops, and that constricted cutesy Japanese women’s vocal style (you know the one I mean)? Then this is for you. They’re a pretty good... uh... alt-pop-rock band, I guess is what I’d call them.

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Interspecies Reviewers (2020)

Episodes watched: the entire 12-episode season

Platform: I plead the 5th. But it’s getting a video release soon, so it will finally be legitimately available in English!

I started this year with a plot-light fanservicey animal-people show, and now I’m ending the year with... a plot-light fanservicey animal-people show. But unlike Nekopara, this show had me cracking up, eagerly clicking “next episode”, and not complaining about the premise. I’m sure a lot of people do have a problem with this show’s premise -- which centers almost entirely on various forms of sex work -- and I understand and respect that they will want to skip this show.

But for the rest of you: Interspecies Reviewers is a wildly-NSFW comedy about a group of fantasy world adventurers who gain fame and fortune reviewing brothels of different species. I expected excessive nudity and fantasy tropes, but I didn’t expect to also get serious thoughts. Like showing, in the golem and Magic Metropolis episodes, some of the unsettling problems that are looming IRL as deepfakes and sex robots are in development -- note especially the contrast between consensually and non-consensually basing automata on real people in those episodes. Or the discussion in the last episode of how much riskier sex would be in a world without magic (i.e., ours). This is a much smarter and more interesting show than you’d expect, considering that it has so much sexual content that it got dropped by two of the networks airing it and even its US distributor.

W/A/S: 5/10/4

Weeb: Although heavily influenced by the Western fantasy media canon of European mythology and Tolkien and tabletop RPGs, familiarity with the tropes of fantasy anime will help you “get” this too, as will familiarity with the -sigh- character dynamics and censorship practices of hentai. Especially because it’s a comedy, there are probably also instances where I have completely missed topical references or wordplay that a Japanese person would get, but I can’t think of any specific instances right now of “there was clearly supposed to be a joke but I missed it”.

Ass: Look, this could not possibly have more sexual content without unambiguously becoming porn. Genitals are (almost) always carefully hidden by viewing angle or conveniently-placed glowing (something lampshaded in one episode as an actual feature of one of the species they review), but otherwise, expect lots of nudity and almost nonstop crude humor. Do not watch this with children. Do not watch this with your parents. Do not watch this with friends you don’t know well enough to know how they’ll react to something like this.

Shit: This show is better-made than it deserves to be. It’s pretty dumb at points, but it’s fun enough to make up for it. The art is consistent and pleasant, and the opening and ending themes are extremely fun, but it’s not a serious standout in any of those departments. Also, I swear the background music is stock music, but I don’t remember what other show(s) I’ve heard it in before.

Stray thought: Crim is a precious and relatable cinnamon roll and I love them.

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OreSuki OVA (2020)

Platform: Crunchyroll

So, I know I didn’t cover the whole season in my initial review, but I still want to mention the hour-ish-long finale of this show, which was released straight to streaming. Short version of the rest of the season: Joro starts to actually fall for Pansy, but a new challenger, Hose, appears. He is irritatingly attractive and effortless at maintaining the right persona for the situation, leading Joro to describe him as “the main character”. Hose is the sociopathic manipulator Joro wishes he could be, and Pansy, who has a bad past with him, clearly wants nothing more than for Joro to stand up to him. But, since this is OreSuki, it’s not going to be handled simply. No, instead, strap in for a grand finale of Joro and Hose competing in, and trying to manipulate through rules-lawyering, an absolutely ludicrous competition to win the right to date Pansy. And, on top of it, we also get to finally see how Sun-chan got to be the way he is and what happened at that pivotal baseball game that set off the whole plot. What has Joro learned from the experiences of the past season? You’ll see! And you’ll facepalm about it!

Really, you must watch this if you watched the regular season.

W/A/S: 6/5(!)/4ish

Weeb: Basically the same as I said before. Gags referencing other Japanese media, anime and otherwise, and it's better if you’re familiar with the high school romcoms and harem comedies Joro thinks in terms of.

Ass (and slight content note): -sigh- Why does the camera need to be there? Also, Joro, you just committed a little bit of sexual assault for the sake of this contest. Stop.

Shit: I want to rate this overall better than I did the regular season because I think it’s an excellent finale overall because, even though it ends in a very “let’s leave everything unresolved” way that’s common in media that rely on absurd relationships to propel the plot, it does so in a way that makes sense in character. I personally think it would’ve been stronger if it had, well, confirmed its title, and at least some of the other “challengers” had lost interest in Joro, but I guess they probably want a Season 2, since they have so much more source material to work from. There are... oh god 14 light novels?! That is too many.

-----

Your Name. (2016)

Platform: DVD

Two high schoolers -- small-town girl Mitsuha, from Itomori, and big-city boy Taki, from Tokyo -- find themselves in each other’s bodies for a day. They both think at first it must be a very vivid dream, but when it happens again, and they start finding clues like notes they don’t remember writing and comments by friends and relatives about their out-of-character behavior, they realize the body swap is real. This begins a relationship of mutual understanding that nobody else can really understand -- or would even believe (except Mitsuha’s grandmother, who is... familiar with this phenomenon) -- and the plot then pivots to a tense adventure where they use their connection, some crucial information Taki has, the skills of Mitsuha’s friends, and the intervention of Itomori’s patron deity, to save the town from an impending disaster.

And that’s all I’ll say about that, because I really do think this is something you should go into blind. My only remaining comments are that (1) the red string of fate is critically important imagery, and is particularly interesting to me here because, if I took a particular scene correctly, Mitsuha made her own red string of fate from sheer necessity, which is a very different twist on that trope, and (2) I am now curious about the history of the body-swapping phenomenon in-universe.

W/A/S: 4?/2/2

Weeb: As mentioned above, symbolism of the Red String of Fate shows up throughout the movie, as do the occasional distinctly Japanese quirk like a wildly out-of-place vending machine or a café with dogs, and but for the most part it’s a cross-cultural story of understanding and dealing with someone else’s life, and of forming a connection other people don’t -- can’t -- truly understand, and to some extent of divides between urban and rural and modern and traditional that I think could play out in any country with just the local symbolism tweaked. The significance and content of Shinto beliefs and practices depicted, particularly kuchikamizake, are made pretty explicit, so although foreign to the vast majority of the non-Japanese audience, I feel like this movie also has nearly no barrier to entry for people not familiar with the cultural context, so I don’t want to rate it very high on this scale.

Ass: Look. It involves teenagers switching bodies. What do you think they do? Especially Taki? But it’s played for laughs, not titillation.

Shit: This movie is beautiful and punched me in the feels and was very satisfying. The closest I have to a complaint about any aspect of it is that the musical breaks that I guess are supposed to mark acts of the movie almost make it feel like binge-watching a short series instead of watching a single self-contained movie.

#weeaboo trash #anime review #mini-reviews #happy new year #di gi charat #first astronomical velocity #super sonico #interspecies reviewers #oresuki #Are You Really the Only One Who Likes Me?#your name

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thecorteztwins · 5 years

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Choosing A Job For Your Character

This is something I see people have a lot of difficulty with. They often can’t think of something that their character can do, or they feel that certain options (server, barista) are “overused” and want to do something different, but aren’t sure of what the other options would be or how to begin finding/choosing them. So I wrote up this guide of tips and tricks that hopefully you might find useful! Under a cut because I can’t make anything short, I guess, sorry!

- Google what kind of jobs you can get with your character’s education level, such as “jobs that don’t need a degree” or “jobs you can get with a two year degree” or “under the table jobs” or “jobs with a BA in chemistry”. Or their interests, such as “jobs for people who like animals” or “jobs related to art”. If you haven’t yet figured out these things about your character, but you know where they live, considering Googling job listings for that place--whether it’s specific like “job listings for Manhattan” or vague like “jobs in the desert” or “jobs in a small town/big city/beach town/etc” and see what you get! If you see something you like, look into the qualifications for it, and you can flesh out your character’s background (education level, degree, etc) from that! - If you don’t know what kinds of jobs would be offered in certain a field or a setting, it’s pretty easy to Google something like “jobs in a hospital” or “jobs in geology” or “jobs at the beach” and so on. You can also adjust for your character’s level of education and training, such as “entry-level jobs in forensics” - Look on Reddit for threads like “what is your job” and browse the answers, some jobs will be very mundane, others very outrageous! I also recommend “how you got your job” AskReddit threads. - Look at your surroundings. For instance, go to a grocery store. You can see various people in various positions there---the cashiers, the people stocking shelves, the baggers, the bakery workers, the meat counter butchers---but also look at the products and think about all the jobs that went into those behind the scenes. For instance, someone drove the truck that delivered the fruit. Or, someone designed the packaging for this bag. If something exists, someone had to create it or grow it, and someone had to deliver it, including the cash registers, plastic bags, electricity that lights the store, etc. And that means there’s a job for it! - Google can also help with narrowing down general ideas to specifics. For instance, let’s say I have a character called Stan. I want Stan’s job to be that he’s a businessman. Okay, what kind of business? I google “top 100 industries in the US” because Stan lives in the US and I want him to be in a moderately successful industry; something that’s doing well, but not truly booming. I don’t find a Top 100, but I do find A LIST of industries doing very well in the US at the moment. I decide to pick “Utilities” which is #15 on the list. I google “Utilities Company” to get a better idea of what that would be, and I get results for companies that supply things like water, electricity, and sewage services. I decide he works at an electrical company. So, what role do I want Stan to have in the company? My idea was a “businessman” so he’s probably not the guy actually working directly with the electricity, but more likely the business side of things. So what would his job title be? Well, I imagine him as being high up enough in the company that he’s not doing any manual work, I imagine him wearing a suit and attending board meetings, but he’s still answering to people in higher positions than himself. So probably something in upper middle management. I google “upper middle management” and get some results that explain different management levels and types. I find a site with A CHART depicting the different levels from the top down. I see that something called a “DSM” seems to be right in the middle. I look up what it is ON WIKIPEDIA but it’s not what I had in mind for Stan. I look again at the chart and what’s above DSM, something called “VP Global Communications and Investor Relations”. I google “VP Global Communications” and I get a lot of results that say “Vice President, Marketing” so I decide that’s what Stan does---he’s the vice president of the marketing department for an electrical power company! This didn’t take long, either, a little less than 15 minutes. It’s really not hard at all! - Almost every kind of business, no matter what it is, requires some kind of clerical work, someone to handle files and records, that kind of thing. They’ll also always need a janitor. And any business that sells anything will have an advertising department, and making any kind of ads will almost always involve some kind of art. Making logos for a shoe company or designing a billboard for a plumber may not be the dream job for most young artists, but it’s a good way to pay the bills so they can keep working on the art that REALLY matters to them. Another thing that every business will need, even a one-person one, is someone to do the taxes. If someone isn’t doing their own, they’re hiring someone else for it. Again, not glamorous, but it’s a living. If you haven’t worked out what your character is good at it or what kind of qualifications they have, these are all options. And if you want to get your character into a certain place but they don’t “fit” these can be a good excuse---for instance, your character isn’t a tech person or business person, but you want them to work at Stark Tower? They could fall into any of these categories! - If you want your character to work in a certain place, but they wouldn’t have the qualifications or you don’t want them to be in the job MOST associated with that setting for whatever reason (ex: the vet at the vet’s office), consider other jobs that would be in the same place. For instance, if you want your character to work in a hospital setting but not be medical staff, they could also be receptionists, medical records clerks, janitors, hospital cafeteria staff, night security, or hospital-employed counselors. If you want your character to work at a police station but not be an officer, they could also be a receptionist or janitor or clerk, as well as a tech guy or lab guy of some sort, a sketch artist, a dispatcher, a police psychologist, evidence technician, victim advocate, or police dog trainer. Someone who works in a restaurant but isn’t a server or a chef could be the manager, the host who greets and seats customers, the bookkeeper/accountant (remember what I said about taxes!), the cashier, the busboy, the dishwasher, or someone who doesn’t work at one specific restaurant but still has a job related to them, such as a decorator who specializes in diners. Pick any kind of job setting, and there will be MANY jobs related to it besides the most obvious option! - If you wish for your character to have some kind of high-level, high-paying, or glamorous/dangerous occupation, take into account the realistic qualifications they would need for it and weigh it against the realism of your setting. For instance, in real life, being a bounty hunter requires a license and there are certain criteria that must be met for that license. If your character doesn’t meet that criteria and tries to operate as one anyway, they will find themselves facing charges after bringing in their first guy. At least, they will in a realistic setting, especially crime/legal dramas like Law & Order. However, in many media settings, being a bounty hunter is presented as something that basically anyone can do as a whim, so if you’re writing your character in one of those settings, you need not worry too much about accuracy (though it also might not hurt either) - If you are writing in a very realistic setting, keep in mind that the training, education, skills, and job experience needed for many high-profile, high-paying, well-respected jobs often takes many years. For instance, becoming a medical doctor in the US typically consists of a 4-year undergraduate degree program, another 4 years in medical school, and then 3-7 years of residency training. So if someone starts all this at 18, they will probably be 30 by the time they’re finished. Even if they’re a prodigy, licensing laws will still require them to put in the same amount of hours and training as everyone else. So if your character is a 20-something or in their late teens, and you really want them to have a job like this, considering either making them still in-training, or aging them up. Many people balk at writing anyone even close to 30, let alone older, especially a woman, but if you’ve never done it before, this is a great reason to start! In less realistic settings, you probably can get away with much younger people in super advanced positions (Marvel Comics has these galore, such as preteen super-scientists and CEOs) but you should still be prepared to justify it at least a little (and there’s still nothing wrong with the option of aging them up either!) - Keep in mind your character’s education, training, skills, and interests when selecting a job, since they would probably seek out a job that catered to those things (and would be more likely to be hired for them), but also don’t feel compelled to make sure they have a job that “fits” them. Many people do not, especially people in the service industry, retail, or office workers. A lot of us aren’t in a career we’re passionate about and great at, but it gets us by. Some of us will hate it, some of us don’t. My current job has nothing to do with my talents, education, or interests, but I’m good at it, the pay is good, the hours are good, and the environment is good, so I’ve been at it the last five years and I hope to stay with the it as long as I can. - Consider your character’s temperament, personality, and limitations, and if they would actually be suited for the job they’re in. Sometimes, it’s not just about whether you’re smart enough or strong enough for a job, or whether you’re qualified on paper, it’s about having the psychological requirements. For instance, I love animals, and I know a lot about them. As a child, I wanted to be a vet, and I think a lot of people expected that I would be. But in middle school, I took a career exploration course for being a vet, and I knew after the first day that it wasn’t for me. They showed us stuffed animals that had been mutilated in various ways to show us the different injuries that an animal might come in with, and how to fix them, such as their eyes popped out or fake intestines coming out of their ripped-open bellies. It was gruesome, but for a good reason---it immediately showed me that this was something I could not handle. I wasn’t going to be able to deal with seeing animals every day who were sick, injured, and in pain, so I dropped the course. After college, when I was looking for a job, I spent two years volunteering near-daily at the animal shelter. Yet I never applied for an actual job there, because I knew that all the animal control officers had to deal with euthanizing animals that we didn’t have room for, couldn’t be adopted, or had just run out of time. There was absolutely no way that I could do that. Instead, I worked for a professional pet-sitting company for a year to supplement my income. I got to care for dogs and cats, but never had to deal with the emotional damaging aspects of being a vet or working at a shelter. So, if your character has certain sensitivities, hang-ups, or anything like that, some jobs simply won’t be an option for them. Of course, some people are in a position where they have to take what they can get---there are doubtlessly countless people in retail, fast food, survival sex work, and other jobs that are probably mentally horrible for them--- but when it comes to a career that takes time, money, and active pursuit (you have to TRY to become a vet, and it takes a long time) it becomes pretty questionable how a person would wind up in a career that they obviously find distressing. Though many jobs do inevitably come with a buildup of stress over time too, such as mental health professionals and police officers, it’s probably unlikely that a lazy person who hates hard work and strict schedules is ever going to wind up a prima ballerina, no matter how naturally talented she is. - Consider the lifestyle and income level you want your character to have. My cousin is a field biologist who spends months tracking sage grouse. He’s pretty much just camping out in the wilderness for a whole season. If I wanted to give a character his job, but also a hard-partying lifestyle, it would pretty difficult to merge the two. After all, it’d be very expensive and inconvenient for him to drive miles every night to party in the city. Likewise, if your character is single and travels a LOT for their work, they probably can’t keep a lot of pets. If your character has a huge income, they probably have to have a reason for it, and if they’re not living off a trust/inheritance/their parents/etc., their job is going to have to justify it. - Consider the conflicts they might have between work and the rest of their life. For instance, if your character is a vigilante who listens to police scanners, it’s going to be hard for them leave work every time they hear a crime is in progress. It’s going to be even more difficult if they have a job like an ER nurse, where people may literally DIE if they leave their post. If you want to set up conflict like this, then it’s GREAT, but if you don’t want to ever bother with these kinds of dilemmas, then avoid creating them and pick some other job. - Once you’ve picked a job for your character and it fits them perfectly, read at least a little about it. You don’t need to be an expert or even really understand it, just be able to more or less explain what it is and what they do. For instance, I don’t understand business in the slightest, but I can say that my dad is the regional sales manager for the east coast at the bearing company he works for, and that this means he oversees all the sales that go on in his territory, and that suffices pretty well. If your character is going to talk a lot about their job, or their job is very relevant to the story, then you may need to do a bit more research to “sell it” to the readers (for example, Michael Crichton probably needed to do quite a bit of research into paleontology to write Alan Grant in Jurassic Park!) Again, you don’t need to become an expert, just enough to fake however much you need for your character and story.

#writing advice #advice #rp stuff #jobs #character jobs #out of cortez

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iamartemisday · 5 years

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Lokane Week- Synergy

A/N: My Lokane Week entries (however many I can get to) will all be set in the same AU. To recap, Loki spied on Thor in his first few moments on Midgard, became interested in Jane and ensured that she wouldn’t go looking for Thor so that he could strike up a friendship with her. Mostly out of curiosity, but we’ll see where that goes. Sort of. These are mostly just vignettes.

Anyway, here we go!

In the morning, Loki brought her a coffee. She was always awake before he got there, dressed and ready to go. The whiteboard was the center of her universe. Photos taped in all four corners providing no more hints today than they had yesterday. A new equation was scribbled out in green ink, to be erased within the hour like all ten that came before it.

“Good morning,” he said. “Thirsty?”

She took the cup and drank it down. “I’ve been up all night.”

“I can tell.”

“It doesn’t make any sense.”

“It never does, does it?”

“Twelve anomalies, Luke!” Jane shoved a wad of papers which may or may not have had relevant information on them. “Twelve! And then this out of nowhere storm that burns archaic runes into the ground. That means something.”

She stormed through her lab, checking data feeds and weather updates at random. Notebooks hit the floor as she swiped her arm across the table, giving her optimal space for a fresh roll of blueprint paper. She sketched a pair of intersecting lines, scribbling numbers on the margins. Her tongue stuck out, her brow furrowed. She erased the lines and redrew them parallel to each other.

“Dammit!” She threw the paper aside. “None of this is right. I can barely think straight!”

“Sleep might help.” Loki nudged a pad of paper aside with his foot.

“I don’t have time for that!” She let out a scream which shocked Darcy, minding her own business on the couch, out of a daze. “This situation is time sensitive and I’ve already wasted hours doing nothing.”

“If I could disagree,” Darcy piped up, “you’ve been doing a lot of things. So many things that I’m honestly kind of scared of you?”

Jane shot her a glare but didn’t have the energy to do more. Her body pitched forward, the top of her head knocking on the metal table with an unnerving thump. Loki stepped closer, not really caring if she hurt herself but hoping he wouldn’t have to clean up the mess. She was still breathing and mumbling to herself. Something about atmospheric pressure at the crash site and people in suits. Loki took it as a good sign.

“The government is about to take over the site,” she said dully.

Darcy, who had been digging through the fridge for food, twisted her head around. “You saw Feds out there?”

“I don’t know what division they’re from, but they had black vans and this guy in a suit was on the side of the road staring at me.”

“Yeesh. That sounds vague and slightly menacing.”

Loki rubbed his chin, staring out at the far off desert. His vision traveled farther than mortal eyes could dare dream. Mjolnir had become the site of grand festivities among the locals. Men tried their hand at lifting the mighty weapon. He might’ve taken a bit too much pleasure in their failure, but that was inconsequential.

Already, the ‘Feds’ were preparing their descent onto the scene. They carried machinery similar to Jane’s, if larger and cleaner. A man in sunglasses oversaw their progress from a distance. He was on the phone, giving reports to his superior. Loki ignored him for the moment but memorized his face. One never knew when there might be an encounter.

“Then you fear they’ll stop you,” he said, pulling up a chair.

“I don’t fear anything,” Jane said. “I hope they won’t get in my way, but since that’s basically how the government functions to begin with, I’m not holding my breath.”

“It’s not the end, though. You have evidence.”

“I have grainy pictures of a rune circle that’s now covered in sand.”

“It’s more than they have.” He would’ve loved to see what kind of conclusions Midgard’s greatest minds would come to regarding Mjolnir. They were sure to be quite comical.

Jane put her head in her hands and sighed. “Don’t get me wrong, I’m not giving up. I’ve come too far and put too many years into this, but…”

Loki nodded as his arm moved. He froze an inch from her naked wrist. Whatever he’d been about to do, he couldn’t possibly say. “I understand. It is frustrating to meet resistance even when it seems the path is clear.”

She raised her eyes. “I was gonna say things are royally fucked, but that’s much more eloquent.”

Loki chuckled. “Then you know this is not the end. If you cannot overcome this obstacle, you must find a way around it.”

“I don’t know if sneaking into military bases is a good idea,” said Jane.

“But let’s be honest, you’d do it,” Darcy shouted from the kitchen, which was only five feet away but this was a woman who needed to make herself heard.

“Thank you, Darcy,” Jane ground her teeth. “But you’re right. You are right. I’m not finished yet. I have all my notes and photos from the storm. Those markings have to mean something. The pattern was too precise to be random.”

“And it is yours and yours alone,” Loki said, sliding the clearest photo of the Bifrost's mark into her line of sight. “Some call science an art. I’d call this a mystery. Are you the one to solve it?”

The barest touch of Jane’s finger left a white imprint. She held it to the light, her bottom lip between her teeth. Loki stared a few seconds longer than necessary. Close to a full minute. Energy radiated off her, seeping into his skin and coursing through his blood.

“They won’t stop me,” she stated.

“Never,” Loki confirmed.

“Okay, do we have tension here? Because it looks like we have tension here.” The double stare down tore Darcy’s smile apart. “Yeah, okay, shutting up.”

#Lokane #Jane Foster #Loki #Lokane Week #Lokane Week 19

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comicteaparty · 5 years

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January 27th-February 2nd, 2020 CTP Archive

The archive for the Comic Tea Party week long chat that occurred from January 27th, 2020 to February 2nd, 2020. The chat focused on HOPE KILLERZ by stc019.

Featured Comment:

Chat:

Comic Tea Party

BOOK CLUB START!

Hello and welcome everyone to Comic Tea Party’s Week Long Book Club~! This week we’ll be focusing on HOPE KILLERZ by stc019~! (https://tapas.io/series/HOPE-KILLERZ)

You are free to read and comment about the comic all week at your own pace until February 2nd, so stop on by whenever it suits your schedule! Discussions are freeform, but we do offer discussion prompts in the pins for those who’d like to have them. Additionally, remember that while constructive criticism is allowed, our focus is to have fun and appreciate the comic!

Whether you finish the comic or can only read a few pages, everyone is welcome to join and chat with us!

DISCUSSION PROMPTS – PART 1

1. What did you like about the beginning of the comic?

2. What has been your favorite moment in the comic (so far)?

3. Who is your favorite character?

4. Which characters do like seeing interact the most?

5. What is something you like about the art? If you have a favorite illustration, please share it!

6. What is a theme you like that the comic explores?

7. What do you like about the comic’s story or overall related content?

8. Overall, what do you think the comic’s strengths are?

Don’t feel inspired by the prompts? Feel free to discuss anything else that interested you!

SAWHAND

Ooh! The first thing I'm noticing about this comic is the colors, which are lovely!!

Eightfish (Puppeteer)

agreed! the characters designs made me laugh, too. Haven't finished it yet but will definitely pop in to say a few words when I do

LadyLazuli (Phantomarine)

I'm going through this too - what an awesome style!

RebelVampire

I'm a prompt kind of person, so I'm gonna answer this a bit going by those. XD I like how the comic opens up, mostly at the end of the prologue with the ominous phone message about Isa and Scotty being dead. Like, just when you thought things were ominous enough, there's already a quick payoff, and I like that about this story. It's not holding its punches. As for a favorite moment, I really liked the argument between Hodori and Behzad, because that moment didn't go how I expected. I actually thought Behzad would include Hodori, not go for immediate betrayal. So to me that was interesting and I like things that don't go with my expectations. This is why they are also my favorite characters to interact, cause I liked Hodori was also the one to know what was going on, and I can't wait to see how Hodori will react when Behzad's sort of betrayal is revealed. For a favorite character, at the moment Chaker cause I think Chaker is the most mysterious and I'd love to learn more about Chaker. Who doesn't like mysterious characters with secrets?

In terms what I liked about the art, I find the use of color interesting. I'm not sure I'd classify as like persay, but it's interesting to see how the colors are used to sort of experiment with the mood or each image. Which for me I feel is the comic's strength. Regardless of how you feel about the content, the comic is intriguing to look at and catches your eye.

Comic Tea Party

DISCUSSION PROMPTS – PART 2

9. Do you think what Behzad wants is justice or vengeance? How will he get it ultimately do you think? Overall, what do you think the story might show us regarding the line between the two and how the pursuit of either can change someone?

10. How do you think everyone’s relationships with each other will be challenged given both Behzad’s solo pursuit of the murderers and some of the team member’s withholding information? Will the team be able to survive the conflict?

11. Do you think the characters will be able to recover their hope after losing Isa and Scotty? Overall, given the themes of hope within the story, what do you think is the overall message regarding it?

12. What do you think the ultimate plan of 58 is? Why does it involve murdering Isa and Scotty and replacing them with doubles? Why do you think Behzad wasn’t killed yet, and what might the villains have planned for him?

Don’t feel inspired by the prompts? Feel free to discuss anything else that interested you!

snuffysam (Super Galaxy Knights)

I'm absolutely loving Hope Killerz! The artstyle is amazing, as everyone's said. I love how each panel sets the mood with its unique playing of color palettes! I am curious as to what the ultimate plan is, replacing Isa and Scotty with doubles and seemingly wanting to use this version of Behzad too. Perhaps... 58's plan is to create a team consisting of the most "bold" versions of each hero? Like, Behzad went off on his own rather than waiting around for an investigation - 58 wants a whole team of people like him. As for why... perhaps vengeance for 58 losing his own team?

RebelVampire

Vengeance is plausible. Although I kind of feel there's gotta be more to it than that. Since you can get vengeance without needing to create doubles.

I really like that this comic kind of explores the theme of justice vs. vengeance. With the rise of superhero movies and such, it's kind of easy to forget that there is a really fine line between them. Which in this case, I think Behzad definitely wants vengeance, although I don't think Behzad will get it. I think someone will knock some sense into the idea before it gets that far. However, overall though, I think the story does a great job that it only really takes one step to go from justice to just wanting to hurt people because you're hurt - even at the cost of your personal relationships. Which is definitely going to be a big thing. I definitely think the other characters, especially Hodori, is gonna feel betrayed by Behzad's action. Maybe empathetic, but no way there isn't a rift created. And as more comes to light, none of them will be sure they can trust each other, and that will make Isa and Scotty's loss even more poignant and bring up the question if the group can survive without them.

But I don't think it's all hopeless. I kind of feel that despite their feelings at the moment, time will heal the teams wounds and that they'll find the resolve to hope. Cause you can basically pull hope out of nothing.

Eightfish (Puppeteer)

Unfortunately I'm feeling a bit lost in the story. There are a lot of characters and a lot of scene changes, and I'm having a hard time differentiating the personalities of all the characters. Maybe I just wasn't reading closely enough? Or maybe the plot'll be more clear in the future? The story is just getting started, after all, so I figure the author is kind of front loading all the setup and character introductions. I do really like the art. It's fun and different. I stumbled across this comic a while ago but didn't read much of it, and the art was memorable enough that seeing it again in the bookclub I immediately recognized that I'd seen it before. 9) Both. Don't think he's really thinking straight due to his grief, and is mostly just driven by emotion right now. 10) Probably, just going from the tone of the comic and the art I feel like this will have a happy ending. I think this is an optimistic comic. 5) The author seems to have a love of drawing butts. I appreciate that. Particularly in the little end chapter sketches. 1) I liked everything about the beginning of the comic. Though it was very strong. Not often do you see a vigilante character feeling regret over their chosen path

Comic Tea Party

DISCUSSION PROMPTS – PART 3

13. What are you most looking forward to seeing in regards to the comic?

14. Any final words of encouragement for the comic?

Don’t feel inspired by the prompts? Feel free to discuss anything else that interested you!

RebelVampire

For this comic, I'm definitely looking forward mostly to finding out about 58's plan since there's a lot of directions the story could go at the moment. I'll be interested to see which path will be taken. Regardless, I hope the creator continues with the color experimentation in the comic since it makes it visually stand out, and it'll be interesting to see how this plays out when the comic is further along.

snuffysam (Super Galaxy Knights)

Yeah for Hope Killerz, what I'm really looking forward to is... more. Like the art is so unique and so stylish, and the characters have interesting motivations behind them, I'm just curious to see where this all pans out.

Comic Tea Party

BOOK CLUB END!

Thank you everyone so much for reading and chatting about HOPE KILLERZ this week! Please also give a special thank you to stc019 for volunteering the comic and creating it! If you liked HOPE KILLERZ, make sure to continue to support it via some of the links below!

Read and Comment: https://tapas.io/series/HOPE-KILLERZ

stc019’s Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/stc019

stc019’s Ko-Fi: https://ko-fi.com/stconineteen

stc019’s Storenvy: http://stc019.storenvy.com/

stc019’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/stc019?lang=en

#ctparchive #comics #webcomics #indie comics #comic chat #comic discussion #book club #bookclub #webcomic book club #webcomic bookclub #comic tea party #ctp #hope killerz #stc019

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