#i was gonna do more than just one sketch but then i had an existential crisis and gave up | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

a-small-batch-of-dragons · 3 years

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Let's Call It Funny

Prompt: Hi! If you know about those gen z peter parker posts, could your write something based on that? With Steve Getting It (tm) because fatalistic nihilism in humor tended to show up during the world wars and we’re seeing a reflection of that now? Sorry- I just think it’d make great options for steve and peter bonding, and dad!tony but actual emotions (gasp!) You can totally ignore this if you want!

Don't ever apologize for giving me such a great ask

Read on Ao3 Part 2

Warnings: uhhh gen z humor

Pairings: none! all found family in this bitch

Word Count: 2529

Here’s the thing about humor. It’s not necessarily that one generation is any funnier than another, it’s just that high school kids are perpetually the funniest people alive. Something about being in a pressure cooker of an environment with a bunch of other people whose bodies are changing in new unpredictable ways whilst having very little say in how their lives go creates humor. Gasp of shock, right?

So basically what Peter’s trying to say is that he’s fucking hilarious.

Come on, not only does he have the default high schooler stuff, he’s also gay, which gives him an instant bonus. He’s trans, which opens up a whole new subset of humor for him to explore. He’s neurodivergent as fuck, and we all know that makes people funny as hell. And if that weren’t enough, he’s severely traumatized and he’s Spider-Man.

Peter Parker is funny as hell.

What is truly devastating—and really, it’s their loss—is that so few people seem to appreciate it.

Ned gets it. Ned’s not someone Peter would expect to not get it, just because hey, it’s Ned. They’ve met each other in the hallways and been like ‘hey! You’re still alive! Congrats on having a body!’ Only for the other one to go ‘hey! You’re alive too! I wish I had an intangible form!’

Because bodies are stupid and evolution really fucked us over but at least we’re not horses.

A solid 50% of their interactions are just quoting John Mulaney and Bo Burnham bits back and forth at each other. Peter’s never gonna forget the day they both had detention and had to watch that stupid Cap PSA—it’s propaganda, you Nazi fuckwits—and something reminded them of the ‘horse loose in a hospital’ bit and they just did it. Full out. Stood up and did the actions and everything. The rest of the room was either trying to do it with them—and failing, because they didn’t have nearly enough practice—or looking so confused. The security guard—Paul, he’s great—just looked at them blearily after they finished and went:

“I mean, you kids are right, but you’re not supposed to talk in detention.”

Well, excuse them for trying to make it more entertaining for everyone.

MJ gets it. If Peter’s being honest, he learned most of his humor from her. She is the master and it is an honor to study in her wake. He’s definitely hijacked the asking whether or not anything’s actually meaningful existentialism jokes and they’ve wormed their way into his day-to-day repertoire.

“Why are you late, Mr. Parker?”

“Time is a social construct, Mrs. B, none of us are ever late or early except in the subjective spacetime paths. The limits of our sensory perception make it so we can’t tell if anything is real, let alone whether or not they conform to some arbitrary definition of ‘time.’”

“…just sit down, Peter.”

See? It works.

Aunt May gets…worried.

Sure, they’ve actually talked about when Peter needs help and wants to reach out and when he’s just making jokes off the cuff because hey, humor’s a great coping mechanism or it’s just a joke and not that serious. Peter loves his Aunt May, so so so much, and the last thing he wants to do is really worry her. And she’s gotten pretty good at figuring out when he’s just joking and when he’s spiraling.

Sometimes, though…

“Peter,” Aunt May calls from the kitchen, “did you remember to stop by the store on your way home?”

Peter freezes halfway through the door.

“Peter?”

He swallows. “…no.”

“Why not?”

“Because I am too stressed and consumed by the swirling pit of blackness deep in my soul to remember my head is connected to my body, let alone remember to go to the store.”

Silence.

“…Aunt May?”

“Do you want to drop off your stuff and then go to the store?”

“…yeah, please.”

“Love you, Pete.”

“Love you!”

“Try to remember that you’ve got arms so you can pick stuff up.”

“Got it!”

See? It’s fine.

The Avengers don’t get it. Like, at all.

Natasha and Clint like, sorta get it? They make the same jokes all the time when they think Peter can’t hear them, which—come on, you guys are super spies, surely you know people are gonna hear you when they’re gonna hear you. Natasha will make a crack about something, Clint will laugh and shove her shoulder. It’s their dynamic, we get it. But when Peter does it…

“Hey, Baby Spider?”

Peter sticks his head up from the ceiling. “Yeah?”

“Where’re you crawling off to?”

“I’m gonna go hide in the garage.”

Natasha blinks up at him. “Why?”

“Because if I get crushed by the airlock doors then I won’t have to do my paper tomorrow.”

Silence. Natasha’s mask is too good for Peter to actually see what’s going on with her, let alone from this angle, but silence isn’t good.

“Nat—oof!”

Something blurs out of the vent nearby and tackles him down onto the couch.

“Clint!”

“Nope,” Clint mutters, wrapping Peter up in a hug as Natasha comes to join them. “You’re staying with us now, Pete.”

“Guys, I’m fine.”

“Peter,” Natasha says softly, “don’t joke about that, you’ll make us worry.”

“I don’t wanna do that,” Peter mumbles, “but it’s fine.”

“Coping mechanism, huh?”

“Yeah.”

“He’s got too many brain cells to do that,” Clint says, ruffling Peter’s hair.

“Stark has a lot of brain cells, you see what good that does him?”

“Hmm. Guess you’re gonna have to stay awhile, Pete.”

There are worse fates. Definitely.

Thor just kind of gets confused by it. He acts like Peter isn’t going to be absolutely fine because there’s no need to do anything like that. No, Peter, you don’t have to put the bleach in first into your cereal, there’s plenty of milk left over. No, Peter, you don’t have to throw yourself off the roof because your laptop is freezing, Stark has so many just lying around. No, Peter, you don’t have to pack a rucksack and run away to the Alps and live like a recluse, come here and get a hug.

Peter suspects Thor’s playing dumb on purpose. The man is smart as hell, there’s no way all of this is flying over his head. And honestly, it warms his heart a little bit when he sees Thor’s sincere, concerned look when he thinks Peter’s not looking.

Banner and Rhodey just kinda shake their heads and move on. They’re used to it. They live and work with some of the most dramatic fucking people in the goddamn universe, they’re used to a little bit of extra humor. Occasionally one of them will give him a look that says he’s pushing his luck, but that’s not often. Less often now ‘cause he knows what he can get away with. He’s also seen them hiding smiles behind their hands or poorly disguised coughs. They’re not as slick as they think they are.

Tony.

Tony is the fucking worst.

Peter can’t get away with so much as sighing too hard before Iron Dad™ is swooping in all soft words and concerned touches. Jesus. You’d think he’d get it, he uses humor as a coping mechanism too, goddamnit, why is he so worried about Peter?

Okay, fine, he knows why.

MJ’s over at the Tower, having another one of her ‘sketch people in crisis’ appointments with Natasha. Peter is coming off of a 32-hour caffeine rush and is violently wishing for death. Tony is in the kitchen doing…something.

“Hey, do you think bleach would make a good smoothie?”

Tony wheels around to see MJ pulling a glass out of the cupboard.

“Kid—“

“Sounds like a filling breakfast,” Peter groans, “can you make me one too?”

“…I’m legitimately concerned,” comes Tony’s mutter.

MJ ignores him. “Who’s the bitch on your forehead?”

Peter rubs absentmindedly at the massive knot on his head, courtesy of a wall that rudely decided to move at the last second while Peter was attempting to walk through a doorway. “He’s called DJ Braindeath and he’s my only friend in the world.”

“Peter—“

“Oh did you meet him at the furry convention?"

“Technically it’d be a buggie convention.”

“What the hell are you two talking about?”

“The pantry doesn’t have good coffee, I’m going to Starbucks.” MJ grabs her bag. “You want anything?”

“A will to live?”

“Peter, what the fuck—“

“Oof, I’ve only got like…20 bucks.”

Peter lets his head drop back to the counter. “Then just leave me here to die.”

“Can I have champagne at your funeral?”

“I’ll be dead, I won’t fucking care.”

“God, I wish that were me.”

Then MJ’s gone and Peter gets treated to a 20-minute conversation with a very concerned Tony Stark that he doesn’t remember most of because hey caffeine crashes aren’t fun.

He definitely does it on purpose sometimes just to wind Tony up. Like there’s this one incident with an interview he does as Spider-Man and he gets asked what he thinks about Tony Stark’s newest intern, Peter Parker.

“That boy’s an embarrassment, just…complete failure. Can’t speak without stuttering through every other word and self-esteem issues all over the place. Also looks like he got dressed in the dark.”

The reporter had awkwardly moved on to another question. The interview aired later that day while Peter was at the Tower. Tony sat next to him on the couch about halfway through.

“You look good, Pete.”

Peter had mumbled halfheartedly, only to hear the reporter ask the same question.

“See, that’s the problem with having a secret identity, you don’t…” Tony trailed off as he heard the answer.

Peter snorted as Spider-Man finished talking. “Say that to my face, you bitch, get a real job. At least I don’t look like someone vomited silly string all over my spandex.”

“Are you okay?”

See? Fun.

The only one he’s made a conscious effort to not be this funny around is Steve.

Because, okay, here’s the thing. Steve’s disappointed look has no effect on him anymore. He’s immune, motherfuckers, he’s had detention too many times for it to still work. Here’s the other thing: Steve doesn’t actually use that tone of voice that often. It’s this meticulously crafted image he plays up in interviews because it catches all the bad guys so off guard when Captain America is suddenly swearing a blue streak at them and telling them to go fuck themselves in, honestly, quite creative ways. The sincere Steve Rogers disappointment and concern still very much works. Also doesn’t help that Steve does caring so fucking well, like…who gave him the right to say a few things and hold Peter like he’s something precious and do the quick one-two punch of saying a super sincere compliment and following it up with ‘I love you.’ Who did that? It’s rude. Stop it.

And yeah, Steve’s the resident Mom at the Ready. It’s a risk to even sit on your bed looking sad ‘cause here he comes, wearing something snuggly and saying ‘hey’ in that stupid, stupid compassionate voice. So Peter knows he’s just gonna end up crying from too much soft if Steve actually gets concerned. Which won’t be fair because he’s gonna try and explain that he’s fine and it’s just his sense of humor while crying. Yeah, like that’s gonna be believable.

So he’s trying not to but damnit it’s hard.

Then he walks into the kitchen one day to see Steve struggling with the toaster.

It’s one of Tony’s new prototypes—which means that anyone struggling with it is so fair—and from the looks of it, it’s managed to not only burn the bread to a crisp, but also mangle the slices beyond recognizable shape.

Peter’s not paying that much attention. He’s on his phone, heading towards his spot in the corner with the beanbag chairs and definitely doesn’t recognize Steve as he goes.

He only plops down and hears someone declare, in a completely deadpan voice: “There is no point to existing at all.”

“Oh, mood.”

He doesn’t think much of it. He doesn’t even know who said that, that’s how hyper-focused he is right now. He hears the others come in and feels Clint plonk down next to him.

“Hey, Pete.”

“Sah, dude.”

“Just vibing. Did I do it right?”

“Yeah, man you’re going great.”

“You teach Thor ‘yeet’ yet?”

“We’re getting there.”

“Steve,” he hears Tony call from the kitchen, “what the fuck did you do?”

“Language.”

“Don’t fucking talk to me about language when you’re making toast that looks like a goddamn welder’s table, what is that?”

“Your prototype’s work, I imagine.”

“How did you even—“

Clint chuckles next to him as the two of them start fondly bickering. Peter’s too busy speedrunning the five stages of grief in his head.

Did…did Steve say the thing about there being no point to existence at all?

No…no way.

He must be imagining things.

Then, of course, there’s a chime on his phone.

Ned: Did u do the bio hw?

There was bio homework?

Ned: yeah, due at noon

“I now know why God abandoned this timeline and when will death come to take me?”

The room goes silent.

Shit.

“Peter,” Clint says, “it’s gonna be fine, you can do bio homework in your sleep—“

“Are you okay?” Ah, that’s Thor.

“Kid—“

And Nat, and Tony’s probably rushing over here as he speaks.

Then there’s another voice.

“We can only pray the reaper arrives early for his appointment with us, kid.”

Peter’s head snaps up.

Steve.

Steve fucking Rogers raises a coffee cup at him in salute and takes a sip. He makes a face.

“…that was definitely salt,” he mutters, before shrugging and downing the whole thing.

…what?

Peter’s still staring at him until he catches his gaze and winks.

Oh, fuck yes.

“Steven Grant Rogers,” Tony says, hands on his hips, “explain.”

Steve just gives him a look. “I grew up in the Great Depression, Tony, and I was in the army. You don’t think I have a fatalistic sense of humor?”

“Plus the fact that most of my generation is resorting to types of humor found when death and stress are so ever-present that you have to joke about it says something,” Peter adds, “doesn’t it?”

Steve raises his cup again. “See? He gets it.”

And just like that, the bond between Peter Parker and Steve Rogers was written, formed, and sealed in salt and existentialist depression.

“There’s two of you,” Tony mumbles, “oh my god, there’s two of you.”

“Oh, you just wait ’til Buck and Sam get back.”

Peter can’t fucking wait.

#marvel #mcu #avengers #spider man #peter parker #fic #dragonbabbles

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nanasarea · 4 years

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Huang Renjun as your idol bf

Genre: fluff

Pairing: renjun x idol!reader

Request: could I request renjun? + can you do idol renjun as you’re bf? + can you do it for renjun? (triple request, it’s what he would have wanted)

Word count: 1225 (i had to stop myself or else this would have been 5k)

a/n: we know I don’t proofread at this point so.....

Haechan / Yuta / Mark / Jeno / Jaemin / Chenle / Jisung

Your schedules overlapped

you were at music core

and when renjun lost a dare

he had to go outside and sing his iconic voice crack

he felt embarrassed

but you couldn’t help but laugh

and since jeno knew of renjun’s crush

and he was next to you when you laughed

he was like “i’m gonna be such a good wingman”

so he was like

“his voice crack is funny, but wait till you see his horrible attempts at comedy”

r.i.p

lee jeno

2000-2020

but it got you to talk to him so

it worked

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

so you ended up taking him up on his offer

“to show you his horrible attempts at comedy over a drink”

and so you went

sm said no

but renjun bullied them into saying yes

i mean

he insisted

normalize bullying sm 2020

anyway

the media knew abt your relationship

before you two did

bu are you surprised

i mean the man does what he wants

if he wants to kiss you in public before you’re even offical

so be it

he knows what he wants

and he shall get it

with consent of course

now onto the relationship itself

you soon realize jeno wasn’t kidding

sometimes his attempts really were horrible

sometimes they were really funny tho

you never knew which one you were gonna get

he likes to be unpredictable like that

buys you moomin merch

but like matching merch

only matching

bc if not, it’s all his

acts like he would sell you for a bag of expired doritos

but is actually madly in love with you

kisses your forehead and tucks you in

without knowing you weren’t asleep

so when you bring it up

he’s like

“waaaaat no i was just ....”

and then runs away

literally never a dull moment

something tells me he would sneak out of the dorms at like 2am

to drag you to watch the stars

and discuss alien life

or another conspiracy theory

or one of his “do sunflowers turn themselves to face the sun?” questions

or he just blurts out something that makes you have to google the answer

would bet on it beforehand tho

it always ends in existential crisis

speaking of bets

call it a hunch,

but this boy would bet on everything

just so at the end, he could hear

“you were right”

he dresses up for you

and the dreamies tease him

like that one time he tucked his shirt into his pants

and the dreamies were OI RENJUN~

on the topic of dreamies being brats

you join them

of course you do

they love you for it

he doesn’t hesitate to beat all your asses tho

he ends up choking you as a joke

and you jokingly moan

and say “harder, daddy”

and now he has discovered some new kinks

I’m sorry I had to include that, i had a dream abt that once so

but i mean

are we surprised?

he may be tiny

but he’s an aries

and a scorpio moon

what do you expect

he also draws for you a lot

draws you a lot too

like a lot

has a whole sketch book

just for his drawings of you

and for you

it ends up filling up in less than a month

but in his defense,

HE JUST LIKES DRAWING PRETTY THINGS OKAY

also

the type of person to be cheesy but like

only around you

when you’re in public

and you do something cheesy,

he fake vomits

but in private,

he’ll be looking for something

“ren, what are you looking for?”

“my will to live”

*turns around and looks at you*

“nevermind, found it”

the first time he said something like this

you were convinced he finally got abducted by aliens

for talking about them so much

that they had to like switch him out with a fake renjun

but no, it was renjun

a very soft renjun

who is now very whipped and comfortable with you

teases you so much tho

like I’m not saying he would roast you 6 times daily

but that’s exactly what I’m saying

we love a sassy icon

but it’s okay, you do the same

but will square up whenever someone else does it

even you

“no one makes fun of y/n!”

y/n: haha look at how weird i look in this photo

renjun: square up, sweetheart

talks bout his day with you every night before bed

“so since chenle said the only food that can make him cry are onions, i threw a watermelon at him”

“i told jeno i knew he snuck out last night so he played dumb, a bit too dumb, because his response was “who’s jeno?”...i live with these people...”

“i should have stayed in china”

speaking of china, you ask him to teach you some phrases

and his reaction was

“me? huang renjun? the man with a never-ending identity crisis?”

he does it anyway

he teaches you so well that you end up speaking Chinese for when you do group activities

“introduce your group in Chinese, please”

*all members look at you*

and he ends up teaching you only bc he’s whipped

you’re the only person who’s allowed to go to the moon with him when he wins the lottery

you walk into him laying on the floor

“lemme guess, you want everyone to disappear?”

“no, you can stay....sicheng can visit on the weekends, but that’s it.”

speaking of wayv,

they are now your brothers-in-law

they treat you like you’re one big family

bc you are

so like for your bday,

he only texts you hbd,

but when he actually sees you,

he ends up giving you like this one big speech about how lucky he is to have you

you cry

he cries

you both cry

your date nights are decided by rock, paper, scissors

no, i am not joking

whoever wins, gets to pick the movie, the food, so on

so let’s say you hang out with yangyang

you go shopping together

and then you tell renjun about your day

and he’s like

“let’s not change the subject.”

“what’s the subject?”

“me”

of course he’s jealous

he’s an aries

with a scorpio moon

again, what do you expect

he does however love that you get along with his friends

also, I’m not implying that you have “short king anthem” as his ringtone or anything

but you totally do

because he’s 5 foot something and he indeed is royalty

short king renjun rise

but also have i mentioned you’re the only one who can calm him down

like jeno’s instinct is to call you when renjun gets like extremely sad or angry

you’re there in less than 5

obviously

fuck dance practice

renjun is more important

he does the same for you

i feel like he’d be so good at comforting

like i can’t explain it

but he just gives the vibe

also i know we talk abt photographer na

like a lot

but PHOTOGRAPHER HUANG

like he’s so talented in literally everything he does

renjun best boy(friend)

renjun ace

and whenever you compliment him

he gets so flustered

he is now the exact shade of a firetruck

but he will quickly cover it up

with something cocky like

“of course I am, I’m renjun”

to wrap this up, renjun is the best boyfriend and you both know it.

renjun > everyone else

convince me otherwise, I DARE YOU (spoiler: you can’t)

tag list: @soleilchannie

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dancing-the-hellfire-rumba · 4 years

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Seen ✓ - 2

Pairing: Sam x Fem!Reader Warnings: light anxiety Word Count: 2.2k Series Summary: On her way home, Y/n finds an abandoned, cracked phone on the sidewalk. Anxious about the well-being of its owner, she picks it up and texts the first contact she finds; Sam. A/N: Chapter 2! Our pals are kicking it off already. Can you smell the chemistry? The rOMANCE? LESSGO

Pictures used in this chapter were found on google images :)

Beta: no one.

Catch up! : Part 1 Masterlist

Chapter 2: overthinker.

From: y/n_andrews85 To: D_impala67 Subject: I have your phone. That sounds creepy. I don’t think there’s a non-creepy way of writing this. Whatever.

Dear Dean, is it?

I just wanted to let you know I found your phone at the bus stop the other night. I wasn’t planning on holding on to it, really, but I got worried that you may have been in trouble, and then you never really looked for it either so, I don’t know, I figured better than someone who’ll snatch it and leave, you know?

Anyways, that’s why I’m emailing. I snooped through it a little, sorry, hopefully you’ll understand it was kinda necessary? Maybe we can arrange something so I can get it back to you. This girl, Jamie, keeps sending me (well you technically) topless photos of her. It’s not really what lights my candle. I’m assuming you’d like it back too.

I hope you’re safe. Looking forward to hearing back from you!

Y/n Andrews

Do you believe me now?

oh god

you didn’t

Sure did

wow. just wow.

you just handed his ass back to him holy shit!

last time he called, he said he dropped his phone while walking back to his motel, so

he’s okay.

That’s good, I’m glad he’s safe.

I was planning on including something along the lines of “This would’ve been easier if you were an active member of the 21st century and used social media”

But I figured the Jamie thing was motive enough?

yeah. topless Jamie? that’s something else.

Don’t be getting any ideas, dude, I don’t do nudes lmao.

oh god, no i didn’t think that

you did not just type lmao though. how old are you again?

oh god, you’re not 14 or something right? i don’t know what that would make me.

Don’t worry about it, I turned 16 last week.

…

are you serious?

Lmao, no, I’m kidding. I’m twenty-two.

But I think the word you’re looking for is a creep. Oh, and an ageist.

ouch.

Haha, I’m joking.

Lighten up, what are you, ninety?

hi pot meet kettle.

Shit I walked right into that one.

also i’d like to think i don’t text like a ninety-year-old man. could be wrong though

to answer your question i’m twenty-four.

Twenty-four huh? I assume you’re done with college, no?

Or- wait, I guess not everyone goes to college.

Yes, this is me fishing for information.

well… i kinda dropped out.

decided to go on a road trip with my brother.

things went a little south I ended up continuing the family business.

Damn, college drop-out ey? Where from?

Also, Family business? What do you do?

Is this too interview-y? I’m sorry, I don’t mean to snoop.

you’re good.

stanford. pre-law.

and my brother and i are private investigators. that’s why he’s not in Kansas with me. he’s working a case.

Daaaaamn. Stanford AND a lawyer? And now working as a PI? You’re pretty smart, then.

an ageist and a generalist? i didn’t take you for such y/n.

Fuck, okay, you sound like a lawyer too.

hahahah

so what about you?

What about me?

are you in college?

Oh yeah! Film school. My dream has always been to be a director. It’s rare to find someone who loves movies more than I do.

that’s really cool.

hey i’ve been meaning to ask.

Thinking of me, Sam?

…

Do tell.

how come you were walking home through a park in the middle of the night the other day?

Ooh, I was coming back from work.

I’m a bartender and I had a late shift on Friday.

oh I see. That makes sense yeah.

I’m sorry to cut this conversation short, but I’m legitimately three seconds away from falling asleep. I’m gonna hit the hay.

See you later, Sam :)

See you, y/n :)

A smile creeps on Y/n’s features at the thought of more conversations with Sam. He has given her something to look forward to, something to make her a little more excited during her boring every-day life. As she tucks herself in under her covers, eyelids heavy enough to droop involuntarily, the last thing she thinks of is him, the clever, sassy, twenty-four year old college dropout on the other side of the cracked phone screen. The overwhelming urge to get to know him overtakes her as she succumbs to sleep

Do you believe in ghosts?

that’s… random.

May be

why do you ask?

Idk, just wanna get to know you better.

that’s what you ask people you want to get to know better?

Yes?

Are you avoiding the question?

i do. believe in ghosts.

You?

So do i.

Well, sorta. I guess I believe in souls more than anything.

hm?

Well… I guess I hope (more than believe) that we are more than our corporeal selves.

In the sense that, it’s comforting to me that when we die, and our bodies stop working, we don’t evaporate.

I guess.

yeah I understand.

i don’t know. i guess i wanna believe in science more than anything but i know better.

How do you mean?

call it a hunch.

Oh c’mon, it’s gotta be more than that.

Sam…?

Y/n huffs out a breath, gnawing at her lip. She hopes her anxiety isn’t right, that Sam isn’t sick of her silly questions and existential dread, and is actually doing something. Perhaps his battery ran out.

...Sure.

She was doing something too, before she decided to text him. Eyes falling on all her books and notes, spread around her like ugly, depressing, anxiety-inducing flower petals. There’s a blanket over her legs, chilly fall weather seeping through her bones, and there’s a half empty pizza box in front of her. She’s full and the left overs are kept for her sister, Emily, who’s currently locked up in her room.

Damn it. Y/n is stressed and tired, and now her distraction is refusing to reply. This sucks. She hates the crawling, awful, gooey feeling of cold anxiety gripping every beat of her heart and stupidly convincing her he’s purposefully ghosting her, because he doesn’t like her.

Not knowing what to occupy herself with, she heads to take a shower. In the back of her head, she knows that she’ll probably not study any longer, so she takes it upon herself to sink under the hot water and wash thoroughly, trying to get her mind off Dean’s phone. When her feet step out of the shower and she has towel-dried herself as best as she can, she tosses her wet hair in a haphazard bun, and gets dressed.

Books stack under the rickety, stained coffee table, and she grabs her sketchbook, her favorite pencil, as well as her and Dean’s phone. She shoots Connor a text, arranging a hang out of some kind, and opens her little booklet, when a text vibrates Dean’s phone.

hey i’m sorry i got caught up in something.

It’s alright.

She doesn’t press the ghost subject, because he doesn’t seem into it and she really doesn’t wanna make him dislike her any more than he possibly already does.

The empty page of her sketchbook daunts her. With a tight grip on her mechanical pencil, she urges her creativity pumps to use some gasoline, but they seem limp and dead, and once more unwilling to help her. As her eyes fall on Dean’s phone, like a light bulb out of a cartoon, she gets an idea.

Hey, this might sound creepy, but what do you look like?

She stares at the phone. This feels like a risky question. God, if he wasn’t done with her before, he certainly must be now. But then, he surprises her.

why do you wanna know?

I’m in the mood to sketch some, and my creativity has officially left the building.

Care to help a girl out? Maybe your literary descriptions will spark something in me lmao.

i didn’t know you sketched.

Yeah, sometimes. Nothing great though, I promise. I’m certainly no Picasso.

i mean you don’t have to be picasso to sketch well. and you don’t have to sketch well to sketch at all.

Yeah, may be.

I don’t wanna pressure you into anything, you really don’t have to humor me.

If you do feel like it though, don’t send me a picture. Kinda wanna spark some life into my brain cells.

haha i will. only if you show me the finished product tho.

You’ve got yourself a deal :)

She simply cannot believe he has just agreed to this. Her breath is caught in her throat.

so.

what do you want me to start with?

Just whatever. Idk, tell me about your face.

well

i have brown curly-ish hair that reaches my ears. uh, my eyes are hazel.

Okay, that’s a start.

What’s your nose like?

it’s a bit pointy. thin i think?

Jawline?

sharp? i guess?

this is by far the weirdest thing i’ve done.

Lmao, yeah, this is pretty weird.

Exciting though.

She shouldn’t have said that. Fuck, that is definitely overeager.

yeah it is.

Her stomach feels floaty at his response.

Eyebrows?

normal?

How do you classify “normal” eyebrows, exactly?

i don’t know? they’re simple i guess.

Are you implying complicated eyebrows exist out there?

…

Elaborate, Sam. Are you shy? Do you not have eyebrows? Are they bushy? Or too thin? Or pointy?

i’m telling you they’re average.

Sam

what

You officially suck at this.

oh fuck off how would you describe yours?

Y/n proceeds to write a cohesive sentence that includes adjectives apart from “normal” and “average”. Words like bushy, thin, arched and curvy.

well shit yeah i guess i do suck at this.

i think it’s not a skill i mind not having.

That… is a confusing sentence.

just… draw them however. what difference can eyebrows make?

Oh you have no idea.

Okay, last thing.

Do you have a fringe?

yeah but not for long. i’ll probably let it grow out.

Okay, I can do something with that. Thanks :)

no problem

Her creativity is finally servicing her according to her commands, and Y/n puts pen to paper and scribbles messily. Line after line, they curl and sit on the page, forming a smile with thin lips, a sharp jaw, a pointy nose. She has to guess the eyebrows a bit, and the eyes are more cartoonish and generic than she likes. In the end, she gets anxious at the prospect of having to show him, and gives him a hood, so she won’t fuck up the hair.

Okay, I’m done.

that was quick, actually.

Well I didn’t have much to go on.

Sam doesn’t reply. She worries he might have misinterpreted her teasing tone.

Gimme a sec, I’ll send it over.

Ugh, Dean’s camera is such shit. Do you mind if I send it from my phone?

no go ahead.

[Y/n has sent a picture]

As you said, it didn’t take long. It’s really not the best.

that…

is actually not too far from the truth

it kind of looks like me from two years ago

wow, really?

yeah.

and it’s honestly a pretty good sketch. good job.

Thank you :)

Sam doesn’t say anything after this, and she huffs. Her head falls back on the couch, and she stares at the ceiling. She should go to bed soon, it’s getting late.

isn’t this strange?

Oh shit. Oh shit, oh shit oh shit, she thinks. He’s regretting this. He doesn’t like her. He’ll stop talking to her and that’ll be it.

Why does she care so much? It’s a thought that passes through her mind. It hasn’t been long since they started talking and, after the near-kidnapping encounter, they’ve been having nearly daily conversations, but that still doesn’t mean much. She knows barely anything about him.

She guesses, she wants to get to know him better. He seems like the type of guy she’d enjoy hanging out with and she has so far. Stopping any kind of conversation would surely feel like a loss. She’d have to go back to her boring routine. This is the most exciting thing she has allowed herself to do in years.

A part of her feels rather lame for finding such a thrill at something so trivial. She’s talking to a stranger, and that’s all it is, but the prospect that he could be anyone at all, and she’s never even seen his face… well… It feels refreshing, new. Scary in an adrenaline-rush kind of way.

What is?

us. texting.

isn’t it a little odd?

I guess it is a bit.

I mean we’ve only known each other for, what, a week? And a half?

yeah.

should we stop?

I don’t know

Do you want to?

The extra moment his reply takes to arrive makes her want to vomit.

Then there’s your answer.

okay then

can I save you in my contacts?

Sure, go ahead.

I just did too.

alright.

Okay :)

I’m sorry, I have to go.

I guess I’ll text you later, Sam.

Go be whoever Sam Something is.

it’s winchester.

Like the shotgun?

yup.

That’s BADASS. Can you even get more badass than this? Pre-law, now a PI, and you’re named after a shotgun? Damn dude.

Well, it’s nice to meet you Sam. I’m Y/n Andrews.

Haha thanks.

nice to meet you, too

goodnight Y/n Andrews.

Night Sam Winchester :)

--- Part 3

A/N: Thoughts? How are you liking the newer version of this? right after I post it, I’m gonna delete the other one.

Taglist:

Old Can You See The Stars taglist: @shutupiminlooove @sammysgirl1997 @kymberlytorres @bambi95-blog @demonic-meatball @thekarliwinchester @littlekay15 @li-m-ii @thinspo-isuppose @carryonmywaywarddemigodwitch @ellen-reincarnated1967 @moonlitskinwalker @marichromatic @illuminatus42 @lazy-author @mirandaaustin93 @hauntedsiriel @pilaxia @devilgirlsarah @nobodys-baby-now @captiveties @calamitychaos @midiocris @wordswillscream

Sam taglist @kymberlytorres @theboykingsam @depressed-moose-78 @andi-mendes-barnes @captainmarvelcorps @nerd-in-a-galaxy-far-away @nellachain

#sam x reader #sam x fem!reader #sam x reader series #sam x reader fluff #sam x reader angst #sam winchester #sam winchester x reader #sam winchester x fem!reader #sam winchester x reader series #sam winchestr fluff #sam fluff #spn #supernatural #spn fanfiction #spn fanfic #seen 2 #seen

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bladekindeyewear · 4 years

Text

Bloggin’ bout HS^2 Commentary from start to Mid-Jan-2020

Sigh. Time to pay the piper. Someone’s gotta extract whatever plot-important and plothole mentions get mentioned in this commentary, even though reading behind-the-scenes stuff about Homestuck makes me even more nervous than reading frontend stuff ever could so I don’t really want to. FYI, that’s what you’re going to get out of my posts on these -- anything regarding plot stuff and plotholes, things we would’ve misinterpreted or missed otherwise, not any of the other paid content such as sketches or full quotes from them about things.

TWENTY FUCKING DOLLARS A MONTH!???!?? Is Andrew even seeing any of this cash? --no, not much of it I guess, he would want to make sure the WP folks get paid enough after the--

Yeah I’m not gonna even think about that.

Fuck it. I’m ponying up.

Alright, first commentary post on the Patreon, commentary and bonus sketches for Ghostflusters... whoa, this is long and extensive. Is it going panel by panel??

I guess I’ll give you a small quote just for a taste of how this starts...

Page 33: Not sure what any of this shit means. It’s pretty deep though. We were going for an echo of the beginning of the epilogue when John is dreaming in anime. Except here it’s Jake, and nobody is dreaming, at least not yet. Also an anime dream wouldn’t be a nightmare for Jake, since Jake likes anime. Or he used to. Now anime probably just reminds him of Dirk.

Good thing we’re never gonna hear from that guy ever again.

...because this commentary is sort of stylized. They’re kind of riffing on what they’re doing, and I get that -- when you have to write commentary you’re asking people to PAY for you can easily feel like you have to be entertaining. But they are describing the rationale for the shot choices they made and such. They’re also going for a sort of Andrew-recap sort of attitude, and I don’t blame them for that choice, either.

[Candy] Jade is...well, you’ll see.

GOD DAMNIT. Don’t remind me that Dave vanished on her forever while they were doing pro-revolutionary work and she’s probably going to be in a bit of a state! Stupid knowing author future allusions...

Then again, that’s exactly why I’m here blogging about the commentary for you guys -- for me to relay Authorial Intent on Stuff That Happened That Seemed Plotholey and Hints About What’s Going To Be Relevant.

I just, uh... didn’t expect there to be that MUCH of it. And that casual phrasing for that Candy Jade Is Going To Be Seen And Or Relevant hint is... kinda indicating to me that there’s gonna be a LOT more of that here than I wanted. :|

Continuing... there’s talk of why they started with Jake here, being unused to writing for middle-aged characters in Homestuck terms, et cetera, but again, I’m only here to relay anything with plot impact or SERIOUS perspective on how we should / the authors are viewing this. The rest stays behind the paywall for whichever of you all think it’s worth $20, I don’t really have a choice. At least now I know why there was no one to tell me what details were actually BEHIND the paywall. Seriously, that’s steep.

Speaking of how stylized the commentary is here, I can get why some might read it and view the authors as slightly callous -- I’m giving them PLENTY of benefit of the doubt, though. Andrew was FAR from callous and he hurt us worse out of love of artistic intent with the Epilogues than the HS^2 folks could EVER hurt us. Real Dirk-like, actually. Dirk is practically half of a self-insert, as we well know. No wonder Andrew thought the right thing to do was to take his hands off the story, what with Dirk’s villainous action being putting his own hands ON the story.

We like to make fun of Jake English as much as the next guy, but he probably is actually pretty good at “doing things” if the need arises.

Mhmm; there are some jibes at how screwed up Jake has made his life, but I don’t believe these authors actually disrespect Jake at all. He was dealt a bad hand by the story leading up to this point (quite INTENTIONALLY by Dirk’s narrative control in the Epilogues, too) and HS^2 and its bonuses so far have been exploring the heap of merits and potential he’s still got in him.

It’s kind of sweet how he wants to clean out his ecto-son’s house, even if most of that is to prevent the slow creep of mounting existential dread and narrative relevance.

Huh. So they think Jake can sort of feel that narrative relevance is seeping in around him, to him? That’s not out of the question at all.

Continuing... they’re going on a bit about the same sort of things I mentioned about their choices in detail or detail-less-ness when depicting people in this new format, considering ages and the paired text descriptions and such. That’s the sort of thing you’d traditionally want to pony up for commentary for, so rest assured that all that IS in their commentary posts if you want to do that. I’m kind of extracting the plot stuff out of the paywall just on principle.

A lot of making this comic--and every other comic ever--is trying to convey as much information with as little space as possible.

Quite so.

From this conversation we find out a couple things. 1) that Brain Ghost Dirk knows about Ultimate Dirk, and he thinks he’s a dickhead. 2) Brain Ghost Dirk knows who Jeff Bezos is, and Jake doesn’t. This could be a sign of a couple things, all of which are probably stupid.

This is ALSO what I came here for: Legitimate “don’t worry about it” handwaves about stuff that shouldn’t matter to us. I never ascribed the slightest bit of relevance or inference to BGDirk making a Jeff Bezos reference, and I’m glad I was completely justified in ignoring it. So far I agree with this probably-plural-but-acting-like-a-singular author’s train of thought.

Come to think of it, it’s maybe strange that in this Cool Future Earth where all of our characters are rich as hell, none of them have bothered to have any sort of corrective eye surgery. Jane, Jake, John, and Jade all still wear glasses. I guess they do have “signature looks” to maintain in regards to their brand.

I had to include this, I was legitimately curious. Understood it was probably an artistic decision to stay on-brand a fair bit -- and losing glasses even temporarily has a lot of thematic significance whenever it happens in Homestuck Proper -- but it’s nice to have some confirmation that this was the understandable rationale behind the choice.

Here we find out what Dirk thinks about Jake’s behavior of the last few years. In other words, we find out what Jake thinks about Jake’s behavior over the last few years. [...]

[Brain Ghost] Dirk is manipulating Jake here, but he isn’t actually saying anything demonstrably untrue.

Again, most of this was obvious at the time, but it’s nice to have authorial confirmation on what was being brought across as per the strange divide between Brain Ghost Dirk’s independent will and his mostly-part-of-Jake status.

Seriously though, shoutout to the conceit that god tiers can just fly endlessly, with no visible effort. It’s a really excellent form of narrative shortcut that fits perfectly into the bonkers vibe of earth c as a whole. Oh there goes one of the Creators, just flying over the Wal-Mart like an asshole.

You know... who IS doing the commentary here? One of the authors, all of them? One of the artists?? This really is a COLLABORATIVE effort between the authors and artists involved here, I think, and it shows in their clear surprise and appreciation for each others’ work that only settles into a full understanding instead of just knowing what one intended off the bat.

It calls into question exactly how much of the Condesce’s mind control was actually mind control at all, and how much was just a lowering of inhibitions.

Right, right.

We see Jane greeting Jake here with open arms, which makes you wonder exactly what is going on here. If you’ll remember from Candy, Jane has already served Jake divorce papers. A mystery in need of solving, for sure.

HERE we go! This is the potential plothole we were concerned about that got me alerted that the commentary had something to add in the first place. John mentioned toward the trail-end of the Candy epilogues that divorce papers had shown up for Jake. (And we also saw an HS^2 update ago or so that Jane hadn’t actually KNOWN Tavros was “awol” at all until he was literally a part of this whole clowncorpse logistics business.) So in light of what this post continues to say:

It could be that Jane has put aside the nasty business of their divorce in order to have a strong chest to cry on. Can’t really say I blame her. Jake English has many flaws but he does seem like a good person to drape yourself across and really let loose on. And without Gamzee there, Jane needs another punching bag.

...it all finally fits as pretty logically consistent, although the author is being deliberately coy in a way that leaves it open for more to be revealed later about exactly how this is happening. Good! No obvious plotholes in HS^2 (yet). That’s an honest relief. The more often they have something in mind where I’d previously worried they’d screwed up, the more often I can give them credit and speculate properly on those gaps in story-logic expecting something there, like we so often got to with Andrew before the retconsplit made even THAT kinda fucky.

If you’ve ever had a friend or family member go evil, you’ll know that one of the hardest parts is there’s always still elements of them that you like.

I can definitely say that from nearly personal experience.

Also, at this point in the story there is no lingering doubt that Jake and Dirk have had a sexual relationship. There’s a familiarity there that wasn’t around when they were teens.

I assumed so, but I guess I never thought ABOUT how I assumed so. Huh.

Do any of the creators have a moral leg to stand on if all they’re doing is curling up into a ball and hoping the world gets better without them? Actually, does anyone have a moral leg to stand on if they do that?

Almost Riddley, there.

These posts are certainly interesting! Steeply priced for what they are, but interesting. Moving on to the second of four so far... this one’s about Catnapped Part 1.

Taking over Earth C's business world certainly would have required rubbing shoulders with the already-powerful on the planet.

--yep, which I never doubted even when brought up in the Epilogues is a large part of her supply-side government views.

Ah, looks like the bonus commentary is a good deal shorter! But that bonus section was a good deal shorter than the story section covered earlier too, so.

On to the next one, for Clown Logistics.

Page 58: If you love Vriskas, i hope you enjoy more Vriska content. If you hate Vriskas, well. Here is another one that is kind of different. Feel free to contemplate nature vs nurture and how best to apply this dichotomy toward emoting about the vriskas of your choice how you see fit.

I’m starting to really enjoy this author commentary.

Tavros being named Tavros sure was a decision. Go back and reread the commentary for panel 58 but stop before the nature/nurture thing, since they are not clones, or even the same species. They just have the same name, which, in this universe, means you at least type kind of the same.

Hmhmm.

Page 65: Sometimes you try and come up with something to say about a page, and you cannot, and so you wait 8 hours, and go see Knives Out, and then you have 2 white russians, and then you still can’t come up with anything to say, but oh well! Commentary needs writing. Tavros is experiencing an emotion here.

Now THAT’s a mood. I gotta go see Knives Out sometime soon.

...Alright, I can see why some people think MAAAAYBE this author might be being a little disrespectful to the audience, but if they’re going based on THIS, I don’t have a clue what they’re talking about. This comment could have come from Andrew’s fingertips any day of the week!!! I honestly wouldn’t WANT replacement authors who couldn’ comment like this in there for a page in paid commentary, especially in a lighter section of the story that doesn't need too much said about it.

And I paid $20 for this shit.

...Continuing, I’m loving all this commentary on Harry Anderson. Representative excerpt:

Again, direct your eyes toward the boy. What a fucking asshole.

...these commentaries are honestly improving my mood! I didn’t expect that, really.

Ah, I didn’t even notice that the flying cars appear to be self-driving. I think maybe the back of my mind MIGHT have noticed but only a bit.

Referring to the corpse-carry crew:

Page 82: Pokedex entry for Magneton in Pokemon Sun: When three Magnemite link together, their brains also become one. They do not become three times more intelligent.

Ain’t THAT a mood.

(...I just had an internal “Wait, am I using that right, it being a “mood”? Isn’t that the hip new term, how do I have any right to latch onto that however much I feel it? Ohhh gosh I’m so fucking old” moment.)

It’s clear from the commentator’s complaints that the crew never viewed this commentary ALONE as worth upping the pledge to $20, but that’s... not quite a bad thing? I think it’d have been more disrespectful to think that they COULD make the commentary worth that. I doubt there’s a single person on their team who feels quite right about the business model (besides the artists they have plenty of context to know how deserving they are of a living goddamn wage), but it’s what they have to live with and go with, here. I feel weird for honestly understanding ‘em, and more than slightly pitying for how many people will look at all this and read “these assholes don’t care about us”. I really can’t think that’s anywhere CLOSE to true from this without more context. (And I really DON’T want more context, don’t send me any. I’ve got to read HS^2 and I’m enjoying reading it so far so let me keep enjoying it please. Background drama details make me nauseous, DON’T give me any if there is any (which I wouldn’t know about in the first place beyond an opinionated friend or two dropping hints in a bad mood).)

Did you know there are people who I’ve seen honestly believing “Undertale is pretty good but the creator is an arrogant asshole”?????

Because they saw his tweet about the game score passing Kojima’s MGSV on metacritic briefly and misinterpreted his wide-eyed disbelief, disbelief honed to nervous laughter to maintain sanity by Toby’s insecurity about his unprofessional work and work product??? They thought he was SERIOUS without any of the context of the usual insincere little dog persona they should’ve read into the game of his they played??

Awh man. That just ticks me off.

Anyway where were we.

Page 91: This is a flashback so I didn’t write this one, which means I thankfully don’t have to say anything about it.

Wait. What?

Are they trading off writers between chapters, or...? Hm.

Whatever they’re doing, it fits together pretty darn well SO far.

Alright, that finishes that off, time for the last commentary post on the second bonus update.

I don't know if you noticed, but everything is terrible right now. And I don't mean just in Homestuck's dumb fake earth. I mean in our dumb real earth.

Now that’s a mood.

I've been playing a lot of Death Stranding recently. Basically any media that you're making in 2019 has to either address what's going on around us or come off sanitized, sterilized, with its head in the sand. Kojima offers a simple power fantasy: Through Norman Reedus's sweaty, urine-filled labor, the things that divide us can be banished. America can be unified again.

Now THAT is a god damned MOOD.

The author(?) goes in about why this is happening, why Jane is being confronted this way, why she IS this way, et cetera.

Privilege, safety, and inherited wealth do funny things to the brain. People justify to themselves why they have what they have. If you have enough for long enough, you start to convince yourself you deserve it.

That’s one of the biggest goddamn reasons for the inequality and political landscape we have today IRL, yeah.

She saw a new world and chose, simply, to replicate the power structures of the 21st-century America she was raised in. Boardrooms, power pantsuits, formality and professionalism.

Jane's favorite comic, a noir-detective drama steeped in the pop-cultural trappings of pulp Americana, reflects this mindset.

So, our catgirl Seer of Light takes us through the looking glass, and we get to see an old friend.

Hm!

Nothing really to say, I just had to share this fitting context the author is giving. How things fit together even better than they seemed to, and this was all far from random.

I feel warmly ensconced in the womb of nostalgia, gently cradled on Norman Reedus's chest.

Pffffffff

Yep, more of what we already surmised and appreciated, how Swifer and Cliper were giving us some much needed perspective... the commentary post even has little traditional-Homestuck sprites for ‘em.

And... that’s it for the commentary so far! Again, I enjoyed all that more than I expected. $20 doesn’t sting for me as much as it does for others in general, but it stung a lot less after I was through reading all that honestly somewhat-entertaining stuff confirming a lot of the insights I’d thought the plot was having.

I’ll probably wait to check for further commentary posts until like... after bonus updates come out, in the future, and then just blog about whatever I’m not caught up on. Sound fair? I’m going to blog as often as a real or bonus upd8 comes out, but I’m not going to pop in more often than that for my own sanity’s sake. Have a good MLK weekend, y’all. :)

#Homestuck #hs2 #Homestuck Liveblog #bladekindeyewear #Homestuck Commentary #blastyoboots

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saijspellhart · 5 years

Note

Full Reveal with an angsty twist 😈

“Marinette?”

A shadow fell over her sketch book, and Marinette slapped a hand over her current sketch before snapping her head up to greet the person who’d said her name. No one needed to see what she was drawing. Ever. Not even Alya.

The sun behind him cast his body in a silhouette while the light caused a golden halo to dance across his gorgeous blonde hair. It was longer than he usually kept it, and for a second her traitorous heart almost mistook him for a certain bleached white cat.

But he’s gone now… you purified him. He’s your lovable Chat Noir again and he doesn’t remember a thing.

“A-Adrien?” Recognition hit her like a ton of bricks and she knocked her chair over as she clumsily shot up from her table. The surrounding patrons at the outdoor cafe shooting her looks, a mix of concern and annoyance. “It’s been what, half a year since I saw you? Maybe more? How have you been? Your Father said you were away on business.”

Adrien’s cheeks flushed with embarrassment and he reached up to scratch the back of his neck. “Yeah… something like that. I’m doing alright. I’m actually out to get a hair cut, seems my hair grew out while I was away.”

“It looks hot,” Marinette blurted before she could help herself. Liar! It looks like Chat! That’s why you like it!

Adrien blinked at her, and the blush crawled to the tops of his ears.

“I mean, it’s hot because it’s summer! And long hair makes you hot—WARM—makes you warm, so you should definitely get a hair cut so you don’t suffer.” Like meeeee~ She wanted to crawl in a hole. She’d sworn she’d gotten over this useless stuttering back in Lycee, but noooo, here it was rearing it’s ugly head all over again for no apparent reason.

“Uh, so,” Adrien fumbled to change the subject, “how have you been? I know it’s been ages since we’ve seen each other but it feels like I saw you just last week. Weird huh?”

Something about that struck her oddly, but Marinette couldn’t dwell on why. “I’m uh… I’m…” miserable? Sad? Despondent? Love sick? About two seconds away from jumping my partner who will not understand why Ladybug suddenly wants him so desperately?

“I’m okay,” she finally finished resolutely, choosing to stare at the ground than at his face.

“That’s good,” Adrien replied a little slowly, as if he could tell there was something else behind her curt answer. “I’m uhhh, I’m gonna be late for my hair appointment if I don’t get moving, but I’d really love to have coffee with you. We should catch up. I… I miss hanging out with you.”

Marinette started and snapped her eyes up to meet his. “You—Yeah okay! Coffee! I’d love to, Adrien. Just text me the date and I’ll be there.” A blossom of warmth bloomed in her chest that hadn’t been there for awhile.

“Great!” He shot her a smile that was ridiculously bright and infectious.

Marinette was about to pick up the chair she’d dumped over, but Adrien beat her to it. He scooped the chair off the ground and set it upright in a slightly theatrical but gentlemanly way.

“I’ll let you get back to what you were working on, Ma souris.”

“What?” Marinette almost took a seat on the concrete. Her heart lurching so hard she thought she might die.

“I—woah! I am so sorry, Marinette! I have no idea why I suddenly called you that. Wow. Fuck.” Adrien grabbed the side of his head like someone had stabbed his brain with a knife. “I have to go.”

Speechless, she watched him bolt like he was having an existential crisis.

Temporarily writing som Floofy-eared Chat Blanc drabbles to get out of my writer’s block.

If you are interested in this AU you can check it out here. https://archiveofourown.org/series/1305218

#adrienette #marichat #mariblanc #chat noir #marinette dupain cheng #adrien agreste #miraculous tales of ladybug and cat noir #chat blanc #floofy eared chat blanc #saijspellhart writes #saijspellhart answers #ask answers #ask drabbles #drabble

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rawrroarart · 4 years

Text

workout pic thought post:

so uhh I been awake for like 2 days so forgive my bluntness/negativity in this one (which u can already kinda see in the post itself lmao)

from a practice standpoint: I made this one mostly to keep practicing on bodies trying to make them more anatomically correct and that's one of the main reasons im choosing to show more skin than I am clothes. (That and im gay so) I do wish to get better at clothes though since my Goal is to be able to draw Diana (and other characters eventually maybe) in cute outfits, but for now I need to at least be able to draw bodies first lmao and also id like to get better at coloring

(gets more negative from here on and honestly just turns into a rant about my life my bad)

from a mental standpoint: the other day I had a legitimate mental breakdown because none of my projects were coming out correctly and everything I drew looked like shit so I had an existential crisis over my abilities of art and somehow convinced myself that maybe I didn't actually ever draw anything on my blog so I guess I also had a bit of an identity crisis and I deleted a lot of unfinished projects despite my habits of hoarding and contemplated deleting the rest of my software to never draw again but for some odd reason my girlfriend woke up during this fit and got me to calm down at least, but I kept hyperfixating on trying to draw and so didn’t sleep but I eventually did FINALLY take a break and when I came back I was pissed and drew this. It turned out really well I think (thank fucking god because I probably would have quit if it didn't) but im depressed as hell!! and I miss my fucking girlfriend!! I was supposed to go fucking see her for spring break because I haven't seen her in over half a year but then covid happened and yea yea boohoo “ur life isn't that hard” but let me be sad dammit anyway im stressed as fuck because of school and the fear of my chances of reaching my dreams never coming true so that art problem was NOT GOOD for my health and idk what im doing hahgAHSWADHASDADSA

Anyway (again) usually my “sketch dumps” have multiple of drawings and I really was gonna draw Akko to go with her but I got really afraid of that breakdown and so as the saying goes, stop while you’re ahead.

on a positive note: yay diana’s stomach

#I speak #it rly is just a rant so that future me can see what a lil bitch I am lmao

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danetobelieve · 4 years

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Threat Level: Pizza || Ricky and Winston

Honestly, Winston was tired. In the last week, between them, Ricky and Dee they had spotted and dealt with four alghouls and what Ricky referred to as a spawn. Then last night a pack of three spawn had attacked the house and Winston and Ricky had been forced to deal with them. Winston was pretty proud of the fact that they had managed to immolate one. That had been a feeling like no other. Yet as they stood with a broom in hand, brushing vampire dust off of their porch, Winston couldn’t help but feel like it was time to make a change. Two attacks on their home in as many months wasn’t their idea of fun. Turning to Ricky, who was fixing a window before moving onto the porch railing that had been shattered during the commotion, Winston sighed. “I think that it is time that you and me start thinking about installing some security, and I’m not just talking about the mundane type of security. I think that we need to consider the fact that it might be time to have something other then a kitchen knife available when the next grizzly beasty comes after us.”

Pausing from his repair work to pick alghoul out of his fangs Ricky nodded emphatically. “I mean. Setting aside the fact that the last time the last time that you and I were involved in some magic together we ended up in a strange prison demiplane inspired by my woodwork and fueled by your magic…. I agree. This is becoming fucking exhausting.” The unending night had made some things that were only comfortable at night far more brazen than they normally were, and a whole subset of those things viewed Ricky as a particularly choice piece of steak, and the house constantly being under siege was wearing on him super fast, “So… I am open to suggestions. As far as super fun magic home defense systems go. All I want you to keep in mind… is that I am very very open to the idea of flame turrets. Very very very open to that idea.” He leaned against the frame of the window and looked out at Winston on the porch, “But, practically, how does it work?”

“Yeah, I’m not necessarily talking the same sort of magic. I don’t want to get stuck in a pocket dimension that is also a puzzle box.” Winston wasn’t sure what they were thinking, but if they could centralise a number of security features to a central console, then Winston wondered whether including spells into their code as data flags would cause any change in the potential effects. “I don’t want to mess around with magic just yet, for now though we should think about making some supernaturally minded upgrades.” They paused as they considered a few options. “Well first of all we could look into installing motion sensors in the grounds around our house and Dee’s these could activate UV bulbs as security lights, that should at least give any vampires a little bit of trouble.” They considered other options. “Maybe something with salt and iron for ghosts …” they were still so new to this, they weren’t entirely sure what else they could include. “If it isn’t too expensive we should consider getting CCTV, maybe I can work out some enchantment that allows us to see things approaching. Infrared or heat sensitive cameras or something…” they paused and pulled their glasses off, rubbing the end of an arm against their scalp thoughtfully. “Any eureka moments?”

“Oh come on didn’t you enjoy our little demiplanar excursion into the realm of ‘oh god I hope we’re not dead?’” Ricky paused his repair work and joined Winston out on the porch, sitting down with his back against the warm wood of the porch, “Well… You’re already talking outside my scope of knowledge, but I think you’re right, we don’t really need to be focusing on the human threats, it’s the supernatural ones we need to be worried about.” He pulled out his phone and started to type out notes as Winston was talking. He was more of a old-school kind of guy; the security enhancements that his roommate was talking about were way out of his scope of knowledge, “Are ghosts really a problem though? I think it’s the physical things we have to worry about more. As for CCTV that shit isn’t too expensive anymore with like Ring and Blink and all that shit you can just control it from your phone. And I do mean you I’m sure I’d break it if I tried to control it.” He kept typing as Winston talked before looking up with a raised eyebrow, “if you’re expecting me to have a eureka moment about technology you are in for a dismal disappointment. You’re gonna have to take point on this and I’ll help out however I can. But if you think you can work enchantments into it I’m absolutely down.”

“No, for some reason I did not enjoy having to endure a minor existential crisis as to whether or not I have died, although I will admit that it is nice to know for certain that I am indeed relatively alive and well.” Winston shrugged before continuing. “No, I think that Dee and her shotgun are more then enough to deal with the potential human criminals, but if we draw the attention of something like Hunters or Vampires or I don’t know, something along those lines then I think that I would want to have something else. I also think we should think about setting up a communication tree with others.” Winston nodded. “I know that it sounds ridiculous, but the one exorcism I saw, back in the library at UMWC was terrifying and I don’t really want to experience it again if I can help it. But I need to really work out how well these cameras will work against fast moving and potentially magic critters.” Chewing on their lip, Winston shrugged. “Maybe you can help me by telling me how feasible it’ll be to set up stuff and we can begin working on sourcing all the things I’ll need to set this up. I can do the techy stuff and you can help me with the actual skilled labour.”

“Well I had a delightful time so your negative experience is on you. I enjoyed our one on one time inside a magical prison. I think we could market the whole experience to white people with too much money and too much time on their hands. Throw in some bullshit about it being meditative and shit. We could be super rich.” Ricky couldn’t help but laugh at Winston’s mention of their land lady, “Yeah I know one day I’m gonna have to have the “hey you probably shouldn’t have a loaded shotgun in the house anymore” talk with her but we’re a ways off from that and she’s a crack shot with it.” he kept typing away, looking up periodically at Winston as they talked, “Well we’ll add ghosts to the list of things to keep out. I mean I don’t think I can tell you how feasible it all is until we get an actual plan in place but it shouldn’t be too bad. Don’t think it’ll require any actual like renovations to the house, unless you’ve got a plan for a garlic filled moat you havne’t told me about yet.” He dashed inside to grab a pad of paper and came out again, starting to scribble down some ideas, “Wanna order delivery and hash this out?”

“You’re also completely barking mad if you thought that our time in a magical prison was anything like fun,” Winston laughed and shook their head at Ricky, “I think that you could market that shit to normal White Crest people and they would still eat it up. But I don’t think I want to get super rich based on whether or not people are going to make it out of a trick prison.” They paused for a moment and slipped down onto a bench on the porch overlooking their property. “Well make sure that I am nowhere near you or her when you have that conversation.” They raised an eyebrow and nodded. “Yes, that sounds like a great idea, and I can use your sketching skills to try and visualise where we are going to put this shit and how it is going to work. We’re going to need shit loads of rock salt, iron fillings, holy water, maybe even silver. Stakes wouldn’t be a bad idea either. I also need pizza and probably some beer too.”

“What can I say, I like puzzles and I’m good at compartmentalizing my feelings. So. I made it fun.” He pulled out his phone and started thumbing through apps, “is that not exactly what an escape room is? Ours would just be a magical escape room where you’re not sure if you’re dead or not! It’s an extra perk; existential crisis added on for free.” Ricky brought up Grubhub with one hand while the other kept scribbling the supplies Winston was listing off, “Meat lovers no cheese extra anchovies for me, what do you want? I’ve got beer in the fridge, I made a supply run when the darkness hit because I didn’t want to leave the house if possible. I’m a vamp magnet.” He started a very basic sketch of an aerial view of the house and the property that surrounded it, “Are we going to have auto turrets for the stakes? I think that’d be noticeable. We should try to be as discreet as possible. Don’t want to draw attention, just protect ourselves.”

“That sounds like something that a crazy person might say, I think you’re just an adrenaline junkie who likes to put their life in danger because it gets their heart racing.” Winston raised an eyebrow and shrugged gently. “I don’t know if anyone is going to play for a healthy dose of Nihilism Ricky, and also in escape rooms you can usually guarantee the safety of your customers and I’m not convinced that I could.” Winston swallowed gently and decided that they wouldn’t try and recreate the mistake they previously had. No they had other plans, a type of magic that they had yet to find any information on. It made them wonder what could be achieved if they tried some new stuff. But now wasn’t exactly the time for them to do that. Now they had other things to focus on. “Can I get a meatlovers with extra cheese and extra mushrooms?” Winston replied. “I can leave the house if needs be, plus I’m sure that people can drop stuff off to us if you don’t want to risk it.” They were honestly a bit shocked at Ricky’s suggestion of auto turrets. “Dude, this isn’t Doom Eternal, we’re not installing auto turrets mainly because I don’t know how to build auto turrets. NoI think it would be better if we can go with high powered UV lamps and a few well placed stakes around the house. At least until I get better at this stuff, I’m a computer programmer not an engineer.”

“At absolutely no point in our cohabitation have I ever fucking told you I was a sane person. No false advertising here. That’s just because you haven’t figured out the right marketing spin for it yet. You can market Nihilism to anyone you just gotta put a pretty enough bow on it. But, we’re getting away from the main topic here.” Ricky tapped the orders into his phone, adding on a couple of 2-liters just so they’d have something in the fridge where they didn’t have to leave the house for supplies. “I’d rather you not take any unnecessary journeys since, you know, once again it’s fucking nightmareville up in this place. But if worse comes to worse we’ll make a group run for it.” He laughed at the reference, shaking a fist in the air, “Rip and tear, until it is done!!! You know it may be eternal night right now but it really makes for some amazing ambiance when I’m playing that game.” Ricky nodded and started a shopping list on the side of the paper titled “Death-based Doodads”, “Stakes and UV lamps it is. Though too many UV lamps and people are going to think we’ve got a grow operation here.”

“My apologies for not considering your sanity as something that could be in question, most people usually don’t expect other people’s sanity to be in question. As for marketing existential crisises and nihilism then that is something that I will leave for you.” Winston replied with a small grin decorating their face. Winston was glad that they weren’t going to have to cook for themselves. They were feeling incredibly lazy after fighting for their night in the middle of the day, even though it was dark. “Don’t worry, I don’t really want to risk facing alghouls and vampires if I can help it, especially not when I know better. I’m not going out as much as I possibly can, I’m just trying to stay home and when I do go out I am making sure that I’m not alone.” Winston shrugged and smirked. “You know, it is not Overwatch, but it is still a lot of fun to kick the shit out of demons, even if I can’t do it in real life.” Winston frowned and nodded. “You’re right, we’ll have to be sensible about where we plant our weed crop, don’t want people to catch us doing anything illegal.” They were being sarcastic, somehow they thought that they would manage to get away with it. They worked for the Police Department after all.

“I really feel like you should have seen that coming though. Marketing existential crises and nihilism are definitely something we could get away with with Gen Z I’m sure of it. Just make the marketing laden with memes and we’ll be all set.” Ricky slid his phone back into his pocket after receiving the text notification that their order had been confirmed, “See. That’s some solid planning right there. In the end it’s gonna be the goddamn buddy system that saves us all.” Rolling his eyes he pushed himself to his feet and wandered back into the house, spreading the papers out on the dining room table so they’d have more room to work, “Yeah yeah yeah you and overwatch. That’s way too much for me to try to wrap my head around. I’ll stick to chopping demons apart with a chainsaw and a variety of super fun weapons. That’s more my speed. Mindless platforming, puzzles, and mayhem.” He laughed as he drew a stool over to sit on, looking down at their plans, “We’ll add a grow operation after we figure out how to protect our home from the supernatural. Even if regular weed doesn’t really affect me much. It’d be a good money maker anyway. But for now we’ll use the UV lamps to attempt to vaporize some vampires.”

“If we marketed using memes we could, but then that would cut out an entire demographic of baby boomers and the older millennials that wouldn’t get it, so you know, you win some you lose some.” Winston shrugged gently and settled in their seat, looking around them trying to decide what else they could include. “Is stuff like wolfsbane a thing?” Winston asked trying to think of the most generic supernatural stereotypes that they could implement here. “Obviously it is going to take a bit of time before I can really get any of this stuff working, but better to start now rather then later.” Winston was terrified of what some of the things that were out there could do to them and their friends. “Everyone has different preferences and enjoyments, it’s not my fault that your tastes are so far separated from mine which are obviously far superior.” Laughing, Winston shook their head and smiled. “Bro, you remember that I work for the police department. They’re not huge fans of illegal grows that aren’t regulate by the tax man.”

“Listen. Boomers had their time to shine. They don’t deserve targeted marketing anymore. They can take or leave whatever we give them.” Chewing on his pen for a moment, Ricky pondered for a moment, “I honestly don’t know. You’d have to ask Morgan. Seems like she’d know more about that sorta herbology shit than me. I know there is a whole subset of supernatural related herbs. But I’m right there with you; this will definitely take some time so we might as well get going. Because knowing this town… this darkness could last for quite a goddamn while.” The doorbell rang and Ricky went to retrieve their pizzas, heavily tipping the put-upon looking driver to make up for the extra anchovy stench undoubtedly filling his car, “Grub’s here. And my taste in video games is impeccable. I’m sorry I’m not into games with a gay cowboy, weird angst cyborg asian stereotypes, and people screaming in the headset about their skill rating. Gimme that sweet sweet ‘don’t talk to other people’ gaming.” He set the pizza down on the counter and got them out a couple plates, “Oh I didn’t forget. But I like to think I’m above certain aspects of the law given the great ease with which I can implement plan ‘just hide in the fucking ocean forever’. Which is a solid ass plan.”

“It doesn’t matter what they do or don’t deserve, proportionally speaking they hold far more wealth then Gen Z or even a good proportion of the millennial population, targeted marketing takes that wealth away from them.” Winston scratched at the thin film of stubble that had sprung up over their jaw. “I’ll put some feelers out and try and find out what else we could to do to really sure up the defenses here, if I was better at magic then I could enchant some more shit but after the last time that went I’m a little bit weary of trying anything big without more practice.” Winston sincerely hoped that whatever it was that was causing this darkness would get resolved soon, but they weren’t about to charge into the darkness and try and change any of it. Not yet anyway. They weren’t that desperate yet. “I love the inherently racist stereotypes that Blizzard brings to me, and if you keep talking McShit about McCree then I’ll cut you.” They grinned and grabbed their pizza from Ricky, slipping down onto the sofa and laughing as Ricky continued their tirade against multiplayer gaming. The irony was that of course in real life they were the exact opposite. Winston was the introvert and Ricky the extrovert that adopted them. “Unfortunately I cannot hide in the ocean forever because I am not an aquatic animal, but you go off.”

“This took a weirdly capitalist-centric turn; but, I’ll keep all this in mind when I’m planning out how to launch our magical escape room empire. Which is going to have a terrible pun of a name but I haven’t decided what it’s going to be yet.” Nodding along with Winston’s train of thought Ricky opened his pizza box and put a couple of slices on a plate, “I’ll do the same. So we’ll see who knows what and we’ll protect this bitch.” A thought crossed his mind as he chewed on his first piece of pizza, “They’ll have to be disableable though. Things to keep werewolves and vampires and ghosts out. I’m… well Remmy and I… are trying to put together an interspecies clan. To at least offer some sort of unified protection against the hunters. It’s harder to pick us all off if the various species have each others’ backs.” It was hard to laugh and not spit a mouthful of various meats and fish all over his couch, but he managed, “They are really bad about racial stereotypes but you’re more than welcome to McTry. It’ll be super messy though, I’ve got extra blood.” He made quick work of the first piece of pizza and set to work on the second one as he kept sketching things out. “We should have some sort of motion detector at the end of the drive, connected to some kind of camera.”

“I never knew that I would be starting an escape room empire, but I guess if I was going to do it with anyone then I would want to do it with you.” Winston smiled gently as they placed a piece of pizza in their mouth and chewed on their pizza straight from the box. Winston nodded. “Of course, they’ll be disable-able and hopefully eventually I’ll be able to write something that is sophisticated enough that it will be able to distinguish between who needs the measures in place. But no offense, we’ve not seen any progress there for a while and I know that you want to help these people but we can’t do anything until we’ve made sure that we’re safe. Once we’re looked after then we can look after others, but not before that.” Winston was a realist and they knew that this wasn’t going to be resolved straight away, this was something that they would need to really work on. “Gross, who needs extra blood. Seal it away in my opinion.” They winked and wiped grease from their hands with a piece of tissue from the takeaway before nodding. “Motion detectors at the gates, not to mention in the grounds hooked up to security lights so if anything moves everything gets lit up.”

“Tides… I would have never considered starting an escape room empire but you and I have some of the weirdest things happen to us, so, I think that that’s pretty on brand for us.” It was a truth; Ricky was realizing. He and Winston definitely had a relationship that seemed to be a magnetic force for strange situations, and he loved it. Life was infinitely better now that they lived together; it was definitely one of the better decisions Ricky had made at a party. “Ooooh I have some bad news for you. We’re never ever going to be totally safe. Welcome to the supernatural life. But, I take your point. We can’t form the Justice League until we lockdown the Fortress of Solitude. Did I mix references there? I don’t really care just roll with it.” Another slice of pizza disappeared into his mouth and he rolled his eyes at the pun, “Alright well for how terrible that was I’m just going to go offer myself to the vampire hordes now. Thanks. Your terrible pun has damned me.” Scribbling at the margins of his page he attempted to not get pizza grease on the plans, “I like that. Plus it makes us look real important.”

Laughing, mouthful of pizza, Winston looked into the moon for a moment before shrugging. “I think it is pretty on brand, we always end up doing the weirdest shit.” They settled into the silence for a moment and shrugged. “Watch tower not fortress of solitude, though I guess both are DC so it doesn’t count as much? I don’t know. Anyway, you know Orion Quinn right?” Winston was considering their next words carefully, “I think that I’m going to offer him one of the rooms if that’s cool, it seems like he could use a place to go because he is currently staying in that Scribe building way too much for the amount of living that someone our age needs to do, obviously we don’t know him but I think he’s a good kid. Just be careful about your skin, I know you are careful, but Orion found Skye’s seal skin after that time we all watched anime together and I want to believe the best in him, but I’m not completely sure we can trust him, I guess we’ll just see, but he needs somewhere to go and I’m offering him this place.” That was one of the reasons that they wanted to sure up the security, to make sure that everything was safe. “I’ve got some more stuff I want to work on, but now we’ve got the basic designs down I can start shopping for the parts and we can look at introducing all of this stuff onto a central system.”

“We have a weird fucking life. But. When you’ve got a seal and a mage living together what the hell do you expect. I love it. This is me living my best life.” He listened carefully as Winston laid out the situation that Rio found himself in and Ricky ended up frozen with a piece of pizza halfway to his mouth, “I’m sorry. He’s living at that creepy fucking abandoned building you found while you were sleepwalking?! Of course he can stay here what the fuck. That’s not even a question.” He took the bite that he’d been frozen about to take and rolled his eyes, “Winston. I’ve been successfully hiding my skin from people for almost a quarter of a century. Have you ever found my skin accidentally? I didn’t think so. I’ve got it nice and hidden so that’s not really an issue. But I appreciate you looking out for me.” He finished the piece of pizza and moved to another. “He’s more than welcome here. I like him. He’s a good dude. So he can absolutely stay with us. I’ll clear out one of the rooms upstairs for him. We do have the basic design down though. Start putting together a shopping list and keep track of costs and we’ll split it up.”

“I don’t think that he is officially living there, he told me that he is living with his parents, but they sound … not great from the very little that he has actually told me about them.” Winston fiddled with their glasses. “Anyway, I feel like they use that place as a way out of the house but they don’t want their parents to find out and it would make sense for someone of their age to be moving out of the house, we’ve got the room and I knew that you would say no without hesitation.” They paused and shrugged. “I know you’ve got this dude, but you’re my rock and I definitely wouldn’t be able to do all of the stuff that I’ve got to do if I couldn’t rely on your safety.” Winston nodded. “Cool, well, I gotta admit that isn’t how I thought this would end, but I’m glad we agree. We can get started on this all tomorrow I think.”

Ricky’s face immediately went pinched and narrow. As someone with his own latent parental issues, he had remarkably little patience for homes where parents mistreated their children. It was part of why Skylar’s defence of her abusive parents had rubbed him so much the wrong way, and why his tone took on a decidedly dull and stony timbre “well. Of course he’s always welcome here. For a couple of nights or for the foreseeable future. Whatever he needs; at least there’s an easy cover with the whole ‘oh yeah I’m just striking out on my own’ excuse. When you do bring it up to him, let him know that there’s no rent. I don’t pay Dee anything so he doesn’t have to pay me anything. Eventually he can chip in on the internet bill, but getting on his feet is more important.” His expression softened and he smiled, “If it makes you feel better… it’s not in the house. It’s hidden and locked away. He won’t find it by accident. You’re stuck with me for a good long while, don’t you fear.” Closing the pizza box before he ate the entire thing he nodded, “Good. We’ll start in the morning and turn this estate into an at least somewhat-secure fortress.”

#p: ricky #para #wickedswriting #threat level: pizza

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venusxxlangdon · 5 years

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draw me like one of your french boys

warnings: smut, fluff, handjob, oral (female receiving, facesitting), praise kink, sub!Michael, Hawthorne!Michael, shy!Michael, female!reader

summary: reader is an artist looking for a live model for her new artwork. When she meets Michael, she realizes that the boy, who looks like a Renaissance painting, is exactly who she’s been looking for. They grow found of each other, and one day Michael asks her to draw him. Naked.

word count: 6850

Every artist experiences existential crises at least once in their lifetime, and if they haven’t experienced it yet, it means that they are about to. It’s an inevitable burden that occurs in everyone’s life, especially after they become successful and the dependency of other people’s opinion increases. An artist, who once created for the sake of the process itself, gets trapped in the idea of being liked by their audience. That’s what you were afraid most of all. To become a puppet whose only desire would be to meet somebody else’s expectations.

The sales of your paintings have increased drastically in the past six months and, as your manager kept telling you, it was high time to paint more. You started making new clients and getting offers for a personal exhibition, but it all felt like the weight of the world was forced on your shoulders. You wanted to rebel against it: tell your manager to shut up, and lock yourself in your studio, where you were alone with your thoughts and nobody told you what to do. It had always been your happy place with sketches all over the floor, your very first paintings hanging on the walls, a huge easel right in the center of the room. You loved the smell of fresh oil and ink, and two huge windows that offered a fascinating view of city skyline. How disappointing it was to come over one day and realize that nothing was making you happy anymore, and the main reason for that was right in the corner of the room. A big canvas of your last painting you had been struggling to finish. It was a drawing inspired by the early Renaissance period: a cherub in the rose garden, wrapped in a navy blue silk that was coming down his lean body in waves. The flowers turned out really beautiful, so delicate and precious with the drops of dew on the rosy petals. The problem was with the cherub. For some reason you couldn’t paint his face, and the blank space instead of its place was driving you mad. You wanted it to be special, and you had spent days trying to find a proper live model who could pose for you, but, unfortunately, all these handsome males, you tried to get inspiration from, lacked the innocence of an angel (especially that one guy who posed for you half-naked, when you were painting cherub’s chest, and decided to hit on you. You were quick to explain to him that the job of a live model wasn’t about hooking up with an artist and made sure that he wouldn’t appear in your studio ever again), the lightness and purity. Days went by, your manager started being really annoying, but you kept looking for that very special one, because you felt he was somewhere out there. Your intuition never deceived you.

It was a regular rainy afternoon when you found yourself sitting in a local coffee shop not far from your studio, thinking how bad you didn’t want to go there and face the unfinished painting which was some sort of a reminder of your inability to draw something decent. Another notification popped up on your laptop desktop, and you already new what it was gonna be about. One more email from Mallory.

“Y/N, Mr. Gallant called, and he’s expecting the painting to be done and delivered to his apartment by next Sunday. Get back to work, please”. You sighed disappointedly. Fuck this stupid time-management. You are an artist, a free-spirit and you will be done when YOU decide that it’s time. Having aggressively shut the lid of your laptop down, you stared through the window.

The rain was oblivious of your worries, as each drop bequeathed itself into a cooling air. You felt pathetic and unprofessional. Why everything had to be so complicated? Why did you let your perfectionism take over and prevent you from drawing a face of any model you could pick from a local model agency? It wasn’t even the artwork you’d hang in your apartment, and the man you were painting it for could care less about the face of a cherub as long it was pretty. You knew the answer to all of these questions — because you could never do things halfway — it was either all or nothing, even if it meant sacrificing set deadlines.

You rolled your eyes when your phone started vibrating with an incoming call.

“Yes, Mallory?” You didn’t even have to look at the display to know who was calling, Rubbing the bridge of your nose tiredly, you prepared yourself mentally for another lecture from your manager. “Y/N, you know I would really appreciate if you answered my emails” the voice on the others side was monotonous.

You sipped your coffee and winced, realizing that the drink had gone cold. Damn.

“I told you I was busy” you answered and looked around the coffee shop, thinking that the way you spend your time could hardly be identified as “busy”. Chewing on your bottom lip, you brought your gaze back to the window.

“Please, tell me that at least you’ve read my last email and you are familiar with the new deadline” you could picture the way Mallory adjusted her glasses, her thin lips pursed, and pale face grimaced with annoyance.

“Yes, I have” you mumbled in response and narrowed your eyes, as you noticed a group of boys crossing the other side of the street. They looked young. Really young. Maybe in their early 20s. Dressed in brown trench coats, they were jumping over puddles briskly, trying not to get their feet wet. Only one of them had an umbrella, so the others were trying to get under it. They were pushing each other with their elbows, playfully fighting for dominance. And then you noticed him. A tall guy who was trying to follow the running boys with his coat unbuttoned, so you could see his black and white uniform. There was a silk ribbon tied neatly around the collar of his crisp white shirt that made him look like he was straight out from some 18th century novel about a private boarding school. His blond hair, wet in the rain, sticked to his chiseled face with sharp, prominent cheekbones and pointy chin.

You literally got glued to the window, admiring him, and forgot that Mallory was still on the line.

“Y/N? Y/N? Can you hear me? The painting should also...”

You cleared your throat and understood that it was either now or never. You didn’t have much time, as the boys took their way down the street away from the coffee shop.

“Mallory” you harshly interrupted her. “I can’t talk right now”, you hanged up on her without even letting her finish the sentence. Her complains were the last thing you worried about when there was a gorgeous boy, who had the face of a cherub you were dying to paint, just several feet away from you. You grabbed your jacket and stormed your way out of the coffee shop. It seemed like your heart was about to beat out of your chest with an overwhelming excitement like a trapped bird. You have found him. You have finally found him.

Faster than the wind you ran after the boys hoping they didn’t go far. You saw the tall guy take a turn around the corner, and without even realizing what you were doing, you shouted at the top of your lungs:

“Excuse me, sir!”

He didn’t pay attention. “Shit” you thought to yourself and speeded up. Raindrops were running down your cheeks, and the wind was blowing right in your face making it extremely uncomfortable to run.

“Heeey!” you almost stumbled and instinctively put your hand out to prevent yourself from falling. Your purse hanged off your shoulder and nearly fell down in the puddle, but you managed to catch it. “Excuse me!”

Right at that moment the guy stopped and slowly turned around. With a slight confusion on his face he watched you slowly approach him, as you were trying to calm your heavy breathing. You imagined that you looked like a wet rat with your hair clanged to you face and smeared mascara — definitely not the most presentable look for the artist whose paintings cost thousands of dollars.

“I’m sorry? May I help you?” the boy asked. His voice was low for an angelic appearance like his. He looked even more handsome up close. The gray sky tinted his blue eyes beautifully, making them brighter. They were piercing at you cautiously, as he was trying to figure out whether he found you familiar. Even though his hair was wet, you still were able to tell that it was curly, as they were sticking to his cheeks in messy waves. You took a deep breath and tucked a piece of your wet hair behind your ear, but it didn’t make any difference to your look.

“Hi!” You smiled brightly. The only thought “it’s him, it’s him!!” was ringing in your head, making you grin like an idiot. Nobody could understand your delight at that moment. It seemed like sleepless nights, when you were eating yourself up for the lack of inspiration, have come to an end. If only this beautiful boy before you agreed to work with you! You would be the happiest person in the world. “I’m sorry for bothering you, sir. But I really need to talk to you...”

“Mikey!! What’s up, dude? Are you coming?” the other boys were calling him. He turned around and raise his right hand in the air.

“Just a moment!” he shouted back at them. He adjusted the collar of his coat bringing it up, so the rain wouldn’t get behind his back. “I’m sorry, who are you again?”

You realized that you should’ve introduced yourself first, but you were taken aback by the beauty of a real-life angel, so you couldn’t blame yourself for that.

“My name is Y/N. I’m an artist” he furrowed his eyebrows, not understanding how it was connected to him, “and I’m looking for a model” you explained. “I’m working on a painting...”, you paused, “of a cherub for a very famous client, but I can’t finish it because I don’t have a model whose face and I could paint, and you are exactly what I’ve been looking for”, you bubbled excitedly.

You could see the blush bloom on the boy’s cheeks. He parted his finely-carved, scarlet lips, but didn’t say anything. Only somewhat confusingly ran his fingers through his hair.

“I’m sorry, but I’m not a model”, he mumbled, lowering his eyes. You couldn’t explain the feeling inside of you as you watched him. He reminded you of Botticelli paintings. There was something ethereal about him: in the detached beauty of his perfectly sculpted face. He looked so fresh, so innocent, so pure, as if he was made of ivory and rosy petals.

“It doesn’t matter”, you hurried to assure him, “you don’t have to be one. It’s just...” you took a deep breath, thinking that you might have die if he didn’t agree. “I’ve been looking for a face like yours for months. It would be an honor to work with you...?” You heard one of the boys calling him “Mikey”, but you wasn’t sure what full name it stood for.

“Michael. Michael Langdon” he said, still smiling shyly. He drew his bottom lip between his perfect white teeth and looked at you through his lashes. “Look, I’m really fluttered. Thank you for your words, but....”

“Michael, we are going now!”, the boys shouted, and he turned his broad back at you one more time. It was pouring by now, and you knew that you couldn’t hold the boy any longer.

“Michael, please, think it over and give me a call, okay?” You took your business card out of your purse and handed it to him. “I’m offering you 50$ per hour. One session usually lasts up to 3-4 hours. Please, do the math and give it a thought”.

His doe-like eyes widened at your words. Not only he was blushing from your compliments, but he was stunned by the boldness of your offer, as if you were asking for something inappropriate.

“I-I-I’m really not sure...” he stuttered. You understood his reaction: how often does one gets stopped by a stranger who offers them to model for a renaissance-inspired painting? But you really, really needed him, and you were running out of time.

“Look, I’m not expecting you to answer immediately”, you said looking him in the eye, and noticed that he instantly looked away, blushing even more, “let me know if you agree by Friday, okay?”

The boys started whistling at Michael. He took your card hesitantly, his fingers were slightly shaking. He looked up at you and nodded slowly, hiding the card in the inside pocket of his coat.

“Alright, thank you”, his voice sounded hoarse, so he cleared his throat and repeated himself, “thank you”.

The corners of your lips twitched, but he didn’t return a smile, being too confused and embarrassed with all this unexpected attention to his persona. You watched him join his friends. They tapped his shoulder, as he approached them, and shoot you a curious look.

You realized that you didn’t even care about the pouring rain anymore. You were completely soaked, but the only thing you were capable of thinking was a gorgeous blue-eyed boy you just met.

xxx

The sound of the ringing phone disturbed the comfortable silence of a Saturday afternoon you were spending in your studio. You were waiting for Michael’s call yesterday, but as the hour and the minute hands of the huge clock on the wall stroke midnight, you understood that he turned down your offer. That’s why you found yourself in your studio on the following day, standing in front of the unfortunate painting and thinking that you needed to start looking through the list of potential models Mallory had sent to you.

“Hello?”, you answered the phone, noticing an unknown number on the display. A familiar raspy voice made your heart drop.

“Hi, is it Y/N?”

“Michael?” you turned away from the painting and sat down on sofa, placing your feet on a small coffee table.

“Yeah, hi”, he said, “I’m sorry I didn’t call you yesterday. Got really busy with school”. School? How old was he? “But I have been thinking about your offer...”

You hummed.

“Have you?”, you had to admit that you didn’t like the fact that he ignored your request to call you back by Friday, because it meant that he wasn’t the most responsible person, and only God knew how you were gonna arrange the appointments with him since he was incapable of planing his time. But then again, weren’t you the same way? For a second you even sympathized with Mallory who had to deal with your own irresponsibility 24/7 (but only for a second).

“Yes”, you could tell by his voice that he was nervous. You smiled at the memory of him blushing in the rain. “Well, I-I-I think I’m ready to try...” you swear you could ready to explode brighter than the fireworks on the 4th of July, but you managed to keep it cool.

“That’s really nice of you. Thank you, Michael. Do you have a pen to write down the details?”

You two agreed that he would come on Tuesday for 2 hours, so you could look at him properly and decide what exactly needed to be added to the painting. Then he could come 2 time a week for 3 hour session. You didn’t plan for the entire process to take too long, 3 weeks maximum. Thank God you had managed to persuade Gallant to give you more time. Actually it didn’t even take a lot of effort: last week, after you discovered Michael, he came came to your studio and got so stunned by the painting that he let you take as much time as you needed. If only all clients were this way.

On Tuesday Michael knocked on your door in time. Dressed in a loose cotton shirt and linen pants, hair clipped in a messy bun, you went to greet him. He was chewing on the inside of his cheek, awkwardly shifting his weight from one foot to another. Just like you thought, his hair was curly indeed. Crisp, golden locks were styled messily, covering a part of his forehead. He was wearing the same coat and holding a big leather bag in his hand. You stepped aside, inviting him in.

“Hi”, he said, blushing, and you curiously wondered if it was an uncontrollable habit of his.

“Hello, Michael”, you took his bag from his hands and carefully placed it on a table by the hangers. “I’m glad you came”.

He nodded. His long fingers started undoing the buttons of his trench coat. He carefully hanged it, and you noticed how elegant his movements were. He pulled the sleeves of his black sweater a bit up, exposing his delicate wrists. You definitely were staring, but not in a romantic way. You were observing him like a picture in a museum and wondering how you got so lucky to meet this precious boy. He was looking around cautiously, as he followed you into the studio, scanning the unknown environment with his eyes. You made your way to the center of the room, took one of the chairs and pulled it closer to the window, not far from the easel.

“Please, make yourself at home” you smiled at Michael. He looked amused, as he studied a huge painting that was almost of the size of the wall for one of your old clients who ordered it about eight months ago. You created your own version of the Miracle of the Bread and Fish, and really like the result. For some reason, biblical scenes always were your favorite to work on. “Would you like some coffee or tea, maybe?”

Michael looked at you and shook his head.

“No, thank you, I’m good”, his eyes were searching for a place were he could sit, and you pointed at the chair. He took his seat and folded his hands neatly, lacing his fingers together, so you wouldn’t notice them tremble. You watched him amusingly with your head tilted to the side. He was absolutely adorable.

“Do you live here?”, he noticed your gaze and smiled shyly, tucking a strand of his hair behind his ear.

You shook your head and turned away to take the painting of the cherub and carefully place it on the easel.

“No, I rent this studio for work purposes”, you nodded at the painting. “So what do you think?”

Michael was in awe. His ocean eyes were glistening with excitement, the tip of his pink tongue ran along his bottom lips nervously, as he said under his breath:

“Oh my God, this is magnificent”.

For a moment it seemed like he stopped being nervous and expressed his opinion sincerely. That’s what you adored art for: it made people feel different spectrums of emotions, all at once. It lifted the armor and left one bare, vulnerable, and unguarded. “I’m not sure if...”, Michael covered his mouth with one hand and than placed it back on his thigh, “if I’m good enough for posing for such a masterpiece”.

You couldn’t believe that such a stunning human being could doubt his looks. Michael’s appearance was worth being painted by the best artists all over the world. How come nobody told him that?“

“I think you will be just perfect for that”, you didn’t admit it, but making Michael blush was your new favorite activity. “But it maybe a bit tiresome to sit still for such a long time”, you instructed him, “you’ll get used to it”.

It was quite a disaster, you had to admit to yourself after some time. Michael just couldn’t keep still. He was constantly shifting in his chair, playing with his fingers, and always felt the need to scratch his jaw or toy with the collar of his sweater. During your first session your were doing sketches of his face, and by the moment your time was up you were practically begging him to relax and stop frowning. He couldn’t let go of his pressure and shyness.

“I’m so sorry, Y/N”, he pleaded, as he was putting on his coat. You smiled at him, washing your hands and watching him get dressed from the kitchen.

“It’s okay”, you approached him and gave him the money for his work, “thank you for coming today, Michael. I’ll see you on Thursday”.

Despite his surprised squeak, you pulled him closer for a hug. You needed him to relax for the sake of posing for the painting. The sessions might haven taken longer than you had thought.

xxx

It took him a while to start opening up to you. By your fourth meeting his hands stopped shaking and he no longer seemed to feel uncomfortable. He didn’t feel embarrassed to ask you to make some tea for him, and you learned that he liked it with lemon and one piece of sugar. As he sipped on it, watching you preparer the canvas and oil paints (you were done with pencil sketches by that time), he told you about his studies at Hawthorne school (Michael was twenty, and apparently, hated his birthdays. You found this fact absolutely astonishing, and made a side note to change this horrible omission), his friends, and his family. Turned out that he had a very troubled childhood, so his behavior started to make sense to you. Sympathy towards him grew with every session, and at some point you caught yourself thinking about him all the time. The thought about your meetings coming to an end made you feel extremely frustrated. Even though you kept reminding yourself that the relationship between you two had to stay professional, and it was wrong of you to think about him in a romantic way, but every time his blond mop of soft hair popped in the door frame you couldn’t hold in a radiant smile. It was impossible not to hug him and accidentally brush your fingers against his flushed cheek. He looked so damn cute.

You grew found of this marvelous boy, who turned out be very sensual, with a bright and vivid mind that generated ideas at the supersonic speed. He loved asking you questions about history of art, he was genuinely interested in learning about your favoring painters and why you loved them so much. He never stopped amazing you with his mindset, and his child-like innocence bribed you.

Another Tuesday night was traditionally spent in your studio apartment with Michael at his usual spot in front of your easel. You were working on the cherub’s eyes. Crystal blue and bright just like Michael’s. Your brows were frowned as you were trying to concentrate on the movements of the brush. The smell of oil paint was filling the room. You glanced at Michael to pay very close attention to his long eyelashes framing his eyes. That’s when you noticed a very strange look on his face. You couldn’t understand what was that. Confusion? Doubt?

“Michael, what’s wrong, darling?”, you asked him adding another brush stroke to the canvas. He slowly shook his head, trying not to move too much. From hours of watching him attentively you had learned his body language quite well. Now you could tell that something was definitely up, judging by the fact how he was holding onto the chair. His knuckles turned white. However, you proceed to painting, considering that maybe he was thinking of his problems or whatever there was on his mind.

“Love, please, look up for me”, you asked him after a while, trying to paint the patches of light in the eyes of the cherub. Michal started biting on his lower lip, but obliged your order and lifted his gaze. Suddenly it all felt like you were back to session 1, when he refused to relax. You put the brush aside and whipped the excess of paint off your fingers.

“Michael, please, tell me what’s bothering you?”, his face turned bright red at your question.

“Nothing”, he mumbled in response.

You sighed and took a step towards him. Carefully you took his face in your hands, forcing him to look up at you. You were glad that he didn’t shy away from your touch like he used to at the very beginning.

“Love, I can’t paint you when you look concerned”, you gently stroked his cheek with your thumb, and he instinctively nuzzled against your palm. It was unprofessional of you, you thought to yourself, but whatever. “You know that you can tell me anything”.

His eyes flattered, long eyelashes were casting shadows on his cheekbones in the dim light of the room. He wrapped his fingers around your wrists and carefully put your hands away.

“You’re gonna laugh at me”, he said, looking down at his knees. You frowned. Why was that? All this time you were trying to show him that he could trust you and you were his friend, and his doubts almost felt offensive to you.

“Michael, darling, I would never”, you assured him, watching him closely.

A broken cry escaped from his chest, as he hid his face in his hands. You started really worrying about him, was something hurting him? Maybe he wasn’t feeling well? You petted his head lovingly.

“I can’t tell you”, he sobbed, and looked up at you. The expression of his face was unreadable. Eyes glistened with salty tears, as he was desperately trying to hold them in. “It’s so e-emb-b-barrassing. You...”, he sighed, “you’re going to think that I’m weird. I can’t ask you for this...”

By that moment you stopped understanding anything from what he was saying. You wrapped your arms around him and brought him closer to you, resting his head against your stomach.

“Shhhh, baby”, you coed, running the fingers of your one hand though his hair and petting up and down his spine with the other hand. “What do you want, Michael? Please, tell me”.

You felt him tightening his hug and nuzzling into your shirt like a cat. He sighed heavily before he answered:

“I was thinking”, his voice sounded so small and vulnerable, and you started wandering what sort of a dreadful sin Michael was going to confess that made him so insecure. “Maybe you could draw me?”

He lifted his puppy eyes at you, and you looked at him confused.

“Baby, isn’t it what I’m doing?”, you chucked softly. Silly boy.

Michael closed his eyes and nuzzled back into your stomach. You had to listen carefully in order to understand his muffled words:

“I was thinking maybe you could draw me naked?”

Your fingers froze in the air inches away from his curls. At first you thought that you must have misheard him, but as his shoulders started shaking in anticipation, you realized that you had heard him correctly. Your heart started pounding, you could hear the blood ring in your ears. The most terrible thing , in the context of your unprofessionalism, was the fact that his words sent impulses straight to you core making a thin cotton of your panties wet. You cleared your throat, looking for the right words. Michael was terrified. He decided that if you had stopped playing with his hair, you got mad at him, so he squeezed his eyes shut, fighting back the tears.

“Michael...”, you started slowly, but he interrupted you.

“Y/N, I’m sorry! I shouldn’t have...I’m sorry”, he was talking fast, afraid that you could kick him out for his foolishness.

Multiple thoughts were running through your mind at that particular moment. Could you really draw him naked and manage not to lose control? Of course, it would be a wonderful sketch for your portfolio, but you doubted if it would be okay for you psych. The silence was making Michael feel even more embarrassed, so he started standing up from his chair, but you placed your hands on his shoulders to keep him seated. God, he was so scurrying all the time, it was almost unbearable.

“Alright, Michael”, you finally replied, hoping that he didn’t sense how hesitant you were about this decision, otherwise it would devastate him. A wide smile spread across his cherry lips.

“Oh my God, thank you, Y/N” he whispered giving you that look through his lashes you could never say “no” to.

You nodded and made your way to one of the shelves to get a sketchbook.

“Well,” you turned back to him, “get ready, and I’ll go find the fabric to wrap you in”.

Michael was eager to oblige. You didn’t expect him to want it so bad, but as he quickly stood on his feet and rushed behind the folding screen, you thought otherwise.

Unable to believe what you had just agreed to, you started looking through the rolls of fabric, trying to decide what color would suit Michael. Probably silver. It would look good with his skin tone and the icy blue of his eyes. You grabbed the fabric and approached the changing screen behind which you could see the outline of Michael’s body. You hurried to hang the piece over the screen and shook your head, as if it would help you to get rid of the indecorous thoughts.

“I think silver will look good”, you said to Michael, “just wrap yourself in it when you are ready”, you swore your hands were shaking. What, you and Michael suddenly switched personalities? God, how were you gonna draw him when you were blushing like a teenage girl?

“Damn, Y/N, you’ve worked with so many models. Get your shit together and breath”, you scold yourself.

“Okay, I’m ready”, you turned around when you heard his low voice, and your jaw dropped. Adonis in flesh. You stood there blinking dumbly trying to comprehend the view of his broad shoulders, taut stomach, and his creamy thighs wrapped in silver silk. If the fabric had been navy blue you would have thought that your cherub painting came to life. No less. You opened your mouth and then closed it without saying a word. Michal blushed and awkwardly crossed his arms, waiting for the instructions.

You coughed and turned your gaze away from him.

“Alright, get comfortable on the sofa”, you figured that a chair wasn’t suitable anymore. The boy laid down on a green velvet sofa you had bought for an extremely expensive price at one of the auctions, and at that moment you were glad that you had, because Michael’s pale skin looked even more fragile, tinted by the emerald color of velvet upholstery. He bent his long legs, carefully put them on the soft material, and leaned back on the pillows with his hands behind his head. For a second you forgot how to breath.

But as soon as you started sketching you felt relaxed. You let the pencil wonder around the clean sheet of paper, drawing the outlines of Michael’s body. He couldn’t stop smiling and looked genuinely happy that you’d let him pose for you. The skin of his cheeks and neck was in delicate pink hue, and he was biting his lips again. You wish you could bite them, too. Fuck.

Your brows frowned when you noticed that the silver fabric slipped off a little and didn’t look as good as you wanted it to be, so you put your pencil aside and stood up to fix it. Michael thought there was something wrong with him.

“Did you do something wrong?”, he asked worriedly. You wondered why he always felt the need to blame himself for everything.

“No, I just need to adjust the fabric”, you explained, without meeting his gaze. You tried not to touch his skin, as your fingers cautiously folded the silky piece, draping it in wavy folds. But the skin of his stomach looked so soft, and couldn’t help yourself and brushed it with just the tips of your digits. The muscles in his tummy tensed immediately, and you heard his breath hitch, so you hurried to take you hand away. Then he did something that sent the remains of your self-control straight to hell. Michael wrapped his fingers around your wrist and put your hand back on his stomach. Feeling enchanted, you slowly moved it to his abdomen and stopped right above the happy trail of blond hairs that went under the fabric. When you glanced at Michael, he was watching you in awe, his lips parted and his eyes wide open. It felt like his skin was burning under your touch.

“You like this, don’t you?”, the tone of your own voice was so low, you didn’t even recognize it. Michael gulped and nodded. His lids fluttered, as you move your hand to his chest.

“Please”, he murmured, licking his scarlet lips. He looked so soft, so innocent, and you wondered how beautiful he would look all wrecked and fucked out. You felt the adrenaline rush through your veins and the familiar heat between your legs. The last thought that came across your mind was “Fuck it”, as you leaned forward and pressed your lips against Michael’s parted ones. He let out a surprised mewl, but eagerly kissed you back. You felt his hands sliding down your waist to pull you closer against his bare chest. The fabric couldn’t cover the outline of his arousal: you could see the contour of his erect cock in the crease of his thigh. The tip of your tongue ran across Michael’s swollen lips, and he gasped into the kiss.

“You’re so pretty”, you said, as you broke the kiss, pressing your forehead against his. The look in his big eyes was completely dazed. You smiled and cupped his face in your hands. “Babe, are you with me?”

Michael nodded and pulled you for another kiss. You yanked his head by his locks and moved your lips to his jawline. Numbing on the thin skin, you decided to test the waters and slowly snaked your hand down to his cock. He moaned brokenly when you stroked it through the fabric. There was already a wet spot of his precum. You moved the sheer material aside and took a look at the long shaft with flushed head glistening with the pearls of his arousal. He squeezed his eyes shut, when you wrapped your fingers around the base of his cock and slowly stroke it.

“Y/N”, he pledged. He sounded so needy, so desperate. You formed a fist and started making circular motions with it around the head of his cock. Michael opened his mouth, but couldn’t say a word, lost in the sensation. You couldn’t take your eyes off of him. He looked like a painting with his boyish features, soft curls, and ripe, sinful lips he kept licking. You started stroking him faster, thrilled to take him apart and find out what his angelic face looked like when he was cumming.

“Shhhh”, you soothed him, lacing the fingers of your free hand into the strands of his hair and gently scratching at the nape of his neck. “My pretty boy”, you kissed his forehead.

Michael whimpered and pressed his head against your breasts nuzzling into them through your linen shirt. Holding tight to you, he carefully cupped your right breast and squeezed it slightly, making you moan and throw your head back. He was pleased with your reaction, as it got him braver, and he started unbuttoning your shirt, exposing more of your skin. You kept pressing feather light kisses to his closed lids, his cheeks, the bridge of his nose and his lips. His face must have been carved by angels from the finest marble. He wrapped his lips around your nipple and delicately sucked on it, drawing broken moans from your throat.

His hips were rutting against the crumpled fabric, meeting the thrusts of your hand. You stopped only for a second just to lick your palm, and wrap it around him again to resume pumping your fist.

“Y/N...”, he whined hopelessly, “I’m close”.

You knew that he wouldn’t last long. He was so young, you were surprised he hadn’t cum right after you kissed him.

“C’mon, darling”, you encouraged him, teasing the slit of his tip, “cum for me, angel. My personal cherub...”

You adored the way his lips twitched, forming a perfect “o”, the tense muscles of his stomach that spasmed in a convulsing pleasure, as he came all over your palm in white ribbons. You wished you could paint him this way. The picture of him cumming undone was forever imprinted in your mind. You smiled fondly when he looked up at you, feeling the warmth coil in the pit of your stomach.

“Thank you”, he whispered, and you chuckled at his boldness. His hands traveled up to your unbuttoned shirt and slid it off your shoulders, reliving your exposed chest to him. He caressed the nipples and leaned forward to suck on them again, swirling his wicked tongue around the hardening buds. “I think I owe you an orgasm now”.

You looked at him in surprise. He didn’t have to. You just wanted to make him feel good, but Michael seemed pretty determined.

“Could you, please, sit on my face?”, he blushed at his own words, but managed not to turn his eyes away from you. Such a polite boy.

You hissed through gritted teeth, and before straddling his chest you involved him in another passionate kiss. He shifted on the pillows, sliding down the sofa to let you straddle his chest in a kneeling position. You scooted forward until your thighs were on either side of his head. The gold curls were disheveled. Lowering your body, as your pussy made contact with his face, you moaned loudly. Michael placed his hands on your thighs and calves for your leverage. As soon as his tongue licked a wide stripe across your wet folds, you cried out, thinking you were in heaven. The feeling of dominance was alluring to you, and in no time you started drawing figure eights with your hips, rubbing yourself against his tongue. You were probably suffocating himself a bit, but judging by Michael’s muffled moans he was enjoying it. He used his fingers to help himself and spread you open, wrapping his lips around your clit. The gently sucking was alternated with him lapping on your folds.

“Good boy”, you praised him, and his whimpers sent delicious sensation to your throbbing core. You reached for your hair clip and took it off, letting your hair down in loose waves. “Just like that, baby, just like that”.

You thought that you lost yourself when his started fucking you with his tongue, stretching your tight walls with each thrust of it. Your legs started shaking not only from your attempts to keep steady, but from the mind-blowing pleasure the boy between your legs was causing you. He was devouring you, as if you were his last meal. You looked down at him and moaned at the sight of him all soft and flushed beneath you. The fact you were sitting on the face of the boy, who looked like a real-life angel, made your insides quiver. A really warm fuzzy feeling spilled inside you, making you scream out Michael’s name, as your orgasm pierced through every cell of your body. It was so good, to the extent of being extricating. Everything seemed unreal. Michael had let go of your thighs, and you bent over to kiss his mouth covered in your wetness.

You were laying on top of Michael, skin on skin, legs entwined, as you two were kissing lazily on the sofa.

“What are you going to do with all the sketches of my face after you sell your painting?” he asked, stroking your bare thigh.

You folded your hands on his chest and rested your head on them.

“I was thinking of using them for my personal exhibition”.

Michael’s eyes lit up with curiosity.

“You never told me about the exhibition! Y/N, that’s awesome!”

You petted his cheek, smiling at his reaction. Thanks to him you started to remember what it felt like to be grateful for every little thing in you life. Somehow, despite all the difficulties, Michael managed to keep his inner child safe and happy.

“Am I invited?” he wondered shyly.

“Of course you are, love” you rolled your eyes at his silly question. “You are my muse, after all”

Tag list: @lovelykhaleesiii @langdons-rep @babypinkstyles94 @sammythankyou @kaigitana @ms-mead @sebastianshoe @langdonsdemon @iloveziggystardust @chaoticevillangdon

People who might like it: @lvngdvns @icylangdon @ritualmichael @langdonsoceaneyes @ccodyfern @sloppy-little-witch-bitch26 @sojournmichael @wroteclassicaly

Amazing art by @theghostoflangdon

#michael langdon smut #michael langdon x reader #michael langdon imagine #ahs apocalypse #duncan shepherd smut

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clevercatchphrase · 4 years

Text

2019 year in review

So… The 2010’s are almost over. Huh. What a decade it’s been. Hard to comprehend how much has changed in 10 years. I can barely believe that I was in high school at the beginning of this decade, and now I’m a college graduate with 2 degrees who’s been working at the same job for the last 3 years. But trying to summarize the past 10 years in a single post is a good way to give myself an existential crisis, so let’s not do that! Instead, let’s just focus on 2019 because there has been more than enough shit that’s happened to me in this year to talk about.

PART 1 OF 2: 2019 AND 2020 GOALS AND RESOLUTIONS

Huh, looking back through my archives, I apparently didn’t make a tumblr post about my goals this year. I definitely had some, though. Lemme list ‘em off real quick, and then we’ll go through them point by point.

1) Pay off all my student loans 2) Finish some song comics 3) Make art for my Redbubble account 4) Finish the first rough draft/script of a game I wanted to make 5) Practice ASL 6) Sew some stuffed animals 7) Finish some fan fictions 8) Work on Ghost Switch 9) AMVs 10) Do some original writing 11) Make illustrations for my fan fictions

Okay, first off, the student loans. I was actually SO CLOSE to successfully completing this one bUT THEN MY CAR HAD TO BE A WHINEY PISS BABY AND HAVE ITS ALTERNATOR DIE ON ME WHILE I WAS ON THE HIGHWAY AND THEN A BLOW OUT THREE WEEKS LATER.

GOD, if I had to summarize this year in two words, for me it would be “Car troubles”. I swear I spent more on auto repair in the first third of this year than I ever have just freakin’ OWNING a car. All four of my tires had to be replaced, my alternator failed and my car literally just SHUT OFF while I was driving, and I was barely able to coast into a gas station. Both my front breaks and rear breaks were worn down the metal and I only learned this when my car was barely able to stop after I had to slam the petal down full force! I went in for an oil change, and they found some problems and then I didn’t get my car back for three days! I don’t even like owning a car! I hate driving! I hate my country’s refusal to provide universal, free public transportation! I NEVER ASKED FOR THIS!

Oh-kay… number 2. Finish some song comics. I didn’t finish any. But that doesn’t mean I didn’t work on them. I have made tiny progress, but that’s certainly better than no progress. One of these song comics I hope to be realizes is going to be a collab with one of my friends. It’ll be a long-time coming as it’s pretty low priority for the both of us, but if anyone else out there was disappointed with KH3’s ending, we’re gonna have ya’ covered… With SONG!

3. Make some redbubble art. I actually did this one! Not in the way I expected, but I added (technically) 3 new designs to my redbubble in the middle of the year. If you like butterflies and dragons, I got some product for you~!

Number 4, finish a script for a game I want to make. I… thought about this. I thought about this a lot, but I never put pen to paper, so… oops. It almost happened! I debated making this my main writing project for NaNoWriMo this year, but ended up having more inspiration for another story. Maybe next year? (god, I hope not. I don’t want to wait a full year just to write something)

Number 5, practice ASL. I just straight up didn’t do this and I only have myself to blame. Still keepin’ up that Danish Duolingo streak, though. 4 years going strong and not a day missed yet.

Number 6, sew some stuffed animals. Again, another one I just straight up didn’t do, but I have an excuse of trying to save money while my car crashed and burned in every other sense except literal this year. Hopefully 2020 will be different. I’ll definitely be able to pay off this last loan within the first half of 2020, and then I can start saving for whatever I want to buy.

Finish some fan fictions was number 7, and I did this! Well, I only finished, 1, but it was a story I’ve been working on for over 3 years, and it came out to over 200 THOUSAND words long, which is the longest thing I’ve ever written, and I’m quite proud of myself. Now that the big story is out of the way, and I’ve gotten into a good rhythm of working on Ghost Switch, maybe I can squeeze in some short writing sessions more frequently. (either that, or just wait for my car to break down again and then go on a writing spree in a pepboys. The lord and the fan fic discord know that’s solely why I finished my other fic this year)

Speaking of Ghost Switch, working on it was a goal this year too, and I did that! I kept it up all year and took a vacation in November and it was wonderful. While the major plot points have been in place since before I started drawing, I still need to script each arc beyond Snowdin, but hey, by the time we get there, it’ll be 2022 so I got time. (Note, don’t do this, kids. Script your stories and comics thoroughly before publishing. The road I’m on is paved with misery and pain and it will only end in tears unless I change lanes soon)

Number 9, amvs. Do people make AMVs anymore? Idk… the last one I made was... Jesus, 5 years ago? (it was a gravity falls/fall out boy crossover, if you were curious) I’ve been wanting to do 2 more for just as long, but in order for me to do that, I’d have to spend time re-watching the shows to find the footage, and then actually edit them together, and I just don’t…. feel like it. Maybe someday, but not any day soon.

10; do some original writing. I did this! For nanowrimo! I wrote the first draft of some original fiction I’ve been planning for a year or two now and it completely sucks! But it’s on paper now and I’m happy. Will I revise and edit it? Sure, but not for a while. I want to let it sit and forget about it and look at it with new eyes months from now so I can be sure I can make it better when time comes to rewrite.

11, make illustrations for my fan fics. Now that You Monster is done, I want to go back and add pictures to it. I didn’t do any this year, but I did keep a list of scenes I wanted to draw, so I have plenty of ideas to do as warm up sketches next year~ I kinda want to stream them~

So, that was 11 goals, and I successfully fulfilled 4 of them! That’s! Not a very good ratio… QmQ So, goals for 2020. Some I’m gonna keep from this year, some I’m gonna drop and some I’m gonna add. In short I would like to,

1) Finish paying off that last student loan 2) Put more stuff on my redbubble 3) Illustrate my own fan fics 4) Sew at least one stuffed animal 5) Make an enamel pin 6) Read one new book a month 7) Write one page a day/Complete at least one new fan fic 8) Learn Python or C# for the game I want to make 9) Finish fully scripting Ghost Switch 10) Boost my patreon

Most of these I think are pretty self-explanitory, but I’ll go into detail just a bit because I’m on a roll and typing my thoughts helps me feel less alone in the middle of the night when you’re super tired and you know you should probably go to sleep, but the toddler in you is throwing a tantrum and doesn’t wanna go to sleep just yet, but you can’t fight the progression of time either way.

Number 1- I should be able to reach this goal by the end of March. End of June at the absolute latest. Once that goal is met, my secret new year’s resolution will be unlocked as well!

Number 2- I want to put more art of my OCs on redbubble. These OCs are tied to the game I want to make. There’s already some art of them up there, but I want at least one piece for each character.

Number 3- Mostly for You Monster. Embrace the cardinal rule of fan fic and apply it to fan art. If you want to read about see art about certain ideas, scenarios, or what-ifs, you gotta make it yourself.

Number 4- I have 3 potential ideas to sew. One is definitely leagues easier than the other two and will probably be chosen if/when I have the time and materials.

Number 5- This year I got really, REALLY into the idea of making enamel pins. Unfortunately it’s a pretty big investment (like, $350 to make 100 pins you might not even sell). If this happens, it’ll probably be towards the end of the year, and if I get enough interest. I’m currently torn between making an original enamel pin and one based off Undertale. We’ll just have to see where this goes.

Number 6- Back in 2018 when I paid off one of my many student loans, I rewarded myself by spending over 200 dollars in used books. All these books had a theme; they were focused on dragons because I have a problem. I have not yet read a single one of these books I have bought, and I would like to fix that. I have, like, 20 unread dragon books, and even if I only read 12 out of 20, I would consider that an amazing accomplishment and money well spent.

Number 7- I currently have about 8 different WIPs I could work on. (well, I don’t know if I can even call them wips. More like, a general idea and a title written down.) I want to build good writing habits, and if I can write just 200 words a day, hell, even 200 words a week and just one of my 8 stories done, I would consider this goal met.

Number 8- I’m torn between making my game in unity or ren’py. I know jack shit about both. Ren’py is more user friendly, but unity will allow me more customization. (Lol, can you guess what kind of game I want to make yet?)

Number 9- I really just want the full story to be done and written incase anything goes horribly terribly wrong in my life and I find myself unable to continue making ghost switch in comic form. Then at least I can finish the story by other means, you know?

Number 10- It always surprises me every month when I get that patreon email saying I got paid. Sure, I don’t even make double digits on it, but it still awes me enough to know that people out there like my work enough to throw me a tip. I can’t thank my patrons enough for supporting me and I hope to one day be in such a good place I can update my comic/song comics/writing frequently enough without need for goals or milestones. But until that magical day arrives, money is always a great incentive for anything, I suppose. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

ALRIGHT. PART 2 OF 2: SHIT THAT HAPPENED TO ME IN 2019

Cheesus crust what a year. This year started off great! Back in late January Kingdom Hearts 3 FINALLY released, and let me tell you a little story. Back in the summer of 2006 I was a 13 year old middle schooler with no way of making money other than by doing house hold chores at a rate of 25 cents a task. A few weeks ago, I had a sleep over at a friend’s house and they let me play this weird game called “Kingdom Hearts” and god, I was instantly hooked on it. That summer, I did over 800 chores, enough to earn myself 200$ and buy myself a playstation 2 (just in time for the ps3 to come out, gg me) The only games I had for the ps2 were KH1, 2, Re:CoM and Okami, and I beat them all… except Okami. Miffed that the PS3 wouldn’t allow for backwards compatibility, little 13-year-old me made a promise. I looked myself in the mirror and said “I will not buy the next playstation console until KH3 comes out, AND BOY that was probably a good choice for me to make with my level of gaming. I’m even less of a casual gamer than the average casual gamer, but I have been waiting 13 years for this piece of closure, and I even told my friends and family that “the day Kingdom Hearts 3 comes out is the day I will buy a playstation 4”. My dad apparently thought this was the funniest shit, because he literally took the day off from work that Friday to drive me on base to get the game and console (he thought it would be less crowded than a regular walmart, I suppose). I paid $400 on a ps4 pro while he bought me the game. Again, I have an impecible sense of timing seeing as the PS5 is now right on the horrizion, but just like before, I’m not buying a new console until the next KH game is released. See you in 2045, sony~. While I was at the gamestop on base, I also picked up Okami HD and The Last Guardian. For all of February and even early March, I took my time playing through KH3. And…! It was the best disappointment I’ve ever played. After a month away from gaming, I started The Last Guardian and finished it in a couple weeks. I love trico and would die for him, but trying to get 100% completion on that game is udder insanity. Okami, HD, however… again after a month break after finishing TLG, I started replaying Okami. I think I had only managed to get about halfway through the game before I just… stopped playing it on my ps2 version. I am currently SO CLOSE to getting a 100% on the ps4 version. In fact, I’ve beaten the game. I only (techinically) need 2 more trophies to be done; 1st, escape the water dragon without being eaten, 2nd, I need to beat that dumb stupid race with Kai, in order to get the last bead on my rosary, as well as the top dog trophy. I hate her so much. I hate this race so much. It’s awful and bad.

Flash forward to December! Earlier this month I was at Barnes and Noble, buying myself a planner for 2020. I exit the store and notice that there’s a gamestop across the street. For shits and giggles I go inside to look at their game selection, and I find KH 1.5 and 2.5. Now, my PS2 died a few years back (it just won’t read my discs anymore, I don’t know why) and I haven’t been able to replay any of my other kingdom hearts games since. If you had seen me the day I finished kingdom hearts 3, after the ending credits rolled, you would have heard me say “Man…. I wish I could play kingdom hearts 2 again”. AND NOW I CAN, ALONG WITH BBS which I had never even played yet, but knew the story of. I’ve restarted playing kh1, and I was so happy to hear that familiar music when I booted the game up for the first time. While at the game stop, I also picked up Rime and Tearaway, two games that had looked interesting to me. At the time of writing, I’ve finished Rime and am 25% done with tearaway. Rime was…. An interesting experience. I learned about it through Jacksepticeye’s channel a couple years back and thought the art style was enticing. For a super casual gamer like me, I found the puzzles just the right level of challenging and exploring was a blast! The music gave me VERY strong Princes Mononoke vibes, but the overall story left something to be desired. Overall I had fun, and enjoyed completing this game to 100%. Now for tearaway. Can I just say this game is super fucking adorable? I know the original was on the ps vita and the gameplay there was arguably more diverse and imaginative, but this game is just so fucking cute I don’t care?? ALSO, this game’s sound track is ABSOLUTELY incredible and I’ve only heard the first fourth of it! Listen to The Orchards, Pig Riding, and Gibbet Hill Pilgrimage for a taste of their wonderful beats and fantastic use of string and woodwinds! God, I’m so excited to get some more games in 2020. I’m proud to say I currently own more ps4 games than I ever did with my ps2 (and now the majority AREN’T Kingdom Hearts titles!), and I’m still hoping to play Journey, The Witness, and Abzu before everything becomes ps5.

What else happened to me this year. Oh, I went to a doctor for, like, the first time in seven years. I also had my blood drawn for the first time ever, and the nurse said the most disturbing thing to me while she did it. Now, whenever I get shots, I refuse to look. I did that here. So she thought it would be appropriate to say to me “Can you feel your blood leaving your body?” Lady… You can clearly see I am uncomfortable with what is happening here. Why, of all the things you could say, did you choose to say that. Unfortunately, while my doctor is nice, she keeps wanting to run tests on me, that I just cannot afford with my current salary, and my monthly insurance is about to go up to 200$ a month, so I’ve cancelled my next appointment with them, and don’t plan to go back until it’s absolutely necessary. Capitalism is fun, guys. Preventative healthcare is for wusses.

I started going to a chiropractor on a monthly basis. Story time- I don’t know when it started, but sometime late last November I began to notice that I had a headache that just... wasn’t... going away? And each day it was starting to get a little worse. It made it hard for me to find a comfortable position to sleep, it made it hard for me to be in bright areas or move fast. So I said to myself “Okay, if this headache persist through the month of december, then something is proooobably wrong and I should go see someone about it. And hoo-boy were thing wrong with me. By the time this January rolled around, I couldn’t even stay on my feet for more than a few hours without it physically hurting to just BREATHE. So I started going to this chain called The Joint (A+ name, I know). THey aksed me “How are you doing?” I said “I’m in pain” and they said “We can help fix that!”. I’ve only been to a chiropractor once before in my life a few years back after my freshmen year of college because I began to notice my hips weren’t able to support me? LIke, I would lie on my back, and I couldn’t push my hips up when my feet were flat on the floor. I also couldn’t climb anything steep, because my legs just couldn’t push me up if my knee had to bend more than 90 degrees when I lifted my leg up. (Turned out both my hips were apparently out of place). This time only one of my hips were out of place (which they fixed. they said one of my legs was an inch “longer” than the other because I had been leaning all my weight on one leg when I stand). But two of my ribs were apparently “Stuck” which was why it was hurting for me to just breathe, and one of my shoulders was missaligned too, causing one of my trap muscles to constantly be streched, which was pulling on my skull, and causing the headache. Anyway, after they popped all my bones back into place, I still felt terrible, but by god, that night was the first time in weeks I was able to sleep without a migrane. A chiropractor can’t magically heal your arthritis, or fibro, but I definately think they have merit to keeping your posture good and helping your body with things like circulation. 10 outa 10, would recomend. It’s all the fun of getting your neck snapped without the dying!

Earlier this month I got together with two of my friends and we baked Christmas cookies. It was a lot of fun, as well as a great learning experience. A member of my family has a gluten allergy, so we used rice flour for most of the cookies. We learned this is a bad idea! The cookies will just fall apart! A few member’s in one of the friend’s family have nut allergies. Other friend and I knew this and were careful to avoid cookie recipes with nuts, bUT THEN COMPLETELY FORGOT THAT ALMOND MILK AND ALMOND EXTRACT COUNT AS NUT. IN FACT, ALMOND EXTRACT IS PURE CONCENTRATED NUT JUICE AND WE FELT SO BAD FOR ALMOST ACCIDENTALLY POISONING THE FAMILY.

Earlier this year me and these same friends took a field trip to Hobby Lobby and just dicked around the store for a couple of hours. It was super fun, 11 outa 10, would recommend, a great date idea for your artsy S.O.

Back in May I went to a wedding for the first time in my life. (well, not true, but the first one I could remember) we left at 5am, drove 5 hours to get there, hung out at a zoo and spent the night in a la quinta before the wedding day. I slept on the bathroom floor because my mom was snoring too loud in the main room and keeping me awake, and the rest of the day was just spent me trying to keep myself together because I was pissed off and tired.

Other than all of that, nothing really major happened to me this year. I guess one more thing I’ve tried to do this year is started the process of breaking certain internet addictions so I can use my free time for more personal projects. Seriously, I found myself watching way too much youtube and following blogs that didn’t even make me happy. I had a personal intervention with myself where I sat down and asked myself, “why do you watch these videos and youtubers? Why do you follow these blogs? Do you really enjoy their content? Do you really care? If you stopped watching/following them, would you even notice?” After critically thinking it over, I’ve found myself unfollowing several channels and blogs and suddenly I feel so much happier. I thought I would miss it, but I realized I didn’t really care if I saw their content or not. I wasn’t missing much. And now I feel like I have more time to draw, read and write. If you think you spend too much time consuming and not enough time creating, I suggest you try and de-clutter your internet habits as well. It’s done wonders to un-fuck my headspace.

And… well, that about sums up my year. How are your holidays going? Anything fun, exciting, dramatic happen to you this year? I hope your new year is warm and safe! Good night, everybody!

#new year's resolutions #year in review #long post #(seriiously this think is like 3k words)

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catsafarithewriter · 5 years

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“Someone tell me what’s going on because I have no idea what I’m looking at right now.”-Haru preferred or Toto for a change of pace

PROMPT: Someone tell me what’s going on because I have no idea what I’m looking at right now.

A/N: I went with Toto here because someone else already submitted this prompt for Haru specifically, and also I got An Idea for Toto. Based on the pokemon au I’ve played around with but never written for, Toto and Muta’s backgrounds are specified here.

Toto didn’t mind the cycle from Jubilife City to Oreburgh. He actually quite enjoyed the research he conducted at the Mining Museum when he got down to it. He loved incorporating that budding knowledge into the young minds at the Trainer’s School.

He just couldn’t stand the company at the museum.

Or one in particular, anyway.

He parked his bike outside the building and let himself in, nodding to the man at the desk as he systematically worked his way through the exhibits. Most of the cabinets housed facts pertaining to to a more geological nature - and even that centred mostly around coal in particular - but a few sections gave a nod to Pokemon evolution.

He lingered at these displays for as long as he could before conceding defeat and descending to the laboratory floor.

It wasn’t technically a laboratory. At least, if any of the higher-ups asked, it was definitely a preparation floor. It just happened to contain a lot of high-tech equipment that the average Joe definitely shouldn’t be allowed to touch without a manual on hand, and even then only under supervision.

Toto didn’t know what half the machines did and, frankly, he wasn’t sure Muta did either.

One of the machines was in use today, a tall, canister-like unit that Toto hadn’t seen in use before, filled with liquid and glowing. An indistinguishable shape floated within. It made whirring noises and the occasional click.

The room was otherwise empty and against all his better judgement, Toto slowly approached the machine, the shape hard to identify within the translucent liquid, but something about it it seemed… eerily familiar. The form shifted and the light fell through to illuminate the curve of a beak, the ridge of a wing…

The clicks abruptly accelerated, running into a whirr and the lights turned red. Somewhere, an alarm went off.

Toto leapt back as the machine began to drain the liquid through vents in its base. The form was gently deposited in a fetal at the bottom. Leathery grey wings were curled about it. A beak-like jaw - not a beak, definitely a maw - poked out from beneath it. Sharp teeth lined its mouth. The canister lifted and suddenly there was not even the barrier of glass to hide the creature behind.

With a mental jolt, the feeling a missing a step on stairs emotionally jarring him, he realised he knew that form. Had sketched it, theorised on it, lectured on it, all from the remoteness of fossils.

He swore softly.

Then the creature leapt up at him and he swore considerably less softly.

Huge jaws that stretched far too far, with teeth like something belonging to a Sharpedo reared up at him, and all Toto could manage was a juddering step back, mistepping, and falling back with the long-extinct Pokemon going for his face–

A stick smacked into the Pokemon and it went slamming into the wall.

Toto looked up and saw the Oreburgh Mining Museum expert, Renaldo Moon - or Muta, to those who even vaguely knew him - standing between him and the creature.

“That,” Toto said slowly, “is the first time I’ve ever been glad to see you.”

Muta hauled the dazed Pokemon into a readied cage, slamming the door shut and snapping back to Toto. “What the heck do you think you’re doing?”

Toto reddened. “What the heck are you doing with that?” he retorted.

“Researching it,” Muta answered, as if it were the most obvious answer in the world.

Slowly, Toto got back to his feet and, now sure the Pokemon wasn’t in a position to try eating him again, approached it. He knelt down. The creature snarled at him. “Muta,” Toto said, his words carefully picked, “tell me what’s going on because I have no idea what I’m looking at right now.”

“And yer call yerself a researcher. Don’t you know an Aerodactyl when you see one?”

“Of course I know an Aerodactyl when I see one!” Toto snapped. “I’ve spent my life studying fossils - but that’s all they’ve ever been - fossils. Because they’re extinct.”

“Only slightly.”

Toto stared for a moment longer. Then he groaned. “Muta,” he said, uncharacteristically softly, “you can’t just bring extinct Pokemon back to life.”

Muta gestured to the Aerodactyl. “Obviously, I can.”

“We don’t… We don’t even know what being… being dead has done to it. Whether it can go into a pokeball, whether you can even call it a Pokemon anymore–”

Any other argument Toto had were wiped clean from his mind as Muta threw a pokeball at the Aerodactyl. Not even a Great Ball or an Ultra Ball, just an everyday, run-of-the-mill ball - and the Aerodactyl vanished into its depths. Muta leant through the bars and retrieved it. “It goes into a pokeball,” he said. “It’s a Pokemon.”

“That’s not… It’s not the only criteria…”

“C’mon. There are way weirder Pokemon out there than a living fossil.”

“Yes, but they’re not created by a mad scientist!”

“I resent that. I’m an expert. Scientists have to do all that paperwork and wear lab coats. Do ya see a lab coat on me?”

The man did look like he’d just walked off Mt Coronet, dressed in the hiking gear he used to explore caves and bring back fossils - only for an obviously different fate than the one Toto had envisioned. When Toto was sure he wasn’t about to go into full existential meltdown, he asked, “How many?”

“How many what?”

“How many times have you done this?”

“Eh, this would be the first.”

“And you just... you just walked out? You left it unattended? What if you hadn’t got back in time before it...?” Hatched? Awoke? Resurrected? Toto had no idea how to refer to such a slap in the face of nature.

“I wasn’t expecting some nosy birdbrain to poke around while I was gone,” Muta retorted. “Were ya raised in a barn? Anyway, I did get back in time, didn’t I? Wasn’t sure how long it was gonna take, but I think once I get the system worked, I could get the reviving process down to, uh, a few hours, maybe.”

Toto gave a chuckle that was tapdancing along the line between incredulity and hysteria. “Reviving,” he echoed. “Sure. Like reviving a fainted Pokemon, yeah, I’m sure the two things are completely comparable. One definitely isn’t a complete aberration of nature that... By Dialga, I can’t even think of an appropriate way to end that sentence to summarise just how.... Muta, how can I get it through your thick rock skull just how much of a bad idea this is?”

“My next test is gonna be an Archeops,” Muta said, as if Toto hadn’t said anything. “Ya know, the allegedly earliest feathered Pokemon on record. What was yer dissertation on again? Was it... it was the Archeops, right?”

Toto mumbled something that might have passed for a yes.

“Yeah, that’s right,” Muta continued. “It was all on the ground-up theory compared to the trees-down hypothesis. Yers concluded that they flew by running instead of jumping from trees.”

“Glided,” Toto amended, but somewhat half-heartedly. “Their feet aren’t made for climbing, but their legs are clearly built for running, so it’s far likelier that their wings were used in gliding when running...”

“Yeah, well now you’ll get the proof.” Muta elbowed Toto conspiringly. Toto could feel the bruise already beginning to develop. “I’ll let ya watch, but only if you don’t kick up a big stink about this.”

“That’s... that’s...”

“Bribery? Yeah. Is it working?”

Toto stared at the pokeball that still held the Aerodactyl. Inside it was impossible. Inside it was blasphemy, if one leant that way. Inside it was the breakthrough of a century.

“If this all goes horribly wrong, I’ll deny all knowledge,” Toto hissed and stalked across the room. “Show me how this works.”

Muta grinned. “Knew you’d see it my way eventually.”

#chez-pezeater #replies #tumblr is messing up ask punctuation #no I don't know why #the cat returns #pokemon au #tcr ficlet #cat writes #toto would be quoting jurassic park now if he could #he'd sit muta down in front of the movie and just be like #ya gonna learn today #the cat queues #two in one day #yeah i'm on a roll XD

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ecoamerica · 2 months

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youtube

Watch the American Climate Leadership Awards 2024 now: https://youtu.be/bWiW4Rp8vF0?feature=shared

The American Climate Leadership Awards 2024 broadcast recording is now available on ecoAmerica's YouTube channel for viewers to be inspired by active climate leaders. Watch to find out which finalist received the $50,000 grand prize! Hosted by Vanessa Hauc and featuring Bill McKibben and Katharine Hayhoe!

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littlemonstersau-blog · 5 years

Text

The Feels Awaken, Part 3: A New Hope (for Friendship)

Written by @jkl-fff, illustrated by me

PART I - PART II [Interlude] - PART III - PART IV [Interlude] - PART V [FINAL] (you are here)

——————————————————————————————–

A new day dawned then waxed then began to wane, but Ford and Bill hardly noticed. A manic, obsessive energy (plus an unhealthy amount of coffee and sugar) kept them focused throughout their self-appointed task. Such is often the case for the kind of people who feel the need to write to right a wrong in the world. Not all heroes wear capes, after all; some wear turtlenecks and trenchcoats, some wear paper-based clones of teenage boys produced through unholy abominations of SCIENCE!.

… For that matter, not all heroes are particularly heroic; some are morally ambiguous straddlers of the line between antihero and antivillain, some are demonic chaos gods who (quite frankly) still wonder how in the 79 Hells they found themselves in this position.

In the end, though it did take more than the one night, they still finished in just over 16 hours. The plot outline came in at just over 18 pages, which they tidily stacked together on the table and declared to be more than adequate … before passing out on the carpet. Facefirst.

When Bill next regained consciousness, he was in his attic bed and morning light was streaming through the window. His mouth tasted like an abandoned prison for criminally insane chalk and his head felt like the internal turmoil of a buzzsaw having an existential crisis. It was a pain that was anything but hilarious; it was the sugared caffeine hangover equivalent of nuclear fallout … Mouthwash fixed the first problem. The second took an adult dosage of aspirin, a lot of water, and deliberate manipulation of many of the clonesuit’s normally automatic processes for a full eight minutes. And even then, not completely.

“Guess I can’t pilot one of these things through 36+ hours of no sleep on a gallon of coffee … Not if I wanna be able to still maneuver it the next day without crashing every ten feet into a wall or the floor, at least,” he grumbled to himself. “Major design flaw … Can’t believe they got evolutionarily approved for mass production with such weak durability …”

Downstairs in the kitchen, Stan greeted him jovially enough. “Stancakes are up, and so are you, it seems. How you feelin’ today?”

“Honestly, confused,” Bill graveled, his clonesuit throat still raw. “I can get longterm possession of a meatbag leading to me—y’know, the real me—developing emotions and physical cravings and other … gross, brain-mush junk like that. Neurochemistry is basically just an addictive habit, like how people respond to hearing the question ‘What is love?’—”

“Baby, don’t hurt me. Don’t hurt me no more,” Stan mumbled automatically.

“Exactly. But what I don’t get is why the real me is also feeling this coffee and sugar hangover. No joke: I tried leaving my clonesuit to get away from it, but it followed me. How is that fair? And, yeah, existence isn’t fair,” Bill interjected before Stan automatically could. “But still …”

Like the benevolent and experienced sage he was (more or less), Stan chuckled to himself. Then, laying a companionable arm around Bill’s shoulders, he leaned in and whispered the truth as grimly as Death itself, “You can outrun your sins, but you can never outrun a hangover.”

“W-wha?”

“Some say if you never stop drinkin’, it’ll never catch up with you. But they are fools. Sooner or later, all things must sleep—sooner or later, all who drink must suffer.”

“Uh … K-kinda freakin’ me out here.” Bill tried to lean away, but Stan’s hold was inescapable. “And, just sayin’, I’m kinda responsible for making most of the 79 Hells as freaky as they are.”

“Heed my warning, child.”

“I’m heeding! I’m heeding! Elder Gods, Stan, the only one who’s supposed to give people nightmares around here is me …”

Straightening up, Stan went back to the stove to continue what passed for cooking with him. “Once you’re done eatin’, by the way, I gotta plate for you to take down to Ford. He prob’ly needs some food and water more ‘n you do.”

Between mouthfuls of food, Bill said, “Yeah, sure … You seen what we wrote, by the way?”

“Yeah. It’s not bad at all. I’d def’nitely go see movies like that. Might even pay my own money for it, too. Heh … Even Soos admitted the storylines are better. Haven’t seen him that downcast ‘bout anything in a while, either. Looked as painful for him as cutting out his own kidney. Might have to do something nice for him soon just to make up for it,” Stan added to himself.

“Huh … Yeah, maybe …” Bill chewed on his breakfast, almost starting to maybe feel guilty. Then, when he finished, he put his dishes in the sink, picked up what was meant for Ford, and took it down to the lab.

Ford, as usual, was at his desk. He was hunched over with a pen, which was also fairly usual. However, and this was very unusual, all his notes and Journals had been pushed into a corner—neatly stacked, but well out of the way. Close to hand, as if for quick reference, was actually their Cosmos Conflicts storyline.

Bill cleared his throat. “Brought some breakfast for ya from Stan.” He set it on the desk, but away from any of the papers (just in case). “How you feeling? I woke up with a caffeine hangover I couldn’t escape even when I left my body. Er, clonsuit. Whatever. Same dif.”

“… I didn’t really sleep very deeply,” Ford eventually replied, his voice as hoarse as Bill’s. “Ergo, I can’t really say I woke up with such a hangover, but I’m suffering one all the same.”

“Yeesh, that sucks. Taken anything? Had some water and some food? That helped me.”

“Some water and aspirin, yes, though I’m not sure I could keep much food down … I suppose I ought to try, anyway.”

“If you feel more rotten than a two-week-old apple core, why are you working?” Bill asked, sliding the plate closer.

“I’m not really working, per se,” Ford answered guiltily. “Just … sketching. Some stuff. For what we came up with.”

Bill’s eyes lit up with interest. “Ooo! Really? Can I see? Please?”

For a moment, Ford’s jaw worked. As though trying to control himself.

“It’s okay,” Bill said hurriedly, though unable to fully contain his disappointment. “I get it. I’ll leave you al—”

A couple pages’ worth of images (some rough sketches, some little more than absent doodles, and some rather intricate and detailed) were thrust at the Demon. “Here. Can’t see any harm in you looking at them, anyway, so …” Ford mumbled. Without looking up, he cut in to his food. “Was just doing this since I’m too awake and restless to just not do anything, but too … wooly in the head, I suppose you could say, to do any productive work.”

Bill poured over them, delighting in the imaginative whimsy of them. Most were of characters from the prequels, though with distinctive touches—touches reflecting their own collaboration (such as Otherkin in a stained pilot’s attire, Imdolledupa aiming ruthlessly with a blaster, and Jelived Knights wearing a different style of clothing from Jelived Sentinels or Jelived Healers). But some were very different, especially among the doodles. “Ha! You made a Soos Wookie!”

Ford couldn’t resist smiling. “Soosbacca. Co-pilot to Stan Solo.”

“In their spaceship, the Mystery Falcon, right? Is Melody a Wookie, too?”

“Huh … That’s not a bad idea, actually. I was having a hard time seeing how to fit her in, since she isn’t really the Princess Leia type.”

“But Mabel and—pff!—Dipper are?” Bill snorted, pointing to where they were both sketched with the iconic braids wrapping around their ears. “Both of them together?”

“Well, they’re also both Luke, since I couldn’t really pick who fit which roll better.”

“Two sets of the twins running around, huh?” Bill murmured, though he was really thinking about two Dippers (and they weren’t running around, either—they were very much not running). “… And Wendy’s Lando, I see. Am I Yoda, since I’m the most triangular or everybody, and the right size?”

“Uh …” Ford hesitated.

“Pff, it’s alright, I can already see 3PO and R2 are both me.”

Lamely, the Weirdologist explained, “Because you’re shiny. That’s the extent of the logic.”

“You gonna do any more sketches?”

“Assuming I can keep breakfast down, probably,” Ford said around a mouthful. “It’s … distracting. And fun. And relaxing, too. Helps to pass the time on a down day like this.”

“Um … M-mind if I stay and watch? Please?” Bill almost begged. “Y’know how much I love watching you meatbags make art.”

“… Oh, fine,” Ford relented. Because what was the harm in being nice to the Demon? Ford didn’t have to trust him for that. “Just don’t make any noise. My head aches enough as it is.”

Bill mimed zipping his lips and throwing away the key before pulling up a chair and settling himself comfortably beside Ford. The only time he broke his silence after that was to ask Ford if he wanted more water, and to assert that the others would get a kick out of seeing these sketches (“especially Soos … the Twins, too, though we’d have to text ‘em a photo of ‘em, or mail the whole project to ‘em to see …”).

All in all, it turned out to be a rather nice day for both of them together.

#little monsters au #the feels awaken #bipper #stanford #bill cipher #writing #fanfiction #please excuse the dopey ass looking star wars sketches #also omfg this is finished finallyyyy #submission

12 notes · View notes

bigbrothernetflix-st · 4 years

Text

EPISODE ONE

“its week ONE. why is everyone being so cracked i hate it here i absolutely hate it here someone take me out with a sniper rifle” - aria

HOH: Jev UPSIDE DOWN: Jacob & Gina NOMINEES: Kiki & Nash POV: Nash FINAL NOMINEES: Kiki & Mo EVICTED: Mo (14-1)

PRESEASON CAST ASSESSMENT

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dEdLzVoyttU&list=PLFEwPPy8j010XXwntq80VSU0qLNTNpSIN&index=2&t=0s

JOEY

WOO holy shit this cast is filled with such insane personalities, and I cannot WAIT to play this game!

NASH

tell me why i'm already nervous

NASH

waits patiently for mo to pick another damn person to infect

GINA

skghkdgljhgdlj BRAIN HURTY,, sm people to talk to and everyone is so so nice! just glad I'm not winning hoh

ARIA

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G-bwCxQGRhk

alternative title: im very mean for 20 minutes

KIKI

so far the cast seems very sweet! a little quiet so far but otherwise im really enjoying talking to them!! and i think the twist is a cool idea but could be dangerous.... maybe a little too easy to expose alliances

GINA

I really like this cast! I'm actually really good friends with Aria (but we keeping that a secret) and I recognize Joshua from other orgs! Also, this twist seems super fun!

ARIA

okay,,,,okay,,,ok,,,k my brain is struggling to complie everything ive learned today i am STRUGGLING!!!!

So!! Lets make a tier list

We're working together (didnt even need to discuss)

-Nathan

-Jacob

-Gina

Asked to work together

-Joey

-Joshua

Implied we're working togther but lower tier

-Jev

-Josh C

-Monty

Super Sweet & Nice

-Bri

-Kiki

-Dem

-Mo

Sweet but i want a response

-Nick

-Emma

_saira

-jake

-Nash

So thats what i've gathered for today mostly, Jacob-Joey-Jev-Joshua all seem to really want to work close with me and we've talked a bit of game ( ITS ALL THE Js HELP) and seem super open while the girls seem more closed off as of now, kinda worried gina isnt gonna be active enough but idk, oh also everyone is noticing bri is CHAOS and that nick is talkative/assertive. more to update in a bit but heres a trust ranking for night one, one more thing jev said he doesnt like nathan or nick :OO and someone else mentioned nick being overbearing

1.Gina (i love her to the moon and back)

2. Nathan( the charisma SNAPPED this game go off sir!!)

3. Josh C (they're also charismatic but they're hecking hilarious and our view are pretty similar)

4.Jev (they cared about me!! and im nice to them and this is just really wholesome)

5.Jacob (LOVE him but we havent talked enough beyond "we're winning this game")

6.Joshua (super fun to talk to, same og community king)

7.Bri (they wont keep info to themselves but shes SO sweet pls take my heart)

8. Joey (hes kinda sketching me out tbh but also he wants to work with me so)

9.Nick (they wouldnt put me up and thats all i could ask for)

10.Monty (PLEASE trust me i need ur braincells)

12.Kiki (sHES SO SWEET AND GOOD AT ART ADORE HER)

13.Mo (existential dread buddies <3)

14.Dem(approached game w/ me,,,but on the first message so might be doing that w/ everyone)

15.Nash (kate protection gang!!!)

16.Saira (we loVE DOGS! and thats it)

17.Emma (feel better soon,,,then pls talk to me k thanks)

18.Aria (dont trust anyone,,,not even yourself)

DEM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ykD4dZjsDl0

BRIANNA

https://youtu.be/odNZXz-jNtw

If alliances have been made already, I am gonna have some QUALMS... This cast is very cute, I love meeting new people, let's see we have

Aria - an ANGEL we've been talking about SIX the musical and slime tutorials

Brianna - The first person to recognize me using a Carole & Tuesday song in any of my videos. I'm v grateful.

Dem - He kinda jokes like a mom...

Emma - I'm friends with Emma outside of the game and she is such a chaotic sweetheart. We been in the house a day and she plays Lois Griffon singing Doja Cat... for what...

Gina - I have not talked with her, I just said hi.

Jacob - Jacob is nice. I think I've yet to have a super positive ORG experience with him tho. So. Yeah.

Can I do the rest tomorrow cus I'm tired and just not in the mood. Okay thank you.

SAIRA

I was a little surprised by the amount of people dming me but they all seemed pretty nice! The twist sounds cool, I'm excited to see how it plays out

JEV

i definitely did NOT expect to win the first hoh but here we are, i have no idea what i'm gonna do but i need sleep so that's tomorrows problem

JOSH C

HELLO! it's your boy josh coming to give you some thoughts on the cast. coming into this game, the only person i know of beforehand is.. JACOB who has managed to snake me in both games we've played together so that's cute. i don't really have a choice but to trust him for now bc that's my only outside connection so we'll see how it goes. he's fun to talk to so i don't really mind but my eyes are PEELED for it going south.

my favorites just from the first night are probably aria, kiki, nathan, and saira. for no REAL reasons other than i just feel like i've had the best conversations with them and they were more fun than the rest of the cast. i'm not sure if those will stay the same but that's HOW I FEEL RIGHT NOW!!

i've reached out to everyone and heard back from everyone (other than nash.. dunno what that's about so i'll just let it sit there. i don't REALLY mind bc it's good if i win HOH because it's a good reason to throw someone up there). everyone is cute enough, though i think i've connected LEAST with brianna, dem, joey, and monty? just haven't gotten a lot of energy back from them but i'm hoping that was just FIRST NIGHT jitters of people not putting in their full effort into their social game.

i'm going to spend today just chatting with people so i have a base relationship with them and that way if jev goes the route of asking people who they'd him to nominate -- i'm not someone they name simply for not knowing who i am. trying to be a little SOCIAL QUEEN. fun and funky so let's hope it pays off.

for the twist, i'm not really sure how to play this. i don't think the first round is going to have the BEST power hidden in it but it'd be nice to know that i for sure won't be first boot. (though i'm feeling OKAY enough that jev won't kill me bc we've talked at least). i think i'm going to wait a minute before i ask someone to send me in, or someone just sends me in on their own accord. that way people don't look at me for having a secret power bc it'll be really easy to narrow down who has one and that's just such an unnecessary way to get a target on your back. i like the twist, it's just hard to figure out how to play it and maybe i should just wait until someone does it for me or i'm one of the later people to get it so i get safety when there are less people in the house and it'll be harder to survive.

xoxo gossip josh

SKINNY NICK

https://youtu.be/yNBReh_pBPk

NATHAN

He's here, he's queer... and oddly enough starting off by not doing a Video DR; however, I think when making an initial first impression/trust list this method seems to go a little smoother... First off, coming right off of Big Brother Pasio and thrown into this game has made my head hurt more than it should. I forgot how annoying and tiresome the initial conversations are with everybody. With that said, I have begun to kinda pick out a path that may be suitable for me this season. In Pasio, my goal was to lay low, not be seen, and form connections. That strategy is going to be partially active this time around as well. I'm a big personality, and while that's fun and cute, I learned by keeping a low profile in the beginning portion while remaining social it does wonders. I don't need to be a Skinny Nick character and be talking in the house call and house chat at every ounce I get. With that being said, this season is full of Pasio players... some in which I had both good and bad experiences with. However, pushing that aside I really have my eyes set and locked on Aria. I have a feeling that the other Pasio alumni may see her for how she played in Pasio and I do as well, but I want to make sure her and I are on as good as terms as possible. She did NOT like me in Pasio, so rekindling that flame is ultra important. Alongside Aria, I get to play with both Monty and Jacob who I've had rocky relationships with in the past, but have grown to become great friends outside this. Working with them is going to be vital, but keeping them too close is suicide. With that being said, here's my initial trust ranking:

1. Aria

2. Jacob

3. Nash

4. Jev

5. Josh

6. Monty

7. Joey

8. Nick

- - -

END LIST

JOSH C

okay, well nominations just came out and i can't say i'm too surprised that nash got nominated for eviction considering she hasn't responded to me yet and most everyone else is saying the same. i can't really imagine anyone using the veto on her unless she has a complete social turn around in the next 24 hours but that seems like.. a stretch. just gotta hope she doesn't win! we love an easy first week boot!

i'm a little sad about kiki getting nominated because i've really hit it off with them, but i think it's a good way to secure some trust with them and spark off a relationship. i've been trying to already be like YOU GOT THIS, YOU'RE STAYING! NASH DOESN'T TALK TO ANYONE! and i think they're being receptive. i like that i can joke around with them, so i'm hoping they enjoy me as much as i enjoy them.

i've also had aria and jake come talk to me about noms which means they trust me and that's GOOD. i want to try to secure something with them soon because i think they're both people that would want to work with me and i know that jake doesn't have a lot of connections already so being an early ally of his would be BIG.

just trying to focus on being a cute little social presence so people don't really focus on targeting me early on. i think this is a game full of half social players and some.. not so exciting people so it'll be easy to just slip through by not being the most boring person around. i don't want to promise TOO many people loyalty just yet but i think building a small core for myself will be important to keep me safe and i'm hoping that can come with jake/aria/kiki/jacob(?)

JAKE

chile............. where the fuck am i?

i dont know what dimension i'm in right now with these people but i am ready to show them what i am made of!! so far i've felt..... on the outs of most of what is going on so im just gonna give my perspective on things so far!!

the cast....... ill just do an assessment

dem: said maybe three words to me since we've started... so there's that

saira: seems like a queen! i def need to talk to her more i've been sleeping on her and i think we'll get along well

joey: girl sometimes idk what this man is saying to me but we're rolling w it..

nash: her "sick" ass hasnt responded to my message from yesterday so bye

joshua: oh he can work! hes fun to talk to and i def see some potential to working with him. hes only 16 so yung so pure i remember those days </3

nathan: hes so hot god i literally want to eat his entire ass but i dont wanna be creepy so im trying to subtly flirt with him SDLKJFSKF he seems to be a sneaky player to me but hopefully thats not the case and we can be a showmance later on hehe

emma: LEGEND. QUEEN! PUT SOME RESPECT ON HER NAMEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!!!!!! my ride or die in this thing <3

jev: oh jevfrey my angel im so happy he's here!!! he's a loyal guy from what i remember and ill def be working with him ESPECIALLY now that hes the first hoh ayyyyY!!!! i feel completely safe with him

kiki: oh i LOVE THEMMMM we had a great connection from the jump and i have a soft spot for them for sure. theyre sadly nominated this week i did not know why jev made that decision but i will make sure they stay know THAT

monty: monty left me on read :( we had a kinda awk convo so idk how monty feels about me right now?? i def dont think he trusts me and ugh i hate the tension!!!!!!!! i hope we can resolve it all and be friends again

josh: KDJKFG i love this man... hes not entire truthful and is def playing me a bit but i think he's great and hopefully he doesnt turn out to be the snake i think he has the potential to be

gina: idk what to think of this girl she doesn't reply much to me and we haven't really spoken much for me to really get a good read of her. i infected her and idk if she'll take that a certain way i came to her with the explanation that we just havent talked as much. idk shes fine?

mo: hahhaha hes a cutie too and i think hes not much of a talker so i think hes nice for the most part it's just kinda hard talking to him sometimes

brianna: um....... yeah we haven't spoken yet and she infected me so idk how to feel about her yet. she claims it was this number system but do i fully believe thats what she based it on? not really.. so ill def have to talk to her more

aria: NOW THIS........ THIS IS ELEGANCE. THIS IS CLASS. THIS IS EXPENSIVE. THIS IS TASTE, LADIES AND GENTLEMEN! this 15 year old girl has me shaking to my god damn core with her social game within a 20 minute conversation ive already devoted my entire game to her and our "attention whores" alliance. iM GAGGGEDDDD i really like her and i know shes a big threat but if shes with me then we can do some damage together hehe

skinny nick: SKINNYYYYY i dont have much to say about nick i think they're well connected in this game so i have to make sure i'm good with them a little more. our convos are a little dry hopefully that'll change as the game goes on

jacob: a sweetie.. i really like jacob as a person but as a player he scares the shit out of me DSLKFGFKJ he lied to me like every round in BBHOS9 so i dont rly know if i can trust him. he def has other friends in this community hes playing with so ill have to sus out who exactly that is...

and......... yeah! kiki and nash are nommed. gina n jacob went to the down under. i think jacob will def get whatever power is down there he is one lucky man so i wouldn't be surprised if it's something good. oh well hopefully when i go i get whatever the best thing is a dpov mayhaps!.......

i hope the next hoh is something i can win because i want these people to TALK TO MEEEE tell me where their heads are at for god's sake! me on day 2: why arent you telling me all your alliances? dFGKLF i feel like im okay just gotta talk to some said people more and try to make sure they dont hate me!

JOSHUA

I thought Jev was nice but I'll have to go back on that because he absolutely is not fooling a single person, I thought we'd be allies but he's been acting sus all day so he can choke on rat piss. Joey and nick literally aren't talking to me at awl so... they can choke and die too. Aria is talking to me a lot but I know she talks to everyone a lot sjdkjds queen of big brother pasio... but I trust her for now I guess. Other than that I'm not super like concerned with anyone else I mean brianna kiki gina mo are nice I guess.. mo is a little hard to talk to though so :( anyway glad to be here but my social is kind of rocky skjdjskdj : ( ( ( ( (

JEV

SKINNY NICK

https://youtu.be/0Kb-twzCkYI

trying to hint to dem that I’m not okay... wonder if it’s working

ARIA

its week one. its week ONE. why is everyone being so cracked i hate it here i absolutely hate it here someone take me out with a sniper rifle im sick of this, but its fine im gonna try to do my best to explain EVERYTHING bc whew is there a lot..

First off lets start with the fact ive been talking with everyone from the moment i woke up and my fingers hurt so much but also now people like me and thats all i need in life so heck yes!! So when it was nash vs kiki i start planting seeds to keep kiki with people and then nash wins veto so thats thrown out the window yayyyy-

Things start happening after jev renoms Mo. First off i get a call with crack kills (joey bri me) and we discuss the vote a little bit with Joey leaning towards keeping Mo and Me/Bri wanting to keep Kiki, joey leaves and me and bri talk about the alliance we were invited to (jacob josh jake kiki us) and then i notice theres a house vc which i then go and join alone.

It was silent for a bit before they mentioned they were talking about votes and were being kinda secretive about names but i asked directly so Mo tells me that dem told him that there was 5 confirmed votes against Mo (nash Jacob Nick Joshua/Jacob(dont remember which) and Josh c) he said the names really fast so i mightve missed a few and nathan interjects about my notes and like??? shut up nathan???? anyways i act all shook about an alliance and we talk about votes and apparently when mo campaigned to bri she just sent "hugs" and im caCKLIGN FDSGFDSH anyways that confirmed 5 votes is gonna make people nervous and cause people to keep Mo which like, im not totally against but i just want a unan vote please. Also i think dem & emma dont really trust me which is big ughhh idk if one of the pregame girlies (any of the names from that list) win hoh next week ill throw one of them utb easy peasy

So then i start asking around to gina and she ghosts me??? gina NEVER ghosts me so im sketched out there and Mo is asking for my help when i already told kiki i would save her its such a messsss. So if i had to guess the sides i would say

PREGAME GIRLIES: Nash Jacob Jake Joshua Josh c kiki

UNCONNECTED NOT PROTECTED: Dem Joey Emma Nathan Mo

Whomst: Saira Jev Monty Nick Gina Bri

Help: Aria

So, where do i go from here? How do i make sure this vote comes out hecking even,,, im not sure. nvm i am sure because Mo just told me they want to give up HFBHJBSDFS MO MY SAVIOR ILL NEVER FORGET YOU KING <<<<3333333 okay nvm hes not fully giving up but im giving him an avenue that would make my life much easier where im telling him to have good convos with people so they connect more and if anyone feels moved theyll come to me and ill get the ball rolling with a easy peasy unan vote hopefully. But i think i might be able to manipulate this situation to my advantage WHEW im hyped now!!

So lets say mo leaves the thought of those "five confirmed votes" is still gonna be in peoples heads mainly dem/joey/emma/nathan which might form into a side and go hard for hoh taking out some big social player and then we have two sides going after each other which would be cute.

I would make trust rankings but i trust no one fbhsafd and thats on pewiod

JAKE

WHEW!!!!!!!!!!! im not the first boot :~) let's celebrate that....

but i'm not too thrilled about these noms...... im happy nash won POV she started talking to me more and shes actually really cool so i wanted her to stay. i am sad kiki is nominated i don't want them to go at all..... and mo being the replacement nominee was a shock to everyone i think.....

i don't have a problem with mo leaving cuz we have a weak connection i just thought dem was going up based on my prior conversations with jev. he says dem started talking to him more but i just wish jev would talk to me and emma about his decisions if we're "aligned"?? like whats the point of having an alliance if we don't have any say in your decisions?

today i woke up to a message from josh asking me what i think about being in an alliance with jacob brianna aria and kiki........ and im just like wtf where this come from and he said that jacob is making it and its just his fave ppl??? im like ok like im not one to turn down an alliance but i let him know that i dont rly trust jacob n brianna as much as the others in the alliance. hopefully this makes him feel close to me and not blab his mouth to jacob ab that!

brianna has yet to speak to me and jacob is just someone im always gonna have a hard time trusting sooo if i have to nominate them down the line i won't hesitate unless this alliance is genuine and helping me in the game.

i really only trust emma so far with aria being my secret spy and big meat shield im gonna need in this game. aria's super well connected and im hoping she'll be able to provide me w the information i need to take bitches down later on.

i think i'd be worried about brianna winning bc we've never talked but at least we have this alliance possibly in the works?? and i dont know if nick would nominate me we haven't talked much..

but i want to win the next hoh so people actually talk to me LOL praying i can win

#bbnetflix st

0 notes

junker-town · 4 years

Text

The NBA has a chemistry problem

How NBA teams struggle to create chemistry in an era when rosters are turning over faster than ever.

The NBA is a league of change. Recent roster turnover has been spurred by a number of factors, from an inflated salary cap and shorter, more exorbitant contracts, to restless owners, to star players progressively embracing their own power. Teams have been forced, at breakneck speed, to become comfortable with being uncomfortable.

Before the NBA went on hiatus due to the coronavirus pandemic, chaos was its new normal: compelling, delightful and anxiety-inducing. But the constant shuffle also sparked an existential question among hundreds of affected players, coaches and front office executives: How can chemistry be fostered in an increasingly erratic era of impatience, load management, reduced practice time and youthful inexperience?

“Every year you have six new teammates,” Houston Rockets guard Austin Rivers said in an interview with SB Nation. “It’s like gaw-lly! In some ways you wish that would stop.

“It’s a new NBA, man. Guys are playing on a new team every year now, and it has nothing to do with how good of a player you are, it’s just how the NBA is. I have teammates who’ve played on eight, nine teams. I mean, that’s fucking nuts. I don’t ever want to go through something like that.” (Rivers is 27 years old, and on his fourth team in seven NBA seasons.)

Over the past six months, dozens of players, coaches and executives across the NBA spoke with SB Nation about the state of the league’s chemistry, and why creating cohesiveness now is more difficult and demanding than ever before. Their responses sketched a blurry future for the league.

“It’s amazing how fast players change in today’s NBA,” Indiana Pacers general manager Chad Buchanan said. “From when I got over here two years ago, Myles [Turner] is the only player who’s still here.

I have teammates who’ve played on eight, nine teams. I mean, that’s fucking nuts.” - Austin Rivers

Last summer, nearly half of the league’s talent pool swapped jerseys. Seemingly every roster in the league was forced to learn complicated new personality quirks and on-court tendencies. Honed locker room dynamics and hierarchies changed dramatically.

Chicago Bulls forward Thaddeus Young has played for four teams in the last six years after spending his first seven with the Philadelphia 76ers. Few people know better just how precious chemistry can be.

“With how the salary cap is going, teams are not locking themselves into long-term deals anymore, where they have four to six guys on four-year deals,” Young said. “It’s definitely tough because you don’t know each other. The communication is gonna be off. The teams that you came from before, you might be driving the basketball and you might be used to a guy being in the corner and that guy might not be in the corner.”

The NBA may be long past being able to reverse the course of roster turnover, but teams are doing their best to mitigate any downsides. The teams that have done the best job tend to think of chemistry in two buckets: personal and performance. The former contains how players interact away from the game, and the latter contains what happens on the court. However, personal chemistry often informs performance, and vice versa. Once players are comfortable off the court, their on-court relationship improves.

Take Los Angeles Lakers forward Jared Dudley, for example.

“When I got here I’d turn the ball over throwing to our centers because they expected a lob,” Dudley said. “I don’t really throw lobs, I’m more of a bounce passer.”

Dudley solved his problem by initiating conversations with LA’s big men, verbalizing his own in-game habits so that everyone could get on the same page. Not all NBA players feel so comfortable expressing themselves, however. Especially when an on-court situation is more complex than what to do on basic pick-and-rolls.

“When the personal chemistry exists, the performance chemistry is often very easy because the performance chemistry is sometimes a function of hard conversations,” one Western Conference GM said. “The personal chemistry allows a guy to say, ‘Hey man, in the second quarter last night there were like four straight defensive possessions where four of us were back in transition and you weren’t. You really put a ton of pressure on us to cover a five-on-four when you were lobbying the officials for a call. It took you forever to get off the deck. Come on, man.’”

Over the past 20 years, no organization has been more conscious of team chemistry than San Antonio. The Spurs are also far and away the modern era’s most influential organization: Nearly one third of the league’s rival head coaches and front office executives can be traced back to head coach Gregg Popovich.

Drafting multiple Hall of Famers undoubtedly factored into the Spurs’ success, but their efforts to maintain an open atmosphere for stars and role players alike — one that obsessed over values of tolerance, respect and empathy — also separated them from everyone else.

However, San Antonio’s year-to-year continuity is also becoming progressively rarer, if not extinct. When Chicago Bulls head coach Jim Boylen was a Spurs assistant during the 2014-15 season, they had brought back 14 members of the previous year’s 15-man roster.

“And of those guys, a bunch of them had been together for years,” Boylen said. “Now there’s approximately 6.5 new guys per team. That’s unheard of.”

To ignore San Antonio’s sprawling influence would be like praising observational comedy and never once mentioning Jerry Seinfeld. But even the Spurs are vulnerable in a league where turnover is the status quo. Prior to the 2018-19 season, they traded Kawhi Leonard and Danny Green, and lost in the first round of the playoffs for the second year in a row. Prior to this season’s hiatus, they were on track for their first losing record in 21 years.

“The Spurs don’t have an advantage anymore,” Dudley said. “We all have a disadvantage. Now it’s who has the most talent. Talent is gonna win out. Talent and vets.”

Continuity is comfort

In 2012, James Tarlow was an economics student at the University of Oregon when he presented a paper titled “Experience and Winning in the National Basketball Association” at the MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference. Tarlow wanted to know how roster continuity relates to team chemistry, so he pulled data from 804 NBA seasons played by 30 franchises between 1979 and 2008. He defined chemistry as “the number of years the five players playing the most minutes during the regular season have been on their current team with one another.”

“I got an actual measurement of how important [chemistry] is,” Tarlow said in a conversation with SB Nation in March. “And it’s pretty dang important. If you keep your team together it’s like a third of a win for a year, which, people don’t appreciate that and it doesn’t seem like much, but if you have a team that stuck together for several years, that turns into another game or two. That’s going to get you into another round in the playoffs.”

Bill Russell once wrote, “There is no time in basketball to think: ‘This has happened; this is what I must do next.’ In the amount of time it takes to think through that semicolon, it is already too late.”

It’s an intuitive idea: The longer we’re around people, the better we know how they’re going to behave under certain circumstances. Just think of the short-hand forms of communication you’ve established with your closest friends, family members and coworkers. Those subtle gestures and glances are especially helpful in sports, where a split-second miscommunication can be the difference between winning and losing.

“You go back to those San Antonio days, the winks and blinks and the nuances [where Tim] Duncan would find Tony [Parker] on a backdoor, or Manu [Ginobili] would find Timmy on a lob, that evolved over time, and lots of times [time] isn’t afforded,” said Philadelphia 76ers head coach Brett Brown, who spent nine years as a Spurs assistant. “You need time to have that sophisticated camaraderie, gut feel, instances on a court that require split the moment decisions.”

Continuity by itself doesn’t lead to winning, of course. In some cases, it might only extend mediocrity. And if winning a championship is an organization’s organization goal, then it should first pursue star power. But continuity is a boon to coaches, who can implement more complex strategies if they’re able to retain a core group of players year after year.

“Right now with the influx of new players, you’re having to really keep your playbook and your schemes at a basic level because you are teaching more,” Charlotte Hornets head coach James Borrego said. “You’re just starting almost at a ground level every single year in a lot of different ways, where the teams that have had success for years and years, they’re building on every single year.”

You never actually practice anymore … like when I first got in the league, everybody had a million plays.” — Steve Clifford

The lack of in-season practice hours only compounds coaches’ frustrations. With shorter timeframes to fold new players into their system and culture, coaches around the league feel they need to adapt quicker than they ever had before.

As Boston Celtics head coach Brad Stevens joked, “We get three weeks to get ready for a season, then we never practice again.”

Orlando Magic head coach Steve Clifford believes that the league office did the right thing by limiting back-to-backs across every team’s schedule. During his first two years as head coach of the Charlotte Hornets, they played 22 back-to-backs each season, while only 11 were on the docket this season for Orlando. But the schedule shift has hurt in unforeseen ways.

“When you play a back-to-back you usually get two days off, most times, right?” Clifford said. “So you give them a day off and then when you come in you can practice. They’re rested, you bring referees in. You practice. You actually practice.

“You never actually practice anymore … like when I first got in the league, everybody had a million plays, and you had to know the plays and stuff, and now if you do it’s an advantage but people don’t look at it like that.”

A side effect of so much player movement may be a simplification of the product. NBA teams have evolved to emphasize an up-and-down, free-flowing style of play that is largely the byproduct of an analytical revolution to prioritize threes, layups and free throws. Modern basketball is filled with pick-and-roll heavy offensive actions that don’t require the same on-court intimacy as a stockpile of elaborate set plays.

“My gut tells me that roster turnover is what’s causing the thinning of playbooks,” one western conference general manager said. “And the thinning of playbooks is what’s causing this standardization of playing style.”

Players feel it, too. “Most teams don’t do anything. Really it’s just take the ball out the basket, pick-and-roll, and run,” Rivers said. “The coaches are really here to guide you now. It’s crazy. It’s more ATO’s (after time-out plays) and out of bounds, and late clock, fourth quarter, that’s when coaching really comes in play. That’s all we go over in shootaround. Most of our stuff involves defense because our offense is fucking ridiculous, man. We don’t really do anything on offense.”

Even teams that have gone out of their way to maintain continuity—like Clifford’s Magic, which returned 85 and 82 percent of their minutes over the past two seasons, respectively—are not immune to change, and all its myriad effects on strategy.

“The game is what they wanted it to be when they changed the rules, and the level of execution is still high, obviously,” Clifford said. “It’s not nearly the gameplanning league that it was even seven or eight years ago.”

Sustained success is not possible without collaboration, and collaboration becomes habit when several contributors spend thousands of minutes battling together in the same system. The Golden State Warriors had the benefit of several superstars as they won three championships, but they also had an iron collective grasp of what they wanted to accomplish on every possession.

“I think there is a level of beauty that exists with the game that is tougher to reach with the turnover,” Warriors head coach Steve Kerr said. “For example, if Draymond [Green] ever caught the ball in the pocket off of a high screen with Steph [Curry], Andre [Iguodala] knew exactly where to go and Draymond knew exactly where he was going to be. We didn’t even have to practice it. And that’s why you saw, frequently, either the lob to Andre along the baseline or Andre spaced out.”

How teams think they can engineer chemistry

NBA teams have been thinking about how to manufacture chemistry for years, long before this accelerated era. None of these billion-dollar corporations can ever be sure how well their efforts actually work, however. Their adjustments have always been based on in-game progression, but success also depends on other obvious factors, like talent, injuries and dumb luck.

A difference between then and now is that players are driving roster decisions to a greater extent. They have much more leverage within organizations, and the biggest stars can take their talent elsewhere if the locker room doesn’t jell quickly enough. For many teams, that means they have to proactively foster strong bonds among teammates by encouraging new and returning players to stick around the practice facility during the offseason.

“The summer time is big for us,” Borrego said. “We can’t demand it, but we encourage it … Guys can really settle down and connect, really understand their teammates, understand their coaches, and it’s just a much more comfortable situation that allows for chemistry to be built and grown.”

The Hornets also organize team dinners when they’re on the road, a practice Borrego borrowed from his time in San Antonio. When asked if those dinners are mandatory, he gave a wry smile: “They are team dinners. Then there are others that happen organically on their own, and I want our players to do that. If they’re doing it on their own that’s even better than me organizing something.”

If there’s somebody in your organization that hasn’t gotten over himself or herself they’re a pain in the ass ... they can’t be happy for somebody else’s success.” — Gregg Popovich

As one former Spur told ESPN: “To take the time to slow down and truly dine with someone in this day and age — I’m talking a two- or three-hour dinner — you naturally connect on a different level than just on the court or in the locker room. It seems like a pretty obvious way to build team chemistry, but the tricky part is getting everyone to buy in and actually want to go. You combine amazing restaurants with an interesting group of teammates from a bunch of different countries and the result is some of the best memories I have from my career.”

Of course, Popovich was also good at finding players he wanted at the table.

“The more you can stay together, the more the chemistry builds. But still chemistry is more a function of the character of the players than it is anything else,” Popovich said. “I always talk about getting over yourself. And if there’s somebody in your organization that hasn’t gotten over himself or herself they’re a pain in the ass and they make it harder for everybody else because they can only feel about their success. They can’t be happy for somebody else’s success. It has to be about them. If you don’t have that then nothing else is gonna help you have chemistry. You can’t make it happen.”

Still, every coach tries to get everyone on the same page. As players digest their new surroundings, it’s important that everyone — coaches, players and executives — understand their expectations for one another. Rockets head coach Mike D’Antoni boiled his own approach down simply: “Don’t ask somebody to do something they can’t do. If you’re gonna have to change a guy, you might not want to bring him in in the first place.”

It is impossible for any team to keep all 15 players in the locker room happy at the same time; they’re human beings who are all going through their own real life issues. But a haphazard onboarding process will create headaches down the road. According to Buchanan, coaches have to be able to anticipate players’ questions.

“‘Why am I not getting to do this?’ or ‘Why am I not getting to play more?’ or ‘Why am I not playing with that guy?’ or ‘Why am I not starting?,’” Buchanan said. “You try to get that communicated up front so the player knows what he’s stepping into, because lots of times chemistry issues evolve from a lack of communication.”

When general managers and coaches are unaware of loose frustrations, they risk one player venting to another, sewing animosity that does irreparable damage to the entire team. Left unattended, a team can spiral into soap opera.

“It’s not difficult to create chemistry,” Atlanta Hawks head coach Lloyd Pierce said. “It’s more about sustaining it through the course of 82 games with so many ups and downs. Obviously [we had] some of those moments with John [Collins] being out and Kevin [Heurter’s] injury. Roles start to shift and some guys weren’t ready for it, so the frustration of that kicked in.”

The Hawks have done two things to stave off that seemingly unavoidable discomfort. The first is an all-in dedication to how they play, in which everything revolves around pick-and-rolls with Trae Young and a rim-rolling big. By keeping the gameplan simple, they can plug in pieces as needed.

“When Trae masters it and everybody else understands it, you know, you roll a little bit harder and you shake up a little bit better, and you slash a little bit better. That’s who we will become,” Pierce said. “Any big that comes to our roster [knows,] ‘I can play here because I know I’m gonna get the ball at the rim.’”

The Hawks also have a breakfast club that Pierce took from his time as an assistant under Brown in Philadelphia. Every time the club meets, players stand up in front of their teammates and discuss something that matters to them. Earlier this year, Collins enlightened the room with a powerpoint presentation about what it was like growing up in a military family. Heurter talked about growing up in upstate New York and losing high-school friends in a drunk-driving accident.

Former Hawks center Alex Len gave a particularly tender presentation last season that moved his head coach.

“You’re barking at Alex Len. ‘This fucking guy, he doesn’t compete, he doesn’t appreciate this,’” Pierce said. “Well, Alex Len talked about why he couldn’t go to the Ukraine for the last seven years. ‘Wow, I didn’t know you had such a tough time with that. I’m over here fucking yelling at you for not rolling in the pick and roll. I don’t know you’re dealing with this Ukraine thing for the last seven years and not being able to go home and see your grandparents. My bad. I’ve got to get to know you a little bit better.’”

Three years ago, Kings owner Vivek Ranadive asked a communications coach named Steve Shenbaum to work with his team. In 1997, Shenbaum founded a company called Game On Nation, which helps corporate executives, military personnel and government employees in addition to professional sports teams.

Within the past decade, Shenbaum has been brought in by the Lakers, Trailblazers, Nuggets. Cavaliers, Grizzlies and Mavericks, and agent Bill Duffy has asked Shenbaum to assist several of his clients, including Carmelo Anthony, Yao Ming and Greg Oden. He has more than 100 improvisational and conceptual exercises to help clients build self-awareness, selflessness, confidence and other traits that enable character development.

A favorite is called “last letter, first letter,” in which two teammates have a conversation with one rule: as they take turns speaking, they must start with the last letter of the other person’s last word, and keep the conversation going. The exercise forces both parties to listen, let one another finish and focus in ways they otherwise might not.

“My hope is I am planting seeds and empowering the players and the staff to take what they’ve experienced and run with it and multiply it,” Shenbaum said. “I want them to see each other in another light.”

Shenbaum has many telltale signs of good and bad chemistry, but a big one is how well veterans are buying in. In a league that’s getting younger and younger, it’s imperative that older players command respect in the locker room and impose a will to succeed.

Dudley believes veterans who might not even be in a rotation can earn their money by bringing everyone together in ways a coach or GM can’t. During his one year in Brooklyn, he organized dinners, trips to the movies, parties and other events away from the game that involved the whole team.

“Then, when we were in film sessions and I would call them out, they took it as love and not criticism,” Dudley said. “You’re developing a relationship and then you can tell them, Spencer [Dinwiddie] or a guy who thinks he should play more, ‘this is why you’re not playing. This is your role for this team.’ Rondae [Hollis-Jefferson], he got benched: ‘Hey Rondae, for you to stay in the league, this is what you gotta do. On this team you’re not a starter anymore but there’s gonna be times they call on you.’ He stayed ready.”

Almost everyone interviewed for this story agreed that chemistry can’t be forced. Players on contending teams have to go through organic hardships together before they can become comfortable enough for the difficult conversations that facilitate progress. Some teams don’t believe it’s necessary or appropriate to ask their players to spend more time together than they already do. They believe that players should figure out issues among themselves, and that a front office’s biggest role is doing good background research on everybody they bring aboard. Coaches are there to take a team’s disparate pieces and position them to succeed.

“I think everybody’s budgets on team meals now has skyrocketed league wide because of the San Antonio Spurs,” Miami Heat head coach Erik Spoelstra laughed. “The more important thing is getting a team on the same sheet of music about your style of play and an identity on both ends of the court, understanding what’s important, what the standards are, the expectations, role clarity. These things fasttrack, in my mind, chemistry. It’s always nice if guys like each other and they go out to eat on the road, have dinner together. But that doesn’t guarantee anything.”

Spoelstra knew early on that Jimmy Butler’s oft-misunderstood persona would have no trouble fitting in with several players on Miami’s roster because they all shared the same sense of duty.

It’s always nice if guys like each other and they go out to eat on the road, have dinner together. But that doesn’t guarantee anything.” — Erik Spoelstra

“I’ve noticed with Goran and Jimmy in particular, they have such a beautiful on-court chemistry because they’re in their 30s, they’re only about winning right now. They don’t care about anything else. If you want to define on-court chemistry, in my mind it’s how willing are you to help somebody else. And how willing and able are you to enjoy somebody else’s success when it happens.”

The “character vs. talent” debate isn’t new among NBA decision-makers. But going forward, we may see teams value the former more than they have.

“If you get a group of four new players who you bring onto your team and they’re all team-first, unselfish, competitive, self-motivated players, there’s a decent chance that the chemistry is gonna have a chance to be good,” Buchanan said. “Doing a ropes course, that’s great in theory and may work for a business, but professional athletes, they develop chemistry by knowing they can trust each other because they’ve been together through tough times on the court.”

Searching for answers that don’t exist

Chemistry is worth deep investment, but perhaps it can be overanalyzed, too.

“We try to make the simple complicated at times,” ESPN NBA analyst Jeff Van Gundy said. “Going out to dinner is a far different chemistry than playing chemistry. You read a lot about, ‘We play paintball together.’ Who gives a shit, you know?

“I don’t believe it’s the reason why a team is either good or not good. I think you’ve gotta get great players, and when you have them you gotta try and keep them.”

There are endless ways to cultivate chemistry, but teams can still only guess at what will work in every situation. Statistics aren’t a good guide. They can’t quantify personality flaws or gauge emotional intelligence. When intuition is the best way to make a decision, some front office executives lean too hard on what they can measure instead.

“I think a lot of these GM’s, they really don’t take [chemistry] into consideration,” Utah Jazz center Ed Davis said. “They’re starting to treat the NBA like 2K and more just looking at numbers instead of, ‘are these two players going to get along?’ And I think you’re gonna start seeing GM’s lose their jobs.”

Top-tier skill, athleticism and on-court awareness is very often the bottom line for NBA teams, but those still trying to crack chemistry’s mysteries have good reason to believe they aren’t running a fool’s errand, as vulnerable as their circumstances may make them feel.

“There’s something very powerful about newness,” Shenbaum said. “And if you embrace it early, whether it’s a new coach, five new players, the star left, if you embrace it early you can actually create a very authentic bond.”

Defining chemistry can feel like trying to catch the wind. It is omnipresent and elusive at the same time. Until the NBA’s best and brightest crack the formula, they will have to deal with increasing levels of uncertainty in what was already an uncertain business.

Time will tell if NBA teams ever learn how to overcome their mounting challenges — from the shifting ways teams are built, to how on-court strategy is implemented, to the quality of the game itself. But there’s no denying that chemistry is a force multiplier, complex and intractable. And in an era of basketball that demands urgency more than ever, that fact can be frightening.

A lot of players and teams will continue to fail in familiar ways, well-laid plans crumbling because players, coaches and executives never understood each other on or off the court. Only now, they may not realize their mistakes until they find themselves starting all over. Again.

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