#or did tumblrs image quality lower recently

[vampireacademysims]

Well, I guess it's time to address the situation... or the lack of situation lol This is gonna be long, be warned. There's a TL;RD at the end if you wanna skip the wall of text. To start, thank you to the two anons who took the time to read the comic and prod me about it and the new people who started following this tumblr in spite of the Hiatus warning. Altho this place has been collecting dust for more than a year now, I'm still around, updating my side reblogs tumblr, so it's not like I dropped from the face of the earth.

The truth is, at this moment in time, I've feel out of love with making this comic. It was always a lot of work due to me being a perfectionist. I never used any extra rendering apps, all you've seen here is raw sims images and a lot of work on Photoshop, so much so it gave me a muscle contracture on my right shoulder (because I did all my work in bed with my laptop/drawing tablet in my lap. I never said I was a smart person lol) that still flares up from time to time because I learned nothing. Then the VA fandom was already quite small by the time I started doing this in 2015 and I never really advertised this in the fandom anyway. I always got the impression most of the fandom didn't like the OG comics as it was and most of the people that followed the comic were sims 2 fans because, well, it's made with the sims and the images were pretty (forever holding in my heart the people you said this <;3) The recent "Vampire Academy" TV series (it was just in names, honestly) was the final nail in the coffin of my motivation. After information had leaked I was already disappointed in it, but after actually watching it, yeah no. Only plus to it was the surprise to see it was partially filmed in my country, in places where I have been myself. And lastly, and probably most importantly, I struggle with motivation a lot. It happens to us all, I am sure. It's no secret that I hated to panel, if I'd start all over again I'd just post the big images like many of you telling stories are doing now, it'd be less of a stress for me, but alas, I can't change formats now. And I said many times I was doing it mostly for myself, because I did love the comics based on the books, but doing it for yourself only gets you so far until you get bored. And I got bored. I'm actually surprised my hyper-focus on it lasted for as long as it did. I haven't been to Photoshop for editing - I used to make photomanipulations and other kinds of editing - for way over a year, so it's not only the comic that stopped.

I still have 7 pages to end chapter 6 in various degrees of editing, Veninorchid and Esotheria-sims have seen them, so they exist lol I will eventually finish editing them - it's mostly a Romitri flashback - and post them. But after that, I will have to decide how to proceed. Spending less time editing would help, but lowering the quality of my pages, the only thing people like about it, really doesn't sit well with me, because yeah, perfectionist.

So at the very least the remaining pages will be posted in early 2024, I might go back to it slowly, a little bit everyday so I don't burn out or put stress on my shoulder. But after that, it's up in the air. It's not like I've been staring at the walls during this time, I had other things taking my goldfish-like attention. I got interested in home bookbinding, which made me dig out old unfinished stories I once started and I've been trying to finish them and later try to bind them, because why the fuck not lol And on my reblogs tumblr I had this set of pictures about a Regency little story that people really loved and I'd like to add to it, but then again, all the editing it'd need *cries* I feel tugged in so many directions I fear I'll end up doing nothing lol

So the TL;DR is, I got bored with the comic because it was too much work and resulted in physical pain, I lacked the motivation and other things got my attention meanwhile. Chapter 6 will be be finished eventually, but after that it's up in the air. Cross my fingers that I get my mojo back while editing those pages. Still, a thank you to all of followed and are still following, sorry these were not the good news you wanted to read just because I made a post. You support up until now was what kept me going in the past, I can't thank you all enough.

[vicerre]

Good Night

Overview

This blog started as a bit of an experiment.

Initially, I wasn't sure what direction to take it; I wanted to write about and draw subjects that didn't have a place on my primary social media accounts, but I didn't have any particular long-term goals.

For better or worse, I settled on Tumblr as the compromise platform. After researching my options, I found it was the only platform that satisfied these requirements:

has an active, open community

hosts posts with marked-up text (i.e. headers, hyperlinks, italics, lists)

hosts posts with images

offers a method to organize and sort posts

offers the ability to edit and delete posts

With some reservations, I joined the website and began to post.

The more I posted, the more this blog found its footing. It became clear that this blog was most effective as a repository for information about my characters and the story they told. Over two years and 150-some-odd posts, I teased out the world that lived in my mind.

And now, exactly two years after I joined, I find I must leave.

Why

Over these two years, I tolerated many issues with this site.

The first were the platform's inherent issues:

Image quality: An optimal blogging website lets the user share original-size images. Art-sharing platforms for this. In contrast, Tumblr compresses and lowers image quality. While not a deal-breaker for my needs, I could never share images the way I truly wanted.

Site search: The site's search system leaves much to be desired.

As an example, Tumblr site search does not apply Boolean functions to keywords. In other words, searching for keyword-x AND keyword-y should, optimally, produce all posts with both keywords. Tumblr does not offer this feature.

As another example, keywords and tags are not guaranteed to produce all search results. A search function that does not return what is expected is useless for organizing data.

Then, my patience with the platform grew thin. Over the course of 2022, my posts stopped appearing in search thrice:

2022-01-02: [80LEMY-LDD4] - Instance 1

2022-08-01: [P9V302-ZWQLD] - Instance 2

2022-08-16: [PM92Q6-8425V] - Instance 2.1

2022-09-05: [ERMWGX-E22ZD] - Instance 3

When I contacted site staff about the issue, all I received was silence. It took persistent messaging over the course of weeks for site staff for them to notice and respond to my report.

I recognize this blog is personal in nature, so whether or not my posts showed up on other people's feeds is a minor factor. However, the lack of response indicated the platform did an unacceptable job supporting the social component of the site.

Finally, Tumblr recently announced a deal-breaking change.

Over the course of these weeks, Tumblr announced removing support for the legacy Markdown editor. I rely on advanced Markdown syntax to compose my posts in a way unsupported by the default post editor. If I can no longer compose posts for my content, I'm afraid I must leave.

What now?

Over two years, I learned what matters to this blog. Thus, I can recalibrate my criteria for a platform. To wit, I've found I don't care about the community aspect of the site as much as I expected. The odd passing Like or Reblog was lovely, but ultimately, this blog was meant for me.

With that criterion no longer a requirement, I could identify an alternate platform for my content: GitHub.

"The site where you can share and collaborate on code?" you may ask.

Well... yes. Let's look at the updated criteria, shall we? With the "community" requirement nixed, we can see that we can indeed create, edit, organize, and delete posts with markup using the default feature set of the site. By virtue of posts being composed in Markdown, the site is fairly portable compared to blogging services or wikis. Furthermore, if we need richer customization options, we have the freedom to write code to support these features.

So there we have it. In the upcoming days, I will be relocating the posts hosted on this blog. The majority of the posts will be relocated to GitHub. Some will be relocated to my primary social media persona. Some will stay here.

Once my content has been relocated, I will remove the existing content from this blog and share a link to the blog's new location.

Thank you for visiting my page.

...

(Link)

[hakurasakura]

Hi! I loved the recent set you did of Mazikeen I was wondering how did u set the fourth and fifth one?

hi! thank you so much for your compliments!

dw i'll walk you through the entire process i did for those two gifs. side note: i do use photoshop cc 2021. and there is an assumption that you know how to use the basic settings in photoshop when making a gif.

maze's aliases gif:

ok for this, i had to screencap/get a t*rrent of a maze scene with not much movement. make sure that the quality of the gif is 1080p, tho sometimes i do get scenes in 720p and the gif does turn out alright in the end.

before any sharpening and adding adjustments, i crop the gif to the size i want and go to image > image size to make the gif and ps canvas the size i need. for example, this gif is 750 x 500 (dont ask me how this fit onto a tumblr post, i dont even know).

step 1: sharpen

i know most gifmakers use sharpening actions to make their process go easy and fast, but i personally sharpen each gif by hand. so, i go to filter > sharpen > smart sharpen. these are the settings for this particular gif:

step 2: brighten and adding the black and white filter

ok after being satisfied with my sharpening settings, i go ahead and add a curves layer. this helps to brighten up the gif, especially when giffing dark scenes. sometimes, when it is a tad bit too bright/white, i add a vibrance layer to add some color back. finally, add a black and white filter by clicking on the option that looks like a box with half of it colored in white. i adjust the settings until i like how the gif appears.

step 3: adding a colored background

for this step, i created a new layer and on top of that, added a layer mask. staying on the layer mask, i click on the brush tool and select the color i want my background to be. my brush settings are: soft round pressure opacity with a 50% hardness. then, i gently go around the gif, of course on coloring the area i wanted to stay black and white. then, going back to the layers tab, i clicked on the blending mode (automatically it will say "normal") and selected "color". here is the tutorial i used when i was confused on this part

step 4: fonts

the two fonts i used are afterglow and adobe handwriting, for "aliases" and maze's named aliases respectively. for the little diamonds i used as bullet points, i went to type > panels > glyphs panel. i used the font arial to get the diamond glyph. then i clicked on that text layer and went to blending options. for there, i clicked on stroke, change the color to white, and kept the stroke size at 2. then i went back to the main blending options menu and lowered the fill opacity to 0. for maze's nicknames, i went to blending options and applied gradient overlay and color overlay, one being white and the other being black, respectively. then, i went back to the main blending options menu and changed to blend mode to "difference".

and that's it for this gif! just make sure everything lines up in the timeline tab.

maze's quote gif:

ok for this gif, first i had to get the quotations gif be at the same length as my maze gif. i used this gif pack by @fluffybap to get the gif overlay. once i have the maze gif and the gif overlay at the same time delay and timeline length, i select all the frames of the quotations gif, copy, head over to the maze gif and select all the frames and hit paste. when clicking paste, photoshop prompts up a dialogue box about how to paste these frames. i use "paste over selection" and make sure the option for linking all layers is unselected. once everything is alright, i go from frame animation to timeline. then i make the two gifs into their own smart object (make sure all the layers of the quotation marks are linked. i personally like to manually link all the layers together at this point so it is easier to move the gif overlay, either all together or one set).

after that's done, i followed steps 1 and 2 from the previous gif.

step 3: fonts

the first half of the quote is in the butler font. i clicked on that text layer and went to blending options. for there, i clicked on stroke, change the color to white, and kept the stroke size at 2. then i went back to the main blending options menu and lowered the fill opacity to 0. for the "bitches" part, i used a font called signature and i went to blending options and applied a peach gradient overlay and a red color overlay. then, i went back to the main blending options menu and changed to blend mode to "difference".

p.s.: to move the left and right quotation marks, i made to link together the left ones first and moved them where i want, and did the same thing to the right ones. and yes you can change the color of the quotation marks.

and once again, make sure everything lines up in the timeline tab. and that's it! i hope this answered everything about my process for these two gifs! as always, my askbox is always open for questions about gifs, my gifmaking process, or anything. also, everything i use in my gifs are reblogged onto my resources blog, @starrypsd

[shininglivecards]

Database update, future plans and a request to you all ❤

Hi everyone, I know what I’ve said about adding new features but I did manage to add some things after all! Bigger changes, my plans and a request to you all are listed below:

By hovering over a card you should see the wiki link leading to that card’s wiki page. This should make it easier for you to get to the CGs or more detailed stats of the card you are interested in

Cards' names and wiki links are now color coded according to their cards attributes

Bad > Good and Bad/Good > Great are now separate filters

EN bangle exchange availability filter has been added

Icons and in some browsers broken scrollbar in the songs database have been fixed

Songs container width has been increased

Made a normal/seasonal filter for songs instead of normal/event/campaign since I wasn’t updating it often enough

Link to the character sorter has been added to the navigation menu

Info page has been updated

As far as my plans go, I’ve already started replacing images (so far only N cards and Rainy event cards though, idk if tumblr quality will let you notice but it should be visible in the screenshot (from Chrome) above) in the cards database to be of their true size. The ones database currently uses are too big for reasons I don’t know, forcing the browser to downscale and unnecessarily increases the loading time and lowers the quality of the images in many browsers (honestly the only one that handles it well from what I’ve found was Firefox which I normally use so I wasn’t aware of this until recently... welp).

This, however, is going to be a very time consuming process, as I have to scale and merge all the images from scratch for it to be of decent quality. If someone would like to help me out, please DM me! There’s no need for paid programs like Photoshop either, I’ll explain you what I use and how I do it if you are interested! You don’t need to do everything either, even if it’s just one set it would still be a big help!

As usual, if you think there are any errors, let me know! Note that if some wiki links lead you to a page displaying below message and the card is relatively new it’s possible that wiki hasn’t been updated to include that photo’s info yet and it’s not an error on my part:

Also, if you know what you are doing and would like to help with improving either layout or implementing new features please DM as well, I’d really appreciate any help ❤ !

[educatedinyellow]

For the vidder meme: 26 and 32 :)

Yay, thanks so much for asking! :)

26. Share three of your favorite vidders and why you like them so much.

1. Oh, this is tough! First of all, I’d like to raise a glass to one of my favorite vidders, humansrsuperior (HRS1812 on YouTube), who vanished off the internet along with all their vids some years ago. This is a depressingly common phenomenon among fan vidders, and *many* of my favorite vids live only in my memory. Some of my favorite of humansrsuperior′s vids included: Two hilarious BBC Sherlock ones dedicated to celebrating The Coat, both set to 1940s swing music, they were swishy bundles of pure joy!; an incredible multi-layered puzzle-box of a vid called “I Don’t Know,” which I gushed about over here; a hilarious behind the scenes Dr. Who vid celebrating Karen and the Babes; a couple of fantastic BBC Sherlock character studies called “Mind Palace” and “Hello” (the latter of which had the most perfect character song for BBC Sherlock that I’ve ever heard -- the fanvid is gone, but I’m going to link you to the official music video for that song because the music’s excellent AND it’s got creepy-cute stop motion animation, I think you’d enjoy it!); and she also made a seduction-by-deduction charmer of a S1 Sherlock vid set to the velvety song “Show Me What You’re Made Of.” Gosh, so many wonderful vids. I did not know her personally, but she added so much to my S1-S2 Sherlock experience. She is missed!

But moving on to favorite vidders whose work is actually still available...

2. I only recently discovered Rhoboat’s vids, but I am bowled over by this vidder’s talent, and she has such a pleasing variety of vids in her catalogue, both in regards to source material and musical style. She can do funny, she can do intense, she can do heartwarming. She knows when to hold back from directly matching lyrics to images and when to go for it. She’s great at editing action. Her visual storytelling is so confident and fluent, and there’s originality in her vidding voice and in the concepts she chooses to create for -- she just makes a lot of vids that I’m interested in watching. I love her stuff. Let me share some personal favorites:

One of the best Ritchie Holmes vids I’ve ever seen: Poker Face [remastered]

The Wallace & Gromit song of eternal devotion that we all deserve: Wherever You Will Go

Okay, even though I personally like J.J. Abrams’ Star Trek movies, this is the most hilarious, clever, and on point hate-vid for them I ever hope to see!: Star Trek: This is a Trent Reznor Song

A BAMF, punchy-in-more-ways-than-one Agent Carter vid where we party like it’s 1941: 1941

A kinetic, feel-good vid for A League of Their Own: Va Va Voom

An intense, action-y and angsty vid focusing on the relationship and parallels between Bond & Judi Dench’s M (I love the split screens! & the scorpion under glass! well played): Supremacy

A pitch perfect crossover vid in which the events of Joss Whedon’s Firefly/Serenity and the Star Wars spin-off Rogue One take place in the same universe: House of Mercy

A bracing sea shanty of a Master & Commander vid: Leave Her, Johnny

And if you’ve ever wanted a Red Shoes horror vid -- and I bet you have! -- congrats, here it is: The Red Shoes (1948) - Toxic

And she has many more vids in her catalogue! To sum up: check out her YouTube channel or her tumblr @rhoboat77, she’s great.

3. Di Wey is an older vidder (by which I mean, a lot of her work that I love is 7-12 years old). If you go back as far as a decade plus, she was working with older technology and lower quality footage, so her vids don’t look as sharp and clear as many more recent vids. But that doesn’t matter. Her editing is so joyous, & her songs so insightful and fun. She made a lot of vids that are really dear to my heart, including:

My favorite Granada Holmes vid, it’s just so full of energy, love, joy, panache, the whole thing (”you never returned that call,” rotfl!!): Read My Mind

A great vid examining the Martha/Ten relationship (Doctor Who). It’s insightful and captures with such clarity the way the many bad things in their dynamic co-exist and are powerfully interwoven with the good things, and it’s one of those rare vids that’s ABOUT a ship without being either shippy or anti/bashing. It’s about saying: this relationship will never work, but it’s still important, without being the only important thing either, and anyway I love Martha and this vid: Foundations

And now that we’ve done the angst, please accept the floofiest goofball geeky-sexy chic Ten vid, its charm is probably visible from space: I Am A Scientist

This constructed-reality fake trailer for a Sherlock/Who episode crossover is still satisfying to watch: A Study in Time

Oh hey it’s my favorite Eleven character vid, sweet! Focused entirely on his first season. She chose a really great song for the Doctor, it just GETS the most important things: Eleventh Dimension

Okay, thank you very much for letting me ramble, I’m done now! Since this got so long, I will save question #32 for a separate post. I appreciate getting to play the meme, thank you <3333

[etes-secrecy-post]

Hi, before I explain my post, I want to say something important.

What you see my blog has become a major overhaul. And despite the changes, I decided that my 2nd account will be now my artwork blog with a secret twist. SO PLEASE DO NOT SHARE MY 2nd ACCOUNT TO EVERYONE, IT’S JUST YOU AND ME! AND IN CASE YOU WANT TO SHARE MY POST THEN DON’T REBLOG IT. INSTEAD JUST COPY MY LINK AND PASTE IT ON YOUR TUMBLR POST! JUST BE SURE THE IMAGE WILL BE REMOVED AND THE ONLY LEFT WAS THE TEXT.

Okay? Capiche? Make sense? Good, now back to the post…↓

• Minutes ago, I’m curious to see and check some updates until a windows 10 version pops up during update process, and it says download the latest “Windows 10 version 20H2″ 🔄🖥️; this will improve security systems, a new look, etc... And I thought to myself, yeah I’ll go ahead and install the new version of Windows 10.🙂 I actually googling the “Windows 10 version 20H2″, and I could see the differences. Well I would say not much, but they change a bit with a minor coat of paint on their Windows 10. Though according to the official Windows website “is a scoped set of features for select performance improvements, enterprise features, and quality enhancements. “, so yeah like I said nothing right to home about, but they did improved nonetheless.

• After I waited for about a minutes, the update is completed.🙂

• Here I made a screenshots of my desktop; The upper you see was before updating and the lower screenshots after updating of Windows 10 version 20H2.🖼️

• On the 1st and 3rd screenshots looks the exact same as before, but on the 2nd and 4th screenshots the Windows Start Bar sees the differences, but otherwise it’s identical as before; with the only change was turn blue into bright black.🔵⚫

Overall: • I would say it looks okay, like said nothing right home about but I’m just glad that I update the recent Windows version. 🙂👍

Well, that’s all for now...

[ziracona]

THE OFFICIAL DBD STORE SELLS A HUNTRESS (and shirtless david) BODY PILLOW AND IM 👀👀👀👀👀👀👌👌👌👌

Keep ‘em comin’ lads

(Haha. I do gotta say tho Anon, if you want a body pillow for DbD, please consider getting a custom one instead. I think you’d actually like it much better! The rest was meant to be under a cut but tumblr is the dumbest shit site coding wise & I made this on mobile, which will not allow you to add read mores anymore. In past this has been no problem bc I can just save as a draft & edit + post on my laptop or edit the second I post & throw in a read-more but apparently now if you make a post on mobile you can never edit it in desktop again. : ) I love that. So fucking much! But this is going to be long now & I physically cannot fix that bc it also won’t let me swap it to html now it’s posted : ) : ) : ) fuck this site : ) —anyway! On a brighter note, here’s my pitch:

Okay! So to start.

First up. Let’s look at what the devs are offering you.

Here are the official body pillows. Now, these aren’t the worst pictures of Anna and David I’ve ever seen, but they’re not great. David’s in his default queue pose, I got no idea wtf Anna’s doing, and neither of them have interesting, good, or attractive poses, lighting, expressions, or detail. Considering this is decently funded company with multiple artists on staff and full body 3D adjustable rendered models of Anna & David on every computer there, it’s lazy as hell. It’s not even as good art as their official sketches or character renders or promo art. They know how to do the work:

They’re just being lazy.

Okay, though, but you really want a body pillow, so what to do? Well, maybe it’ll be cheap enough you don’t care about the quality too much. So, how much will this cost you? For me to ship to myself in the us with the cheapest shipping option, Anna would cost me $80.

Okay, so. That sucks. But you really want this and what else can you do? There’s nothing else to pick.

OH WAIT. Yes there is! So here’s some actually good news for ya 💪

If you want a custom body pillow, you have two options: 1, buy a custom pillow case and a pillow separately, or 2, buy a custom pillow with the image on the pillow print itself. Now, you can get the second option, but it is exponentially more expensive. I’ve seen maybe 60something-70 as the cheapest option for this, although I didn’t spend a ton of time looking. Still, if you want to go full hog, it’s possible. If you don’t mind a pillowcase/the cheaper option, though, (and many pillow cases are custom to the exact specified pillow size and aren’t really noticeable at all), it’s a good deal. For example: A body pillow can be bought at many stores for about 15 bucks. There is some variance in pricing for size, shape, and material, but here I’d like to add the official DbD site doesn’t even list dimensions for their body pillow, let alone material. So, for me to get what I want if I wanted this, I could buy a $15 pillow at a store, and then a pillowcase from a place that I could get it custom made & delivered, IE price + shipping is $30 from here https://www.etsy.com/listing/653983430/custom-21-x-60-zipper-body-pillowcase?ga_order=most_relevant&ga_search_type=all&ga_view_type=gallery&ga_search_query=custom+body+pillow&ref=sr_gallery-1-1&bes=1

So we’re at about $45 right now. (eBay offers cheaper custom pillowcase options but I didn’t want to try to vet sellers for quality & reliability making this post & this is a good price).

This leaves about $35 to commission an artist for something to put on the pillow case. Now, price for commission varies greatly from artist to artist, and full body is the most expensive base option for a single subject, but there’s definitely people offering really freaking incredible commissions at this price, and sometimes even lower. Even though their art should really be worth more than that. Unfortunately, we artists gotta eat. And a lot of the people who buy commissions are also young adults who gotta eat and don’t have a ton of cash. 🤷🏻‍♀️ So there’s a lot of people who’d be genuinely very happy to be paid for that commission even though it kinda sucks we be there. And if you want to commission someone more expensive, sure you’ll be spending more on the body pillow than DbD officials $80ish. But uh. Would you rather give the same devs who picked the most racist Claudette design they could put into the game for the most recent costume contest $80 for one of these:

Or

Spend $37 for a David of @eggchef ‘s lookin this kinda fine:

https://eggchef.tumblr.com/post/190185302972/david-and-jake-are-both-just-rich-kids-who-said

$40 for a full body Anna of @guud-night ‘s in the style they did this: https://guud-night.tumblr.com/post/185148722468/summer

Or $42 for a full body Anna like this one by @sleazy-art https://sleazy-art.tumblr.com/post/169548091038

or $70 for a full body of @guud-night ‘s in the style of this Anna seen here https://guud-night.tumblr.com/post/165476621798/the-huntress

The fan artists do better work—I mean think of how amazing a pillow could look if your heart cries for one. Vs the low-grade renders the devs be offering. They do so much better it’s like a “Look at your body pillow. Now look at the body pillow the devs told you not to worry about” meme it truly is. TBH, you could screenshot a DbD store screen with Anna or David, edit out the BG in photoshop, and already have a better 3D image than the official offering. 😂 And with an artist? 👌 Mmmmm. Anyway, haha. There was my in-depth pitch to buy from fans instead of official. I was just very motivated to *Robin Williams Genie voice* Illuminate the possibilities! I hope it may have given you inspiration for something even more beautiful than what you thought your heart desired :’-)

[soulvomit]

People basically attacked the main personalities behind 70s thru 90s Boundaries Psychology without trying to salvage the parts that were good. This writer was white and rich and problematic? We must throw out ALL the writers! Boundaries are privileged!

The publishing industry was part of it, tbh. It wasn't even "Wokeness Culture" that undermined Boundaries Culture.

Lots of Boundaries Culture writing DOES assume a basic economic privilege and education level. Like, let's get real. For it to be broadly applicable, the writers would have to acknowledge this and actually acknowledge how impracticable a lot of their methods are by a lot of people. Especially in anti-neediness and anti-codependency discourse. A lot of it fed into this image that a modern woman, in order to be successful both socially and or in a career, has to make her life appear seamless in ways that are only possible for women if you're able to hire help, because of the degree to which *for a much broader range of men* this seamlessness was made possible by hidden female, lower socioeconomic class, and or POC labor. Women have to be more privileged in order to hire the seamless hidden labor force that traditionally, professional heterosexual men got by getting married. And this COULD have been the beginning of quality analysis. It certainly was acknowledged at the beginning of anti-codependency/anti-neediness discourse, in the 70s.

And that didn't happen.

As of the late 90s, lots of it was getting replaced on the bookshelves by gender essentialist pop psychology manuals about how life would just work better if we all performed our gender roles properly.

Stuff like Laura Doyle and Josh Harris and of course Mystery, because PUA was actually part and parcel of this phenomenon.

And somewhere along the line, Boundaries Psychology was lost. And by the time we had Bullshit Pop Psych 3: the Tumblring, it was a forgotten relic, with only its most caricatured proponents (the rich white Boomers) remaining visible. Another problem is that anything women-specific that came out of the 70s (such as *early* Boundaries Psychology) risks being written off as TERFy because of the whole problem of adjacence to 70s feminism. (But can't we have some non-TERFs address these issues?)

We know all the cons but have forgotten the pros. We've even recontextualized many positive aspects of that movement as evil (oh god I wish Tumblr would actually learn about "tough love.")

Maybe it's inevitable that Boundaries Psychology will come back in some newer, more intersectional form.

It didn't start off bad. It started off as a movement of people (especially women) who were actually being disenfranchised in measurable, observable ways by the "everything is okay" culture of the 1960s and early 70s.

We forget that in this context, "everything is okay" culture did NOT necessarily imply a permissive and accepting environment for marginalized people. It implied an environment with zero responsibility, and in some cases, everyone being intoxicated. It was okay for men to "find themselves" while women, who at the time were often unemployable and still only recently even allowed to have their own bank account or line of credit, left with abandoned children to clean up the mess. It meant that there were lots of abandoned women sleeping on couches.

That's where a lot of boundaries talk evolved. Most of the narratives in Women Who Love Too Much are of women who were in counterculture and subculture movements. (Which is also why so many people brushed off these problems as, "so join a church and become a yuppie, and you'll be fine.")

It was a NECESSARY conversation. Women needed to set boundaries against being exploited both by opportunistic men, and by the women newly leaning on other women because they trying to live their lives without those men.

I suspect that this conversation is going to have to happen again at some point.

It's going to have to be a hell of a lot more intersectional to succeed, and be willing to meet people where they're actually at.

I suspect that generational educational and privilege differences contributed to pop psych getting progressively dumbed down, too.

[bandsanitizer]

How did you make your edits for the Austin Moon stuff?

hello bobby lol thank you for the ask!!! um my explaination is going to lack technical terms because i kind of just go with whatever looks right as i edit (hence some inconsistencies) but hopefully this makes sense.

to start: i do all the editing on my phone with the apps pixlr and proknockout. both are free, though they have a quite a bit of ads—they get the job done. additionally, all the original photos either came from ross lynch’s or laura marano’s instagram or a lot of google searching for the perfect picture

now the concepts for the playlists as fake albums came from me rewatching austin & ally this year and being like “wHAT HAPPENED IN THE TIME SKIP???” yknow those years between ally giving austin her book and them being on the helen show? yeah. i was like “what happened?!? i need to know” and originally i was thinking of a fic but i started also getting into the driver era and thus i thought up “what if like... austin moon had other albums?!” cos we kind of just know of his first album in canon. and then it extended to “hOLY MOLY WHAT ABOUT THEIR DUO ALBUM?!?” anyways that’s way more backstory so onto the edits

WiLdHeArT

okay so this was the simplest of the edits. basically i took this photo:

cropped it into a square, played around with some of the exposure and such to make ross look less washed out, and then rotated the image and put some text over it. the font is provided with pixlr and i chose it because it conveys how i’d kind of imagine austin moon’s handwriting. the “album” itself was meant to have a very personal/authentic aspect so i thought it fit.

for the back cover/track listing, i took this photo:

and used proknockout to crop out ross. then in pixlr, i layered it over a solid background, with some rotation. add some filters, played with lighting, then blurred the whole image before adding the text on top. definitely one of the more rushed back cover edits.

ECLIPSE

okay so i had fun with this! the front cover comes from this original photo from some magazine shoot the driver era did (i think it was MOOD but i can’t remember)

this “album” was intended to capture a darker side to austin moon’s music and i really love ross’ harley hair so i had to go with brunet ross lynch. in pixlr i cropped to a square, did a lot of filtering to have cooler tones (matching the darker feel of the playlist) and then played with a filter that adjusts texture. after that, i layered the image over itself with adjustments to size and position to get that distorted effect. then i added the font and such lol

for the back cover the original came from pexels which is a royalty/copyright free image site

basically to match the title i wanted to utilize an eclipse image. i played around a lot with how i wanted the track listing to be. eventually i figured it out, put the text down with pixlr, and then played with filter and exposure and such to get the bluish glow that matches the front cover edit along with a warmer tone for the background. then i used a filter that inverted the colors to get the contrasting blue-black side. then i used proknockout’s collage option to put the two together—kind of to convey the crossing-paths aspect of an eclipse.

last step was going back into pixlr and if you look closely, it’s not just a solid background. it actually has several lines of the text “there’s no way i could make it without you do it without you be here without you” which is an oblivious reference to the austin & ally theme song. it’s meant (in this au of sorts) to be austin giving recognition to ally’s impact in his life and career on an album that marks a step away from his past. ANYWAYS! the text just has very very low opacity to make it blend better.

where you are

this one i think i had the most fun and the most trouble with because i could NOT find a nice image of both ross and laura. thus i had to search to find the right images. bc tumblr is limiting me to 10 images total on this, i’m only including one of the two images of laura i used. they’re both from the same photo shoot and screenshots from one of her recent instagram posts. the images of ross/base photos for the edits came from the driver era instagram.

okay so front cover edit took this phot of laura:

and used proknockout to crop her out of the background. then i used pixlr to layer it into this image of ross to kind of make it appear as if she’s standing behind the piano:

which you can see in the final edit! then i layered black squares, erasing majority of their inside, to get those black frames throughout the edit. finally i added text. originally I had a logo concept for austin & ally but then thought the simple font looked much better for the concept of the album—which was meant to convey their maturity as artists. also played around with the coloring and shadows and exposure.

finally for the back cover, i cropped this image (sorry rocky):

and used proknockout to take an image of laura sitting and layer it onto the driver era image. then i played with some exposure and filters to get laura’s lighting to match that of the original image. after realising the pic of laura was way higher in quality than ^this, i blurred it A LOT. then i used the same technique with the black squares, only this time lowering the opacity a bit. then i went with a font that was a bit more playful to set up the track listing. “two in a million” was left as a bonus track since it’s not on the playlist because it’s not on spotify.

and yeah! that’s how the edits were done! they were honestly a lot of fun and sparked by the playlists i made towards the beginning of this year. they all had a few different versions LOL but anyways, thank you for asking! i had fun sharing and i hope you enjoyed the playlists, the edits, and/or this explaination! sorry it’s not too technical!

[daily-rayless]

20 Years of Art

2000

(OC / Celes from Final Fantasy 6 / OC / OC)

The influence of Final Fantasy 6, off of the Anthology collection, and Yoshitaka Amano caused a significant shift in my art, leading my human figures to be very slender, graceful, and frequently pale. Most of it was of women, some of it was of horses, and by then I was very self-consciously starting to draw men. I mostly worked in pencils and colored pencils. Faces were oval with high hairlines and long, sharp, narrow noses. Also note my evident fear of mouth-seams and lower eyelids. I was pretty terrible at coloring, often feeling that coloring one of my sketches ruined all the nice linework.

2001

(Quistis from Final Fantasy 8 / Rosa from Final Fantasy 4? / Schala from Chrono Trigger / Dark Knight OC from Final Fantasy 4)

This is where more anime influences came in, and I consciously took on a semi-anime, semi-realistic (in my own mind) style. My ideal of beauty was overbig eyes, overlong nose, and oversmall mouth, and I stuck to it pretty relentlessly. Trying to figure out shadows and face structure. Still bad at coloring. I was incredibly proud of that charcoal picture. Was also going through my mandatory Dark 'n Edgy phase, with a big helping of Phantom of the Opera, Sarah Brightman, and my attempts at designing supercool clothes, many of which I wouldn't have actually worn, even given the opportunity.

2002

(Me trying to recreate “Flaming June” / OC, who incidentally looks almost exactly like Sarah Brightman and whose diadem was bodily lifted from a Jodi Lee painting / angsty symbolic wet chain lady / OC)

Deep in the Dark 'n Edgy. Faces are still very heavily made-up, with big lashes, defined upper eyelids, and dark lips. Trying very hard to be a good artist though, have high expectations for the future. I was so proud of that final pose and worked so hard on it. Lined paper? So not a problem. Besides, how else am I supposed to draw during class? A sketchbook would've been even more obvious than the incredibly obvious I already was. I'm able to listen while drawing pretty reliably, and I did manage to take detailed notes while doodling, so at least I had that going for me.

2003

(Celes / OC / OC / Hermes-inspired wing lady)

I was focusing (at least some of the time) on backgrounds and trying to make my work detailed and polished. Coloring is still hopeless. Often when I colored, I would go super light, even when I was using dark or intense colors. It would give my pictures a sort of faint, half-assed hazy look. I remember an art teacher urging me to use more color, but I probably resisted because I knew that way lay total destruction. I'm sorry, well-meaning art teacher. You are unversed in the ways of my pencils. I have killed too many sketches to take those kinds of risks.

2004

(Rosa? / Meliara from Crown Duel / willow-dress lady / Geddoe and Queen from Suikoden 3)

See the Meliara picture? That's supposed to be a night scene in a forest. Front-lit by blazing firelight. I was too afraid to make the colors darker. This is dark enough, okay? Anyway, this year, along with being utterly obsessed with Suikoden 3 and Crown Duel, I was letting my art head in a more realistic direction...

2005

(OC / Queen / Queen / part of Zetta and Salome from Makai Kingdom; I remember deliberately copying those swoopy Ss from one of my friends’ handwriting. Wishes ended up being the first longform fanfic I posted online.)

...that really flourished this year. It's not actually realism, but I made a point to give my characters, especially the women, more realistic bodies. Faces are very round in this period, often with soft features. Noses are prominent. I'm also, finally, using more vibrant colors. I probably got my first Prismacolor pencils around this time. I also got some really cheap markers, but had no idea how to use them so mostly stuck to pencils.

2006

(All OCs)

I look back on this as a good year. I was learning better coloring techniques. (Bold colors! Press that pencil down! Okay, I still had much to learn.) I got an Elfwood gallery while the site was doing its slow mosey into oblivion. But that was an important step, not just looking at other people's art online, but putting my own up as well. There were downsides though. I began to feel more insecure – or maybe more realistic? – about my art, on this site with so many highly talented artists. Still, 2006 is a good year. It was a lot of fun, and I learned a lot.

2007

(vampire and hunter / Fleur from Harry Potter / OC / Avril from Wild Arms 5)

The year of Fleur Delacour. This is when I was writing Kindred. I think it was because I was trying to depict Fleur as distinctly non-human that my art shifted away from that more realistic style. Fleur, and my other figures, became very tall and slender. The anime DNA is still there though. For a long time, I felt the lying-down picture of Fleur was my best work.

2008

(Revya and Gig from Soul Nomad / my attempts at being “abstract” / OC / OC)

This was the year of Soul Nomad and, towards the end, Tales of the Abyss. Unsurprisingly, the anime influences start moving back to the fore. The eyes are becoming larger again, the features a bit more angular and stylized, mouths are shrinking. I'm still desperately trying to figure out markers and wondering why it's so darn hard (I don't try to educate myself, I just flail), but I was proud of that blue OC picture. It made me feel like I was getting somewhere. 2008 is when I started my deviantART gallery, right when everyone else was moving on to Tumblr.

2009

(teacup lady / Persona 4 noir-style comic / Revya / OC)

Then Persona 4 hit. Shigenori Soejima was a huge influence in this period, especially in eyes and faces. Pupils, chins, and jawlines shrink, eyelashes are sparse and stylized, noses are simplified. 2008 and 2009 are about as pure anime as I've ever gotten. Meanwhile, I'm really exited about my dA gallery and trying lots of different combinations of media. I'm super active on dA and FFN at this point, writing Elysion and then a slew of shorter Persona fics.

2010

(Minako from Persona 3: Portable / concept-art-version Minako / lady with dragon ferret thing / other lady with dragon ferret thing)

I'm still drawing with a lot of Soejima influences. Additionally, bodies are becoming even longer, taller, thinner, and bendier. Some of them look absurd to me now. On the other hand, a lot of pictures from this period have a nice elegance to them. I was still using colored pencils a fair bit, but more clumsy markers are showing up. Persona 3: Portable came out, and this is when I was writing Death and Ker.

2011

(mask lady / hat lady / Archaya, Duphaston, and Iryth from Eternal Poison / symbolic autumn lady and her winter baby)

Midway through this year, I hit a breakthrough when I got my first set of Copics – and skin tones, no less. Even though I was still flailing, I was so thrilled with my results. That Eternal Poison picture left me enormously proud, as did the mother and child one. My style hasn't changed all that much, but it's starting to feel less extreme. The focus on big eyes and tiny little mouths remains.

2012

(Elza from Suikoden 2 / Daryl and Setzer from Final Fantasy 6 / Killey and Lorelai from Suikoden 2 / Lyssa, Greek goddess of madness)

This is the year of Elza. Lots of delicate sketches of this lovely scarred lady, and lots of colored pictures too. I've definitely shifted away from pencils towards markers. The Daryl and Setzer one was an attempt to use both, and I was very happy with it. These pictures show their age, but there's still a lot here I like. Mouths are larger too. However, my online activity was starting to lag.

2013

(Rydia from Final Fantasy 4 / Nia from Infinite Space / the prophet and Schala / Argos and Io from Greek mythology)

The mid-2010s weren't entirely great for me, marked with a lot of frustration and discontent. And that definitely carried over to my art, making me feel very disappointed with myself. There was lots of marker work this year. Probably the standout picture is Argos and Io. This is also when I played through all three routes of Fate/Extra, and my art was suddenly full of Hakuno and Emiya.

2014

(Minako / butterfly lady / Marta and Tenebrae from Tales of Symphonia 2 / Elza)

Looking at it now, this was a good year. Lots of nice marker art. The butterfly one was a big step up for me in terms of coloring. The Marta and Tenebrae has a really cool stylized look to it. But I was becoming less enthusiastic about sharing my art with others. I started to post less and less.

2015

(evil Hakuno and Emiya from the Fate series / Mitsuru from Persona 3 / half moon cookie lady / Hakuno)

I barely posted anything this year, though I was still drawing a ton. As far as making strides, this is one of my better years. Coloring will never be my strong suit, but it's a lot more fun, and it looks a lot better. It's almost entirely marker-work at this point. Despite my, er, angst, a lot of people are smiling this year.

2016

(OC / doodle lady / Luna from Roman mythology / hair bow lady)

At this point, it's feeling too recent for me to really see what's changed. I did a fair bit of eraserless work. One problem I still have – and, yes, it involves coloring my pictures – is losing some of the image's personality after I've inked it and erased the initial pencil work. The picture's still there, but not as nuanced as it originally was. The results often feel stiff to me. Doing the first linework in ink, or not inking at all, allows me to keep that sensitive, spontaneous quality. Luna and the bow and doodle ladies were done without erasers. Another thing I did a lot this year was fill backgrounds with busy shapes and colors, which is a trend I’m still following today.

2017

(flapper and dog / Alcyone and Ceyx from Greek mythology / flower hair lady / Kida from Atlantis)

Not a good year. Not that the art is bad, there just isn't a lot of it, and what there is often isn't very finished. I was still mostly dark online, wondering if I should take down my dA gallery. Drawing and knowing I wasn't going to post something took off some of the pressure of my own expectations, but I was still unhappy.

2018

(Altera from the Fate series / Elizabeth Bathory from the Fate series / OC / Aranea from Final Fantasy 15)

This was a really important year for me. I wrote a novel I'm really proud of, and it's done a lot to give me confidence and a sense of creative direction. I also decided that after New Years, I was going to start a Tumblr gallery...just as everyone who was still on the site was jumping off of it. Much of my 2018 work is still sketchy and unfinished, but I also think it's loosening up some. It feels less stiff than the stuff from the middle of the decade.

2019

(Aloy from Horizon Zero Dawn / medievaly lady / Red from Transistor / Red)

The year of Supergiant Games, which led me to focus more on bright saturated colors. It's really hard for me to analyze these objectively. Coloring is better? I worked more on details? I used my metallic gel pens a ton and did shape-cluttered backgrounds? These aren't new things, but I think they paid off okay. I'm more at peace with my level of ability, I've finished more complicated works, and I crawled out of my den and started posting regularly online again. So that's all good. Curious to see what the art looks like in twenty more years.

[alessandriana]

Internet trolls don’t troll. Not the professionals at least. Professional trolls don’t go on social media to antagonize liberals or belittle conservatives. They are not narrow minded, drunk or angry. They don’t lack basic English language skills. They certainly aren’t “somebody sitting on their bed that weighs 400 pounds,” as the president once put it. Your stereotypical trolls do exist on social media, but the amateurs aren’t a threat to Western democracy.

Professional trolls, on the other hand, are the tip of the spear in the new digital, ideological battleground. To combat the threat they pose, we must first understand them — and take them seriously.

On August 22, 2019, @IamTyraJackson received almost 290,000 likes on Twitter for a single tweet. Put in perspective, the typical tweet President Trump sends to his 67 million followers gets about 100,000 likes. That viral tweet by @IamTyraJackson was innocent: an uplifting pair of images of former pro football player Warrick Dunn and a description of his inspiring charity work building houses for single mothers. For an anonymous account that had only existed for only a few months, “Tyra” knew her audience well. Warrick’s former coach, Tony Dungy, retweeted it, as did the rapper and producer Chuck D. Hundreds of thousands of real users viewed Tyra’s tweet and connected with its message. For “Tyra,” however, inspiring messages like this were a tool for a very different purpose.

The purpose of the Tyra account, we believe, was not to spread heartwarming messages to Americans. Rather, the tweet about Warrick Dunn was really a Trojan horse to gain followers in a larger plan by a foreign adversary. We think this because we believe @IamTyraJackson was an account operated by the successors to Russia’s Internet Research Agency (IRA). Special Counsel Robert Mueller indicted the IRA for waging a massive information war during the 2016 U.S. election. Since then, the IRA seems to have been subsumed into Russia’s Federal News Agency, but its work continues. In the case of @IamTyraJackson, the IRA’s goal was two-fold: Grow an audience in part through heartwarming, inspiring messages, and use that following to spread messages promoting division, distrust, and doubt.

We’ve spent the past two years studying online disinformation and building a deep understanding of Russia’s strategy, tactics, and impact. Working from data Twitter has publicly released, we’ve read Russian tweets until our eyes bled. Looking at a range of behavioral signals, we have begun to develop procedures to identify disinformation campaigns and have worked with Twitter to suspend accounts. In the process we’ve shared what we’ve learned with people making a difference, both in and out of government. We have experienced a range of emotions studying what the IRA has produced, from disgust at their overt racism to amusement at their sometimes self-reflective humor. Mostly, however, we’ve been impressed.

Professional trolls are good at their job. They have studied us. They understand how to harness our biases (and hashtags) for their own purposes. They know what pressure points to push and how best to drive us to distrust our neighbors. The professionals know you catch more flies with honey. They don’t go to social media looking for a fight; they go looking for new best friends. And they have found them.

Disinformation operations aren’t typically fake news or outright lies. Disinformation is most often simply spin. Spin is hard to spot and easy to believe, especially if you are already inclined to do so. While the rest of the world learned how to conduct a modern disinformation campaign from the Russians, it is from the world of public relations and advertising that the IRA learned their craft. To appreciate the influence and potential of Russian disinformation, we need to view them less as Boris and Natasha and more like Don Draper.

As good marketers, professional trolls manipulate our emotions subtly. In fall 2018, for example, a Russian account we identified called @PoliteMelanie re-crafted an old urban legend, tweeting: “My cousin is studying sociology in university. Last week she and her classmates polled over 1,000 conservative Christians. ‘What would you do if you discovered that your child was a homo sapiens?’ 55% said they would disown them and force them to leave their home.” This tweet, which suggested conservative Christians are not only homophobic but also ignorant, was subtle enough to not feel overtly hateful, but was also aimed directly at multiple cultural stress points, driving a wedge at the point where religiosity and ideology meet. The tweet was also wildly successful, receiving more than 90,000 retweets and nearly 300,000 likes.

This tweet didn’t seek to anger conservative Christians or to provoke Trump supporters. She wasn’t even talking to them. Melanie’s 20,000 followers, painstakingly built, weren’t from #MAGA America (Russia has other accounts targeting them). Rather, Melanie’s audience was made up of educated, urban, left-wing Americans harboring a touch of self-righteousness. She wasn’t selling her audience a candidate or a position — she was selling an emotion. Melanie was selling disgust. The Russians know that, in political warfare, disgust is a more powerful tool than anger. Anger drives people to the polls; disgust drives countries apart.

Accounts like @IamTyraJackson have continued @PoliteMelanie’s work. Professional disinformation isn’t spread by the account you disagree with — quite the opposite. Effective disinformation is embedded in an account you agree with. The professionals don’t push you away, they pull you toward them. While tweeting uplifting messages about Warrick Dunn’s real-life charity work, Tyra, and several accounts we associated with her, also distributed messages consistent with past Russian disinformation. Importantly, they highlighted issues of race and gender inequality. A tweet about Brock Turner’s Stanford rape case received 15,000 likes. Another about police targeting black citizens in Las Vegas was liked more than 100,000 times. Here is what makes disinformation so difficult to discuss: while these tweets point to valid issues of concern — issues that have been central to important social movements like Black Lives Matter and #MeToo — they are framed to serve Russia’s interests in undermining Americans’ trust in our institutions.

These accounts also harness the goodwill they’ve built by engaging in these communities for specific political ends. Consistent with past Russian activity, they attacked moderate politicians as a method of bolstering more polarizing candidates. Recently, Vice President Biden has been the most frequent target of this strategy, as seen in dozens of tweets such as, “Joe Biden is damaging Obama’s legacy with his racism and stupidity!” and “Joe Biden doesn’t deserve our votes!”

The quality of Russia’s work has been honed over several years and millions of social media posts. They have appeared on Instagram, Stitcher, Reddit, Google+, Tumblr, Medium, Vine, Meetup, and even Pokémon Go, demonstrating not only a nihilistic creativity, but also a ruthless efficiency in volume of production. The IRA has been called a “troll farm,” but they are undoubtedly a factory.

While persona like Melanie and Tyra were important to Russian efforts, they were ultimately just tools, interchangeable parts constructed for a specific audience. When shut down, they were quickly replaced by other free-to-create, anonymous accounts. The factory doesn’t stop. They attack issues from both sides, attempting to drive mainstream viewpoints in polar and extreme directions.

In a free society, we must accept that bad actors will try to take advantage of our openness. But we need to learn to question our own and others’ biases on social media. We need to teach — to individuals of all ages — that we shouldn’t simply believe or repost anonymous users because they used the same hashtag we did, and neither should we accuse them of being a Russian bot simply because we disagree with their perspective. We need to teach digital civility. It will not only weaken foreign efforts, but it will also help us better engage online with our neighbors, especially the ones we disagree with.

Russian disinformation is not just about President Trump or the 2016 presidential election. Did they work to get Trump elected? Yes, diligently. Our research has shown how Russia strategically employed social media to build support on the right for Trump and lower voter turnout on the left for Clinton. But the IRA was not created to collude with the Trump campaign. They existed well before Trump rode down that escalator and announced his candidacy, and we assume they will exist in some form well after he is gone. Russia’s goals are to further widen existing divisions in the American public and decrease our faith and trust in institutions that help maintain a strong democracy. If we focus only on the past or future, we will not be prepared for the present. It’s not about election 2016 or 2020.

The IRA generated more social media content in the year following the 2016 election than the year before it. They also moved their office into a bigger building with room to expand. Their work was never just about elections. Rather, the IRA encourages us to vilify our neighbor and amplify our differences because, if we grow incapable of compromising, there can be no meaningful democracy. Russia has dug in for a long campaign. So far, we’re helping them win.

[yoonqiful]

Another Gif Tutorial

No one asked for this, but I thought I’d make another gif tutorial on how I do my gifs now. I’ve changed the process over the last two months. Granted, the other is still useful as well. 

This will end up being long so everything will be under the cut! 

Previously, I used AviSynth. And while I like AviSynth, and there’s nothing wrong with it I recently decided to try out VapourSynth. It was recommended to me by a few other gif makers in a chat with. For reference, the other one, here. 

Why do I use VapourSynth? 

Easier to find the exact time stamp that you want/need. It also reduces the loss of quality when importing the frames into photoshop. You can also use Avisynth to crop the gif that you need, but I often just crop in photoshop for personal preference on how I edit my gifs. 

However, here is a link on how to install on Windows. The video is at the top on how to install it. It can be complicated, but it’s soooo worth it! If you need any help, feel free to ask me! 

Drag your video to VapourScript (I put mine on the desktop like in the video)

This CMD prompt will open.

From there, you will add in the start of the time stamp. So I did 00:00:09 (i want it to start at 9 seconds. 

The next is encoding duration, which just means how many seconds of it do you want. I normally just always use 00:00:03 (this gives me 90 frames). Just hit enter next. 

Just like AviSnyth, another window will pop up in your browser so you can see the settings you want.  For this, I only use the denoise filter KNLM. 

Settings for KNLM: 0, 6, 4, 1.9 (you can play around with these if you’d like. 

I also use 30fps fast, but you don’t have too. It’s what you like and how you want your timing to be. 

Once it cropped the time stamp, another pop was open, right? The VaporSynth Editor. This is where it can get a bit tricky. 

The video goes into detail on where to copy and paste the code from the resizer, but it also allows you to trim the frames you want, but I don’t want to go through that. So I’ll just put the # sign there to cancel that out. Just like below.

So you see here the trim is grayed out, it just means I won’t use that feature of it. 

Normally you’ll see this :

video = core.fmtc.resample(video, css="444")

video = descale.Debilinear(video, 630,354) 

Instead of:

video = core.fmtc.resample(video, css="444")

video = descale.Debilinear(video, 1920,1080)

I personally like to change it to the original size of the video so when you crop it, it doesn’t come out stretched or weird looking when you use 630,354. 

You’ll also see where I used:

video = haf.QTGMC(video, Preset="Fast", TFF=True, FPSDivisor=2)

This is just the present for 30fps fast. That’s optional. 

From here once your settings look good, you go to file save script and then script encode video. 

Where it says header change it to Y4M (always).

Hit start, and let it do its thing. Then after it's finished you can close it. Sometimes it can take a minute or two once you change the size of the video. 

Photoshop

If you haven’t already cut your gif in another program, then you can use photoshop to crop. I, however, recommend that you do. I started using Avisynth maybe a month ago, and it’s the best thing ever. I won’t force that on you, get comfortable with photoshop first if you’re new to PS.

Importing and Resizing

Import video into photoshop (file > import > video frames to layers)

Use these settings

Using the sliders, select the part that you want with the sliders to the left and the right.

Once it’s all open in photoshop, you will need to make sure you have timeline open. window > timeline.

If you used VapourSynth, and have cropped to the frames that you want. Then all you need to do is crop the gif.

So you’ll just go to import > video frames to layers > windows > vapoursynth > output > select output.move

NOTE: IF YOU USE PS CS6 for some reason it doesn’t open MOV files. My mutual found a way to work, so I’ll have to ask her if it’s alright to direct her to you to see how she got it to work. 

When I crop my gif to the correct size for Tumblr to keep it under 3MB.

Go in with the rectangular marquee tool. With sizes below:

268 x 360 - 400

268 x 200

540 x 280

Position it to the place that you want. Then go to image > crop.

Once it’s cropped, you will then go to image > image size.

I normally set it to bicubic (smooth gradients).

Also always lock in the width & height.

Here is tumblr’s sizing.

Delete any unwanted frames you don’t want.

Sharpening

I use a varies of settings when sharpening and clearing my gifs how I like. 

Select all your frames, and then at the bottom of that timeline window click the convert to video timeline.

Select all your layers, and then convert to smart filters. (filter > convert to smart object)

I no longer use topaz settings. It takes entirely too long, and I’m lazy. So now to get my gifs smooth looking I use gaussian blur and smart sharpen only. 

So the steps I take are:

Duplicate your smart filter

On the bottom filter, I use smart sharpen

I normally keep it at 500 / 0.2 or 500 / 0.3.

Copied smart filter:

Filter > Gaussian Blur > I usually use between 1.0-1.6 just depends. 

You can lower the opacity of the gaussian blur like below:

Double click the one next to the gaussian blur I usually lower it between 50 to 80% just depends on the look I’m going for.

Filter > Smart Sharpen > 500 / 0.3 (a second time)

Convert frames > flatten frames into clips.

Click the bottom button again to convert video to timeline (using that same button as before).

Then delete the first two layers. It’s the one that says layer, the others will say frame.

Once it’s deleted, go to the timeline option button. It’s located at the top right corner of the timeline.

Select the option to make frames from layers.

Coloring + Timing + Saving

To avoid this being longer than it is, I’ll link the original tutorial on coloring, timing, and saving gifs, here. 

[eirianerisdar]

Waiting in the Quiet, Part 6

General Summary: Gren and Amaya, from their first meeting until the end of the first season of The Dragon Prince. Will continue to follow canon events, but as a gremaya AU.

This chapter: Determination, a confession, chains against the dungeon wall, and a letter finally seen in full. Picks up where we left off: Episode 5, An Empty Throne. The mutual pining is strong with this one.

I reference some earlier chapters in this one, so reread those if you’d like a deeper understanding! Also, line breaks aren’t working on tumblr mobile so I put a > for every new section.

Read from chapter 1

Chapter Index

Chapter 6: The Confession

Daybreak found Amaya waiting in the throne room by one of its arched windows.

The rising sun drenched stone floors in gold and limned the scarlet of the processional carpet with gilt thread. The warmth of those rays was a living thing that soothed her exhausted heart, even though she knew it would dissipate as the sun sailed higher above the horizon.

She had found no rest that past night; no counsel except her own, taken by light of guttering candle, while Gren slept soundly in the next chamber.

There were three problems in her hands. 

First, and by far the most important – her nephews, and the Moonshadow elf that had captured them. Corvus could track as silently and swiftly as a lynx; with luck, he would catch up to the boys by mid-morning.

Second, Viren. His haste in arranging Harrow’s funeral spoke volumes of his true intentions; patriot he might be, there was something in his actions that edged a little too close to treason for Amaya’s liking. It would not do to leave him unwatched.

Third, the Breach. Amaya did not doubt her soldiers’ ability to hold the fortress against the forces of Xadia; but should Xadia take the empty throne of Katolis as an opportunity to launch a combined attack, her absence there would be keenly felt. Morale was a fickle thing. It depended on the presence of a leader that every soldier could trust.

Three problems, and she could only be in one place at once.

Amaya sighed. Rested her head against the warm stone of the throne room wall for a moment. The sun was halfway visible over the horizon, now.

She had come to a decision last night, with her head bowed over the flickering light of the candle before her.

Whether the decision would come to anything would greatly depend upon Viren’s actions in the coming few hours; but should he still persist in his veiled, ulterior motives–

–Amaya would have no choice except to leave Gren here, as her eyes and ears.

And therein lay Amaya’s final and most unexpected problem; one she had not anticipated, or perhaps did not wish to admit to herself.

She did not want to leave her commander behind.

Viren remained as wily as a viper, despite their long acquaintance. Amaya had no doubt Gren was as aware of this as she, but all logic aside, should he remain, and Viren strike…

Amaya fought back the shudder that rose up from her gut; an aching, senseless thing of denial.

Gren, her commander and closest friend, and–

And what? The words flickered before her, mockingly. And what more?

Two days ago, she had found him on the battlements of the fortress at the Breach; he had skipped breakfast to write a letter; tucked it away under his bracer with haste when he spotted her.

They had stood and watched each other, as they seemed to do more often in recent months, since she had almost lost Gren on the eve of last Winter’s Turn. For a moment there, she had wondered if the words he meant to say on the battlefield were not I thank you, but rather–

Footsteps vibrated up her armoured boots from the stone floor; a tread she could not hear, but as familiar to her as her own.

The sun was well and truly risen, now; the light crept up her cheeks without warning and dazzled her vision, and she turned, blinking the spots out of her gaze, to find Gren in the shadow of a pillar, blue eyes calm and waiting. His gaze flickered over the sunlight on her cheek, and deepened with an unreadable emotion.

Seeing him there made the ache of their all-too-likely parting well up afresh.

Amaya knew Gren had a lighter tread – he could have stepped right up to her without her notice, but as always he chose to put more force into his steps than usual when he approached from behind; so that she would know he was coming.

He had never said anything.

Neither had Amaya.

But perhaps…perhaps when this was over, they should.

Talk. Of all the things they had never said.

Gren pushed himself off the pillar with a nudge of his shoulder, to free both arms to speak. “Good morning.”

And there was that smile again – a flash of gentle humour despite the earth-shattering events of the past few days.

That smile used to bring warmth like hearthfire; now it made her stomach flip in an inexplicable surge of ice and flame.

“Good morning,” Amaya echoed. Her hand – the same hand that had nearly betrayed her by reaching out for Gren’s sleeping features, beside a campfire only two nights ago – hesitated briefly as she lowered it. It clenched at her side as she fought against the urge to ask what they had no time for.

Gren’s sharp eyes caught the motion. He straightened and raised his hands to speak. There was hope in his gaze, hidden behind the thinnest veil of control.

Oh, Amaya thought numbly, as she watched his fingers slide into the bar of sunlight to form the first word. Perhaps we both wish to ask the same question.

“Amaya,” Gren began, “Do you–”

He broke off as his chin snapped towards the double doors of the throne room.

Amaya swallowed past the painful lump in her throat; quelled the urge to pull him into the shadow of an alcove and say the things they wished to say, where neither of them could miss the truth of the words they held.

Gren gestured to the opposite side of the chamber, and they hastened across the expanse of scarlet cloth, leaving the warmth of the Eastern window for a shadowed pillar. Gren’s head was still cocked to one side as he listened for what Amaya could not hear, but after a moment he nodded once, sharply, and signed, “Viren.”

Amaya watched him, still, and as he met her eyes his shoulders dropped a little out of their automatic tension, eyes softening at the corners.

There were many things that Amaya wished; but sometimes, wishing was all she had.

The heavy double doors opened and closed again, a palpable tremble from the flagstones up to Amaya’s ankles, and she straightened, shoulders back and head held high – the perfect image of a General.

Gren’s head inclined just so. Acceptance. He took a step back and turned towards the centre of the chamber: once more her interpreter.

They fell into their separate roles with familiar ease. The fact that neither of them truly wished it meant little at this moment. There were more important things to handle.

Amaya took a breath, stepped forward, and began to sign.

“Thought I might run into you here.”

Viren turned languidly in place to face them. He looked…good. As though he had the most refreshing night of sleep – as though the kingdom was not in shambles and its princes in the clutches of an Elven assassin.

Amaya clenched her teeth and stared him down, fingers flashing. Gren’s lips moved in the periphery of her vision.

“We need to talk.”

If anything, Viren’s haughtiness seemed to grow further. With one hand he indicated that he was listening, though his expression said anything but. A fox-faced smile – the smile of a man who would let her say her piece and then throw it into the dirt-pile.

It reminded Amaya of the yawning emptiness to her right – her brother-in-law’s throne, bereft of its king and rightful heir. Harrow’s body now lay with his forefathers in the Valley of Graves, a scant day after his passing.

It filled her with incandescent rage.

“How could you let it come to this?”

“You speak as if I invited these assassins,” Viren said, dropping one arm out from behind his back as though in readiness to strike.

Oh, she would like to see him try. “I had to leave our stronghold at the Breach,” she continued. “Do you have any idea,” – she emphasised the word by the set of her shoulders – “the dangerous forces gathered at our border?”

“I did everything in my power to protect King Harrow. I was willing to give my own life!” Viren countered. There was a thinned quality to the shapes of his lips that suggested his control had slipped enough to raise his voice.

“Then what went wrong?” Amaya challenged.

“He did.” Viren threw out an arm towards the empty throne, with such vehemence that Amaya could almost see the shadow of a silver dagger that would have pierced the uneven towers of the tapestry behind it.

Viren was not done. His lips were curling in what must be a true shout, now. “His own stubborn ways stopped me from helping him. You know him as well as I do. His pride was more important to him than his life!”

Your pride is your life, Amaya wanted to say. But she reined back the words.

“You wanted this outcome,” she accused instead. Gren’s presence was solid behind her shoulder; she felt him lean forward to convey her exact meaning.

Instantly, she could see she had pushed too far. Or perhaps just right, like the keen blade of a sword-thrust right past Viren’s veiled armour and directly into his heart of hearts.

Viren’s eyes flashed. “How dare you suggest–”

Something twisted in Amaya’s stomach, vicious. Got you.

Oh, she was not done, not in the slightest. She pushed on with calculated severity. “His death creates opportunity for you.”

“His death breaks my heart,” Viren said, lips bared. Anger. Offense.

To one who only knew him in passing, that anger might be taken as sheer incredulity that anyone would accuse him of exploiting his old friend’s assassination; to any who knew him well, his anger was just what it was. Rage. Pride. Hurt, but perhaps not the kind that stemmed from being wronged.

Amaya laid her trap, then; a test of candor, a trial that might determine if Viren truly was the snake she suspected.

“Then honour him. Find his children.”

His chest expanded as he sucked in a breath to fuel his next words. “They’re gone, Amaya. Captured by a Moonshadow elf.”

He looked, in that moment, almost like a grieving uncle.

Almost.

Amaya was once again reminded that it was a good thing she withheld Corvus’s mission from him.

Viren was not done. “If they’re not already dead, they will be soon.” His sceptre slammed into the floor in a jolt that ran up Amaya’s greaves. “This is a time of crisis,” he continued, turning to move up towards the dias and the throne upon it.

Amaya’s eyes narrowed. If Viren were to show even an ounce of intent to sit upon that seat…

But her thoughts were left unfounded. Viren brushed the fingers of one hand over one worn armrest, and said, “An empty throne is beacon of weakness. An invitation to destroy us.”

So are many other things, Amaya privately thought. Missing princes. A fortress without its general. The cruel ambition of a kingdom’s chief advisor and sorcerer.

“We must defend Katolis and all the human kingdoms against what’s coming.” Viren gestured at the throne. “I can help us from there.”

Amaya shook her head once.

Astoundingly, Viren was not done. 

“You think I’m being an opportunist, but I couldn’t be more selfless in my motivation. I am a servant of Katolis. A servant!” He brought down his sceptre on that last word, a jarring, metallic jolt through Amaya’s ankles – like a judge with a gavel, or a king’s announcer.

Viren was neither.

But here there was something strange, in Viren’s choice of words; a twisting of his expression as he spoke those latter words, old pain and dissatisfaction and bitterness, which morphed the shape of his words into snarls.

A moment, where Amaya watched Viren breathe, as she calmly moved her hands, fluid and unyielding.

“Those are awfully nice clothes for a humble servant, Viren.” Amaya could sense Gren’s cocky grin as he finished the sentence. It comforted her, here where Katolis hung in the balance between her and Viren’s wills.

Something flashed in Viren’s gaze, still and dark and unreadable. Then he did something unexpected – he stood aside and inclined his head.

“Then you take it. Go ahead, sit down. I’ll support you as queen regent.”

For a moment there, Amaya wondered. There was no possibility of her taking the throne, of course, but to offer it like so was beyond what she had expected of Viren. Was he, misguided in his efforts as he was, truly thinking of Katolis and her people?

Viren’s next words took that possibility and threw it out the window as neatly as one of her famous front kicks.

“I’ll gather the High Council, and we’ll send word to the other crowns of the Pentarchy immediately.”

He expected her to say yes.

Because that was what Viren would have done.

Amaya sank further into her stance. Narrowed her eyes into slits. She would not take her brother-in-law’s throne, and her nephew’s by inheritance.

Sarai would have had just the thing to say; assisted Amaya, even, in heaving Viren bodily out of a window.

Oh, she missed her sister so, so much.

Anger steadied her hands as she replied, “The throne stays empty until we find the boys.”

The darkness in Viren’s eyes became less unreadable, at that. He opened his mouth in a soundless snarl and stalked down from the dias, taking care to slam the sharp edge of his sceptre head into Gren’s unarmoured chest as he shoved between them.

Amaya spared Gren a glance, and watched as Viren threw open the doors and faded down the corridor.

And then it was simply the throne room Amaya knew so well, without Viren’s polluting presence in it.

Two breaths, slow and even; Amaya closed her eyes briefly, and then reached out to splay a gentle hand on Gren’s front, where a dent in leather marked the spot where sharp silver dug into his sternum.

The steady movement of Gren’s breathing hitched as her fingers brushed his chest.

Amaya was instantly alert; if such a soft touch was enough to cause pain, then Viren must have struck him with much more force than she thought–

But Gren only reached up to grasp her hand where it was pressed into his sternum. The steady rhythm of his heart thudded against her fingers, even through reinforced leather and thick riding gloves.

“I’m fine,” he said with his lips, the shapes familiar. “It doesn’t hurt.”

There was truth in his eyes.

But standing there with her fingers against the flow of his heart, she could only remember the sheer desperation that slammed through hers when she felt nothing but still and cold leather under her touch, on the battlefield last Winter’s Turn.

She had seen him fall – the lightning strike that cleaved through him from shoulder to foot. Her mad scramble to him then and the desperate pressure of her hands against his chest to beat his heart back to life was no more than a memory; but now, even with evidence of his life pressed against her palm she remembered what it was like to feel no pulse, no warmth, and no Gren there.

And now she might have no choice but to send him to do what she could not.

Amaya fought the shudder when it came.

Gren was looking at her with that expression that he sometimes wore, that in recent times made her wonder at the depth of emotion in his quiet blue eyes.

She slipped her hand out from between his fingers and his tunic. He let her go without complaint.

Amaya looked past Gren to the window, where the morning light had settled to a pale, wintry shine; the light filtered over her hands, weightless.

“I need to speak to my sister.”

>They rode together down to the Valley of Graves, side-by-side, wordless.

Their horses were familiar enough with them to likely have continued onwards if they chose to slacken their reins, but neither did; there was a comfort and ease in their companionship that went beyond the need to speak.

Gren’s spirits lifted slightly despite the earlier clash with Viren; riding with Amaya like this reminded him of the earlier years of their friendship, riding out together through the wildlands at the border, before Queen Sarai’s passing.

And there, digging into his wrist between his bracer and long-sleeved tunic, was a letter.

The letter he had finished writing two days ago on the battlements on the fortress at the Breach; the letter that he had tucked under his bracer when Amaya sought him there, and which he had carried with him all the way here when the urgent summons from King Harrow came.

The letter that was addressed Amaya – in the event of my death.

Not that he thought there were any after his blood – but after waking on the frozen battlefield of last Winter’s Turn with Amaya’s hitching sobs at his side and his ribs aching from the press of her hands that had restarted his heart, he had thought it would do to be better prepared.

The wind picked up. Gren breathed in the fresh air and shook his head; the letter might be under his bracer, but there was no cause to give it to Amaya yet.

Their horses’ hooves trotted at a steady pace through the forest and canyon, to the edge of the small lake guarded on all sides by statues of past kings and queens. The thunder of the distant waterfall was a soothing, steady drumbeat where Katolis itself was in turmoil.

There, the final guard to the stone platform for funeral rites and the graves of kings by the shore, stood Queen Sarai’s monument. Her smiling likeness was captured forever in stone, on horseback and in full armour, one hand grasping her spear and the other extended in gentle grace. 

Gren always thought it was as though she extended her love and sympathy to each mourner who chose to visit the valley – offering to take their hand and lead them through the canyon and forest to the welcoming lights of home.

Amaya’s horse snorted as she dismounted. Gren followed suit, but stood back as he did on the morning after the queen’s funeral, when they had ridden here with raw hearts and fresh grief.

Then, Amaya had spoken to her sister, and then extended a hand to Gren much like her sister above; the two of them had rested together in Sarai’s presence until grief became hope.

Now, Gren settled a few paces away as Amaya looked up into her sister’s gentle features and signed, “Hello, sister.”

Amaya’s armour shifted audibly as she knelt. Even now, at mid-morning, there were candles flickering at the foot of Sarai’s grave; the people of Katolis loved their queen as they did their king.

Gren watched as Amaya lit a fresh candle with another, bowed her head, and began to sign. His heart wrenched as she spoke; the shapes of her words had always been lovely to him, but there was a tenderness and grace to them as she spoke to her sister that turned the dance of her hands heart-achingly beautiful.

“You were my hero,” Amaya said, and Gren knew from the angle of her head and the drop in her shoulders that her grief was still there, welling up afresh. “Perfect, strong, and unbreakable. Kind and loyal. I’m sorry, older sister. I failed you. Your children were safe and I let them slip away.”

Gren closed his eyes as he raised his face to the queen. The princes’ capture was in part his fault, as well, and there was no denying it; he breathed a silent promise to Queen Sarai that he would do his part in returning her children. His heart ached for them all; the late Queen, gone so young, the King taken for his country, the princes who even now were held in the deadly grasp of Moonshadow elves.

His general, whom he loved so much, who could lose the last family she had left.

Behind him, a horse’s neigh echoed down the canyon. Gren half-turned, eyes sharp, to find a familiar figure approaching.

Lord Viren had none of the fiery discontent he had in his gaze an hour previous; he moved past Gren without meeting his eyes, focused instead on Amaya’s still-kneeling form.

Gren let him pass, the spot on his sternum where Viren’s sceptre had dug into his skin tingling. His hands loosened at his sides, though for what he did not wonder; there was no possibility of winning any fight against Viren, but that did not mean Gren could not prepare for it.

He followed Viren’s every move with wary caution. If the man showed even a subtle indication he meant ill, Gren would know.

But Viren did nothing but step forward until the impact of his sceptre against the ground reached Amaya’s knees; she raised her head and looked up at him.

His voice was soft. Remorseful. “May I light a candle?”

Gren could see the moment Amaya decided to put aside their differences. Her lips curved as her eyes softened, and she looked so much like her sister in that moment that Gren almost looked away.

Viren knelt beside her and reached for a candle, and Gren loosed a breath. His hands returned to the small of his back.

This was a moment of quiet truce, and he would not interrupt it.

When a span of time passed, Amaya got to her feet and stepped back. Viren rose after her, smiled up at the late queen with fond memory.

“Your sister made him better,” he said, and for a moment he looked as he must have as a young man, best friends with the crown prince of Katolis; for all intents and purposes almost a spare, sworn to the service of the crown. “Harrow told me he was never as strong or brave as Queen Sarai believed him to be, but he tried every day to be stronger and braver so he could live up to what she saw in him.”

A small smile tugged at Gren’s lips, despite himself. Viren’s words struck deeper than Gren expected; the praise of a loved one had a way of bringing out one’s determination to grow, to rise to that regard.

He knew because Amaya so valued his friendship. And he valued her beyond that, even.

A beautiful thing, to love.

Amaya’s hands moved in the corner of his vision, and his eyes slid to her hands like centering of his self.

“She was compassionate and patient.” Fond memory rose as he read her next words. “Unless, of course, you took the last jelly tart.”

Viren chuckled. “I only made that mistake once.”

Gren remembered the consequences of his own mistake well enough; Sarai had chased him through the halls and nearly to the castle bridge the one time he had taken the last jelly tart at breakfast, his first time visiting the royal family in his early days as Amaya’s interpreter.

They had called a truce and broken the jelly tart in half, and Amaya’s laughter, when they returned, had been reward enough for the sheer fear Gren had experienced at Sarai’s hands.

Amaya’s laughter now was a light, soft thing that eased a knot of worry in Gren’s chest.

“A sweet tooth and an iron fist.”

Viren inclined his head, contrite. “General Amaya, I am sorry for what happened in the throne room. You helped me see the truth.”

Amaya’s head tilted.

“And why was that so hard?”

Viren moved forward. “I was blinded by my abiding love for our kingdom and humanity itself.”

And well, if that wasn’t evidence for Viren’s propensity for hyperbole.

Gren raised an eyebrow, but Amaya’s fingers were already flicking with sharp wit.

“Guard, fetch a stable boy, quickly,” he interpreted, leaning eagerly into her implied tone and staring Viren down. “I’ve encountered a giant pile of bull–” Gren’s eyes widened slightly at Amaya’s last word, even as he failed to suppress a grin. “–droppings,” he amended, eyes sliding from Amaya to Viren and away again to avoid the consequences of smirking perhaps a little too obviously.

But Amaya was smirking as well, so perhaps it wasn’t too bad.

Oh, Gren loved her so much.

Viren breathed a laugh. “The princes come first,” he admitted. “Finding them is absolutely the top priority of the kingdom of Katolis.”

“Good, you see it my way,” Amaya said, and Gren noticed as he spoke for her that she seemed almost relieved. “I’ll be departing at sundown with a rescue party.”

Even as Gren finished the sentence, he became aware that the relief was not entirely for the princes. It was more obvious in the way she gestured at him to follow with a subtle flick of her fingers at her side as she turned.

But he had no time to wonder at it, for a voice sounded over his shoulder, and his hands moved automatically to translate.

“Of course,” Viren said, all ease. “But allow me to ask: What happens to the Breach?”

Amaya stopped mid-stride, eyes fixed on Gren’s hands. As she turned in place her eyes met his in a look of shared understanding.

It had been too good to be true.

Viren barely waited until Amaya faced him before continuing, the words coming fast and ruthlessly logical. “You said yourself how precarious the situation is. Without you there commanding the fortress, do you believe, in your heart, that the border will hold?”

Gren’s scrutiny slid from Viren to Amaya, and found her holding her chin high, tight-lipped.

Oh.

So she had already given the matter thought. And in this, she could not disagree.

“Make your point.”

Viren’s eyes glittered. “If the Breach falls, the enemy will surge into Katolis, and I can hardly imagine the death and destruction that will follow.”

Amaya’s face remained closed.

“Then what are you suggesting?”

Gren knew Viren’s answer even before he finished speaking.

“You return to the border, hold it fast. It’s where you’re needed most,” Viren said – and the worst thing about it was that he was right, to some extent. “A party of our best will be dispatched immediately to find the princes.”

Amaya’s jaw tightened under the sweep of her fringe past her left cheekbone.

Gren shifted into readiness as Viren approached.

“And in case you still doubt my intentions, I will task my own children, Soren and Claudia, with leading the rescue expedition,” Viren concluded.

It was an impressive offer.

Gren didn’t think it amounted to much. Amaya apparently didn’t think so either, because she stepped into Viren’s circle of space and nudged him hard in the chest with a pointed finger.

“I do doubt your intentions. I will return to the breach, but your children won’t lead the rescue.”

Gren narrowed his eyes as he spoke; Amaya’s choice of words means that she had decided on another course of action.

Amaya’s hands moved on, sure, steady.

“The mission will be assigned to…” Gren stopped, as meaning caught up with the shape of Amaya’s fingers. “Commander Gren,” he stumbled, after a pause, eyes widening in question as Amaya looked at him with an expression that said yes, you didn’t read that wrong.

What.

In his surprise, he did what he had not done in years; continued to stammer where he had learnt to shut up and finish off. “That’s– that’s me,” he spluttered. “I– I am Commander Gren.”

He probably looked a lot younger and a lot less bright than he meant to, saying that. He fought back the blush that threatened to rise in his cheeks and ears, too – it had been years since had flushed in public, for Katolis’s sake!

Viren looked askance at him as though gauging his worth and finding him lacking, but agreed to it nonetheless and headed towards the waiting horses.

In the perfect silence after his departure, Gren looked at Amaya and waited.

Surprisingly, Amaya wasn’t smiling; she was looking at him with something so much like dread that it Gren felt his stomach drop.

“Amaya?” he said, using his hands so Viren would not hear.

>It had been a long time since Amaya had felt such trepidation. Seeing her nephews in the clutches of that Moonshadow elf had been different. There had been things she could have done then.

There was nothing she could do now; she had to leave Gren here, as she had known was a possibility. It was a consequence of their vows of service to Katolis, Viren’s ulterior motives, and the fact that of all the people who remained alive in the world, there were none whom Amaya trusted more than Gren.

And none she could not bear to part with as much as he.

She tilted her head in the direction of the kings’ graves, partly to pay Harrow the respects he was due, and partly to delay the conversation and think on her words. 

The King’s grave was of white marble, freshly hewn; Amaya and Gren bowed their heads as one.

When they rose, the sun had ascended to its zenith. The two of them hardly threw any shadows, now; drenched in sunlight, there was nothing Amaya could do to hide.

Halfway back to the horses, Amaya paused. Raised her head to meet Gren’s gaze.

“Be careful,” she began. “Watch him. We can’t be sure what he intends.” There. She has phrased it in such a way that it is – that is to say, it is not about–

Gren’s eyes soften at the corners. “You knew this might happen,” he said. There was nothing accusing in the angle of his chin or in the earnestness of his expression.

Amaya almost wished there was. The fact that he stood before her utterly accepting of the double task she had laid on his shoulders somehow made it worse.

“You are…” Amaya tried. Stopped.

Gren waited.

“I can’t withdraw you from this mission simply because I–” Amaya’s hands stuttered over the next word, re-formed another. “Simply because you’re you.”

Gren’s chest rose and fell. He was looking at her with an expression that held both understanding and hope.

Amaya reached out and took his hand, and he stared down at it and back up again, the hope in his eyes visibly coalescing into something like disbelief.

“Gren,” she said, releasing him momentarily to speak, “After you find the boys, and return to the Breach, I think we should talk.” She paused, weighed her next words. “I think I can guess the words you want to say. And I have something to say in return.”

She threaded her fingers through Gren’s again, her fingers incredibly sensitive even through her gloves; Amaya forced herself to look away from their clasped hands and into Gren’s face instead.

Gren was still staring down at her. Sometimes she forgot, because he stood to the side behind her so much when he interpreted, that he was taller than her.

His free hand moved.

“I’d like that,” he replied. Raw emotion hovered behind his lips; he looked very close to exuberant joy.

Amaya nodded once, and forced herself to take the first step towards the horses, pulling Gren beside her with their still-woven fingers; she knew if she stepped towards him she would never be able to stick to her decision to make him stay and be her eyes and ears.

Their hands remained clasped tight the entire ride back to the citadel; the first and the last of a familiar hold, sword-callouses against ink-stains.

In the courtyard they parted, fingers slipping over each other and reaching out again for that lost warmth even as they edged their horses further apart and dismounted.

>Dusk drew ochre veils across the citadel.

The reddish light of the setting sun on the battlements mimicked the fiery glow of the Breach; Gren spared the sky a small smile as he crossed the courtyard.

He surveyed the soldiers arrayed in the courtyard. Most were already mounted and ready for the ride back to the Breach, but two remained on foot, spears in their hands – they would ride out under Gren’s command after the others departed.

The two foot-soldiers saluted him, hands to their chests, and Gren acknowledged them with a nod.

Amaya’s distinctive armoured footsteps approached from his left, accompanied by the clip-clop of her war horse, and Gren stood back and dipped his head in greeting. They shared a single, steady look, one that edged their smiles with further warmth, before facing Gren’s soldiers to issue last orders.

Gren fell easily back into interpreting as Amaya began.

“I’ve sent word to Corvus that King Harrow has passed.”

One of the soldiers nodded and stepped forward. “Is Lord Viren aware that Corvus has been tracking the princes?”

Amaya shook her head.

“No,” she signed, and stepped closer to Gren to look at him in equal part as he spoke her words. “Do not trust Viren. It may be a month from now, it may be a year, but he will stab you in the back.”

The words were supposed to be advice to their soldiers, but there was a ferocity in the way Amaya stared into Gren’s face as she finished the sentence that belied the true target.

Amaya turned that heated gaze to the two again, and Gren knew she was giving them one more order without having Gren speak: Protect Commander Gren.

A sharp nod from both helmeted heads. They were both veterans of the Standing Battalion, these two; they understood well enough.

But there was still a tension in Amaya’s shoulders that only those who knew her best could see. So Gren leant into her peripheral vision to make only promise he could give.

“I’ll be careful,” he said. 

And he would have said more, if she did not turn to him with the fluid grace of a trained warrior and press a single gloved finger to his lips.

The words stuck in Gren’s chest, somewhere around his hammering heart. He stared at the way Amaya’s lips softened into a smile, as if acknowledging his move.

He raised his eyes to meet hers, and her smile softened further.

She drew back her hand to speak. He felt the absence like an echo of warmth.

Amaya held his gaze captive as she spoke, hands close to her chest and high enough that he found himself drinking in both her face and her hands. “Gren, I trust you,” she said. “You have been my voice, and now I need you to be my will and find the boys.”

He looked at her and thought, belatedly, how miraculous it was there was still a word that could describe her now, with the setting sun edging the shapes of her words in amber and dusting her dark eyes with gold.

Amaya.

Gren pressed a hand to his chest and bowed. He could not say what he wanted to, but he hoped that this would convey even a little of it: an offering of his heart, his fealty, and even his life, should it come to that.

As he straightened she was already reaching up for his shoulders to pull him into an embrace, and he knew as he felt her bury her face in his shoulder that she understood, if only in part.

He hugged her back with as much restrained ferocity as he dared, here before so many eyes; his hands slipped behind her shield to cross against her back. There was always an element of surprise at the ease with which she fitted in his embrace – a general with unparalleled strength who was willing to acknowledge that she had to stretch to wrap both arms around him while his breaths ruffled her hair.

Gren closed his eyes against the sunset, the citadel and the fading light, and stretched out this moment as long as he could.

But all too soon her hold loosened, and he straightened the same time she did, hands loose upon his shoulders and her side.

She smiled at him – an expression of trust, and fondness, and hope – and strode away.

The ephemeral weight of her hands on his shoulders remained, and gave Gren fortitude enough to return her smile, tilting his head a little as if to say, Good luck.

She paused by her horse, eyes brushing over his face and his freckles as though committing him to memory, and swung herself into the saddle.

Two silhouettes appeared to Gren’s right. Viren and his son Soren approached, casting long shadows in the waning light.

Amaya’s face set into cool command. Her fingers rose, blade-like in precision, and Gren straightened to speak.

“I expect to be notified when the princes are found. And safe.”

Gren closed his eyes and inclined his head as Amaya nudged her horse in a turn around the three of them, to face the archway to the bridge.

“I’ll send word to the Breach immediately,” Viren was saying, but Gren, as he raised his head, only looked up at his general.

And Amaya’s gaze, though she nodded in acknowledgement, rested on her commander.

A horse’s clear cry as Amaya kneed her battle-charger into a rearing gallop, and the thunder of hooves on flagstones echoed through the archway and curved around the corner, and Amaya and her soldiers were gone.

Gren looked after them for a long moment, willing himself to center. He forced his hands to remain loose where they were clasped at his back.

“Oh, Gren?”

Soren’s voice was clear enough; Gren’s eyes slid to his right to look at the younger man – boy, really – and mused, in the split second before Soren continued, that Soren had not changed much at all in the years since Gren had first met him. A boy who worshiped his father, even if perhaps his father did not value it. Gren almost felt sorry for him in that regard.

“Bad news,” Soren said, voice dipping into a drawl. “There’s been a change of plans.”

The words crashed down onto Gren’s shoulders like battle adrenaline, diplomat as he was. He felt the sheathed dagger in his boot dig into the side of his calf as he spun to look at Viren and his son.

Viren was smirking.

“What are you talking about?” Gren said, sharply. He turned to Viren. “What is he talking about?”

Viren was the one to answer. “Oh, I’ve decided you’re off the mission,” he said, voice like silk-smoothed wine. “Soren will lead the rescue expedition.”

Gren stared at Viren’s crocodile smile and Soren’s my-father-gave-me-an-important-mission nod, and Gren’s jaw slackened.

“What? General Amaya was very specific that I was to lead this!” Somewhere in the middle of that sentence his shock had been overtaken by sheer incredulity – he felt his eyes tighten at he corners as he leant into his protest.

Viren had the expression of a mountain lynx that had caught a particularly fat prey. “Oh, perhaps there was a misunderstanding?” he said, voice liltingly, placatingly calm, like a father explaining something obvious to a small and very stupid child. “Soren, set up a meeting for Commander Gren and I to…discuss his concerns.”

Soren nodded and grinned, and Gren wondered detachedly whether the young man had any idea how his father was using him.

Viren paused halfway into the tower entrance. “Somewhere quiet,” he added. “Say, around nine?”

Only years as a diplomat kept Gren’s eyes from widening and his hands from forming fists.

That was a coded order if he ever heard one.

He let his shoulders drop. “Yes, very good,” he said, even as the fingers of his left hand curled into signals at his side. “Nine…suits my schedule.”

Every part of his head was screaming at him to turn and check whether the two members of the Standing Battalion stood a little ways away had seen his signal, but he forced himself to keep his head down, dejected, harmless.

He heard one soldier excuse herself, the sound of her armoured boots clicking casually against the flagstones. She was headed for the stables, no doubt to race after Amaya and her platoon.

Gren’s relief at that was short-lived.

Soren’s eyes flashed once – a fool for his father, people might whisper behind his back, but an idiot he was not – and his hands lanced out viper-swift for Gren’s wrist and neck.

Gren twisted away, shouting, and heard over the drumbeat of blood in his ears the clatter of a falling spear as members of Soren’s guard tackled Gren’s two soldiers to the ground. The cry of the soldier who had gone for the stables accompanied the crack of her helmet against stone. 

Gren’s fingers had found the dagger in his boot, though he rebelled at the thought of using it – not against Soren, barely eighteen, and a family friend of the royal house of Katolis since his birth.

Soren looked at Gren’s dagger, smirked in an incredibly accurate imitation of his father, and drew his sword.

And Gren, for all the self-defense lessons Amaya had given him, never had a chance.

He fought like a cornered animal anyway.

The dagger was ripped from his hand. Gren took advantage of the fact that Soren meant to capture and not kill by sinking his teeth into the underside of Soren’s arm, where the bracer did not protect him. Soren howled and dropped his sword, and Gren grabbed Soren’s head of perfectly-shaped blonde hair and yanked as hard as he could.

Soren’s screech was immensely satisfying, but the blow to Gren’s solar plexus was not.

All the air in his lungs left him at once.

Soren’s hand grasped Gren’s shoulder and slammed him bodily into the ground.

Gren choked in a breath.

“Amaya,” he croaked. The sound was lost in Soren’s very vocal whoop of victory.

“Amaya,” Gren tried again. “Amaya!” he shouted, a full-throated yell that sent the birds that had returned to their roosts rising off the battlements in a cacophony of shrieking protest.

There was no way she could hear him. Not even those with her, surely out of the citadel and well across the bridge now.

Gren shouted anyway.

A hand clasped over his mouth, and no matter how Gren scratched and bit and writhed, more arms and legs pressed him down until rough hands pulled his arms behind him and fastened cold iron against his wrists.

He stopped struggling, then. To continue would risk injuring his hands.

They hauled him away – his two soldiers to the common dungeons, but Gren blindfolded, through familiar echoes and then unfamiliar, through passageways and down circle after circle of stone steps until the chains at his wrists were exchanged for different ones, heavier, thicker.

Gren winced as Soren ripped off his blindfold, revealing a windowless chamber bathed in murky blue light.

“Hey, Gren, it’s not personal,” Soren said jovially, as he tossed the blindfold over his shoulder. “No hard feelings?”

Gren stared at him.

Soren shrugged. “Eh. Your choice.” His armour clanked obnoxiously as he disappeared up the spiral stars.

Gren swallowed.

The chamber was still.

Bookshelves. Strange artifacts, fire-pokers and blacksmith’s tools lined up against the wall; luminescent blue crystals, the light of which overwhelmed what scant pools of yellow light given by thin candles. Strange objects covered with cloth, chains dangling from the ceiling, and all manner of preserved animals frozen with snarls on their faces.

The silence of the chamber was almost oppressive; not a breath of wind, a mustiness to the air that spoke of somewhere either deep underground or very much hidden.

And worse…

Gren craned his neck back to look at his hands. They swayed above him, held with manacles clasped around his wrists, where his bracers met his skin. A chain stretched up above each shackle to the wall, where the chains ran into hidden recesses.

Gren jangled the chains experimentally. They barely moved, heavy and solid.

Sound seemed to thin to his left, which suggested a doorway; Gren heaved against the chains as much as he could to twist his neck and look over his shoulder.

Darkness loomed beyond the archway, so still and silent that Gren swallowed and settle back to stand against the wall.

The chains.

The chains were going to be a problem.

For the moment, it was manageable; Gren could shift his wrists a little in the iron bonds, alternate the spread of weight on the heels of his hands. The wall was solid enough to lean upon.

The true danger would come should his feet grow tired, or if he needed to sleep. Then, the whole weight of his armour and body would strain on the join between his wrist and his hands, bruising in places and leaving others bereft of blood.

Gren’s heart kicked into a racing rhythm as he considered the very real possibility that he might lose his hands.

Amaya.

Already, his shoulders had begun to ache, and his fingers tingled from the struggle of pumping blood up to his fingertips; His wrists were icy and hot at once against the rough rust of their bindings.

Gren took a breath.

He straightened his shoulders deliberately; planted his feet even and sure on the stone floor, leant as much of his weight as he dared on the wall behind him.

And he waited.

It didn’t matter how long. He was good at it.

>Viren’s face, when he appeared, was all affability.

“Ah,” he breathed. “Five past nine. I apologise for my tardiness.”

Head lowered, one foot propped up against the wall – if he had to put up a show, he would – Gren considered his options, and decided a little sarcasm wouldn’t go amiss.

“It was only five minutes,” he stated, perfectly evenly.

Viren nodded as he approached, a pleased smile on his features. “What are your concerns?”

And there was that tone again – the one used for an insufferable lesser being one had to listen to.

“Well.” Gren cleared his throat, tamped down on the urge to growl. “You took me off the mission,” he said, conversationally.

“Hmm. Noted. Go on.”

“And,” Gren continued, with slight aggravation, “You threw me in this dungeon.”

“Ah, I see,” Viren said, looking quite contrite. “Anything else?”

Your filthy hands and your traitorous heart, Gren wanted to say.

But that would get him no information.

“Uh, no,” he said instead. “But…no. I guess those are the main two.” 

Viren had the gall to press a hand to his chest and incline his head formally. “Thank you. Your feedback is a gift.”

Gren’s eyes sharpened, and he might have loosened his tongue to say more, should Viren’s daughter not have leant into the room at the far archway.

“Father, it’s about our other prisoner.”

Viren looked at Claudia a moment, and strode after her without a word.

Gren rearranged his posture to take the strain off his wrists. Mused on this new bit of information.

Other prisoner.

Intriguing.

But as the hours lengthened, Gren’s mind turned increasingly more to the pain in his shoulders and the ache in his wrists, back and legs.

His letter to Amaya was a hard wedge of parchment across the back of his forearm, under his bracer. He focused on that to the exclusion of all else.

Don’t fall asleep, Gren told himself.

Don’t fall asleep.

Don’t fall asleep…

>The stamping of boots against stone jolted Gren to full awareness. He had not been truly asleep – his hands and wrists would have been in agony if he was – but he had been resting more weight on his bindings than he liked.

He straightened, shaking himself awake, and forced his fists to open and shut ten times in quick succession, wincing at the burn of returning blood.

Surprisingly, it was not Soren who descended the stone steps, but a young-faced guard with amber eyes and a sweep of messy hair, dressed in the plain armour of the palace guard.

Gren scrutinized the guard’s features a moment longer before recognition settled in. 

One of the Home Guard’s newest recruits, graduated in the Spring. What was his name again – Marcos.

“Good morning, Marcos,” Gren said genially, and the young man jolted so badly he nearly upset the tray of gruel and water in his hands.

Marcos’s eyes snapped to Gren’s. “I’m not supposed to talk to you, sir,” he whispered, almost mouthing the words in his effort to be quiet.

Sir. That was a good sign. Gren tilted his head. “So I gather it is morning?”

Marcos did not reply, but placed the tray to the side and stepped out of Gren’s line of vision; a moment later, Gren’s chains lengthened enough that his arms, though still bound, dropped completely to his sides.

Gren half-collapsed to the floor, knees, feet, and everything from shoulder to fingertips aching.

Armoured boots slid into his field of vision again and placed a wide chamberpot in front of him.

Gren looked at it and groaned. At least Marcos looked away as he did what he needed to.

The chamberpot was pulled away, and the tray placed in front of Gren. Marcos’s hand indicated the bowl and pitcher.

Gren rubbed his wrists once more, and set to eating. The gruel was thin and watery and the water had a metallic aftertaste, but it was food and he was not about to waste it. As he ate, he stole surreptitious glances at the guard.

Marcos had moved a few paces away towards the spiral stair, as if by standing as close to it as possible he could prove to any who chose to enter that he was not speaking to the prisoner at all, oh no.

“Thanks for the food,” Gren began, conversationally. “Has any work been done to find the princes?”

Marcos startled, and his eyes slid to meet Gren’s momentarily before snapping back to the opposite wall. “Not supposed to talk to you, sir,” he repeated.

Gren paused. “Well, I’m sure a smart person like you can find a way around it.”

It took a moment, but Marcos shook his head, carefully.

“So Soren hasn’t ridden out yet.”

Marcos shook his head again, no more than a single sideways jerk of his chin.

Gren finished up his breakfast. As Marcos stepped over to him to pick up the tray, Gren’s hand darted out and clasped around the younger man’s wrist.

Gren sighed inwardly as he took in the shock and raw fear on Marcos’s face. “Calm down,” he said, quietly. “I need you see a message sent to the Breach for me.”

Marcos shook his head so vehemently that his armour plates clanked together.

Gren wondered for a moment at the young guard’s thoughts. Gren’s other hand was unoccupied, and the chain running from it was long enough to pool over the floor by their feet – and so long enough to wrap around Marcos’s neck, if he wished.

Of course, it wasn’t as if Gren would do such a thing, but the fact that Marcos hadn’t thought about it probably meant that Viren thought his life expendable.

What had Viren expected? Had he sent this young and green guard down to Gren as if saying, You can take the sword at his side if you wish to. Just kill him?

“Marcos, this is for Katolis,” Gren sighed.

Marcos’s cheeks darkened with colour, and he had the grace to look ashamed. But it seemed that shame was enough to push him to speak, at least. “I don’t have the key,” he murmured.

“I don’t need you to release me,” Gren whispered, urgently. “I need word sent to General Amaya.”

“Even if I wished–” Marcos’s eyes slid away. “Lord Viren has a chokehold on all letters in and out of the citadel,” he said. “I won’t get away, or any other rider.”

Gren released Marcos’s wrist, and the younger man stumbled back, rubbing at his left bracer.

“I’m sure you can think of something,” Gren said, as Marcos gathered the tray.

“I’m sorry, sir,” Marcos mumbled, stepping around him to tighten the chains, this time feeding them through a wooden board over his head so they were even tighter than before; Gren grimaced as the strain on his shoulders and wrists flared anew.

“Please,” Gren said, and Marcos’s eyes flashed to his and away again.

“I’m sorry, sir, orders,” Marcos repeated. “I’m sorry. I can’t talk to you.”

And then he was gone, and nothing remained except the burning in Gren’s wrists, the numbness of his fingers and the fog of exhaustion that threatened to claim him.

>Viren came and went.

Gren found it harder and harder to stand. There were short reprieves every morning and evening – or so he assumed those were the times Marcos came with food – but the guard refused to speak to him, everything in the set of his shoulders showing fear of retribution. But he let Gren nap for ten-minute stretches every meal, at least.

The only thing that took Gren’s mind off the struggle to preserve his hands was the fact that he soon figured out the other prisoner down the corridor ahead was a Moonshadow elf – and not just any one.

King Harrow had died by this elf’s hand.

But from the echoes of speech that Gren could hear whenever Viren visited the elf, Viren was less concerned that this was the murderer of his best friend and more occupied with prying for magical information – something about a mirror.

Gren frowned.

Viren’s complete apathy made sense. The rest did not.

But then the tenor of Viren’s voice changed as it filtered to him across the length of the dungeon, and Gren froze, listening.

“What a beautiful challenge you’ve given me.” Viren said, all intrigued delight and intellectual satisfaction. “I must come up with something you will fear…more than death.” 

Gren closed his eyes briefly. The fact that Viren was willing so say something so chilling – even to an enemy of Katolis – spoke volumes of his true character.

The sharp, metallic sound of sceptre meeting stone grew louder, and Gren raised his head just in time to catch Viren appearing in the opposite archway. The man passed him with nary a glance, but Gren called out after him – some nonsense about the Xadian fruit in Viren’s hands, and although Viren treated him as though he were nothing more than a yapping dog, it was worth it to keep up pretense that he had no ruminations of escape.

In the silence after, Gren took a breath. Weighed his words. And when he spoke, it helped clear some of the fog of exhaustion over his eyes.

“I’m not going to ask what your name is,” he called, letting his voice ring down the stone towards the cell on the far end of the corridor. “I know well enough that you do not wish to reveal it. But I’m a prisoner like you are, and I thought you might like to talk.”

Nothing.

Well, it was only expected. Gren took another breath, shifted his aching shoulders. “Why did you kill the king?”

Silence.

Gren closed his eyes. “Ah,” he said, softly. “Because we killed yours.”

It made sense. It was even cruelly logical, in warfare: a proportionate response.

There was no answer, but Gren thought he heard the clinking of chains far ahead, as though the elf had shifted.

“I was there,” Gren said. “I was there, last Winter’s Turn.”

The chains groaned against stone, and Gren knew he had an audience.

And then, so softly that Gren almost missed it: “Did you have a hand in it?”

“The killing of Thunder?” Gren paused. “No. I am no warrior.”

A single, barking laugh, ragged from a throat completely dry. “You lie. I’ve heard them call you Commander.”

“Well, that is my rank,” Gren sighed. “But I don’t do much fighting. I’m a sign language interpreter.”

A pause, and then, in a growl so low and filled with hatred that Gren felt his hackles rise: “You’re the general’s companion. The one who bears no weapon.”

It was…strange, to hear that this was the way the Xadian forces thought of him. But it was also comforting. He would have expected them to call him her servant, her lieutenant – but to be her companion was a hidden blessing.

That tone, though, needed exploration.

“You sound as though you don’t like me very much,” Gren said, mildly.

The sound of spit against stone. “Your general killed hundreds of our people!”

“So have you, I take it,” Gren countered. “Elven assassin, aren’t you?”

“You serve a murderer,” the growl came.

“Don’t we all,” Gren sighed. He couldn’t feel his fingertips anymore, and no matter how he tried to move his hands they were sluggish to respond. His chains rang against the wall and his manacles in a maddening, useless cacophony.

Gren sighed. Stilled. Then: “What’s up with your hand?” Viren had said something about it, earlier.

The silence grew a little colder.

“I should think that as an assassin, your hands would matter,” Gren murmured. “…As mine do.”

But the elf did not respond, and Gren was left to the endless repetition of moving his hands as much as they could, systematically, pushing away the fear in his heart that with each moment he remained shackled to the wall, the damage to his hands increased.

>When Viren came again, he entered by another archway, pushing a tall, cloth-covered shape ahead of him.

Gren had taken to whistling to keep himself awake – anything to counter the sagging of his weight against his shackles – and he raised his aching head to watch as Viren disappeared into the far corridor.

There was a cryptic exchange between Viren and the elf regarding a mirror of some kind, and the clatter of metal against stone floors; and then, a chanting of a many-layered voice, louder and louder until the walls seemed to shake with it, and rising into a crescendo underneath: wild, agonised screams.

Gren strained against his bonds, leant as far forward as he could to peer into the darkened corridor. 

A sickening purple glow bled out of the half-open door at the end of it; a colour Gren had seen only once before, on the battlefield of last Winter’s Turn, when a lance of fire that exact shade had struck down the King of Dragons.

The screams cut off abruptly.

Stillness.

And then a tall, lean-shouldered silhouette slipped into view. Gren’s eyes caught the familiar long coat and high collar, but his breath caught as a purple glow filled the hallway again; from a pair of glowing eyes, no less.

By Katolis, Viren. Gren stared. What have you done.

The figure approached, and the full horror of what had just been done crashed down upon the chamber as it emerged into the light.

It was a twisting of nature. There was no other word for it; where Viren’s eyes had been were now black, fathomless pits, with irises a purple so dark they were almost sable; grey-blue skin scored with darker scars covered what once was human. The colour of his hair had been leached away, leaving a metallic white that seemed more metal than hair.

Viren flicked out a coin from behind his back and examined it. “I always seem to capture the same expression,” he mused, dispassionately. “Defiance…”

Gren breathed shallowly, stiffening as Viren turned to him.

“…Giving away to absolute fear,” Viren relished.

It took a moment for Gren to realise what Viren held between his thumb and forefinger.

When he did, he could not stop the horror on his features.

Viren barked a laugh and ascended the stairs, flicking the coin into the air and catching it languidly, as though there was not an elven soul captured in it.

Gren thought he was going to be sick.

He closed his eyes, and breathed. The musty smell of the dungeon assaulted him anew. This development brought new information, yes. It also boded ill. There was now no possibility that Viren intended to let him go alive, not after what he had seen.

So.

There, a little further down his bracer than the band of numb flesh where the manacles pressed into his skin, his letter remained.

Amaya, in the event of my death.

Gren took a breath, and decided.

When Marcos came down the steps with food that night, he looked spooked. His hands were shaking ever-so-slightly where he clutched the tray.

“Marcos,” Gren said.

Marcos shook his head, tight-lipped, and placed the tray on the floor.

“Marcos,” Gren repeated, with a note of command.

The young guard looked away.

“I take it you’ve seen what he’s become,” Gren said.

Marcos looked like he almost jumped out of his skin. He went wordlessly to lengthen Gren’s chains. Gren took that as answer enough.

“I have a question for you,” he said, ignoring the food. His hands felt like they were on fire, and her rubbed them against each other as best he could. Already, his fingers were refusing to form a fist.

“I can’t,” Marcos murmured, so quietly and shamefully that Gren almost missed it.

“Yes, you can,” Gren said, and there was nothing but steel in his voice. “I saw how he turned into…that. Do you really think he’s going to let me live?”

Marcos studied his armoured boots.

“Here,” Gren said. His clumsy fingers worked under his bracer, and pulled out a folded sheet of parchment: his letter. “Send word to General Amaya. Don’t leave out a single detail of what’s happened. But keep this letter with you until you have cause to believe I’m dead.”

Marcos’s eyes met his, wavering and hazel. “How…how would I know?”

Gren’s lips twitched in dark humour. “You’ll have no more orders to bring me meals.”

The younger man still stared at the letter in Gren’s hands, but did not reach for it.

Gren sighed. “For Katolis,” he said.

Marcos’s hands were shaking, but he reached for the letter and pocketed it.

Gren found himself wishing, illogically, for it back – for the comfort of knowing it was with him.

“Send word to General Amaya, and only send this letter if you are likely to have…died,” Marcos repeated.

“Yes,” Gren confirmed. He smiled. Marcos was a soldier of Katolis after all, it seemed; brave in the face of despair.

Marcos tapped the spot in his tunic where he had tucked the letter away, and nodded. “I’ll try, sir,” he said, seemingly drawing confidence from Gren’s approval. “But I can’t promise anything.”

They spent the rest of Gren’s meal in silence as Gren struggled with the utensils in his sluggish fingers, and Marcos looked at him apologetically as he tightened his bonds.

When the thud of closing door sounded high above, Gren leant his head back against the wall and closed his eyes. Exhaustion filled every inch of him, now; he could feel the siren call of true sleep tugging at his soul.

His wrists grew so quickly numb in their chains now that the temptation to give in, to crumble and let his hands take his weight, was overwhelming.

But his part in his mission was complete.

And he had sent his letter on, though he had no idea if it would ever reach Amaya. If Marcos sends it on, it would mean that Gren would have died.

A strange thing – Gren had never had delusions of having a long life, not when he had chosen to serve at the Breach. He had thought he would die by his General’s side, willingly, but it was only now when he knew that returning to the fortress at the Breach would bring the culmination of all his hopes that he wished desperately to live, for no other reason than to see Amaya again.

He wished…

He wished he had not lied, last Winter’s Turn. He wished that when he had whispered “I love you,” into Amaya’s embrace he had repeated his true words in sign instead of signing I thank you.

He could have told her properly, so many times.

Gren’s legs trembled; he knew they would give way soon, and there would be nothing further he could do to save his hands. His voice, when it came to Amaya; so he could speak to her as she could to him.

Viren was a cruel, cruel man. He had told the elf that it was a beautiful challenge to find something that one would fear worse than death.

For Gren, it was to lose his hands; the ability to sign, and interpret. His very purpose of living.

“Amaya,” he whispered, and the name echoed into the empty dungeon without an answer, ghostly touches of her hands on his shoulders and her fingers in his, and he tried to fold his fingers around that phantom touch without success.

His letter was somewhere far above, tucked into the tunic of a young guard. Gren could recite the entire text verbatim; he had spent a sleepless night writing it not so long ago, when he had thought he could keep the letter with him for long years yet.

The words brought him comfort.

Amaya, in the event of my death:

Dearest Amaya,

I pen this letter a few months after Winter’s Turn, when the King of Dragons fell. I confess that I do not know in what circumstances this letter might come to you – I hope that I will have had the opportunity to say what I put in this letter to you in person. You deserve truth, and heartfelt conversation face-to-face. But the events of last midwinter have led me to realise that life, after all, is fragile; I would have died on that frozen ground were it not for you, and I know that knowledge has weighed heavily on your mind in the months since, as it has mine.

So, I hope that this letter may serve in my absence. To speak where I cannot.

Amaya, I love you.

It feels almost strange to write it down like so when I have been thinking it in your presence every hour and every day since it first occurred to me, years ago when you took the blow to your head that left you with the scar on your right cheek. I was younger then, and I knew that it would be best to wait. And wait I have, in quiet and in battle, in joy and in sorrow.

I suppose I should explain how I came to love you, but I do not think I could; how do I explain how beautiful your words are when you capture them in your hands, or how I stumbled over myself like a fool just to hear you laugh? I’m not sure if I ever told you, but your laugh is one of the most beautiful things I have heard.

You were my general first. In my earlier months by your side I often stood astounded at your compassion and steel-fired will; it had not occurred to me before meeting you that one could be both at once. Gentleness and ferocity, kindness and command. And it was in discovering the depth of my regard for you that I realised I wished to remain by your side for as long as I could – to aid you and to serve, and to be your trusted confidant, as long as you wished.

I suppose that if you are reading this, I am gone. I do not know what took me – battle, sickness, or cruelty – but I know that you must be grieving. I hope that you will find the same peace we did before your sister’s grave, before mine. Do not grieve too long, Amaya. Memory is precious in that with time, it grows fonder, just as each moment I spend with you now only adds to the regard I have for you. The fact I am gone does not diminish that love. And love is meant to be shared; with your nephews, with friends you may find in the future.

I will always love you, Amaya. I always have.

Ever yours,

Gren

As he recalled the final words of his letter, Gren felt his ankles give way at last. He hissed in pain as his legs collapsed under him; bereft of support, his shoulders and wrists jarred with his full weight, and he cried out despite himself.

He stared up at his slowly-whitening hands, and felt tears well up the corners of his eyes, blurring the images of his fingers until it appeared that he had no hands at all, only blurred shapes that grew number and colder by the moment.

And, like so, hanging as a puppet, he fell at last into an exhausted sleep.

Next chapter: Interludes! I’ll be writing a couple of interludes set anywhere between chapters 1 and 6. Requests are welcome, though I already have a few ideas!

Also, this will continue into season 2. It’ll probably be a very solid gremaya au by then, but I’ll try to follow canon as closely as possible. Thanks for reading this, guys! I never thought I’d write tdp fanfic but this has blossomed into quite the lengthy fic. It’s over 36,000 words total!

>Chapter 7

Chapter index

My fanfic masterlist

FFN profile and stories

[magicgrass]

Kirby

These are some cute Kirby drawings that I did a little while ago. I recently have added them into my Redbubble store collection (not sure if this is the correct phrase sorry). If you like them as a lock screen for your phone or whatever please feel free to download them(or I could email them to you. Tumblr has a kink for lowering image quality). If you’d like these Kirby’s or any of the other art that I post you can ask me to draw it in whatever ratio you’d like and I’d be more than happy to do that for you.

You can find all of the art I’ve made on my blog under the “my art” tag(I hope😅).

[bountyofbeads]

That Uplifting Tweet You Just Shared? A Russian Troll Sent It

Here’s what Russia’s 2020 disinformation operations look like, according to two experts on social media and propaganda.

By DARREN Linvill & PATRICK Warren |

Published November 27, 2019 | Rolling Stone | Posted November 27, 2019 |

Internet trolls don’t troll. Not the professionals at least. Professional trolls don’t go on social media to antagonize liberals or belittle conservatives. They are not narrow minded, drunk or angry. They don’t lack basic English language skills. They certainly aren’t “somebody sitting on their bed that weighs 400 pounds,” as the president once put it. Your stereotypical trolls do exist on social media, but the amateurs aren’t a threat to Western democracy.

Professional trolls, on the other hand, are the tip of the spear in the new digital, ideological battleground. To combat the threat they pose, we must first understand them — and take them seriously.

On August 22, 2019, @IamTyraJackson received almost 290,000 likes on Twitter for a single tweet. Put in perspective, the typical tweet President Trump sends to his 67 million followers gets about 100,000 likes. That viral tweet by @IamTyraJackson was innocent: an uplifting pair of images of former pro football player Warrick Dunn and a description of his inspiring charity work building houses for single mothers. For an anonymous account that had only existed for only a few months, “Tyra” knew her audience well. Warrick’s former coach, Tony Dungy, retweeted it, as did the rapper and producer Chuck D. Hundreds of thousands of real users viewed Tyra’s tweet and connected with its message. For “Tyra,” however, inspiring messages like this were a tool for a very different purpose.

The purpose of the Tyra account, we believe, was not to spread heartwarming messages to Americans. Rather, the tweet about Warrick Dunn was really a Trojan horse to gain followers in a larger plan by a foreign adversary. We think this because we believe @IamTyraJackson was an account operated by the successors to Russia’s Internet Research Agency (IRA). Special Counsel Robert Mueller indicted the IRA for waging a massive information war during the 2016 U.S. election. Since then, the IRA seems to have been subsumed into Russia’s Federal News Agency, but its work continues. In the case of @IamTyraJackson, the IRA’s goal was two-fold: Grow an audience in part through heartwarming, inspiring messages, and use that following to spread messages promoting division, distrust, and doubt.

We’ve spent the past two years studying online disinformation and building a deep understanding of Russia’s strategy, tactics, and impact. Working from data Twitter has publicly released, we’ve read Russian tweets until our eyes bled. Looking at a range of behavioral signals, we have begun to develop procedures to identify disinformation campaigns and have worked with Twitter to suspend accounts. In the process we’ve shared what we’ve learned with people making a difference, both in and out of government. We have experienced a range of emotions studying what the IRA has produced, from disgust at their overt racism to amusement at their sometimes self-reflective humor. Mostly, however, we’ve been impressed.

Professional trolls are good at their job. They have studied us. They understand how to harness our biases (and hashtags) for their own purposes. They know what pressure points to push and how best to drive us to distrust our neighbors. The professionals know you catch more flies with honey. They don’t go to social media looking for a fight; they go looking for new best friends. And they have found them.

Disinformation operations aren’t typically fake news or outright lies. Disinformation is most often simply spin. Spin is hard to spot and easy to believe, especially if you are already inclined to do so. While the rest of the world learned how to conduct a modern disinformation campaign from the Russians, it is from the world of public relations and advertising that the IRA learned their craft. To appreciate the influence and potential of Russian disinformation, we need to view them less as Boris and Natasha and more like Don Draper.

As good marketers, professional trolls manipulate our emotions subtly. In fall 2018, for example, a Russian account we identified called @PoliteMelanie re-crafted an old urban legend, tweeting: “My cousin is studying sociology in university. Last week she and her classmates polled over 1,000 conservative Christians. ‘What would you do if you discovered that your child was a homo sapiens?’ 55% said they would disown them and force them to leave their home.” This tweet, which suggested conservative Christians are not only homophobic but also ignorant, was subtle enough to not feel overtly hateful, but was also aimed directly at multiple cultural stress points, driving a wedge at the point where religiosity and ideology meet. The tweet was also wildly successful, receiving more than 90,000 retweets and nearly 300,000 likes.

This tweet didn’t seek to anger conservative Christians or to provoke Trump supporters. She wasn’t even talking to them. Melanie’s 20,000 followers, painstakingly built, weren’t from #MAGA America (Russia has other accounts targeting them). Rather, Melanie’s audience was made up of educated, urban, left-wing Americans harboring a touch of self-righteousness. She wasn’t selling her audience a candidate or a position — she was selling an emotion. Melanie was selling disgust. The Russians know that, in political warfare, disgust is a more powerful tool than anger. Anger drives people to the polls; disgust drives countries apart.

Accounts like @IamTyraJackson have continued @PoliteMelanie’s work. Professional disinformation isn’t spread by the account you disagree with — quite the opposite. Effective disinformation is embedded in an account you agree with. The professionals don’t push you away, they pull you toward them. While tweeting uplifting messages about Warrick Dunn’s real-life charity work, Tyra, and several accounts we associated with her, also distributed messages consistent with past Russian disinformation. Importantly, they highlighted issues of race and gender inequality. A tweet about Brock Turner’s Stanford rape case received 15,000 likes. Another about police targeting black citizens in Las Vegas was liked more than 100,000 times. Here is what makes disinformation so difficult to discuss: while these tweets point to valid issues of concern — issues that have been central to important social movements like Black Lives Matter and #MeToo — they are framed to serve Russia’s interests in undermining Americans’ trust in our institutions.

These accounts also harness the goodwill they’ve built by engaging in these communities for specific political ends. Consistent with past Russian activity, they attacked moderate politicians as a method of bolstering more polarizing candidates. Recently, Vice President Biden has been the most frequent target of this strategy, as seen in dozens of tweets such as, “Joe Biden is damaging Obama’s legacy with his racism and stupidity!” and “Joe Biden doesn’t deserve our votes!”

The quality of Russia’s work has been honed over several years and millions of social media posts. They have appeared on Instagram, Stitcher, Reddit, Google+, Tumblr, Medium, Vine, Meetup, and even Pokémon Go, demonstrating not only a nihilistic creativity, but also a ruthless efficiency in volume of production. The IRA has been called a “troll farm,” but they are undoubtedly a factory.

While persona like Melanie and Tyra were important to Russian efforts, they were ultimately just tools, interchangeable parts constructed for a specific audience. When shut down, they were quickly replaced by other free-to-create, anonymous accounts. The factory doesn’t stop. They attack issues from both sides, attempting to drive mainstream viewpoints in polar and extreme directions.

In a free society, we must accept that bad actors will try to take advantage of our openness. But we need to learn to question our own and others’ biases on social media. We need to teach — to individuals of all ages — that we shouldn’t simply believe or repost anonymous users because they used the same hashtag we did, and neither should we accuse them of being a Russian bot simply because we disagree with their perspective. We need to teach digital civility. It will not only weaken foreign efforts, but it will also help us better engage online with our neighbors, especially the ones we disagree with.

Russian disinformation is not just about President Trump or the 2016 presidential election. Did they work to get Trump elected? Yes, diligently. Our research has shown how Russia strategically employed social media to build support on the right for Trump and lower voter turnout on the left for Clinton. But the IRA was not created to collude with the Trump campaign. They existed well before Trump rode down that escalator and announced his candidacy, and we assume they will exist in some form well after he is gone. Russia’s goals are to further widen existing divisions in the American public and decrease our faith and trust in institutions that help maintain a strong democracy. If we focus only on the past or future, we will not be prepared for the present. It’s not about election 2016 or 2020.

The IRA generated more social media content in the year following the 2016 election than the year before it. They also moved their office into a bigger building with room to expand. Their work was never just about elections. Rather, the IRA encourages us to vilify our neighbor and amplify our differences because, if we grow incapable of compromising, there can be no meaningful democracy. Russia has dug in for a long campaign. So far, we’re helping them win.

______

Darren Linvill is an associate professor of communication at Clemson. His work explores state-affiliated disinformation campaigns and the strategies and tactics employed on social media. Patrick Warren is an associate professor of economics at Clemson. Dr. Warren’s research focuses on the operation of organizations in the economy such as for-profit and non-profit firms, bureaucracies, political parties, armies, and propaganda bureaus.

[hawkland]

Finding His Way

So this is my contribution to Sonny week for @svucharacterappreciation on Tumblr. It’s loosely based around the quote prompt (“I worked Homicide a couple of years. It’s…it’s the women who get you.”) It fits into the continuity of my Spaces In Between fic series, which you can find on AO3. 

It’s fairly long - over 4,000 words - and mostly about friendships, not romantic ships. Though of course, me being me, there is background Munch/Fin (and the tiniest hint of Rollisi). The story is mirrored on AO3 if you’d rather read it there.

Sonny pushed open the door with greater force than he’d intended, entering the squad room full of pent-up frustration and annoyance. He’d been doing his best to remain positive and upbeat since getting this new assignment to Manhattan SVU, but some days? That was proving far easier said than done.

Days like today. He’d wasted most of his morning trying to get somewhere with an uncooperative witness; he needed her to give a positive ID, if they were going to make a case. It had taken him days to simply locate her from surveillance footage, and a few people from the neighborhood who recognized her. But she was denying having seen anything, even when he showed her the images proving she had been on the scene.

She claimed she had no knowledge of what had occurred and couldn’t recognize anyone from the line-up photos. A woman was in a coma in the hospital, unable to speak about the man who had dragged her off the street to rape and beat her, and Sonny couldn’t get this one last piece in place that he needed before he could get an arrest warrant for their suspect.

So when he spotted someone unfamiliar hanging out at Fin’s desk—in fact sitting there as if it were somehow his own, scribbling away on a notepad—Sonny walked straight over asked, “Excuse me, sir. Can I help you with something?”

“That depends.” The man rose from where he had made himself at home in Fin’s chair. He was tall—about an inch taller than Sonny—considerably older, and well-dressed. He was also clearly sizing Sonny up in a way that did little to improve the detective’s mood. “Who exactly are you?” the man asked, lowering his head to peer at Sonny over the top of his glasses.

“Detective Dominick Carisi.” Whoever this guy was, in no way did he merit a “Call me Sonny” yet.

“Ah. The new guy,” the stranger said, as if that explained everything. “You can help if you might be able to tell me where Rollins and Fin are at currently. I need to speak with them as soon as possible.”

The assumed familiarity once again jarred him. “Detectives Tutuola and Rollins are out on a case right now. If I can be of assistance instead, I—.”

“No, never mind,” he cut Sonny off with a dismissive wave of the hand. “I was hoping to catch them here instead of making them come all the way down to Hogan Place. It’s regarding the Thompkins rape from last year that’s finally scheduled for trial next week. There’s a few discrepancies between their report and what the victim said on re-interview, during trial prep. We need to make sure everyone’s got their stories straight before the defense can rip any holes in the case.”

So this guy seemed to be someone from the DA’s office, Sonny gathered, realizing he hadn’t even gotten a name yet. “Well I’m sure our detectives wouldn’t lie in their reports. That’s not how things work around here.”

“Oh, I know all about how things work around here, kid. Anyway...I left Fin a message, including a reminder to stop letting his cell phone battery run down all the time, so I can reach him when I need him.”

And with that the man headed off, only stopping as Amaro strolled in. Nick was returning from his lunch break with a paper bag in hand, and seemed incredibly pleased by the surprise visitor.

“Nick! Great to see you out of uniform again.”

“Hey!” The two exchanged smiles and a friendly hug, chatting briefly until the stranger departed. When he did, Sonny went over to Nick and asked, “Who the heck was that?”

“Our former sergeant, John Munch. He’s working out of the DA’s office now.”

“I gathered the last bit. But what’s his deal?”

“Munch?” Nick shook his head and chuckled softly. “If you can ever figure that out, then you’re one up on the rest of us. Except maybe Fin.”

Amaro sat down to focus his attention on his sandwich. Sonny frowned and then shrugged the bizarre encounter off. He had more pressing concerns to address at the moment, including what he was going to say to Sergeant Benson when she returned from her lunch break.

Because Sonny wasn’t a slacker, and he wanted to be here. But he had the feeling his presence wasn’t exactly embraced with open arms just yet.

Time passed. Today, Sonny couldn’t be happier. Proud of himself, though he tried not to be smug about it. They’d made it to the end of a hard week on the job with several tricky cases closed out, and no immediately pressing business for the weekend. He’d even earned the sergeant’s praise for finding a connection between several recent assaults that had ended up bringing in a serial rapist before he could strike again.

And, to further Sonny’s triumphant mood, he’d finally been invited out with his coworkers for a celebratory after-hours drink.

He knew they went out pretty regularly as a group. Maybe not every Friday, but a lot of them. Whenever the week had ended on an “up” instead of “down” note and they had good cause to let off some steam. However it had taken until this particular Friday night for Amanda to ask him, as she grabbed her coat, “Carisi, wanna come with? We’re getting a round or two down the street. And you certainly deserve one for today’s work.”

“Thanks, Rollins. Sure! Let me just...I’ll be right behind you.” He quickly shut down his computer and cleaned up his desk for the weekend. And, he tried not to grin too much as they headed out to the bar together, starting to feel like he might be welcome here after all.

Fin was texting on his phone as they walked along, and Benson asked him, “John joining us?”

“Yeah, on his way.”

“Good.”

Sonny didn’t connect the “John” whom Benson mentioned to the former sergeant he’d met some weeks before. Not until they had settled into their table at the bar and were already one round in, and a voice behind Sonny’s shoulder asked, “Is this seat taken?”

Sonny turned and saw it was none other than that Munch guy again. “No, help yourself,” he replied.

“Thanks.” Munch eased into the empty chair, between Sonny and Fin, and asked, “So who’s buying tonight?”

“I’ll get this round,” Amaro offered, getting up to go to the bar. “Same for everyone?”

“Gin and tonic for me.” After he left, John sighed and said, “I need to have a talk with Nick about how he doesn’t owe me for the rest of his life.”

“Owe you for what?” Sonny asked, curious.

Amanda jumped in with the explanation. “When Nick had some...trouble...before you transferred in, John paid his not insignificant bail.”

“Wow. That was generous.”

“You know what they say about a fool and his money.” John shrugged. “Then again, if he’d high-tailed it out of town on my life savings, at least my exes wouldn’t have been able to milk another dime from me.”

“No, but some of us might’ve kicked your ass for bein’ so gullible,” Fin said.

“I was merely looking out for a friend. Right, ’Liv?”

She smiled. “It’s what you’ve always done, John.”

They enjoyed their second round, after which Olivia announced she needed to head home to relieve Lucy of babysitting duties and spend some quality time with Noah. Amanda and Nick had wandered off to play a round of pool in the other room, leaving Sonny at the table with Munch and Fin.

He’d so far learned that the two of them had been partners at SVU, for quite a few years, before and after Munch had make sergeant. Beyond that, Munch was the one asking the most questions about Sonny and his life experiences. Fin, as usual, remained quiet save the occasional pointed remark.

“So how’d you end up in SVU?” Munch asked.

“Ah, y’know...moving around, trying out different divisions in the force once I got my shield. I worked Homicide for a few years...”

“Ah, Homicide! My old unit.”

“Oh yeah?”

Munch nodded. “In my Baltimore days, before I moved to New York. Years and years ago.”

“Ancient history,” Fin put in for good measure, “which I’ve heard about more times than I care to remember.”

Munch chose to ignore Fin and continued to Sonny, “Homicide’s usually the prestige assignment everyone wants in on. Why’d you leave?”

It wasn’t the first time Sonny had heard that question, because Munch was right. Most detectives fought to get into the “murder police” and were in no rush to leave. Not unless they couldn’t cut it. “I dunno...guess I just decided it wasn’t for me. Always dealing with the dead, it seemed...I mean we get our share of murders in SVU, too, of course. But at least here...sometimes, we get to help the living as well.” He paused, reflecting back. Even from those few years in Homicide, there were cases that plagued his thoughts. Images that haunted him in the early hours of the morning when sleep proved elusive. “The women get to you, there, you know?”

“Oh, believe me, I know. But don’t think the living victims won’t some day get to you even worse.” John finished his drink as Amanda and Nick returned to the table, Rollins declaring victory. Munch turned his attention to Fin and asked, “I’m starting to feel about ready to turn into a pumpkin. Are you good?”

“Yeah, I’m good.” Fin eased out of his stool and said, “See you guys on Monday?”

“Let’s hope not until then,” came Amanda’s reply. She gave Munch a hug, and Nick waved good-bye as the two older men departed.

“Nice seeing old partners stay friends like that,” Sonny said. He hadn’t grown that close with any of his previous partners, he supposed thanks to not sticking around once place all that long. He hoped that might change, here at last. Especially, maybe, with Amanda. He liked her. Maybe a little more than he should like a co-worker, but he wasn’t going to push that.

Amanda and Nick shared a secretive look, causing Sonny to knit his brows in concern. “What, am I missing something?”

“You’re a smart detective, you’ll figure it out,” Nick said. That only left Sonny more puzzled than previously—and acutely aware he was still the “new guy”, not trusted with things the others all knew about each other.

It kind of sucked. But he’d keep working at it. He was nothing if not persistent.

Sonny wasn’t completely dense, so it didn’t take him that long to connect the dots.

That John almost always joined them for end-of-the-week drinks, and when he did he never departed without Fin at his side.

The picture on Fin’s desk of the two of them on vacation somewhere, looking a lot more chummy than simply “old partners”.

That Fin wore what looked like a wedding band, despite never mentioning a wife.

And one evening at the bar, Sonny noticed John’s wedding band was an identical match to Fin’s.

“Hey Rollins, can I ask you something?”

It was Monday again. They were walking back from lunch break, coffees in hand. She didn’t raise any objection, so he continued, “Fin and John...John Munch...They’re together, right? Like...married, together?”

She gave him a measured glance, then confirmed, “Uh huh. You heard it from someone?”

“No, figured it out on my own. But I wanted to be sure.”

“They’re not closeted about it, if you’re wondering. Just...quiet.”

“I get that. ‘Don’t ask, don’t tell’?”

“More like don’t tell Fin you think they make a cute couple. Not unless you want to get the death scowl or worse from him for at least week,” she warned, finishing her words with a laugh.

“Okay, my lips are sealed. Until or unless Fin mentions it himself.”

Amanda nodded in approval. “You have to understand, Carisi, it’s still tough to be in an openly gay relationship on the force. Fin told me it was especially difficult when they were partners. Our old captain had to work hard sometimes to keep that from becoming an issue with any of the higher-ups.” Amanda talked about their old captain, Don Cragen, quite a bit. Sonny frequently wished he’d known all these people he heard about from the others. There was a lot of history in this unit of SVU, a lot of people who’d seen out their careers here instead of making it a short-term assignment like most did.

“I can appreciate all that. And I’ve certainly gotten the feeling Fin’s a private guy to begin with.”

Amanda chuckled. “No kidding. John told me once that it took them being partners almost two years before Fin even told him he had a son.”

“Fin has a kid?!”

“You see what I mean? By the time I transferred to New York and partnered with him, he was a little more open than that. But not by much.”

“Okay, I only wanted to know, so I didn’t, y’know, say something stupid, some time.”

“You? Say something stupid?” she teased. “It wouldn’t be the first time.”

“Hey!”

She ribbed him with her elbow. “C’mon. The sarge texted me that Arden came in voluntarily a few minutes ago, so we’ve got a suspect to put on the hot seat. Let’s go light a fire under his ass.”

“I can’t wait.”

“I hate this sitting around. Doing nothing.” Sonny fidgeted, adjusting his tie for the umpteenth time that morning. He understood the legal reasons for it, of course. Since they were both testifying they couldn’t sit in the gallery and hear the proceedings leading up to their appearance. But it felt like a waste of time when they had a full load of cases to be working on at the precinct.

Fin snorted in response. “Do this job long enough, you’ll come to appreciate havin’ some quiet time.”

Sonny glanced over his shoulder at the closed courtroom door. “How d’you think it’s going in there?”

Fin shrugged. “Barba’s no doubt doing everything he can to send those bastards away as long as possible. Hard to deny the evidence, and we got a clean confession from the accomplice who flipped on these two losers. If that jury’s got any common sense it should be a unanimous verdict. A fast one at that.”

“Hope so.” It had been an ugly case, a brutal assault which Barba had managed to convince the grand jury deserved hate crime charges, along with first degree rape. A young man and his boyfriend had been targeted by a group of teens after coming out of a gay bar in the Village. The boyfriend managed to get away and run for help, but not before their victim, Joey Hynes, was dragged off in a van, beaten and sodomized, and then dumped in an abandoned lot near the waterfront. “The way they went at Joey, he’s lucky to be alive. But I don’t know how he’s gonna be able to move on from what happened.”

“It’s gonna take time, like for any other vic. And things won’t ever be the same for him. They’ll get better, but...it’ll always be there, in the back of his mind. Scars that are more than physical.” Sonny looked to Fin, picking up a hint from the sound of his voice. There was something personal about this case for him, more than it being an attack based on the victim being gay. He said nothing, though, knowing Fin well enough by now that he would only open up when he was ready, and at his own pace.

“My son’s husband was attacked, few years ago,” he finally explained. “Situation a lot like this case, part of a gang initiation. It was...he got it real bad. Even worse than Joey. Almost didn’t make it and he’s got some health issues as a result that are gonna be with him for life.”

“Damn. I’m sorry.” Sonny hadn’t known, of course. He thought things over for a moment, and then asked cautiously, “You don’t think Buchanan might try to bring that up? Say you have a bias, an axe to grind?”

“He might. Buchanan is scum, he’ll try his best to dirty you up,” Fin said. “He’ll probably even bring up me bein’ in a gay relationship myself. At this point? It’s not like I care. I might want to kick his ass when I get out of that courtroom, but the best way to deal with that son of a bitch is keepin’ your cool on the stand. Never let him see you sweat. So don’t forget that, Carisi.”

“I won’t.” And Sonny wouldn’t forget this moment of openness from Fin, either. Knowing that Fin trusted him enough to share these details of his life gave him heart, and more determination than ever to do his best today when the bailiff called his name.

Late evening and the corridors of One Hogan Place were dark. Almost as dark as Sonny’s mood, as he headed to the elevators from Barba’s office. Benson had sent him off to deliver files—their continued findings of negligence within the Department of Child Services—so that the ADA could use them in wrapping up this case in court tomorrow. Grayson would be on the stand and Barba wanted to hit her with everything he could to illustrate her complete negligence.

And yet, somehow, it didn’t seem to be enough. Not the evidence—they had plenty of that, more than Sonny wanted to think about—but the potential outcome. Jail time, needed reform within the system... Sure, that would be all good and well. But it wouldn’t bring Keisha Ozuna back to life. It wouldn’t change the fact that she’d been locked in a dog cage, left to starve to death while her mother only cared about getting high.

Finding Keisha in that cage...that would be another one of those images that would never leave Sonny’s mind. It made his soul hurt to think about her, to wonder how many other children out there had or still suffered similar neglect and abuse.

Was Sonny doing all he could to stop that, he wondered? Or was there some other calling where he could do more?

As he walked along, lost in these deep thoughts, he spotted a light on in one room along the way. The squad room for the DA’s Special Investigations Unit. He glanced inside, out of curiosity, and was surprised to recognize the lone man there at work. Sonny stopped and knocked lightly on the open door, catching John Munch’s attention immediately.

“Hey, Sonny!” he said, which made the detective smile. John was the one person who actually did call him that now, without fail. “What has you lurking about at this forsaken hour?”

“Just delivering some files to Barba before heading home.” He stepped into the large room full of empty desks, save John’s. The squad room wasn’t as fancy or modern as the one at the 16th, but it had a comfortable, familiar feeling. An old-fashioned police bullpen, straight out of some gritty crime show on tv. Munch seemed right at home here. “Why are you workin’ so late? I thought cops retired to stop pulling all-nighters.”

“Hmph. I thought so, too. But occasionally there are deadlines that wait for no man’s rest. Judges who won’t hear of another continuance. Besides,” John checked his phone, stretched his neck and rolled his shoulders, “Fin’s stuck in an interrogation that could last most of the night, or so he told me. And on occasion being alone at work is better than being alone at home. But a little company either way is far better.” He indicated to the chair next to his desk and Sonny took it without hesitation.

“Fin tell you about our case that Barba’s trying now?”

“Of course. Plus it’s been all over the news—and the gossip network here at the DA’s. Not easy taking on institutional corruption in this city. But when children are dying? People will finally demand answers—and change.”

“I sure hope so.” Sonny paused, trying to gather his thoughts. Munch was easy to talk to. He’d started to understand why no one at SVU seemed to want to let him go, move on. He was kind of like a priest who would hear your confessions without making you do penance afterwards—though he’d always leave you with something to think about. “Y’know, a while back you told me it’s the living victims who get to you. Now I think they all do, to be honest. The living, the dead...the ones you wonder about, think maybe you could’ve saved them if you’d only gotten there a little sooner. The ones who were crying out for help, but...no one could hear them. Or people pretended they couldn’t hear, so they didn’t have to take any responsibility.”

John nodded, his expression suitably pensive. He then opened the bottom drawer of his desk, and out came two glass tumblers and a bottle of amber liquid.

Sonny grinned. “I thought only lawyers kept a secret stash of Scotch in their desks.”

“You’re not wrong—Scotch is a seemingly natural proclivity of the legal profession which I’ve never had a taste for. This is bourbon.” He poured them both a finger’s worth, then handed Sonny his glass.

“Thanks.”

“Drinking alone is no more fun than sitting at home alone,” John said, raising his glass in a toast, then taking a sip. “Are you debating if SVU is where you should be, Sonny? Because there’s no shame in that; I’ve known some excellent detectives in the past who found it too troubling, too hard on the heart. They went on to do fine work in other departments. Vice, Arson, Major Case...”

“Yeah, no...I don’t know,” he confessed. “If anything...I’m actually studying to take the bar exam. So if I did move somewhere, it wouldn’t be another division of the police. It’d be somewhere else, where maybe I could make more of a difference.”

“I see.”

“I guess the thing I wonder is, do I want to keep trying to catch the bad guys and then leave it up to someone else to bring them to justice? Or do I want to be the one to try to make sure they get what they deserve? Maybe even try to improve the justice system itself, where it seems to keep falling short.”

“Well you know, prosecutors and police...they’re both just different parts of the same whole. Although prosecuting attorneys and law makers don’t have to walk onto fresh crime scenes and stare at bloated bodies, mangled corpses. They don’t need to come face-to-face with a dead baby in a cooler, fished out of the Hudson River. Or look down on the still-beautiful face of an old high school crush, found strangled to death in a parking garage in the middle of winter.” John paused to take a sip of his drink, and Sonny noticed his hand tremble—just a little. And then it passed, John collecting his own thoughts before continuing on. “But they still need to deal with the haunted victims, mourning relatives. Figure out how to tell them when you fail to get an indictment, or lose what seemed like an open-and-shut case in court. There are always going to be faces and voices to haunt you, unless you get out of this kind of work completely. And that’s a lot easier said than done—I mean, look at me,” John finished with a grimace.

Sonny nodded in understanding. He could have sat there talking and drinking with John a lot longer, but he was feeling in need of rest. And he didn’t want to miss court tomorrow. As he contemplated departing, his eyes traveled over the many items on John’s cluttered desk. He recognized the same photo that was on Fin’s of the two of them, a bust of President Kennedy, and a line-up of books which seemed to follow on the JFK theme. “Kennedy must be a big hero of yours?”

“Ah, he was an inspiration to my generation. We genuinely believed, back then, that we could do anything if we put our minds to it. Especially if we worked with—not against—each other. It’s a message too often forgotten today.” He pulled out a book from the stack, then presented it to Sonny. “Have you read this?”

“‘Profiles in Courage.’ Sounds familiar, but no.”

“Give it a read. Then come around again and we’ll talk about it—over another round of bourbon.”

“Thanks—for the drink, and the book. I will.” Sonny stood up to leave, but there was one last question on his mind now. “Hey, since you’re a big fan and all, I’ve always wondered... What do you think happened with his assassination? ’Cause I remember, even back in high school when I read about it, somethin’ didn’t add up to me.”

John practically beamed with pride and excitement. “I knew I liked you, kid. We’ll talk about that next time for sure.” He lowered his gaze and added, conspiratorially, “Don’t mention it to Fin, though. Or else I’ll be banished to sleeping on the sofa and that’s terrible on my lower back.”

“I won’t. Have a good night, John.”

“You do the same.”

And Sonny thought maybe—just maybe—he actually would.