#several of them gave me ideas to make full (or at least bigger) illustrations with them so they'll probably still take a while

[12chumtoadsinatrenchcoat]

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[thisisthepartwhereyou]

BEASTARS MINI-STORY #5: “Everybody Play the Game pt. 3” by JCL

---

We see the interior of a claw crane machine full of plush dolls. These plushies look like adorable chibi-versions of characters in Cat's Don't Dance (1997), such as Danny, Sawyer and Pudge. A claw moves down into frame and makes a grab at a Danny-doll. While the claw succeeds in clamping the body, the doll still slips through the grip and remains down with the rest of the dolls.

HARU: "Damn."

We see that Haru is the one playing with it, holding its joystick with an irritated expression as the claw returns to its default position. Now seeing the whole machine from the exterior, we see that it has an aquatic theme, with the picture of a cartoon crab and the title 'Treasure Trove' printed between the top of the machine and the display glass.

Legosi is standing next to Haru, leaning against the wall next to the machine.

LEGOSI: "I think you're throwing your money away. I've never actually seen anyone win something from these things."

Haru takes up a coin from her pocket and pushes it into the coin slot. The machine begins to play a short melody (which sounds like a sea chanty) and the crane inside it starts to blink, signifying that a new round has started. Haru's ears (who following the events of the last chapter look a little reddish) flicker. She got a frown on her face.

HARU: "It's not a waste of money if it keeps you distracted for a bit."

She glances over her shoulder, over which we see that the boys from 701 has taken a seat at their reserved table.

HARU: "He's still feeling pretty bad, isn't he?"

Legosi turns his head to look at Durham. The coyote look depressed for some reason.

LEGOSI: "Yeah..."

Haru pulls the joystick in a L-shaped motion, goading the claw back to the Danny-doll.

HARU: "I don't get it, it's not like he pulled my ears off or anything. He already apologized... He doesn't have to look like he's on a funeral or something."

She presses a large and red button on top of the joystick. This makes the four-fingered claw inside open up, descend and make another grab at the plushie. It goes a little better, with the doll actually being elevated for a short distance, before sliding off the grip and falling down. Haru gives off a disgruntled growl.

HARU: "Damnit! I get knocked around by accident almost daily by animals bigger than me, but they usually just apologize and then it's done. I don't take it personally, and they don't linger on it."

She quickly puts in another coin. The melody plays again and she maneuvers the claw into the same place as before. She really got in for that Danny-doll!

HARU: "I don't like getting treated like a little porcelain doll. Most of the world pities me already for being this small and fragile, he doesn't have to feel so sorry for such a little thing! It's like with you and that yakisoba-incident*...!"

She presses the button and the claw goes down again, except now it misses the intended target completely.

HARU: "SHIT! It was just a stupid mistake, and you still feel bad about it."

Haru turns her head to look at Legosi, who is still looking in Durham's direction.

HARU: "What is it with you canines and your overabundant sense of guilt?"

LEGOSI: "I think you've misunderstood why he feels as bad as he does. After he hurt you, did you happen to get a good look at the other visitors here?"

Haru's brows go up. She turns to look at the other visitors in the café besides them. We see that there is like 10 of them, all of them herbivores of varying sizes. She does not notice anything special about them though.

HARU: "What about them?"

LEGOSI: "Look at them for a little longer..."

Haru takes another, longer look. Doing this, she eventually notices how the other visitors are throwing them and the 701s nervous and/or unfriendly glances.

HARU: "... They keep looking our way?"

Legosi nods. He then crouches down, gets close to Haru and whispers into her ear.

LEGOSI: "It's because they're expecting us to attack and eat you at any moment. You probably didn't notice in the commotion..." ---

We enter a flashback, taking place right after Durham accidentally clamps Haru's ears on the Fivelimbs-carpet.

LEGOSI: "...But when you cried out they all immediately stood up or reached for their phones, probably ready to call the police."

As this happens, several of the other patrons stand up at their tables with their phones up, or look like they are about rush out or rush in.  

LEGOSI: "Two of them even ran out the door."

We two scared-looking visitors, a goat and a llama, running out through the door.

LEGOSI: "Yanni reached for something behind the counter. I don't know if it was a phone, a baseball bat or a even a firearm."

Finally we see the owner, Yanni, reaching down for something behind the counter. ---

Returning to the present, Haru look upset by what Legosi just told her.

LEGOSI: "That's why Durham feel so bad. You see, because of his accident, everyone in here is now watching us with scrutiny. After all, we are six male carnivores, with one female herbivore..."

We go over to the 701s, sitting at their table. In an illustrative way, we see disembodied eyes filled with scorn spawning around them within a cloud of resentful aura, illustrating how they are currently perceived in the café by the other patrons.

LEGOSI: "People are always quick to assume the worst from us, and now that one of us has actually hurt you, it's hard for the other ones here to get the idea of us eating you out of their head."

Haru turns to Legosi. She has gone from being upset, to angry.

HARU: "But it was just a stupid accident!"

Legosi acknowledges this with a nod and a melancholic expression.

LEGOSI: "There are no accidents, not with carnivores. That's what they think."

He sighs.

LEGOSI: "That's what they always think, and we're always supposed to feel bad about it, even if it isn't true. That's the reason behind our... Overabundant sense of guilt."

Haru stares at Legosi, looking very sad for a few seconds. She then groans with a voice that sound so frustrated, deep and rough that it might as well have come from some wrath-filled creature from the darkest pits of hell.  

HARU: "Son of a BITCH!"

The sound hilariously catches Legosi off his guard. Haru then swiftly turns and hits the crane machine with her fist. She leans forward, her forehead resting against the glass. Her eyes focus in on the Danny-doll; the orange feline sitting in there like an unattainable object of desire.

HARU: "It pisses me off. And as a cherry on top of the situation, why must that darn cat mock me..!?"

Legosi puts a hand on her head and scratches it affectionately.

LEGOSI: "There, there...!"

HARU: "So what are we supposed to do?"

LEGOSI: "Buy the doll online?"

Haru backs away from the machine and turns to Legosi.

HARU: "No... I mean about the atmosphere. What can we do about it?"

LEGOSI: "I am not sure whether there is anything we can do.... I guess we could go to another place."

This makes Haru's ears twitch in annoyance.

HARU: "No way! You guys rented a table, we have as much right to be here as any other paying customer."

Haru seems to ponder hard about what to do.

HARU: (The issue is fear and ignorance... How does one deal with silent fear and ignorance withpout causing a scene?)

Thinking about this, she then looks like she realizes something and turns to Legosi with an apologetic look.

HARU: "I am sorry about what I said about canines and guilt. That was very speciest of me."

Legosi shrugs.

LEGOSI: "It's alright, you didn't know better. Also, you should probably stay away from the word 'bitch'. That's kind of an offensive therm for us..."

Then, all of a sudden, a light bulb appears above Haru's head. Meanwhile, Legosi's stomach begins to grumble.

HARU: "Hey... You just gave me an idea."

LEGOSI: "Good. Could we get something to eat while you explain it to me?" ---

We skip ahead for a bit. We see that at their reserved table, each of the 701s have individual trays with food in front of them. Durham is continuously dipping a wafer into his cup of coffee with a vacant look in his eyes.

DURHAM: "This is unbearable. First impressions are everything, and now I've turned this game night into a stare off..!"

Jack, who is eating an English muffin whilst carefully wiping the crumbs from it into a napkin, gives the coyote a tired look.

JACK: "You should try and cheer up, you know, for her sake. She probably doesn't understand the situation."

It is about then that Haru return to the table with her own tray. Sliding the tray up on the table (which has a carrot cake, a cup of black coffee and a small bag of sugar cubes on it), she then hops up on the sofa and scooches in next to Miguno, who straightens up with a nervous look as she gets close. She doesn't appear to notice this though and looks around with a friendly face.

HARU: "What are you guys talking about?"

DURHAM: "Oh... Nothing."

Durham's eyes go directly to Haru's ears, taking notice of their reddish tint.

DURHAM: "... You're sure that you're alright?"

Haru looks a bit annoyed. She proceeds to rip open the little bag with the sugar cubes, making them fall out on her tray.

HARU: "I told you, I'm fine. You don't have to keep apologizing when it was just an accident."

Durham nods, but still look quite guilty. A hand lands on his shoulder. He looks up and sees that it is Legosi, who is giving him a look that appears to say 'it's okay.' This seems to calm Durham's conscience a bit. We then hear Collot growling at Durham.

COLLOT: "You should apologize to me too...!"

We then see that Collot has ordered a very large glass of ice tea, which he has positioned between his legs.

COLLOT: "Or at least pay for the damn tea. I'm not even an ice tea kind of guy...!"

Durham raises an eyebrow and stares at Collot with an unsympathetic eye. Meanwhile, Legosi sits down next to Haru. We see that his tray has a latte and a pound cake on it.

DURHAM: "Just consider it a bad case of karma for something you've done and gotten away with."

Haru sweat drops at this.

HARU: "Actually, I should be apologizing for that one... I am sorry that I bust a nut."

All the boys give her a weirded out looks. Realizing what she just said, she blushes and looks embarrassed.

HARU: "Okay, lousy choice of words, but you get what I'm saying, right?"

Collot gives her a little nod and smile, showing that he is not holding any grudge. Haru sighs.

HARU: "My karma must be wicked bad. First the crane robbed me, and now I put my foot in my mouth...!"

Voss, who has been busy gorging on a piece of blueberry pie, looks up from his plate.

VOSS: "No disrespect, but I don't think a crane machine is such good indicator to the legitimacy of karma, cause in that case everyone who has played it must've been real ass... ASSemblings of bad actions. I mean when did 'Cat's Don't Dance' come out? Twenty years ago? I bet the owner have to take those plushies out every weekend just to remove the cobwebs."

JACK: "Actually, there is some scientific legitimacy to karma."

Now everyone turns to look at Jack.

JACK: "Not that one can actually collect supernatural points that will determine what you're reborn as. I mean, if you see karma as an outcome of action, one should remember the third law of motion: for every action, there is an equivalent and opposite reaction... Meaning that good actions will affect your odds favorably, just as how bad actions can come back to bite you, sometimes when you least expect it."

Collot huffs at this, lifting the iceatea off his crotch and putting it on the table in front of him.

COLLOT: "Whatever you say Earl."

Taking a sip from the tea through a long straw, his face lights up a bit.

COLLOT: "Mmm... Its actually pretty good!"

Haru and Legosi share a look. He nods, prompting her to clear her throat, which directs the 701s collective attention towards her.

HARU: "Excuse me, I was just wondering... Do you guys have any questions about me and Legosi?"

This question catches the boys off guard. They all look a little uncertain.

HARU: "It's okay to be curious you know, I mean you gotta wonder how it works."

MIGUNO: "You mean... It's okay to ask questions?"

Legosi nods.

LEGOSI: "Well to be honest it would be nice if more people asked questions about us."

Haru takes the sugar cubes up from her tray and puts them into her coffee. She then proceeds to stir it with a spoon.

HARU: "Most people seem scared to ask, or maybe they're afraid of the answers."

DURHAM: "So it's really okay?"

Haru takes her spoon up and points it at Durham.

HARU: "As long as it's not too personal."

Miguno leans forward, looking at her and Legosi eagerly.

MIGUNO: "Okay... Um, stop me if I overstep any boundaries, but what do your families think?"

Haru takes a sip from her coffee.

HARU: "They all like Legosi, but I don't think they quite get that he's my boyfriend."

LEGOSI: "Actually, your dad knows."

Haru looks surprised by this, and she puts the cup down.

HARU: "He does?"

LEGOSI: "I told him when he gave me a ride home the first time I had dinner at your parents house."

HARU: "Really? Huh."

JACK: "What about Gosha?"

Legosi meets Jack's look.

LEGOSI: "He knows, but we haven't really had a chance to set up a formal meeting. Things have been pretty hectic since last Rexmas, with my job, his job and Haru's studies, so finding a date that works for all three of us have been pretty difficult."

HARU: "Golden week is soon. How about then?"

Legosi look at Haru with uncertainty.

LEGOSI: "I am not sure. A lot of people order udon during golden week... I'll have to talk about it with my boss before I can say for sure."

A little vein pops on Haru's head; she gives his arm an annoyed little poke.

HARU: "Considering you almost never take any time off, even during the holidays, he should give you a break...!"

JACK: "I have a question."

Jack stares at the two with a quizzical expression.

JACK: "How did you guys meet?"

Haru and Legosi look comically stunned... Like how are they supposed to explain all the bizarre details of how they got together without freaking everyone out?

HARU: "Uh... Well we actually came across each other one night, but we didn't really say hello to one another...!"

LEGOSI: "Y-yeah, we didn't really have a proper meeting until I went to the gardening club to ask for some plants for the drama club to borrow."

The 701s listen to this (very censored) re-telling with interest.

HARU: "Then we kind of met back and forth during the preparation for the meteor fest. It was a rocky time for both of us, during which we got close and... Well..."

Putting her hand on Legosi's, Haru gives him a tender look.

HARU: "Things has just continued to develop since then."

Legosi responds with a tender look of his own, and puts his other hand over hers. Seeing this, the 701s look touched. Durham even lets out an effeminate sigh. Strangely enough though, Jack doesn't seem to share the same sentiment as his friends, having a rather neutral expression on his face instead.  

DURHAM: "Did he go after you or did you go after him?"

Haru awkwardly thinks back to when Legosi almost ate her in their first meeting, while Legosi simultaneously thinks back to when tried to have sex with him in the storage room of the gardening club. They both look a little awkward about this and reply with deadpan voices:

HARU & LEGOSI: "Both."

Haru then points a finger at Legosi.

HARU: "Though I'd have to say he made the first move."

Legosi blinks and gives her an odd look.

LEGOSI: "Are you kidding? You totally came onto me first."

Haru looks at him in an argumentative way.

HARU: "No way... It was you who started it."

LEGOSI: "Did not."

HARU: "Did too."

The boys stare at them as this interaction takes place with amused expressions.

LEGOSI: "Nuh-uh!"

HARU: "Yuh-uh!"

Haru takes a bite out her carrot cake with a stubborn look.

HARU: "Whatever, I know I'm right though... Mmm, a little dry...!"

Legosi look a little annoyed, and he begins to eat from his pound cake.

VOSS, COLLOT, DURHAM, MIGUNO & JACK: (What is this? Elementary school?)

HARU: "Anything else you wonder about?"

Voss then holds his hand up, like a little kid in class.

VOSS: "Me-me-me! I'm next! I'm next!"

HARU: "Shoot."

Haru takes her cup and takes a little sip of her coffee.

VOSS: "What is the sex like?"

Legosi's eyes bulge open and he bites down hard on his spoonful of pound cake. Haru chokes on her coffee, Jack facepalms and the other 701s stare at the fennec in a scolding manner. Even some of the other patrons (who appears to have listened in on the group's dialogue) look uncomfortable.

JACK: "Idiot...!"

Voss on the other hand look adorably clueless.

VOSS: "What? Was that too personal?"

Legosi opens his mouth. We see that he bit down of the spoon so hard that it is now bent out of shape... And with Legosi's set of false teeth attached to it.

LEGOSI: "Of coff itf too peffonal! What could poffibly be-"

Legosi then notices that his dentures are missing. He looks down, pulls them off the spoon and puts them back into his mouth. The boys look stunned and confused by the reveal that Legosi now wear dentures, while Haru can't help but to give off a little laugh at the slapstick-esque situation. With his teeth back in place, Legosi gives Voss a stern look and finishes his sentence.

LEGOSI: "- more personal?"

HARU: "I have to agreed, that is too personal." (I mean we haven't even...!)

Voss is visibly amused by all their reactions.

VOSS: "Yeah-yeah, I know. Honestly I just wanted to see your reactions!"

He then gives Haru a more serious look.

VOSS: "Serious question though, from one small mammal to the next: How do you deal with the size-difference? Like, when you're hanging out and stuff?"

Haru seems to think about this as she wipes some coffee stains off the corners of her mouth with a napkin.

HARU: "That was mostly a problem in the beginning... I mean I am a bit self-conscious about my size, and when I first started being with Legosi, I felt constantly reminded of it. But now I don't think about it as much."

She pats at the backpack which she is seated on.

HARU: "I mean we find ways to make it work, with him bringing a backpack when we eat out so that we can sit at the same table, and I got him a pair of big chopsticks whenever we stay at home to eat together."

VOSS: "Do you ride him?"

This question causes another wave of extreme reactions across the café. Legosi now look angry and embarrassed.

LEGOSI: "VOSS!"

Voss rolls his eyes at all of this.

VOSS: "I meant non-sexually you dirty-minded doof! Like how I ride Collot or Durham when we're up and about!"

The fennec points his thumb at Collot. Both Haru and Legosi sweat drops at the idea of them doing this.

HARU: "No... No offense, but I think that would be weird."

Voss points at her with his own, blueberry-stained spoon.

VOSS: "That's what I used to think, but it actually makes you feel surprisingly empowered. I mean the view is great, you don't have to worry about anybody stepping on you or knocking you down. And on top of that, it's like you're piloting your own, giant furry MECHA!"

Hearing this, Collot turns and gives his small friend a look.

COLLOT: "Is that why you hum Cruel Angel's Thesis whenever we're walking through the school halls?"

VOSS: "Maybe."

COLLOT: "Nerd."

Voss glares at him.

VOSS: "Oh yeah? Get fu... STUFFED!"

The 701s all turn to stare at the fennec.

DURHAM: "... Fu-stuffed? You know, now that I think about it, you've been awfully reserved with your vocab tonight Voss.

MIGUNO: "Yeah, most of the time you're like a little Chucky-doll."

Collot puts  two fingers on Voss forehead, checking the fennec's temperature.

COLLOT: "Are you ill or something?"

Voss look annoyed and pushes Collot's fingers with his hands.

VOSS: "I am fine!"

Voss then looks away with a pair of puffed up cheeks.

VOSS: "I just don't think it'd be appropriate when there's a lady present..!"

The group at first look stunned by this. Then they all go "aaaawww" and lean in towards the embarrassed-looking fennec. Haru even finds it so cute that she holds her hand over her heart.

VOSS: "SHADDUP!"

Looking at the group around her as they make fun off the fennec fox, Haru then stares at Durham, who does not look the least bit depressed anymore.

HARU: (To think a mood can change so drastically... )

She shares a look with Legosi, who gives her an approving smile.

HARU: (... when you know a little better)

LEGOSI: "Hey, is anybody up for a game of Hungry-Hungry Wolf?" ---

We see a compilation of Haru, Legosi and the guys getting back to playing multiple games across the passage of time: These include Haru, Legosi, Durham and Miguno playing Hungry-Hungry Wolf, using large, plastic wolf heads to eat as many of the little red marbles as possible. After this they play Whodunnit, where Jack seems to have come to the conclusion that it is Captain Mustard who murdered the victim in the kitchen with a flatiron. Then, finally, we see Haru and Voss play a tug of war with a rope in their mouths (the same game played by Legosi and Bill during the Riz-arc) while the others cheer them on. ---

Later, we see Collot and Legosi competing against each other at the Whack-the-Weevil machine, furiously beating the the artificial bugs that go up and down from the holes while collecting points on a scoreboard each. Completing the round, Collot does a victory-pose while Legosi looks like he's out of breath.

COLLOT: "And the title of district weevil-swatting champ goes to..."

He points at Durham, Voss (who is currently sitting on Durham's head) and Miguno, who un-enthusiastically complete Collot's sentence.

VOSS, MIGUNO & DURHAM: "Collot, the sultan of swat...!"

Collot proceeds to make audience sound effects in a boastful fashion, while Haru puts her hands on her hips and gives Legosi a confounded look.

HARU: "Are you tired or something? I mean I've seen you at full speed, you could've totally beat him!"

Legosi, who has his hand over his stomach, looks like he is in some pain.

LEGOSI: "It's probably because I need to got the bathroom... I'll see you guys in a minute."

Legosi walks off to the bathroom, Haru and the guys following him with their eyes as he leaves. Collot begins to eagerly rub his hands.

COLLOT: "Very well then, who'll be the next victim? Haru?"

HARU: "No thanks, I am still tuckered out from the tug of war...!"

Hearing this, Collot turns to Durham instead.

COLLOT: "How about you then Durham? Get over here!"

Haru looks around, and then notices that Jack is sitting by himself at their table, looking though his phone. She walks over, hops up on a seat opposite him. He looks up at her.

JACK: "Just looking through my schedule for the next week. Did you want something?"

Haru pulls up a coin from her pocket and places it on the table, she then leans forward and gives the labrador a curious look.

HARU: "Penny for your thoughts."

JACK: "Don't worry about it, my thoughts are free."

HARU: "I am just a little curious. We haven't really talked a lot this evening and... Well, you are Legosi's oldest friend, aren't you?"

Jack nods and looks down at his phone again.

JACK: "That is correct."

HARU: "Meaning that me coming into his life was either the biggest or the smallest surprise to you."

Swiping through a schedule on his phone, the labrador doesn't look up as he replies.

JACK: "Probably the biggest."

HARU: "Is that why you don't like me?"

Jack looks up from his phone with a shocked expression.

JACK: "I... Why would I- Why would you think I don't like you?"

HARU: "Just a feeling. Back when when we talked about how we met, you could probably tell that we skipped over quite a few things. Things that were not very pleasant. Also, when I asked if it was true whether you were the smartest guy at school like Legosi thought, you acted like it wasn't a good thing."

Haru looks over to the rest of the 701s. They are enjoying their game of Whack-the-Weevil, unaware of the serious conversation taking place.

HARU: "This is just me guessing, but you probably consider it a burden rather than a strength, because it forces you to see the whole picture of something."

She looks down.

HARU: "Meaning you can see what an effect that our relationship will most likely have on our lives. You want to be happy for Legosi, but it's hard when you're certain  that he most likely won't have a happy life with me..."

Looking at her, Jack's expression gets increasingly sadder as she continues to talk.

HARU: "I doubt I am as smart as you, but I am a realist. I know what it means for Legosi to be in love with a herbivore, and I wouldn't be surprised if you hate me because of that."

JACK: "I don't hate you!"

Haru meet Jack's look, which is a bit on the shocked side because of Haru's observation.

JACK: "It's just that... Well, it's complicated... And a bit selfish actually." ---

Entering a flashback, we see Jack's collective memories of Legosi from his childhood.

JACK: "We've been like peas and carrots since kindergarten. We've gone through basically every tough thing and fun activity together, outside and inside school. I... Well I guess with him, I eventually came to believe it would be like that through Cherryton, then through university and then through... Everything really. Always."

He thinks to back to his first meeting with Legosi in kindergarden, then playing in the sandbox together, him comforting Legosi at his mother's funeral and then finally attending Cherryton together. ---

Returning to the present, Jack looks depressed.

JACK: "But he chose you. He's not the kind of person to abandon someone, but still, after he met you, he's just drifted further and further away."

Haru stares at Jack with a knitted brow.

HARU: "... Y-You wouldn't happen to be in love with him?"

Jack looks up, looking kind of disturbed by that thought.

JACK: "It's not like that. For most of my life I've relied on him to feel strong... And now that he is living his own life, I've come to realize just how weak I feel without him."

He sighs and gives her a serious look.

JACK: "So no... I don't hate you. I am just jealous of you."

Haru looks skeptical.

HARU: "And you're sure you're not in love with him?"

Jack's face twists into an irritated grimace.

JACK: "Don't be ridiculous, I like girls!"

HARU: "Yeah-yeah, I was just kidding."

She then transitions to a more serious expression.

HARU: "Believe it or not, but I understand how you feel. This relationship has not been easy to keep going, especially not since we both left Cherryton." ---

We enter an illustrated train of thought in Haru's mind, where we see Legosi from the back as he is walking straight into a vast darkness ahead of him.

HARU: "It's frustrating... That feeling that he keeps going to places where you can't follow him, followed by that fear that one of these days, he won't come back...!"

In this domain of thoughts, Haru tries to follow Legosi into the darkness. But as they move further in, Legosi becomes one with the darkness and disappears, while Haru is left alone in the dark. ---

Back to reality, Haru gives Jack a melancholic smile.

HARU: "It's a hard thing to confess to, both as a female and as a herbivore that you actually need someone."

She leans forward against the table, her chin in her hands. Her eyes go tender.

HARU: "But at the same time... When I am with him, I feel neither scared or sad. What people think, the risks, all the realistic and horrible things that might happen, even my pride... All of that just go straight out the window."

She looks up at Jack, a great smile on her lips now.

HARU: "So I'd say I have grown dependent on him too."

Jack looks stunned; he never would have guessed that her feeling for Legosi were so similar to his.

JACK: "I really am happy for him though, and I am happy that you make him happy."

Haru meets his look.

HARU: "So... It's not impossible for us to get along?"

JACK: "Well the parameters certainly argue against the improbability."

Haru stares at him. Jack looks a little self-conscious about his convoluted phrasing.

JACK: "That means-"

HARU: "That it is not impossible."

The two are quiet for a few seconds, then they share a little laugh.

HARU: "Speaking of improbability, what are you thoughts on that?"

She nods towards the Treasure Trove crane. Looking at it, Jack cocks an eyebrow.

JACK: "Well, research does indicate that one in fifteen people can win a prize from them."

HARU: "Really?"

She hops down from her seat with a convicted look.

HARU: "Sounds like good enough odds to me!"

She proceeds to go over to the machine and puts the coin in. The machine plays the melody and blinks again. Haru grabs the joystick and aims for the Danny-plush again.

JACK: "Wait a minute!"

Jack walks over and crouches next to Haru, looking in through the display glass.

JACK: "If I were you, I would try to go in just a little further in from where you have it now..."

Haru looks back and forth between Jack and the machine. She looks doubtful.

HARU: "But then I'll miss the head..."

JACK: "Trust me."

Doing as he suggests, Haru moves the claw in just a little bit more before pressing the button and making the claw go down. As Haru predicted, it misses the plushies head and goes behind the doll instead. Haru does not look surprised.

HARU: "Knew it."

But as the claw goes up, she sees to her great surprise that the plush follows it all the way up. It turns out that while the claw missed the the head, it did get a grip of the plushies tail.

HARU: "...!"

JACK: "See?"

Getting a really focused expression, Haru gently pulls the joystick to the left, goading the claw back to the deposit-hole.

JACK: "Careful now... Steady...!"

Once there, she presses the button again. The claw opens and drops the plush down the hole successfully. Both she and Jack looks overjoyed and victorious.

JACK: "Ah!

HARU: "YES!"

Haru pulls the plush out of the hatch and looks at it with stars in her eyes. She then turns to Jack, looking all impressed.

HARU: "I can't believe it! How on Earth did you do that?!"

Jack rubs the back of his neck.

JACK: "It was just a well-educated deduction. I mean the head is covered in fake fur, which is why the claws keep sliding off it as it deals with the full weight of the doll. The tail on the other hand is made of a less slippery fabric."

Stars appear in Haru's eyes.

HARU: "Wow... You're like Sherlock Hound!"

Jack gives her a surprised look.

JACK: "You know about Sherlock Hound?"

HARU: "Know about it? I watch that show anytime it's on! I especially love Moriarty and his bumbling sidekicks."

Jack, looking happy over the fact that they have found a common ground with something and goes full fanboy on the subject.

JACK: "Yeah I know, they're hilarious! And Mrs. Hudson!"

Haru nods with a knowing expression.

HARU: "I know right...! Personally, I think the show is really underappreciated."

JACK: "I think it's really underappreciated too!"

Haru then takes another look at her newly acquired Danny-doll, looking really happy. But then she gets an uncertain expression and looks up at Jack.

HARU: "But what should we do? By right half the plush should be yours..."

Jack chuckles.

JACK: "I am not really a plushie kind of guy, you can have it. Besides, it was your coin."

To his great surprise, Haru then hugs him around his neck. He looks stunned by this.

HARU: "Thank you."

She then lets go to look down at down at the plushie again. She playfully makes the doll dance while humming 'Nothing's Going to Stop Us Now.' Jack still look stunned and has a noticeable shade of red on his face.

JACK: (That was the first time ever a herbivore gave me a hug..!)

HARU: "We gotta show this to the guys! They'll be so impressed!"

Jack smiles and points over his shoulder with his thumb.

JACK: "I'll fetch them so that you can surprise them."

HARU: "Great idea!"

Jack gets up and proceeds to walk over to where the rest of the 701s are. As he goes, Haru begins to play with plushie again with a happy expression.

HARU: "~Nothing's gonna stop us, nothing's gonna stop us, nothing's gonna stop us now!"

???: "Well-well, look who it is."

Haru's happy expression dies in an instant. She looks around, seeing three familiar figures from her past: Mizuchi the harlequin rabbit and her two friends. Her former bullies.

TO BE CONTINUED...! ---

[kristallioness]

2016 | 2017 | 2018

*quietly sneaks back in*... Happy New THIS Year, my dear followers! In Estonia, we have this saying that if you wish someone a 'happy new year' after Three Kings' Day (the 6th of January), you gotta have a bottle of alcohol with you and give them a drink. *lol*

Anyways, I would like to apologize for the sudden disappearance that happened prior to Christmas. I was just busy travelling back home for the holidays, unpacking and putting away my stuff, watching some great, traditional movies or shows on TV, and most importantly, working on those 2 latest masterpieces that I posted (which barely got 30 notes each.. *sigh*).

But as you can (and probably will) see, the year of the yellow earth pig (i.e. my dad's year) was a rollercoaster of emotions and accomplishments, or lacking thereof.

My creative side seems to have suffered the most due to lack of leisure time. I only managed to finish 3 full digital drawings and left behind several sketches or unfinished WIPs (2 of which are revealed here under the months of June and November for the first time, I intend to finish the Korrasami one btw). At least I got to start 2020 with a completed drawing on the very 1st day, ha-ha! Perhaps that's a good omen for this year?

If so, then I hope I'll find the time to finish the rest of the 2019 Inktober prompts, since I only did 4/31 this past October (even though I'd thought of ideas for all of them). I brought all the necessary drawing utensils and sheets of paper with me, so whenever I'm in the mood, I'll try to sketch another one.

*calculates for the nth time*.. I wrote 18,110 words worth of fanfiction, plus 820 words for the UYLD prompts (making the total 18,930). Technically, you can count another 8k+ in there, since it comes from that unfinished story (of Aang taking care of a flu-ridden Katara, as illustrated by the September sketch), which I haven't finished within the last 4 months or so. Plus, I barely wrote 1/5 of the amount compared to 2018.. *hides in shame*

Then again, I was an excellent pupil for picking up an actual book and reading through 150+ pages (which means I have ~300 pages to go). I'm talking about the new Kyoshi novel that came out. As I once said, I haven't voluntarily read a book in years make that 2 years ago (most of the reading I've done in my life is either Tom & Jerry comics, now the Avatar comic trilogies and art books as well as fanfiction online, or compulsory reading during school). But this novel is freaking fantastic superb!

Not only that, I bought all the new comic trilogies and managed to read them through. Damn, did they give me feels.. especially "Ruins of the Empire" (ngl I squeed so hard when I saw the Korrasami farewell kiss on the 1st page of the 2nd part). I can't wait to read the 3rd part this year!

However, I failed to rewatch Avatar last year, and I haven't seen Korra since.. 2016, I believe? Wow, that's 4 whole years.. But I intend to fix that mistake starting from 2020. Hopefully I'm in the mood to start my rewatch this weekend tonight. *fingers crossed*

But as I said, I had much less time to focus on my hobbies since 2019 was the year for finally moving on with my life (sort of, I'm still working on it). I still remember how down I'd been feeling for a while and how valid those emotions really were. The first quarter of the year (+ like a month or two) was a continuous descent into desperation and feelings of utter failure, which already started around the 2nd half of 2018 and only continued to deepen around that time.

Everything began to change when I was first chosen to be part of a 2-month summer internship in an IT company, and I had to start building a new nest in a new location in Tallinn this May. And now, I feel like I've hit the jackpot by getting a permanent job in another IT company this October.

I got the opportunity to work in two different fields, in two different teams within a year. I met some awesome colleagues (a lot of whom are foreigners) and got the chance to really put my English skills to the test.

Thanks to the new job, I also had to go to a free health check, which went really-really well. Despite my nervousness in the beginning, I feel much more relaxed about my physical (and mental) health, cause the results showed that everything's okay (something I'd been worried about since March 2017).

Speaking of health or staying healthy, there were a few sports events that I went to, too. Our team held the first winter team event (it was the first one for me, at least) by going to do archery in a range on the outskirts of the capital.

I watched the football match between 2 teams of our local league at my hometown together with my dad on his birthday. Our home team won the match and came in 4th place overall in the league this year, which is their best result so far (I'm really proud!). And merely days before I started work, I visited the Tallinn International Horse Show for the first time (also with my dad). I last got to watch horses jump over fences or dance to their musical programs ~ 10 years ago, and I loved it!

Event-wise 2019 was pretty full of them. As has become tradition, I went to the Defence Forces parade on our 101st Independence Day (which seemed rather bleak compared to the centennial, even more so since we didn't have ANY snow at the time).

What will hopefully become new traditions, I visited the television tower on the Restoration of Independence Day (where Uku Suviste gave a free concert in the evening), and went to the Veteran's Rock concert (to honour our war veterans) on our Freedom Square on the 23rd of April (since I'm residing in the capital now, I should be able to go again this year).

To continue with the centennial celebrations (yes, some things are STILL turning 100), I saw and explored inside the armoured train no. 7 called "Wabadus" ("Freedom") in the Baltic Station. This armoured train was one of the keys that led our country to victory during the War of Independence from 1918-1920.

There was an even bigger (150th) anniversary to celebrate in the beginning of July, when I attended our Song and Dance Festival. This was a really important, if not the biggest event of the year. I intend to make a longer post about my experience, cause it's something that you foreigners need to see for yourself. I can't simply describe or put it into words, I have to show you some videos and photos.

But while we're on the topic of concerts, I should mention that I went to 2 more at the beginning of June - Bon Jovi and Sting - as well as 2 that were part of Christmas tours in December - Elina Nechayeva and Rolf Roosalu.

Besides that, I went to 6 different festivals, half of which I'd been to several times before, such as the Türi Flower Fair, Jäneda Farm Days (where I went on my first helicopter ride for my 25th birthday present) and the Christmas market in the Old Town of Tallinn.

The other half is comprised of festivals that I'd been considering going to for a while, or which took place for the first time. The latter applies to the Black Food Festival, whereas the "Valgus Kõnnib" ("Wandering Lights") and the duck rally, both of which took place in Kadriorg, fall under the first category.

The duck rally is a charity event held in the beginning of June. Regular people can buy at least one (or several) rubber bath duckies for different prices, which will then be dumped into a tiny stream that'll carry them towards the finish line. This event has grown more popular each year, and the money the Estonian Association of Parents of Children with Cancer (sorry, long name in English!) collects is donated to the Cancer Treatment Fund.

*wipes forehead*.. Phew! I'm surprised, that's a whole lotta positivity for 2019. I think there's one more important, but seriously negative topic I haven't covered yet, but I feel should be mentioned and explained.

When it comes to politics, 2019 was a complete disaster for us. EKRE (Eesti Konservatiivne Rahvaerakond in Estonian, or Estonia's Conservative People's Party in English) i.e. our populist/nazi/pro-Trump party is in the government as of April 2019, thanks to 100,000+ idiots (out of our population of 1.3 million) who voted for them and gave them 19/101 seats in the Parliament.

No, I am NOT going to apologize for calling them a nazi party, because their main leaders have repeatedly supported ideology that's common to nazis (they use aggressive rhetoric, blame the media for making them look bad, downgrade women, minorities, are racist, anti-semitic etc...). And I will not apologize in front of the people who voted for them, because "thanks" to this, EKRE has dragged our country's reputation straight through a mud puddle (not to mention the scandals that have accompanied 5 of their ministers, 3 of who have THANKFULLY stepped down from their positions) and.. *swears like the British*.. it's BLOODY EMBARRASSING.

I am done being nice, I have at least some kind of prejudice about anyone who supports them or their ideals. And I will certainly not let Estonia end up like America. So that is why I participated in two protest events against EKRE and our current government (because the 2 other parties, who were willing to form the coalition with them, are spineless jellyfish that simply seek to hold onto their current positions of power). I'm willing to take bets as to when our government falls (the sooner the better).

*shakes off the frustration*.. Brrr! So besides that, I guess the only downside to 2019 was my spare time falling back in the list of priorities (which shows in the empty square of July).

2020 is gonna be the year of the white metal rat. I can only hope (and take action so) that it'll be just as eventful, and much more creative than 2019. Thank you all for following me (or lurking anonymously) for so long, especially to the bloggers who've offered me support through better or worse! *raises a glass* Here's to 2020!.. *sip*

[sol1056]

shooting it all into the sun

I haven’t seen anyone else bringing this up (or at least, the people I follow haven’t been reblogging it, if it has) but I think it’s worth pointing out. Given the bios a lot of you have at your headers, I’m guessing most of you haven’t had the firsthand experience that would help you see how startling (and pointed) a certain exec move was, in VLD’s final season. 

To understand that, though, humor me with a thought experiment first. Once you’ve got the basic mindset, then I’ll explain what in S8 made me sit back in absolute shock and reevaluate DreamWorks pretty thoroughly. 

1. Think of a large sum of money for you. Your paycheck, your savings, or all your holiday gift money from elderly relatives. Big enough that spending it all on one thing is a little scary. Let’s call this your cash-on-hand.

2. Think of a decision you make regularly. Do the dishes after dinner, or let them sit overnight? Take this bus at your corner, or walk two blocks for a different bus? Study with friends, or alone? Something relatively minor.   

3. Now imagine: there’s money riding on your choice, equal to the amount in step #1. Choose wrong by some mysterious measure, and you lose all your money. All of it.

4. Another twist: it’s not predictable. The first time you do the dishes right after dinner, you lose. The next time, you wait til morning... and lose. You’d probably realize quickly there must be other factors making an impact.

5. Another twist: if you choose right, you get a bonus. A dollar extra, a hundred, or more. You’d have to pay careful attention to what else could be in play, making the bonus small this time, and huge the next time.

6. And for the god-tier twist, every decision is actually multiple-choice: take the bus, walk, get a ride from a friend, work from home? One choice will cost you, another won’t cost you but won’t gain you either. Another will get you a small but decent bonus, and another gets you a bonus twice your cash-on-hand.  

How would this impact your decision-making? You’d start to track when you lost, when you didn’t, and when you gained. You’d look at all kinds of things: maybe “study with friends” is only good when the teacher's out sick. Or “walk two blocks” is only the right choice if it’s not raining --- and when it is raining, you have to score “get a ride” for the biggest bonus.

Figuring out the logic is going to take some wrong guesses, and each one sets you back to zero. You might get lucky and get a bonus -- and proceed to lose it all trying to reproduce what you did right that one time. Was it the weather? time of day? someone’s mood? So many factors. You’d weigh every decision carefully -- especially new ones. Is this like that time I lost everything, or more like when I got that huge bonus? Hold on, is it raining? Mood check! 

Bottom line: the more you have on the line, and the closer that ‘more’ is to ‘everything you have,’ and the more unpredictable the number of factors, the more conservative (little-c) people tend to be. We’ll hoard, save, hold back. The bigger the gamble, the bigger the potential gains --- but the risks are just as big.

You are now --- in a limited but hopefully illustrative way --- thinking like an executive. Big money, big potential, bigger risk. 

As an exec, maybe you figured in the last stretch of a multi-season show, the staff didn’t need constant supervision... and then you see S8. Obviously, you figured wrong. Whatever your specific complaints, you agree with the other execs: this season needs fixing. And fast.

The question is: what needs to be fixed, and what can be fixed, given time constraints, limited remaining staff, and whatever is left in the budget? It’s a lot of choices with big consequences. 

Doing nothing will cost in a lot of ways: franchise goodwill, future income, your brand and reputation, and of course, the audience’s good faith. Doing nothing simply isn’t an option. At the same time, there’s no point laying new carpet in a house that’s falling down. You can’t fix everything. What can you do that’s just enough to patch up the worst? 

Well, an epilogue where everyone gets a happy ending, that also leaves open the chance for franchise continuation... that might work. It’s not a full episode, and it could be done in the time remaining, by in-house staff. Alright, then. What goes in this couple of minutes? This is your chance to tell the audience what you, as execs, think is a good place for the story to end. What do you want to say? What’s your highest priority? 

A conservative set of execs, from a conservative company (think Nickelodeon) would show each character as happy in their post-series lives, and call it a day. That’s the safe bet. You might not gain much, but you’ll lose less. An adequate fix for the least cost in terms of cash, time, and effort.

In case you missed it: this is not the choice DreamWorks made.

All along, the EPs have paid lip service to VLD’s queer audiences, like in this oft-quoted exchange from Let’s Voltron podcast:

interviewer: Will we be seeing any LGBT representation? LM: It’s super important to us. JDS: Just know that from our perspective, we’re fighting to create as open and broad a spectrum of characters as we can. LM: We can’t give you any definite answers, but just know that--- JDS: We’re fighting for as broad and open representation as we can.

A company playing it safe would give every character an ambiguously (and unpaired) happy ending. A company walking the same edge as the EPs --- a lot of lip service, requiring a lot of reading between the lines --- might give a Korrasami ending. 

An idea of what that might look like: Shiro’s section shows pictures on a mantle. In the center is one of Shiro with another man; perhaps they have their arms around each other, both smiling at the camera, flanked by the paladins. It’s the barest possible nod for a queer audience; for everyone else, that could just be Shiro with his new best (totally-platonic) flight partner. 

That’s choosing to lose small. Throw a bone to the queers, but not so much to piss off the assumed-majority straights in the audience. 

Or you could just say fuck that and go for broke. 

DreamWorks didn’t have to go that big. Really, they didn’t. The EPs had set up a perfect cover for the execs to hide behind: getting representation is hard, so many barriers, you just need to be patient and maybe you’ll get a split second nod that you have to tilt your head and squint to interpret as any kind of queerness, but really, we’re totally fighting for every little scrap. 

DW took the EPs’ protests and tore them into smithereens. Then DW gathered up all those teeny pieces and shot every last one into the goddamn sun. 

In the big picture, I do agree that everything else being equal, a five-second clip like this is pretty much the opposite of satisfactory. Audiences want to see the relationship develop; that’s what really matters. A wedding kiss is just a happy by-product.

But if you’re an exec who has only so much money left to gamble, a company policy of not reacting publicly to audience reactions (for better or worse), and limited time to repair or redo the damage in the final season... you need to make the most of what you do have. 

So you edit Ezor in so she’s not one more dead queer character, you edit a few scenes to include a love interest’s presence earlier in the season... and you blow the lid off the EPs’ prevarication. None of this implying bullshit; you put it all right there on the screen.

You know what that says? 

It says there was no goddamn reason we couldn’t have had a long development of an mlm (or wlw) relationship, onscreen, over the course of several seasons. I don’t care which relationship you think it should be; that’s not the point. It says as far as the execs are concerned, we could’ve had a queer relationship written as romantic and sealed with a kiss, none of this euphemism crap. It says in the execs’ opinion, every time the EPs swore they did ‘all they were allowed to do’, that the EPs were wrong. 

The inserted epilogue is practically a neon sign two stories high. 

HEY THIS IS OKAY BY US, WE WOULD’VE BEEN FINE WITH YOU HAVING THIS EARLIER, JUST SO YOU KNOW

Want to know what else the epilogue tells us?

Remember all the steps at the start of this post, how everything is setting you up (as an exec) for not acting without all possible data, for moving slow and being cautious in case this wrong guess is the final straw? 

There’s another side to that: sometimes, you have to gamble because doing nothing is against everything you stand for. Even if it costs more and appears to gain you nothing in the bank. 

When you take in everything --- from the money lost (20M is a conservative estimate for VLD’s production costs), franchise partners who might not be keen on queer cooties, to the EPs who swore what we got was all they could get --- DW is making a pretty clear statement, here. Being inclusive and progressive is important enough to them that even in a show patently and obviously failing on every count, they’ll still make sure it doesn’t end with a handful of dead queers and one shelved mlm guy. 

Yes, DW still has to clean its own house and do some internal education to make sure its decision-makers don’t sit back for so long and let a bunch of newbie showrunners impose their narrow-minded regressive agenda. Yes, DW was a day late and a dollar short when it came to fixing the catastrophe of S7 and the complete hash of S8. Yes, DW clearly chose to bury S8, rather than yank it back and redo it over. 

But they also chose not to let it go down without showing their support for onscreen, explicit queer characters and relationships. 

Enough with the grumbling about so-called exec meddling; we’re overdue to lay the blame for bad LGBT representation squarely on the EPs. All they gave us was a lot of empty talk. It’s the DW execs who gambled on walking on the walk, and I think it’s time we recognize that.

[eng-hypnosismic]

Spoon 2Di vol.40 Interview (Komada Wataru)

Please get the spoon magazine and get your hypmic poster and support the original!! 

Yokohama Division’s mediator, Iruma Juto, as played by Komada Wataru-san. He was asked on how he delivered Juto’s unique high-tension rap style, also on how he approached this project and an outlook to the character.

How do you feel about the huge amount of responses to the project lately?

Since we started the project with a “full-fledged rap”, we ourselves also had an uneasy feeling and was not sure if people would accept it. So we were really surprised to hear that the response was bigger than we imagined. “Hypnosis Microphone” is divided into 4 divisions: for example, Yokohama Division had rappers who’re actually from Yokohama to collaborate in making the songs, etc; they even included sounds that has the characteristics of Ikebukuro. We got comments like “they made it so particular” from fans of hip-hop, which makes me really happy. Also this was from the early days of the project, but hearing things like “that sounds fun” or “I want to try that” from our industry makes me glad.

Was Komada-san familiar with hip hop before the project?

I grew up in Germany, and the hip hop culture there is more active than in Japan so I was familiar to it as a listener. Therefore in this project, I tried to create the feeling and sounds from the hip hop I’ve listened to before.

It is said that there was an audition, how did you feel at that time?

If its an idol project, idol songs are like the set piece. But, for Hypnosis Mic it was a reggae song. Moreover, rather than the hook, I was tested on doing an unique melody line. I think it’s for seeing our vibes and rhythem, which was new to me. Perhaps there’re roles that are already designated during the audition, but I was given rough illustrations of the characters, setting guidelines and also the freedom to choose. Among the ones I was interested in were Busujima Mason Riou, Arisugawa Dice and Iruma Juto. I feel an affinity to Riou, thinking how nice it is to let him use English, and as for Dice I never played a character as easygoing as him. But, the character I’m used with are always the intellectual ones wearing glasses. Although Juto is usually cold-hearted and cool, when he raps he goes on a sudden change so I thought that he is very interesting. It’s not favorable to play the same role twice (laugh), but at least I have a character that I can draw new experiences from..

After your role was decided, how did you build your character?

When I actually started playing [Juto], I still got very little of detailed information about him. Because of that, I got myself several patterns, thinking  “Maybe it’ll feel like this?”.  Those things I came up with, I use as a base, so when I rap I asked on how far should I go on making Juto’s sudden change. Since I was told that he can become a totally different person , I went all out with the rap out. And by nature, I have a powerful voice. So those who listened to the song would say “Juto seems energetic!” (laughs).. But if the tension is to that extent, it is a success to me. When I hear the song, I realized that I challenged myself too much on coming up for something different, so I couldn’t imagine the usually cool Juto.

How were the song recordings?

Whichever content the demo song was given, Hypnosis Mic will make the demo song sound good. It really makes you think, “Isn’t this good enough already?!” (laughs). Since I was influenced like that, once I check the rhythm and rhyme stanzas, I try to face the character without listening to the sound. The rap part doesn’t have a music score, so it is free to insert or take something out. But to get compliments from fans of hip hop,  it is important to have a lot of practice.  Therefore, I listened to a lot of rap patterns that includes freestyle, and made certain rules within myself for the sake of that rap feeling. I think other cast are doing this as well, so everyone gets better every recording, and has a stronger grasp of what to do.

In the Niconama Rap Battle, you showed off your freestyle, didn’t you?

That’s right! That was pretty harsh (laughs). “Will we be given a script?” was what I thought, but we were really told to freestyle. So in order to deal with the responses during the live performance, we were sweating on our foreheads in the dressing room, desperately thinking of lyrics.

But you guys seemed to do it without any difficulty, you guys really are amazing.

We face difficulty all the time! (laughs). But, to take a rhythm and put words to it , it seemed so far away since the first time so it’s fun to accept the challenge. “Thanks, Hypmic!”, kind of feeling (laughs).

So, what do you feel about Yokohama Division’s team, MAD TRIGGER CREW?

Fierce, they give a strong impression of aggressiveness. As of now, they don��t only chop very fast rhymes but their choices of words are the utmost violent, and the characters are placed in the most rough environment. Maybe physically, they’re the strongest team. Since they live in that kind of unforgiving environment, it seems like that is where their sharp piercing words and sounds came from. Their occupation is all over the place too….. I don’t even know if I should call it their occupation as well. (laughs).  

In the songs and drama, I feel that they get along unexpectedly well.

Taking good care of one another is part of the hip hop culture. They are still a team, even if they’re a bunch of pricks. Even though they’re really rude towards each other, when Samatoki somehow got admonished by Riou, Juto would go and stop them, which is unexpected for him to show understanding towards Samatoki. That kind of relationship with each other is what makes a beautiful balance to them. They have no foundation like “I like this guy” or “I trust him” to their relationship, so I thought it would be a challenge for them to battle as a team. Therefore, I got a feeling that Yokohama Division are pretty good guys, aren’t they? (laughs).

What kind of impression do you have on Samatoki and Riou?

Samatoki is the member of the legendary team that established an era, The Dirty Dawg. Due to that fact, it gave him great amount of pride. And of course, this brings a lot of nuisance to Juto and the rest of the police force  (laughs), Samatoki’s a very stubborn man. I feel like he is a leader who will open up if I tag along with him. Juto and Riou do not follow Samatoki, but rather, stand with him as equals, so all 3 of them kept a perfect balance among each other. They might fall if one of them is missing, but if the three of them are together, they seem to be alert and stand for their own in whatever they do, which just gives a feeling of relief.  Also, Riou’s existence just felt like he’s the buffer , doesn’t he? His dishes are brutal, but it has become a key to calm the atmosphere down in a moment. (Bitter smile)

Samatoki and Juto seem to know each other from a long time ago.

Indeed. “A Yakuza whom I befriended” (laughs). I need more details on that!! Now in Chuuoku, their past wasn’t revealed as much. But I’m sure there’s been a cause and effect in the past, that’s how they are able to be in a team now. For that reason, it makes me feel like both of them are drawn to each other, or dependent on one another . They’re foils to each other,  and I find that interesting.

You’re also interested in Juto’s past, aren’t you?

This is just my imagination but, maybe, he did have an upright sense of justice when he was younger. However, the world was heavily infested by evil. With his position only as a policeman, he realized that it is impossible for him to deal with everything so he felt that despair.

Not only he became rotten, by taking in evil he could ruin things from the inside, and that seems like a good idea. Although it’s quite a dangerous thought, it does make sense in a way. I mean, he could also handle a dangerous dog like Samatoki. In that sense, he seems to be good at winning people over and is capable of adapting to his surroundings. I really want to know how his past was like!

In the drama part, Juto gave advice to Jiro and Saburo on how they’re being too dependent on their eldest brother, didn’t he?

Juto is so kind~ (to the kids) !  That why you can call him a guardian (laughs). However, it is because Ikebukuro is their opponent, that’s why you can see this side of Juto. I think he’ll be different with other teams. He’s extremely uninterested to those who can’t do anything or are talentless. It doesn’t take much time for him to crush those people down, by just saying “try to face yourself once again”. While Juto could sense the threat from the future growth of the  Ikebukuro boys, he look forward to that boiling blood of theirs. That is why, Ikebukuro team interests Juto a lot. He definitely won’t admit that, but it’s good that he’s aware of that.

Next, we are going to touch about the songs.First, please show us some key points of your solo song, “Bayside Smoking Blues”.

Basically, it’s as if you’re standing alone, smoking cigarette while watching the scenery of Minato Mirai and its surroundings. Other than that, I was told to do it as how I like. Samatoki and Riou’s solo song has other characters joining in, but for Juto’s song, it’s literally a solo song. There’s no one there to help him sing (laugh). That’s why he’s been saying “I’m a lonely only RABBIT” on every chorus, expressing that he’s a lonely only RABBIT. The hardest part of the song is obviously the rap. At the introduction part, in order to express what kind of person and what kind of position Juto has in Yokohama, I checked and try to say the very Juto-esque words like “I'll arrest you” or “Pig Pen [jail cell]” so that it remains in people’s ears. There’s no way I’d scream such foul word like “mother xxxx”, though (laughs) . Other than that, Juto being the number one brain but a bit nihilistic is beautiful. Since that’s the case, I tried to rap in a calm and charming manner so I won’t change that image.

Then how about Buster Bros!!! And MAD TRIGGER CREW’s WAR WAR WAR song?

This song has the so-called freestyle battle feels. It feels more like a stage battle rather than a song. It has the baton-passing format, so I thought that it was fun with all the clear call and responses. I responded to Jiro (Yamada) but, the recording is different. When Jiro speaks to Juto, his words are littered with sharp glares and phrases meant to knock him off his feet, that’s what I think. However, whatever their enemy says, Yokohama gathers and releases the strength to utterly annihilate them. The tension rises, to the point a policeman said “We’re cold-blooded killers” (laughs). Maybe I’m thinking about it too much, but that phrase is certainly a killer word, it’s important to me.

After listening to the complete product, how do you feel about Jiro’s rap?

Jiro is much stronger than I imagined. If someone were to record half-heartedly, it is obvious that the power balance would collapse, so everyone definitely did their best in this.

There must be a battle among the casts, aren’t there?

We do battle! Haru-kun (who plays Jiro) listens to the complete songs, even now, “that comeback is strong!” he says in regret  (laughs). “You’re strong too!” was what I thought, but it’s great to see everyone’s doing their best.

So what do you think about Yokohama Division’s song, “Yokohama Walker?”

To me, I imagine the 3 Yokohama members riding an open car (convertible), running through the sea breeze while smoking cigarette at the bayside. Juto drives, Samatoki sits at the passenger’s seat raising his legs and Riou sits diagonally in the back seat because he does not fit (laughs). They won’t talk much, driving towards any desired destination as they please. It’s as if they’re taking a short break after the whole deal in the screwed up world of theirs. The song doesn’t make me feel anything as much, but it sure do has a lot of brutal words. “The path home dirtied by blood” or Juto’s “I’ll handcuff and arrest him to kill some time” is definitely not something a policeman should say (laughs). But I don’t feel the least bit uncomfortable saying it, since it’s important for the establishment of this character. The gaps between the sound and lyrics has a meaning that’ll make the song a killer, and I like that.

Which character are you interested in Shibuya Division and Shinjuku Division?

I enjoy listening to Shibuya Division Arisugawa Dice’s song, it makes me want to sing along, so I got interested. As for Shinjuku Division, they have this peculiar vibe that is eerie, but fun. (Jinguji) Jakurai-sensei is really tall!! Our Riou is no match (laughs). I look forward on how will the song be when those two team battles. I really can’t wait to see them battle.

So other than your own song, do you like any other songs?

My most favorite song would be <Hypnosis Mic -Division Battle Anthem->. All 12 people sing in one song, singing all at once and also solo. Moreover they made their own rhythm and it was tough. The song gave the most rap feeling. I really like the feeling it gave, as if beating people one after another. Of course, this song has a demo version and I’ve already sang it before. The demo song was also sung in character, so it really is like the sample (laughs). So, I think we shouldn’t let it get brushed off.  Also, I like Ichiro’s song, “Ore ga Ichiro,” because it’s catchy, isn’t it?

<Hypnosis Mic Division Battle Anthem>’s MV also shows all of you rap, that must’ve been a big deal wasn’t it?

You can watch the MV’s fullsize for free! It's the ultimate giveaway!. The MV’s appearance is so stylish, it gave that mood of “Maybe I’ll try to do rap!” and I’m really happy for that. Of course showing the character is important, but if that’s the only thing that is showcased, the rate of being shaken off by hip hop will fall. On top of the rap, I add in characterization so that the character can be received well. “Hypnosis mic” has become the key to wow factor contents.

It seems like all the casts are having fun, too. All of you who collaborated with “Hypnosis Mic” made a Champagne Tower at a karaoke store.

Yeah we did ! Actually what happened after that is a private matter, but out came the Champagne Tower (laughs) ! First we drank to <Battle Anthem>, and the tension rises. Lastly, we drank to Champagne Gold and………… it was bubbling (laughs) 。 There’s a lot of things you can do only within “Hypnosis Mic”, so I look forward to work with everyone.

There is a second live on 26th of August, isn’t there?

Yes, you’re right. But I’m so scared on how it is going to be like. They’re definitely going to include freestyle battles! Definitely! It’s horrifying!

In the Territory Battle with Ikebukuro Division, Yokohama Division is currently leading.

But the results are very close to each other, so I can’t figure out the outcome. This isn’t about “either way, everyone will be in peace”, but the project will continue on delivering contents only to that outcome, which I think is very unique. The songs and story will definitely be designed by their victory or loss, so I feel like the listeners are truly involved in this. To have a wave of something like “You guys  gotta win!” echoing to us motivates us to not lose. That’s why Ikebukuro should be crushed…………. (laughs).

(laughs) . Finally, any messages to the fans who supported you?

As time goes by, all the songs, story and goods will be brushed up, and it’ll expand rapidly. So in order to not get left behind by the momentum, do fight along with your favorite teams, favorite songs and favorite characters. And, by all means, please listen to rap other than “Hypnosis Mic”, too. I haven’t been informed much, but it seems like there’s going to be secret plan and hidden tricks so I want to support as much as I can. And please! Make MAD TRIGGER CREW be the winner! Cast your last vote and reach out to the summit together (laughs)!

[charlottecarterbcu]

Evaluation

Within this project my aim was to use my own primary research of looking at the landscapes around me, public transport and commuting as a whole to experiment with different techniques and processes including weave, embroidery, print, mark making, collaging, and creative textiles. Once I had some samples I was then to look into the variations and compare my everyday moments throughout as I progressed through the module, showing my findings in my sketchbook and discussing them on my blog. I believe that I have achieved this as I took an extensive range of different primary photographs looking at both the Bromsgrove and Birmingham sides of my journey to start with. I then went on to attend all workshops enabling me to use my primary research as inspiration when experimenting with new textile skills and processes. From there I was then able to go back into workshops to work into samples created in other sessions to get the most out of my samples and to fully show my narrative throughout my work. I’ve then gone on to display my samples in my sketchbook and have discussed them on my blog.

I began my research by going out into my local area and I began taking photographs of the countryside around me, focusing on the farmland that the public footpath goes through near to my house. I took many photographs including the tree, telegraph pole and barbed wire fence pictures that I have used repeatedly throughout this project.  Then once we started face to face lectures at university I was then able to broaden my primary research by taking photographs and a video along every step of my journey from getting to the train station, being on the train, arriving in Birmingham, and walking through the centre of Birmingham to get to the university. I have used the picture of the train at the platform and urban landscape shots from around Birmingham frequently throughout this module to add comparison.

My primary photographs are so different to one another, this has been a real help in being able to fully explore and experiment within the workshops as I have had plenty to choose from, for example in the first mark making session I focused my samples on the primary photographs taken within the countryside, creating many drawings inspired by the barbed wire fence photo. Whereas, in my first time in the print workshop I focussed my first few prints on the basic greyscale skyline associated with the buildings in the later part of my primary research. Having such a diverse range of primary research has really helped me to explore within the textiles workshops as I haven’t felt restricted at any point as there has always been at least one photo that would work well with the sample that I was going to produce.  

However, finding the balance has been hard to achieve throughout this module as I went through waves of only looking at nature or buildings for a few weeks at a time with no cross over or comparison. This has made it difficult to fully achieve the brief as a whole as different areas of my primary research were looked at in different workshops making it difficult to compare the two. This is reflected in my final piece where I decided to focus all of my samples on just one element of my everyday journey, the countryside. This is because I felt that I had created the best samples when looking into the finer details of the nature around us, with my procion dye leaf prints for example I was able to add in all of the discolouration and vein detail which is very different to plain skyline screen print sample that I created earlier. However I did feel that I was able to fully achieve my brief whilst in the digital sublimation print workshop as I was able to overlap images from the different sides of my primary research and print them together enabling me to have the full comparison just on one textiles sample.

In almost every workshop I have made the most of my time in there and have tried to base every one of my samples on one of my primary photographs, linking each sample to my narrative along the way when discussing my samples on my blog.  For example, in my first workshop in the embroidery room when we looked at pleats and pin tucks, I didn’t have a direct link to my narrative with the samples that I had made. I found this frustrating and set myself a challenge of always having a clear link to my primary research with every sample before rushing in to complete the sample without thinking clearly. I feel like I have followed this plan and have gone into each workshop with a few ideas already in my head of what I will be focusing my sample on that day. In regard to my pin tuck sample, after thinking it through I was able to relate my sample to the building structures near the university and developed this idea further by creating another pin tuck sample with reverse appliqué to fully show the similarities within the structure and the sample.

When I first started this course, I had some experience with some of the textile’s skills and techniques but the majority I hadn’t done for years. Weave was completely new to me and I embraced the challenge of learning a new skill. I took to weaving really quickly and needed my loom turning forward several times on the first mornings session. Despite some of the issues with the loom colours and broken shafts, overall, I believe that I created some of my best samples in the weave workshop as I was able to create weaves relative to my narrative with the broad array of yarns provided and also through experimentation of weaving through different objects such as rope and a cut up screen print.

A skill that I believe I have been able to develop over the weeks is print. In my first time in the print workshop I created very basic shapes with the screen printing, all of which needed working into further to make them usable within my sketchbook. But then as I progressed through print into the second week with procion and disperse dye and then lastly with the digital printing I was really able to push myself to create detailed samples with a clear link to my narrative. As I previously mentioned the prints that I created in the digital print workshop, for me are the samples that clearly show my narrative in the way that I wanted to in this project with a comparison of the different landscapes.

The hand textiles workshops were different to the workshops for the other processes as we were able to go at our own pace and have complete control over what it was that we were trying to create. I’ve always believed that I’d never be able to knit after being shown how to do it many times over the years and having no success. So, to be able to persevere and learn a new skill in the session, I was really proud of myself of what I had been able to achieve. I think I will have to continue knitting to ensure that I remember how to do it and to improve my samples from this technique as I am still merely a beginner still trying to understand the basics. The creative embellishment and hand stitching that we did in this workshop was much harder than it looked, and I have been trying to fathom out how to do a French knot for weeks. Despite having finally managed a few to go onto my final piece, French knots and hand embellishment in general is definitely something that I need to improve and develop my skills on.

I really enjoyed experimenting with design and using my mark making samples to create fashion illustrations. However, my illustrations need a lot of work, especially as I plan on progressing onto the design course next year. Over the next few months I need to ensure that I am finding time to practice my fashion illustrations, paying close attention to the detailing of hands and feet especially.

I believe that my experimentation was successful because I made the most of every workshop and created as many samples as I possibly could in the time. Despite having plenty of samples to work with I can’t help but think that perhaps I gave myself too much to work with and too many ideas were across the different samples confusing the layout overall due to the narrative being too broad. If I was to carry out a project similar to this one again, I would definitely refine everything. I would begin by focusing on just one element for my narrative, such as the countryside for example. I am happy with my samples and what I have been able to achieve with my current narrative, but it opened up too many pathways to different ideas and interpretations of the narrative and what could be accomplished. By having just one main focus for the narrative I would then be able to focus all of the experiments within the workshops around the same idea which would then help me to create similar samples that complement one another.  

From the very beginning of this project I have been forward thinking and planning my next step before even completing the last few. I write lists and then I also do smaller lists for the bigger main list. This usually works well for me, but I can’t help but wonder what went wrong this time round as I sit here on the morning of the deadline completing my evaluation. I believe that I am a good planner, but I think this time round I just gave myself too much to do and expected too much of myself. I gave myself unrealistic and unachievable targets which has unfortunately reflected in the later parts of my blog and in the quality finish of my final piece. Towards the end of the module I just had too much still to complete with not enough time to do it in. With this being the first module I’m not going to be too hard on myself and instead I’m going to use this experience as a learning curve to hopefully put me in the right direction for the next module.

Overall, I am extremely happy with what I have been able to achieve and the work that I have produced over the past eight weeks. I have learnt new skills and developed old ones to. I have also tried to problem solve to the best of my ability, for example with the loom in weave that didn’t match my colour scheme, I was able to go away and think about it and found a link enabling me to be able to use the sample in my sketchbook.  I also had to do a lot of unpicking in the embroidery workshop, rather than wasting the samples I just thought of new ways to use them or work into them to cover the mistakes and make it a useable sample. I always work big and fill a space, therefore where I feel that I didn’t problem solve well is within my sketchbook as I was unable to use the rule of third when sticking down my samples. I also wasn’t able to put my samples alongside supportive primary photographs which is what I had originally planned to do. If I’d thought it through initially, and knowing what scale I usually work with I should have thought about getting an A2 sketchbook to display my work in as this would have created the needed negative space on the page and it would have also enabled me to put pictures alongside my samples to clearly show the progression of my narrative throughout.

[blustersquall]

Only Make Believe // Chapter 17: Confession is Good for the Soul

As before, because of tumblr’s interface, the link to this chapter on AO3 is in the source link of this post. <3 I have put a link to the chapter on AO3 at the end of the text, underneath the read more as well. 

December 23rd, early afternoon

--

If the outside of the cathedral was huge, the inside was gargantuan. The exterior did nothing to illustrate just how vast it was internally and Cullen was forced to take a few moments to stop and appreciate the sheer mass of the building when he stepped in from the cold.

It wasn't just the size of the cathedral that was impressive, the high vaulted ceilings or the ornately carved stone archways; it was the way the light from outside filtered through the stained-glass windows, creating splashes of colour on the ground and the pillars. And it was the candles, the thousands and thousands of small candles currently lit and burning, all situated on tables and tombs. They were being tended to by the caretakers of the cathedral. Every time one candle burnt out it was immediately replaced, or it was lit again. They gave the inside of the cathedral an almost ethereal glow and warmth and everyone inside was quiet or spoke softly.

Cullen stared up at the ceiling where there were images carved and decorated with gold leaf. He tried to recognise the people and stories represented but could only just make out different scenes. Nevena would probably know - he would ask her when he found her. If he found her. So far she hadn't replied to his message.

Removing his coat and scarf, Cullen looped them over one arm and wandered through a security gate and metal detector. He was warned by a burly security guard against taking flash photography and then directed to a cloakroom where he could check in his jacket if he wanted. After doing just that, he stepped to one side to see if Nevena had replied yet.

He furrowed his brow when he saw she'd hadn't. A worry gnawed that the back of his mind that maybe she was upset with him. A worry he chose to ignore for now, as he typed another message to her.

In the cathedral. This place is huge. Where are you?

He sent the message and decided to satisfy himself by looking around at what was near to his location. The amount of people inside was staggering, yet the cathedral didn't feel over populated or stuffy, or like there was no room to move. Everyone was softly spoken and polite, a contrast to shoppers outside. Clearly, something about the building had a calming effect on people. Or maybe it was just something in the incense Cullen could smell.

His phone vibrated in his hand, Nevena's name flashing up on screen.

I'm on a tour.

Cullen stared at the message and stepped to one side. The curtness of her message could mean one of two things: either she was pissed off with him, or she didn't want to be distracted or rude by typing long messages. He hoped it was the latter, but the niggling worries at the back of his mind told him he was wrong. Choosing to spend time with Solona had likely upset Nevena... which would potentially make the conversation he wanted to have with her more difficult.

Heaving a sigh, Cullen ran his hand through his hair and quickly sent a response.

Whereabouts? I'll come and join you.

As he waited for a reply he followed a small group of visitors down a wide hallway. At the far end was an image carved in marble of a young man, his hands together in prayer, eyes lifted to the ceiling. There were tracks down his cheeks that were more worn than the rest of the rock giving the illusion that the young man had been crying. Cullen followed the figures gaze up to the ceiling. Looking down on him were more faces, carved from the same white marble. It was difficult to distinguish if the creatures peering down were good or bad. They all were round-cheeked and smiling, but some of the smiles were more menacing than others. A chill ran down Cullen's spine the longer he looked at them.

Backtracking out of the corridor and into the main hall of the church, Cullen saw a familiar head of messy golden blonde hair across the room from him. Nevena stood at the back of a tour group, small and unobtrusive, as discreet at possible. He saw she had her phone in one hand, potentially waiting for a reply from him? He checked his phone. There was a message from her though he didn't read it as he crossed the wide room.

When he was close enough he tapped her shoulder to announce he was there. Nevena jumped slightly, but only treated him to a short glance when he took his place beside her. He smiled, she didn't.

Definitely pissed.

The tour group was at least fifteen people strong and was being led by a white-haired woman in her late fifties. She described the decor, the stained glass, and the various statues and carvings with enthusiasm though, despite probably saying the same thing over and over again most days. The tour group murmured when she told them things, making suitably impressed sounds in reaction to some of the facts she reeled off. Nevena spent some of the time looking at what was being pointed out, and the rest of it peering down at the guidebook in her hands.

Aside from the cursory glance when he arrived, she didn't look at Cullen once. And that bothered him more than he liked. The sooner they could talk the better. He didn't like this cold irritation he felt flowing off her. It didn't suit her.

"What did I miss?" he asked her after a good twenty minutes of stoic silence. They followed the tour group from the back as the guide ushered them gently but firmly from one place to another so no two groups meshed.

"Stuff." Nevena shrugged. She kept her eyes forward and her face still, but Cullen could see her clenching her jaw. "Where's Solona?" She tried to sound casual, but she practically spat Solona's name.

"She had to go," Cullen told her.

"How sad," Nevena replied. "Sorry you had to cut your date short."

"It wasn't a date," replied Cullen, with a sharpness to his tone that he didn't expect. Why was she being so childish? Nevena tossed her hair over one shoulder, saying nothing. "Are you jealous? Is that why you're angry?"

"I am not angry," Nevena snapped, stopping for a moment. "And I am not jealous." Her hands curled into fists around her guidebook.

Cullen arched a brow, crossing his arms as he stood to his full height to look down at her. "Of course, you're not. After all, this," he gestured at her up and down, "is the image of a perfectly happy, not angry and not jealous woman. Clearly."

A nerve by the side of Nevena's mouth twitched. "I am not angry. Or jealous," she glowered at him, and her words were the closest thing to a snarl Cullen had ever heard in Nevena’s voice. "In case you forgot: this," she waved her hand in the air between them mimicking him, "isn't real. So, there's nothing for me to get jealous or angry about. You ditched me. Not the other way around."

Cullen opened his mouth to retort but Nevena was already stalking ahead to catch up with the rest of the tour group. Not quite the reaction he was hoping for when he teased her, and definitely not the mood he wanted her to be in when they talked. He sighed, slipped his hands into his pockets and followed her, mulling over what he wanted to say and how best to approach it.

Clearly spending time with Solona was a bad idea. He would apologize, though he didn't see how spending time with her was wrong. However, there was a silver lining to Nevena's reaction. There was no way Nevena would react the way she was if she didn't feel anything. Despite her declaration of their relationship being fake, she didn't say there was nothing between them. If she truly felt nothing, then she would have shrugged off his brief catch up with Solona as nothing, and carried on as normal. Her rather intense reaction was all Cullen really needed to have his beliefs about whether her feelings matched his proven.

Now, he just needed to get her to admit it, and hopefully they could move forward.

He decided not to approach her about it while the tour was ongoing. He hoped if he said nothing she would calm down and be more amenable when they did talk. The tour took them through the ground level of the cathedral, through a small section of the underground catacombs, and several older sections no longer in use by the clergy but places that still maintained a historical significance. The final leg of the tour took the group up a long, steep stairwell towards the very pinnacle of the cathedral.

The dome set in the roof of the building was far larger than Cullen imagined. Looking at it from the floor, it was vast, at least the size of his apartment, if not bigger. The panes of glass were a sea of different colours, with ancient constellations picked out using what the guide explained were crystals. There was a belief the crystals were used for divination when the cathedral was first in use, but it was sheer conjecture.

Visitors were invited to lie on the ground to enjoy the glass dome ceiling in all its splendour. Cullen decided not to, but Nevena willingly lay on her back and stared up at the ceiling for some time. She did nothing, said nothing, simply laced her fingers together over her chest and looked upwards. Even as the guide called the tour to an end and those in the group began to disband, Nevena stayed where she was.

No one paid her any mind and after a few minutes only three people from the group remained along with himself and Nevena. Breathing deeply, realising this would likely be the only time he would get to speak to her without dozens of people around, Cullen approached her on the ground and gently nudged her leg with his foot. Nevena's gaze flicked to him for a moment before she closed her eyes and covered her face with her hands.

Cullen squatted to her level, “what’s wrong?”

He waited. Ten seconds, dragging to twenty, and then to thirty. Each moment more uncomfortable than the last.

"I’m so…” She took a slow breath as if building up courage. “I’m so mad at you," she said, puffing her cheeks out as she sat up. “And at myself. For being cross with you. I feel so… humiliated. And stupid.”

A sense of guilt chewed, almost painfully, at Cullen’s chest. He really had fucked up by going with Solona. By abandoning Nevena to not be rude. Ashamed, he rubbed the back of his neck. "I’m sorry." Nevena looked at him impassively for a few seconds and then swept her hands through her hair, crossing her legs and staring at her hands as they dropped into her lap.

Glancing around, Cullen saw that no one else in the dome was paying attention to them. He sat on the floor, crossing his legs and offered a hand towards Nevena. When she didn’t take it, Cullen felt the shame creeping up his neck to his cheeks. He was sure he was turning scarlet. He pulled his hand back into his lap and cleared his throat. "Talk to me," he said, watching while she stared down into her lap, looking downtrodden. He swallowed thickly. His throat felt as though it was closing over. “Please.”

"You ditched me." She shrugged her shoulders. Her words were to-the-point and non-accusatory. Factual. Honest. Somehow, the lack of emotion made him feel worse. "You’ve been a giant jerk to me all day. I spent most of this morning wracking my brains, trying to figure out what I did wrong." She arched her head back and shook it. "Turns out it’s not so much what I did wrong, it’s more that I am wrong. The wrong person… Go figure."

"No, you're not." Without thinking Cullen reached for her hands, taking them in his. Nevena didn’t pull her hands away… she didn’t react at all to his touch, and that made Cullen feel as though something inside him had cracked. His lungs grew tight. Had he fucked up so much that he had ruined everything? “You’re not the wrong person. I was…” Cullen exhaled sharply. “Seeing Solona again just took me aback. I hadn’t seen her for years. I was surprised and…” He ran his thumbs over her knuckles. “I came to Redcliffe with you. I shouldn’t have gone off with her… At the very least I should have extended the invitation to you. I just… I wasn’t… thinking.”

"No. I don’t think you were." When she looked at him, he saw a coolness in her expression and her eyes that was almost chilling. "I’m just… tired, Cullen. Maybe coming here was a bad idea and we should go back to Haven." She shrugged her shoulders and pulled her hands away. "We’ve seen all there is to see, and if you’re not enjoying yourself there’s no point in this."

A breath caught in Cullen’s throat. “In… this?” he repeated.

“In us. Being here in Redcliffe. You already said you had a headache. It’s an hour drive back to Haven, I’m sure that will only make things worse.”

He hated the words she was saying. The tone of voice, how devoid of emotion and cool she was being. He wanted the Nevena of the day before back. The one who was vibrant and relaxed. Who was giggling and playful, and who threw out comments and quips that made him laugh. Of course, the reason for her change in demeanour was down to him. Down to his decision to spend time with Solona. Down to his choice to ignore the arrangements he and Nevena had made on a whim.

Leaving the cathedral with things between them so frigid and impersonal was out of the question. He had wanted to use the day to talk to her, to put his cards on the table and try and discuss how he felt and learn if her feelings matched his. The way things had transpired did not change that. He simply needed time. A chance. He needed Nevena to be willing to listen. She was not unreasonable or unkind, she would hear him out if he asked.

Cullen shifted closer on the cold floor until his knee was touching Nevena’s leg. He wanted to take her hands again, but thought better of it, clenching his in his lap. "All I can do is apologize. I didn’t plan for Solona to be here. I hadn’t seen her in years. It… She took me by surprise and I didn’t want to be rude…" He adjusted the collar of his shirt. “It… didn’t really occur to me that in trying not to be rude to her, I was being unforgivably rude to you. I suggested we come to Redcliffe. I allowed a headache to colour my mood, and I know I’ve not been the best company today while I’ve been with you. The day isn’t over though, and it would be a shame to waste the rest of it returning to Haven.”

"That’s the start of a decent apology." Nevena’s lips quirked into a half-smile. "As for your ex, that’s… more a me thing.” She shrugged. “I have no claim over you, after all. I’m just your client.”

"That's not entirely true," Cullen replied, feeling a hitch in his breathing.

She arched a brow. "What isn't?"

"That..." Cullen inhaled to settle himself, "that you don't have a claim over me."

Nevena's eyes widened and coloured flooded her face. She looked like a deer caught in headlights, a few sounds that weren’t words escaping her lips. Cullen noticed another tour group was beginning to file into the dome meaning their ability to talk would be compromised. Nevena realised too and she quickly rose to her feet, and began to dust herself off. She hurried out and he followed after her out of the room and towards the stairwell, grabbing her hand as he caught up. The gesture was enough to make her slow down.

"Can we talk?" he asked as casually as he was able, despite how his stomach tightened anxiously.

"Sure," Nevena nodded. She kept her gaze averted and allowed Cullen to lead her through the winding corridors and hallways. Weaving through other visitors and between points of interest, Cullen was able to lead them to a small vestibule, tucked behind an ornate tomb that was at least his own height. There was no sign on the door denoting it was out of bounds and the door opened when he turned the knob. He quickly ushered Nevena inside and closed the door behind him, hoping no one had seen them go in and that they would remain undisturbed.

The room itself was dank and smelled musty. Various objects were covered in white sheets to protect them from dust and there were two upright windows, allowing a cold grey light to spill inside. There were a couple of metal cabinets lined with cleaning supplies, and a machine for waxing the floor in the far corner. Clearly an unmarked storage room then. There was nowhere to sit. Nevena stood in the middle of the room being careful not to touch anything and Cullen paced a little, trying to put his words and thoughts into order.

"What did you want to talk about?" asked Nevena, her voice small.

"Well..." Cullen puffed his cheeks out. "There's something I want to tell you."

"Are you going back to Denerim?" Nevena's words caught Cullen off guard and he stared at her, wide eyed. "Something's happened? You never said who was at the door yesterday. When do you need to go?"

"No, no," Cullen chuckled. "It's nothing like that." Somehow her over thinking caused him to relax. He moved closer, tempted to take her hands but choosing not to. "Something was delivered for me yesterday, that's all. I'm not leaving."

"Okay..." Nevena's expression shifted into a faint frown. "Then... why are we in here?"

Cullen inhaled deeply. The damp smell of the room was not a pleasant one and he almost coughed as it overwhelmed him. "Do you remember what I told you? About me being a TEMPLAR? About my military service?"

"Mhm-hm."

"I didn't tell you everything." He watched for a change in Nevena's expression, a tiny shift or glimmer of emotion. Her eyes narrowed a little, but there was little change beyond that. Cullen took it as a good sign and that he could carry on. "There are a few things you should know, it might answer any question you have regarding yesterday morning."

"Your nightmare?"

"Yeah."

Nevena went to the windows, placed her satchel on the floor and leaned against the windowsill. "I'm listening."

"Remember how I told you TEMPLARs were a specialized military division?” Nevena nodded and Cullen continued, considering his words. All the things he had planned to say fled from his mind the moment he began talking. He was on his own. “Well, the reason we were so specialized is because we were given a... performance enhancing substance." As Cullen spoke, he watched Nevena for recognition or changes in her expression. Her face remained relatively still, but there was a tiny glint of understanding in her eyes at the mention of 'performance enhancing'. Swallowing thickly, Cullen continued. "Its scientific name is too hard to pronounce, we all just called it lyrium. It was used to make us... better. Better soldiers, better workers. On it we could march for days without rest, build around the clock, go for a week with no sleep and not suffer for it. For what we did, it was necessary. It meant we could assist war torn locations more effectively and faster."

"Okay..."

"There were other things too. It gave us enhanced stamina, a higher pain tolerance, the list goes on and on." He ran a hand through his hair. If he thought about it, he could still recall the tang of lyrium on his tongue and the odd fizzing sensation it gave when it was swallowed. "There were side effects too, of course, nothing good ever came without a price. We had to take it every day without fail or the side effects would come on fast and hard. Muscle weakness, irritability, confusion, hallucinations, nightmares... The longer you were on it, the worse the side effects became if you stopped taking it, or it was denied. There were rumours it caused memory loss and early onset dementia too, though that was never proven.”

"Sometimes, if you were insubordinate or caught doing something you weren't supposed to, your supply would be cut off for a few days. I saw other men and women going through the throes of lyrium withdrawal and it wasn't pretty."

"I believe you." Nevena shifted a little on the window sill.

"When I was… held captive in Kinloch I was tortured." He said the words so plainly he might as well have been commenting on the state of the weather. He lifted the hem of his shirt enough that a few scars were visible. Nevena's eyes widened and her hands went to her mouth. "I was cut, and burned, and tormented for... weeks? Months? I don't even remember. I was kept alive for the amusement of others while my friends were barbarized and slaughtered in front of me." He dropped the hem and breathed deep. His heart was racing, pulsing at the back of his throat threatening to choke him. Panic rose inside him and he was fighting to keep it at bay. He was safe. He knew he was safe. "I felt first-hand what lyrium withdrawal was like and it was... agony."

"But..." Nevena took a tentative step forward, "you left. The TEMPLARs, I mean. You said you left."

"I did." Cullen nodded once. "After Kirkwall I was given the option to leave or to stay. I knew leaving meant no longer having lyrium, but I also knew remaining was not something I could do. I'd seen too much. Lost too much. I didn't want to be chained to the TEMPLARs any longer. I made a hard choice, and was prepared to accept the consequences.”

"I was with Solona when I stopped taking the lyrium. We'd been together for about three years and she supported my decision to leave and stop taking it, even though she knew there would be issues as it left my system... I don't think either of us realised how bad it would be, or how long it would take for the withdrawal to stop completely. I'd been taking it almost daily for nearly a decade after all." Cullen pushed his hands through his hair and arched his head back, staring at the ceiling.

"She tried," he choked out. "Maker, she tried to live with me, but I was a mess. Without the lyrium I was aggressive, erratic, and angry all the time. The smallest thing would make me snap and I refused to accept her help. Any help. I was sure I could handle it myself. The nightmares got worse before they got better. There were days I could barely hold up my own weight because my body was so weak. At times, I thought I was going blind because my vision would be so blurred... It was terrifying. For me and for her. But I was stubborn and she kept pushing for me to get help. Eventually... it was too much."

"She left... didn't she?" Nevena took another small step towards him and away from the window. Her hands were flexing at her sides, fingers curling and releasing. Her posture was ridged, her face still, but there was pity in her eyes. Pity, concern... Even a little fear that made Cullen's skin go cold when he saw it. He was painting a terrible picture of himself, and given Nevena's history, he couldn't blame her for whatever she now felt towards him.

"She did," he nodded, standing straight. "After a particularly impressive fight we both needed space. She left to stay with a friend, and I went AWOL for a few days... When I went home, there was a letter on the kitchen table from her, and she'd taken all her things."

"Cullen, I'm sorry." Nevena reached out and placed a hand on his arm.

"Don't be." Cullen shook his head. "I deserved that and more for the way I treated her and what I put her through. I was a terrible person during that time. Angry and stubborn, and I took it out on her, unfairly. For whatever reason, the friends I had and my family still considered me a person worth their time and worth saving. They rallied around me, convinced me to get the help I was in desperate need of. Not just to deal with the lyrium, but to deal with everything that happened to me in Kinloch and in Kirkwall."

"Of course you're a person worth saving and worth their time." Nevena removed her hand.

"I didn't believe it at the time," Cullen said slowly. "Sometimes I still don't. The lyrium, everything I experienced, I think it left me broken in a way. As if a part of me was stolen away and all that’s left is an endless void." He exhaled, rubbing his hands over his face. "The nightmares are as good as they'll ever be. Normally I can manage them. Yesterday... Yesterday was the worst I'd had for some time. There are times it feels as though I'm back there. I can hear everything, smell everything, feel everything. They're as real as you are now."

"But it's not. It was, but it isn't now. I know that doesn't make it any better but..." Nevena reached out and grabbed his hands closing the space still remaining between them. "And you're not broken. You're standing here, a testament to the fact you went through unimaginable terror and pain, to come out the other side." Her voice cracked with the rawness of her sincerity. She dropped her head so her forehead rest against his collar. "For what it's worth, I think you're a good person. And so strong for going through everything you did, for making a hard choice for the betterment of yourself, and for owning up to your own mistakes. You're a better person than you give yourself credit for." She sighed, shoulders sagging. "I like the person you are."

Cullen stared down at the top of her head, taken aback by her earnest words. His chest ached as warmth flooded through him down to his fingers. His skin tingled and he could feel his heartbeat racing, thudding noisily behind his ribs. He knew he would never have a chance as good as this for her to know how he felt. For her to understand. That knowledge did not make the prospect of being vulnerable and open with her any less daunting, however. He steeled himself with a deep breath.

"There's a reason I'm telling you all this, you know?"

Nevena lifted her head, "I assumed as much." Cullen slipped his hands from hers and slowly trailed them up her arms.

"I don't want there to be any secrets. No untruths or lies. You should know all about the worst parts of me before we... confront and deal with whatever this is between us." Cullen didn't move, only kept his eyes trained on Nevena's face. A look of understanding mixed with unease filtered through her expression and she retreated a step. A tiny step, yet Cullen felt it was like a punch to the gut.

"There..." she shook her head, eyebrows furrowing. "Cullen, there isn't... I don't know… Why are you saying this? There isn’t anything— I don’t know what you’re implying.” Nevena buried her face in her hands and groaned into her palms, shaking her head. Any words she continued to say were muffled though it sounded more like pitiful whining through her fingers.

Every inch of Cullen's body felt like lead and as though every gesture was difficult. Why couldn't she just admit there was something between them, like he could? Why did she have to deny it? Why was she so afraid?

Cullen gently grasped her hands and pulled them away from her face with ease. She kept her head bowed to avoid looking at him. "Nevena," Cullen huffed softly. He took hold of her chin, eased her head up and without giving her a moment to speak, pressed a kiss to her lips.

It was nothing like the kiss in the kitchen which was desperate and hungry and primal in nature. This was slow and soft, careful and measured. He did not want to overwhelm or startle her. He didn't want to be forceful. He didn't hold her in place, she could move and break away and if she did, he would not pursue. If she broke away, he would know he only imagined what was between them.

She didn't though. After an instant of surprise, she was kissing him back, her lips moving against his, her body melting into him. Cullen's hand at her chin curved to cup her cheek, angling her head and his free arm dangling at his side wrapped around her waist gently guiding her closer. Kissing her felt so good, better than he could have imagined. Even after kissing her once before, rash and brisk, this was intense and heady and better. His senses were filling with her. The hitch in her breathing with every subtle change of pressure, the way her arms rose up to his shoulders and her fingers furled into his clothing with an almost vice like grip, how she pressed herself against him. He could get used to this. He wanted to get used to this.

Cullen pulled away a little and was pleasantly surprised when Nevena followed, the care of the first kiss giving way to want and hunger. One of her hands slid up into his hair, her fingers knotting around the loose curls. She was straining on her tiptoes, his bottom lip between her own, her teeth lightly grazing the sensitive flesh making him shiver and a low groan rise from deep within his chest. He'd never wanted to kiss someone like this as much as he wanted to kiss Nevena Trevelyan. Now he was, and he didn't want to stop.

Her natural smell of ginger and rain overpowered the scent of the damp room. Cullen's head was swimming as he followed the line of her mouth with the tip of his tongue and her lips parted. Cradling the base of her skull, Cullen wrapped his fingers in her hair and eased her head back to deepen the kiss. The warmth throughout his body was becoming an insistent, pleasurable heat, and his skin prickled under his clothing, hair standing on end fuelled by excitement and anticipation. Blood pounding in his belly, Cullen's hand at her waist inched lower grasping her hip and bringing her lower body in contact with his. His name, formed of a sigh and a moan, escaped Nevena's mouth and he responded with a searing kiss, groaning against her lips.

When Nevena pulled away, Cullen let her. She moved barely a hairsbreadth from him and their lips still lingered tantalizingly close to one another. Cullen's mind was a cloud of pleasure and excitement and he fought to catch his breath. Enjoyment and anticipation rocketed through him, reigniting feelings and sensations he thought gone. He curved his hands around Nevena's face holding her jaw. He could feel her pulse racing against his fingers where they touched the hollow of her throat. Opening his eyes, Cullen saw her own were still closed. Her lips were reddened and tempting. More so when she bit her bottom lip between her teeth.

“I—“

Before Nevena could get another word out, the door squeaked open. Cullen turned sharply, hackles raised, putting himself between the intruder and Nevena. “What?!”

The intruder was clearly a member of staff for the cathedral. In his twenties, he looked between Cullen and Nevena with a rather bored and tired expression. “This is a storage room…” he said in a sarcastic drawl as he went to the shelves to retrieve a cloth and some kind of cleaning fluid. He left, muttering something about the door needing a staff only sign.

Only when the door clicked closed did Cullen allow himself to relax. He dropped his shoulders taking a slow breath so the adrenaline racing around him slowed. When he turned back to Nevena, she offered a small amused smile.

“We really should stop doing this in places where people can walk in…”

��Yeah,” agreed Cullen. He watched her and waited, hoping she would continue to say what she meant to, without prompting from him. Several awkward seconds passed, the two of them looking at each other, the moment gone due to their untimely interruption and Cullen’s poor choice of location to talk. He cleared his throat and took a step towards her. “You were saying something…”

“Was I?”

“You were about to.” Moving slowly so not to startle her, Cullen rose his hands and placed them on her shoulders. She didn’t tense, or shy away, if anything she seemed to move in closer, lowering her head so his lips automatically pressed to her skin.

“I guess I don’t remember what I was going to say.” Mumbled Nevena.

“Can I say something then?” asked Cullen, swallowing thickly. “Would that be alright?”

“Mhm.”

He inclined his head to press his forehead against hers and summoned up what courage he possessed before he spoke. "I want you," he said, voice hoarse. He smoothed his hands up her neck to cup her jaw. The words were forward, but painfully honest. If he didn't say them now, he would regret it for the rest of his life. "I want you, more than I have ever wanted anyone. It's like I can hardly breathe."

"Cullen..." Nevena's breath shuddered. He could feel her hands on his clothing not moving.

"Tell me you felt nothing," Cullen said. "Tell me you feel nothing."

Nevena eyes opened briefly, before she closed them again and her expression contorted into one of almost pain.

"If you can look me in the eye and honestly tell me you feel nothing for me, that I'm wrong and I've imagined this, then I will accept it." His stomach felt like a rock, weighing him down as the words spilled out of his mouth. He was putting so much on her it wasn't fair, he knew it wasn't fair. But he also knew he couldn't carry on like there was nothing between them. He knew he couldn't let things continue without a word. "If you tell me I'm wrong and deluded, I'll believe you. We'll go back to the stipulations of the contract, kiss for show, touch for show, and when it ends in January we'll walk out of each other's lives. But…" he squeezed his eyes closed and continued speaking with his lips pressed to her forehead. “But, if you can tell me there’s a chance, no matter how small, just a chance that you feel the same then… then please, I’m begging you, please do so.”

He waited, heart in his throat and every second feeling like a day. Nevena's hands slipped down to his shoulders. She inhaled deeply and there was a distinct quiver in her voice when she released the same breath.

"I can't tell you that." She shook her head, opening her eyes slowly. Cullen saw there were watering and quickly dabbed the corners of her eyes with his thumbs. "I can't tell you I don't feel anything, because I do. But..."

Cullen's stomach sank to his feet. "But...?" he repeated. Why did there have to be a but?

"I'm terrified." The corner of her mouth quirked upwards. "With what happened in the past and... And I'm scared of letting myself give in to... in to this. I've never felt anything like this before and I've tried to ignore it, put it down to the situation we're in. It's intense, and exhilarating and… kind of frightening..." She shrugged feebly, closing her eyes again. "I'm sorry. I know that's not what you want to hear..." Her voice shook, and Cullen could hear her trying not to cry.

"I'm not going to turn into Rick. Or someone like him," Cullen stroked his fingers up and down the column of her neck. "I promise. And I understand the fear... I feel that, too. I would never hurt you like he did, never, ever lay a finger on you. Never force you, or manipulate you, or frighten you." He clenched his eyes closed, trying to find the right words. He struggled to think clearly as all the things he wanted to say wrestled for air. "Maybe this, us, is the universe making reparations for everything we've both been though." He spoke finally, tilting his head to one side. "Don't we at least deserve to give this a chance? Don't we owe ourselves that?"

He waited with bated breath for a response, praying it would be a resounding 'yes' and that the kiss between them just then would not be their last. If the situation wasn't so dire and serious, he would have found it funny. He never expected to be the kind of person to lay his feelings out so blatantly like this. To put his fate in the hands of someone else, and give them the deciding vote. His stomach was turning over and over, nerves making him feel sick.

"You sound so certain and sure." Nevena said, her eyes lowered.

“Because I am… I-I think.”

She sighed, "I wish I could be."

Cullen swallowed thickly, his throat all but closing up. He took slow, measured breaths, fighting to keep his disappointment concealed even as it sank in his chest and made his whole body turn to ice. The warmth he felt was quickly giving way to a cold chill. He straightened up, giving Nevena some space.

"That's a 'no', then," he stated, struggling to keep his voice steady. He breathed out through his nose and a pain sparked behind his eyes. "I understand..." He nodded.

"I didn't say 'no'." Nevena shook her head, voice small. She lifted her gaze to his, her chest heaved and her face was scarlet. "It's... a 'maybe'. I need some time to think it over." She curled a tuft of hair behind one ear. "Is that okay?"

A maybe.

Cullen's sense of disappointment lessened, but only a little. A maybe wasn't a no. It wasn't a yes, either, but most importantly it wasn't a no. That meant there was a possibility. There was hope. It still left them in a kind of limbo, but it was better than a no. Or no answer at all. It was frustrating, but he could live with it. He would live with it. He wouldn't apply pressure for a rushed answer. If this was going to happen, it would happen when they were both happy, and both confident and ready for it.

"Maybe.” He smiled, briefly pressing a kiss to Nevena's forehead. “I can work with ‘maybe’." He squeezed his eyes closed as his lips touched her skin, breathed hard to settle the tempest of confusion roiling inside him and then stepped away. "Do you want to look around the cathedral some more?" he asked, wanting to make the atmosphere lighter and give them both a break from the intense pressure in the room, though how much of a break he could give himself from his feelings was a different matter.

"Sure." Nevena nodded and quickly grabbed her satchel from where she left it on the ground.

When she turned back towards him, Cullen offered her his hand, half expecting her not to take it. Her gaze moved from his outstretched fingers to his face and back several times. He smiled hopefully, waiting for her to make a choice. After pulling her satchel on, Nevena took his hand almost cautiously. Her fingers slipped between his with ease and she gave a small smile.

Cullen's stomach squirmed pleasurably. He wanted to kiss her again but kept the desire at bay. With a resigned and resolute smile, he opened the door to the storage room and led the way back out into the cathedral.

Link to chapter of AO3

Hey everyone~

Thanks for joining me for another chapter of Only Make Believe, I hope you enjoyed it - especially after Cullen’s exquisite faux pas in the previous chapter.

I’m sorry if updates are a bit sporadic at the moment. Between work, and massive writer's block it’s been tough to get a schedule. I’m over the half-way mark of my buffer chapters, which makes me uncomfortable (I have 30 chapters written, over 15 uploaded and the ending planned, its just getting it written down). I just hope I get my mojo back soon.

Anyway, I hope you enjoyed this chapter, such as it is. Where things go from here is anyone’s guess - but I’d love to hear your predictions or your hopes. XD Leave a comment, or reblog with your thoughts! I love to read them. 

Thanks again for reading. I hope you enjoyed, and see you in the next chapter. :3

Also, if you’re enjoying Only Make Believe, or any of the other fics I upload, I have a donation page set up on Ko-Fi, if you feel like offering some support. I’m not going to hold chapters to ransom, or anything - but if you like what you read, maybe think about it. It would help out a lot with bills and stuff. Bluster’s Ko-Fi

[csprofstudy]

Professional Practice Blog Week 2

PRICING: WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW

To provide context, Louise wrote and read out a dummy email request from a company for an artist to provide an illustration to market a new building in Belfast; it made it clear that a number of artists would be approached.

Louise explained this is usual practice, so email responses needed to give careful consideration to the brief and to pricing.

Task

In small groups of 2 or 3, we had 20 minutes to work out a suitable response to the request, including questions about the job and details of pricing. It was hard as we were working without much information, so we had to research the company, clarify the brief and think about the process of costing a project, which was a completely new area of experience for most of us. Louise gave us individual advice about what we needed to consider and explained how to decode the email in order to ask the right questions e.g. how the art work might actually be used as this was not made clear in the initial email.

She gave us a useful analogy to demonstrate how we need to cover all possible angles before moving forward with a theme.

Outcome

I felt a bit panicked about the task as it was outside my comfort zone, but Louise was really reassuring and explained to us that the exercise was all about being supported, not judged – to ‘fill in the gaps in people’s knowledge’ not to write a ‘perfect email’. This helped me to feel more confident. We looked again at the brief and tried to put ourselves in the role of illustrator; we realized there were things which needed to be confirmed such as the measurements of the piece required, where it was going to be placed and for how long, whether any other use was going to be made of the image…..so we bullet pointed these.

We weren’t sure whether money should be raised at this early stage.

When the task was completed, we then shared these emails on a board. One person from each group had to explain what was on the paper and one person had to write down a summary of the points ‘a club secretary’. Louise went through the points and explained what worked well and what needed more thought e.g. perhaps don’t talk about projected earnings before you have got the job! It was useful to hear others’ viewpoints and to hear Louise’s explanations about why particular points would be better raised later in the process – e.g. colour schemes.

Summary below of important details omitted, which we should have raised as questions in our email response:

Detailed specification – exact measurements/dimensions/content of piece?

Usage of the work - where/how it will be reproduced e.g. postcards (free to public?). Why layering? Animation intention? Copyright?

 Exact timescale?

Nature of (hotel) space? Visuals required. Wallpaper – where is it going?

Target audience? Breadth of market?

This was really useful as a general guideline about what to look for if approached by an artistic director and could be applied later on to a real-life scenario. I also learnt more key points from Louise’s verbal feedback about email responses to potential clients:

Prioritise information in emails – try to write points down in order of importance.

Questions should help you to decide on pricing so bear this in mind.

 ‘Decode the email’. e.g. in this case, the request for a 50 word artist summary shows the client/response required was high end.

Research your client.

Remember the aim of an email is to secure the job. Tone should be friendly/direct.

Louise handed out a summary sheet, good for going over and expanding points raised through the task, giving us more pointers to keep safe for future reference. Further key points I learnt that an illustrator should always consider when deciding on pricing:

Do you retain copyright or is it a buy out – partial or one time? A full buy out means you lose ownership.

Usage is important. Is your work going to be used for a seat cover, mural, magazine? Money increases if use is complex or in multiple locations.

Where is your work visible and for how long? Ask about ‘territories’ – local or global? Bigger audience means more money for client, so artist should be paid more.

Terms of payment should be made later on in the process.

Payment normally 30 days after project. May differ if long timeframe, so you might need to ask for payments to be split to cover rough and final stages as you have to eat!

Price according to your desire for job.

Exposure is important but be careful about giving ‘free’ work unless it is going to be of benefit to you.

Mark-ups happen. Agencies usually take commission, so push price upwards to cover this.

All of these points were completely new to me and so valuable to have them made clearly and logically. It suddenly brought the outside world inside, which was frightening and exciting at the same time. 

Until now we have been drawing, painting and printing in a very secure little bubble! Louise has burst this, but in a good way, giving us a look into the future ahead and guidance to help us find our way through the tricky bits.

Finally  - today a project was set: Pop-up shop/event

Before Xmas Louise asked the group to organise a pop-up shop/event where we would all have a presence. We had to find a venue either in the uni – such as the Atrium space, or outside the uni, through personal contacts - and produce work for that – zines, prints, cards. We were told we could use existing work and put it into saleable format. 

Louise asked us to elect 4 or 5 key people for roles – research, money, manning pop up etc. and set up meetings. There was some argument about groupings as people wanted smaller groups and Louise said we could be flexible, but it might make organisation more difficult. Everybody was to produce at least one piece of work – maybe in a zine. Costs would be funded by the uni.

Outcome.

I had a meeting with my small group and we decided to create a Facebook group for communication. Although we did get as far as creating  the group, it sort of fizzled out and we ended up being caught up in our other projects. I did complete a sketch of our puppy asleep in readiness for the show as I thought it might be a popular Xmas gift if scanned and copied onto card as pets (and labs especially) are so popular; however, I didn’t get to use it.

I think the idea of a big group with some key organisers to whom we submitted work would have been more effective and manageable. As I am not good at pushing myself forward, I waited for the others to push the project forward and when it didn’t happen, I wasn’t sure what to do next. 

I have learnt several things from this experience:

         Be brave and challenge my comfort zone

         Be proactive, don’t wait for others to lead

         Be self-reliant  

         Make sure clear structures are in place for any project, with a  series            of  meetings put in place in advance from the very start of the project          to competition. 

Careful planning will ensure the project reaches the end point…….After our first meeting, we needed to set definite dates for the following meetings in order to fulfil our aims.

[zak-graphicarts]

Sam Elston: Drawing People & Writing Thoughts

In this post, I’m looking at local artist Sam Elston, his portfolio of work and the importance of drawing from life for inspiration.

Self-portrait. (2018). Taken from https://www.instagram.com/p/BiRoFLGDRK_/?taken-by=samelston_

Based in Essex, artist Sam Elston produces incredibly energetic and expressive illustrations and sketches. His works have an appealing dynamic aesthetic, with loose linework and gestural marks. He’s interested in capturing the everyday - and as such, he’s only got a limited time to sketch that fleeting image before it fades away. This kinetic, rapid approach to drawing can be best seen through a more recent example of his work, Interests are Interesting.

The use of muted, flat greys and greens give the piece a dull aesthetic, something which reflects the ‘everyday’ quite effectively. This is doubly true then riding a public bus, where life seems it’s most banal. The lines look as if they could move at any moment, with scribbled marks creating an inherently exciting and dramatic atmosphere - even when it’s just a bus driver and his pin collection. This plays a part in the successes of the artist’s entire portfolio, I think. He takes moments from everyday life, ones which we tend to overlook, and forget to admire in the hustle and bustle of our daily lives, and illustrates these in loose, observational comics.

This same dull, flat theme can be seen in a few of his works, most notably Steel Grey Day - a piece with his signature hand-drawn aesthetic, with clear mark making that creates an effective, lo-fi and naive finish to the work. The hint of colour gives the comic a focus, but blends in well with the dull tones of the rest of the piece. Real life isn’t in greyscale, obviously, and the subtle muted blue gives a life which still feels very monotonous, and weirdly, grey.

Along with these hand-rendered pieces, Sam is able to make subtle commentary on everyday life - writing his thoughts whilst drawing which creates sublime works of visual poetry: his observational comics in particular could be considered the comic equivalent of a haiku, with loose, scribbled images of everyday life accompanied by imaginative and ambiguous thoughts working together to throw the audience into Sam’s shoes.

These observational comics inspired me in particular, and over the Easter break I decided to produce a few more, inspired by the ideas behind the artist’s work. In these pieces, I adopted an aesthetic from one of Sam’s earlier works, Faces, a simple exercise in which he went out and began drawing people in cafes, as reference for another project. These have a confident, bold line quality that I found visually quite interesting - and I think with a Sharpie there’s a spontaneity in your marks - you’ve just got to start drawing, without any planning or sketching first. There’s an honesty in the process that I like, and so decided to adopt it in my own comics.

Faces. (2017). Sam Elston.

Through this, I produced several of these ‘observational comics’, and found it to be quite a fun exercise - most importantly, it made observational drawing interesting and fresh for me as a graphic artist. Normally this is where I’d go into more depth on the artist’s portfolio, but I decided to contact Sam via email and we were able to talk about his work, why he started making observational comics, his influences and a quick review of my own art.

To begin, I asked why Sam started creating observational comics - if it helped with composition or characters. ‘At the start I just wanted to improve my drawing skills to try and find a consistency in the drawings I was doing, so I started drawing a page a day in an A6 Sketchbook - which gave me a size restriction and I suppose started the whole panel thing. I was never very good at making up stuff straight from my head and found it much easier to just pause and draw whatever was in front of me at a set time each day.’

It seems like it wasn’t really a conscious idea to make it a comic - it just happened through the format he was using. This is quite an interesting idea, and none of the artists he goes on to mention follow this panelled structure - suggesting this was his own personal touch.

This regular drawing helped Sam build his confidence and speed with his sketches, who began playing around with the composition of the page. ‘At this time, I would mainly draw things rather than people because I would take longer and people move all the time. At the same time I wouldn't let myself spend more than around 5/10 minutes on each drawing otherwise I’d end up never finishing it.’

Adding a time limit seems to breed creativity - this is something that I’ve begun doing in life drawing classes and my own work, and the challenge forces you to capture a specific subject or person in the quickest way possible. This idea of timing yourself for a drawing is perfectly expressed in the comics I’ve discussed already, thinking about the expressive and scribbled marks in Interests are Interesting especially. 

‘I came across Robert Weaver by accident when I was looking in a 'lots of artists in a book' book and really liked his Reportage work and then found 'Robert Weaver: A Pedestrian View' which is a book that has more of his personal work in. When I saw this stuff, something just made sense and realised that I could add text to what I was drawing and it didn't really need to make complete sense or have a big narrative, it could still be as natural as just sitting down and drawing except now it would be a case of, draw what is in front of you and write down what you're thinking.’

This summarises Elston’s work perfectly - draw what’s infront of you, and write down your thoughts whilst doing so. He’s clearly not taking the aesthetic from Weaver, however - with his examples in A Pedestrian View staying true to a sense of realism, with an acrylic still life aesthetic illustrating anonymous legs in a constant state of motion, manholes and police barricades. There’s splashes of colour to add life to the composition, but his works echo more of a still life painting than an energetic moment in our everyday lives, as Sam’s does. 

Up until this point, Sam had been strictly drawing from life - not writing from it. Seeing Weaver’s works, however, inspired him to stop worrying about a linear narrative and begin writing his own thoughts in addition to his comics, creating a series of works which took the idea of an observational comic in a very traditional place. These examples are rather cinematic and introspective, acting almost as a camera pan around his home town as the naive, wobbly lines illustrate seemingly banal scenes of coffee machines and Chinese takeaways.

‘So I would try and do a full spread per day and write down what I was thinking at the time of drawing. At this point, I had planned to make what I drew in this sketchbook into a zine so started playing with panel size and the flow of it from page to page so that it looked more like a comic than the stuff before but I think it was more along the lines of a visual diary.’

At this point, Elston was avoiding drawing people, due to the fact that they move around and it’s quite an unnerving activity for the first few times you try it. This is a sentiment that I share, but exploring Sam’s work and discussing how to approach observational drawing made me go out and draw people in my sketchbook, using the same loose style.

Discussing his more recent influences, Sam mentioned the work of artist Joost Stokhof - an artist who draws and writes things on an A4 page until he’s filled it, with the compositions hinting at storylines and bigger narrative, drawn from life. Looking at Stokhof’s work, I can see a clear influence on Sam’s more recent work - which abandon the traditional panelled approach to comics and show a more spacious, loose composition. Sam’s keeping with the scratchy and scribbled aesthetic, however, which allows his art to stand apart from the somewhat more refined, linear and minimal line work from Stokhof’s examples.

I think responding to an artist’s visual style can be exciting, but it’s more interesting, to me, at least, when we incorporate an artist’s philosophy and thought process to our own work. This way, we’re able to move past mimicry and a purely superficial line of enquiry and visual analysis and hit more distinctive areas when responding to our research.

An idea that I’ve found to be strictly Sam’s own, however, is the use of a ‘cardboard view finder’ to create the compositions for his comics. This struck me as an original and creative approach to the medium, so I asked why he began using it. “If I’m in a slump, I use the viewfinder to help me find interesting compositions as it can be hard to see them when you can see everything at once, I think a lot of it is about giving yourself restrictions whether that is time, size or focus points.”

An example of one of Sam’s viewfinders

That last part was one of the most important ideas to take away from the conversation, I think. As artists, when we give ourselves restrictions we force ourselves to step out of our comfort zone and be creative in ways we aren’t used to. When I begin designing characters, I’ll be following Sam’s practice and giving myself a time limit on each sketch, keeping the illustrations expressive and loose.

“As for a reason why [I make comics], I think it's to keep me drawing as there is no excuse not to, if all it is is what is in front of you, it can become a very cathartic process if you let it - I think it would be a good thing to start and try and keep a Visual Diary as it gives you space to try stuff out that can help inform your practice and it should definitely help to free you up and grow your confidence and speed with drawing.’

I asked about drawing people - his process, experience and any tips. “Coffee shops are good if you sit in a corner where you can see lots of people (they're normally all too busy talking so you can stare at them easily) or sit at a window then you can draw people outside. To loosen up and warm up at the start draw 10 faces in 10 minutes (they might not turn out any good or they might - who cares because they're warm-ups) get a sketchbook just for warm ups if you don't want to draw straight into your main one. If you think they are going to drastically move or leave half way through you drawing them - take a sneaky picture and use that instead. For practice, draw from pictures but only give yourself a few minutes.’  

Coffee Shop Drawings. (2018). Sam Elston.

This is something that Sam’s put a recent focus on, producing quick studies of people in cafes. Drawing people is something I’ve been working on throughout this project, something which, previously, had always been rather intimidating to me. All the animation tutors I’ve spoken to have stressed the importance and value of drawing people as a great exercise for animators - and so this is something I’ve been trying to keep up with on a regular basis. It’s a good way to develop ideas for characters, but also I’ve found it helps to develop skills in gestural and figure drawing - as I only have a few moments to sketch someone before they walk past.

Finally, I asked Sam to make an overall comment on my work, shown on Instagram.

‘It's really good that you're letting your own personal interests feed into the work your creating (if that makes sense? Like, I can see that you do actually have an interest in film and animation because of the work you're making and the research you're doing.) so I would try and continue to do that and see how you can push that further.’ This was an idea I hadn’t even considered about my work - that it conveys to the audience not only an interesting work, but my own passion for the craft, and subjects I’m exploring. He’s basically saying to continue to explore my own interests in my practical work - and that’s essentially what I’m doing with Exquisite Walks, exploring the potential of a walk cycle in animation in exciting new ways.

‘By the looks of it, you've got pretty good digital skills to be able to put together the animations, videos and digital drawings so keep that going and see how you can combine traditional and digital methods together in the work you make - which I can see you've been starting to do with the Moonlight animation tests. Illustratively, you're getting a good confidence in your line work. I think FMP will be a great time for you to step out of your comfort zone and try and learn something new because you've got a good skill set to work with that will be worth pushing. ‘

A few of my works that Sam is discussing. 

‘Learning something new’ is essentially the mantra for my FMP, as I’m drawing people from observation, learning new animation techniques and I’ll be exploring how to make a stop motion puppet - pushing my 3D skills further than I’ve ever done before. It’s not something that I’m particularly confident with, and is probably one of the biggest ways I could ‘step out of my comfort zone’ with an animation project. It will be a challenge, but that’s how we grow as artists.

A little project of Sam’s that I was particularly inspired by was his ink warm ups, using a brush and ink to produce quick character sketches. This is something that I found really interesting, and wanted to incorporate as a warm up for my own character designs. The challenge comes from the time limit, use of a brush instead of a pencil, and the camera watching your every move - it’s a timelapse so just recording your process forces you to work in Sam’s signature ‘loose’ approach.

There’s no time to think when you’re on camera, and as result, my pieces possess a loose, fluid line and uneven, quick ink aesthetic. These are just warm up sketches, but it’s an exercise which allowed me to get ‘loose’ in a mindset sense additionally to my linework - working in an autonomous, instinctual manner like my compositions with the Abstract Aesthetics workshop. They’re quick sketches, and they obviously have value through these quick approach - but there’s a difference between lose and ‘bad’. It’s a fine line, and I think it’s a line that I’m skirting with a few examples. With the brush size that I was using, I should have focused on heads and faces - the few body illustrations I attempted look very amateur and crude in comparison to my other examples.

This is a process that I’ll continue to use as I progress through my FMP, as it challenges me to abandon my structured predisposition and ‘get loose’ with my drawings. Brush and ink is a medium that I’m yet to feel comfortable with, and results in a distinctive, visually exciting aesthetic and imaginative, aloof designs, not responding to anything other than my own thoughts.

Through this online discussion, and looking at Sam Elston’s portfolio of work and producing my own observational comics, I’ve learnt the value of drawing from life for inspiration. There’s a wealth of ideas to draw from when we respond to things and people around us - an honesty and substance that results when we’re producing our own research. A key idea that we’ve discussed in class is how primary research is essential for a successful, distinctive self-led project, and I will continue to draw from life as I begin to develop character designs from my own observational sketches, and recorded walk cycles.

This also marks the first time I’ve been able to conduct my own primary artist research, contacting Sam and discussing his process first hand. Not only was this to hit the higher grading criteria of the brief, but also to make my research more valuable and useful to me as an artist. I was able to discuss his thought process and get some ideas for my own developments into character design, in a way that moves past simply reading from a website article.

Whats next? Having explored the work of Sam Elston in detail as an artist case study, I’ll be focusing on creating character sketches and developing these into several designs for my animation. With this, and my contextual research into the idea of an Exquisite Corpse and Richard William’s approach to a walk cycle, I’m shifting my focus into producing exciting practical outcomes - creating character designs and learning new animation techniques.

Recently, I was able to attend a street art tour in London exploring some of the world’s most exciting works of graffiti and street art. This was a great experience, and introduced me to a handful of interesting artists that I plan to briefly discuss in an upcoming blog post.

Actions

In my sketchbook, continue to draw people from observation following Sam’s challenges

Create several character designs in response to these drawings, using a time limit to produce a series of designs with a range of materials

Write about the London Street Art Tour, discussing key artists that I found exciting e.g. Nathan Bowen and MCLN.

New References

Weaver, W., 2013. Robert Weaver. Distributed Art Pub Inc.

Self-portrait. (2018). Sam Elston.