#sorry these are getting more and more impressionistic (?) i draw like 3 of these in one sitting so i can have days off to do other art iagj

[verndusk]

Re-drawing a screenshot from The Bad Batch everday until season 3 comes out: day 42

[tedlebred]

if youre comfortable sharing, whats your rendering process? what are some ways you learned? your art is very yummy

HSHSHHSHS hello!!!!!!!!!! first off omg,,,, thank you so much,,,,🤭🤭

secondly!!!! heres my attempt at a rendering process explanation. uhm. warning ive never really been asked to explain it before please bare with me

BUT. here goes. this'll probably be ungodly long apologies

so when i render my biggest rule is basically Do Not Blend Ever. what i do is do my sketch, then flats, then basic placement of blush/shadows+darkest parts/etc and then i go in and just colourpick the inbetweens+place them between colours in small strokes until the changes in colour don't look too sharp/jarring

here's some examples of the process;;;

(still a wip but HSHSHHS) so i work on 3 layers primarily (sometimes i do the hair+items that cover the face on another layer, too, though they might end up getting merged):

^ with just the sketch layer n flats / and then with the render layer added

i go in with a bigger brush to block in colour variation on the face on the flats layer and then paint over that, as well as over the sketch, with smaller strokes on a render layer- i never do lineart lol, and any "lineart" thats visible is just the sketch peeking through. I try to rely on colour and shadow to create shapes and boundaries instead of lines though this isn’t a hard and fast rule.

i also try to stick to the same pallette the entire drawing- once the flats and shadows are first roughly blocked in all the other tones/midshades/colours are basically just inbetweens picked directly from the drawing. Just me zooming in real close till I can see the pixels and colour picking where they sort of mix. (any smaller shifts in hue/tones are just colours with saturation slightly turned up or down, usually) im also not sure if this helps but i use the Sol brush from the clip studio assets store for literally everything from sketch to render, which is basically just a slightly soft opacity brush which ive deluded myself into thinking helps give my art a softer look. idfk if it does or not.:)

I like to use really saturated blush and for shadows I usually use two base colours; a warmer one and a colder one- a warmer one for smaller shadows and shadows near light and then colder ones for planes more in darkness. Also, usually, at the very end of the drawing I’ll add a layer that’s just fully yellow with colour burn or linear burn or multiply turned on and the opacity turned low just to make everything warmer. (a little thing I like doing for shadows sometimes is never making them reach the edge of the plane; the actual edge is usually a slightly lighter shade and it sort of looks like stylised bounce light that would probably not be there but anyhoo)

but yeah,,,, Never Blend But Make It Look Almost Blended. I’ve been doing it forever,,,,,, and I really like the almost shiny feeling it gives things:)))

And where did I learn. Ough. A lot of what I do I figured out through trial and error and just drawing a bunch (IM SORRY THATS REALLY NOT HELPFUL) but some sources I looked towards were sinix design and bluebiscuits on YouTube!!!!! Sinix has a really good video on rendering skin which is where I sort of took my principles from and ran. And bluebiscuits was a huge inspiration for me when I started trying to render things beyond flats!!!!!!! They’re also where I found the sol brush, lol. Also just,,, the impressionist movement as a whole is a massive inspiration. The use of light and shapes to create form is just,,, omg. Especially Claude Monet in particular. (and for the basics of drawing I learnt from my aunt!)

and honestly, just observing people. A lot of the time when I’m watching a movie or on a walk or even just talking with someone I tend to start looking at their face, and the different planes, how light hits it and how shadow interacts with it, where the shadows are harsher/softer……….people are wild man

I really hope that made sense!!!!!! I’ve never tried explaining it before and honestly, I’m not even really sure how I do it. I just sorta. Switch off and start drawing, yk? BUT I HOPE IT HELPED!!!!🫶🫶💞💖

in case that was all utter nonsense here’s a speedpaint that’ll hopefully demonstrate my process;;

I also have straight up screen recordings of me drawing but. I don’t think anyone wants to sit though that

thank you for the ask!!!!!have a nice day/night and SORRY THAT ENDED UP THAT LONG

[ramadoodles]

Grave errors: Or how to learn an entirely new art movement in 30 days or so

Hi guys. Sorry about the month-long hiatus.

I have several excuses prepared for it which I will not bore you with, because I have figured out the reason why I was delaying my posts.

The reason I have been delaying the cubism series, is because cubism is hard. It's like an expanding book, the deeper i dive into it, the broader the field gets. And considering the attention span of people on the internet, I don't want to dive too deep and make the post too big, because I have grown attached to the amount of likes and reblogs I receive on these posts.

So finally I gave up and asked a proper professional for advice about how to go about learning an entire new field of art with almost prior knowledge. Here are the tips that I learned from them, which I hope I can pass on so that you do not make the same mistakes that I have made.

(Also in case the professional in question is reading this- in case I got anything wrong, please let me know!)

Tip 1: There are multiple levels to understanding an art movement.

Level 1- Conception

This level is achieved by the original artist or artists who start thinking "what if I take these disparate concepts and combine them into something entirely new and never before seen?" Think Picasso combining African masks and impressionist paintings (or, as it was explained to a nerd like me, think of Einstein wondering what light would look like if he travelled alongside it, a precursor to his developing the theory of relativity.) Understandably, we students can't achieve this level of understanding of an already developed movement.

Level 2- Style development

After Brach and Picasso developed their first line of funky new cubist paintings, a whole bunch of artists decided to copy them and understand how they were made. They were really focused on the nitty-gritties- a cubist painting is made of multiple distorted perspectives of an object, but how many perspectives? How much distortion? How much of the object is still understandable?

After they learned the exact technique that pucasso and brach had used, these artists started experimenting with the rules by adding more distortion, fewer perspectives, more color, removing all semblance of the original object, etc. From this level, two subcategories were developed, Analytical and Synthetic Cubism, but that's not really as important.

What's important is understanding how we, as students, can achieve level 2 understanding of any art movement- by understanding the exact rules of how these paintings are made, and then experimenting with them. That requires copying (ideally) many different paintings of a variety of subcategories inside the art movement. I'm currently doing this, and progressing much faster in three days than I have in the last three weeks.

Level 3- Mannerism

The basest understanding of an art movement. Imagine if you simply added a bunch of geometrical faces to a drawing of say, an apple, and claimed that it was a cubist drawing🥲. (I'd link my own apple drawing as an example, but I'm not going to shame myself that much.) To come back to my Einstein example from level 1, imagine if someone told you "Einstein is famous for inventing the theory of relativity, E=mc^2" and could not tell you what E, m or c were supposed to be. And the level of visceral rage a scientist would feel at that remark, is probably what an artist feels every time they hear about cubism being a bunch of blocks stacked on each other. I feel deep sympathy for artists now🥲.

Moving on from my self-pity, if you want to avoid falling into the trap of this style of art, then you need to draw as many paintings of your chosen art movement as possible. They need to be of a large variety, and also not too difficult for you to get discouraged. (Trust me, I learnt it the hard way.)

I'll put up a list of paintings that I'm going to start copying tomorrow morning. I should churn out one every two days if I regular about this, so hopefully you can expect regular posts from now on. Let's see how it goes.

Tip 2: Art movements tend to be reactionary.

That is, they tend to oppose whatever art movement came before them. To make it more understandable, you know how fashion always cycles every twenty years, and whatever was popular ten years ago is hated today, only to be loved ten years from now? Art has a similar concept.

How is this useful to us? When you're looking at an art movement, it's always a good idea to look at the movement which came before it, which it is now opposing. It helps you to get a better sense of the movement you're trying to understand. I haven't gotten far enough to try this out yet, but i'll make a post on it when I do.

That's all for today, i'm dead tired. Goodnight y'all.

[pumpkinpaix]

Hello! Feel free not to answer this question if it is in any way too much, but I've been wondering about something concerning the "western" mdzs fandom. Lately, i have seen multiple pieces of fanart that use what is clearly Christian symbolism and sometimes downright iconography in depicting the characters. I'm a european fan, but it still makes me vaguely uneasy. I know that these things are rarely easy to judge. I'm definitely not qualified to do so and was wondering if you have an opinion

Hi there! thank you for your patience and for the interesting question! I’ve been thinking about this since i received this ask because it?? idk, it’s difficult to answer, but it also touches on a a few things that I find really interesting.

the short answer: it’s complicated, and I also don’t know what I feel!

the longer answer:

i think that this question is particularly difficult to answer because of how deeply christianity is tied to the western art and literary canon. so much of what is considered great european art is christian art! If you just take a quick glance at wiki’s page on european art, you can see how inextricable christianity is, and how integral christian iconography has been in the history of european art. If you study western art history, you must study christian imagery and christian canon because it’s just impossible to engage with a lot of the work in a meaningful way without it. that’s just the reality of it.

Christianity, of course, also has a strong presence in european colonial and imperialist history and has been used as a tool of oppression against many peoples and nations, including China. I would be lying if I said I had a good relationship with Christianity--I have always faced it with a deep suspicion because I think it did some very, very real damage, not just to chinese people, but to many cultures and peoples around the world, and that’s not a trauma that can be easily brushed aside or reconciled with.

here is what is also true: my maternal grandmother was devoutly christian. my aunt is devoutly christian. my uncle’s family is devoutly christian. my favorite cousin is devoutly christian. when I attended my cousin’s wedding, he had both a traditional chinese ceremony (tea-serving, bride-fetching, ABSURDLY long reception), and also a christian ceremony in a church. christianity is a really important part of his life, just as it’s important to my uncle’s family, and as it was important to my grandmother. I don’t think it’s my right or place to label them as simply victims of a colonialist past--they’re real people with real agency and choice and beliefs. I think it would be disrespectful to act otherwise.

that doesn’t negate the harm that christianity has done--but it does complicate things. is it inherently a bad thing that they’re christian, due to the political history of the religion and their heritage? that’s... not a question I’m really interested in debating. the fact remains that they are christian, that they are chinese, and that they chose their religion.

so! now here we are with mdzs, a chinese piece of media that is clearly Not christian, but is quickly gaining popularity in euroamerican spaces. people are making fanart! people are making A LOT of fanart! and art is, by nature, intertextual. a lot of the most interesting art (imo) makes deliberate use of that! for example (cyan art nerdery time let’s go), Nikolai Ge’s What is Truth?

I love this painting! it’s notable for its unusual depiction of christ: shabby, unkempt, slouched, in shadow. if you look for other paintings of this scene, christ is usually dignified, elegant, beautiful, melancholy -- there’s something very humanizing and humbling about this depiction, specifically because of the way it contrasts the standard. it’s powerful because we as the audience are expected to be familiar with the iconography of this scene, the story behind it, and its place in the christian canon.

you can make similar comments about Gentileschi’s Judith vs Caravaggio’s, or Manet’s Olympia vs Ingres’ Grande Odalisque -- all of these paintings exist in relation to one another and also to the larger canon (i’m simplifying: you can’t just compare one to another directly in isolation etc etc.) Gauguin’s Jacob Wrestling the Angel is also especially interesting because of how its portrayal of its content contrasts to its predecessors!

or! because i’m really In It now, one of my favorite paintings in the world, Joan of Arc by Bastien-Lepage:

I just!!! gosh, idk, what’s most interesting to me in this painting is the way it seems to hover between movements: the hyperrealistic, neoclassical-esque take on the figure, but the impressionistic brushstrokes of the background AAA gosh i love it so much. it’s really beautiful if you ever get a chance to see it in person at the Met. i’m putting this here both because i personally just really like it and also as an example of how intertextuality isn’t just about content, but also about visual elements.

anyways, sorry most of this is 19thc, that was what i studied the most lol.

(a final note: if you want to read about a really interesting painting that sits in the midst of just a Lot of different works, check out the wiki page on Géricault’s Raft of the Medusa, specifically under “Interpretation and Legacy”)

this is all a really long-winded way of getting to this point: if you want to make allusory fanart of mdzs with regards to western art canon, you kind of have to go out of your way to avoid christian imagery/iconography, especially when that’s the lens through which a lot of really intensely emotional art was created. many of my favorite paintings are christian: Vrubel’s Demon, Seated, Perov’s Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane, Ge’s Conscience, Judas, Bastien-Lepage’s Joan of Arc, as shown above. that’s not to say there ISN’T plenty of non-christian art -- but christian art is very prominent and impossible to ignore.

so here are a few pieces of fanwork that I’ve seen that are very clearly making allusions to christian imagery:

1. this beautiful pietà nielan by tinynarwhals on twitter

2. a lovely jiang yanli as our lady of tears by @satuwilhelmiina

3. my second gif in this set here, which I will also show below:

i’m only going to talk about mine in depth because well, i know exactly what i was thinking when I put this gif together while I can’t speak for anyone else.

first: the two lines of the song that I wanted to use for lan xichen were “baby, I’m a fighter//in the robes of a saint” because i felt that they fit him very well. of course, just the word “saint” evokes catholicism, even if it’s become so entwined in the english language that it’s taken on a secular meaning as well.

second: when I saw this scene, my immediate thought was just “PIETÀ!!” because LOOK at that composition! lan xichen’s lap! nie mingjue lying perpendicular to it! the light blue/white/silver of lan xichen in contrast to the darker robes of both nie mingjue and meng yao! not just that, but the very cool triangular structure of the image is intensely striking, and Yes, i Do love that it simultaneously ALSO evokes deposition of christ vibes. (baxia as the cross.... god..... is that not the Tightest Shit) does this make meng yao joseph of arimathea? does it make him john the evangelist? both options are equally interesting, I think when viewed in relation to his roles in the story: as a spy in qishan and as nmj’s deputy. maybe he’s both.

anyways, did I do this intentionally? yes, though a lot of it is happy accident/discovered after the fact since I’m relying on CQL to have provided the image. i wanted to draw attention to all of that by superimposing that line over that image! (to be clear: I didn’t expect it to all come through because like. that’s ridiculous. the layers you’d have to go through to get from “pretty lxc gifset” --> “if we cast nie mingjue as a christ figure, what is the interesting commentary we could do on meng yao by casting him as either joseph of arimathea or john the evangelist” are like. ok ur gonna need to work a little harder than slapping a song lyric over an image to achieve an effect like that.)

the point of this is: yes, it’s intentionally christian, yes I did this, yes I am casting these very much non-christian characters into christian roles for this specific visual work -- is this okay?

I obviously thought it was because I made it. but would I feel the same about a work that was written doing something similar? probably not. I think that would make me quite uncomfortable in most situations. but there’s something about visual art that makes it slightly different that I have trouble articulating -- something about how the visual often seeks to illustrate parallels or ideas, whereas writing characters as a different religion can fundamentally change who those characters are, the world they inhabit, etc. in a more... invasive?? way. that’s still not quite right, but I genuinely am not sure how to explain what i mean! I hope the general idea comes across. ><

something else to think about is like, what are pieces I find acceptable and why?

what makes the pieces above that reference christian imagery different than this stunning nieyao piece by @cyandemise after klimt’s kiss? (warnings for like, dead bodies and vague body horror) like i ADORE this piece (PLEASE click for fullview it’s worth it for the quality). it’s incredibly beautiful and evocative and very obviously references a piece of european art. I have no problem with it. why? because it isn’t explicitly christian? it’s still deeply entrenched in western canon. klimt certainly made other pieces that were explicit christian references.

another piece I’d like to invite you all to consider is this incredible naruto fanart of sakura and ino beheading sasuke after caravaggio’s judith. (warnings for beheading, blood, etc. you know.) i also adore this piece! i think it’s very good both technically and conceptually. the reference that it makes has a real power when viewed in relation to the roles of the characters in their original story -- seeing the women that sasuke fucked over and treated so disrespectfully collaborating in his demise Says Something. this is also!! an explicitly christian reference made with non-christian japanese characters. is this okay? does it evoke the same discomfort as seeing mdzs characters being drawn with christian iconography? why or why not?

the point is, I don’t think there’s a neat answer, but I do think there are a lot of interesting issues surrounding cultural erasure/hegemony that are raised by this question. i don’t think there are easy resolutions to any of them either, but I think that it’s a good opportunity to reexamine our own discomfort and try and see where it comes from. all emotions are valid but not all are justified etc. so I try to ask, is it fair? do i apply my criticisms and standards equally? why or why not? does it do real harm, or do i just not like it? what makes one work okay and another not?

i’ve felt that there’s a real danger with the kind of like, deep moral scrutiny of recent years in quashing interesting work in the name of fear. this morality tends to be expressed in black and white, good and bad dichotomies that i really do think stymies meaningful conversation and progress. you’ll often see angry takes that boil down to things like, “POC good, queer people good, white people bad, christianity bad” etc. without a serious critical examination of the actual issues at hand. I feel that these are extraordinarily harmful simplifications that can lead to an increased insularity that isn’t necessarily good for anyone. there’s a fine line between asking people to stay in their lane and cultural gatekeeping sometimes, and I think that it’s something we should be mindful of when we’re engaging in conversations about cultural erasure, appropriation etc.

PERHAPS IT IS OBVIOUS that I have no idea where that line falls LMAO since after all that rambling I have given you basically nothing. but! I hope that you found it interesting at least, and that it gives you a bit more material to think on while you figure out where you stand ahaha.

was this just an excuse to show off cool (fan)art i like? maybe ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

(ko-fi)

[thevikingwoman]

Fandom: Dragon Age. Words: 3303 (this part)

Part 1 | Part 3 || read on Ao3

(art by @destinyapostasy​ banner by me)

Solas x Iwyn Lavellan | vampire AU | smut with feelings Rating: Explicit. Sex, painting, oral sex, biting/blood during sex, vampire stuff, very light dom/sub, sub!Solas, a bit of begging, light angst

Comfort, part 2

Iwyn watches as Solas works in the kitchen. He makes himself a hearty breakfast. Eggs, toast, mushrooms, bacon. She approves. It smells divine and she regrets not needing to eat any of it. She does accept a mug of coffee, black. Solas adds milk and 3 teaspoons of sugar to his. She’s comfortable watching him, snug in one of his sweaters.

He is a puzzle, she decides. He seems far too self-assured, too comfortable, too measured and calm to get drunk in bars, to invite someone home without a thought for his own safety. To allow her into his home and his bed, to allow her to bite him.

“So, you’re an artist?” She gestures behind her, to the hallway and the glimpse of paint and canvases in a work area, of beautiful finished paintings.

“Not really.” He shakes his head. “It’s… a hobby. I’m an investment banker. Or was.”

“Was?”

“Another partner and I was working to shut down some of the more unethical aspects of the company. The she had an… accident. I proceeded to uncover every dishonest transaction and business, and it brought the company down. I am jobless, for now.”

He shrugs, but his nonchalance is careful and deliberate.

“You don’t believe it was an accident.”

He looks up at her.

“No.” His voice is full of a deep sorrow.

“Were you close with this person? The partner.”

“She was a friend.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to bring up painful memories.”

“It’s no matter. What was done was done. And now I am out of work – no one in the industry would be willing to hire me.”

He shrugs again, and sits down to eat.

She is worried. This does uncover the mystery – the way recklessness seems out of character for him, the weariness she senses in him too. A part of her realizes – no one would miss him, if she missteps. He already gave her his trust, and he shouldn’t have. She ignores that part of her, tells herself she made peace with that a long time ago.

“Aren’t afraid they will retaliate. If they can arrange one accident, there could be another?”

“What happens will happen,” he says, and digs into his eggs.

She doesn’t like this fatalistic attitude one bit. She wants to hunt down the people who hurt him and make them suffer. She doesn’t pretend to ignore this impulse. She might still do it, if only she can find out their names.  

“They already had their revenge,” he says. “None of them can imagine anything worse that being ostracized from the world of finance.”

Her intent must have shown on her face. And she can imagine worse. A lot worse. He doesn’t need to know.

Solas pushes his plate aside.

“Now I’ve had my breakfast” He smirks at her.

“Can I see your art?” she asks. She is curious. She is hungry, yes, but she also wants to know him, before he changes his minds and kicks her out. Not that he can force her out, now that she’s invited in, but she’d respect his wishes. She thinks.

“Of course.” He sounds surprised, like he doesn’t expect her to care about who he is or what he does. She supposes it is fair, given how she is a vampire, and only should care for blood. Or sex, or both.

He uses a spare bedroom as a studio. It is messy, littered with paper, paint, brushes, inks and more materials of all kinds. His works are in many different styles – soft charcoal sketches, impressionistic paintings, a few watercolors, but what draws her eyes is bright art, stylized and different from anything else she has seen.

“These are beautiful, Solas.” They are. The light and the uniqueness. Stylized wolves howling at the moons, bright rays of gold hitting a crumbling castle. “You should take you art to galleries. I’m sure you can sell your art.”

“It’s just a hobby.” He looks like he doesn’t believe her.

“Do you want it to stay a hobby?” She runs a hand up his back, and kisses his neck. His pulse quickens, but she doesn’t bite. “You could start something new.”

“Can I draw you?” he asks suddenly.

“You want me to pose for you?”

“Yes. Please.”

He pulls out a stool, and she sits on it. She’s wearing Solas’ sweater, and it’s too big and slips off her shoulders.

“Do you want me to take this off?”

“No, it’s fine. It looks good. Interesting.”

She tucks up one bare leg, and smiles at him.

“It’ll just a be a quick sketch,” he mumbles, pulling out an easel and securing a piece of heavy sketch paper with two rubber bands. His picks up some pens and charcoal, frowns, and states at her intently. She winks and shows a little teeth. It makes him chuckle and start drawing. His movements are quick and broad and then small and detailed. He’s concentrating and it gives her time to study him. His cheekbones, his strong jaw, and lush lips. His broad shoulders. His throat, two small wounds already almost healed. She was careful, and it will barely leave a scar.

Solas pauses, and notices her staring. He blushes, coloring his cheeks beneath his freckles.

“A little longer,” he says. “Please.”

“I’ve nowhere to be except your bed.”

His blush reaches his ears, but he keeps drawing. He picks up some colored pencils, carefully contemplating the colors before he uses them. Once decided, he’s quick.

“I just need to capture the colors,” he murmurs. “I’ll add details later.”

“Eager for something?”

“Yes.”

He looks at her briefly, then he returns to his sketch. The intent in his eyes makes her impatient too, like he can chase away the cold inside of her. She pushes that aside, and focuses her attention back on him, the confident way his hands move across the paper. It doesn’t take long for him let out a satisfied sigh and put his pencils and charcoal down.

“Thank you,” he says, and shows her his work. It’s her, detailed and accurate. She’s perched on the stool, her leg drawn up as she sat. Her smile reveals a fang and the look in her eyes is dangerous. He captured every part of her, including the one who wants to tackle him to the ground.

“Beautiful.”

“The beauty is all yours.”

She puts the drawing safely on the worktable, and kisses him.

They make it to his bedroom, his curtains securely closed still, and they tumble into his bed. He slides his hands up her legs, underneath his sweater she’s still wearing. He pulls at it.

“Please, I want to touch you.”

“I like this, though. Very cozy.”  

“You can have it, later.”

She laughs, and helps him to pull it off her. His hands returns to her body, warm and large. He teases a nipple, causing her to gasp and want. He follows with his tongue, licking down her throat, lightly sucking her nipple. She wants more, and growls and digs her nails in to his shoulder until he bites. A moan escapes her, and he continues, hand on one breast, his teeth on the other and then down, hot breath against her skin. He slides to his knees in front of her, pulling her legs over the edge of his bed. She shivers in anticipation.

“May I taste you? Please.”

“Yes.”

Iwyn spreads her legs and caress his ears, causing him to moan in turn. He kisses the inside of her thigh, but he’s as impatient as she is, and he quickly finds her sex, wet and ready. He licks up to her clit and he gently sucks. She moans and presses his face to her, and he does not protest and works eagerly. He works one hand under her ass and pulls. her closer. His other hand finds her cunt, and he slides a finger, two fingers into her. She’s so wet for him, her juices coating him in a slippery mess.

“More,” she growls, and she falls backwards on the bed, tilting her hips towards him. He tongues her clit, pressing and sucking, and he pumps his fingers slowly and deep, stroking her. She rides his hand and his face faster, mercilessly, thrashing until she comes against him.

Solas sit back on his haunches and wipes his face in his shirt. He smirks when Iwyn collects herself enough to sit back up, and grabs his shirt and pulls him in for a kiss, tasting herself in his mouth.

“Take off your shirt,” she says, and he does. She kisses him again, and down his jaw and his throat. He trembles and his breath hitches. She wants to bite him, but she doesn’t. Not yet. He wants it too, and that excites her, sends a new bolt of arousal through her body. Too much; she has to be careful.

She nips him with blunt teeth, pushes him on the bed and climbs on top of him.

“My turn to taste you, Solas.”

His hips buck into hers, the hard ridge of his cock pushing against her. She kisses his exposed chest, trailing kisses across his collarbones, worrying his pink nipples. Everything she does make him react, shudder and moan and want. It pleases her, his willingness to take what she offers, his easy need. Iwyn moves down his body, and dips her hands beneath his pants. Solas lifts his hips to help her pull them off him, and he is finally as naked as her, beautiful spread out beneath her.  She runs one finger up his large cock and it jumps, wanting more. She kisses the tip of it, the shaft, teasing and gentle.

Iwyn sits back between Solas legs, her hands on his thighs and she spread them further, making room for her.

“Put your hands above you head and keep them there. If you can.”

Solas nods, and does as he’s told, stretching out, mortal and vulnerable before her.

“Very good,” she says.

Iwyn considers him for the moment, letting him wait. She caresses his thighs with small strokes of her thumbs, until he impatiently tries to lift his hips. He can’t though, supernatural strength allowing her to keep him firmly in his place.

“Please,” he says. “Please touch me.”

“I already am,” she says, and grins at him. She moves her whole hand though, down closer to where his leg joins his crotch, fingers dancing across sensitive skin.

“More,” he whimpers, and his cock flexes impatiently.

She takes mercy on him, and grabs his cock in one hand. It’s hard and heavy and very large and pretty. She caresses the velvet soft skin and pumps lightly, her other hand fondling his balls. She bends over him and kisses the inside of his thigh. She can feel his blood there, pumping rhythmically through his veins.

Iwyn licks up his cock, and takes him in her mouth. Just the tip of him, swirling her tongue around his head. She tastes the saltiness there, and she takes as much of him as she can into her mouth. His cock is thick and long and very hard. She moans in appreciation, reveling in his gasps and groans, and the way her lips stretch around him. She keeps one hand on his hips, holding him in place, and work him slow and fast. His cock pulses in her mouth, and she pulls back, kissing down his other thigh. His pulse jumps when she scrapes blunt teeth along his tender skin.

Iwyn returns to his cock, taking him in her mouth again. Solas gasps her name. She uses her hand around the base of his cock, pumping along with sucking, stimulating his whole hard length. Solas bucks into her mouth and she now lets him, urging him on. His cock hit the back of her throat, and she swallows and sucks.

She thinks he is close, and she pulls back again, letting him slip from her mouth. His hips keep moving, his erection seeking friction that isn’t there.  She kisses the inside of his thigh again.

“Please, please, I need…”

“What do you need, Solas?”

She wraps her hand around his cock, and doesn’t move it.

“I need, I need to come. Please. I need you.”

Iwyn lets her fangs out, pricking his skin. Solas words turn to moans, incoherent pleading. She pumps his cock, impossible hard, with her fist, and drags her fangs down to where she can feel his pulse, stuttering and wild.

She bites, rich blood coating her tongue. Solas screams, and comes, hot spend covering her hand. She drinks, a few more sips while he is pulsing and trashing in her hand. She’s careful, withdrawing her fangs and licking her lips. She clamps a hand over the wounds, tight, and seals them. Solas looks dazed and perfect. She licks his softening cock, the taste of his cum mixing with his blood.

“You taste delicious.”

“Fuck,” he says, and his cock twitches.

“Again?”

Solas chuckles and shakes his head. Iwyn nestles next to him, and kisses his shoulder. After a little while, he squeezes her shoulder, and sits up.

“I think I better go clean up a little.”

She lounges in his bed, naked and satisfied for now. The bedroom is cozy, despite the tall white wardrobe looking generically modern. There’s a drawer too, and a bookcase, filled with books with no apparently organization. A thick book on ancient Qunari architecture next to a novel by an author she doesn’t know. Something that looks like a finance textbook next to a biography called Scandals, Sex, Paint: The Life of Michel de Bordelon. Iwyn itches to organize it, but at least there’s not clothes strewn all over, except the ones they discarded last night and this morning. There are more books stacked on top of the wardrobe, along with a glass jar filled with a fairy light string. It’s surprisingly whimsical, yet another unexpected side of him.

When Solas returns, he’s brought his easel, pencils, and sketchbook.

“May I draw you again?”

“Of course.”

She’s pleased she inspires him, she finds it incredibly flattering. If she’s honest, she also enjoys the blush that spreads across his cheekbones when he asks. He looks a little shy, as if it’s somehow more scandalous to draw her nude than for her to suck his blood while he comes all over himself. It’s endearing, and she is happy to pose.

He doesn’t bother to dress, and sketches quickly, his eyes roaming over her as he commits her to paper. He pulls a sheet off the sketchbook, and she stretches.

“Come back to bed,” she says. She wants him next to her.

Solas puts down his pencils, and comes to her. She kisses him, full of need.

“I am not certain I’m up for another round just yet,” he says. “But I did promise to sate your hunger.”

“If you’re willing,” she says. The sex, his gaze on her has left her hungry in more sense than one. She wants him in every way.

“You can do whatever you want,” he says.

She scrapes her teeth against his neck. “You really shouldn’t say that.”

“Please.”

She cannot resist his begging. She bites, his rich blood flowing across he lips. Solas groans, far off and loud. She sucks his sweetness up while he shudders in her arms, grasping the sheets beneath him. He doesn’t try to stop her, and she has to slow herself down. She doesn’t want to.

She allows herself to be careless with the wounds. Maybe if she leaves her marks, he’ll be protected form others of her kind. He is too careless with himself, that’s all. It has nothing to do with the heady feeling of him being scarred by her, forever.

She nestles closer to him, and he sighs, delirious. She makes him drink some water before he falls asleep again.

Iwyn gets up. She feels awake and powerful, full of his life and blood. She peeks at the easel, at herself looking sultry out of the page. Or hungry.  She cannot allow herself to stay, to sleep, no matter how easy it is to be with him, no matter how much he fascinates her. Leaving herself vulnerable is too risky. Once was enough.

She looks back at Solas. He looks innocent, beautiful. She wishes she could paint him, sharp angles and pale skin and bloodred marks at his throat and thighs.

Iwyn worries about him, too. She knows there are mortals like that. The chasers. Those who wants to flirt with danger or with death. Those who crave the high of a vampire’s bite. Or worse, those who are drawn to the idea of immortal life, who does not understand the agony of the vast, cold eternity. A coldness he could chase away, a small voice offers inside of her, if he joined you at your side. She shakes her head. He does not deserve that. Neither did she, but she can’t change that.

She doesn’t take him for a vamp chaser, but his behavior, his eagerness is concerning. A bright flash of jealousy at the thought of him finding someone else to satisfy him, someone else tasting him. She can only hope to dissuade him, and to remind him to live his life to the fullest.

Iwyn covers him tenderly with a blanket. She needs to leave, somehow, before she does something she’ll regret forever.

--

Solas wakes, and the first he knows is that he is alone. Maybe Iwyn left the bed. He isn’t sure how much sleep vampires need, just as he isn’t sure how long he has slept.

His clock says 13:23, so he has only dozed a little over an hour. He gets up, and stops at his easel, Iwyn lounging and looking at him seductively. His hands itches to take the sketch and the pose to a large canvas, giant and larger than life, just like the way she barged into his bed.

“Iwyn,” he calls. Maybe she is in the kitchen or living room, but no one answers. He notices both her dress and his sweater are missing, as he pulls on his shirt and boxers.

“Iwyn!”

In the hallway, her shoes are gone. In the kitchen, a folded piece of paper against a half-drunk cup of coffee.

He sits.

He folds it open.

Solas,

Thank you for last night, and this morning. It was wonderful. I’m sorry for my sudden departure, but I must walk away. Had I stayed, I fear I would have wanted more from you. That you would have given me more than you already have.

You’re a wonderful man, Solas. You do not belong in the shadow. I care about you, more than I probably should.

I know your life seems troubled right now, and I worry this clouds your judgement. If you had been awake, you would have asked me stay, and I would have. I’m not a nice person, Solas. I’m a vampire, selfish and immoral. You should remember that. At some point, I would want to drag you into to darkness, or you would want to follow me. I can only be strong once. I wanted to stay in your embrace, to get to know you better, but you don’t deserve that. My life is in the dark, and so is my path. You can’t follow.

You deserve to live your life, beautiful and in the sun. Continue painting, drawing. You can give so much to world, and please do. Someone can give you what you deserve, and someone will.

Please take care of yourself, Solas. Don’t try to find me, and please do not seek out other vampires. No more inviting strangers to your house!

Goodbye and live well.

Yours,

Iwyn of Clan Lavellan

[mediawhorefics]

hi marie! i have sort of a weird question to ask and i’m so sorry if i bother you with this. i have to do research in one of my classes which basically consists of finding certain paintings, sculptures, statues, letters whatever kinda speaks to me and inspires me to think about different themes…kinda? in terms of art.

soo…i know you’ve posted things in the past about van gogh’s paintings and letters and i was wondering what your favorite paintings are or anything else art related really. i know you mentioned his ‘sunflowers’ painting in tbow and i definitely wrote that down but since i love what art you share i thought i’d ask you.

oooohhh, yess i can def. tell you about my favourite paintings/art related thing !! i think this is probably gonna get awfully long and rambly and i apologise in advance for it rip. but here we go !!!

first of all, vincent van gogh is my favourite painter so gotta start with some of my favourites of his....

1. skull of a skeleton with a burning cigarette

i love this painting because vincent made it during his brief time at art school in antwerp and it's kind of a commentary/satire on what he considered to be rigid, pretentious, and conservative 'academic' artistic takes. which just delights me. this guy really spent a wee while at the royal academy of fine arts and said this is bullshit and boring and i'm learning nothing. fuck those guys. art is felt not taught so im gonna keep learning by myself. and he made this to make fun of them. and every time i look at it, it makes me smile. it's his darker more dutch palette too, before he lived in paris and met the impressionists and colours!!! for the first time which i think is a very interesting period in his career. even tho it's maybe less talked about/known. i don't know. i'm fond of it. i just read it as a massive middle finger to the establishment. and, if we do a modern read of it it could totally be an anti-smoking ad, which is pretty funny though. anyways, that skeleton's got attitude and i'm here for it.

2. the mulberry tree

this might be my absolute favourite van gogh painting and i hope one day i get to see it in person. i love most of vincent's paintings of trees, but this one is just so special to me. the fiery golden colours of an autumn day just really resonate with me. i want to live in it.

3. rain

there's nothing i love more than a rainy day and the colour green so this one particularly speaks to me. there's a passion and an imperfection to it that's just so beautiful to me. i really struggle with figurative art that's too polished and perfect. if it looks like a postcard, i'm often less interested? i need to see the artist's vision, the artist's soul, in the landscape and i think this one, like many others of vincent's paintings, express his passionate and intense personality.

4. sorrow

this is a drawing so i don't know if it counts but i'm very very fond of it. vincent made it only two years after deciding to become an artist apparently and it depicts a woman he was in a relationship with at the time. i just think it emotes so much so i always feel drawn to it. from vincent's letters: 'I want to make drawings that touch some people. Sorrow is a small beginning [...] there is at least something directly from my own heart.' july 1882

5. the sunflowers

i'm pretty sure i've said everything i needed to see about how these make me feel in tbow but i couldn't make a list of some of my favourite paintings without including them. that felt sacrilegious.

and now here are a few of my favourite paintings in general:

1. wanderer above the sea of fog

i mean, what else is there to say except paintings of seascapes awake something really primal inside of me and i've been in love with this painting for years. tts vibes anyone ? seriously though, there's a comfortable loneliness to it that i really relate to.

2. andy warhol's cat paintings

this is probably cheating since it's more than one but i just love them so much. i have a print of the blue one stuck to my wall that i bought in glasgow and i love it so much.

TBC

[imnobodyuknow]

“[And Finally, Here Is A New Artwork, Created By Rubbing Pencils of Differing Colors On A Sheet Of Paper In A Specific Order And Using A Scanner to...]”

*ahem*  They don’t need to know that, ProphetBot.

“[...Sorry.]”

OneShot is a surreal puzzle/adventure game with a story that’s incredibly involved (to say nothing of the unusual way in which it’s told), but I’m nonetheless quite eager to talk about it, so let’s start at the beginning.

Actually, you know what?  Let’s start at the end.

***OneShot Spoilers Ahead***

“Big reveal” 22 is my version of the unseen ending to young Niko’s surreal adventure in a different world!  While I did enjoy the ending, I was somewhat disappointed not to be able to see Niko’s reunion with his Mama, so I decided to create that part myself.  I wasn’t the only with this idea, as it turns out, but I still thought it’d be worth it to create my own unique rendition, drawn in the same styles as the game itself.

OneShot explores a number of interesting concepts -- the good of the one versus the good of the many, the three rules of robotics, perseverance in the face of adversity, and most importantly, having faith.  Whether it’s faith that someone will come to your rescue, faith in things or people you can’t see, or faith that everything will turn out all right even when the world (or World Machine) is crumbling around you, this game beautifully explores the concept of faith through the (catlike) eyes of a child, and this made me smile more than a few times during the whole experience.  Not to mention the whole “mixed reality” part of it, but that’s another story.

So in this happy ending, Niko finally makes it back home, much to his and his Mama’s delight (you'll see their footprints in the grass if you look closely).  Meanwhile, the World Machine, taking on Niko’s appearance, is given a chance to observe this happy moment that the two of them were able to bring about after Niko saved it from total corruption.

Don’t ask me how that’s possible, by the way.  I didn’t really think that far ahead.  : /

This drawing was by far the easiest one I’ve done with colored pencils, since a lot of it was made in the same impressionist style as the game’s cutscenes.  I used this one as a reference for the wheat field, for example:

Niko and his Mama’s designs were based on the more detailed picture shown in the game’s logo...

...but I used cutscenes as a reference for them as well:

I liked how the game never showed us anything above his Mama’s nose, which is why I decided to give her a hat in order to preserve that sense of mystery.  I’m sure she has lovely eyes, of course, but why spoil a good mystery?  X 3

I also used the same light effect on Niko and his Mama’s clothing as in the logo, this time reflecting the light from their sun.  And finally, the light/shadow pattern on the tree in the background was based on the shadows on an actual tree growing outside my bedroom window.  It’s quite the lovely sight on a bright summer day, isn’t it?

So there you have it: a happy ending for everyone, both in Niko’s world (which almost sounded like a utopia from his description of it) and in the world where he became a hero.  It’s good to be reminded that happy endings can happen anywhere you go, no matter how bad circumstances can get.

And let me just say one things about Niko -- he’s the only person I know who can fix a malfunctioning computer just by having a friendly talk with it.  Man, if only it was that easy...

[gala-art]

TMI Tuesday: do you have any personal art goals? Is there a specific style you really love?

Hey @sloth-race! I’m sorry I missed this yesterday. I haven’t been frequenting my art blog very often ;__; I kind of ran out of juice running multiple blogs and just rolled everything over to @galadrieljones. 

Anyway, to your questions. And I’m flattered by your curiosity!! My personal art goals are very loose. I have zero formal training and tend to learn and improve only by DOING and drawing sketches that challenge me to the brink of frustration, but then getting through them, and putting them on the internet for all to see. I’m still teaching myself photoshop and feel like I make a new discovery there with every piece. So my goals are just...draw and get to be able to draw the things I really want to draw. Like being able to do more complex poses off reference, for example, and also getting faster with portraits so that maybe I can be more efficient and do more commissions as well. I just really love being able to draw my favorite characters because, since I’m really mostly a writer, it is just great to be able to put it into art, these little moments and pairings I envision, and to bring a sense of my aesthetic out of words and into pictures.

Styles I like tend to be sketchy and dreamy and a little impressionistic. I love @destinyapostasy‘s clean, dreamy sketch style as well as @lauren-draws-xxx and how her sketches are these sort of impermanent, ethereal waves of shape and feeling that always come together visually in very compelling ways. Living artists outside fandom whose styles I admire and feel very close to are pop surrealists like Mark Ryden and also just straight up symbolists like Andrea Kowch. I think my own personal style is born of these influences and also the way that I write? I like impressionism and symbolism and usually find a way to make my settings and characters feel “real” but like how they might exist in a dream.

Ask me anything!

[hotelkumasutra]

hnghhh i'm sorry if this is too many but for the danganronpa ask thing, i was wondering if you could answer 1-6, 10, 12, 21 & 22? i'm v curious aha & i hope you're having a swell week???? thank you for being lovely & blessing us with art uwu your valentines saiouma was so cute asdfghjkl i love the blushies & i always love the way you draw hair with the little shapes & all the coloring??? it's so cool & cute & that's just something that consistently catches my eye in your style/art

it’s not too many at all >_

1 - i’ve barely started dr2 so idk if i should answer this yet but even with it’s,,, faults v3 is definitely my favorite.. any game that makes me feel so much for almost the entire giant cast is impressive to me

2 - shuichi is my favorite character who is a protagonist, but hajime is my favorite as a protagonist if it makes sense, so whichever this question means

3 - ouma!!! even if he might fall more under anti-hero, idk..

4 - *tips my cowboy hat with a long, heartfelt sigh*...ouma as well

5 - tenko!! she gets on my uwus. but also kaede…...but also celeste.....but als

6 - shuichi, kiibo and kokichi are my best boy trinity

10 - if talent were a vitamin i would have scurvy but the Ultimate Impressionist™ would be fun......or turn out a nerfed ultimate imposter sksjshhd

12 - idk much about danganronpa 3 but i like mitari

21 - oh gosh a lot of them do really good jobs!! but probably bryce papenbrook, johnny yong bosch, or erika harlacher

22 - detective

if this ask was physical i would hug it...thank u so so much!! it’s so nice to hear what u notice in my style uwu.. anytime u rb my art my arteries clog up in love because u always leave the nicest tags! u are too nice uvu

[libralibro]

Double Ask Game

my beautiful friend @cynotype ​ (follow her, she is lovely) tagged me in this pair of ask games, so I’m gonna answer them woo!

Get To Know You Tag Rules: answer the questions and then tag 15 people you want to get to know better.

1- Relationship Status: Single and trying to work on myself before I try to date anyone else again.

2- Lipstick or chapstick: I honestly hate both of them.

3- Three Favorite Foods: I add so much garlic, salt, and vinegar to various foods that it’s become a meme.

4- Song Stuck In Your Head: Brain Dead from A New Brain -- something about the tempo and pacing of this song resonates with me me when I’m stressed and anxious or hypomanic, so sometimes I’ll loop it when I’m feeling that way. Also Jonathan Groff is a gift.

5- Last Movie You Watched: Crazy Rich Asians I think? idr lol

6- Top Three Shows: arbitrary choices from the many shows I love but: Supernatural but only up to season 5, FMA:B, and Deathnote

7- Book I Am Currently Reading: Unafraid by Benjamin Corey (nonfiction)

8- Last Thing I Googled: eggcorn

9- Time: 11:10pm

10- Dream Trip: I’d love to return to Shanghai again, and I’d also love to visit Singapore and Japan... just a tour of East and Southeast Asia basically

11- Anything You Want: To be out of my parents’ house (just two more weeks woo!)

Writing Tag

1. When starting something new, how much do you know about the story before you start writing?

Oh god this assumes I actually start writing and don’t spend endless time planning shit...

somehow both too much and not enough

2. What draws you to your WIP(s)? Why did you choose to write that/those over anything else?

I really love magic and have always wanted to write fantasy or scifi, but I love dealing with the small human problems within star-touched worlds rather than grand stories of saving the planet.

3. Favorite writing spot? Why?

I’m about to move so I haven’t let myself fall in love with any spots here, but I love cute cafés in general for writing -- something about the café atmosphere works really well for me.

4. Share your favorite line of what you’ve written so far!

Luke’s heart was trying to claw its way up his throat. Olivia’s mouth tasted like a mentholated cherry cough drop, and his lips were going numb. His hands and mouth and tongue moved without him telling them to, like he was watching himself kiss her in a movie. Some sort of artsy indie movie, too --  the room around them felt blurry like an impressionist painting.

apparently not wanting to kiss people is one of my strengths as an ace writer who knew

5. If you had to choose one oc to bring to life as an actual person, which one would it be and why?

Oh god Luke I’m sorry but you’re the only one who isn’t an absolute twat yet

6. Are you looking to get published? If so, do you hope to make it a career?

I’d like to be published someday, but if I die without being published I won’t linger as a ghost or anything -- I have other career plans.

7. What’s something you would read but would never write (or the other way around)? Any reason?

I really love reading mysteries, but it’s not really what I find rewarding to write.

8. What’s something you are most proud of about your work so far?

uh tbh too early in the process to find much to be proud of beyond the fact that I’m trying to make there be more of it now.

9. Badly describe your WIP(s) in one sentence.

Luke has a gay furry panic at boarding school

10. Why did you want to be a writer?

I want to create things. Ideally good things, but I’m not picky.

I don’t really have enough friends to tag in this but I’ll tag some writeblrs I follow and would like to know better: @catwritesfiction​, @melindawrites​, @acheloides​, @bearlyfunctionalwriter​, @focusdumbass​

also anyone else who wants to! :D

[caltropspress]

Notes on AKAI SOLO’s Eleventh Wind

Rhythm in poetry need not be “smooth” or “musical” (since that word has a questionable meaning). Be cautious of these descriptions as a so-called “good ear.”

—“Manifesto” from Russell Atkins’ Juxtapositions

I try to become really liquid with the shit—not even liquid. I try to become formless.

—AKAI SOLO

Always the same thing. A drop of hope glimmers, then a sea of despair begins to rage, and always the pain, always the pain, always the anguish, always one and the same thing.

—Leo Tolstoy, The Death of Ivan Ilyich

I've been robbing motherfuckers since the slave ships.

—The Notorious B.I.G., “Gimme the Loot”

1.

There’s an “unfinished” aesthetic (I mean it gently, fondly) to AKAI SOLO’s work. His rhymes often start in medias res. The listener needs to become oriented to what he’s spewing, but he barely allows you to catch your breath. For anyone who’s ever been thrown [au]topsy-turvy by an ocean’s wave, you can respect the power of the primordial soup flow. Each verse is a wipeout. It’s Ron Wilson’s relentless drums on the Surfaris’ 1963 “Wipe Out” and the Fat Boys’ rollicking 1987 version all at once—joy pulled from despair.

2. “…a sunken system”

What is flow? In AKAI’s case, it’s something abrupt—both a step-up and a step-to. Is it free-form? Is it automatic writing gone horribly wrong? Is it asemic writing? Is it a Ouija-like push of the pen across the page? A flower doodled on scrap paper? Is it AKAI’s language acquisition happening in real time—a babbling? It’s not an infantile flow, though. Mannish boy? Man-child? It sometimes sounds like lips smacking of Mississippi mud. Think of AKAI on Shrine’s “Parables” (which begins with the lapping of waves—not the babbling brook): he takes “a deep sea soak in plasma.” The structure and borders of AKAI’s bars are liquid (formless); his words wash over.

3. “Pondering of the painter in between strokes.” (An Unknown Infinite, “Concrete Slides”)

Who’s out of pocket? Geochemistry tells us small pockets of water pulsate deep below the Earth’s surface. I find AKAI to be offbeat in both senses of the word. He’s both outré and outer space. Antediluvian and FEMA flood recovery plan. His bars rupture the very notion of time, of meter. To rap along with AKAI is to have an out-of-body experience—our neuroscience skitters and we gain an astral perspective on what the physical mouth is doing. Sheldon Pearce has called AKAI’s verses “impressionistic.” Plugging into AKAI’s music is to induce the Stendhal syndrome—beholding the sublimity of Claude Monet’s Impression, Sunrise, but—more accurately—Calida Garcia Rawles’ Singularity, seeing as how AKAI keeps it hyper-real. He “signs” nearly all his songs—another painterly touch.

4. The Earth is a great place to visit, but I ain't stayin’. (J-Ro, The Alkaholiks)

AKAI SOLO is for the antisocial kid who quotes Bruce Lee under their yearbook photo: Empty your mind. Be formless, shapeless—like water. Water is everywhere on Eleventh Wind, even if the album title suggests other elemental forces. AKAI sometimes slurs, but not drunkenly—this isn’t some stumbling and staggering likwidation: it’s a reflection of your own grogginess, your own inertia from sleeping on his flow. There are oceans between J.M.W. Turner’s The Slave Ship and the “Big Pimpin’” of Jay-Z, but AKAI’s poetics bridge the two. He comes at us, off-kilter, aslant, like the uneasy and queasy cover art for O.G.C.’s Da Storm.

5. “…a ship came, seeking harbour, fleeing from torture & swords” (from Kamau Brathwaite’s “Noom”)

The content often defies logical reasoning. He spits non-sequiturs in a literal sense, in that he does not follow. He machetes his own path (cutlass, more likely). AKAI is Cappadonna with his words—his slang is editorial, and it floods similarly. Zilla Rocca has called Cappadonna’s work “a waterfall of energy and creativity.” The same, seriously, could be applied to AKAI SOLO. I’ll call it logorrhea—and I don’t mean that pejoratively. It’s the seasickness you stomach so you can see the sunset from hundreds of miles off land.

The songs on Eleventh Wind are essentially single verses. There’s no middle eight, only an interminable Middle Passage. And water is everywhere.

6.

AKAI’s lineage traces to the same cove you’d find Mr. Complex and Saafir washed ashore. Like those predecessors, his un-rhymes and rhythm-driven bars beat against the rocks, ebbing just when you think he’s flowing. He’s an H2O proof MC. He’s Black hydropower, and, like the ancestors, AKAI continues to speak of rivers, of swerve of shore to bend of bay.

On “An Ode to the Isolated,” argov’s production sounds submerged, certifiably Cousteau. We’re immediately in the deep, and the beat platforms AKAI’s aqua-lung breath control. He’s “in a den of dissonance dissolving,” which puts language to what’s happening sonically here better than a critic ever could. AKAI is “overwhelmed by your deep blueness”—the vast blue sea. These are pandemic blues. The Covid-minded lyric, “Masks donned as requested,” doubles as the masculine trap to swallow pain, smothering emotion in gritty sand, while still forward-facing a street persona. AKAI has acknowledged Eleventh Wind was, in part, generated from a depressive state.

7.

[Testimony of John Cranston, a sailor upon the Polly, describing a slave woman hoisted down to sea from the mainmast in a chair after being isolated for small pox, June 15, 1791]

Q: Did you not hear her speak or make any Noises when she was thrown over—or see her struggle? A: No—a Mask was ty’d round her mouth & Eyes that she could not, & it was done to prevent her making any Noise that the other Slaves might not hear, least they should rise. Q: Do you recollect to hear the Capt. say any thing after the scene was ended? A: All he said was he was sorry he had lost so good a Chair. Q: Did any person endeavour to prevent him throwing her [over]board? A: No.

8.

“Tetsuo” draws on Tsukamoto’s trilogy of cyberpunk perversity. How AKAI could feel “washed before the water touch the skin” is beyond me, as the skin crawls with maggots. The penetration of metal rods, but no tetanus—no lockjaw. Only body horror flow. He’s sketching futures—and all of them are nightmarish: “Surrounded by a blanket of ashes, / We all fall down like that one song said we would.” AKAI vaguely alludes to a plague rhyme of yore. And the uncertainties we’re living with come through even in his drafts, as the liner notes on PTP’s cassette release of the album provide a set of lyric options: “Surrounded by a sea/bed/blanket…” Choose your own misadventure.

9. From at least the sixteenth century onward, a major part of the ocean engineering of ships has been to...minimize the wake. But the effect of trauma is the opposite. It is to make maximal the wake. (Christina Sharpe, In the Wake: On Blackness and Being)

On “Tainted,” AKAI—young as he may be—identifies the foolishness of some of his peers: “N----s wanna toast on a slave ship / …sinking with the drink.” AKAI suggests they’re still on the slave ship, ignorant of the fact. When he goes off on a paranoid tangent full of what seem to be elementary internal rhymes, it’s anything but: “hitting a lark / in the dark / in the park / skill a shark / or a narc / ill a mark on his job every time.” This litany of monosyllabic rhymes sounds an alarm.

10. “Even though the vessels differ, we’re all still sailing. / …navigation through suffering.”

“Still Sailing” acts as a centerpiece for the water imagery on Eleventh Wind. It’s also a self-assessment of his style. The “wavelength irregular” puns on wave and owns the irregular flow; “my groove goofy,” he admits. His vulnerability is stunning, refreshing: “I was ensuring my work was worth something.” Such vulnerability is liquid, is flux, reflects reality:

In a dirt sea, all I am is a seed Reaching for what I mean to Rooted in what it is, galvanized by what can be.

Even AKAI’s other nature metaphors—like earth (be it rare-earth or “Real Earth,” no matter), seeds, and roots—are built on water ones (“dirt sea”). This is Wallace Stevens-level abstraction. “Flowing like katanas of grass / Landscaping through with blazing sound waves” does it again (“flowing”/“grass”). And, of course, the mention of flowing katanas invites a Liquid Swords comparison. With the even cuts of AKAI’s sharp lyrics, it’s warranted.

I want to feel like Vast Aire, “like Moses with a staff that parts the Red Sea,” but it’s not so simple. Meaning is slippery on the album—hard to get your footing, your sea legs. Listeners are pulled into rip-tides and torn asunder, repeatedly. AKAI’s songs are raw—not in a hardcore way—in a work-in-progress sense, the way some of the most sincere songs humans have recorded are at times unfinished ones. Like Dylan’s “Santa Fe,” for instance, where the words converge into a slurry.

11. “Your water heavier than it’s supposed to be and they know that.”

On “Candor,” AKAI speaks on the burden of family discord, a “dilemma with me and mines.” In venting, he channels and subverts LL Cool J: “Don’t call it a comeback / These are just preliminary steps / On your back like structural racism is.” Where LL foregrounded his pugnacious masculinity, masking his insecurities (all the while calling for his “Mama”), AKAI is more likely to allow his tears to rain down like a monsoon. Candor has its origins in kand, meaning “to shine.” AKAI’s words offer glimmers of clarity, of openness.

12. “Depression stirs me before the morning chirps.”

Eleventh Wind closes with “Nebula”—gases flow, dust is bathed in glowing starlight. Again, we’re persevering: “Sound like nil singing / Feeling like nebula unraveling / Feeling like infinity expanding.” The consecutive gerunds emphasize AKAI’s desperation. He’s nihilistic here, nonexistent (“nil”) and grasping for meaning. In that way, he’s not so different from us approaching his music. Whether people are hot or cold, irate or aloof, he turns to water for comfort: “When I want to feel the heat I don’t get from people, I resort to water. / When I want to feel the cold I know people for, I resort to water.” AKAI SOLO doesn’t just bless us, he christens us.

Images:

The Fat Boys & The Beach Boys, “Wipeout” music video (screen shot) | The Surfaris, “Wipe Out” 12” (Decca, 1963) | Fat Boys, “Wipeout!” 12” (Tin Pan Apple, 1987) | Jay-Z, “Big Pimpin’” music video (screen shot) | J.M.W. Turner, The Slave Ship (1840) | Originoo Gunn Clappaz, Da Storm cassette cover (Duck Down/Priority Records, 1996) | Claudia Garcia Rawles, Singularity (2018) | The Alkaholiks, Likwidation album cover (Loud, 1997) | James Neagle, Frontispiece for the Dying Negro (1793) | Screen shot from Tetsuo II: Body Hammer (Shinya Tsukamoto, 1992) | Hokusai, Feminine Wave (1845) | Carina Nebula, NASA, ESA, and the Hubble SM4 ERO Team | Claude Monet, Impression, Sunrise (1872)

[anactualcaseofthetruth]

Call Me A Safe Bet, I'm Betting I'm Not - Chapter 2

(AO3 Link- Chapter Two)

“Even though scientists are still quite baffled after multiple millennia of medical and technological advances of exactly how the soulmarks work, there has been enough research and study that we now know when and how to expect them… There has yet to be one soulmate coupling occur before the female has experienced a menstrual cycle and the male to begin producing sperm. In short, soulmarks have never appeared before entering puberty…

There are many, many more cases in which two people have insisted they are soulmates only to not mark with one another. All in all, only about 3% of couplings are correct in predicting they are soulmates before marks form.”

***

Betty Cooper is four years old when she meets Jughead Jones. She knows he is her soulmate, he’s not so sure.

Chapter Two

“As with mostly everything relating to soulmarks, there is no science behind where they are formed, what shape they take, and why. There are theories, of course, and myths different people choose to believe depending on where their own mark is… The common myth most believe is ‘the closer to the heart, the stronger the bond’ when it comes to where the mark is on the body.

In numerous surveys done over the years it has been found that soulmates can come up with some sort of reasoning as to what their mark resembles in their lives. For example, one couple’s mark strongly resembled a bird as if painted by an impressionist and the two met at the local aviary.”

From Myths and Mysteries Surrounding Soulmarks, 2010

*

Initially, it surprises even Betty that she enjoys working on cars with her dad. Her dad is real grease monkey, one of those guys who think ‘why pay someone else to do something when I can learn to do it myself?’. So when it becomes clear that Betty was very much like her mother in the way that she does what she wants, and does not like ballet, Hal suggests he get her interested in cars. ‘It’s a good life skill, Alice,’ he repeats over and over until her mother lets them give it a shot.

It fascinates Betty, learning how everything works, being able to fix something so broken, and she doesn’t try to think about what kind of metaphor that means for her life.

At thirteen, everything is becoming very real for her and Jughead, sort of. She hasn’t gotten her first period yet, so it is pretty much a waiting game, but in the mean time they have fun, do thirteen-year-old things, or in Jughead’s case, fourteen.

They go to the drive-in on the weekends, Archie too, of course, and a few others, but her and Jughead always snuggle under one blanket. Sometimes she sits between his legs with his arms around her, other times she is practically in his lap, but that’s usually when it’s a scary movie. When they go to Pop Tate’s he holds her hand under the booth, but her favorite is when he plays with her fingers and draws doodles on her palms. It gives her goosebumps and makes her feel floaty.

One thing they really haven’t done is kiss, and it annoys her to no end. Sure, they kiss each other’s cheeks and stuff, maybe even a peck or two on the lips, but they still haven’t kissed yet and—Betty’s father was right, she is a lot like her mother, so that means she knows when to push and when to let it be.

With this, with Jughead, she lets it be because she understands why he is hesitant. His parents are an unnatural couple, he is an unnatural child, the statistics of unnatural children finding a soulmate drop little by little every year. She can tell him she knows he is hers until she’s blue in the face, but he needs the mark, he wants it so badly, and she can’t convince him with just words. So, she waits for the mark, she knows she should be getting her period soon, Polly did around her age, and when she does she’s going to walk up to Forsythe Pendleton Jones the Third and kiss him fully on the lips, a real kiss not just a peck, and their marks will form and she will do a dance around him screaming ‘I told you so’ between not being able to stop kissing him, she thinks.

That is where Jughead finds her, in the garage, her head bent under the hood of the newest old car her dad wants to fix up, thinking about kissing him, really kissing him.

“Betty!”

She turns at the sound of her favorite nine-year-old girl in time to see Jughead riding up on his bike, Jellybean standing on the pegs installed on the back wheels, her hands gripping his shoulders. Betty wipes off her hands as the little ball of energy runs up to her, talking a mile a minute.

“What’s up?” she asks as Jughead drops his bike and makes his way to her. “You rode your bike all the way here? That’s, like, a thirty-minute ride. Is everything okay?”

“Jelly, can you—“

“Beat it? Only for a minute, you never let me spend time with you and Betty! You always want her to yourself,” Jellybean responds as she skips off to tinker with some old toys of Betty and Polly’s in the back of the garage.

“Hi,” Betty greets, pushing up onto her tiptoes to kiss his cheek.

“Can you watch her for a couple hours? I have to go,” he says in hurried, hushed tones. “Mrs. Hannigan at the trailer park wasn’t home, and you’re the only one I trust with her besides Mrs. H and—“

“Of course, Jug, but what’s going on?”

“I—I don’t have time to explain right now, but,” he looks to make sure Jellybean isn’t paying attention. “I picked Jellybean up from a sleepover and when we got home,” he stops and is already making his way back to his bike so Betty follows.

“What?”

“My parents were going at it again, this time it’s bad. I have to get home and make sure they don’t kill each other or someone calls the cops,” he tells her while putting his helmet back on.

“Jug,” Betty whispers, grabbing his hand. “If it’s bad maybe you should stay too, let them sort it out. You’re just a kid, you shouldn’t be the one—“

“Betty, please don’t do this,” he pleads while getting on his bike now, forcing an end to the conversation. “They’re my parents, and—“ he stops and takes her hand again, this time squeezing it and leans forward to kiss her cheek. “I’ll be back for her later, okay? Thank you, so much,” he murmurs before taking off, peddling faster than she has ever seen.

Not a second later Jellybean is at her side, scaring her. “Bean! Don’t do that!” Betty scolds.

“Sorry,” the younger girl apologizes sheepishly. “Can we do makeovers? And watch a movie? Can I pick? Jug never lets me pick the movie, and my mom said if I steal her makeup one more time—“

“Yes, Bean, to all of it,” Betty interrupts, smiling at the girl’s excitement and energy.

It’s because of Jughead that Jellybean has any sense of childhood, still has some innocence and hope. He takes care of her in every way, makes sure she goes to school, helps with her homework, calls Betty if he’s confused about something, takes on odd jobs around the trailer park to make money so he can take her out to eat once in a while, has lunch money, and can do things with her friends.

FP’s been skipping around from job to job for years now, getting sober every time Gladys threatens to take the kids, then falls off the wagon once she starts to trust him again. She hasn’t had a steady job either, her own drinking getting in the way, but insists it’s FP’s fault, then somehow manages to fall under his spell when he’s sober and think everything will be okay.

Betty doesn’t comment on it, because Jughead is like his mother in that way. Every time FP gets sober Jughead is so happy, so willing to believe this time will be different, then climbs through her window at night after his father comes home falling down drunk, after cleaning him up and getting rid of the mess, so his mother and little sister won’t have to, but he can’t face what he’s done and so he takes solace in Betty.

Jughead hates that he helps hide FP’s drinking, that he makes his father seem better than he is in his mother and sister’s eyes, that he still has hope his father will turn everything around, if not for him, then for Jellybean.

She watches as the boy she loves breaks off pieces of himself for his family to try and fit into their own empty spots, and then can’t stop watching as those pieces don’t fit and his parents just toss them aside, holding their hands out for more. It kills her.

Betty tries not to overthink it, his parents fight all the time, he’s always putting himself in the middle to mediate, and there is nothing she can do about it, not right now. So she lets Jellybean take her by the hand and lead her into the house. They raid Polly’s vanity and sneak into the attic to steal the colored hairspray from Halloween. Betty makes sure Jellybean has fun and doesn’t worry about her parents at all.

After all, why should she worry? Her big brother is handling it.

Hours later Betty honestly doesn’t know how Jughead does it all.

He goes to school, splits his time between her and Archie (and they make sure to spend time all together), practically parents his little sister, works around the trailer park, and still manages to be on top of whatever is going on with his parents to diffuse the situation.

After a couple hours with Jellybean, Betty is beat. Of course, it doesn’t help that she had been woken up at the crack of dawn by Polly to go jogging—Polly is now in high school and on the River Vixens, where working out is not just a suggestion. Alice is very pleased her daughters are taking an active approach to their health, but it is not Betty’s idea of fun to get up early on Saturday to do anything except make sure Jughead scales down the side of her house safely and isn’t found by her parents.

Jellybean was invited for dinner as she was already there, and not inviting her would look very bad on Alice Cooper, and Betty was once again reminded how alike the little girl and Jughead are. They have bottomless stomachs, but with Jellybean it’s somehow endearing, whereas with Jughead she finds it a little disgusting just how much he can eat, and he’ll literally eat anything.

By the end of the night parts of Jellybean’s hair are blue, her eyeshadow matches, and Betty learns all about third grade, who is who, what is cool, and that too many of Jellybean’s friends are starting to think Jughead is cute, but Betty doesn’t need to worry because she tells them her brother is very much taken.

It’s nearing the end of their second movie when headlights burst through the window and Betty turns to look. It appears to be Jughead’s mom’s van, and Betty wiggles out from underneath a sleeping Jellybean to go make sure. Jellybean wakes much like Jughead—not well—so she doesn’t want to poke the beast too soon.

When she makes it outside she finds Jughead and Gladys arguing just outside the van.

“Jughead, baby, please see this from my side—“

“No!” Jughead cuts his mother off. “I have been in the middle of the two of you my entire life. It’s always been me cleaning up after your messes, me hiding what you do from Jellybean, me pretending everything is always okay when it never is. I have been in the middle of your marriage since I was born, and this time, this time I am not going to be in the middle picking up the pieces, this one is all on you.”

“Don’t talk to me like that, I am still your mother—“

“Since when?” Jughead interrupts once again, and Betty can see the anger in his shoulders. “You blame him for everything—he’s the reason you drink, he’s the reason we moved to the trailer park, he’s the reason you dropped out of high school, you have never taken responsibility for anything that’s gone wrong, and you know it. It’s easier to blame him than it is to blame me, isn’t it?”

“Jughead, don’t, you know—“

“But I’m the real reason for all of it, Mom,” Jughead continues on, “I’m the reason you were forced to drop out of school, I’m the reason you married him, and Jellybean is the reason you stayed married to him, and now you have an out for all of it, don’t you?”

“I didn’t mean for this to happen, you have to know that, Jughead. Please, just listen to me,” his mother pleads while cupping his cheeks, but he shakes her off and steps back.

“It’s too late, and I don’t even care about what it means for me,” Jughead tells her. “I hope you’re happy, I hope that your soulmate gives you everything my father never could,” he says and Betty’s eyes widen. “I hope he takes care of you the way my dad never could, I hope he helps you stop drinking, I hope he makes you remember everything you wanted out of life before me and Jellybean came along. You don’t have to worry about me, I’m raised, and I did it myself because I had to be there for Jellybean. I raised her, she’s smart and she’s strong and she’s beautiful, I did that, okay? Me, I’ve known you and dad were on borrowed time since I was born, but her? She has no idea, and when this breaks her heart you will be the one to explain to her what is going on. You have to be the one to tell her that you’re leaving dad, that you got a soulmark and decided that it was more important than the family you already had, more important than her.”

By now Gladys’s eyes are watering and she is staring at her son like she already lost him. “Please don’t hate me.”

“I don’t hate you, Mom,” Jughead replies, his voice softer now. “I hate the way you handled this. I hate how you let Dad find out about him, I hate that this is going to tear my little sister apart, but I hope you get better. I hope you go back to the mom I had once, I hope you do that for Jellybean and that he helps you do that. I can forgive you for almost anything Mom, but if you go be with him and keep drinking and you let this hurt Jellybean more than it has to… I won’t be able to forgive that.”

“I won’t, I won’t,” Gladys insists earnestly. “I’m—I’m already getting help, Jug, I’m in AA and Billy… he’s good for me, Jug, in a way that you father never was.”

Jughead takes another step back. “Good, I hope he is, I hope he’s everything we could never give you,” he whispers, and then turns to face Betty. “She sleeping?”

Betty simply nods and Jughead walks past her without another word to go get his sister.

“Betty,” suddenly Gladys is in front of her, her hands gripping Betty’s. “Please help him through this. Please, you’ll understand one day, one day when you get a mark and it’s not Jughead—“

“No,” Betty rips her hands away. “I love Jughead, and if we don’t get marks, if we’re not soulmates, then that right there is our mark. We won’t have them together. I would never do this to him,” she tells her and then hears Jughead coming down her porch steps.

He has Jellybean in his arms, she’s cuddled into him like a koala and she’s getting big so he’s struggling under her weight. “Door,” he mouths and Betty opens the sliding car door for him.

“Jug?” Jellybean groans sleepily.

“You’re going home, Jelly, okay?” he tells her as he buckles her in because she’s completely useless when she’s sleepy, just like he is.

“You’re not coming?” she asks.

“No, I,” he stops and looks back at Betty. “I’m sleeping over Archie’s, okay? But I’ll be home when you wake up, I promise.”

“Okay. Love you, big head,” she mutters, her eyes fluttering closed.

“Love you too, peanut butter,” he responds and closes the door as quietly as he can.

“Jughead-” Gladys starts.

“Don’t worry, I’ll find him,” he answers before she can even ask. “He’s too angry right now. I have to wait until he’ll be too drunk to fight me. I’ll be home in the morning to help you pack,” he says before turning and grabs Betty’s hand as he passes, not giving his mother another look.

He leads her to Archie’s garage that has recently been made into a gym of sorts as Archie gets more and more into sports. It’s equipped with a couch and mini fridge so Jughead jokes it’s his room. He doesn’t bother to turn on the light and just collapses on the old fold-out.

His eyes are full of pain and anger, and all Betty wants to do is hold him until it all goes away, but knows that’s impossible.

“She got a soulmate?” Betty asks tentatively, to which he nods. “How long?”

“I don’t know, a couple months? She’s been keeping it a secret, didn’t know what to do about it, was caught up in it, I don’t know, other bullshit like that. She didn’t even tell my dad, the guy came over ‘cause he hadn’t heard from my mom and was worried my dad did something. My dad is a lot of things, Betty, he’s a drunk, he can’t hold a job, he can never finish what he starts, but he would never hurt my mom, not like that.”

“I know, I know he wouldn’t,” Betty agrees. “She’s moving out?”

Jughead nods again. “He’s invited the three of us to move into his condo, it’s very exciting, his building has a pool.”

“Juggie,” Betty whispers getting on her knees next to him, her knuckles brushing down the side of his face. “I’m so sorry.”

“I’m not moving in with him,” Jughead states. “I won’t. You should have seen my dad, Betts, he looked so broken,” he says while leaning his face into her hand. “Through everything, through all his faults, and all of hers, he still loves her. He doesn’t care about marks, he said he didn’t need them, and I know he’s not perfect, but that’s always something I admired about him.”

“I’m here for you, Juggie, whatever you need,” she tells him and rests her forehead on the side of his, her nose nuzzling his hair.

“I don’t—I’m sick of talking about it honestly,” he admits and relaxes into her, his head falling back to the couch.

“Okay, we can talk about something else if you want. I’m good at talking, to you at least,” Betty says cheerfully and he looks at her with an eyebrow raised. “Too much? Alright, I can be monotone, I can be one of the guys. How do you like the new GTA?” she asks in a low, unusual voice.

Jughead’s lips almost form a smile. “Or, you can be you and we can just not talk about my parents,” he suggests.

“What, you didn’t like my Archie impersonation?”

“Not at all, so to try and change the subject again, thank you for looking after Jelly today, I know she can be a pain—“

“Shut up, Jughead Jones. I love Jellybean like a sister, she’s fun and crazy and now I know everything about that horrible girl Bridget, we hate her,” Betty continues on and stretches her legs out over Jughead’s as he chuckled. “And Charlie, short for Charlotte, has a huge crush on you so we’re not sure if we should hang out with her for a while, you know, until she gets over it. Jellybean tried telling her how stupid you are, but it didn’t work.”

“What?” Jughead actually laughs and she wants to dance at the victory.

“I say Charlie, short for Charlotte, because before I asked I thought some little boy-friend of hers thought you were cute, but alas, it’s a girl. Don’t worry, Jellybean told her you’re already smitten with another, and apparently she’s really pretty and you’re so into her that you don’t even notice other girls.”

“Is that so?”

“I know, I find it hard to believe too. A stud like you not noticing other girls? She must be something really special.”

Jughead takes both of her hands in his and kisses them gently. “She’s definitely one of a kind.”

“Mhm, Jellybean also says that she overheard you and Archie talking one time about her lips and she wants to know what that is all about.”

“I, uh, don’t know what you’re talking about,” Jughead responds, his voice cracking a little.

“You don’t? Remember that one time you took Jellybean to the mall and she went to the movies, and you told her to meet you at the arcade when she was done? Well, she eavesdropped on you a little bit. She said you two were playing some racing game and Archie was talking about some girl’s boobs and you said that liking the obvious was too easy, that beauty is in the specifics, and that is when you mentioned my lips. Bean said that it was getting too weird for her around then, so that’s when she pounced on you, making you lose the game and Archie gloat all night.”

“Wha—uhm, she told you that?” he asks in a low breath. “No, wait, she overheard that? Shit.”

“I think she’ll survive hearing Archie talk about some girl’s boobs. Have you seen him check out a girl? He’s not very subtle. His soulmate better show up sooner rather than later because he is becoming far too curious.”

“That’s for sure,” Jughead agrees.

“Now back to what you were saying about me. You think I’m beautiful? You like my lips?”

Jughead shifts so he’s facing her more. “Betty… you don’t-” he starts and fiddles with her fingers. “You don’t know that I think you’re beautiful?”

“Well, I, I think you do, but you’ve never said it, and I’m not saying you have to say it now,” she insists. “I’m not fishing for compliments or anything, it’s just when Jellybean said it, I don’t know, it made me feel warm and, I don’t know, nice, I guess.”

“Betty, I,” he stops and cups her cheek, “I think that you’re the most amazing person on the entire planet, but if you say that to Jellybean I’ll deny it,” he says and Betty does her best to not giggle like a school girl. “It’s not looks that matter, not really, it’s about how you… you’re always there for me, and I know I’m not easy to be there for. You don’t judge my family, you love my sister as your own, you’re the first thing I think about in the morning and the last thing before I fall asleep. The thoughts are drastically different, you know, morning and night, but it’s still all about you. The fact that you’re beautiful? That’s just icing on the cake for me, you know? And if you don’t know that, then I don’t think I’m doing my part in this whole thing.”

“Jug,” Betty whispers and kisses the inside of his palm. “You’re really good with words, you know that? Like, wow, keep reading because the effects are really working for you.”

Jughead smiles. “Thanks.”

“Thank you for saying all that, it means so much to me. I told you I wasn’t fishing for a compliment, but it was even better hearing it from you than through Jellybean.”

“I need to talk to her about eavesdropping, it seems.”

“Oh, don’t tell on me. Snitches get stitches, dude.”

Jughead smiles again and his hand moves down to cup her jawline and his thumb sweeps across her cheek. “Never call me dude, and you’re not allowed to hang out with her for at least another month, she’s not a good influence on you.”

“Try and stop me, Jones, I dare you,” she murmurs, her breath catching in the back of her throat. She can feel him leaning in and despite her better judgement her eyes flutter closed, and suddenly he’s kissing her like he never would before.

This isn’t just a peck or something innocent, and while it’s little uncoordinated because neither of them have done it before, it’s still wonderful. Betty grips onto his shirt to keep him close as he leads their lips, going slow and tentative to see what works and what doesn’t feel right.

Betty wants to enjoy it, and she does, but—

“Jug,” she pulls away and makes a point to put her hands on his chest to keep him at a distance.

“What?” he asks, his eyes glassy and chest heaving.

“I—you have no idea how much I want this, how much I’ve wanted to do this, but,” she leans back to get even more space between them. “Not like this, not as a distraction because of—” she stops and immediately feels awful when his face drops. “I don’t want the first time we kiss, and I mean really kiss, to be to keep our minds of something else. I want it to be the main event, you know?”

“Right,” Jughead sighs and stands, reaching for his forgotten hat and fixes his shirt.

“No, wait, I didn’t mean—we can stay here for a while. My mom won’t be looking for me yet.”

“No, it’s okay, I should be looking for my dad anyways, and I have to walk to the Southside so,” he makes his way to the door, but Betty stays sitting. “You coming?”

“I just ruined it, didn’t I?”

“Betty,” Jughead starts and lets out a long breath. “No, you’re right, I don’t want it to be like that either. I want us to do it the right way.”

“When we have marks, you mean,” Betty corrects him. “It’s because of the marks you won’t call us going out dating, or me your girlfriend, or even kiss me like this.”

“Hey, I was just fine with what we were doing, you stopped it, not me,” he reminds her.

“And you just agreed that it was the right thing to do! Unless you were lying to me,” she challenges and stands herself with arms crossed over her chest.

He scrubs his hands down his face. “Betty, do we really have to get into this right now? And tonight, of all nights, after what I went through today?”

“No, you’re right, we should just ignore it until I finally get my period and let that decide for us. That’s what you want, isn’t it?” she questions.

“Betty, not now, not today, please,” he pleads quietly.

She softens and hates herself because he’s right, she shouldn’t do this tonight. It just feels so good to finally say what she’s been feeling that it got ahead of her. “I’m sorry,” she apologizes.

Jughead simply nods and plays with the door handle to the garage. “C’mon, I’ll walk you home,” he volunteers. “It’s a bit out of my way, but I think I can manage.”

Betty rolls her eyes at him and takes his hand as he offers it, her free arm wrapping around his that is encased in her hand. “I hate that you have to do this, you know.”

“Walk you home? I know, it’s a tough neighborhood,” he agrees and she pushes on his shoulder.

“Don’t joke, Jug, this is serious,” she tells him. “Just sleep over Archie’s house tonight, you know he wouldn’t say no. You shouldn’t have to go searching bars for your dad or take care of him like this. You’re only fourteen.”

“Don’t worry, by the time I find him he won’t put up much of a fight. It’ll be easy to get him home and passed out on the couch. I’ve done it a million times before.”

They stop in front of her door and Betty shakes her head. “I hate this, I hate how you just think this is normal. It kills me,” she whispers.

“Betty, this is my life, this is my normal, this is just how it is,” he tells her and leans in to kiss her cheek. “I hate that it hurts you, but it doesn’t affect me anymore, so it’d be easier if you just accept it too.”

Betty looks him in the eye. “Never. You deserve better.”

“Too bad, this is what I got. Don’t count on much from me tomorrow. With Mom and Jellybean moving out my dad’s going to be out of his mind and I have to help it happen as painless as possible,” he says and chuckles at that. “Funny choice of words, huh? I’ll call when it at settles, if it does.”

“Let me know if you need anything, okay? Help packing or unpacking or to just get out of there, even if you just want me to sit next to you and not say anything at all,” she orders.

“Don’t worry about me, okay? I’m a pro at this by now,” he reminds her and she huffs. “I know, you hate it, you tell me all the time, but it’s true.”

“If you want me to stop nagging you about it, it’s not going to happen, not until you see how much more you’re worth and how much better you deserve.”

“We can stand here and fight about this all night, we both know that, but I do have to go. The sooner I get him home and to bed, the sooner I can go to sleep and get tomorrow’s shit show over with.”

“If you need someone to take Jellybean—“

“I know, Betty, you’re my go-to for almost everything, don’t worry. I know you’re here for me, I know you’ll do anything I ask, I know, okay?”

“Okay, be safe,” she whispers and kisses his cheek. He begins to let her hand go and walk away, but Betty holds her grip. “Jug, I,” she says in a breath and blinks up at him. “I know this isn’t the right time, and maybe I’m saying it more for me than for you which isn’t fair, I know, but—“

“What, Betty?” he interrupts in an attempt to get her to stop rambling.

“I love you, Juggie, like I’m in lo—“

“I know what you mean,” he cuts in once again and visibly gulps. “Betty, you know how I feel about you—“

“I know you can’t say it,” Betty assures him and plasters a fake smile on her face, the Cooper way. “It’s okay, I just needed you to know because tomorrow is going to be hard for you and—I want you to know I do love you and no matter what happens you’ll have me, you always will.”

Jughead’s face is a jumble of emotions she knows he’s trying to decipher within himself. “I… have to go now, but, um, thank you,” he murmurs, giving her hand a squeeze before dropping it and shuffling down the front steps.

She waits until he’s around the corner to go into her house feeling a heaviness in her gut that she knows won’t go away, not until they have marks, not until Jughead can feel confident enough to call her his. She never thought about her and Jug never getting marks, it hadn’t crossed her mind really, but with his mom being marked with someone else… the statistics of an unnatural child having a soulmate are low, but an unnatural child with a parent who later marked? It was even lower.

Betty has always taken solace in knowing Jughead’s parents believed in them, that one day they would get soulmarks, but Gladys obviously doesn’t, probably never has. And if his parents don’t believe her, and her parents don’t believe her, and if more things keep going wrong in Jughead’s life to pull him even farther away from her… She shakes the thoughts out of her head.

Forsythe Pendleton Jones the Third is hers, she doesn’t care what the universe does to separate them. To her, somehow, they are already one.

…

“You should just call him.”

Betty glares at the back of Archie’s head. “Yes, because I hadn’t thought of that, oh wise one. Any more obvious things you want to point out? The sky is blue—”

“You’re mean without Jug around,” Archie mumbles, his fingers violently smashing buttons on his controller.

“I’m sorry, I’m not—I’m just so frustrated,” Betty groans, collapsing on his couch dramatically. “I haven’t really spoken to him in three days, and texts do not count as actual communication. What did he sound like when you talked to him, Arch?”

“Uh,” Archie begins, but is distracted by his video game.

“Archibald Andrews, I will unplug that freakin’ machine—”

“Alright, alright, calm down,” Archie pauses the game and turns to look at her. “He sounded rushed, I guess. He’s dealing with the fallout from his mom, Betty, and making sure Jellybean is okay, it’s kind of a lot, even for him, you know?”

“Yes, it is, I agree!” she exclaims and he leans away in surprise at the enthusiasm of her response. “It’s a lot, and I can help him, I could take some of it off his plate, I’m great at helping!”

“Betty, take it down a notch, you’re about to attract dogs.”

“You don’t understand, Archie, the other night I,” she stops and lets out a long breath. “I did something so stupid.”

“What’d you do?”

“Pushed him away, which is hard to do when he’s already practically sprinting in the other direction, but I am just that good,” Betty sighs.

“Betty, you know how Jug feels about you,” Archie assures her. “He’s just, he’s Jug, you know? He’s not used to nice things, or things working out, and you’re the nicest thing in his life. To him, it doesn’t make sense that he gets you, you know what I mean?”

“Do you guys talk about this? About me?” Betty demands, sitting up and leaning in his personal space.

“I try to keep out of your guys’ couple drama because I want to be Switzerland,” Archie tells her. “I’m the best friend and what you say stays between us, and what he says stays between me and him. You gotta respect that, Betty.”

“I do, Arch, you’re a wonderful human, but Jug is hurting right now and we both know I can help him, so if you tell me what you know—”

“Jug’s been hurting, Betty, come on. He’s white-knuckling as we get older and you’re getting closer to, well, you know,” he hints at her period and she shakes her head at him. Boys, they get so grossed out about the menstrual cycle. “Betty… Jug, he’s, how do I say this,” he clears his throat and sit back on his hands to think. “Now, he hasn’t said this to me in so many words, but it feels like he’s waiting for you to take it all back. Every day he wakes up waiting for you to break his heart. I’m not just talking about marks, I’m talking about who he is, and how he’s so different from you.”

“What? Jug’s the most thoughtful, sweetest, genuine—”

“I know you think that, and I’ll try to not be offended because I do think I’m genuine—”

“Archie,” Betty warns, her patience is wearing thin.

“I know, I know. You see Jughead how he is, I see Jughead for who he is, but Jughead, it’s like he’s looking in a funhouse mirror and all the bad parts are enlarged and the good parts are so small. He’s waiting for you to see him the same way and just walk away, maybe not even wait for the moment to get the mark, you could do this tomorrow to him, in his mind. When you walk away from him, he’ll never be the same, so he’s trying to, like, soften the blow, maybe. Again, he hasn’t said any of this to me in these words, it’s just how I see it from his snide remarks and comments, so his general personality, I guess.”

Betty opens her mouth and then closes it again. “What?” she questions and almost wants to laugh. “What?” she repeats, speechless. “Have you—have you told him how wrong that is? That, that, I mean, it’s so—I need to find him.”

Betty stands, but Archie holds his hands up from the floor. “Betty, calm down. You bullrushing him right now with all these emotions is just going to cause a fight, besides we don’t know where he is right now. Just because I’ve talked to him doesn’t mean he’s been open and honest. Wait until tonight when you know he’ll be by the trailer, when his dad—”

“Will be drunk and need taken care of,” Betty finishes and sits on the couch again. “When did you get so wise, Arch?”

“Well, while you and Jug have been mooning over each other I have been watching and learning how to handle getting my own soulmate. You guys are helping me out a lot with all the trial and error,” he admits.

“Oh, you’re welcome,” Betty says sarcastically.

“Yep, so wanna watch a movie? With Jug not here it could be in color, not have subtitles, and it can even star Seth Rogen,” Archie suggests with a wide smile.

“You make some excellent points, and who knows when a moment like this will happen again,” she agrees. “But no Seth Rogen please.”

“Fine,” Archie says in a huff and in minutes they have a movie chosen, something that never happens with Jug around because they usually spend twenty minutes fighting first, and both were settled on the couch. “So, how are you going to get your mom to let you go to Jug’s so late at night?”

“I’m going to tell her I’m sleeping over someone’s house,” Betty answers easily. “Probably Ethel’s, she likes Ethel, and Ethel will cover for me if something happens. I’ll buy her a pie from Pop’s to thank her.”

“A whole pie? I help you out all the time and I don’t get anything.”

“You’re stuck with me for life, Ethel I still have to bribe to stick around,” Betty says with a sideways glance and smirk before suppressing a yawn.

“Haven’t been sleeping?” Archie asks while hitting play on the DVD remote.

“Not at all, really, no,” Betty answers honestly, because why lie? “But my room has now been feng shui’ed, is more organized than ever, I’ve sorted my closet into categories of ‘my mom made me buy this’, ‘my mom doesn’t know I own this’, and ‘my mom and I agree on this’, well I guess four categories because I also have a garbage bag clothes that just don’t fit anymore, same with shoes.”

“You have shoes your mom doesn’t know you own?”

���High heels, yes, given to me in secrecy by Polly. My mom doesn’t think high heels, the kind Polly gave me anyways, are appropriate, She’s more of a sensible shoes woman, my mother.”

“I’m going to pretend I know what that means,” Archie says, his arm splayed over the back of the couch.

“Oh, and I’ve already read four books on the AP English summer reading list,” Betty informs him.

“God, you need sleep, it’s just sad. Want me to make popcorn?” Archie asks while standing.

“Sure, light on the butter please!” she calls after him and shuffles to rest her head on the armrest, and that’s the last thing she remembers before Archie’s front door bangs open, it’s dark out, and the TV screen is blank.

“Arch!” she hears someone calling.

It takes a moment to realize it’s Jughead in her sleepy haze, and she struggles to get up. It is then she realizes she’s locked in a hold by Archie, his body behind hers, his arms around her like how he sleeps with his dog Vegas.

“Archie!” Jughead yells again, coming into the living room and flicking on the light.

Betty’s eyes squint at the harsh change. “Jug,” she groans, struggling under Archie’s weight—he literally will not let go.

Jughead just stares at them, his eyes blinking repeatedly, like he can’t believe what he is seeing.

“Archie!” Betty grunts, now fighting his grip and it begins to lessen as the red-head wakes up. When Betty looks back up Jughead is gone and the front door is slamming shut. “Jughead!” she calls after him, stumbling over her feet. “Juggie, wait!” she yells, following him down the sidewalk as he practically sprints. “Jug, I can run faster than you, stop!” she orders, cutting him off and they knock into each other.

“Let me go, Betty,” he says in a deep voice, his hands on hers as she anchors herself on his flannel.

“No! I was going to come find you tonight.”

“Yeah, you looked real interested in me tonight,” he bites back.

“What? Archie and I were watching a movie and fell asleep, that’s all. He was helping me not freak out about not hearing from you in a couple days.”

“Yeah, sure. Let go,” he says, tugging on her hands again, but she doesn’t listen. “Betty.”

“No, why are you getting so upset? Because of me and Archie? Are you serious? It’s—he’s Archie,” she says like it explains everything.

“Don’t be naïve, Betty, it doesn’t suit you,” he remarks and she doesn’t like the dark look in his eyes. The eyebags indicate he hasn’t been sleeping either, he looks exhausted.

“What is that supposed to mean?”

“You just said it the other day, Archie is getting curious and he’s not subtle about girls,” he reminds her.

“What? Me and Archie? He’s like my brother. Are you seriously telling me after all this time you’re jealous of Archie? Our best friend, Archie?”

“No, my best friend Archie, your neighbor who gets to look into your bedroom window every night and is a stone’s throw when you need him. You guys even have a freakin’ system to wake the other up in the middle of the night if something happens!”

“From when we were five and you helped design it! That was never for Archie, I only used it when you were sleeping over. Are you really making a big deal about this? Archie doesn’t think of me that way, and I definitely have never even considered the possibility—”

“Betty,” Jughead cuts her off and forcibly takes her hands from his button up. “I literally cannot handle this right now, I came to Archie’s to get Archie, not you.”

Betty nods and steps back. “Wow, okay, that’s… nice.”

“Don’t do that, do you have any idea how shitty this past week has been for me?”

“Maybe I’d have a better idea if you actually talked to me, or you know, wanted to hang out with me other than when you feel the world is falling apart all around you. I can’t just be a safety blanket for you Jug, there are two people in this relationship.”

“Really? ‘Cause five minutes ago I couldn’t tell which two people were in one,” he comments and is already walking away. “I have somewhere to be, don’t follow,” he says over his shoulder and is around the corner as she stands glued to the sidewalk.

When she turns Archie is standing at the end of his driveway, just waiting. “Where’d he go? Is everything okay?”

“No, Archie, it isn’t,” Betty tells him and brushes by to go to her house.

“Betty,” Archie grabs her wrist. “Let me help, we should go find him together.”

“Trust me, Arch, the last thing he needs is the two of us looking for him together,” she insists and is already going up her front steps to lie to her mom, pack a bag, and head for the trailer park.

Hours later Betty has no idea what time it is because her phone died, she hopes her mom hasn’t called to check in on her, but also doesn’t really care, and is considering making a sleeping bag out of her clothes to sleep on, but doesn’t think it’s a good idea because if FP comes home first he’s likely to trample her.

She knows she actually dozed off when she jerks awake to the sound of hoots and hollers. Jughead is standing in front of her, two boys on either side of him. She thinks she recognizes them, maybe from school or just the trailer park, but she doesn’t care. What she cares about is the brown bottles hanging from their hands.

“Can I get one of these delivered to my front door?” a boy asks as he steps towards her, but Jughead catches his collar with his fist and tugs him back. “Fuck, Jones, what’s your problem?”

“What are you doing here, Betty?” he questions, ignoring the blond guy, then takes a swig.

“Are you drinking?” she demands while stepping closer to him. “What the hell, Jughead?”

“Yeah, J, what the hell, we should be sharing. You want some, babe?” the blond speaks up again.

“Shut the hell up, Dez,” Jughead orders, his tone dark and firm, his eyes practically black. “You guys should go,” he says a moment later with eyes soley on Betty.

“Killjoy,” Dez, apparently, muttered and kicked a rock. “You think Toni’s up, Joaquin?” he asked as they walked away.

“Dream on, bro,” she heard the other guy, Joaquin, say as they went.

“What’re you doing, Jug? Drinking? This isn’t you,” Betty tells him once the two boys are out of sight.

“And who am I, Betty, huh?” he asks with the bottle to his lips.

“Well, you’re usually not this much of a dick, for starters,” Betty offers and crosses her arms as Jughead just laughs. “I’ve been waiting for you for hours and you were off drinking with those guys? Where’s your dad? I was starting to think you slept over your mom’s.”

“My mom’s,” Jughead chuckles while leaning against the side of the trailer and takes a long drink. “My mom’s, that’s funny,” he goes on and laughs. “To think, a boy from the trailer park has two homes, yet neither of them really want him.”

“Jug, don’t, don’t do that. I know you’re going through a hard time right now—”

“Right now? I’ve been going through a hard time since I was eight, Betty, open your eyes,” he cuts her off.

“Open my eyes? What, you think I’ve been walking around with blinders on since we met?”

“Give the girl a medal, she’s finally got it!” Jughead yells into the abyss of the trailer park.

“Jug, why are you being like this?” Betty asks almost in a whisper.

“Because this is who I am, Betty,” Jughead states as he comes closer. “Doesn’t it ever occur to you just how different we are? Like on a cellular DNA kind of level? You’re a straight-A student, your sister is already training you to be a cheerleader when we get to high school, I mean you’re the perfect girl next door.”

“I hate that word.”

“I’m the damaged loner outsider from the wrong side of the tracks,” he goes on, ignoring her.

“You know I have never thought of you that way,” Betty insists.

“Betty, come on,” Jug urges. “Who are we kidding? We’re on borrowed time.”

Betty feels her eyes water. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

“You can’t just decide at four years old that someone is your soulmate!”

“I didn’t decide anything!” she exclaims. “I felt it, and you said you did too, unless you’ve been lying for nine years!”

“I was five, Betty, hoping to get a pretty girl to stop crying, I paid attention to you in a way no one else did, a way Archie didn’t and is finally starting to. Wake up, we aren’t those kids anymore,” he tells her.

Betty nods, blinking tears away. “Right, so all this time I’ve just been using you. For nine years I’ve been so very vocal about how I feel just to make a fool out of myself when we don’t mark together.”

“Might as well have,” Jug agrees and lifts the bottle up in a cheers motion. Before he can put it to his lips she reaches out and smacks it out of his hands. “What the fuck, Betty?”

“You open your damn eyes, Jughead Jones,” Betty orders, her tone firm even though her lip is quivering and she can taste the salt of her tears. “I am doing everything I can to keep you whole, to keep us together, and all you’re doing is running in the other fucking direction. You want me to think all you needed was some liquid courage to tell me that our entire life together has been a lie? I don’t buy it, you hear me?” she states and steps right up to him. “I know it seems everyone in your life lets you down or walks away but I am here, I am standing right here and I’m telling you I am not going anywhere. I love you, I know that scares you, but I don’t care, you just have to get used to it.”

“Right, until you mark with Archie, then what? You’ll still be right here, only with him right beside you? No thanks,” he mutters, unable to meet her eye.

“Why is everything about Archie now? I don’t feel that way about him, I have never seen him that way. The only person I have ever even thought about was you, you’re all I see, why can’t you see that?”

“Because you don’t see what I see, Betty,” Jughead bites back. “You’re the perfect girl next door and he’s the All-American boy every girl dreams about. Don’t you see just how much more sense you two make? Guys like me don’t get girls like you. I’m an unnatural child, Betty, with a mother that marked later, you think I don’t look up the statistics just like you? My chance of marking dropped in half from the less than fifty-percent it already was. We can’t hold onto some childhood fantasy anymore. You’re going to mark, Betty, there is no doubt about it, but me? I’m going to become just like my father, in love with a girl who marked with someone else, and chasing the liquor bottle. It’s about damn time we accepted that. You think I’m waiting for you to walk away? You’re already halfway gone, Betty, and I’m losing my fucking mind.”

“You might think that because you’re pushing me away. I’m not willingly putting the distance between us, that’s all on you Jug, and you know it,” Betty reminds him.

“It’s called self-preservation. You think this is fun for me? What, you think I’m going to stick around when it turns out I’m right and nothing happens when we touch after you get your period? You think I can just watch when you end up with Archie or someone just like him? No, as soon as you touch me and nothing happens I’m gone because I won’t be able to just stand on the sidelines, it will literally kill me.”

“Didn’t you feel anything when we first touched, Jug? Don’t you remember how it felt? I know we were just kids, but God, don’t you still something when you hold my hand or kiss my cheek? Because I do. I feel it every damn time. We’re soulmates, we are, don’t shake your head at me,” Betty demands and takes his face in her hands. “And if we aren’t then we won’t have marks together. I don’t need a mark, Jug, and for all the trouble they’ve caused I wish they didn’t even exist. I wish we could just pick whoever we wanted and be happy, because if we could then I would choose you, I’d choose you every time.”

Jug removes her hands from his face. “My mom was in love with my dad just a couple months ago, Betty, then she touched Billy and it was like he never even fucking mattered. It didn’t matter she already had two kids, it didn’t matter that she was the only thing keeping my dad even remotely together, she forgot about it all the moment that mark formed on her back.”

“I’m not your mother!” Betty practically screams and pushes on his chest. “I’m not her, I’m stronger than her, and I don’t need a mark to tell me who I should be with. I know it right in here,” Betty insists, putting her hand over his heart. “I love you, Jug, please, just stop all this and accept it. You’ll see when I finally get my period, then all of this will be for nothing,” she says in a whisper as tears pour down her face.

“I can’t do it like them, Betts,” Jughead murmurs, once again making it so they weren’t touching. “I can’t—” he chokes and turns away, resting his hands on the trailer as he breathes heavily.

Betty sniffles and then jumps when he punches the trailer repeatedly. “Jug, Jug, stop!” she pleads, grabbing a hold of his arm. “You’ll wake your dad up, or, I don’t know, dent your house!”

“My dad’s in jail, Betty,” Jughead tells her, using his bloody hand to wipe his nose and laughs. “Drunk and disorderly. Billy called the cops on him when he showed up at the condo to try and get Jellybean to bring her home, said this shithole is where she belonged.”

“Jug,” Betty breathes and steps towards him and he steps back, stumbling into the trailer and just slides down until he’s sitting. “Jug, please—”

“I’m going to lose you, Betty,” he says softly and looks up into her eyes, the little boy she met shining though his iris’. “I’m going to lose you before I even get to have you. Don’t you understand how that’s killing me?” he asks and breaks off into a sob.

“Juggie,” Betty drops to her knees and takes him in her arms. For the first time tonight he doesn’t fight her and lets himself fall apart in her arms. She pushes his beanie off and cards her fingers through his hair, whispering soothing words in his ear.

It takes a few minutes for him to calm down and his eyes look glassy while his eyelids keep trying to close. The alcohol is setting in, she thinks.

“I don’t know which is worse,” he mumbles, his head falling back onto the side of the trailer with a thump. “Losing you before because I’m pushing so hard, or just saying fuck it and losing you after. Should I get to know what I’m missing or let what could be haunt me?”

“Juggie,” she repeats and bites her lip to stop herself from crying herself. “C’mon, let’s get you into bed,” she urges, standing and tugging on his hand to get him standing.

He follows her lead and doesn’t fight, he doesn’t even say another word until he’s in bed after kicking his jeans off. “Fuck, I’m already him,” he groans while digging his palms into his eyes.

“You’re not your father, Jug,” Betty assures him, getting him under the blankets and holding a glass of water up to him. “Drink some of this for me.”

He attempts to sit up and gulps down half before falling back down. “Really? ‘Cause I’m sure I did this same thing with him last night, only I was on the other side of it.”

“Sh, close your eyes, Juggie,” she whispers, brushing hair out of his eyes and he leans into her hand. “I’ll stay until you fall asleep, okay?”

“I want you to stay forever,” he whispers as his eyes are already fighting to stay open. “You know, I thought,” he starts and peeks one eye open. “I thought that if I did everything right, if I did everything for everyone else, spread myself so thin I had nothing left, that maybe the universe would owe me,” he stops and shifts so he’s on his side facing her, his body curled around her's sitting on the edge. “I thought maybe finally I’d get something for myself, that I’d get you,” he goes on once her hand is moving through his hair again. “But I guess I did too good of a job making my mom look good because the universe thought it’d been her all along.”

“Sleep, Jug,” she says again and leans down to kiss his temple.

“You ruined me, Betty Cooper,” he mumbles, both eyes closed and his breaths evening out. “And I can’t even be mad about it,” he goes on and smiles to himself, or maybe her, she doesn’t know. “‘Cause what a way to go.”

She stays for a long time just to watch him sleep, her fingers massaging his scalp as he dreams, hoping that his mind isn’t wreaking havoc on him when he’s unconscious like it does when he’s awake.

Many people have told her she’s wrong about her and Jug, more people have laughed at her than believed her, but none of those people were Jug himself. He’s never put into words that he didn’t believe her, that he didn’t believe they were soulmates. Sure, she knows it was in the back of his mind that it nags him, that it’s been getting louder the older they get, but she didn’t think it was consuming him the way it is.

What if she’s wrong? What if she just built up a cute little boy helping her out of the mud when she was four so much in her head that she doesn’t know what’s truth or fiction anymore? She thinks she remembers that moment perfectly, how he felt, what he smelled like. She still has the paper crown in her hope chest and can recall the exact moment it hit her: this boy is her soulmate.

But the other option is that he’s not. Did she just have a crush and romanticize her parent’s marks and love so much that in her four-year-old brain a crush and a soulmate were one in the same?

Betty has never doubted herself before. She has never truly thought she was wrong, never realized just how broken she could leave Jughead Jones if she’s been mistaken.

Slowly she extracts herself from the sleeping boy and leaves the trailer, grabbing her bag and one of his zip-up hoodies on her way out. Betty doesn’t know where she’s going, doesn’t have a plan, she just walks and then begins running, not stopping when she enters Eversgreen Forest. She doesn’t care when branches slapped her in the neck and face, ignores when her lungs burn so much it’s hard to breathe.

She only comes to a halt when she trips and tumbles to the ground and can’t force herself up. Her legs are jelly and she sobs when she realizes she’s in a mud puddle, just like the one Jughead found her in.

Betty Cooper knows what being in love feels like, and now, at thirteen years old, she knows what a broken heart feels like too, only it’s not her own heart she’s worried about, it’s Jughead’s.

She holds all the cards in her hands, it’s all up to her. With her touch they will mark or not, their hearts will break or swell.

She looks down at her hands and squeezes them closed in anger—she wonders if she's fortunate to find love so young, or if feeling it all slip away just makes her unlucky for having it at all.

To Be Continued...

Notes: Thank you everyone for everything you left after the first chapter!!! It made a depressed girl smile for a couple days, so once again, thank you. I tried to make sure I answered everyone's questions in the comments, the one's I could answer without spoiling anything, anyways. If I didn't ask again and I'll do my best to reply!

Big shout out to @jandjsalmon again for helping with this chapter and beta-ing, and of course making the aesthetic for this chapter as well. 

The third chapter is well on it's way but I have been on vacation for a week so it's been hard to write, and I thought that since I'm going home tomorrow and will have some time to write again (hopefully) that the kudos and comments from this chapter will help push me along with it.

[nerbert]

This is like, months late I’m sorry please forgive me

This was a questions tag thing that went around like a month ago, and it’s been sitting in my drafts waiting for me to finish it

I forget the rules, and I think everyone has answered these already, so I’m not going to bother tagging more peoples, but if you haven’t done this yet, and want to, answer any 11 of these questions!

3 people tagged me, so this is long

@thecrazyexfangirl tagged me for these:

1. What are you studying or what is your profession? 

I’m studying economics! I’ll graduate with an honours undergrad degree next year, and then I want to complete a masters in economics, a masters in public policy, and a phD in economics, then spend my career writing macroeconomic policy for governments. Basically I want to run the world 

2. I read a lot of opinion about FMAB and FMA03 Mustang, but what is your opinion about FMAB and FMA03 Edward?

I have opinions, and I am going to start on that essay post soon! 

3. Where are you from? 

I grew up in Victoria BC 

4. What is your favourite film/book and why? 

Across the universe is my favourite movie, because I love Beatles music, and I think the movie is just so well done. and Harry Potter is my favourite book, because, well, why does anyone like Harry Potter? It’s the first book I read all the way through, because it came out when I was a smol, the first book that had enough diverse characters that I could identify with, and rereading it it’s feels like catching up with an old friend❤ 

5. If you get a role in the FMA live action, which role would you play? 

I would love to play Major General Olivier Mira Armstrong, but I think honestly, I would want more of like an extra role, because I’d be too busy fangirling to actually act, plus, acting isn’t really my thing 

 6. FMA03, FMAB or FMA manga? 

Good golly, that’s tough. I haven’t read the manga yet, I have a processing disorder that makes it hard to read black and white manga. Between 03 and brohood, brohood is definitely a better series, but 03 is important to watch. I really love Ed’s character development in 03, and I LOVE satan Tucker’s fate. Death is too merciful for him, I love that he sufffeeeerrrrrrrrrsssssss 

7. If you get an opportunity to meet with an author who would you choose? 

I think Arakawa would be a really cool person to meet. From the little that I’ve read/heard about her, I feel like we’d get along 

 8. Which fictional character would be your best friend? 

I think Mai from atla would be my saltmate for sure 

9. Favourite fandom? 

Definitely fma 

10. When did you join to the tumblr community? 

I think I made a tumblr in like 2012, but didn’t really get into it, then after watching fma, I started looking at fanart, and found royai fanfics that soothed my soul, and then I started using Tumblr, so mid 2016. 

11. Do you make fanarts, fanfictions, amv etc.?

I wish. I am an artist, but I paint impressionist landscapes, so fanart isn’t really my domain. And I’ve never really been a writer.

@queenxolivier tagged me in these:

How did you get into fandom? What was your catalyst to finding the tumblr community?

This was kind of answered with when did I join Tumblr. But I got into fma after my brother nagged me to watch it. I got into fandom back in the days of My Immortal and the Harry Potter fandom, but I didn’t have a tumblr back then, so it was more looking at hp fanart on deviantart and MySpace, and googling fanfics, but I was never part of a fandom community until I found fma

What’s your favourite part about your favourite fandom?

I love that the fma fandom is still thriving, like, brohood ended 6 years ago, and people are still joining the fandom, making new art and fics, it’s awesome!

If you could spend the day with any fictional character, who would it be and why?

I’d love to spend a day with Katara, she’s so incredible, and I think I could learn a lot from her, like just how to be a better person in general

What fictional character has had the biggest impact on your life or has inspired you the most?

Hermione was the first character to have an impact on me. And it was because I have gigantic teeth just like her. Seriously, my front teeth are like twice the size of my husbands, and I’ve had these teeth since I was a tiny 8 year old. So I latched onto her character, and started to find more similarities between me and her, and she taught me it’s ok to be smart and a girl

Talk about your favourite book (I KNOW IT’S HARD but if you had to pick one).

Lol hp fo sho. It's just so perfect, like even now, there's still more I'm learning about the Harry Potter universe, and so many more headcanons I can get behind...and more reasons to hate Snape 

Do you have any accomplishments or anything in your life you feel the most proud of?

Ha, way too many. I have a super interesting back story, but that will take to much to talk about here

Tell us about a project you have going on! Or if you don’t have one, maybe something you’ve always wanted to write or draw?

Right now I’m doing an econometric analysis on whether minimum wage increases have impacted the CPI in British Columbia for the last 30 years, and I’m also writing about how Canada’s economy wouldn’t have developed without the help of the Indigenous Peoples

How do you feel about AU’s?

Meh. I like the funny au headcanons, like the one @izumiicurtis proposed, where everyone wears period clothing, except ed still looks like he robbed hot topic in the dark (that is the best joke in the fandom I swear) but I never really got into au's

Do you have any favourite composers or soundtracks?

I really love the Rent soundtrack 

In your opinion, what is the best Disney movie to come out since Disney’s Golden Age?

Wreck it Ralph

Fangirl about something, really go wild.

Major. General. Olivier. Mira. Armstrong. that woman is a goddess and could kill me and I’d be ok with it. She’s so powerful and doesn’t take any crap and she’s so smart and always plans ten steps ahead of everyone and she’s not afraid to admit she doesn’t know everything and she loves her brother so much and does so much to protect her family plus she’s absolutely beautiful like her hair is made of silk I swear and the way she fights with a sword instead of guns I just love swords

@haganenobeato tagged me in these

1. Would you wanted Solf J. Kimblee perish a deserving death on that train? Yes or yes? 

Yes. He should have died RIGHT THERE 

2. Is there fanart or fanfiction you feel needs to be made but doesn’t exist yet or w/e? FMA or otherwise? 

There should be more RizBecca (Riza and Rebecca) fics/ art, and more Marier (Maria Ross and Olivier Mira Armstrong) fics/art. Just more wlw content in general in the fma fandom 

3. What do you think Hayate’s Cream Shiba’s name is? 

well, I think that dog must be Roy’s, and Roy is a nerd, so he probably named her similarly to how Riza named Black Hayate

4. Knowing the FMA baddies masterplan, what would you have tried to do to stop Father? 

lol I’m 5 feet tall and I’ve never been in a fight in my life, If I tried to stop them, I’d somehow trip and accidentally press the big red button that sets the plan in motion (oh there’s no big red button that does that? surprise, when I’m around, there’s suddenly a big red button that does The Bad Thing(tm) )

 5. Which is your favorite AU? 

Idk, I’m not really into AU’s

6. What fictional character would you have a comfortable silence with? 

Riza. I feel like she’s the type who doesn’t do small talk, but when she gets to know you she starts like, making puns and when she has a topic to talk about, she really gets into it. And she doesn’t seem like the type to be awkward with silence

7. Which fictional character would you introduce to your family? 

Riza. I think she’d have a lot of fun with my family, and I think my family would like her. I would say Olivier, but she doesn’t seem like the ‘meet the parents’ type of person to me

8. Which fictional character deserved better? 

Katara in legend of korra, they really did a horrible job with her character 

9. Which FMA character (assuming they don’t know alchemy, even if they do in canon) would you rather be stuck on an island with? 

OLIVIER MIRA ARMSTRONG 

10. What scene brings a smile to your face each time? 

the EdWin proposal, it’s just so cute, and so awkward, and so appropriate for how Ed/Winry propose to each other

11. FLAIL AND CAPS LOCK SOMETHING, ANYTHING

IDK WHAT TO CAPS LOCK ABOUT. NOW I’M THINKING OF EDWIN SO MAYBE I’LL FANGIRL ABOUT THAT. THEY’RE JUST SO PERFECT FOR EACH OTHER AND THEY’RE CHILDHOOD FRIENDS AND BEST FRIENDS AND ARAKAWA WROTE THEIR RELATIONSHIP SO WELL AND IT’S SO SUBTLE AND BUILDS OVER TIME AND THEY’RE SUCH A SUNSHINEY COUPLE AND THEY HAVE SUCH A CUTE LITTLE FAMILY AND I LOVE MY BABIES

if you read this all, you’re my new best friend

[braindamageforbeginners]

Calculations

Cycle 8, Day 18

Like Sisko’s entry in the amazing DS9 episode “By the Moonlight,” this one’s all about me, and I might hit the publish button because, hey, more material. So, on Monday, I’ll have my usual end-of-cycle blood draw, then my 8-week MRI. I really do hate those machines; you’d imagine having an MRI every 3-12 months for 15 years would make them less unpleasant, but I’ve gone beyond loathing to something even purer and more focused, I’ll have to do some research and steal a word from another language or something.(the great English-speaking past-time). Either way, I’m awaiting sentencing, as it were, and there’s not much I can do at the moment; and there are a few values on the latest blood count a month ago. That doesn’t worry me too much, although I’ve heard from a few sources that Temodar tends to catastrophically drop lymphocye (white blood cell)(the immune system’s first line of defense against viruses, bacteria, and... cancer. Alright, screw those ones) counts in third or fourth week of each cycle. But that would delay the next cycle a bit, and, I’ve already lost that bet in the worst way possible, even if it was a year ago; and it’s getting beyond tiring living my life as it can all go to hell next week - I mean, that’s technically true for all of us, but I’ll still swap odds with anyone. And even though I’m betting science - or black magic, I’m still not sure which would more-accurately describe The Warlocks - will offer better solutions to glioma patients in a few years, I do have to live long enough to see that. Most people wouldn’t end that statement with the idiom “that’s the trick,” but, in my case, that is the trick.

I’d usually launch into a comparison about the definition of luck, and chaos theory’s concept of dependence on initial conditions (pretty much what it sounds like). But we all know of the prince who gambles away his money or wholesome girl who runs off with the Hell’s Angels. I was supposed to be healthy - or mostly-healthy, barring a single fluke with a brain tumor in my teens. Now, I’m not even 34, and I’m price-comparing ankle braces, so I can walk without feeling like I’m about to keel over on the left. To quote the bard, “I’m pretty fucking far from okay.” Or Ving  Rhames, I get the two confused. The downside to starting to figure out how magic and unique we all are is realizing it applies to me too. That 30-50% ATRX protective mutation’s not hitting my psyche. And I’ve been exposed to so much nigh-lethal carcinogenic crap in the last year that the odds and statistics on every single thing in a 20-km radius of me is changing quickly. Human brains may be built for math, but not Calulus, which is concerned with that (and the proof of that is that we didn’t discover it until the 18th century., even though we’ve been around for 200000 years). I’m trying to keep Warlock Senior’s dictum in my brain - that the longer I’ll live, the better my odds. That with every step across the Abyssal Plains, I’ll get that much closer to the ascent out of here, but there is so much governed by random chance that’s constantly changing, there are no sane or safe bets. I’ll be getting to the point where i can’t hedge any of them, either. I started this writing project because, as far as I knew, no one had come out the right side of this with any decent data for the next folks (Ben Williams is the current GBM survival record-holder at 23 years, and he wrote a book, but his own website admits large sections are outdated)(also, I want more than 23 more years). Maybe it was a chance to finally outwit a disease that has - in various ways - defined my entire adult life; by approaching it as an artist instead of a scientist. At the same time it’s possible there’s an odd bit of the impressionists and/or the machine overlord in it - stick with me closely. One futurist once predicted - and forgive me for not giving direct quotes or citations - that computer programs of tomorrow, presumably after producing Arnie and killing all humans, would run operating systems that would, as a byproduct, recreate personalities and memories while running. Take note, folks, that is the best explanation for the Matrix sequels. The other aspect here is of the French Impressionists, my favorite visual artists (Sorry, Walt), who were obsessed with light and shadow. Maybe I just need another hobbie that doesn’t require obsessively trying to recreate 19th century coal (haze was a factor to the Impressionists)(more importantly, to me, is the story of several of them trying to capture in paint a train coming into the station, as the steam, smoke, and people quickly changed the lighting and quality of the landscape - I won’t be the same person who is currently writing this). I’m trying to see - and forgive me for being self-absorbed  - if it’s possible to create an intact, accurate representation of who I am (or was, if this all goes bad) using words. I know, it’s an arrogantly ambitious plan, but I don’t want to wake up in The Sims 205 to find I sill have all the same problems. The Machine Overlord can fix the damned limp.