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starcrossedkaiju · 3 years

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Kingslayer AU: Chapter Seven

This one is very nice I think you will like it. I call this the “Scott accidentally makes friends” arc.

Scott had just returned from a boring mining trip. Thankfully it wasn’t netherite duty this time. He was looking forward to sitting down after putting everything away when he looked out the window.

Martyn was perched on top of the walls, he seemed to be writing something. Scott’s interest was piqued. It was just after nightfall and cold out. He wondered what the other man was doing as he quietly opened the door of the Renchanting base. It was one in the morning when he checked the clock. There was time to spare.

The world was silent save for a chorus of crickets. It had stormed the night before and a thin blanket of snow preserved the land in tiny crystals. Scott did his best not to crunch the ice beneath his feet as he approached the ladder strung over the high walls.

Looking up, he saw that the sky was clear and brilliantly lit by the stars. A third quarter Moon hung in the air. Obfuscated by the only bank of clouds in the night sky.

He climbed.

As Scott approached the top, he wondered what he was even planning to do. He was going to talk to Martyn, then what. The whole Red Army was still walking on eggshells around him. Of course he didn’t mind. No, he wasn’t supposed to. He was a spy.

That’s what he told himself to sleep better at night.

Yes, ever since he’d started “intermingling” with the Red Army he had grown to admire their friendship. Not between himself and them so much as between each other. It was refreshing. Scott caught himself smiling along with their jokes, tapping his foot to the beat of whatever song was on the radio.

He didn’t dare laugh, or start a conversation, that would be out of line for him. Not yet. Not right now. When tensions were still so high.

Scott poked his head over the top of the wall. Ever so slightly, glancing at the deserted surroundings. He ducked down just enough so that Martyn wouldn’t be immediately aware of his presence. Still contemplating whether or not he was making a good decision.

“You know, if you’re aiming to be sneaky you should really think about investing in a hat,” Martyn’s voice shook Scott from his thoughts.

It also shook him from his perch on the ladder. He jumped in surprise and threw his hands up, conveniently forgetting about the rung he was holding onto.

“Well, this is it,” Scott’s mind said to him, at least his green life track record wasn’t too shabby.

A hand clasped around his wrist, suspending him in air with his feet braced on the ladder.

Scott stared wide eyed up at Martyn, who looked like he was contemplating letting him go. Then he pulled the other back to the ladder and sat back down.

“Uh, thank you,” Scott almost whispered. Pulling himself up onto the wall.

“Well it would be very hard to explain to Timmy,” Martyn replied.

“Jimmy,” Scott corrected, still looking at his feet.

“Timmy,” Martyn said back immediately.

Scott shut up.

“Major?,” Martyn looked over at him. Scott’s head snapped to attention.

“Jesus! Are you possessed?” He asked.

“No. I’m fine,” Scott assured. He didn’t want to admit to himself that the Hand made him nervous.

Martyn laughed at his expense, “calm yourself Major,” he clapped him on the shoulder.

Against his best interest Scott flinched a bit. Trying to laugh off his discomfort.

“What brings you out here in the middle of the night?” Martyn changed the subject.

“I- uh. I saw you up here,” Scott scooted a bit closer, swinging his legs over so that he was facing the same way as the other man. He looked over to see what Martyn was working on.

A book with plain pages was splayed across his lap, the page open was about halfway through the well loved sketchbook. The first half’s papers were crinkled and discolored from use. On the open canvas was a few disconnected sketches of figures that Scott didn’t recognize. Smudges and erase marks scattered the page.

“What’re you drawing?” Scott asked. Aiming to redo the icebreaker.

Martyn held out his art book so the other could see better, “these are just some sketches of people I used to see on TV. That’s Metal Man. I’m certain he wasn’t actually called that; but I can’t remember his real name,” he explained.

Further down the page was “Scarlet Witch,” then there was a drawing of Ren that neither of them mentioned.

Scott pointed to the last drawing, a bust of a superhero-looking man, “that one looks like you,” he observed.

“Mm, maybe a little?” Martyn replied with a bashful inflection.

“Yeah that’s totally you. He even has the little swirly thing on the chest,” Scott said. Martyn made a dismissive gesture.

“Aw come on. Like you never wanted to be a superhero,” he replied quietly.

Scott giggled. He wasn’t making fun of Martyn. It was just funny, a little, to see the Hand of the King up here doodling cartoons.

“I usually come out here to draw the sky. It’s different every night, always pretty,” Martyn flipped the page back to reveal a drawing of the night sky.

It took up two pages, landscape style, entirely pencil. The scenery even included some landmarks like the very top of Big B’s base. Scott noticed that Martyn’s fingers were covered in excess graphite from blending out the stars.

It was beautiful.

“Helps me umwind,” Martyn flipped a few pages forward to a blank spread, “you should try it,” he suggested as he put the sketchbook in the other’s lap.

Scott sat cluelessly. Staring at the page when he was handed a pencil.

“I’m no artist. Not like you are,” he tried to pass the supplies back but the other refused.

“Whatever you want. It doesn’t have to be the sky, it doesn’t have to be anything recognizable,” Martyn encouraged.

Scott nodded. He adjusted his grip on the pencil and positioned it above the page. It stayed there motionless while he thought.

Martyn had grabbed his hand on that ladder. He let him sit next to him while he was completely vulnerable, trying to get away from reality on top of the wall as long as he could. Martyn showed him pieces of his world. The world the way he saw it, the way he chose to preserve it. Remember it.

He shared it without question and now he was telling Scott to do the same. Show him a bit of his reality so he could understand.

This was a leap. Scott knew it, straight out of his comfort zone; and there would be no turning around, but something in the back of his mind screamed that he couldn’t keep hiding from people.

So a line showed up on the paper, followed by another. Scott pulled the image out of his mind and funneled it through the pencil, the foreground and then the background. A landscape that shaped itself across the whole page. There were mountains fading into blue against the skyline, he remembered, a river with a house on one of its banks.

A floating mass of land in the sky with vines hanging from the bottom, and a building on top.

Martyn didn’t say anything. It was like he wasn’t even there. Scott started drawing a figure to occupy the space. Reaching deep into his mind to see their face. Their faces. Soon instead of one person there was two, then three, then four. He drew every attribute and detail that came back to him.

Twelve people. He didn’t want to forget them.

When Scott finished he put the pencil down next to him. So Martyn knew he was done. He held the page up to study what he’d made, looking for anything he may have forgotten.

“That’s pretty cool,” Martyn complimented him.

“Really?” Scott asked.

“Yeah, I like that dude. The one with the wings,” Martyn pointed to where Scott had drawn a man gliding through the air with huge wings, holding onto his striped hat.

“I don’t remember his name,” Scott admitted. Mostly to himself.

“He had a name?” Martyn asked.

“They all did. I can barely remember their faces,” Scott replied, running his fingers over each of the people he’d drawn. An ugly feeling of guilt made a home in his chest.

“It’s a lovely picture,” Martyn said after a few seconds. He took the book from Scott and ripped a chunk of the pages out, “here,” he held them towards Scott. Including the one he’d been drawing on.

Scott was shocked that the other had desiccated his art book so quickly, but took the pages. He may as well.

“Use em’ however you like. I have plenty more,” Martyn instructed. He clapped Scott on the back again.

Scott flashed him a smile, hoping he didn’t look too much like an idiot, “Thank you,” he said.

“I have to go,” Scott jumped quickly back onto the ladder. He made it a few rungs down before pausing and returning to the top.

“Sorry for kicking you in… You know,” he apologized.

Martyn threw his head back in laughter, “thanks Major,” he replied.

“Bye,” Scott responded. He descended the ladder quickly and jogged to the exit of Dogwarts, fumbling with the doors and then trudging down the hill to make way for his flower forest.

“Remember to get a hat!” Echoed from behind him.

Scott turned around momentarily and nodded to Martyn on the wall, then continued into the trees.

#fwiendship???#i think next chapter is my favorite of the recently written ones #kingslayer au #3rdlife smp #3rdlife #3rd life smp #inthelittlewood #scott smajor #dogwarts

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justanotherdeadgirlwalking · 4 years

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That is Just the Saddest F**king Thing I Have Ever Heard.

TW obviously DEH is about a kid’s suicide, so it has those themes

other parts :)

Part Five.

Art doesn’t just happen. It’s a process. You need a muse, an inspiration, something that lights a spark in your brain. Inspiration is everywhere. I’m surrounded constantly by beautiful bodies, beautiful faces. Sometimes you walk down the street and see how perfectly someone’s shoulders meet their slender neck, and the image burns into your mind. You want to see it in front of you again, but you can’t because that would require stalking the person to find them, and that’s super fucking creepy. So, you settle for the next best thing, you draw it. You sketch it over and over again until you get it right, and suddenly that woman is in front of you again. I prefer to draw people, because then you never run out of ideas. Faces are so unique; each body is different. There’s billions of people in the world, each one just waiting to be captured; I never run out of ideas. Eyes are like two little galaxies right in the center of the asteroid that is your face.

Putting together a portfolio has been a lot harder than I’d expected. I thought I’d just through my favorite drawings in a folder and call it a day. The only problem is, I hate literally everything I have ever drawn. Mom has always told me that my drawing look like photographs. That’s complete bullshit because you can see fingerprint smudges, and you can tell that one eye is significantly better than the other, and the noses look like shit. I literally want to redo every piece.

I’m not being one of those people that says their work is shit because they’re fishing for compliments, I know they’re good. I’ve been featured in district art shows, and I’ve won awards. And I’m not trying to sound like a cocky asshole either. Art is just the one thing in my life I have complete and total control over, and trust me, I took control. I can choose how it looks, I can make it as perfect, or imperfect as I want it. I had to beg my parents for the best pencils and canvas to use. I figured, I didn’t take music lessons or dance lessons like Zoe did, you guys can buy me some quality supplies. They didn’t want to waste money on the stuff if I wasn’t going to use it. As a child I tried a lot of sports and hated them. When I was ten, I joined the swim team. I practiced every day, for hours. I even talked Zoe into training with me, I made her time me, and yell at me in an angry German accent when I wasn’t making time. Then, after probably hundreds of hours of training, I decided that I didn’t like swimming before I even had the chance to compete. I guess they didn’t want me to do the same thing with art. Mom finally took me to an art store, like a real art store, when I proved to her I was serious about it. It was like going to Disney world. Everything I’ve ever dreamed of was right there in front of me. There was a wall of colored pencils. There were pencils in every color I could think of, and then some, colors I never even seen before. I stood there in awe. It was a game changer to use real colored pencils, not Crayola’s. Larry was so mad, he didn’t understand how art supplies could be so expensive. Well, I don’t understand why someone would spend $100 on a dozen golf balls either, so I guess we’re even.

Since I couldn’t realistically redo every piece of art I’ve ever made, I decided I would just use every piece that my art teacher loved and draw one new piece. It seemed like a good compromise. Miss Schmitt was the only person I really trust with anything. She’s always pushed me to keep going, not to give up on a piece and see it through. She didn’t teach me how to draw, you can’t teach talent, but she always motivated me.

I really needed her motivation now. There was one person I really wanted to draw, but I seemed to have a mental block on what they looked like. Miss Schmitt told me to use a reference picture, but I didn’t want anyone to know who I was drawing. It would make me look psycho, and people finally stopped thinking I was a freak. I couldn’t bring myself to draw his face, so I drew his body. I drew his New Balance sneakers and his mal fitting khakis. I spent hours trying to replicate the crease down the front of his pants just right. I even made a special trip to the art store to make sure I found the right shades of blue for his stupid stripped shirt. I got an off-white colored pencil so I could shade his cast just right. Evan’s arm may not be broken anymore, but when I think of him, I think of him in his cast, just after I signed it. When everything was still really real and made sense.

I’ve become obsessed with him. How could I not be, he was my one and only friend. Except, that wasn’t true, and he used me for a better life. I really wanted nothing to do with him, but at the same time I wanted to know everything about him. It didn’t help that he was always around.

There was a knock on my door. “Come in” I called, snapping my sketchbook shut. I looked up to see Evan in my room, behind him, Zoe was peering in, almost hiding. “What’s up” I asked them, annoyed. Evan stands there for a second, looking down and playing with his fingers. I cleared my throat to get his attention.

“Um, me and Zoe want to talk to you” he spits out in a nervous stutter. I motion for them to come in. Zoe comes in and sits on my bed, not looking at me. Evan stands still for another moment before pulling the door shut and sitting on the ground where he stood. Everyone is silent for a moment, avoiding eye contact. I cough loudly to end the awkwardness.

“What did you guys want to talk about?” I ask.

Its Zoe that answers, softly, her voice breaking, “I want answers,” she says. Well kid, that makes two of us. “Why did you try to kill yourself.”

I feel like I was kicked in the chest. I don’t really have an explanation as to why. I just did. It was impulsive, seemed like the right thing to do in the moment. I wasn’t suicidal, and I wasn’t depressed beyond my normal gloom and doom. I just did it because I felt like it. I wasn’t feeling helpless or worthless, just bored. Except, I can’t tell her that. “Connor?” she asks. I just stare at her, hoping she will drop it. She meets my gaze and raises an eyebrow. She looks so sad, so broken. I must have really hurt her.

“I don’t want to talk about it” I say.

She sighs and balls her fists and taps them against her legs. She didn’t like that answer. I get it. I’d want to know too, I guess. Except, there’s nothing to know. Except, I wasn’t as important to her as she is to me.

“In the emails you wrote to Evan,” she starts. Oh, great the fake emails, “you were doing so well. Please you don’t need to tell me everything, but I just want to know what happened”

“I said I don’t want to fucking talk about it.” I snap.

Evan coughs, bringing attention to himself. I forgot he was here for a second. He looks nervous, really nervous. I don’t blame him, I could blow up his whole life right now with the truth. “Maybe he needs more time Zoe” he says. I give him a dirty look.

Zoe slams her hand against the bed, “You’ve had months,” she yells, “How much more time do you need. How do you go from climbing trees with Evan to killing yourself in a park?”

“Zoe,” Evan says, “you remember what you read, you don’t want to trigger him.” Trigger me? Okay Evan, you just don’t want me to tell the truth. Evan stands and opens the door, motioning for Zoe to leave. She looks at me again, pleading me with her eyes, then gets up and leaves. Evan lingers for a moment, watching her walk down the hall to her room. He steps back in and slams the door.

“We need to talk f-for real,” He says.

“Oh, for sure” I say, standing up and covering the distance between us until I’m towering over him, “Let’s talk about how you’re taking advantage of my entire fucking family.”

He’s beet red. “I’m not” he says, looking at the floor.

“Hey buddy, we’re not friends, we never were friends, and we’re probably never going to be friends.” I say

“Wh-why not?” he whispers.

“News flash,” I yell, “the first and only time I ever talked to you was when I signed your cast remember? You lied to everyone, and you’re a shitty liar.”

Evan is silent, he’s staring at the ground and pulling at his fingers. I watch him as he scratches his neck, pulls his ear, shifts his weight. I’ve thought Evan and I were the same; neither of us had friends because we were outcasts so to speak. He was just socially awkward, whereas I was the school freak. But I could tell he felt the same stuff I felt. The same wish that someone would notice us, that we were both on the outside, always looking in. Maybe if things were different we would be friends. I tried reaching out to him, but he was too self-absorbed with his own issues to notice me. And now, I am somehow engulfed in his issues. He took my suicide and made it about him. He lied to my parents and Zoe and the whole world. Evan Hansen was a nobody, a barely in the background kind of guy, and now his basically an internet celebrity. And me? People still don’t care about me, but at least they’re nice to me now.

I think that’s why I’m so angry about the whole situation. He got what he always wanted, he got his dreams come true. He got a taste of a perfect life, so he did what he had to do. But it ends now. I hope it was fun and he had a blast while he dragged me along.

“Did you read the emails?” Evan finally asks. I read them. He wrote a story of a perfect friendship. Friends that quote their favorite bands and tells jokes nobody understands except us two, and there’s nothing that we can’t discus, like girls we wish would notice us but never do. He even included me encouraging him to go after my sister. The fucking creep.

“Dear Evan Hansen,” I say, “You either tell Zoe and my parents the truth, or I will.” I open my door and shove him out of my room, “Sincerely, me.

#deh #dear evan hansen #DEH fanfic #deh fandom #Dear evan hansen fanfic #dear connor murphy #connor murphy #evan hansen #zoe murphy #mike fiast #ben platt #fanfict #tree bros #musicals

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yourfaveisyanderematic · 5 years

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Boiling the Frog

When you leave things up to me, you get Horrible, but I suspect you already knew that :3c

You hated nail polish. The whole process of manicures, in fact, seemed like a frustrating hassle, far too much effort for a result that would only chip in a few days anyway, something that was…girly, in a way you instinctively shied away from. Your friends would admire your hands and complain that leaving them bare was a waste of good genetics, but you were perfectly content to simply regard their nails with vague admiration and leave things at that. When would you ever need to learn, anyway?

“Fuck.” you swore under your breath as your hand trembled, moving the brush in the wrong direction and ruining the coat yet again. Reaching for the rubbing alcohol and undoing everything for the umpteenth time was the last thing you wanted to do—you’d already been at this for over an hour—but entertaining the idea only reminded you of the last time you’d given into the impulse. You saw his face in your mind’s eye, clear as day, the handsome cheekbones and elegantly styled light hair framing cold grey eyes that betrayed no hint of emotion but communicated profound disappointment all the same.

“Even young girls can do this properly, it’s one of the first things they teach each other. How is this so difficult for you?”

The mere memory of hearing him say the words made your heart wobble. You scrubbed at the fresh paint with new fervor, erasing the thought of having to actually hear them again with each stroke. You’d do it right. You could do this right. It was easy.

You’d never paid attention to the routine before, but in only a short time you knew it intimately. You knew how to push your cuticles back (an intimidating process that drew blood the first time you tried it) and to lay a clear base. You knew how long to wait between coats and how to brush them for the best consistency and coverage, and you knew to coat the undersides of your nails with the topcoat to keep them from chipping for longer.

Only a month or two ago, if someone told you you’d learn to do all this for some guy, you would have laughed in their face. You tried not to think about that, just pushed past the fatigue of making such tightly controlled motions for so long and tried again, watching the rainbow flecks of the micro glitter swirl against deep blue in the wake of the brush. It was a good thing you were on the very last nail. There wasn’t much time before you had to go to work, and Kira hated to be kept waiting.

You waved your hand in the air in an effort to get the last coat to dry faster, capping the bottles with your free hand and putting them away. These, too, had a particular order to be in, and you weren’t sloppy enough to forget again. Everything had its place.

Time to go. You took a glance at yourself in the mirror, adjusted your slacks and dress shirt, and made for the door, stepping into the hallway.

“Kira? I’m ready to go,” you called for your boyfriend (it still felt a little weird to think of him as that) and made your way down the stairs. Yoshikage Kira waited for you near the front door, standing between you and your shoes, making a show of adjusting his tie even though his appearance had never been short of what you’d call ‘effortlessly immaculate’. It was enough to make you straighten your shirt again, a little more nervously this time, even though you’d already confirmed you looked professional enough moments ago.

Kira gave you a very obvious once-over as you came to a stop in front of him, finally reaching forward to redo the button at the very top of your shirt. The sensation of his hands, close enough to your neck that you could feel their warmth, was enough to make your breath hitch, but he graciously ignored it.

“That’s all anyone else should be seeing of you. You look very professional.” He raised his hand, a wordless invitation (or an order, something in your head whispered) and you complied, resting your hand in his. He tilted his hand, letting the light catch your fingers from all angles, regarding your work in complete silence. You couldn’t help but hold your breath.

“Very nice.” Your heart fluttered at the words, so simple yet rarely heard from him. “I can see you’ve been improving with practice, I told you this wasn’t hard. Although…” a frown creased his thin features, “I’m not sure about the color. Don’t you think the glitter’s a little childish?”

You felt your heart sink. “But…you said it was fine, when I picked it out.” This was stupid. It was your nails, it should have been fine if you liked it. Ever since your relationship began, however, it became increasingly obvious that Kira was far more sophisticated than you were. You found yourself acting in response, changing how you dressed and even what you cooked, a childish compulsion to please him, to live up to the standards he set for you.

“For work? When you wanted to buy this I assumed it was for a night out or the weekend, so I didn’t raise any objections.” He eyed the clock overhead. “You don’t have any time to change it. Come on; traffic will be terrible.” He stepped aside, letting your hand fall out of his grasp as you stepped into your shoes. Without another word, Kira opened the door and walked you to his car, letting his arm rest around your shoulders in a way that was almost possessive.

But I don’t want to change the color, you thought but didn’t say.

—

“…and that’s how I got Sato to start putting his laundry away!” Suzuki, one of your coworkers, finished her latest spiel about her adventures in childcare, sitting back for your reaction with an expectant grin. You gently nudged her to move her leg, letting you finish filling out the form, and gave a noncommittal hum of acknowledgement. Lunch hour was only ten minutes away but really couldn’t come fast enough.

“Everyone kept telling me ‘oh, once he’s got the habit it’ll be so hard to change’, but once you know the trick it’s actually really easy,” she wound a brunette curl around her finger with a knowing smile. Suzuki was a nice enough coworker, older than you and modern enough to work despite being a mother, but she had a frustrating ability to carry on a conversation almost entirely one-sidedly, and learning to tune her out was almost a prerequisite for your job.

“It’s just boiling the frog. All you need is patience.”

The strangeness of the phrase made you pause, and you watched her grin broaden as you stared up in incomprehension. “‘Boiling the…frog’?”

She clapped her hands, loudly enough to draw looks from others in the office. “Funny saying, right? I picked it up on a trip to America. Basically, instead of trying to do everything all at once, you change things gradually, one at a time, and wait. They get so used to things that they’re doing everything you want, and they don’t even notice the change! Next I’m going to do it with vegetables. You’ll definitely want to do things like that when you’ve got kids of your own!” she gave a knowing wink, despite the fact that you’d never once expressed the slightest interest in children. She opened her mouth to continue some other story about parental wisdom she wanted to pass to you, and you went back to work, hearing her voice muffle into a background drone that was almost musical.

A shadow loomed over you, breaking into your thoughts. The next thing you registered was that Suzuki’s presence had mysteriously vanished from your desk, freeing up a good third of the space.

Kira loomed over you, beautiful even in the fluorescent lights that flattered nobody. His hand came over your own, stilling your pen.

“What are you doing? Lunch has started. Hurry, we’ve only got an hour and I want to have Saint Gentlemen’s.” Normally you would have objected—not even Suzuki would interrupt you in the middle of work, and there were only a couple lines left on the form—but Saint Gentlemen’s was popular, and missing out on lunch would put Kira in a bad mood. You put the pen down and stood up. It felt bold to grab Kira’s arm as the two of you walked out, but he didn’t pull away this time; when you looked up at his face, you realized it must have been because he was distracted, glancing over his shoulder with an unreadable expression.

“What’s wrong?” You waited until the two of you were alone in the elevator to ask. You hated to look like you were gossiping. He took a deep breath.

“It’s nothing, really…I just dislike two-faced people, who smile to your face but laugh at you behind your back. I’m so glad you’re nothing like that.”

You watched the lights on the display slowly count down, itching to press but unsure if you should. “Like…did something happen?”

He looked at you out of the corner of his eye and then reached out, once again holding you close.

“I don’t want to upset you. We’re about to have lunch, I’d hate to ruin the mood.”

Memory flashed. It was Suzuki he’d been staring at.

“Was it Suzuki? Did she say something about you?” The elevator doors opened, and Kira stepped out with you, holding you tight against the crowd flowing out the doors into the warm sunshine.

“Actually, it was about you. She’d been laughing with some friends on her break, while you were still working. ‘They’re so gullible,’” Kira repeated in a high-pitched imitation of your coworker, “‘Did you see their face when I joked that their work was worth the promotion? I trust the part-time hires more!’” His face betrayed no emotion, but you felt your stomach twist as you began to rethink every compliment or comment she ever told you in a new light. Was that really how she felt? Why didn’t she say anything? She—

Kira took your chin in his hand, turning your face to meet his. Something like amusement tugged at the corner of his mouth.

“You’re so easy to rile up. Didn’t I tell you I didn’t want to ruin your mood? Forget about it. You aren’t even friends with her.”

I thought I was, you thought but didn’t say.

—

“You’re lovely to look at, and so intelligent. You’re just so…unpolished. Only with my help can you really shine.”

Those were the words Kira said to you that first night you began dating. You would have laughed, but you could tell by the conviction in his eyes that he was completely serious, so you played along, even if you didn’t have any idea what he was talking about.

As time went on, however, you began to realize just how right he was.

You were careless. Time and time again you’d found yourself locked out of the house or missing your wallet, for Kira to look—with you in hysterics—only to produce the missing item from a pocket you must have forgotten to check. You’d misplace laundry, and Kira would have to buy you new clothes.

You were naive. Suzuki was the first of your silent bullies you learned about, but she wouldn’t be the last; it seemed like everyone at the office was undermining you somehow, and if Kira hadn’t been acting as your silent guardian you’re sure you’d be the office fool still. It had been enough to make you quit your job from the stress, though Kira had been more than gracious enough to keep you at his home to recover in peace.

You were hysterical. Too often you got yourself worked up, imagining that Kira said something hurtful, that he was trying to control you, that he told you this or that or locked you in your room. It was in the moments of clarity that followed, moments that swept you up in shame and embarrassment, that made you realize that you’d imagined it all. The stress of being the hunted at your job, of everyone being against you, was threatening to turn you against the one man truly and unconditionally on your side.

Kira had been so patient. He helped you through it all, tolerating both when you hurled insults at him through the door he you locked to the moments of weakness when you sobbed like a baby into his chest.

“Structure,” was all he would say in those times. “Structure is what will put your mind in order and make you stronger. You’re very close, you just need me to help you a little more.”

He was right. It was only when you knew you were following his lead that you really felt safe, that you could wear that coat or follow that recipe without being sure that you were somehow making a mistake. The agonizing hours that he was gone (“I still have to work to support you, dear,” he said with a smile as you opened the door for him to leave) were almost suffocating. Those rare, rare nights when he was out for longer than normal were the worst, when you genuinely felt that you were going to die.

Even so, it was with numb incomprehension that you watched him crush pills from an orange prescription bottle and tip them into the pot he stirred. He caught your eye and smiled reassuringly, turning the label away from your view.

“To help you sleep tonight,” he offered as explanation, “I have to work late, but I don’t want you to be up all night worrying for me. You’re fine with it, right?”

The idea of being awake and by yourself was awful. The idea of being drugged—unconscious and vulnerable to whoever happened by—was borderline unbearable. No, you felt the word push behind your lips, but you couldn’t make yourself say it. You nodded slowly.

Kira tilted his head, a satisfied smile that made your heart flutter with pleasure. If it made him happy with you, if it made you less unmanageable, maybe it couldn’t be that bad. He gestured to the dinner table, where a small bottle of nail polish waited. You could see your reflection in its pearly pink sheen as you approached.

“A new shade was released at the department store today. I’d love to see it on you; we have enough time before dinner’s ready.”

You looked at the label, some high-end brand you would never buy on your own. Killer Queen.

“It suits you, doesn’t it?”

#yandere jjba #yandere x reader #yandere kira #Kira's a real bastard in this one gotta say #by me

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hitodama89 · 4 years

Text

Because I’m still not over what a mind-boggling disaster the whole process of creating that pixel animation from yesterday was, I actually want to share the painful details with you! Which is extremely unprofessional of me, as everyone who has felt any ounce of respect towards me or my art will absolutely lose it hahah, but the good thing is I’m not a professional so it doesn’t matter for real.

So, the beginning part I have already told: I drew the whole thing, looked at it and decided that I actually want to make it look good. There’s really no way to do that in pixel art without putting every shitty little pixel down individually, so that’s the method I used while redrawing 90 % of the thing (only some of the coloring could be saved). During this I redrew Näkki’s braid I think 4 times and the northern lights 2,5 times.

Then I once again looked at it and thought “man, this really would be neat as an animation”. The idea had been in my mind ever since the beginning, but I never intended to truly chase it. Well now I did, but because I’m an idiot the whole thing was on like 3 layers and I had to manually separate elements from each other to make anything work. (During this I actually made a cool discovery though! Gimp usually considers one layer as one frame of animation, but one layer folder is also just one frame! This made things so much easier.) First I made Näkki move, and then I added some slight movement to water, stars and the light effects on the ice. Then it was the northern lights which were really tedious... Because I sort of forgot that I had drawn a separate base form for them that I was supposed to be able to edit easily. Whoops. But what can I say: at this point the whole thing was already in three separate files: the first one contained a non-pixel sketch and reference images, the second one was the actual pixelated piece and the third one, which I was now working with, had the animation. The base was on the second file, so of course I never remembered it existed!

But no matter, the thing was now basically ready to go! So I once again did the mistake of looking at it... And realized the animation wasn’t paced the way I wanted. (This is when I posted the preview image.) Näkki’s breathing looked too fast, and slowing down the whole thing looked just awkward. I was afraid I’d have to make a couple of new frames for it, but after sleeping a night I decided I’d instead duplicate all the frames and make Näkki and the background elements move at different paces. That seemed like a good compromise... In theory. In practice? I would’ve survived with so, so much less if I’d just added the two frames like I originally meant to.

How would I even describe the mess that followed... Even though I had only 3-4 layers in one layer folder (GOD why didn’t I separate things even more than I did?!) some of them had several separate objects moving in different paces. It was a total nightmare and if I had to explain where everything is in like a month, I would likely not understand it even myself. =‘D The stars and the ice effects had three frames that went back and forth and the water had three frames but it looped instead. The northern lights had... Four frames? They also went back and forth, just like Näkki who had only three frames. But Näkki’s frames had a rhythm of 2-2-4 frames instead of the normal 1-1-1. Then there was also Näkki’s breath clouds. First there was maybe 5 frames of them, but when I doubled the frame count I drew more in-betweens for them. In the end it looked off because they were so close to Näkki who moved much slower, so I actually deleted the new frames and made the original ones move on 2-2-2 speed.

At this point I have no idea how many things I had redrawn, because everything was constantly this close to just falling apart, so I had pretty much not enough brain power to keep count of them. But... Somehow I stumbled to the finish line! And saved it as a gif, watched it to see the possible damage the compression had done and... Was fairly satisfied. Except for the color of the sky, which originally had a gradient in it. The gradient absolutely didn’t work with gif palette, so I went back and made the sky colors more flat. Aaand that somehow left some weird stripes of the original sky color into a few frames. Okay, this is fine, I can deal with it. I delete the stripes. Now the water animation is completely fucked up! At this point I was too tired to make the connection between deleting the stripes and the messed up water, so all I could think was that I just hadn’t noticed the thing before and it was actually gif optimization that had done the damage. I go back and basically redo the animation without optimization, which takes about three tries because I am TIRED and always lose a frame or two somewhere and it’s easier to just do the thing over from the beginning than start searching what went wrong and where. Finally all looks as it should! Except now I have to change the sky again. And delete the stripes. And nOW THE WATER IS FUCKED AGAIN.

Now I finally realized that the water actually had some of the same color as the stripes I had deleted, and those pixels got accidentally deleted, too. I laugh and cry and correct my mistake. The thing is fucking finally finished! I go to sleep and decide to return to the shitshow tomorrow.

Next day I come to assess the damage, but fortunately I don’t find much. The most horrifying thing is that when I was already dead tired I had actually overwritten a wrong file at some point, so I had replaced the cryptid animation from last summer with a messed up version of this animation. (It was named “cryptid” and this was “colors”, so they were close to each other.) Thank god I had uploaded it to several places on internet, so I could just download it back to my computer! Besides that the animation still looked decent, but I still decide to fix one little thing with Näkki’s hair. I’ll do it, save it and upload it to dA. And realize I had forgotten to save it as an animation. Thank the merciful gods of the universe I hadn’t shut down Gimp just yet, because if I had done that I would’ve lost... A lot of work and would’ve needed to create the animation for 65674564236145th time.

Soooo yeah, that’s finally it. I saved the thing again as an animation and swore to never look at it too closely again, because doing that is apparently really, really cursed.

The lesson of the day: actually plan your animations in order to not end up like this! =‘‘‘D

#rambling

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xocdarb-blog · 5 years

Text

6 month: Post 59

DEVELOPMENT BLOG

POST MORTEM

My 6-month, game project is just about coming to and an end and it is bitter sweet. Therefore I'm about to do a game post mortem. This post is going to be a lot longer than normal. This post mortem will follow the 5-5 method e.g. what were the 5 failures and 5 successes of my game development cycle. First of all, let me say that these 6 months have gone in the blink of an eye for me and yet somehow, for the most part, I usually felt in control. The game was created to run on P.C and is a 3D constructivist take on a gravity golf puzzler called ‘Swing’. This platform was chosen because it is an open and free platform to develop for, it has a wide user base and the fact that it is a P.C game means that I didn’t need to manage memory and or project size. Meaning this made the platform suitable for my first solo game. Before we start I do want to talk about a few things that I've learned.

LESSONS

DEVELOPING A GAME BY YOURSELF IS LONELY

Developing a game alone can make you feel isolated and lonely for many reasons. The biggest being that when you have a problem no one is going to solve the problem but you. When you work in a team however, you have the luxury of coming in after a day of banging your head against a problem and someone else has fixed it (This is a rare occurrence). Next, you can miss the comradery of working in a team. Sure, it's great to be able to make a decision at the drop of a hat and not have to justify your position to anyone, but most of the time debate can lead to a better idea then you started with. This is why in my opinion developing a game alone robs a student of learning. When working in a team you learn because you argue and grow your perspective. Working alone did make me learn something, the importance of time management because I had no team I had to stick to a task no matter what. Lastly, if you want to work alone, learn one thing quick "Don’t be afraid to Kill your darling's" this can mean a few things I'm sure but in this context what I mean is sometimes you need to get rid of some of your favourite ideas if they are not working, don’t be precious. Often this is can be because of ideas not being very good but because we see things through rose-tinted glasses we think they are amazing.

IF YOU CAN’T FIX A PROBLEM AFTER A WHILE, JUST CHANGE WHAT YOU ARE DOING AND THEN COME BACK TO IT

I learned over the course of my game development of "Swing" that if you have a problem. Research it, gather information and then take your best crack at the problem. After this has been done a few times when you are exhausted for options and or solutions, rather than ramming your head against a wall for hours, just do another task specifically a short one that can be done quickly. This does two things for the developer one it triggers a feeling of victory in the developer this can alleviate any feelings of stress or depression that the developer may be feeling. Secondly, it can jog the developer's mind. It may sound silly but sometimes when you figure out the answer to one problem your brain just works on figuring out the solution to another problem in the background without you really thinking about it.

DEVELOPING ALONE REALLY HELPS YOU TO FIGURE OUT WHAT SPECIALTY YOU REALLY WANT TO DO

This one is really simple if you decide to develop a game alone you are either going to

A) have one job that you enjoyed much more than you did the others.

B) you may discover that having the lack of a specific job can be really disheartening and remove some of your enjoyment from the development of the game. This can tell you a lot about what you enjoy but also why you enjoy it.

DOING A DEVELOPMENT BLOG IS IMPORTANT BECAUSE IT KEEPS YOU ON TRACK BUT MORE IMPORTANTLY, IT HELPS YOU TO VENT VARIOUS FRUSTRATIONS YOU MAY HAVE ALONG THE WAY

The creation of a development blog and keeping it up to date is more important than you know. At the beginning of the development cycle, a dev blog can seem like a pain and even a waste of time. However, you are wrong, throughout this process I have learned the importance of keeping in line, on track and most importantly accountable. It is so important especially when you're working alone to have a diary that you have to write in every day what you did and why. This technique will be especially effective if you have a mindset of not wanting to disappoint yourself, your superiors or your audience and this will aid you in your quest to making a game. Having a dev blog teaches you how to vent your 'work-place' grievances in a safe environment. If you feel as though someone is bullying you then you have a place you can discuss it and this lets you think. It can also be very helpful to express your technical or design problems to the aether. This is similar in technique to talking to a rubber duck, where you explain your problem to a rubber duck and as you explain it, you figure out the solution. In future, I will try to always keep a dev blog and a physically written production planner simply because it helps me to formulate my thoughts, feelings, ideas and processes at either end of the day when I use my Dev blog or at the beginning of the day I use my production planner.

https://xocdarb.tumblr.com/

FAILURES

1) Planning an assignment six months before you start it is a waste of time.

2) Re-name and organize/ delete things early.

3) Don’t be afraid 'Kill your darlings'

4) Go slow and you will only have to do something once.

5) Don't be afraid to redo something that works.

This is the part of my post mortem that I have to be blunt with myself about my game. The game is 'Fine' and I mean that in both a positive and negative manner. In this paragraph, I will discuss the negative connotations of that statement. When I say this game is fine what I mean is I don't feel it is anything special. I think that it is a fun one-button game that is worth people's time but not their money. This game is in part an art piece it’s a living breathing gallery.

The mechanics of this game are fun but rather simplistic for the simple reason that when I found something that worked I had a tendency to either alter it a small amount or nothing at all. Before I started this project I had planned my assignment down to the wire and then about half a month into the assignment I changed the game and assignments entire focus this proved my prior planning to be a waste of time and resources.

Part way through this assignment I was told by someone that I should delete all of my unnecessary files. I deleted a few over the course of the project and at the end of the assignment, overall though I was so scared of breaking something that I didn't want to delete anything. This makes my game file bigger than it has to be and is more of an irritant than an issue.

The 'Not being afraid to Kill my darlings' issue. I was far too attached to integrating voice recognition into my game for far too long. I should have heard the critique that people were giving me internalized it and then gotten rid of the game's dependency on voice recognition immediately, instead, it took me weeks to come to this milestone. This process did teach me how to cut things that don't work without mercy, which is what I did for the rest of the game's development.

Another big issue for my game was that I rushed things that can't be rushed. For example, the art style that I ended up using for this game was 'Russian Constructivism' this is an art style that requires every angle and colour to be considered. With this in mind at the beginning of my process, I did not do that I just drew something that looked cool and modelled it. I didn't consider how the angles on the inside would affect the bouncing ball. Doing this I made level after level unplayable and worse yet not at all engaging or fun. I did this over and over again until I finally learned, I took my time and I planned the balls angles of bouncing and then after that, I planned the art intentionally around it. This process took longer, every level at the beginning of my project took almost half a week but as I learned I sped up and now it takes a day to make a level.

I would say that my last big failure on this assignment was being afraid to change something that works. This could have many reasons; confidence or skill it doesn’t matter. I am an aspiring junior rigger, I can code and I can model / texture. This being said my coding, modelling and texturing ability is limited. This had an interesting result on my game which is once I made something that worked, regardless of how much time I had to do the task. I didn’t want to re-do the task mainly out of fear that I would break it and not be able to replicate the result. I think this lead to a lot of mechanics, models, and scripts being ‘Fine’. This along with the ever-looming deadline of the end of our project approaching lead to a lot of my work being done up until a point and then having to move on because of time constraints.

Fear was the killer for me on this assignment. I think that my fear of taking risks, or redoing content and even standing behind some of my choices really hurt me on this assignment. With this in mind I know I grew as a person and as a creator over this process but that doesn’t mean I’m not disappointed in some respects. The disappointment doesn’t come from the game it comes from me.

At the beginning of this assignment, I was swinging for the fences, with a 3D narrative based voice recognition game and I examined it and there were massive scoping and technical issues. So I did the wise thing I made something smaller and more fun and while logically I can look at the problem and say I did the right thing. Sometimes I feel playing it safe does leave a bitter taste in my mouth, it’s like admitting to yourself that you don’t think you can achieve the alternative. In thinking about it now I should have also used Git-Kraken from when started. I started using it a month or so into the project and It saved me a lot of time and effort. Originally I was just uploading an individual file to the shared file every day but as the file became larger and larger this became unobtainable. Eventually, I did migrate over to Git-Kraken and get everything set up in the proper manner however once again it was my own fears an uncertainty of self that held me and my project back. I was worried if I didn’t know how the Git Kraken worked or if it broke how to fix the problem, so I choose not to engage with the service. Once I chose to use Git Kraken I learned new skills and could progress at a much more rapid rate.

Twitter: https://twitter.com/xocdarb

SUCCESSES

1) Planning my production schedule.

2) Keeping a considered art style the whole way through.

3) Making my level designs feel at home in the game's world.

4) Listening to/ sorting through appropriate critique.

5) Polishing my game.

Now it’s time to count the ways that I actually succeeded in this assignment. Before we begin I will note that I find it much easier to give negative critique to myself as to me it really feels like I’m gaining knowledge. Whereas when I give positive critique to myself it does feel as though it rings hollow to me. That being said, I think I planned my games development path and then executed on that development plan extremely well. I think that this is one of the single biggest factors as to why my project is in the position it is in during these last few weeks. I would say for future reference that planning out every week’s tasks (including unexpected event weeks) is imperative to an assignments success of any nature.

In the future, I would also use Trello from the beginning as it was instrumental to my success because it gave me a physical reminder to do certain tasks on certain days. In truth, I felt disappointed if a task I was working on could not be completed on time. Next, I felt that I kept a considered art style the whole way through the game, from the ‘Splash Screen’ to the game's menus and then through all of the levels. This was an amazing achievement for me. This required me to dive deep into both the constructionist and suprematism art movements visible in the early 1900’s. I had to learn the art style and then consider what every plain and angle would look and feel like to the player. One of the other big wins for me on this portion of the art was that I think I telegraphed the way that the level should be played/solved well. I used Trello to list my tasks per week in a checklist. Once the week’s tasks have been completed it is dragged into the done folder. This helped me to keep in mind what tasks I needed have done and by when. This method also helped me to keep in mind if I wanted to spend more time on a task what the immediate repercussions would be on the next task.

https://bradcox.itch.io/wobble

Over the course of this assignment, I received a lot of critiques, some of it from leading industry professionals. One of my biggest victories in this assignment I had, is that I finally learned how to control the influence these critiques had over my assignment. To clarify in the past, I have received critique from people and just assumed that their knowledge was superior to my own on the subject and enacted changes without really thinking about the repercussions on the assignment as a whole.

However, in this assignment this wasn’t the case, for example, there was a point that an industry member commented that in my game there should level splash marks on the walls the ball hits and rather wasting weeks trying to replicate the results of an off-handed comment I simply discounted the statement. I took time to internalize the critique and came to the conclusion that the real issue that the person wanted to see remedied was not the lack of paint on the screen but the lack of immediate feedback from the games stimuli. I also think that in this assignment I was more open to critique as a whole because I knew that my process was to listen to what the person was saying and then decide what the true meaning behind the words was. This meant that when I heard something I thought was wrong I was more flexible and accommodating to the critique givers reactions.

The last thing that I would consider a large success in this game assignment for me is how I polished my game. I feel like that this time because I had a clear plan and end goal I was really able to push the quality of my game because of the amount of polish I was able to give it. This gave me time to fix little things meaning I felt relaxed enough that when I did receive further critique on my game I didn’t freak out and or panic that I would not have enough time to fix my issues. Having said that I think one of my biggest successes/ personal growth moments of this project was realising that I label things ‘Good Enough’ and then leaving tasks at that level. This has been a big problem for me in everything from my game design to my Rigging and I do think that now that I have acknowledged this fact I am taking the right next steps to furthering my career and my skill set.

TRENDS

This graph is a measure of the overall engagement of my game over the last month. My return/ replay factor including playtesters sits at about 7 active users. My active users return rate is currently at about 0.67% - 0.14%. This means there is a 0.67% - 0.14% chance that someone on a daily basis is downloading or visiting my games itch.io page. This is a great indicator of how fun my game is. Unfortunately, the trends shown below appear to display spikes in the engagement that happen to coincide with my games significant playtest and or critique opportunities. This graph shows positive expectations for my game upon release.

The graph below represents the number of active players that I have at any one time. The blue line is the number of unique players that I received by the game in the last 30 days, the green line is the total amount of active users I have per day and finally, the purple line is the number of first-time users for my game. This constraint (Even if it is ever so slow) trend of increase in the blue line makes me feel confident that my required audience is being engaged correctly.

https://bradcox.itch.io/wobble

CONCLUSIONS

MOVING FORWARD

Moving forward is always a difficult part because a lot of the time you learn an important lesson and then you forget it for the first few weeks of your next assignment then before repeating to many of those same mistakes your brain starts working and you remember all of the solutions you learned previously. This often happens to me before any significant time is wasted. That being said, the lessons that I learned here in this assignment are varied. Some of these lessons are personal and have taught me that next time ‘fine’ isn’t good enough. Whether it is a rig, or polishing a game or a model, it is important to note that in future I need to walk away from any project knowing that I really refined my work until it is a cut above.

I think the other big thing I would do next time is to not be so scared of failure. As I’ve said there were times in this assignment where I was worried about breaking something so much that I didn’t want to redo or take time to streamline my processes.

At the time of writing this I believe that I am on the right path to fixing this issue as I solved one of my biggest issues, an error that says ‘Particle texture type read and write needs to be enabled’ by making sure I had a back-up of my project (Keeping me in a measured state of mind) and then going through a copy and deleting each group until I found the group causing the issue. Then I took the items from that group and deleted them one by one until I found the item that was causing the issue. After I found the item I kept drilling until I found the issue component. I think that this shows a mindset shift about the importance of doing whatever you have to, to solve the issue even if that means to rebuild something. I hope this change in mindset is the start of my growth beyond being a junior in my field.

RELEVANT LINKS

Blogs:

https://xocdarb.tumblr.com/

Socials:

Twitter: https://twitter.com/xocdarb

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/xocdarb/

Games:

https://bradcox.itch.io/wobble

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skadventuretime · 6 years

Text

like so many shattered dreams

Well, chapter 75 made me emo and @ahshesgone drew things that made me emo (AND it’s still her birthday in my timezone!), so please accept this tiny pile of feels.

On AO3 or FFN, if preferred.

When you were young, your grandmother told you stories of cruel wizards and daring knights and hope that would beat back the most unlikely odds, if you were only strong enough to fight for it. You grew up wanting to help, to be a doer in your story that you acted out day after day, sometimes as the protagonist working hard for the best grade on the quiz, and sometimes as the background character giving courage to a stranger on the street.

So it was not surprising, really, that you stepped in front of that bus to save a man you didn’t know without a second thought. Nor was it surprising that you defied heaven to stand by him, wresting him from the jaws of the underworld and fighting to keep the powers that be from erasing his existence.

What is surprising is how you let him slip away. How you stood there, frozen, while he pressed his shrine into your hands -- hands that had bled and cracked and healed to build it -- and disappeared. You have trained long enough to know there were at least four holds you could have gotten him into during that time. Four ways to stop him from saying goodbye.

This haunts your every pounding step back to Kofuku’s house to raise the alarm. Could have, should have, could have, should have. Would have, but -- what? You were too distracted by that pretty mouth? Too terrified of your own feelings to realize what was happening outside yourself? He had looked so resigned, before he let you go.

The search lasts for over a week. You and Yukine team up to scour every known hideout he may have visited on his way to seek his father, every possible nook he may have rested in for more than a moment. Kofuku causes a few minor weather events trying to flush out ayakashi for questioning, but despite all of your efforts, you cannot find him.

Heaven proves to be just as inscrutable. Amaterasu gives you a sad smile and says that Yato’s fate is in his own hands, now, and refuses to send aid. You know that crying and violence will not solve anything, but you do both anyway, sobbing until you retch and breaking your knuckles open on the punching bag in your basement.

What you would give, to get one more chance to stop him.

In your dreams, you do. In your dreams, you pull him down onto the pavement where you can bury your face in his neck and clutch him so close that you are overwhelmed by the weight of him in your arms. And in your dreams, he stays.

But dawn is always on the horizon.

Weeks turn to months turn to a year, and though fragile as a matchstick’s flame, you still have hope. You think -- no, feel -- that he’s alive somewhere, and that is enough to get you through your days.

It is also what undoes you, because to hope is to want, and to want is where it goes so very, very wrong.

One day after a particularly grueling set of exams you come home to find Yukine scraped and battered on the floor of your kitchen. You open your mouth to ask him what is going on, but a small figure waddles out from behind the breakfast bar and fixes you with electric blue eyes you have been hoping for so long to see.

“Who’s that?” he asks Yukine, who now looks much too old to be the ghost of a fourteen-year-old boy.

After so much time spent making sure you would remember, it never occurs to you that he might be the one to forget.

“Hiyori. That’s Hiyori,” he answers, voice thick with the agony of reconciling a past and a future that are now irrevocably diverged.

“Hello, Yato,” you say. Your throat is tight. He is so small.

He tilts his head. “I’m Yaboku,” he says, emphasizing the last two syllables. “Dunno why everyone tries to call me Yato.”

Yukine grimaces and shoots you an apologetic look. “When I found him, the only thing he knew was that his name was Yaboku. I guess that...I guess that ‘Yato’ didn’t make the cut, after he --” He looks away and says no more.

Yato -- you refuse to think of him as anything else, no matter what you’ll call him to his face -- is still looking at you like you’re a puzzle, and you cannot bear how achingly familiar the expression is. “Let’s get you two up to my room,” you say, if only so they will not see your face crumble. This is still what you wanted, you remind yourself. He is still safe and alive.

In your room, you watch as Yato shuffles around poking his head into every corner he can fit his tiny head. After a few moments, Yukine catches your eye and asks, “What now?”

What, indeed. “We protect him and raise him,” you say, watching as he gets his hand stuck in your lowest drawer. You think of how his father treated him, and of the chance to redo at least one thing right. “We give him a childhood.”

Yukine nods, his face turned away in the hopes you wouldn’t see his bright eyes. But you have been holding in your own tears since you walked into your room and realized you would never again get the same Yato knocking on your window late at night; never again plumb the depths of those glowing eyes that seemed so tired but so kind. He even smells different, as if wiping clean his old memories removed some essential part of him that his new body mourns.

You will love him, and it will never be the same.

You bring him to Kofuku’s house where Daikoku hides his pain behind a tremulous smile at the tiny god and Kofuku goes as still as the eye of a storm. She makes Yukine bring him up to the attic to get comfortable, and only then does she break upon your shoulder. “It wasn’t supposed to be like this,” she hiccups between sobs. “He was supposed to come back to us.”

And he was, he was, he was. But you do not give That Hiyori too much of your time. You only think of her, the Hiyori who stopped him that day he came to return his shrine, late at night when you are alone and Yato is safely tucked in besides Yukine. Only then do you allow yourself to wonder about that other timeline in which you were able to act, in which you were a doer in your own story instead of a side character in someone else’s. You hope she is happy, That Hiyori. You hope she tells That Yato how much his mouth and eyes entrance and infuriate her. But most of all, you hope she never has to wonder how it could have all gone so wrong when she cared so, so much and tried so, so hard.

But then, as Tenjin has reminded you, you were only ever human.

#noragami #yatori #noragami fanfiction #noragami spoilers #chapter 75 ruined me and ash art ruined me so take this pile of feels #madi tries words

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not-so-lonely-star · 7 years

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Could I please put a request in for Holsom and celebrity :)

Wordcount: ~1500Rating: GSummary: Ransom has a teeny tiny crush on Adam Birkholz. To be fair though, who doesn’t have a crush on a movie star? Besides, the chances he has of ever meeting the man are slim at best - at least they are until it’s announced they’re filming his next movie in the town next door to Ransom’s… A/N: Thanks so much for the prompt! I hope you enjoy it :)

When Justin found out they’d be filming the new Adam Birkholz movie in a town twenty minutes from where he lived, he’d calculated the statistical probability he had of meeting the man. It was unlikely. When he found out there was an open casting call for local extras his chances expanded exponentially.

Which was how he ended up in a coffee shop turned set, less than five minutes away from meeting his celebrity crush. They’d told him to act natural, take occasional sips of coffee, talk to his seatmate - the mic wouldn’t pick up what they were saying anyway, ignore the cameras and the funny, kind, beautiful faced man who’d be walking through the door.

He was seated with a guy named Bitty, and once the director called for action they began making smalltalk. It took literally every ounce of willpower he had not to look out the window and watch for Holster’s approach. He did turn his head when Adam walked in, but Ransom wasn’t even thinking about the movie anymore. Holster’s gaze roved the coffee shop, stuttering on Ransom imperceptibly enough that he may have imagined it, before he made his way to the counter to place his order. Bitty tapped Ransom’s arm gently, bringing his gaze away from the movie star less than ten feet from him.

“You might want to close your mouth hon,” he said with a consolatory pat on the wrist.

Ransom felt his face heat. He needed to pull himself together if he didn’t want to get himself kicked off set. He was doing an admirable job of focusing when Holster walked by and tripped over nothing, crashing into Ransom. Adam’s elbow was jammed into his ribs and his head knocked into Justin’s chin hard enough to bruise. It was the best six point four seconds of his life.

“Oh my god,” Holster said, getting up off Ransom’s lap. “I’m so sorry bro.”

Bro Adam Birkholz just called him bro. “It’s fine,” Ransom said, voice only just barely squeaking. “No harm done.” Luckily the coffee cup he’d been holding was filled with water so he was only slightly damp instead of burnt and sticky.

“I’m Holster,” he said, stretching out a hand.

“Justin - well my friends call me Ransom.” He had to clamp his jaw shut to keep from rambling as he took the proffered hand.

The director had called cut and they’d begun to reset the scene, but Adam stood there gazing at Ransom. They were still holding hands. An assistant or PA or someone finally came over and dragged Holster away so they could redo the scene.

The next time they shot the scene, Holster made it to his seat without incident and Ransom successfully managed not to stare at him as he walked. He was talking to Bitty, telling him about this time in college where he and Shitty had pranked the Lax bros, and feeling quite proud of himself for acting so natural.

“So they were naked, locked outside of their house just as the soccer girls were coming home from their game,” he said, laughing at the memory.

Bitty laughed. Holster laughed from Ransom’s side and turned to him with a wide smile. “Did they get you back for it?” he asked.

“Cut!”

“Shit,” Holster said, throwing a sheepish glance at the director.

They reset the scene once more and Ransom let Bitty direct the conversation. Clearly Ransom was not a very good extra. He probably should be talking about something boring. Bitty smiled at him, talking about pie and jams for a long while. Ransom glanced at Holster out of the corner of his eye and saw him keep glancing at the door. He was supposed to be stood up in this scene - or something - Ransom wasn’t quite sure.

“Sorry for talking your ear off,” Bitty said with a smile. “So you mentioned a lacrosse team and soccer team lived near you in college. Were you on a team too?”

Ransom nodded. “Yeah I played hockey.”

“Nice, I play too!” Bitty said. “What position?”

“D-man.”

“Me too,” Holster said, turning to face Ransom with a shy smile. “Do you - shit. Shit. Sorry everyone,” he called, standing up to redo the scene once more.

They filmed the scene a dozen more times. The first time the barista sneezed just as Holster was ordering, in another take one of the other extras was being too exaggerated with his hand motions. There were several takes where Ransom wasn’t quite sure what went wrong, only that he was told to switch to a table on the other side of the room.

It wasn’t as much fun on the other side of the room. They’d put him at a table by himself so he was just supposed to be tapping on a laptop and eating a muffin. The muffin was kinda gross, but Ransom was hungry so he picked at it. At least this time he was facing Holster’s chair, so any time he glanced up it’d be only natural for him to look at Holster.

They were most of the way through the scene when he looked up and caught Holster’s eye as he was scanning the cafe. Holster smiled at him. Ransom smiled back. The director called cut. They did the scene twice more with similar results. By the third time Ransom was determined not to look up from his computer. It wouldn’t be that weird for someone in the background to be really focused on the computer.

He was doing a good job of being hyper focused on his laptop and more than half eaten muffin when the director called cut again. Ransom looked up and caught Holster staring at him, cheeks flushed pink.

“Why don’t we take five.”

Holster nodded sheepishly and left the room. When they reset a few minutes later they had Ransom sitting at a table by himself behind Holster where they wouldn’t be able to see one another and Ransom wouldn’t be speaking.

They shot it perfectly in one take.

Some of the extras were asked to stay on to help film another scene after later, but Ransom wasn’t one of them. He still got to eat lunch though, and they’d pay him $50 for the day - so all in all not a bad deal. He was planning on sitting down with Bitty to eat when there was a tentative tap on his shoulder.

Ransom turned and couldn’t help but smile when he saw it was Holster.

“Hey,” Holster said, “Do you want to eat with me over there?”

Ransom nodded. “Definitely.”

Holster asked him the questions he’d tried to during filming, and they talked for so long that Ransom worried Holster would be late to film his next scene. It was clear neither of them wanted to be the one to stop though, especially once Holster mentioned that he’d almost enrolled in Samwell the summer before he got his big break.

“We would’ve been D-men together,” Ransom said in wonder.

He was trying to picture how different his life might’ve turned out had Holster not gotten his first role. Was it selfish of him to wish the man hadn’t? Because now that he’d talked to him, Ransom knew for certain it wasn’t just the celebrity that he liked, it was the real Holster too. The shy dorky guy who tripped on set. The guy who was so excited he kept messing up the scene to talk to him.

“I know.” Holster nodded. “I never once second guessed my decision to skip college and take that part.”

Ransom nodded. He figured as much. The man was rich and just famous enough where his entire life wasn’t displayed in the tabloids. He played characters who meant something to him. He had the life most men dreamed of.

“I’m kind of regretting that decision now.”

Ransom whipped his head up to look at Holster. “What?”

Holster shrugged. “I just - if I’d gone to Samwell we’d have met five years ago. We’d definitely be besties and maybe -” Holster’s gaze drifted away from Ransom’s shyly. He cleared his throat. “Maybe something more.”

Ransom bit his lip. Nope, not dreaming. “We still could,” he said, no idea where the forwardness came from.

Holster smiled, bright and full of promise. “I’d like that.”

It a fit of wild courage Ransom leaned across the table and kissed him, soft and chaste. Ransom had only started to pull away when Holster chased his lips and drew him back in for another kiss. When they finally parted a full thirty seconds later he was dazed. Holster’s face was flushed and his lips were parted in invitation. Ransom couldn’t quite stop himself from kissing him again.

They showed the blooper reel at their wedding.

#holsom #check please #omgcp #holsom fic #ransom #holster #myfics #omg-kent-mashkov #omg-kent-mashkov's follwer appreciation

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ikkydikky · 6 years

Photo

Here it comes! Time for an end of the year “Here’s what I drew this year” list. Mainly just to archive my art now for future’s sake and tell myself my thought process and how I felt about it now.

I’m skipping over sketches and going straight to stuff that was finished and polished and I’ll explain each image as we go. Buckle up boys its going to be a long one.

We’re going to go to the first image I did this year and explain how things went from there!

Drawing #1, Scrubbed off Katia Managan

March 3rd 2017

Art is actually kind of hard when you don’t know what form, line consistency, anatomy, or any of those things are! In fact I only know about two of them right now! And how to put into practice one of them! This image shows what its really like to start out with base-nothing. The idea is cute! And I’ll probably redo it later on when I am probably a years worth better. It marks however the first thing I really posted online. To me, that makes it special.

Drawing #2, Sigrid, but smug.

September 9th, 2017

BIG gap between the two! And not a lot of improvement, or maybe a lot of improvement? Who knows. I think this image was the first thing I did digitally that I put up for other people to see, and it was exciting! There’s absolutely no construction to this. Prior to this image being done I was basically drawing people’s heads and circles. Like, pages upon pages of circle grinding to actually know how to draw a circle digitally.

The main reason why there was such a gap between March and September was due to me graduating high school. I basically didn’t feel like drawing at all when I already had the work load of school ontop of me. But the art starts coming a lot faster now. Yes you can see there was a huge prequel influence.

Drawing #3, Blushin Bob

September 29th, 2017

Art is something that you can really do a lot of, but you can easily get burnt out on. Animal crossing is actually one of my favorite games out there, and to try to pay tribute I drew this. Not uh, not exactly my favorite.

This image has me trying basically 3 new things I’ve never done before. Shading, clothes, fur tufts, and bodies. Yeah. Not exactly my best job at any of those. The shadows are, very inconsistent and its clear I didn’t really know how to do it properly. The fur is atrocious with it looking like spiked tumors, and the shirt rides up way too high like hes wearing a shirt thats way too short! Also he might be a bit too skinny.

This is kind of an image that broke me. At the time I was trying to fix every error when I just couldn’t, from the arm in the first attempt being god awful, to how the shading and shirt looks. I genuinely think this is the worst image in my library, and I knew it at the time since I drew nothing for all of October. You know. The month that’s meant to be the most inspiring artistically?

Drawing #4, Gondola The Peaceful Giant

November 12th, 2017

This was actually just a shitty paint up I did of a sketch practicing perspective. It was mainly for a draw thread on 8chan’s /v/ and probably my only work I’ve posted to an image board. I think generally doing art for anonymous people is a bit thankless. Its great for practicing but it really gives back no validation.

Keep in your memory these clouds, I’ll be talking about those later.

Drawing #5, Bunny, The space mechanic.

November 12th, 2017

This character was a mistake, not the drawing but the character! This is my first actual tabletop character and boy I flubbed it. But this is art retrospective. Not roleplay retrospective. Anyway. A portrait done with a new pen style that I don’t think worked out too well. It comes off a bit too rough and gritty. But it makes for unique coloring when it comes to painting. I’ll actually have some more to say about that in a bit too! This also marks the point where I really got into drawing again. See. The table top group I’m in rewards you for drawing pictures of your characters, no matter how shitty it is, as long as you do your best, you get a reward in game. Its actually a really, really neat system!

Drawing #6, Oh dear god why.

November 16th, 2017

This is going to be a reoccurring character, so. Lets get to talking about it here. This character was as far as I know, a joke character made by a friend that got turned into a full blown character for a campaign, she is nonsensical, random, actually crazy, and worst of all, vibrantly colored. She is the Deviant Art Sparkledog as a character. Which funny enough, is her character name. This was my first attempt at really going ‘sexy’ and ‘nude’. And actually I think Sparkledog is a perfect candidate for it because its already cringy and god awful to look at! So it hides my bad attempts at a sexy lady behind an already cringy character. Thanks friend.

Anyway to talk about the art its self. It was done with no ref or pose. And I think it kind of shows. Everything’s proportionate to a degree but something about the perspective of the whole thing feels... off. Of course the background is just slapped together with glue but I mean on the character. She’s laying on the ground but not in a way that I think is possible or comfortable.

This also goes as my second attempt at fur, it’s, better. But definitely not good. Ontop of that this is probably my first attempt at an actual muzzle! Pic below related.

Muzzles are really hard to do. For some reason. If you ever read Loomis’ Fun with a Pencil it becomes slightly easier, but it also kind of isn’t. A month later and I still struggle with them, A lot of my joke sketches I often forgo any sort of attempt at drawing a muzzle and go for round head shapes, this works out if the character’s species is a prey type, as the eyes for herbivores are often on the side of the head, while for predators, its facing dead ahead. On another note, apparently I can just *do legs* with almost ease. I’ll touch on this more in a bit.

Drawing #7, A background for the end.

December 2nd, 2017

Tabletop is a wonderful thing, art groups are also an amazing experience to ever be apart of. The group I’ve been with has been an amazing experience for me artistically as I’ve learned to grow so much more. This is an image I did as soon as I woke up on my birthday. Friend A. did the character sketch. Friend b. did the coloring of the characters, and I got to practice something that I’ve wanted to do for ages.

Environmental art.

Ontop of character art and such, one thing that always draws my attention is environment art. Its something you can always get lost in. Your eyes can search to every corner imagining what it would be like to be there. Genuinely amazing works of art is often environment art.

Its also time we talk about the clouds. I hope you remembered them from the gondola picture. See. Clouds are all about layers, and layers, and layers. Especially when done in a thunder storm. They’re something I might recommend painting if you ever want to start out! I do however think the clouds in the gondola image work a lot better. But I think that might be from the several things I did to trick myself to think they look better.

And that’s all there really is to say on this image. Which is a problem. I learned a bit more about perspective and how floors work when under character’s feet... and how to do lightning kind of. But there isn’t much else. If I were to do this more I’d probably add another cliff to the background. A mountain, a landscape just beyond the fog, because it seems unfinished as it stands.

Drawing #8, Oh dear god why, Revengeance.

December 5th? 2017

Probably the only unfinished image that gets posted! So lets talk about it. I think fur is my least favorite detail to make ever.Yet it also is my favorite when its done. The tail also might not be the best but its league’s better than my first attempt! But lets talk about the main thing about this image.

PAWS.

I don’t have a thing for paws, or feet, that’s not my kink. I think footjobs are sort of appealing sure but I don’t care much for it. so this was my first attempt at paws, and I think I did damn well. However, digitigrade legs are something I still have an issue with, and I am working towards fixing that. I don’t think furry characters look great when their legs are humans, but with paws. As well I think legs are the easiest part of the body to draw in some ways, that might just be me.

The face also is a bit of a mistake? Its better than its.. original incarnation...

[NOT EVEN THE DEAD KNOW PEACE FROM THIS EVIL]

Animal faces with human features is the proper way to do things, but human faces with animal features is... Hell incarnate.

Also that ass took me like 30 tries to get right god damn.

Drawing #9, The last hoot for today.

December 18th, 2017

The last one for today. Some point after Christmas I’ll post probably another three drawings. But this is the final one. Lets talk about a few things about myself.

Art style is all about inspiration. You pick up inspiration from everywhere. Specifically from art styles you really, genuinely enjoy. You might have noticed the art style at first was I Wanna Be The Kazerad and then to something completely different from Kazerad but not distinct from anyone else. This is the process I think to finding your own art style. Emulation.

You might also noticed I ditched aliased (pixely) lines in favor of smooth lines, this was because I was having a tiny issue with drawing at large scale. For some reason I always liked zooming in real close on my 2000x2000 canvas and drawing tiny little things. The bunny picture is a really good example of this. He only took up the tiny corner of my much, much larger canvas. Speaking of his part of this post, lets get into color.

There’s been 3 ways I colored things, the first was plain flats, second was with a sort of homemade crayon brush (Ala Bunny and Gondola), and third was a unique way in how I did the eyes of this image. Looking at them closer you can see theres, actually a lot of rich detail in them!

This was a pretty easy thing to do and it has such amazing results that, I want to do a full image using it just to try it. For how I did it, I use krita, and how it handles gigantic brushes is like most art programs, by automatically raising the spacing between each ‘use’ (for a lack of a better term.)

Here’s what the blue part looks like with a white background behind it and the layer count to make this beside it. (Only one of them visible.)

It also kind of hits close to to another artist I’ve been following pretty closely as of lately. (And more recently on tumblr.)

You might not have heard of @jamdrawers , and you should definitely check them out if you haven’t. They are someone who, in my eyes, has such a wonderful art style. Other artists that do a style with pixelly, aliased lines don’t even come close in my opinion. I bring jam up here because of a few things, the art style he presents has thoroughly inspired me to pick back up trying to draw in aliased lines again, and because going forward I’ll continue looking to him for inspiration. Also if you read this jam tell winrarphile I said thanks for getting me into your art.

Now, when it comes to the owl its self. I regret not adding a thicker outline to all of her character, and instead kept it to just the head shape, as well I do think she comes out a bit bland. Of course color wise its to keep in theme with the rest of the table top groups color theme. But outline wise? Definitely needs work. I tried a ‘hair style’ for her but that didn’t really work out either. So I kept it to the three feathers at the top of the head. I also think I spent more time on this image than I did any other, to quote myself “I’ll finish this owl up in about an hour or two”, which quickly lead to 8 days instead, just through procrastination.

Don’t do something in art if you really don’t want to do it. You can easily, easily get fatigued and burnt out with out delay, but among this procrastination came other sketches that, I don’t think I’ll post here, but helped me learn hands somewhat. So there is that.

Thus ends this posts governing topic. If you read this whole thing, good job. If you didn’t and skimmed to the end. That’s fine too! I understand I got a bit wordy but, I genuinely wanted to lay out my thoughts about all this.

In conclusion, I think the rate at which I’m getting better is decent, Mistakes are being ironed out each new drawing I take on. Each study and figure drawing adds onto the many experiences I’ll use for later in my artistic career, and I think the rate at which I’m drawing is far too slow for my own tastes, as such its a goal for the upcoming year to get a lot faster with finishing each drawing so I can quickly move onto the next. Thank you for reading this.

Have a noid chewin’ some pizza as a reward for coming down to the end.

#art #my art #kazerad #prequel #long winded spiel

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