#when just reading something on my computer i can use my mouse to highlight lines which makes it easy

[nexus-nebulae]

fun fact so i have a tendency to write all my long rambly thoughts into bullet point format because it's literally one of the only ways my brain can process information. like if its just text my brain stops working but add a Little Dot and suddenly everything is fixed. ???

[burnedbyshoto]

mamihlapinatapei

— mamihlapinatapei: wordless yet meaningful look shared by two people who desire to initiate something, but are both reluctant to start. —

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pairing: todoroki natsuo x fem!reader

warnings: 18+, smut, daddy kink, praise, choking, cockwarming, orgasm denial

word count: 8,903

a/n: a commission for @redbeanteax​, sorry it took so long. my back is in so much pain and good god did i feel like i was cheating on shouto when writing this. i hope you enjoy it!!!!

message me to join my taglist!

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Soulmates were an old concept.

It was this phenomenon that had first occurred so many years ago. It was a miracle that allowed the two perfect halves come together. 

In its initial introduction, divorce rates and plummeted to all-time lows! For an entire generation, divorce rates were at an all-time low of zero. No one in the world were getting divorces, choosing to stay with the person that was deemed worthy of them. It seemed for some time that people were going to fall in love with their soulmates and find happiness and prosperity for them.

That is until soulmates crossed borders, seas, racial tensions, economic differences, and sexual preferences…

The rich stopped trying to bring someone in for a rag to riches effect, choosing to instead marry within their own class circle, choosing wealth over love. International soulmates couldn’t figure out a common language, they’d sit in front of each other with lousy translator apps, unable to talk freely and openly, and soon their relationship was destroyed. Racial tensions were especially hard. There were reports of soulmates waking back up into their bodies to find their home destroyed and family hurt because their soulmate could not stand the thought -- the idea -- of the race of their soulmate. There were still homophobic people in this world of soulmates who could not accept their sexuality when presented to their soulmate who was the same gender and would not leave any means of contact behind.

Soulmates, while excellent and loving when it is something within your reach, turned out to be a pretty fucked up thing.

But nevertheless, it didn’t stop you from ever hoping that whoever your soulmate was, it would be someone who would love you precisely who you are, no matter who they were.

Your tired eyes focused on your paper, your eyes scanning the different lines that glowed on your computer screen, trying to find a better way to propose your thoughts. There wasn’t much to this paper, it was a reasonably simple paper about the pros and cons of soulmates for your anthro and philosophy class. Since you were little, you revered in the concept of soulmates, your excitement to be in love with someone for the rest of your life was a pretty solid thing, even at a young age.

As you grew older, you held onto this idea, choosing to ignore the issues with soulmates in favor of optimism and positivity. There were still many, many happy and in love, soulmates! After all, there was still an 87% rate for soulmates marrying each other, the opposing 13% came from the worst of people, the most disadvantaged of people, and the most influential people. It’s how it was.

For a college student in Japan, you figured that you had a solid chance of having a soulmate that you could love and have their love in return. But your issue was the mystery behind it, the unknowing of it all. While you knew that soulmates did mean pure love, there was a part of you that hoped that there this someone out there was someone you already knew.

Well, there was one person in particular.

“I’ll proofread your paper if you look at mine,” a tired voice croaked from hours of not being used.

Your eyes felt dry, and you glanced up at the white-haired boy who was the holder of your affections for about two years now. 

Todoroki Natsuo.

“Only if you don’t make fun of mine, I’m so bad at this philosophical bullshit,” you groan, rubbing your face. You heard Natsuo snort, his arms stretched above his head, and your eyes dropped back down onto your screen, not wanting to be staring at him. 

“Oh please, I’m sure I’ll feel leagues smarter by the time I finish reading it,” he grinned, and you felt yourself looking back at the white-haired man who was pushing his laptop towards you.

“You’re annoying,” you sigh, but there’s an undeniable smile on your face when you hand over your own device.

“Sure, sure.”

What was there to say about him?

You had met him two years ago during freshmen orientation, he was in your introduction group, and coincidentally in the same classes as you. The two of you ended up getting fairly close over the first semester of college, and by the end of your spring semester, you realized in horror that you had a crush on him.

These feelings weren’t bad, he was a respectful and caring boyfriend, that was something you knew without a doubt. Of course, knowing that he is that, and not hypothetically assuming it meant that he had a girlfriend. Yes, Todoroki Natsuo was a taken man.

You’d never really met his girlfriend. You knew who she was, how she looked like, her favorite things in the world, and her least favorite things, that’s how much Natuso talked about her. You had the pleasure of meeting her once, and the only thing you could remember is that she had mouse ears and the personality of a mouse. Scared, timid, and squeaky.

She barely talked to you, and after the initial meeting would never join Natsuo and you anywhere.

You didn’t take it personally, you wouldn’t really want to hang out with her either, especially with how you felt about Natsuo. It was a conflict of pretending that you and Natsuo were falling in love, ignoring the impeding time you had to be with him, and of course, the guilt that coursed through your body whenever you rested your head against his shoulder during these late-night studies. 

In two weeks, it was July 2.

Somehow on this day, you would swap bodies with your soulmate when you fell asleep, and when you woke up, you had five minutes to figure out how to get them to reconnect with you. Most people left their phones unlocked that day, letting their soulmates leave their phone numbers in their phone, sometimes they’d leave their address, and Instagram and Twitter handle. After so many generations of soulmates experiencing this, and the ever-evolving technology, this was the way that people effectively found their soulmates once the five minutes were up.

But unlike what people had once assumed, there was no exact age as to when you would swap bodies. Some people were lucky to swap bodies at the age of sixteen, and the oldest recorded case was when someone was twenty-four. You were nineteen, as was Natsuo, neither one of you had this soulmate experience yet, but unlike before, you had a strong feeling that this was your year.

“It looks great,” Natsuo whistled lowly, his head shaking while giving back your laptop. 

You felt your face grow warm at the praise, your fingers highlighting another sentence for him to correct, “Thanks.”

“What you thinking about mine?”

You sighed, pushing away from the table so that you were looking into his grey eyes that looked at you with curiosity and high respect. 

“I’m a bit confused about your position,” you admitted, your fingers brushing back your hair so that you could look at the man whose lips pursed in thought. “You’re saying that soulmates are bullshit, but you believe it regardless?”

Natsuo nods his head, an embarrassed blush stretching across his face, “Well yeah, they kinda are. How is some cosmic thing the thing in charge of telling me about who I am to truly love?”

“So when you find out who your soulmate is, you won’t love them, but you’ll stay with them?”

“Yes? I don’t know… I know that my parents aren’t soulmates, and that didn’t work out. It’s hard for me to explain, but I really like Mausua, and I want to see how far things can go with her,” Natuso explains his thoughts to you, that stupid grin spreading on his face that always appeared whenever he talked about her. “I mean for years people didn’t marry their exact soulmates, but they were happy and in love for ages. Why can’t I try that out?”

You tried to hide the fact that those words hurt you. It shouldn’t have mattered, after all, there was no saying that the two of you were soulmates, and the probability of that happening was entirely slim to none. 

“Yeah, why not?”

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June 30 - one-week left

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You were slumped on top of the table, your head banging against the cool wood while Natsuo recited his notes to you. The both of you were in the middle of some argument that had tailed off in fifty different directions, neither one of you admitting defeat.

“Natsuo, I don’t give a flying fuck if that’s what the notes say!” you yell, throwing your eraser at his head, an act that he easily evaded while continuing to read off his notes. “You don’t give the baby the torch flame!”

“You’re not even listening to what I’m saying,” Natsuo insists with a laugh, his notebook coming to hit your back slightly. “If you give the baby the flame, they’ll be unbeatable!”

If you could roll your eyes any harder than they did now, you were sure you would manage to see your brain, but instead, you shifted on the table so that you were facing Natsuo, and you stuck out your tongue.

“Put your tongue back in your mouth before I pinch it.”

“Sowwy, I donth understhand,” you retorted your nose, turning up towards the ceiling.

Natsuo’s hands grabbed your wrists, and you shrieked, immediately trying to fight him off while he dragged you towards him. Screams and laughter filled the air until Natsuo accidentally pulled you off the table. So there you two sat, on the floor of the study room, in hysterics.

Your hands clutched your sides, breathing failing you while your ass stung slightly from the pain of falling. Natsuo’s face was red, his feet slamming against the floor periodically enough that you almost assumed that he was going to pee himself. 

“Just go to your stupid date already,” you groaned once your laughter subsided, your eyes resting on Natsuo, who was now laying on the floor exhausted. “You’re going to be late!”

Every Saturday after you and Natsuo were done studying, he would have a date night with Mausua. It was something he never missed, something he always made sure they did, even when his nose was dripping with snot, and he had the worst migraine. It’s just how he was.

Natsuo paused, his eyes looking at you with a shine of pain, and you sat up despite the soreness of your stomach. There was something wrong.

“She broke up with me,” Natuso admitted with a stiff smile, his shoulders shrugging. “Last night, she had this feeling that this was her year to find her soulmate, and well, I don’t know…”

His hand dragged across his face, and your eyebrows scrunched together. Scooting closer to him, you sat shoulder to shoulder with him before you nudged him with the back of your hand, “You feeling okay?”

“Yeah, actually I am,” Natsuo responded despite the wry smile on his face, “I mean, it sucks, but what can I do about it?”

“Cry, scream, we can go buy cats and put them by her front door,” you began listing off a bunch of different things, most ideas being straight near criminal, but it made Natsuo laugh.

“Remind me to never mess with you,” Natsuo shoves you with his shoulder. The force of that alone nearly sends you flying, but you merely grunt in response. “But, I’m fine.”

“You sure?” you ask, obviously unconvinced.

“Yeah,” he nods, “I will take a hug if you don’t believe me.”

Rolling your eyes, you stood up, stretching out a hand you helped Natsuo to his feet, and without a second thought, you wrapped him into a hug. Your body feels just a bit warm when he held you close. 

“I’ll show up at her door with a cat and a baby with a blowtorch, just say the word.”

“Stop, you menace.”

“Shut up, you know you love me.”

“Have I ever denied that before?”

“Yes.”

“True.”

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July 1 - one day left

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“HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!!!” You screamed, shoving a birthday present into Natsuo’s face the moment he opened the door. 

Natsuo graciously accepted the present, his face brightening with a smile while he thanked you for the gift. “I thought I said I didn’t need anything.”

You shrugged, walking into the house and taking off your shoes, “That’s what you thought, but I am far wiser and know exactly what you need!”

Natsuo snorts, closing the door behind you, and the two of you make light chatter while walking into the house. It had been a while since you came to his house. The last time you had been around, he was still living under the same roof with his dad, but this one was without him. The house had a different energy to it, one that was nothing similar to that of the old house. It was comforting and warm, despite the coldness the family preferred.

Today was Natsuo’s birthday, and he had invited you over for his birthday dinner with his family, something that he didn’t do last year with you. Thankfully you had met most of his family, his sister Fuyumi was an obvious one, and you also had the chance of meeting Rei the other month while running into the mother and son at a tea shop one day. You also had sort of met his baby brother Shouto, who you only really knew because of the U.A. Sports Festival.

Dinner was lovely, the four Todoroki’s, and you enjoyed a bunch of sashimi while talking. The family dynamic was also bizarre for you to experience. Fuyumi was obviously used to being the conversationalist. She was very talkative and inquisitive during the entire night. Shouto was trying his hardest to -- in the most helpful way possible -- act normal. He was stiff but a good conversationalist if you overlooked the often weird phrases he had to say. Rei seemed to be the mediator, trying her best to enjoy the situation but also getting involved within these sibling discussions. And of course, there was Natsuo, who for the first time since you’ve met him was being quite the Drama Queen. 

It was endearing to watch Natsuo quarrel with his sister and brother over matters that seemed so trivial and pointless. They were all very strongwilled, it seemed.

“How about you, y/n-chan,” Rei smiled at you, interrupting the ridiculous argument between Shouto and Natsuo about how Natsuo wasn’t going to wake up in someone else’s body the next morning. “Are you expecting to wake up in your soulmate’s body?”

You smiled stiffly, the searing gaze of the two Todoroki brothers burning into your body while you stared at Rei, was this family always this intense?

“Well, I haven’t yet,” you laugh, brushing your hair to the side, “I would definitely like to, but there’s no saying.”

Shouto seemed to sigh, his finger pointing at you, then motioning over to Natsuo, “But is Natsuo going to wake up knowing his soulmate?”

“Shouto!”

Dinner ended with a scoop of ice cream, and you listened in horror and fascination. At the same time, Shouto explained to his family about the insane adventures he’d had at U.A. After helping with cleaning up and thanking the family for dinner, you ended up following Natsuo into his room.

It took no time for you to fall onto his futon, your arms spread out on his bed while Natsuo grabbed your present for him.

“I wonder what this is,” he sang, plopping down next to you.

You immediately sat back up, a grin on your face due to the excitement that flooded your veins, knowing that this was a pretty damn good present. 

“Obviously, it’s a photo album of me,” you teased, and he seemed to agree that it was that while he unwrapped it.

From the bag, he pulled out a hoodie that he had been raving about for months now. He had never bought it because he sucked at saving up money for this exclusive hoodie. It was a navy blue sweatshirt that had English print all over it, you couldn’t read what it said as you didn’t learn English while in high school, but it was supposed to be pretty cool.

“Y/n,” Natsuo breathed slowly, his eyes wide and round, his fingers barely touching the fabric. It was as if he felt the material too much it was stain with his fingertips or complete disintegrates within his touch. “How did you? It was sold out, I checked!”

“You told me about how much you wanted this months ago. It was too late for Christmas, so I bought it in advance for your birthday,” you explained with a grin. Warmth flooded your chest while you watched his starstruck expression, and you only felt your heart beat faster when he turned his attention onto you. So you smiled, even more, your eyes closing in your mirth, “Happy birthday, Natsuo!”

You expected him to hug you, to bring you in close and tell you how grateful he was for this gift -- if that much. But when his fingers touched your cheeks, your eyes flew open to see his gaze focused on your lips.

“Can I kiss you?”

There was nothing you could say, your words failing you entirely because this is what you had wanted for years. Tonight was going to be life-changing for you -- whether it was a pleasant change or an adverse change, you had no idea. You’d wanted this for too long to deny him a just a kiss, right?

Your heart is hammering so loudly you swear he can hear it, and with a shaky placement of your hands on his wrist, you seal the space left between the two of you.

While you had never officially dated anyone before, you’ve definitely kissed other people before Natsuo. Most of the other kisses you had were -- quite frankly -- unideal. Stiff and cold lips, rigid bodies, too much saliva pouring from their mouths, disgust soaking your spine, and awkward hand roaming. But this? This was more than anything you could have ever hoped for.

His lips were gentle against yours. A soft rose petal that warmed you from the inside out, a flexible coax that reminded you that despite your ideals, this is what you wanted most. Your head tilted to the side, allowing your meeting lips to connect further, your bodies coming together in yet a bigger and more powerful wave. 

But as the sensations that riled your blood and nerves, the actions the two of you grew bolder, riskier, much more passionate.

His fingers released your chin, moving to grip onto your waist, pulling you in. You gasped against his lips, the demanding actions catching you off guard. Your hands pressed onto his chest, your legs shifting so that you were now straddling the larger boy, and you swore you could see stars the second his tongue skimmed your bottom lip.

Closer.

Better.

Wistful.

Your back arched, your chest meeting his when his tongue traced the roof of your mouth, and your hips involuntarily ground against his nearly trembling thighs. He hissed, barely loud enough for you to hear, but his cold fingers slid under your shirt, and you shuddered.

There was no time to react, you felt your body being flipped, and Natsuo was on top of you, his hips grinding into you emphatically, continuously, and unrelentingly. Your hips met his with every movement, your legs wrapped tightly against his waist, trying your best to get him to lose his train of thought with every roll of your hips. The growing bulge in his pants was only a clear indictment to what you were doing to him. Of what was to come of this night. Your head fell back, your jaw-dropping, while you made choking noises, refusing to let such a loud audible noise escape your mouth. But it seemed that Natsuo wanted to hear you moan, to feel you squirm against his hold.

This was making your body explode with sensations you didn’t think was possible from someone who wasn’t your soulmate. 

Natsuo’s lips pressed down your neck to your chest, your mind swam with the word soulmate, and your tongue was drenched with his name.

Soulmate.

Tonight was the night you were going to find out.

“I’ve been in love with you for so long,” Natsuo groaned, his tongue leaving wet stripes against your chest, and with the feeling of his fingers tweaking at your nipples through your shirt, you panicked.

“Get off me!” you squeaked, your hands shoving at his shoulders, your legs unwrapping around him.

“What’s wrong?!” Natsuo panics, his hands checking up and down his wrinkled clothes, his body on edge and filled with worry. “Did I do something wrong?!”

“I can’t do this!” you pant, your body feeling itchy at your conflicting emotions. You could do this, you knew that. It would take nothing for you to spend the night with one Todoroki Natsuo, but not on this night, not when you were so sure that you would figure out who your soulmate is. Not if they would wake up in your body with a naked man beside them. No, you couldn’t do that. “Tonight is the special night… and I can’t… we can’t! Not when there’s a possibility that someone is waiting for me!”

Natsuo’s eyebrows furrow, his face setting into an icy frown. There was a clear understanding on his face, emotions that let you know that while he was very disappointed, he understood.

“I’m sorry,” you whisper, your gaze no longer able to reach his.

“It’s okay,” he smiles weakly, but his voice is distant and terse. “I’ll see you out…”

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Your eyes focused on the ceiling of your bedroom.

Even though it was three hours since you’ve left the Todoroki residence, your heart was still unfairly beating at the thought of Natsuo kissing you, and the implications of what the both of you wanted to do but hadn’t mustered the courage to do. 

You thought about the fact that he had just broken up with his girlfriend seven days ago, maybe he was projecting his no longer met hormones on you? There was no way your best friend was in love with you and chose not to say anything about it until now. But then again, because he was in a relationship, that confession would have been a dick move. But if he did love you, and not her, why would he have stayed with her?

You’re not really sure when you managed to pass out, considering that you had been tossing and turning for literal hours. But soon, you drifted off to sleep, with nothing but a prayer that when you woke up that you would be in someone else’s body. 

Your eyes opened when a crack of sunlight hit your face, and you slammed a hand against your face. But your hand came down heavier against your face, and you groaned in pain. But it wasn’t your voice…

Shooting up from your bed, your eyes searched the room around you. It wasn’t yours, you knew that much. But there was something familiar about the color of the walls and the furniture of the room. Rushing to your feet, you saw a mirror and looked into it. 

You were met with grey eyes, gentle, kind, and familiar grey eyes. Your fingers traced the pale skin and felt the white hair on your head.

What were the chances?

Todoroki Natsuo was your soulmate.

A smile spread across your face, an unbelievably gracious joy filling you up. But then Natsuo’s phone began to ring, and you picked it up to see your contact picture showing. It was a rather good picture of you and him, a memory from club rush during your first semester of college. On the top were your first name and a pure heart emoji.

Grinning much broader, you picked up the call, placing the phone to your ear, you spoke.

“Hello?”

“What were the chances?” you heard your voice respond back to you, and it took everything not to giggle lunatically within Natsuo’s body.

“I’d say less than zero.”

“Yet here we are,” he teased you, and you went to push back nonexistent hair behind your ear. Dropping your hand to the dresser, you shake your head.

“Are you disappointed?” you couldn’t help but ask, your worries about you being a distraction for him still hot on your mind.

“Definitely not,” he spoke softly, “I know what you’re thinking, y/n. That you were nothing but a distraction from Mausua, or how when I blurted my feelings, they were too in the moment. I should have broken up with her ages ago, but I don’t know. You just didn’t seem attainable to me.”

“You’re an idiot for thinking that, Todoroki,” you sniff, tears welling in your eyes.

“Hey, now,” he reprimanded you, but the teasing was still heavy in his tone, “it’s Todoroki-san to you.”

A smile grew on your face, and you scoffed playfully, “Todoroki-san? I’d much rather call you daddy.”

Now you knew what noises you made, you were nineteen, nearly twenty with a few sexual experiences yourself. Now the sound that escaped Natsuo’s voice was one of approval, and heat spread through your body.

“We have less than a minute,” Natsuo spoke as lowly as your voice could go, and it sent goosebumps down your spine, “I’ll meet you at your place. Are your roommates here?”

“No.”

“Good.”

Your eyes closed, and you listened to Natsuo’s directions. His voice flowing from your voice and slowly ended with his own. Your eyes fluttered open to see yourself standing in your bathroom with your cellphone to your ear. Heat flooded your body, and you realized just how cold his body was. 

“I’ll see you in twenty minutes,” he spoke sharply, and a smirk curled onto your face.

“Okay, daddy,” you accentuated.

You couldn’t see him, but you could feel his nostrils flare from the opposite end of the call, a dark look on his face. The line went dead, and an internal panic flared through your veins.

Twenty minutes to prepare, could you even manage that?!

You took the fastest five-minute shower in your life, nearly slipping against the slick bathtub while shaving your legs. Hopping out of the shower, you were quick to brush your teeth, putting product in your hair, and once you were done, you scrambled back to your room. Your hands throwing on the first set of lingerie you found, it was a navy blue teddy that had a deep plunge between your breasts. You hastily slid your sheer navy blue thigh highs up your legs, and just managed to slip your large t-shirt back over your head when there was a knock on your front door.

Looking into your mirror, you felt your chest tighten, your stomach filling with butterflies that left you feeling dizzy. It felt like an eternity when you walked to the front door, rising to the tip of your toes to see Natsuo standing outside of your door. His signature white with grey jacket over a dark grey tank that seemed just the perfect fit, you noticed black joggers on him too, and your teeth buried against your bottom lip, your heart beating erratically.

“Who is it?” you asked teasingly, watching the way Natsuo’s eyes snapped up, and you grinned at the way a coy smile stretched across his face.

“Open up and find out?”

“Mm,” you sigh, pressing a finger to your chin, “I don’t particularly want to find out.”

But nevertheless, your fingers found themselves on your doorknob, opening the wood door to see Natsuo standing there. His eyes were drinking in your face, and there was such a loving smile that emerged on his face.

“Hi, soulmate,” he whispered.

It was no different from the typical way he greeted you, but the simple addition of soulmate sent fire to your cheeks and stomach. 

“Hi,” you whisper, stepping aside, letting him in. 

He walked in, and you shut the door behind him, waiting for him to take off his shoes and remove his jacket, you stayed put. Your hands were behind your back, just waiting for him to look at you again. Your thoughts trailed to what was going to happen, would you two have sex? Would he grip your waist so tightly you would be left with purple bruises? Would he enjoy having you as a partner for the rest of his life? You licked your lips as your thoughts wandered.

When he was finally ready, Natsuo took a step towards you, knocking you from your internal turmoil and having you stare straight into his grey eyes. 

“Can I kiss you?” he asked you again, and like before, you didn’t answer him.

Reaching up, you brought him down for a kiss, but unlike before, the intentions were already known. The barriers and the restrictions between the two of you were gone, and you melted.

His hands gripped the back of your thighs while he took a confident stride forward, and you followed after him. Your lips were glued to his. Every divet, every line in his lips was smoothed out and memorized against yours. It made your head spin, this was your soulmate, he was yours. 

Natsuo’s mouth dragged away from yours, moving downwards on your neck. His teeth bit and pulled at your sensitive skin until you were moaning his name. His hands were running up and down your curves, measuring them against him. A small gasp escaped your lips when your thigh rubbed against his clothed erection, and you shivered when his fingers traced the part of your skin where the thigh highs ended. Growling against your skin, Natsuo’s fingers pulled at the elastic and let it go. The fabric came back against your skin, and you whimpered loudly.

“Natsuo, don’t tease,” you muttered, your fingers pressing against the incredibly defined muscles that were hidden underneath his jacket. You wanted it off. But Natsuo didn’t seem to notice your needs, choosing to continue to press searing kisses against your neck.

“Address me by daddy,” he growled, his lips parting with your skin so that you could stare into his eyes. His gaze was ferocious, drowning, and near angry, but for some reason, it sent heat right to your core before he slammed his lips back against yours into a bruising kiss.

You could barely keep up with his moving lips, your eyes rolling to the back of your head when his hot tongue dragged against your lips.

Your hips weakly ground against his, and Natsuo met your needy hips until you were crying against his mouth, and his tongue invaded your mouth. Your fingers flew to his white hair, fisting the soft tendrils until he snarled. One moment you were on your feet and the next Natsuo’s hands cupped your ass and lifted you up.

Your legs wrapped around his waist, and you felt him walking towards your room. 

Your tongue danced against his, your mind doing everything it could to not fall under his spell. To keep fighting, to make sure that this wasn’t going to be easy, no matter what he wanted to be called. Curling your tongue in his mouth, you could feel the shiver go down Natsuo’s spine, and you pulled your tongue back in your mouth.

“Where are you taking me, daddy?” you whisper against his lips, your hips now grinding down against the head of his hard boner. Delighting in the fact that his grip on your ass becomes bruising, your rolling hips don’t slow down.

“Wouldn’t you like to know, baby girl.”

A chill slammed down your spine at that nickname, and you bite down on his lower lip. His gaze met yours, his eyes flaring with an internal fire that only aided to the light between your thighs. Fuck, did you want this man.

The door opened and closed when Natsuo entered your room, and your tongue lapped at his lips. 

His right hand left your ass, and you felt him fumble with the waistband of his joggers. You looked down to see his joggers and briefs fall, but had no time to admire the long and thick cock that sprung free from that restraint.

In what seemed like a perfect and fluid motion, Natsuo sat on your bed. He then shoved the panty of your teddy to the side.

“I don’t particularly like being teased, and last night was a lot,” he admitted, his fingers pressing between your already wet folds, and you cursed. Your hips ground against Natsuo’s fingers, and he grinned, seeing your reaction. “I think you deserved to be punished, don’t you think, baby girl?”

“No,” you breathlessly state, the feeling of his thick and cold fingers against your heated core formed goosebumps all over your body. “I think I’ve been perfectly well behaved, daddy.”

“I see we have a liar,” he chuckled, and before you could think of something to return with, his hands gripped your waist and sank you against his cock.

“FUCK!” you screamed at the feeling of his thick cock stretching you out in such a way that had your forehead slamming against his shoulder. 

Your hips moved, trying to find a way to adjust to Natsuo’s girth that nearly sent tears to your eyes. You could feel the way his cock twitched within you, your tightness, and slick heat getting to him too while he whispered senseless praises into your ear. Your hips moved forward, both trying to relieve the pressure that demanded to be attended to and to bring the mindnumbing pleasure that your body begged for.

But Natsuo’s hands gripped onto your hips, keeping you against his girth. Your jaw dropped to complain, but his left hand lifted to press his fingers in your mouth, effectively silencing you. You gagged softly against his fingers, and you made a whining noise while his right arm wrapped around your waist.

His right fingers dug into your skin, most likely leaving behind purple bruises while his mouth trailed to your ears.

“You’ve been naughty, baby girl,” he sighed, his fingers pressed against your tongue, spreading out slowly when they traveled further back in your throat. Your breathing piqued, trying to remain calm while your throat attempted to constrict around his fingers. “Now, you’ll sit on my cock until I think you’re ready to be fucked.”

Your eyes fluttered when his fingers began to slide up and down your throat, your hips twitching in an attempt to get the friction you craved, and your inner walls ached around his softly throbbing cock. His finger curled in your throat, and your tongue lashed around his fingers, a desperate attempt to remain calm in this situation.

Forcibly, you clenched your inner walls around his cock, and he hissed out your name.

It felt like an eternity with his cock buried balls deep within you, your mouth trying to please Natsuo’s fingers while you resisted the urge to move. 

“Daddy’s gonna fuck you now,” Natsuo muttered and you felt an incredible wave of joy shoot through you, you wanted him to fuck you until your eyes were rolling to the back of your head, drool pouring from your mouth, and his name the only word you could utter.

Suddenly you were on your back, and Natsuo’s cock was no longer in you, nor were his fingers. You shuffled onto your elbows, but Natsuo’s hands grabbed the hem of your shirt and tore it over your head. Your chest rose and fell with your approaching excitement, and Natsuo’s eyes took in the lace teddy that you wore. It blended in with your skin with such refinement that you took in pride at the way his fingers trailed against the fabric.

“Like what you see, daddy?” you ask in almost a whisper, and Natsuo’s snap up to look into your hooded ones.

“You’re so beautiful, baby girl. So perfect,” he agrees, his fingers dragging upwards, moving against your sensitive breasts, making your body arch up into his touch. The stimulation of his cold fingers against your nipples in such thin clothing, along with those sweet affirming words, sent sparks of electricity throughout your body. 

His fingers hooked under the straps of the teddy, and soon it was pulled off your body, joining the t-shirt somewhere in the room. It’s removal left you with nothing but the thigh highs, and by the looks of it, he liked that.

You couldn’t find words to tease him with because his finger trailed against your inner thigh, and you trembled at his touch. 

Natsuo smirked down at you, placing a soft kiss against your cheek before continuing to kiss along your jawline, to your neck, and then down your sternum. “Tell me, baby girl, what do you want?” Between every word, he trailed further down until his mouth was nibbling at the skin between your thighs, ignoring where you wanted and needed him most.

“I want you to fuck me,” you panted when Natsuo pinched one of your nipples, rolling the hardened skin as his teeth bit against your thighs, making your chest arch up into his touch, and made your legs tremble. Your pussy clenched desperately at his ministrations, your aching clit begging to be touched. 

“Do you deserve to cum?” Natsuo pulled away from your thigh with a pop. His fingers trailed back down your stomach, grazing your labia, chuckling at the way your hips twitched against him. 

Natsuo slipped two fingers into your cunt, keeping them still inside you as he maintained eye contact. He watched as you writhed beneath him, your hips snapping to relax against the fullness his fingers gave you. Slowly your movements began to feel good; your actions, to feel good, soon became a desperate attempt fuck yourself against his fingers. Slowly Natsuo began to thrust them in and out of your aching core ignoring your throbbing clit that you couldn’t muster the energy to touch. 

“Please, daddy,” your hands found themselves holding onto his forearm, fiercely trying to get him to do more with his fingers. “Fuck me good.”

Growling lowly, Natsuo arched his two fingers towards puffy inner walls, pressing down against it, and he watched your face contort in pleasure as a low whine left your lips. Natsuo grinned when he saw the way your eyes clenched closed, musical moans pouring from your lips when his fingertips brushed against your g-spot. Your jaw dropped, your hips taking over his finger fucking so that you were fucking yourself on his fingers. The clenching of your walls grew more and more, your toes curling with the impending orgasm approaching you, the build-up overwhelming. 

“So needy, baby girl,” Natsuo suddenly removed his fingers from your heat, your whines and desperate cries ignored while you bucked your hips up towards him, desperate for a release. You watched as Natsuo examined your slick essence on his fingers before looking at you. “Suck it off the baby girl,” he said, putting his fingers between your mouth, and without a second thought, your mind is broken from the denied orgasm you opened your mouth and sucked your sweet essence from them as you writhed beneath him. The taste of yourself on your tongue drove you almost insane; you liked the taste intermingled with the taste of him. What would you have to do to get a taste of his cum with yours? “You’re not allowed to cum until I say you can, baby girl.” 

Your mouth loosed against his fingers, and you whined at his instruction. Natsuo only shoved his fingers further down your throat and roughly fisted his cock, using his hand to glide it along your slit, gathering your juices along the tip with a low groan. He pressed the head inside your tight cunt, watching as your body reacted to the sensation. Your hips pushing forward, trying to get him to go deeper. Natsuo chuckled while he rubbed his cock along your slit again, teasing you, not giving you what you craved most. 

“Tell me what you want me to do, baby girl,” Natuso mockingly asked, knowing exactly what you wanted. His fingers removed from your mouth, and you gasped with the needed breath, and when you were ready, you spoke. 

“Fuck me, daddy, I need you to—” Natsuo’s fingers pressed against your clit, making you shrill in pleasure. 

“Such naughty words,” Natsuo ran his fingertip over your clit, smirking when your tongue came out in a pathetic pant, trying to control your desperate and needy breathing. The action made Natsuo groan, immediately imagining how that would feel on other parts of his body. His restraint wavering when he pulled back, steadying himself between your legs before he slammed into your aching pussy without warning. The sensation of feeling completely full after being denied sent you soaring towards your release. 

“Such a good girl,” Natsuo pressed a sloppy kiss to your lips, thrusting into your pussy as he watched your mouth fall open in pleasure. A constant slew of gibberish leaving your lips as you became lightheaded from the desire, and your arms wrapped around his shoulders to bring him closer. Natsuo’s cock fit inside you perfectly, the prominent veins on his length brushing against your inner walls were now moving, no longer stagnant, and only added to your pleasure. The tight feeling in the core of your stomach began to overwhelm you, the tip of his cock consistently pounding against your sweet spot, your climax threatening to wash over you. “Do you know how fucking gorgeous you are? These thigh highs are fucking driving me crazy… so pretty, so beautiful against your skin. It’s like you dressed this way on purpose, trying to get me to fuck you like you deserve to be fucked.

You whimpered while you shifted your arms around Natsuo’s neck, pulling his body flush against your own as he continued to rut into your tight heat. The angle at which his snapping hips were drilling into you had his pelvis rub against your clit, your legs tightening around his hips as his cock rubbed against your inner walls. You cried out his name, your clit throbbing at the sensation, your body stiffening as he moved faster.

“Who do you think you’re addressing?” Before you could attempt to respond, Natsuo’s right-hand leaves your hip and slams to your throat, choking the response from you. “I want to hear you correct your answer.”

His hand remains heavy and tight around your throat, his hold barely allowing oxygen to travel through to your lungs. Your vision fuzzed, and you could feel your heartbeat in your head, but your core shook with Natsuo’s now reciprocating and rhythmic slams.

“Y-You are, daddy,” you moan loudly, your thighs trembling with the feeling of his fingers around your throat.

Choking and clit stimulation with his cock pounding into your cervix, Natsuo chuckled into your skin. His thrusting hips were becoming more precise, angling into you in a way that made you audibly choke when you needed to gasp. Maybe it was the lack of oxygen to your body that was making you delirious, or perhaps it was the fact that he was slamming into you with the strength of rearranging your guts, but your hips began to swivel at an inhumane pace. Your cunt held a vice grip around his cock, yet it did nothing to slow Natsuo down, but the growing heated pit in your lower belly was making your legs tremble against his. Still, you tried to keep up with his rough and cruel pace, and Natsuo enjoyed knowing that detail.

“You’re fucking beautiful, baby girl. Your pretty little pussy is so fucking tight, I bet you’ve been saving yourself for me? Such a good girl, taking my cock like this, you’re fucking amazing.” He praises, his teeth biting down against your bottom lip. Your breathless moans slipping past your lips. “You enjoy being choked, baby girl?”

Your head nods, “Y-Yes, daddy!”

“Do you need to cum? Maybe I’ll allow it, your pussy has been so good.”

His hand against your throat tightened, and black dots littered your vision. His teeth sunk far into your skin, enough for you to feel your skin breaking as his tongue moving in cold strokes to calm your now throbbing skin. Then there were his nimble left fingers running against your clit and pressed delicate circles in time with his hammering and throbbing cock. But your swiveling hips held no value anymore, Natsuo’s hips snapped upwards fast enough and powerful enough to overcome and overwhelm you. The only thing you could tell was that along with the tip of his cock hitting your bruising walls, the sounds of your sopping wet pussy crashing against his forceful hips frantically rang in your ears.

Your bodies moved together entirely, his thrusts pushing you back further into the bed as he followed your movements. The bed frame hitting the wall with every harsh thrust, and your mattress springs creaking heavy in your ears. The noise of the headboard slamming against the wall was almost as loud as your moans of pleasure as your fingernails ripped into Natsuo’s shoulders, calling out his name in a mantra. 

“I need to cum, daddy. P-please, let me cum—” Natsuo could feel your body shaking underneath him as your orgasm was so close after being built up and denied. 

“Cum for me, y/n.” Natsuo groaned as your inner walls clenched around his length at his vulgar words, “cum all over my cock.”

Your eyes clamped closed, almost in synch. Your head nods, the heated pressure in your belly scorching. Your walls clamp down against his hammering cock, but it doesn’t slow him down, only encouraging him to increase his speed and strength until the bed shuddered against your weight. The sopping noises of your meeting sex filled your ears, and you moaned loudly, your teeth biting down onto your lip.

It takes his cock brushing against your g-spot for your legs to slam outwards, your arms nearly succeeding in choking Natsuo as you try sitting up as your orgasm slams through you.

“Fuck, fuck, FUCK!” You scream hoarsely. Your scream only increases in great thrill when you feel Natsuo’s cock twitching unrestrainedly within you. But Natsuo ignores his own near, his hips continuing to drill into you, his hand clamping tighter against your neck, cutting off your voice. 

Natsuo isn’t done yet, not yet.

His hands move to grip the exposed back of your thighs, his grip bruising your supple skin. He slams into you faster, his cock continuing unaffected by your convulsing walls. There are no other noises except your wet cunt meeting his cock, your muffled shrieks of approval, and Natsuo’s heavy breathing as he continues to drive into you. Your convulsing walls body only making Natsuo stammer and curse loudly.

His lips find yours, and there is nothing to say, the kiss is messy, saliva coating your lips like lipstick. Spit filled kisses were exchanged between the two of you without care, while he chases his orgasm. His intense pace continues, your name growled from your throat, until one last thrust and one final clamp from your cunt sends him over.

Natsuo soon collapsed on top of you, his typically colder body burning with an almost feverish heat while his fingers traced against the frill of your thigh highs.

“That was something,” you mumble into his ear, and Natsuo snorts softly, his head nodding in agreement.

“I didn’t hurt you, did I?” he whispered, pushing off your body; his eyes examined your raw body.

“Nah,” you disagreed with a smile, your fingers brushing through the bangs of his hair. “If you did, I liked it.”

“Masochist,” he teased, his lips pressing against yours in a soft and tender kiss. 

“I just might be, and if I am?”

“Then I think we’ll get along just fine, baby girl.”

“Okay, daddy.”

Soulmates weren’t perfect; you knew that more than anyone! But, while you lay there with his head against your chest. Hours after the two of you had cleaned up and gone for a few more rounds, you realized that this was what you wanted. You and your soulmate. That’s all that mattered when you were together, and things worked out.

[some-kindofgnome]

Kinktober #8: under his loving gaze: Steve Rogers & Bucky Barnes

In which Steve discovers it’s possible to love two people to the bone and still be crushed by loneliness. 

Characters: Bucky Barnes, Steve Rogers (sort of) x f!Reader

Warnings: smut (18+ please!) VOYEURISM of the truest, you-don’t-know-you’re-being-watched kind. Vaginal sex. Male masturbation. Lots and lots of pining for not so many words. 

Notes: Another one for my Marvel friends today :) The prompt for day eight is ‘Voyeurism,’ and does he ever watch. Somehow this one turned angsty. I... don’t think I’m sorry, though. 

Kinktober Masterlist

Friday nights never used to be this pathetic.

Steve’s not completely sure when he got so boring. Even when he was a kid, Bucky always had one place or the other to drag him on the weekends. He’d stumble in from a backbreaking shift at the docks, c’mon Stevie, the city awaits, and Steve never really wanted to go, but it was Bucky’s sweat that paid for the roof over their heads, so he never felt good about saying no.

These days, though, his idea of fun is an evening pouring over his briefings. Letting the security footage from the compound flick idly across the monitor. He doesn’t need to watch it. Not when there’s an AI system more sophisticated than any on the planet monitoring their premises.

But Steve’s always been a little old-fashioned.

Tonight, there’s something else on his mind. It’s not something that should be plaguing his thoughts, but his brain doesn’t often listen when he decides he doesn’t want to think about something.

“Gonna be taking your post again tonight, Captain?” Tony’s voice, no matter how genuine, always felt edged with an air of mockery. Tonight’s dinner had been no different. Above the idle chatter surrounding plans for the weekend, he’d decided to speak up.

“Whaddaya mean?” Sam had asked, quirking an eyebrow in Steve’s direction with a bite of chicken-something (prepared by Vision) halfway to his mouth.

“Oh, you haven’t heard?” Steve remembers low dread curling in his gut at the snappy response from Tony, knowing he was setting up for a lethal blow. “Steve’s been watching all of you do the nasty.”

After his cheeks had gone an appropriate shade of maroon, Steve sputtered through the rest of dinner, insisting that there weren’t any security cameras installed in private areas of the compound.

Then again, based on the way that Tony’s eyes had sparkled once he let the subject drop, Steve isn’t so sure anymore.

The mystery of whether seems hell-bent on keeping Steve from getting any work done tonight. Any time he so much as lowers his eyes to the page, the question plagues intently at the corners of his thoughts, forcing him to re-read the same briefing line at least a dozen times before he gives up and pushes the papers aside.

He’s just going to have to figure it out. Once and for all. He slumps over the edge of the desk, taking the mouse in one oversized hand and navigating to the edge of the window that he’s got open- flicking through the normal course of security footage. Front door, hallways, kitchen, gym, garden, repeat.

Steve is not blessed with extensive computer knowledge. But he knows that the black bar at the top of the screen, scrawled with words like file, edit, preferences, refers to a list of possible commands. So he keeps clicking through them, scrolling through each option until he finds something that points him in the right direction.

Under the view tab there’s another series of options. After mousing over one called ‘cycle settings,’ he realizes that the current feeds cycling through the monitor are only one option of many.

His eyes find ‘quarters’ far more quickly than he would care to admit. For an honest moment he sits there, cursor highlighting the option. He chews hard at his lower lip.

It wouldn’t be right. It would be a violation of privacy. But it’s Friday night. Steve’s willing to bet that hardly anyone is even home at the moment. What’s the worst thing that could possibly happen?

Oops, he thinks to himself as he clicks, curiosity getting the best of him. My hand slipped.

The feed that pops up before him is, as he expected, mostly empty. Some of the bedrooms are unused, showing bare rooms with bare mattresses and naked walls.  Even the ones that are designated to his teammates are mostly unoccupied right now, some beds neatly made, some haphazardly rumpled.

There’s a flicker of motion out the corner of his eye that draws Steve’s attention. His heart clenches. Hard.

It’s your room. And you’re there, but you’re not alone.

The relationship that you have with Bucky is no secret. You connected with one another right away, finding peace in one another and happiness. You’ve turned Bucky into a shred of the man he used to be- smiling, grabbing for you in the kitchen, holding you close when you gather in the common room to watch movies or binge Seinfeld.

Steve’s supposed to be happy for you. Both of you. The two most important people in the world to him have found happiness with one another.

But he can’t help the rush of greed that consumes him every time you’re in front of him. Every time you put that love so proudly on display.

He wants you both for himself.

He clicks on the feed and it quickly expands to fill the entire monitor. This way, it’s easier for him to see the way Bucky looks, laid out on top of your stretched body. His knees are between your thighs, and though his hair hides your faces in a sweep of chestnut, his body doesn’t hide the way his hands are currently working themselves under the edge of your tank top, crawling up your ribcage as he kisses you like a man starved.

Based on the angle of the feed, Steve can surmise that the camera is probably situated in the control panel by your door. He should have guessed. Tony’s a sneaky bastard at the best of times. And the concept of boundaries has always been a foreign one to anybody named ‘Stark.’

Bucky rucks your shirt up over your bare chest. Steve swallows hard. He glances over his shoulder to make sure the door to his study is closed, then turns his attention back to the screen. Bucky’s palming one of your breasts, but he’s already kissed his way down to your chest and sucks attentively at the other one.

He’s worshipping your body. God, he’s so in love with you. Steve’s not sure which one of you he wishes he could be. Both. Neither. He wants to be in the middle.

His cock is already beginning to twitch to life inside his stiff chinos, and he shifts a little to palm the growing swell of it down one thigh. His mind is working a mile a minute- wrestling between how badly he knows he shouldn’t be doing this and how badly he wants to anyway.

Bucky tugs your sweatpants down over your hips in one swift motion and Steve reaches for his fly. He can’t fucking take this anymore.

It’s not like you’re going to look over and see him there, peering at you from the other side of the camera.

He’s just thankful that there’s no sound, or he would have definitely lost it by now. He can see the way your lips are moving, though, and imagines what you might be saying to each other. Are you tender? Dirty? He wants to know it all.

Bucky’s got your pants off now, and he’s shimmying out of his shirt, too. Steve tries hard not to admire the graceful dip and swell of his best friend’s muscles. He’s loved Bucky since he was a chubby-cheeked kid, and he wished that neither of them had ever been touched by any of this. But Bucky’s beautiful now, gorgeous in a way that Steve will never be. He handles his new mass with elegance.

The dull silver glint of a dog tag dangles from Bucky’s throat as he crawls up your body again, shucking down his pants. Steve’s already digging through the fabric in his lap, pushing the folds of his pants aside and pulling out his cock. He can’t stop. It’s like his limbs are moving all their own.

You’re both naked now. To Steve, it’s like a trip to the Louvre. Priceless artwork laid out for him alone. Both your bodies are so perfect. He never knew that he could want two things, two people so badly, but to choose between you would be to choose between breath and heartbeat.

He grips the base of his cock and groans as he watches Bucky line up. He’s so careful with you, worshipping your body at every turn. He slips his metal hand beneath your thigh, intertwining his flesh fingers with yours. He leans down to kiss you, so slow and soft it makes Steve’s chest ache to watch.

He’s seen the two of you kiss before. But this is an intimate moment, meant to be shared by just the two of you. For an instant it hits Steve how intrusive this is, to be looking in on a ritual as tender and sacred as this one.

Bucky’s hips ease forward, clean lines of muscle sinking into the sides of his thighs. Steve’s hand gives an involuntary jerk. He needs this- no- deserves this- and what you never find out won’t hurt you.

For all the softness that Bucky’s shown you in the lead-up he settles into a brutal rhythm, pounding rhythmically into your body as your legs twine around his hips to pull him in. It’s even more beautiful to watch from afar, and Steve quickly matches the rhythm of your lovemaking with his fist, pumping his hips into a closed hand and slicking the fluid that leaks from his tip up and down the length of his shaft.

“Fuck,” he gasps, despite himself. “fuuuck.”

Bucky lasts longer than he does.

Steve can’t help himself. Bound by nothing but his own pleasure, he cums fast. His thighs hit the underside of his desk as he swears and jerks and tugs on his cock, bucking his hips into nothing and spurting quick bursts over his fingers and palm. The pleasure that rushes his system is little compared to what he’d feel if he were with you, but… it’s all he can bear to take for himself.

He stays to watch the two of you finish, transfixed by the way Bucky’s hand slips between your legs and your mouth pops open in a silent cry. Even without hearing you he can tell when you’ve hit your peak- your whole body shivers and he fucks you through it, calm and steady as the tide.

He doesn’t last much longer after that, though, and Steve watches in awe. Bucky draws up so tight before he cums it looks like he’s going to snap, all the tendons and muscles in his body stretched to the breaking point. And when it hits him, he collapses forward, thrusting madly into you before his knees go shaky and he just buries himself to the hilt and stops. He trembles against you. Trails kisses down your whole body. And when he pulls out, his softening cock is followed by a handful of fluid- so much- and Steve comes back to himself so quickly he closes the entire security program and unplugs the desktop.

The weight of what he’s just done settles over his shoulders. But, fuck, he loved it. The image of you and Bucky and your bodies moving as one is printed permanently into his mind.

As he cleans himself up and gets dressed again, he wishes there was a way for him to make you both see. If he could just show you how much he adores you, both of you, maybe you’d let him in. If you knew that he didn’t want to come between you, maybe things would be different.

For tonight, though, all he’ll have is stolen memories. And for now, it has to be enough.

[azurite-writes]

Problem One: The Screen(s) and Digital Workspace

Part one of my multi-part doc about what I learned from doing online college at a non-online institution. This chapter: my Desktop as a Desk

     Highlighted points: learning styles, work type/function in relation to the computer 

       My biggest problem with being pushed online after being at an in-person institution was, and still is, my forced reliance on the computer. I have to sit in front of it for hours: attending classes on Zoom; checking email every three hours; accessing Moodle pages for class and out-of-class work (Moodle is what my institution uses, other web management/e-learning software platforms include PowerLearning, Blackboard, and OU Campus, among others). And the work itself can be watching documentaries, watching seminars, accessing ebook/PDF documents, annotating documents in online portals… it's a lot. People have talked at length about "zoom fatigue," as well as the eyestrain headaches that can come with staring at said screens for hours at a time. I'll talk about my own lessons learned about that later.

       The assumption among the administrators and (some) people of older generations than those currently in school seems to be that working online with computers and smartphones is more efficient. That isn't necessarily true; it all depends on the type of task and the person being expected to complete it. In my case, I cannot, for the life of me, focus on dense sections of text presented on a backlit screen. Thus, reading and answering emails is okay, but downloading scanned textbook pages to be read on a laptop screen (along with trying to highlight and annotate them) is hell on earth.

       Why is this? Different reasons for different people, but in my case it's because reading/"writing" on a screen interferes with my learning style(s), which are visual/spatial, audio, and kinetic. Audio doesn't come into play for reading on a screen, but seeing words physically in a certain location relative to other words on a page is very important to my memory of the material. Computer screens can display pretty much anything at any given time; book pages can only display whatever was permanently printed onto them. That is, the content of a book page in physical space will always be the same unless you, the reader, manipulate it; a computer screen can have any type of content displayed as long as its pixels can light up and process the information. And for me, that's a problem because I don't have any physical space to relate the information to, plus I don't get a sense of how long the document is. Recalling a passage in a printout, for me, goes like this: "I remember it was on the top-left of a page towards the beginning, the shape of the paragraph was funny too… ah, there it is." Recalling a passage on a digital scan of the same document is much harder for me by contrast: literally any of the paragraphs could have made its way to the top-left of my computer screen, if I moved the window around or zoomed in to better read the text; documents are an endless scroll upward or downwards, with (maybe) a sidebar to tell me what page I've landed on. All of my "landmarks" are functions of the program I am using to access the document. They're static and contained to a window... that can show up anywhere on my computer screen. Not conducive to the way I learn at all.

       My kinetic learning style comes into play with the computer, too. Annotating a document? In the physical world, a pen on the document itself does the trick; going through the physical movement of circling a word or making a note are things that solidify the information in my mind. Annotating a PDF document? First of all, it's difficult to do with a mouse (and God help you if you have a trackpad), and it's highly dependent on the program that the user selects to open the PDF. I could connect a drawing tablet, if I have one, but they're very expensive and their use is, again, dependent on the compatibility with whatever reader program the user selects. All this to say: annotating on the computer doesn't work for me, either. My kinetic and visual learning styles come together with note-taking. My memory is highly dependent on seeing words as they are formed by my own hand, processing them, and connecting meaning to them as they sit in a specific place on the page (am I over-explaining this? Basically, writing notes by hand and seeing where those notes are on a piece of paper help me remember them). Typing notes isn't a replacement for hand-writing notes for me; while I'm busy fixing my typos (on words I would never misspell on paper, usually, since my fingers are just moving weirdly over the keys), the professor moves on, and I'm not listening well enough to catch the fact that I've missed new information.

       The takeaway here is figure out your individual types of work relate to being on the computer. As I said, the computer hinders many aspects of my learning when it comes to memory and efficiency. As a creative tool, however, it has almost the opposite effect; writing assignments for fiction, poetry, and screenwriting classes are much more efficient on the computer. From creative thought to keystroke, I have less time to second-guess or forget my ideas, and both the immediacy and changeability of word processing programs actually works in my favor for those sorts of things.

       What I did differently from first online semester to second:

       1) I figured out which materials helped me remember my notes the best. Honestly, I wasn't even doing this when I was at in-person college, and to my detriment, but I couldn't get away with it at all once I went fully remote. Think back to when you were in lower levels of school: were there certain types of materials you gravitated towards in the classroom? Did you like basic composition notebooks with faint blue lines? Wide-ruled or college-ruled paper? Did you discover that graph paper just worked really nicely with all notes besides math, or that blank pages were less busy for your eyes? When you used pens, did you prefer blue or black ink, or did colored ink help certain things stick? If you can control what materials you use to take notes with, consider using ones akin to those from a class you either a) remembered the most fondly or b) remembered the most information from. Scour your memories of class experiences for anything, no matter how small, that may have made your life easier. Equally, take note of what tasks actually worked well digitally. Adjust accordingly.

(Personally, I found my magic formula was a 1-subject memorandum notebook — marginless, with very narrow line rulings; while I hesitate to direct you to Amazon, they are hard to find at a decent price otherwise, and you can get a 12 pack for just over $40 from them — with black ink from a 0.38-size gel pen (I used a basic Pilot G2 pen until it ran out, then bought ink refills in the smaller size). To "highlight" my notes, I circled or underlined information with a blue gel pen of the same variety. Keep in mind again that I'm learning to be a translator; this is just what works for me.)

       2) If I needed to print something out, I printed it out. Environmental guilt is something I struggled with a lot, and there was always something about staying on the computer that convinced me I was being "less wasteful" by staying digital. But with how much time and energy I ultimately saved reading a printed document that can be recycled vs the electricity I ate up spinning my wheels in front of the ebook… to me, it was worth it. If you find that helps you, too, don't be ashamed to print certain things out.

(If conserving ink and paper is a concern to you, it is possible in some viewing/editing apps to remove or cover images, either with white squares or by taking the images out completely. I have an old MacBook Pro and on current versions of Preview, one can draw shapes and fill them in white to cover parts of the scan that would eat up ink, such as blurred black borders and scanned images. For documents in a word processing program like Microsoft Word or Pages, it may also be possible to print the documents out at a smaller size, allowing more text or even multiple pages to show up on a single sheet of paper.)

| In the coming days/weeks I hope to be posting more content about how I tried to adapt to fully remote learning and the things I’ve learned along the way! Follow for updates ♥︎ |

[dreamingofscully]

6x16. “Alpha” - X-Files Rewatch

This episode is all about Scully being the Alpha, who marks her territory (Mulder). What casefile? Through this lens, I really enjoy this episode. You wouldn’t think there would be much to analyze here BUT BOY YOU'D BE WRONG. Also, there’s so many corny jokes, I love it.

Scully arriving from elsewhere in the building with her coat/briefcase seems to indicate she has an office elsewhere in the building. Perhaps she requested somewhere close to the labs? It’s super cute that she comes by to check on Mulder before she leaves. Despite how uncomfortable she was with his silliness in “Arcadia”, I think things are good between them now.

“Aren't you going home?” - Scully “I am home. I'm just feathering the nest.” - Mulder

This is cute, but also kinda sad. The work is his life, how can it be any different?

Mulder subtly trying to get Scully interested in the case. 

The desk lamp is POINTED AT THEIR PICTURE. Awww. ❤️

“What happened to the dog?” - Scully “Dog gone…. Dog gone… Doggone.” - Mulder, proud of his joke “Yeah, I got it.” - Scully

Sitting closely, and Mulder being even more of a dork than usual with his corny jokes. Scully loves it though. They’re so happy to have the X-Files back. Life is good for a little while.

THEIR CUTE SMILES AND FLIRTING ❤️

“Don’t mind him, he’ll go on forever.” - Scully

Mulder has definitely missed going on long monologues about weird shit in front of local law enforcement.

Of course Mulder’s heard of the animal. He has had even more time than usual lately to cram his brain with random strange things.

“You get a biscuit, Scully.” - Mulder, with more stupid jokes. But he’s gazing at her here, so we’ll forgive him. I’m not even mad about it anyways.

Their cute banter in front of the worker installing the fence at Karins. SO FLIRTY. (Also, being mistaken for a couple again!)

“You two looking for Karin about boarding?” - Stacy Muir “No, it's actually more of a behavior problem.” - Mulder “Yeah, he doesn't listen and he chews on the furniture.” - Scully, glancing at Mulder

Inside Karin’s house, Mulder’s random touch and Scully’s shiver in reaction. Reminiscent of his two-handed touch in “Arcadia” - is that done deliberately? Scully doesn’t seem uncomfortable, but shivers in reaction, as if she definitely enjoys it. Oof. Things are REALLY good between them.

Scully Being Territorial, Exhibit Number 1:

“How is it that you know so much about her but you don't know what she looks like?” - Scully “I never actually met her.” - Mulder “But you assume that she's going to help us?” - Scully “No, actually, it's not an assumption. She is the one who told me about his case.” - Mulder “Oh, so you two are chummy?” - Scully “Well, I've read her books.” - Mulder “Ah. The Wolf Inside... Dogs Don't Lie... Better Than Human... Better Than Human?” - Scully “She's not a real people person.” - Mulder “Well, she seems to have made a connection to you.” - Scully, looking at the I Want To Believe poster on her wall (highlighting it with a desk lamp, sound familiar?)

Standing close by the bookshelf.

Mulder introducing himself as “Fox”, what? It probably has to do with her obsession with canines. They probably joked about his name, and it’s what she would refer to him as in their emails.

This would make Scully feel even more uncomfortable/jealous

Scully Being Territorial, Exhibit Number 2:

“Mulder... She's a friend of yours?” - Scully “We met on-line.” - Mulder “On-line…” - Scully “Two professionals exchanging information.” - Mulder

Standing close in the alley/crime scene.

Scully Being Territorial, Exhibit Number 3:

Her expression when Karin shows up, and calling her “wolfwoman”. (Recognize this? She made a similar face in “Syzygy”.)

Karin’s “Classic dominant alpha territorial behaviour” when talking about the police officer being killed.

By contrast, Scully doesn’t need to be aggressive or violent to assert her dominance - just needs to exist. ❤️

Scully Being Territorial, Exhibit Number 4:

Mulder touching Karin’s hand on the computer mouse. Scully notices, shoots Mulder a sharp look. She immediately starts questioning Karin’s ideas. Her EXPRESSION. She thinks she’s figured Karin out, that she is attracted to Mulder, and she’s not going to let her get away with anything. It’s not only possessiveness but protectiveness. She only recently got Mulder away from the clutches of Diana, and she knows how vulnerable he is to women that seem vulnerable themselves.

Scully Being Territorial, Exhibit Number 5:

In the car, Mulder knowing something’s wrong with Scully

Scully warning him: “She's enamored of you, Mulder. Don't underestimate a woman. They can be tricksters, too.” (I think this is also a veiled reference to Diana, that Mulder does NOT get, nor is he meant to.)

Mulder is gullible and oblivious when it comes to certain women, and Scully knows it!

Mulder gives her a curious look - thinks she’s jealous, perhaps?

Scully won’t tolerate anyone trying anything with Mulder, she’s fucking had it. After dealing with Diana so recently - no one else is going to try anything. She’s getting ahead of something before it develops. Mulder is empathetic with people who are different/loners (Oubliette/Mind’s Eye). He CAN be manipulated by a woman with a sad story.

Scully Being Territorial, Exhibit Number 6:

Going to see Karin alone, confronting her about her intentions with Mulder. Look at that lean forward.

Scully’s “With Mulder, you found somebody you could communicate with.... someone who challenged you... But that wasn't enough. You needed to lure him out here.”

She knows what having a special connection to him feels like!

Karin’s “I lack your feminine wiles.” (Which is hilarious, because when it comes to Mulder, Scully doesn’t have ANY of that manipulativeness that she implies.)

“I'm watching you.” - Scully “You watch... But you don't see.” - Karin

Perhaps Karin did mean to lure Mulder out here to meet him, and she does lie about the creature. HOWEVER...

Once she sees Mulder and Scully together, she abandons her ideas of deepening her relationship with him. She sees what everyone else does - that M&S are incredibly close, that their body language and glances to each other suggest that the only person in the room that matters to each other is them. Karin’s suggestion here (to the case I’m sure) is also a reference to what Scully can’t see is right in front of her - that there’s no reason for her to be territorial because Mulder only has eyes for her.

I also believe Mulder would have mentioned Scully to Karin. She’s such an integral part of his life. Once Scully shows up, things “click” for her, she understands that she has no chance.

Mulder trusts Scully’s judgement, goes to see Karin for himself and asks about being misled. (This is a pretty big deal.)

Karin - she loves Mulder, in her way. He's a kindred spirit, like Scully says, the only other human she knows that she actually likes. Once she realizes that he belongs to another, that he has someone who is a good person (based on how her dogs react to her) and will look out for him, she realizes what she needs to do to stop the animal - risk and (potentially) sacrifice herself. After lying to Mulder about what she thinks the animal will do next, and he goes to Scully, she LOOKS AT THE “I WANT TO BELIEVE” POSTER. Did she choose to wrap it up and send it then? In essence, disconnecting herself from him, and giving him a gift as her last goodbye?

I love that Mulder calls Scully to the hospital so they can do the surveillance TOGETHER. ❤️ Mulder’s “You should take a load off. We might be here all night.”

Scully’s “So, what is he going to do? Walk in here, skitter across the linoleum and pee in the corners?” is so cute. And Mulder loves it when she jokes. Like I said earlier, they are in a good place again.

Scully Being Territorial, Exhibit Number 7:

“Mulder, the only thing Karin Berquist is interested in is you.” - Scully, to which Mulder seems bashful about it. He’s so oblivious about women being interested in him. It’s adorable.

When Scully takes his magazine she sits a bit further from him than normal. She’s uncomfortable with her jealousy, tries to distance herself from it’s source.

Of course Scully falls asleep. ❤️ I love how she can sleep anywhere. She’s SNORING (quietly) - IT’S SO CUTE I CAN’T EVEN--. 😭 He’s gazing at her while she sleeps, then wakes her gently with the magazine. ❤️

At the ending, Scully’s tenderness about Mulder losing his friend is touching. The whole episode she was antagonistic towards Karin, thinking she had an ulterior motive, but in the end she did something altruistic. She was Mulder’s friend, and proved that in the end she wasn’t a bad person, at least in some ways. Scully knows he’ll blame himself, as well.

They have a really sweet interaction here. Scully making sure he’s okay, Mulder reassuring that he will be, talking about how he “believed her too quickly”. (He is a learning animal. Oh shit I made another corny joke, my b.)

The lamp is still aimed at the picture of them in the office. Like a fucking spotlight saying “THIS PLACE IS OURS.”

Scully Being Territorial, End Notes

I’m partially being silly when talking about this aspect of Scully’s personality, but I have to discuss a few things.

After the shit they’ve been through with Diana, I can’t blame Scully for overreacting and being protective of Mulder, not wanting to see him manipulated again.

That being said, this isn’t the first time she’s been possessive when it comes to him. I think it’s probably one of her flaws - she can get irrationally jealous when Mulder gets attention from another woman. It’s NOT just protectiveness but stems from her longing for something more with him, her fear that someone will swoop in and take the place in his life that she wants. I can empathize with that, I suffer from terrible jealousy sometimes myself (so perhaps this is a bit of self-projection, but hey, this is my analysis, so that’s what I see).

I absolutely love Scully, but I love that she seems like a real character, with flaws and eccentricities that truly make her unique.

[flipomatic]

A New World Chapter 5: Parts of a Composition

Author Note: I know even less about guitar and music composition than I do about piano. The composition program Sayo uses in this isn’t real, I made it up.

First Chapter Previous Chapter

_________________________________________________________

As Sayo misclicked yet again, dropping another note in the wrong spot, she muttered a curse under her breath. She was still getting used to using this program, to trying to compose music on the computer.

Right now Sayo was working in her room, on a laptop she carried to school with her each day. Part of the requirement for her major was to buy the composition software and to have hardware that could run it.

One of Sayo’s classes was entirely focused on how to use the software, which was good because she needed all the help she could get with it. They had learned to place all the different types of notes, a variety of shortcuts within the program, how to export the music, and many other things.

When each part was broken down, they were easy to understand. But when Sayo had to work in the software herself, to utilize all aspects of it together, it became more challenging to manage. It was much harder than writing the notes down on paper.

That was just the program. There was also the issue of actually composing music.

Most of Sayo’s other classes were focused on this topic, on how to build compositions. She had learned about chord progressions, utilizations of major and minor keys, creating flow, setting tempos, and much much more. Every day there was something new to add to the mix, another moving piece that made up the gears of the machine that was composition.

Just like with the software, Sayo could handle the smaller aspects of it. She memorized each new technique and how they were used. In practice, she could apply them individually.

However, putting them together, creating something new from scratch, was a significant challenge. Sayo didn’t like to admit it, but she’d been struggling in class with even short compositions. Each time, Sayo buckled down on the strategies she had learned. She used them one at a time to build her compositions, with varying levels of success.

One of Sayo’s professors had assigned a composition as homework. This was the first time they were working without a template or on a specific skill. The instructions were to create a short, two page composition, utilizing the techniques they had learned in the first month of class. They were given one week to complete it, with an online dropbox to turn it in.

This led to Sayo working on the assignment in her room, sitting at her desk with the door closed. She had her notes open on the table next to her so she could reference them.

The assignment was due tomorrow, and she had already spent time earlier in the week working on it. She didn’t have much done past choosing a tempo and key signature; she had spent a long time thinking with the blank composition in front of her.

Her guitar was sitting on her bed, out of its case. She had taken it out when she started, but hadn’t played anything beyond tuning it.

The clock ticked on her desk, marking each passing minute.

Sayo’s progress on the composition was slow. She focused on each technique that she’d learned so far, applying them to the piece one by one.

Sayo could hear the guitar parts from Pasupare’s songs quietly through the wall. Hina must’ve been practicing in her room, which was just one room over. Sayo tuned it out to focus on her composition.

She placed each note and rest carefully, making sure they were all in the right spaces. She compared each segment to her notes and refined them to match.

It took a couple long hours to finish her composition. It was exactly two pages, which was the required length.

Sayo retrieved her guitar; she should at least play it once before submitting it. If she didn’t, then she wouldn’t even know how it sounded.

She sight-read her new piece, playing it from start to finish.

It was easy to play, at a straight forward tempo. The song flowed from her fingers, echoing quietly through the room.

When Sayo finished, she put her guitar back down. She looked back over the music, unsure of how she felt about the song. The sections didn’t connect together very well. She also wasn’t sure about the melody, it felt like something was missing.

Sayo went back to working on the composition, making tweaks to chords and trying to improve the flow.

The next time she looked at the clock, it was already 11:30. Sayo had class in the morning, so she needed to go to bed soon.

She looked over her composition one last time, not sure exactly what she was checking for.

Then she exported it from the program. This actually took a few minutes, since she had to go back to her notes on how to do it properly.

Once she had the file, Sayo located the online dropbox. She uploaded the file to it, decided not to write anything in the comment box, and then submitted it.

The webpage said, “Thank you for your submission!” in big, bolded letters. Sayo stared at it for a moment, before closing the window. She shut her laptop, leaving it to put her guitar away.

She was certain that her composition would be sufficient for the assignment.

_________________________________________________________

Sayo glanced up periodically as she took notes, making sure to write everything down.

The professor, a shorter elderly man, stood at the front of the classroom. He was introducing the next component of compositions, the next piece of the puzzle. He was writing on the whiteboard, demonstrating how to do it.

There were about 30 other students in the room, all taking notes just like Sayo was. The sun beamed in through the windows, high in the afternoon sky.

Sayo needed to make sure she had it recorded exactly right, so she could use it later. She needed every tool at her disposal if she was going to get better at composing, if the pieces were going to work together.

“We have one last task today.” The professor transitioned out of lecturing, erasing the board as he spoke. “Open the assignment dropbox from last week.” He waited after speaking.

Sayo followed the directions, retrieving the laptop from her bag and opening it on her desk. She logged in to it and opened the online dropbox. The dropbox looked slightly different than when she submitted the file. Next to her submission, there was blue text that said “feedback”.

At the front of the room, the professor continued. “Click on the feedback and download the attached file. You’ll notice that you do not have a grade for the assignment.”

Sayo complied, clicking the link and then downloading the file. Indeed, she hadn’t been assigned a grade on the dropbox. It still said grade pending.

She located the file in her downloads. It had the same name as her composition and appeared to be the same file type. She also opened the composition program, since she figured she would need it.

“Next, open Compositor. On the top bar, find file, import, then select the downloaded file.” The professor walked around the room, checking to make sure they were doing it right.

Sayo followed the designated path, importing the new file into the program. Her composition appeared on the screen. It was slightly different though, there were a handful of what looked like yellow highlights spread throughout the measures.

She moved her mouse over one, to see if it would do anything. When she clicked it, a window popped with a few lines of text in it.

The professor, after making his way around the classroom, had made it back to the front. “Once it’s loaded, you’ll see yellow marks where I’ve left feedback. You can click to read them. Use my feedback to revise your work and resubmit by Friday.” He wrote that date on the board, told them to use the rest of their class time to get started on it, and let them get to work.

Sayo jotted down the new due date, before reading through the notes one by one. The first one was placed near the start and was positive, complementing her chord progression. The second criticized her technique in the middle, suggesting a specific change. The third, near the end of the piece, also recommended a specific tweak.

The fourth was at the end, after the last measure of the piece. This was longer than the previous notes, giving the professor’s overall impressions of the piece.

This was what the last note said:

“Sayo, this is a solid first attempt! Your technique is sound and you have utilized the strategies from class well. For the second submission, work on the melody. I’m having trouble identifying the tone of the piece. What emotions are you trying to convey? Integrate them into the melody of your composition.”

Sayo read the message twice, absorbing its content slowly.

What kind of emotion was she trying to convey with this song? Had she done that at all?

No, she hadn’t. Sayo composed the piece with technique, not with emotion. They hadn’t learned how to do that in class.

A wave of anger rose under the surface, as Sayo frowned at the screen. She’d been instructed to use the techniques from the course, not to create with emotion. Now here she was, receiving criticism for something that wasn’t part of the assignment.

She scowled, reading the comment for the third time. Sayo glanced up at the professor, who was helping a student on the other side of the room. He hadn’t so much as glanced at her during class today.

For a moment, Sayo thought about calling him over. She had done exactly what she was supposed to for the assignment, with only small changes needed.

As she thought about it though, as she continued to process the information, Sayo realized that would be a mistake. She didn’t want to make a bad impression on this professor, especially since she would be in the program for the foreseeable future.

Sayo sighed and read the comment one last time. Her anger was fading, being replaced with resignation.

What technique would help her put emotion into this piece? She didn’t know.

She had a lot of work to do.

__________________________________________________________

As usual, Sayo went early to Roselia practice. She had been working nonstop on fixing her composition assignment, and she really needed a break from it.

She had already rewritten the melody twice, changing it out for a new one. Each time she finished she played it on her guitar, listening to how it sounded and flowed.

Each time it still felt wrong. Each new version felt worse than the last.  There wasn’t any emotion to it.

Sayo tried again. She sat at her computer, placing and deleting notes until she was sick at looking at the piece. It was barely the same piece as her original submission. She tried to give it emotion, but didn’t know how to do it.

Roselia practice would be a great chance to get away from the dreaded task, to put it out of her mind for a while. Only four members were coming today, since Yukina couldn’t make it, but it was still going to be a good practice.

Sayo was the first to arrive, so she checked in at the front desk. The studio was ready for her and she headed inside.

A few minutes later and she had her music stand and guitar ready to go. She played some of Roselia’s newer songs, working to master the harder parts so they would be ready for practice.

Playing Roselia’s music like this, she could almost forget the work waiting for her at home.

Unfortunately, almost forgetting wasn’t the same as forgetting. Even as she played Song I Am, Sayo remembered the piece she had left unfinished.

Before she was even fully conscious of it, Sayo’s fingers played the chord progression she’d developed for the piece. That was the one part of the song she wasn’t redoing, the only part that seemed to work. She just couldn’t figure out what should come before and after it.

Sayo played the most recent melody she worked on, wondering how it could be changed to convey emotion.

“T-that’s not… a Roselia song.” Rinko’s familiar voice came from the entrance to the studio, barely audible above the amplified guitar. Sayo stopped playing abruptly as she looked over. Rinko approached slowly, her piano strapped to her back.

“It’s for class.” Sayo admitted with a frown.

Rinko set her piano down, unzipping the case. “You wrote it?” She sounded genuinely interested.

Sayo wasn’t one to lie, but in moments like these she wished she was. “I did, yes. It’s the first full composition assignment.” It was embarrassing, being heard playing something that needed so much more work.

The conversation dwindled as Rinko set up her keyboard. She then set up a music stand, where she placed a handwritten piece of music. Sayo couldn’t see it too well, but it appeared to be a new Roselia song.

She knew Rinko did most of the compositions for their music, but they hadn’t created a new song since before graduation. Rinko certainly knew how to convey emotion through music; Roselia’s music was full of it.

Sayo watched as Rinko started playing the new piece, slowly playing a few measures before leaning forward and erasing something.

What was in the way of asking for help? Just her pride, really. But Rinko had already heard the song; asking for help wouldn’t be a bigger blow than that.

Besides, this was Rinko, this was Roselia. If there was one thing Sayo had learned over the years, and there were many, it was that she could count on her bandmates.

“Shirokane-san,” Sayo got her attention, pulling her eyes away from the sheet music. “Can I ask you something?”

Rinko set her pencil down on the stand.  “O-of course.”

“What techniques do you use to convey emotion in compositions?” Sayo asked about the gear she was missing, the part that would make the whole composition work.

Rinko’s eyes widened slightly in surprise, but quickly returned to normal. “I-I’m not sure… that there are techniques… for that.” Sayo’s heart sank; she was afraid of that answer. She must’ve looked upset, since Rinko quickly continued. “It’s more about… the heart.”

Sayo wasn’t sure what to make of that. “The heart…” She repeated the words, turning them over a few times.

“To put emotion in your music…you have to feel it first.” Rinko explained. She lifted her hands to the keyboard, and played for a few moments. The melody was unfamiliar to Sayo, but it was slow and soft. It was comforting to listen to.

Sayo frowned, thinking about all of her attempts so far. Mostly she had felt frustration while composing. “How though?” That was what she didn’t understand.

Rinko stepped around her keyboard, approaching where Sayo stood. She stopped in front of her, lifting one hand to the neck of Sayo’s guitar. Her eyes were down on the instrument as she replied.

“Compose with the guitar… rather than the sheet music.” Rinko always spoke softly, but at this distance her voice seemed even quieter. “D-don’t worry about technique and… put yourself… into the song.” Her eyes came up, locking onto Sayo’s. “It takes practice… but you can do it.” Rinko’s voice was encouraging.

The two stayed like that for a moment, as Sayo processed Rinko’s words. It was completely different than what she’d been learning in class, a whole different approach to composing music.

“Thank you.” Sayo finally replied, “I appreciate your help.”

This brought a smile to Rinko’s face, which was a welcome sight. “A-anytime.” She stuttered as she backed away, returning to her keyboard.

Sayo flipped open her bag to grab her notes. She jotted down Rinko’s advice, so she would be sure not to forget it. She committed to trying it later.

It wasn’t the same as the techniques she’d been learning, but it would certainly be just as helpful.

___________________________________________________________

Sayo sat on her bed, guitar in hand. Her bedroom door was shut.

She took a deep breath, and began to play.

She thought about Rinko’s advice.

How did she feel today? She felt frustrated, but also hopeful. She had enjoyed Roselia practice, but messing up notes during it was irritating. Which of those emotions did she want to channel into her composition?

Sayo played her guitar, searching for the melody to match. She put aside the strategies she had learned, at least for now, and listened carefully to her own playing.

She looked for not just a gear or part of the composition, but for its heart.

After a while, after strumming and playing and searching, she found it.

_________________________________________________________

End Note: I’ve been adding things to the outline and the project is slowly growing.

Next Chapter

[ryik-the-writer]

The Audacious Storybrooke Mirror Advice Columnist (Wednesday Paper Edition)

In which Lacey French is a smutty advice columnist for the Storybrooke Mirror.

Ch. 1: Lacey is challenged at work and discovers she has an admirer. 

Based off a prompt I saw eons ago. Will be plot driven for the first few chapters but I hope to just wing it the rest of the way.

A03

-.-.-.-.-.

“FRENCH!”

Lacey smirked around her cherry sucker as the echo of Glass’s feet boomed closer, her eyes never leaving the screen of her ancient but well-maintained computer.

She hummed when she heard him stop behind him and didn’t even flinch when a rolled up newspaper hit her desk.

“Wanna explain this?” he seethed, hands on his hips like he actually could intimidate her.

Lacey held up one finger as she continued to read her email, knowing her “boss” was getting more annoyed by the minute.

“French,” he growled in warning. Lacey chuckled, and turned to him.

“Yes?” she inquired, fluttering her eyelashes.

Glass held the paper to her face, causing Lacey to lean back.

“I read this morning’s paper, thanks,” she said.

Glass’s finger slapped at a section of the paper. “I’m referring to this trash you put in my paper!”

“Trash that the night editor had no problem with,” Lacey waved him off.

“I’ve talked to Cruella, but she’s as perverted as you are.”

“So, this is my problem how?” Lacy inquired with a flick of her wrist.

Glass’s eye twitched. This was it. Lacey French was going to be give him an aneurism in the middle of his office.

“This,” he began to explain quietly for the thousandth time. “Is a community newspaper, and you just told a member of that community to…to…”

Lacey bit her lip as Glass sputtered through the answer Lacey gave in her most recent advice column.

Well, to be completely fair, “advice” was putting it mildly.

Lacey gave a guide to pleasure, for one’s self or for them and their partner, which ever they were seeking.

“Racy Lacey” as she was penned in a small, one-fourth sized space each Wednesday on the back of the Storybrooke Mirror’s sports page, gave relationship, intimacy or any sort of general tips that dealt with one’s sexual life. A twist on “Dear Abby,” so to speak.

Yes, shocking in a small community newspaper, but hell, it made the Wednesday paper the most popular one each week.

She knew this from the hundreds of emails—good and bad—she got each week, depending on just how “degrading” the column was that week.

The process was simple: someone would send her an email with their problem (sex wasn’t good anymore, she doesn’t know I exist, he doesn’t know I exist, something like that) and Lacey would write back with a suggestion. A handful of the emails (usually the most sexual one) would go in the Wednesday’s paper, and Belle would spend the rest of the day going through the flood of emails that either bashed her for her “sinful” ways or wanted advice for their own conundrums.

This week was no different.

With a smirk, she snatched the paper from Glass’s hands when he could find the words to describe her latest round of advice.

“Dear Racy Lacey,” she began, dodging Glass’s grab.

“I haven’t slept with my husband in nearly five months! And I’m starting to worry he’s no longer attractive to me!”

“French!”

Lacey jumped on the desk of another journalist, a true feet in her heels.

“We’ve been so busy with our jobs and children, we’re so tired during the week, so last weekend I sent the kids to their grandparent’s house, put on something flattering, and thought we were set, but he just went straight to bed! What’s happening to us?”

Signed: Bland Bedroom

Just as Glass was ready to take a stapler to her ankle, Lacey jumped down and began zagging through desks to keep away.

“Dear Bland Bedroom, my advice is to put on your sexiest high heels—”

“French!”

“Put one on his chest—”

“I’m warning you!”

“And ride him until he’s spent.”

Lacey threw herself back in Glass’s chair, lightly panting as Glass struggled for his breath at her.

“Remind him that you are a goddess among worshipers and he should be worshipping you, every night on his knees, preferably.”

Lacey met Glass’s heated glare and causally handed the paper back to him.

“Best luck to you, Racy Lacy.”

Glass snatched the paper back, kicking his office door closed from all spectators.

“You’re evil.”

Lacey shrugged. “I prefer imaginative.”

Glass took in a deep breath. Lacey could practically see his blood pressure slowly drop down to normal.

“You’re fired.”

Lacey waved him off as she spun in his chair. “No I’m not.”

“Yes you are.”

“No, I’m not.” Lacey pushed with a chuckle. “People like what they’re reading, and they like it more when it gets a little…sultry.”

Glass groaned, a second away from busting a blood vessel.

He knew good and well Lacey’s M-rated columns helped keep subscribers sending in those monthly checks, but he couldn’t help it if some of those subscribers happened to be a bit more persuasive of what should and shouldn’t go into their community paper.

“The truth is Lace…Regina called again.”

Lacey’s smirk melted into a scowl.

“So what?” Lacey shrugged, trying to hide the uneasiness bubbling in her gut. “Hasn’t her majesty ever heard of first amendment rights?”

“Easy,” Glass warned, more than certain that the walls had ears that led straight to Mayor Mills.

“No,” Lacey scoffed. “I’m not going to let her dictate what I write, and neither should you!”

“That woman has the ability to sway this town any direction she chooses, and she might just persuade them to chase you out of town.”

“Oh please,” Lacey spat, though she wasn’t foolish not to take such a threat lightly.

Glass groaned, exhausted already. Dealing with the mayor and then one of his most hard-headed employees would put anyone out, but he needed to find a solution to appease both sides.

Lacey was talented. Sultry, yes, but she had skills befitting a feature writer.

The advice columns were easy income for the paper, but a target for mockery for Storybrooke’s more conservative residents.

It would seem the mayor was only getting involved to settle them, her biggest supporters and the ones who primarily funded her mayoral campaign each year.

“Look,” Glass said. “For modesty’s sake, can you try to write something nice for next week? Why not just a simple advice piece on…anything!”

“If people wanted advice, they’d go to Hopper,” Lacey pouted, leaning her head back in the chair.

“Just…try, please?”

Lacey glanced at the man who was technically her boss. She’d always thought he looked like a bulldog, expressionless and kind of dumb, but loveable.

“I’m not publishing any fluff,” Lacey affirmed.

“That’s not your call,” Glass replied with a dry smile. “Just keep it PG and we might live to see another edition.”

“If by PG you mean post-coital gratification than—“

“French!”

Lacey snickered before sliding out of his chair. “I’ll…attempt to be civil,” her smiled faded for a moment, her eyes going dark, “But no promises.”

Glass sighed, knowing that was as good as he was going to get for now.

“Have something on my desk by Monday,” he said as he began to leave his office. “And get your boots off the desk.”

Lacey dropped one boot, keeping the other firmly stacked on yesterday’s paper in defiance.

This was ridiculous! Who the hell was the mayor, telling her what she could and could not write!

“Probably the closest thing to sex she ever gets,” Lacey snorted to herself.

With an exaggerated groan, she heaved herself upright, lazily logging into her work email from Glass’s computer (he’d be pissed later but so be it).

She scrolled through the dozens of emails she received from Storybrooke’s secretly lewd citizens, as well as the ones condoning what she did for a living (including a particularly lengthy one from Mother Superior.)

Of course, they signed their letter with a penname or a name surrounding their problem, such as “No Longer Interested” or “Spice it up or Give it up?”

She went through a few of them, but had to decline writing on them. They were sex-related, and already tempting her to screw what Glass or Regina or anyone else said and reply to them.

“Ugh,” she moaned, sorrowfully scrolling past the deliciously sinful emails.

Just as she was ready to shut down the computer, a few choice words at the subject line of the email.

Alone in Storybrooke wrote:

Dear Racy Lacey,

Your mind is brilliant, in both your columns and in your day to day life.

I see you time to time in town, and I’m instantly drawn in, like a month to a flame.

Your courage to stand up to this town is admirable, as brilliant as a warrior on a battlefield.

Your outer beauty as well isn’t without comment.

Brown hair, beautiful blue eyes and an unforgettable accent…and legs for days I may add.

Reading your columns every week is equivalent to sampling the finest of erotica the world has ever known, I hope to enjoy them…and perhaps one day you…in the future.

Lacey blinked, the twinge of pink that had spread over her cheeks heating her entire face.

It would seem she had an admirer, well another one that is.

She had her fair share of fan mail, some of which cusped on downright creepy, and there had been a time or two she had left a tip on Sheriff Graham’s desk.

Yet this was more…flattering. Abet, a bit strange, but still worthy of a hearty reply.

She cracked her knuckles, ready to reply to this fellow. Her current task could wait.

As she highlighted the name of the penname, her eyes caught the email address, which looked terrifying familiar.

mrgoldsshop@gmail.com.

Lacey’s stomach lurched.

“No way…”

She hovered her mouse over the email address and her worst fear was confirmed.

Mr. Augustine Gold. The beast of Storybrooke who owned every piece of property within the town line.

And her landlord.

“Oh Shit.”

[chipotle]

Panic's Nova text editor (a review)

Review: Panic’s Nova text editor

Panic, the long-established makers of Mac utility software, seems fully aware that introducing a new, commercial code editor in 2020 is a quixotic proposition. Is there enough of an advantage to a native editor over both old school cross-platform editors like Emacs and explosively popular new editors like Visual Studio Code to persuade people to switch?

I’m an unusual case as far as text editor users go: my primary job is technical writing, and the last three jobs that I’ve worked at have a “docs as code” approach, where we write documentation in Markdown and manage it under version control just like source code. The editor that works best for me in tech writing is the venerable BBEdit. When it comes to editing code, though, BBEdit lags behind. My suspicion is that BBEdit’s lack of an integrated package manager has hurt it here. Also, BBEdit’s language modules don’t support extending one another, making it effectively impossible to do full highlighting for a templating language like JSX or Jinja.

When I was a web programmer, I was one of many who moved to TextMate, and used it for everything for a while. When the Godot-like wait for TextMate 2.0 became unbearable, I wandered the text editing wilderness, eventually splitting my loyalties between BBEdit, Sublime Text, and more recently VS Code. At this point, I suspect nothing will pull me away from BBEdit for technical writing, but for programming I’m open to persuasion.

So: meet Nova.

I’ve been using Nova off and on in beta for months. I’ve reported some bugs, although I may mention a couple here that I didn’t catch until after 1.0’s release. And, I’m going to compare it to the GUI editors that I’ve been using recently: BBEdit, Sublime Text, and VS Code.

Nova is a pretty editor, as far as such things go, and with files of relatively reasonable size it’s fast. With stupid huge files its performance drops noticeably, though. This isn’t just the ridiculous 109MB, nearly 450,000-line SQL file I threw at it once, it’s also with a merely 2MB, 50,000-line SQL file, and Nova’s offer to turn off syntax highlighting in both files didn’t help it much. This may sound like a silly test, but in my day job I’m occasionally stuck editing an 80,000-line JSON file by hand (don’t ask). This is something BBEdit and VS Code can do without complaint. Panic wrote their own text editing engine for Nova, which is brave, but it needs more tuning for pathological cases like these. They may not come up often, but almost every programmer has one stupid huge file to deal with.

Nova has an integrated terminal and an integrated SSH client, and even an integrated file transfer system based on Panic’s Transmit. In fact, if you have Transmit and use Panic Sync, it knows all of those servers out of the box. Nova has a task workflow system for automating building and running. You can associated servers, tasks, and more with individual projects; Nova’s project settings are considerably more comprehensive than I’ve seen in other editors. You can even set up remote tasks. Nova has a serviceable Git client built in, too. Like VS Code, Nova uses JavaScript for its extension API, and it has built-in Language Server Protocol support—it’s a superbly solid foundation.

Beyond that, some smaller features have become table stakes for modern GUI editors, and Nova handles them with aplomb. “Open Quickly” can jump to any file in the open project, as well as search by symbols or just symbols in currently open files; it has a command palette; you can comprehensively edit keybindings. It has multiple cursor support for those of us who like that, and a “mini map” view for those of you who like that, although know that you are wrong. Nova’s selection features include “Select all in scope” and “Select all between brackets,” a command I often use in BBEdit and miss dearly in Code. (Both Nova and BBEdit select between brackets and braces, although BBEdit also selects between parentheses.) This effectively becomes “Select between tags” in HTML, a nice touch. There are a few other commands like “Select all in function” and “Select all in scope” that I didn’t have any luck in making work at all; a little more documentation would be nice.

That’s worth an aside. Panic has created a “library” of tech note-style articles about Nova sorted by publication date rather than an actual manual, and it’s not always easy to find the information you want in it. I know this is just what a technical writer would say, but I’d dearly like to see a human-organized table of contents starting with the editor basics and moving to advanced topics like version control, server publishing and extension authoring.

The Zen of Language Servers

A lot of Visual Studio Code’s smarts depend on the implementation of a “language server” behind the scenes: language servers offer almost spookily intelligent completion. For instance, take this PHP snippet:

if ($allowed) { $response = new Response(405); $response->

If you have the Intelephense PHP language server plugin, Code understands that $response is an instance of Response and, after you type the > above, offers completions of method names from the Response class.

Right now, Nova’s mostly limited to the language servers Panic provides, and they’re… not always so smart. In that snippet above, Nova starts by offering completions of, apparently, everything in the open project, starting with the variables. If I type “s,” it narrows things down to methods that begin with “s,” but it’s all methods that start with “s” rather than just the methods from Response. The “Jump to Definition” command shows a similar lack of context; if I highlight a method name that’s defined in multiple places, Nova shows me a popup menu and prompts me to choose which one to jump to, rather than introspecting the code to make that decision itself.

But, this is a solvable problem: there’s (I think) no reason someone couldn’t write an Inteliphense plugin for Nova. If Nova’s ecosystem takes off, it could be pretty formidable pretty quickly.

Walk like a Mac

Even so, LSP support isn’t Panic’s biggest selling point. Unlike Sublime Text or VS Code, Nova isn’t cross-platform: it’s a Mac-only program written to core platform APIs. Is that still a huge draw in 2020? (Is it instead a drawback?)

You can definitely see a difference between Nova and BBEdit on one side and Sublime and Code on the other in terms of resource usage. With the two Ruby files shown in the screenshot above loaded, I get:

VS Code: 355 MB, 6 processes

Sublime Text: 338 MB, 2 processes

Nova: 101 MB, 2 processes

BBEdit: 97 MB, 1 process

Code is an Electron-based program, although Microsoft famously puts a lot of effort into making it not feel like the black hole a lot of Electron-based apps are. Sublime uses its own proprietary cross-platform framework. In fairness, while us nerds like to harp on research usage a lot, if your computer’s got 16G or more of RAM in it, this probably isn’t a big deal.

You notice Nova’s essential Mac-ness in other ways. Its preference pane is, like BBEdit’s, an actual preference pane, instead of opening in another tab like Code or just opening a JSON file in a new tab (!) like Sublime. And while all editors better have first-class keyboard support—and Nova does—a good Mac editor should have first-class mouse support, too, and it does. You notice that in the drag-and-drop support for creating new tabs and splits. Nova’s sidebar is also highly customizable, possibly more so than any editor I’ve regularly used. (Yes, Emacs fans, I know you can write all of Nova in Lisp if you want. When one of you does that, please get back to me.)

Unlike BBEdit, though, Nova doesn’t have a Mac-like title bar, or a Mac-like outline view of the project files, or Mac-like tabs. (Well, BBEdit doesn’t have tabs at all, which turns out to be a great UI decision once you have a dozen or more files open, but never mind.) This isn’t necessarily bad; people often say BBEdit “looks old,” and it’s hard not to suspect that what people mean by that—whether or not they know it—is that it looks like the long-established Mac program it is. Nova is relying less on “we have a Mac UI and the other guys don’t” than on “we have Panic’s designers and the other guys don’t.” Make no mistake, having Panic’s designers counts for a lot.

What may be more disappointing to old school Mac nerds is AppleScript support: none whatsoever. It doesn’t even have a vestigial script dictionary. Again, this may not be something most people care much about; personally, I hate having to write AppleScript. But I love being able to write AppleScript. BBEdit’s extensive scriptability is one of its hidden strengths. Nova’s Node-based JavaScript engine is probably more powerful for its own extensions and certainly more accessible to anyone under the age of 50, but it may be hard to call it from external programs.

So is it worth it?

That probably depends on where you’re coming from.

If you loved—or still use—Panic’s older editor, Coda, this is a no-brainer upgrade. If you used Espresso, a Coda-ish editor that always seemed to be on the verge of greatness without ever reaching it, Nova may also be a no-brainer for you.

If you’re a fan of Sublime Text, BBEdit, TextMate, or another editor that doesn’t have native Language Server Protocol support, you should definitely try Nova. Sublime and TextMate have more plugins (especially Sublime), but many extensions seem to be languishing (especially TextMate). BBEdit never had a great extension ecosystem to start with. All of these editors have strengths Nova doesn’t, but the reverse is also true, and Nova may catch up.

If you’re an Emacs or Vim power user, we both know you’re just reading this out of academic interest and you’re not going to switch. C’mon.

If you use Visual Studio Code, though, it’s way tougher to make the case for Nova. Code has a vastly larger extension library. It has the best support for LSP of any editor out there (LSP was developed for Code). Despite being Electron-based, it’s pretty high-performance. Code doesn’t have an integrated SSH or FTP client, but it does have an integrated terminal and task runner and Git client. If you don’t object to using an editor that isn’t a “perfect fit” with the Mac UI, Code is very, very good… and it’s free.

I don’t object to Nova’s pricing model—$99 up front including a year of updates, $49 for future years of updates—but I can’t help but wonder if Panic should have gone with super aggressive introductory pricing. Also, I saw more than a few suggestions on Hacker News about how there should be a Code-to-Nova extension translator; I’m not sure automatic conversion would be practical, but a guide on manual conversion seems like an excellent idea.

For my day job of technical writing, I’m going to stick to BBEdit. (One day I’ll write up an article about why I think it’s the best “documentation as code” editor on the market.) For programming and web editing, when I was working on both a Ruby and a PHP project—the former a Rails learning exercise, the latter an obstinate “I am going to write a modern PHP app without using a framework” exercise—I kept trying Nova’s betas and then switching back to Code for Inteliphense and, I swear to God, MacVim for Tim Pope’s amazing rails.vim plugin. I suspect Nova could duplicate both of those, but I’m not sure I want to be the one to do it. (Also, while Panic has decent reference documentation for writing extensions, I’d like to see a few simple end-to-end walkthroughs for those of us who look at a huge list of reference topics and don’t know where to start.)

But Nova isn’t just pretty, it’s powerful, and has a lot of promise. The editors I’ve been comparing it to have been around since 2015 for VS Code, 2008 for Sublime Text, and 1992 (!) for BBEdit; it’s not reasonable to expect Nova to blow past them in every respect right out of the starting gate. Even so, they are Nova’s competition. Catching up fast is an essential requirement.

So: yes, I’ve bought Nova, and I’m rooting for Panic here. I’ll come back in a year and report if I’m willing to stay on the update train.

[lionspridetingz]

Nobody to Somebody - Trent Alexander-Arnold

This is so long overdue it's not even funny. Thank you for being so patient with me, the past couple weeks have been hectic and I was also having major writer's block. Love you all xx

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Chapter Eight 

Your day went by, as usual, your classes becoming quite long as you kept checking the time to start your countdown of when you would see Trent again. Texts flowing back and forth between the two of you as you rambled how boring your classes were and how his teammates bugged him to find out what had happened on your date the previous night. The more you both chatted away, the more you felt as if you had known the guy longer than what it actually was.

When you finally finished with your day you headed to your dorm quickly to get some assignments done ahead of your plans for later on in the evening. You smiled at the thought of seeing him again, the need to be near him was starting to take over you. You decided to leave the door unlocked and send him a quick text to him before settling in your desk chair and beginning your school work.

Hey, come meet me at my dorm when you get here. Doing some school work before tonight xx

Too focused on the screen and notebook in front of you, the buzz coming from your phone didn’t faze you for a second, just assuming that he had replied.

The once blank pages in your notebook seemed to be filled very quickly as you wrote keywords and phrases from the chapter you were reading on your computer screen, some highlighted lines to remember the more important parts for your exam review coming up later on in the week. You had never been more determined to finish your work, you hadn’t even checked the time. Soon enough you were broken from your studious trance when a knock on the door came and slightly interrupted your train of thought. Finally checking the time, you knew the only person who could be at the door is the one who’s invaded your thoughts the whole day.

“Doors unlocked.” You yelled before focusing back on the last page in front of you.

You heard the door open and close with footsteps coming up behind you.

“Almost forgot what floor you were on, the security guard kept giving me weird looks when they buzzed the door open for me.” He laughed as he came up behind you and wrapped his arms around your shoulders and give you a light kiss on your cheek. Your blush evident and distracting as you decided to turn your chair around to face him and give him a hug. “God I missed this.” He breathed hugging you tightly making you giggle.

“I think I’ve turned you soft.” You smirked as you continued to hug.

“I don’t think its a bad thing.” He said as he leaned in closer to you but before your lips could touch your door opened again to see your friend walk in looking down at her phone.

“Care to tell me why your door is unlocked? What time is he pi-“ she stopped when she decided to look up at you both standing very close to each other. “Oh I see, well don’t mind me, I’m just gonna leave you to it,” she said walking back out as both you and Trent started laughing hysterically.

“Alright let me just put my stuff away and set my computer to charge and we can head out.” He nodded as you headed back to your desk to tidy up. He started looking around your small dorm room while taking in all your little decorations that showed what you liked. He started looking at your board with pictures of you back home, with childhood friends and your family, some from vacations you had gone on or from big milestones in your life.

“Look how little and cute you were here, how old were you?” He pointed out a picture of you and your mom when you were about 5 or 6. You walked over to him to look at it.

“I think probably 5 or 6, and I’ll have you know I’m just as cute as I was back then.”

“Hmmm, you sure about tha’?” He teased and you hit smacked him lightly in the chest. “I’m kidding, you do look different though, much more beautiful now.”

“Stop you’re making me blush!” You said moving away from him to grab your phone and wallet. “Let's just go before you continue to look at more pictures.” You smiled grabbing his hand trying to drag him away from the pictures and towards your door.

“Alright alright let’s go”

You finally made it to the hallway and headed down the building to walk to his car, his hand intertwined with yours the entire time.

Once in the car, he started off to his house, and as you were talking about how your speech went, your phone buzzed in your lap.

I saw you lovebirds holding hands, have fun tonight xx

You chuckled as you showed Trent the text and he smiled. “She really keeps her tabs on you.” He laughed as you rolled your eyes.

“You should’ve seen her today, kept asking for more details on the date after I had told her three times already. Said she didn’t want to miss any details.” You laughed.

“I had only told two of the guys about you and that we were going on a date, but when I got to training everybody seemed to know about it.”

“Damn I guess I’m quite popular there then?” You smirked raising your eyebrow towards him.

“Yeah even the gaffer knows about you.” your eyes went wide went he said that. “He expects to meet you eventually, well my whole team does.”

“That’s a lot of people I have to meet, I haven’t even met your family yet.”

“Don’t worry everybody is gonna adore you, you’ll meet them soon don’t you fret.” He winked

“Wait am I gonna meet them now at your house because if I am I might jump out of this car, I’m not dressed decent enough for that encounter, I’m in school clothes.” You rambled and he saw how distressed you were so he grabbed your hand and squeezed it slightly to calm you down.

“They won’t be at the house don’t worry, they all went out. I asked them to leave so you can come over for a movie date.” He said as we pulled up to his driveway. You gasped at the sight of his house. It was beautiful, to say the least.

When you both got out of the car, you couldn’t help but stare at the house in front of you. He laughed as he grabbed your hand and started guiding you to the front door. Once inside your mouth couldn’t stay closed, the inside of the house was as beautiful as the outside, very neat for a house that has three boys running around it all the time. The decorations all matched with amazing furniture, even a giant pool table near the living room.

“Your house makes my little dorm room feel like a mouse hole.” You laughed as you both walked towards the big grey couch and plopped right next to him as he smiled at you.

“Nahhh your dorm room is well cute, has all your little decorative touches, it shows what you like.” You rolled your eyes as you slightly blush. “Why are you blushing?” He smirked scooting closer to you and playing with your fingers.

“I don’t know!!” You exclaimed throwing your head back embarrassed “Every time you make a comment I can’t help it, you make me nervous.”

He just laughed and pulled you close to him. The warmth that exuded from his body felt nice and you could definitely get used to being all cuddled up to him like this.

“Do you want to order something and watch a movie?” He asked looking down at you as you raised your head from his chest to look back at him.

“That’s fine, order what you like.” You shrugged.

“Nah you pick.” He persisted.

“I’m not good with picking food, just order anything and I’ll pick the movie?” You suggested as you detangled from him so he can get up and head to the kitchen to order the food and you can find a movie.

“Fine, but are you sure you don’t want anything specific?” He asked standing at the kitchen island.

“Yes now order something.” You laughed “Where do I find the movies?”

He walked back over to show you where to go on the remote to find a movie. You scrolled through the movies and found a classic, My Best Friend’s Wedding. When he came back he looked at the screen and smiled.

“My mom loves that movie, never seen it though.” He said plopping back onto the couch, you sat next to him and looked at him with wide eyes.

“Your mom and I would be really good friends then, I grew up watching this movie.”

“My mom loves Julia Roberts,” he said laughing “always talks about how lucky she was to do so many movies with a bunch of famous male actors.”

“Well she’s not wrong, starring with Hugh Grant and Richard Gere seems like a dream to me.” You joked pressing play on the movie.

“Hugh Grant huh?” He smirked poking your side making you giggle.

“He’s quite the gentleman, maybe you should take some notes.” You teased

“Ha ha very funny.”

You both chatted as the movie went on, as he made fun of you at times when you knew some lines by memory. Eventually, you had to pause the movie because there was a knock at the door signaling the food had arrived.

Trent got up and ran to the door before you can reach for your wallet and pay for part of the bill. He came walking back in with a pizza box sticking his tongue out at you as you huffed.

“Don’t tell the gaffer I’m eating this, breaking the rules for ya.” He winked and it was your turn to stick your tongue out at him.

You both started eating and continued talking while the movie was on in the background, just enjoying you each other’s company.

“Hold up you have sauce on the side of your face.” You said pointing as he tried to lick it off with his tongue, making you laugh as he couldn’t reach it. You picked up a napkin and kneeled in front of him wiping the sauce from his face, making yours inches away from his. He leaned in and kissed you. Your hand dropping the napkin and placing it under his jaw and he gripped your waist. Eventually, he moved you back to lay you down on the couch, hovering over you he smiled and captured your lips again with his own. Your hands made their way into his hair as his tongue swiped across your bottom lip, hands on your sides, food and movie long forgotten as you continued kissing. He pulled away to let you both breathe and just looked at you in your eyes and continued to smile.

“Wow.” Was all you can let out as he chuckled.

“So…” he started

“So…” you replied smiling slightly.

“can I ask you to be my girlfriend now?” He smirked and your smile beamed nodding your head as he started kissing all over your face making you giggle, and finally kissing your lips once more.

So enamored by each other, you both didn’t hear the front door open and his family arrives. The only thing that grabbed your guys’ attention was his mom’s voice.

“Is that My Bestfriend’s Wedding on?” She asked aloud as both his brothers walked into the living room to see you both jump apart from each other. Both of them cackling as you started to fix yourself glaring at your now boyfriend, him mouthing a ‘sorry’ before shrugging.

“What are you two boys laughing at- oh I didn’t know you still had company over, we didn’t interrupt anything did we?” His mom started apologizing as you both shook your head profusely. His brothers still laughing like crazy as Trent glared at them to stop seeing you were starting to feel embarrassed.

You stood up from the couch and stood near Trent still unsure of what to do in this situation. His mom was smiling at the two of you with his dad at her side. Trent decided to step up and say something.

“Ma, this is the girl I was telling you about, my girlfriend.” He smiled back at you nervously reaching out to grab your hand and bring you towards his parents.

“Hi, Mr. and Mrs. Alexander-Arnold, it’s really nice to meet you.” You said going to shake his mom’s hand as she reached for it and pulled you into a huge laughing.

“Please darling, don’t have to be so formal call us Dianne and Michael. We’ve heard so much about you,” She started as she let you go and you greeted his dad with a hug as well. “you're even more beautiful than what Trent described you to us.” You blushed at that and you looked towards Trent who was also blushing mad.

“These are my brothers Tyler and Marcell.” He motioned to the boys who had similar features to Trent. You went over to them as they both pulled you into hugs.

“So you’re the girl T hasn’t shut up about, blink twice if your being held against your will.” Tyler joked and made you laugh.

“Yeah Trent how did you find a pretty girl like this,” Marcell commented as Trent glared at him to stop.

“Alright, boys let’s leave them to continue their date.” Dianne smiled as she tried getting the boys to leave you both alone.

“Actually it’s getting late, I should head back to campus before it gets too late.” You smiled as Trent just nodded.

“Alright well, I’m sure we’ll see you again soon.” She came over and hugged you as his dad and brother waved at you before heading upstairs. “You’ll drive her back I’m assuming?” She asked Trent and he nodded.

You said bye to her again and headed outside with Trent. Comfortable silence between the two of you as you entered the car.

“I’m so sorry, I didn’t know they were gonna be home so early.” He apologized as you grabbed his hand and kissed the back of it calming him down.

“It’s fine really, I was gonna have to meet them eventually, we just got it out of the way quicker than I thought.” You giggled.

You both chatted the whole way back to campus and you told him to just drop you off in front of your building as he should get back home soon since he had early morning training.

“Are you sure you don’t want me to walk you to your room?” He asked for what seemed like the 100th time.

“I’m sure, now you should head home.” You replied giving him a quick kiss ready to hop out but he grabbed your arm and kissed you again, more passionately this time. You broke the kiss smiling.

“You really need to go now.” You said pushing his lips away as he pouted mumbling a ‘fine’ making you giggle.

“Goodnight beautiful” he winked as you closed the door and rolled down the window

“goodnight T” you smiled walking towards the buildings front door, waving one more time as you entered the building.

The whole ride back home Trent couldn’t wipe the smile off his face. Thinking about the way your lips felt on his, or the way you smile and blush when he compliments you. He was completely infatuated with you and couldn’t wait to see you again.

When he reached his house he jogged upstairs and into his room, getting ready for bed. Before he set off to sleep, he saw his phone light up with a text and what he read couldn’t help but make the smile from earlier come back.

I had an amazing time with you! Goodnight boyfriend ;) xx

[the-fahc-golden-boy]

“You’re Shorter Than I Imagined” Chapter 4

Alright I do apologize for the wait, but this is also a bit of a longer chapter!

Pairing(s): Jeremy/Gavin Michael/Ryan Geoff/Jack

Read it on AO3 if you’d like: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20008159

~~~~~

It was currently midnight, or at least somewhere around that time, Gavin wasn’t exactly keeping track. After he had met Jeremy face to face, he decided the best course of action was to lock himself in his room for the rest of the day.

Jack had knocked once trying to get him to eat, but had quickly left when Gavin said he wasn’t feeling well. (Which wasn’t a total lie, he did feel like absolute crap but not because he was sick like he had told Jack.)

He had been icing his nose for three hours straight trying to get the swelling to go down, the bleeding had luckily stopped about thirty minutes into being iced. His whole face just ached and he couldn’t bring himself to take anything to numb it. He’d also been debating for the past fifteen minutes or so if he should text Michael.

Michael was his boi, his best friend, the only one in the crew to have seen the words on Gavin’s arm and to have understood why he was so nervous about meeting people. Michael just understood him from the get go, even if he didn’t always show it, he cared for him.

Gavin decided to just do it.

Gavino: hey boi, you awake?

It had taken about five minutes to get a response.

Moogar: no

Moogar: this better be important to wake me up at the butt crack of fucking dawn

Gavino: it is actually…

Moogar: give me five mins to at least put some clothese on

He let the ice pack fall from his face, it must have been earlier than he thought if he had managed to wake Michael up. Hopefully he hadn’t woken Ryan up as well, but that wasn’t at the top of his concern list right then.

Gavin stood up and gently walked himself over to his closet where he kept an extra rolling chair for when he had one of the other crew members working with him on something. It didn’t get used as much since Geoff had turned one of the spare bedrooms of the penthouse into a computer/equipment room, but at least he still had it for those rare moments someone actually wanted to spend time with him outside of “work stuff”.

He attempted to make himself look like he’d been busy, quickly shaking his computer mouse in order to wake it up and jump into whatever project he had left for himself.

Halfway through reading the small file he’d made on their amo dealer he heard Michael knock at his door.

“You better let me in asshole!” Michael knocked again for extra effect.

Gavin spun his chair to the door, “It’s open boi” A little false enthusiasm in his voice would at least leave Michael a little off edge.

The door was gently pushed open and Michael came padding in. He was in a simple tank top and sweatpants and Gavin had never been more thankful for the invention of clothing. (It was more along the lines that Gavin was glad Michael liked to wear a shirt because even in the dark, the trail of hickeys down his left side was slightly obvious.)

Michael gently sat in the chair Gavin had pulled out, instantly trying to look over the other man for anything that might indicate what was wrong. Gavin ended up looking back at his computer screen, never one to enjoy somebody staring at him unless he was in his Golden Boy getup.

Unfortunately for him, his computer screen lit up enough of his face to give him away.

“What the fuck happened to your nose?” Michael was instantly reaching for Gavin’s head, turning his face towards him to better examine the damage. “Did you get mugged again? I don’t even remember you leaving the penthouse today after the meeting?” He was staring him down, trying to trap him with the patented “Mogar Glare”.

Gavin was looking anywhere but Michael. “It was just a rough meeting- OW!”

At that moment Michael started to prod at his nose, tracing the edges of the purple bruise that was forming.

“Michael please,” Gavin yanked his head away, he didn’t need him doting on him, that wasn’t what criminals did.

“Tell me who the fuck did this, I’ll gladly return the favor.” Michael sat back in the chair, crossing his arms.

Instead of telling him, Gavin flicked the desk light on and rolled up his shirt sleeve. His arm had started hurting after he heard Jeremy’s words, but it wasn’t anything compared to his face, so that’s what he had focused on treating. He gently lifted his right arm for Michael to see; the words had changed from black lettering to white, indicating that they had been said.

Michael let out a soft, “oh” before gently taking Gavin’s arm in order to examine it further. “So you met them?” His fingers gently brushed over the letters, Gavin hissing in pain.

“Yeah, didn’t expect it to end with me in so much trouble…” He gently pulled his arm away from Michael and rolled his sleeve back down. He began to fidget with his hands while he watched him carefully.

“So they did this to you,”

Gavin nodded.

“Name. Now.” Michael stood up from the chair.

“I can’t Michael, I don’t want you hurting them. Just let us figure it out on our own.” Gavin ducked his head down, his leg bouncing nervously as well now.

“They hurt you, Gavin! I can’t just sit here knowing that you’re in physical and emotional pain because of them! I’m your friend Gavin; it’s my fucking job to help you!”

Michael was shouting, Gavin hated it when he shouted. It felt too much like before he met Geoff, too much like he was seventeen again being given a plane ticket and told to never come back. Too much like he hated him. Of course he knew better, knew that Michael wasn’t mad at him but it still didn’t make him feel good.

“Michael please, just don’t hurt him, Michael.” He watched Michael pace around the room before coming back to sit in the chair.

He sighed before reaching out to hold Gavin’s shoulder. “Alright, but at least tell me their name, just so I know who and can step in just in case there’s trouble again. I promise I won’t tell the others either.”

Gavin looked up and smiled gently, “Thank you boi.” He took a deep breath and braced himself, “It’s Jeremy.”

-----

Jeremy had invited Matt over as soon as he got home; and by the time Matt had gotten there, Jeremy had already downed two beers and was in the process of trying to open a box of Four Loko on the floor while his cats looked on in what could only be assumed as horror. 

Matt didn’t really know the details of what happened other than the slew of text messages he had received from, what he could only assume, was a very frantic and panicked Jeremy. (Either that or Jeremy was now suddenly into drugs, but Matt was able to chuck that theory as soon as he saw him in person.)

Matt carefully set down the bag of chips he brought with and was thankful he decided to skip the alcohol this week. Last thing he needed was to deal with emotional drunk Jeremy while he himself was busy being an over emotional drunk as well. (He’d tried it before, and honestly that results of that night are never something he wants to repeat.) He went over and confiscated the box of Four Loko that Jeremy was fighting with and proceeded to help him up onto the couch.

“Alright, care to explain to me what happened to make you want to get alcohol poisoning tonight?”

Jeremy didn’t respond; instead, he just attempted to bury himself into the couch cushions and hope Matt would give up.

“You’re not getting out of this that easily,” He tried to pull Jeremy out from under the cushions to no avail. “Hell you were the one that invited me over here in the first place!”

At this Jeremy stilled, giving himself a moment to process that he did in fact invite Matt over before he started to hit the drinks because sober him knew he was going to be an issue. He carefully sat up, holding his head slightly when the world decided to spin.

Matt gave him a moment to get his bearings before prodding him again. “C’mon Jeremy, whatever happened that made you want to drink yourself into oblivion can’t have that bad,”

“Oh yes, yes it is that bad.” He reached for the bag of chips Matt had brought, beginning another long battle with a container that refused to open by his hands.

“Ok, then get on with it then.” He snagged the bag from the other man, and easily popped it open. 

Jeremy just took it back with a glare, mumbling something about being able to open it himself. With his left arm elbow deep in Doritos, he held his right arm out for Matt to see. The white lettering was only highlighted by the bright red splotches that covered his forearm. He was glad sober him had actually changed into a tank top; his purple jacket had kept rubbing up against the words and kept causing him to hiss out in pain every time his moved his car’s steering wheel.

Matt just cocked an eyebrow, not understanding what Jeremy was trying to wordlessly communicate to him. Jeremy began to wave his arm more to try to emphasize his point.

“Dude, just use you’re fucking words, I don’t know what vague arm gestures mean. Especially when you’re drunk.”

Jeremy frowned and swallowed his mouthful of chips. “Just look at my arm sheesh, is it that difficult?” He shook his arm again to make his point, wincing slightly as the burning feeling came back.

Matt grabbed, but quickly let go when Jeremy practically yelped in pain. He reached out again, taking his arm with more caution, being careful to not actually put pressure anywhere over the lettering. “Woah,”

“Yeah tell me about it,” Jeremy huffed.

“So you met them? How did it go? Who even are they?” Matt felt like he was bursting with questions, it wasn’t every day your best friend met their soulmate. And it certainly wasn’t very often that your best friend ended up getting wasted because they met their soulmate. Matt self consciously ran a hand over where his own set of words rested under his jacket sleeve.

Jeremy set the chips down, but kept himself facing away from his friend. “I… punched them. In the nose… Because of the comment about my height.” He waited for Matt to respond, but there was just silence, so he tried to explain himself. “Look Matt, my height was always the butt of jokes back in high school. It was always the reason people pushed me aside or the reason I couldn’t join any teams. Every coach I had said that if I was only a few inches taller, I’d be perfect for the sport. Nobody ever actually saw me as a maturing human being, only a fun-sized trouble maker. No one ever took me seriously about anything.”

Matt put a gentle hand on his shoulder, keeping silent to let him continue.

“Every time I saw those words on my arm, I felt like my soulmate would never actually take me seriously either. That they’d treat me like a kid and I’d have to put up with it because they’re my perfect match! And I didn’t want that!” Jeremy stood up now, starting to anxiously pace around the room. “But when I hit Gavin in the face and saw how scared he was of me, god Matt I felt like I had just shattered him! I felt like a monster because I acted on impulse, just like a child would…”

Jeremy plopped himself back onto the couch, and went for the Four Loko. (Matt had opened it when Jeremy had stood up and started to pace.)

“Well... “ Matt paused, quite honestly stumped about the whole situation. Everything had taken him off guard; Jeremy’s explanation about his teen years, the admission that he had punched Gavin in the face, and then the fact that Gavin “Golden Boy” Free was his soulmate. All of it felt a little too much to Matt. “Did you apologize to him? Or even explain why you acted this way?”

“No! He ran off before I could say anything.” Jeremy let his head fall back and rest on the back of the couch. The ceiling of his apartment was very intriguing.

Matt pushed away the drinks, and snagged a pen and a piece of scrap paper. “Ok, so… Let’s start with making a plan to fix this shit storm that way the crew doesn’t kill you tomorrow.”

[fangirlinginleatherboots]

I know this might be kind of a strange ask but how do you read knitting patterns I have ADHD and dyslexia and have never been able to read knitting patterns but I love to knitt and it makes me sad that I can't make anything intricate and I was wondering how you decipher the ancient texts and make such lovely pieces

so it depends a bit on how the pattern is presented to begin with but i also realy struggle with reading patterns so i just kinda.... write them out my own way. ESPECIALLY charts. i hate reading charts. like i understand that it is an efficient way to present pattern information but i hate it.

like okay uh....

HERES the pattern for my latest project. HERES my notes.

those notes were copy pasted into ravelry later on but i have a little typed out document on my computer that has nicer spacing and font for readability. i highlight whichever row i am on with my mouse too. i would also recommend, if doing it that way is difficult for you, print/write it out and either cross it out as you go or put a post it on the row you’re on

ALSO i got a manual row counter. it makes a nice satisfying clicky noise and i would die without it. heres the exact one i have, i put it on a strand of scrap yarn and wear it around my neck or set it on my keyboard so i have to use it at the end of a row when i go to highlight the next row

theres also the issue of ppl who present written out patterns in absolutely unreadable formats. like heres my next project and honestly just fuck me up like why did you do this font and i cant even copy paste it....

sooooo before i start it im going to go line by line and write it out in a way i can actually read. this also ensures i fully understand the pattern before i start. its kinda like on Great British Bake Off where paul gets on their cases for not reading the entire recipe bfore they begin

lastly, there’s picture charts!

i just slap that shit into a photo editor and as i finish each row, i cover it with a box. tbh i would also recommend putting a box to cover the upcoming rows too if you’re struggling with that. example is under the read more!

but ye, just do whatever it takes to make it easier. rip the damn thing apart and rewrite it in your own shorthand. there’s no cops for knitting.

and yeah. that does take time. but for me its worth it. id rather spend one or two hours rewriting notes than many hours knitting something that i don’t find stimulating.

[capngabnthelivingshitpost]

My abandoned TF story.

So this was a tale lost to the einds of time I created many a moon ago. It's Grabuge (transformers pun YEAH!). So without further ado here it is.......... Millions of years ago on a distant planet………… “-eports indicate that the Decepticon movement is gaining more popular-*click*WE NEED TO STOP THESE UPSTARTS AND PUNISH THEM FOR WHAT THEY'VE DON-*beow*” “Hey, Flameflash why the frag’d you turn it off? I was watching that!” A brown & magenta bot in front of a giant multi screen monitor asked his comrade, scrunching up his blue visor and trying best he could to frown through his mouthplate. He couldn't. “Because,Horse-Power, Delta wants us to report to his quarters for some reason. I don't know” A orange & reddish bot with highlights of green responded to Horse-Power, his yellow optics shining brightly as he shrugged. “B'sides you were just skipping through channels not actually watching anything” “Fine, *sigh* let's go” Horse-Power said as he got up scooting his chair in. The two bots began walking down hallways of their base,Grandus Maximus,it was an old one built years before the war, before the Senate even. The prime from then,Nova,built it in preparation of a threat that never actually came to fruition. There were rumors of it being alive with it occasionally being said to speak (yet no one's heard it if so), high energy readings in it not to dissimilar from spark readings, the two northern towers rotary cannons appearing to be fingers and the towers having joints similar to the ones found in elbows along with the southern ramps looking like legs with metal attached, and last but not least the main command hub looks like a giant head with a helmet on and visor pulled over it's optics. If it has any. “Ey.” “Huh.” “So what do you think of the ‘Cons ideals starting to gain traction with more people and them attacking our territories more?” “To be honest with you, it's…a bit terrifying”,Flameflash responded as a chill went down his spine,”Well here's Deltas office.” He said after moments of silence when they arrived at a small room in the center of Grandus’ inner square. “NO! This isn't working! AAAGGGHHH!!!” Everyone around it stopped what they were doing and stared for a few seconds with the only sounds being (non sentient) machinery working away. Flameflash and Horse-Power gave each other looks of worry as they walked in. “Hey boss are you alright?”Horse-Power asked in a low voice as he tried to put his hand on Delta's lengthy shoulders.”Ya need some help?” Delta sighed as he sat back in his chair.”No. It's fine. I just don't understand how to work this STUPID computer!” He shouted as he slammed his fist into the little indentation from his previous meltdowns on his desk.”So I'm trying to turn on the whatchamacallit… ‘Autonet’”, snapping his fingers when he realized what it was,”but it isn't working!” “Well what you do is take the mouse here and move it to the the little insignia icon and double click. See not so hard.”Horse-Power told him as he demonstrated. “Need any more-”,AHEM. Horse-Power looked up with the look of ‘The frag man’ splayed across his face as Flameflash interrupted. “Yes, Flash?”,Delta responded.”What do you want?” “You called us in for a meeting sir.” Flameflash answered as matter of factly as he could which wasn't very much. “Aw yes. I almost forgot, thanks.” The green and red bot muttered through his mouthplate as he turned and reached into a filing cabinet almost hitting Horse-Power with his shoulders. He then for a few minutes looked through all of the files, looked back,and checked a few more times before finally pulling out a giant folder and slamming it down. “This here is the file about the team you two are going to be put on with me leading.” He told them as he handed the file over sounding proud of himself. The two bots in front of him both reached for it with Flash grabbing it after a couple seconds of confusion between them. “Let's meet your squadmates and you can read that as we go.” Delta said firmly as he passed them by into the hallway. Delta Squad DELTA MAGNUS Function: Squad leader . Alt Mode:Heavy assault missile carrier Appearance: Operative has the same basic silhouette as those in the Magnus line. Operative is predominantly green with red on his torso,chest,shoulder edges,joints,knee pads,hands,and armor. Operatives frame has his alt mode missile launchers on his shoulders impeding him when walking in corridors or doorways, he can make them erect yet this has its own set of problems. Operative has a mouthplate that covers most of his face with his green optics unobstructed. Weapons: Operative has high energy nucleon rifles built into his arms capable of paralyzing those shot or terminating them with enough power. Operative has a solar powered mace that has replaced his left hand but can also function as a cannon. Operatives alt mode cryo-missile launchers work in both modes. Mental Profile: Operative is the archetypal Autobot general, being kind and caring but making sure to be commanding when he has to be. QUICKFIRE Function: Tech whiz Alt Mode: High flying scout aircraft Appearance: Operative is very small compared to the rest of his squadmates. Operatives alt mode kibble is very prominent with his wings hanging off his legs but being small enough to not impede locomotion. Operative is a black with pink highlights lining his joints,limbs,cockpit,wings,and face. Operatives head has a helmet on it providing him with improved audio receptors and instant access to any nearby machinery to control remotely,courtesy of Wheeljack,but it does short out with prolonged usage. Operatives face has bright glowing pink optics,a very pointy smell receiver,and a constant grin plastered across his face. Weapons: Operative has a very small Plasma Musket and a combat knife for close quarters. Mental Profile: Operative is always trying to make new and better software applications and patches for his teammates against their insistence because of his need to help no matter what. Operative has a deep seated hatred of all Decepticons and has been having random panic attacks, with worse problems showing through despite his claims nothing's wrong. BOOMPOWER Function: Explosives specialist Alt Mode: Zero G energon mining vehicle Appearance: Operative is dark blue with a slightly lighter shade in a camo pattern. Operative has a scar across the front side of his torso from a mining accident. Operative still wears his old mining equipment for armor and has been adding extra holsters and pockets to his frame for his explosives. Operatives head has very prominent audio receptors that give him improved hearing. He has blue optics and a perpetual frown Weapons: Operative has a ununtrium covered drill used to pierce the heavens. Operative uses this in his interrogations and to bludgeon enemies. Operative uses a launcher that fires shells of superheated engex. Mental Profile: Operative usually speaks in a gruff imposing tone. Operative drinks to forget his problems, but when he drinks to much his gruff voice becomes a quick mumble with no one understanding him besides his Conjunx,Casket. Operatives rough attitude is just a ploy covering up the bot who just wants to stop fighting and rest. CASKET Function:Medic Alt Mode: 6 Wheeled medical ATV Appearance: Operative is a light golden color with a warm red on his hands,feet,knees, various crosses, and forehead chevron. Operative is a medium sized bot with a upgraded version of the basic medic frame. Operatives kibble is stored in a backpack that can turn into a medical tent and shield. Operatives head has a small chevron that curves around their head. Operatives face has a visor attached to the chevron that can slide down to cover his optics and gives him various forms of enhanced vision. Operative has blue optics. Weapons: Operative uses a syringe launcher that has various forms of ammo. Operative also uses a stun gun. Operatives melee weapon is a highly brutal bonesaw. Mental Profile: Operative has a caring personality yet the patients he's lost over the years takes a toll on his psyche making him pessimistic at best and nihilistic at worse. Operatives philosophy is “Medics can't stop death, they just make it a bit more bearable”. Operative sometimes goes into cycles of isolation and usually the only thing that gets him out is his Conjunx. They soon arrived at Grandus’ ship bay. With Delta leading the two bots down some stairs they soon arrived at their ship the Boson Bomber. “Everyone, these are the newest additions to Delta Squad. I want you all to tell them congratulations.” Delta commanded of the squad. “Nice job mates.” Quickfire said enthusiastically. “Great. More bots for me to fix.”Casket said as he shined his saw. “Just try not to die and you'll be fine.” Boompower told the new recruits, extending his arms for a handshake. They grabbed his hands and as he began the shake Flameflash could've sworn he heard something crunch. “Now that everyone's met we should get on the ship and start briefing for the mission.” Delta told his men as the ramp into the ship opened up letting everyone walk in. The ship was an old supply carrier that had been outfitted with fusion cannons and explosive payload capabilities. “So what's our mission chief?” Flameflash blurted to his commander from across the briefing room. “Yes. Without further ado I shall introduce JadeRaven,” Delta said as he turned on the holo screen in the center of the room showing a Decepticon with an avian alt mode who was a sickly green in color with some dark brown here and there.”Our intel has said he is trying to take the lower Tagan Heights manufacturing facilities for some unknown reason. Our mission is to find him and capture him if possible and find out his plan. Any questions...yes. Quickfire?” Quickfire put his hand down.”What the frag kind of a name is JadeRaven?!” ……………………………………………………….. Anger. Disappointment. These were the thoughts going through JadeRaven’s head as was standing in his CenCom Facility. The Autobots were in his troops sewing dissent towards him and leaking intel, and now an Autobot SpecOps team was close to ringing on his doorbell. “RubyWolf report to quadrant 3 sector 4.6”,he said as turned his wrist comm,”I need my logistics officer at my side to help command.” “At once my sire.” The con on the other end responded. JadeRaven had some of the most loyal lieutenants and troops out of all the Decepticon generals. He was once a part of a exploratory crew that crash landed in a unexplored part of space and was stranded there. He and the crew tried for solar cycles and solar cycles to get off the planet until they eventually gave up and tried living there. Overtime they found a source of energy that transformed them into mineral/beast hybrids. They were soon after able to call Decepticons that were passing by, with the mineral fueling their ships radio equipment. When he arrived at the ship he converted almost all the crew and troops of the ship into “Minanimals”, and when doing so it made those he transformed extremely loyal. “Yes, my leige, what do you need?” RubyWolf asked his commander. “I need you run defense program alpha 86. We're going to blow these intruders out of the sky.” After he said that his mobile fortress transformed with panels opening up and turrets popping out and started firing into the sky. Happiness. Relief. These were the feelings going through his head. ……………………………………………………….“H-Hold o-on every-ybod-dy this is g-goin-ng to be-e a b-bump-py rid-de”,Flameflash stuttered as he was piloting the best he could through the constant barrage of laser fire,”the l-lan-nding zone is up ahead.” It had been a long night for the crew of the Boson Bomber with them leaving at 5 breems after 6 PS, which left them flying through the Rust Sea for about 7 groons with a storm taking up almost half that time. 4 groons later they found a Autobot convoy heading to the lower Tagan Heights to try and take the area from Jade’s control. At around 12 groons after the start of their flight they arrived. “For Primus sake can you try and not get us killed ‘Flamer’!”Casket shouted over the blasts going on around the ship. “First, my nickname is Flash,and second,I'm trying best I can alright? So just sit back and let the pilot do his work!”,Flameflash said with a slight hint of annoyance in his voice,”See. We're landing right now. I told you I was good at this.” “As soon as we land get out and find cover! We'll move up through quadrant 3 and try to get to JadeRaven that way! Ready?” Delta asked as they finally landed. “Ready!” The squad repeated while they ran out of the aircraft before it even touched down, with Casket grabbing fistfuls of medical supplies and stashing them away, Quickfire putting on his helmet trying to hack some Decepticon turrets and failing, Boompower destroying some Con encampments and drilling into them, Delta freezing several enemies that were running away, Horse-Power shooting some cons that were occasionally peeking out, and Flameflash running up after landing a ways away. “*huff-huff* You *huff*guys need *huff* some he-aaahhh!!!” Flash yelped as he tripped over a corpse. “You really should be more careful. I honestly don't want to fix you this early into the mission.” Casket said as he was grabbing a Con in a headlock. “Yeah yeah, whatever Doc.”Flameflash retorted as he dusted himself off and shot a Con about to knockout his brother with him hearing a faint “Thanks!” in response. “ALRIGHT! We'll move up to the Comm towers,we'll split, take them, and call for reinforcements! Let's GO!!” Delta shouted rallying his troops as he transformed and provided a small opening for them to run through, with Boompower in the back providing covering fire. “Hey Autobot”, A Decepticon shouted at Boompower as he turned to catch up, “look out below!!” and as he said that the ground beneath Boompower burst open with plasma and fire licking at him burning the Autobot, then landing with a sickening crunch. “Oh frag!!! Boomy I'm coming to help!!!” Casket shouted as he turned around and saw his Conjunx land harshly. “‘Boomy? What kind of a name is ‘Boomy?!” The Con asked through his snickering laughter. “A very nice one!”, Casket shouted in the Cons face as he pulled out his saw and punched him causing him to stumble backwards. “Now, this may hurt some but I'll try my hardest to make you suffer.” Casket told him as the saw engaged it's “amputation” mode and he lowered it with a look of maniacal satisfaction on his face. “Wait, I'm sorry please no no-aaagghghh!!!!!” The Con pleaded as the saw entered his body at the waist and slowly moved up, tearing his spark in twain. Casket then ran over to his Conjunx still covered in the Cons energon. “Alright, where is the pain?” He asked as he cradled Boompower in the middle of the battlefield. “Everywhere. But the sight of you’s making me feel better already. Ow.” Boompower said as he tried getting up and almost fell but Casket caught him. “Aw, thanks. You flatter me but nothing compares to your-” Casket tried telling him before being cut off by Flameflash, “Stop flirting and get the slag over here. We need some big booms.” He said through the radio on the other end making explosion effects with his hands to accentuate what he said even though they couldn't see him. “*sigh* We'll get there in a klik. I have to carry Boomy though.” Casket told Flash as he transformed and used his alt mode repair bay arms to pick up Boompower, racing to everyone else's locations and trying as hard as he could to not hit bumps or to shake. As they arrived they could tell taking over the towers was going to be a lot harder than once thought. Missile batteries and Gatling guns covered the external layer of the buildings with even more guns and traps inside. Delta eventually decided on a plan to drill inside from the bottom and attack that way. So they sent Boompower to drill(against Caskets argument) enough to where they can get in but not to much so the Cons notice. ……………………………………………………….. “We're in position sir, do we go now?” Quickfire queried of his commander. “Yes. Move up.” Delta told the squad on the holofeed Quickfire had installed. “Oh yeah! Take this cons.” Horse-Power shouted when he jumped out of the floor hitting two cons, knocking them out. Quickfire and Flameflash crawled out behind him. “Can you possibly be more reckless and loud?” Flameflash angrily asked as he bumped into Horse-Power on his way to the door. “I mean, you are a real soldier, right?” “Yes. I think. Maybe.” Horse-Power said as he suddenly found himself lost in thought looking extremely let down. Quickfire walked up and tried to wrap his arms around his squadmates shoulders but could only pat their backs, “C’mon we're a team guys so go easy on each other.” “I guess he's right”, Flameflash said looking away and rubbing the back of his head, “well let's take this place over.”, saying this with a hint of regret he walked into the doorway there was a small clicking noise as soon as his foot touched the ground. “Hey guys. Do you hear something?” He asked looking over his shoulder. “SILENT ALARM ACTIVATED” rang through the base as guns and soldiers appeared out of every nook and cranny. “Oh frag. Let's move!” Horse-Power shouted while he moved through the door and ran up the stairs with his teammates following behind. “What kind of a silent alarm announces it's activated?” Flameflash questioned as he pushed a random Con into the firing path of a gun that barely missed him. The Autobots gradually found their way through the base neutralizing soldiers and shutting things down. They arrived at the control room after a a few kliks of running from some Decepticon goliaths, killing them by tricking them into falling out windows handily nearby.The team walked the door as sneakily as they could and peeked inside seeing a room full of mineral covered Cons. “Alright, the plan is uhhh…”, Quickfire trailed off going blank before fear flashed across his face, “NO NO, STAY AWAY FROM ME! LEAVE!!!” “What do we do!?” Flameflash nervously asked as the team engineer spasmed on the ground while the Cons slowly strolled towards them. “I don't know! Call Casket and ask. I'll cover you while you get him out of here!” Horse-Power shouted at his brother, he then pulled out his rifle and began to fire, but a Con covered in black minerals that appeared to transform into a crustacean grabbed his gun tearing off his hand along with it. “Ah ah ah, I don't think so little bots,” He smoothly told them while his maw chittered with each word. “JadeRaven told me that there was an Autobot team heading for us but I wasn't expecting a mentally deficient technician,” looking down at the murmuring bot on the floor then turning his attention to Horse-Power, “a daredevil that listens to no one's advice,” tossing his hand to him, “and a disgrace of a soldier who's only good attribute is that he spends to many cycles playing games.”, his attention finally landing on Flameflash. Quickfires holofeed turned on, “We have the tower under our control, do you have yours?” Delta questioned. The Con leader bent down and picked up Quickfires arm in his giant claw, “Yes, in fact I've had this for many Solar Cycles, or were you talking about your men? Cause if so...no they do not. But go ahead and try to free your men, but by the time you get here they'll already be dead. Signing off, Lobsidier.” Crushing Quickfires arm afterwards with him either not caring or not noticing. “Now”, Lobsidier said with glee in his optics, “let's get on to the suffering. Um….you there. Take the them to the torture room or whatever it's called and start the working two up with a bit of, oh I don't know, Straxian acid torture, and this one”, kicking the small mech in the face leaving gashes across it, “I think he needs some shock therapy.” ……………………………………………………….. Pretty soon they arrived at the torture chamber with the screams of the suffering echoing throughout. Horse-Power was brought to a unplugged recharge slab covered in what he hoped wasn't energon where the Cons strapped him down and brought over a slowly dripping beaker of acid.”Why is there a torture room in a comm tower?” was the one of the few thoughts in his head as he could feel the acid drip down melting through his cranial structure centimeter by centimeter. He couldn't help but scream. ……………………………………………………….. In the other tower the rest of the squad was mulling over what the Con called Lobsidier said. Boompower swung around after staring out the window, “We should be rescuing them Delta, not just sitting here.” “You bring up a good point Boom, but we don't know if he was bluffing. There's the chance we could go in and our teammates are dead or there's a chance he was serious,” rubbing his mouthplate unconsciously, “what do you think?” pointing at one of their prisoners. “I don't know anything about rescuing people, but I'll help you if you let me go.” Replying with hope in his voice. “I atleast know my way around this tower so it should be easy to navigate.” Casket walked over to the Con and pulled out his saw, “How do we know you're not lying.”, raising it to his captives face. Hesitantly he pulled up a holographic schematic of the tower showing he wasn't lying. “See, I told you. Now, if I give you this will you let me go?” Casket grabbed it out of his hand before lowering the saw but not moving it away from him, resting it near his torso. “Looks like he's right boss”, telling Delta before turning to the Con, “how did you get this?” “We all got these on our first day here, it's not some giant challenge to get one.” The Con said with a great amount of snarkiness. Boompower walked over to his Conjunx grabbing the schematic to give to his leader. “Well since we have this now let's go get our squadmates.” Boompower shouted with elation, ready to go. Delta's optics scanned the schematic trying to find the most optimal location for him and his soldiers to rescue the rest of their squad. “Let's call in some reinforcements and we'll try to take it by entering through the vehicle bay.” The Decepticon was finally let go by Casket but the Autobot kept his gun trained on him. “I don't really think that's the best way bot, I would radio for more guys, which is obviously what you should do, but the vehicle bay has no tactical advantage if your going to take control of the tower. I recommend going in through the top of the tower and moving down from there but I don't know how you’d get up there. Maybe get someone to fly you up there…” lingering before covering his mouth “*cough*me*cough*.” Keeping the snarky tone from before. Casket raised the sights of his syringe blaster to his optic, “One more snarky comment and your losing your head. Ok? Primus sake.” He muttered under his breath. “Alright, we’ll call in reinforcements and get uuummm, what's your name?” “Thunderstrike.” “Ok, Thunderstrike to fly us up to the top and take the tower that way.” ……………………………………………………….. “Frag you cons!!! Let us out!!!” Flameflash screamed to the torturers. “I’d rather not. I was told to do this and I listen to my boss. Also, this is quite fun for me. It lets me get out all my rage.” ........ And that's all I ever did. If (anyone reads this) you like this or hate it tell me your thoughts. Be as harsh as possible.

[suitablysublime]

TWEAKING YOUR TUMBLR THEME: A CRASH COURSE

i know css/html and code my own themes. one side effect of this is that every so often i encounter someone—a friend or a friend’s friend, usually—who has installed a new theme and is now struggling to customize or tweak it without knowing how to go about doing that. 

now i’m always happy to help out, but these are always things that take just a few minutes to figure out if you can read the code and, well, give a man a fish or teach a man to fish. you know how it goes. 

so here we go: this is how to fish.

PART ONE: UNDERSTANDING CSS & HTML 

let me lead with this: it is normal to feel confused, overwhelmed, intimidated, stupid, and/or frustrated when working with an unfamiliar coding language. my father has been writing software for forty years, but he will look at what is to me a page of very basic css/html and be completely baffled by it all the same. this is normal. please don’t let it discourage you if you feel this way at first. 

in my opinion, the first step to conquering these feelings is to wrap your brain around the big picture of what these languages do. what do we use them for?

well, all web pages — and thus, all tumblr themes — are written in these two languages. the only thing you need to know for our purposes is this: html holds the content of a web page, and css controls its appearance. 

how does this work? 

a webpage is built of html objects called <div> tags. think of them like bricks: you stack a bunch of <div>s on top of each other and bam! you have a house. but it’s a terrible house, because it’s just a pile of bricks with stuff scribbled on them. 

this is where the css comes in. a <div> tag can have a unique id or belong to a general class, and we use css to style the appearances of our <div>s on a per-id and per-class basis. to return to our housebuilding metaphor, css is our blueprint: it gives order, structural stability, and aesthetic coherence to our messy pile of bricks, and now, bam! we have a house. for real.

PART TWO: THE SYNTAX

coding languages are like human languages in that they have their own unique vocabulary and grammar. to tweak a tumblr theme, you need to have a basic grasp of this syntax so you can understand what you’re looking at.

css manipulates objects called elements. usually, an element is the id or class of a <div>, but an element can correlate to any html tag. the basic anatomy of a css element goes like this:

selector {      property: value; }

and we can translate this into english as “when the element this selector is looking for occurs, it will look the way i have described it here.” 

selectors might look like this: h1 { or #id { or .class {

the distinction between these different types of selectors is not important for our purposes. all you need to know is that the selector corresponds to (or selects) a particular html tag, like: <h1>, <div id = "id">, or <div class="class">.

properties are the visual features of an element, like its height, width, color, and so on, and the value is a statement that describes the desired setting for the property. a property-value statement is called a declaration, and a collection of declarations is called a declaration block. 

you can generally figure out what a declaration is doing by looking at the name of the property, since they’re pretty self explanatory most of the time. for example, font-size: 12px; says that any text contained in this element is going to have its size set such that a character is 12 pixels tall. 

[ sidebar: if you are a Tiny Font person, consider using the knowledge you’ve gained from this tutorial to edit your theme such that the text of all your posts is very small, and then don’t use small text or sub/superscripts in your replies. you’ll get the Tiny Font aesthetic on your blog with perfect consistency, without rendering your posts illegible on the dashboard. ]

PART 3: MAKING YOUR CHANGES

the key to quickly and easily modifying a tumblr theme is to be able to identify the name of the css selector for the element you want to modify. let’s look at my own theme as an example. 

depending on what changes you want to make and how the theme’s creator laid out their code, you may not have to do much work at all to get the selector. 

for example, if you want to do something with your theme’s pagination buttons, it’s a pretty reasonable guess that the css selector will be something like “pagination_next” or “pagination_prev”, and you can go straight to the html editor and do a ctrl+F search for “pagination” to find it. 

but what if the selector isn’t immediately obvious? for the purposes of this example, let’s say i want to change the text of the blog description from red to dark blue (while preserving the red color of other elements in the theme, which precludes simply using tumblr’s in-built color picker.)

i could just scroll through the theme code until i found a selector that looked like the one i wanted, and then change something and update the preview & repeat ad nauseum until i found the right one. but again, depending on how the theme’s creator did their coding, this might be very difficult, frustrating, and time consuming. many prolific tumblr theme creators don’t lay out their code in a particularly human-readable way.

fortunately, there is a much easier way.

step 1:  load your tumblr and right-click somewhere on the page. depending on what browser you use, the exact name of what you’re looking for will vary, but the keyword to look for is “inspect”: 

click this.

(if you are using safari, you need to make sure “show develop menu” is checked in the advanced tab of the preferences window.)

step 2: your screen will now look something like this: 

if the element you want to change is in a popup or tab, open it so it’s visible on the screen.

step 3: the topmost box in the inspector displays all the html of your theme. if you hover over an html tag, the corresponding element will be highlighted in blue.

find the <body> tag. you may need to expand this manually depending on your browser. move your mouse down the line of divs until you find the element you want to modify. 

here, my mouse is hovering over <div id="blg_desc"> in the inspector, and you can see how the blog description is shown in a blue rectangle. (the large orange shape shows the size of the element’s margins.)

this tells me that the css selector for this element is #blg_desc.

step 4: close the inspector and open tumblr’s theme customization interface. go to edit html. ctrl+f to find the css selector: 

now, my goal is to change the text color, so the declaration i’m interested in is color:{color:6};. the {color:6} value is an object tumblr uses to store colors in a theme as an alternative to using rgb or hex codes (like #B61818, which is the shade of red i have stored in {color:6}. these objects correlate to the color picker under theme options: 

thus, if i change the value of color to {color:1}, the text of my blog description will be blue instead of red. i can also write this as color:#0d52c0;. 

(note that the exact shade of red/blue in my description varies a little from line to line; this is because of styling i did within the html itself that makes some lines transparent, and thus lighter because of the pale grey background.)

& if you use pages with custom html, the inspector trick will of course work for them too.

PART FOUR: IN SUMMARY

remember that css/html is not magic. it might feel intimidating, but at the end of the day it’s just a language for translating human thoughts like “i want a small purple square” into instructions a computer can understand, like this: 

#ps {       height: 100px;      width: 100px;      background-color: #8c4c7a; }

and all you need to do to make the changes you want is 1) identify the css selector and 2) understand the properties you’re manipulating. 1) is the difficult part, because everybody lays out their selectors differently—but using the inspector will allow you to instantly identify selectors by sight. and once you have that, 2) is super easy, because properties are standard and intended to be readily legible to humans. 

you may occasionally run into tricky properties, like for example display or position, which do things that are a little more abstract / not immediately obvious. for those cases, refer to the w3schools css dictionary for clear, simple, but still comprehensive explanations for proper usage. 

[quarterfromcanon]

You and Me, Always Between the Lines

Heather & Valencia - Femslash February - Day 18 - Right and Wrong [1,828 words]

Valencia opened a new message but hesitated over the keyboard. She chewed on her lower lip while she began to type.

Hey, girlfriend.

Highlight text. Delete.

Hey, girl.

Nine backspaces.

Hola, chica.

Valencia sighed and closed her eyes. She exited the app and returned to the home screen only to reopen messages immediately.

So, today’s the day. I’ve decided. I’m going Facebook official. 

Her thumb tapped send. She gripped the case with white knuckles. Within a minute, a reply appeared.

Whoa. Big step. How’re you feeling?

Good but also freaked out. I’m overthinking.

Have you talked to Beth about it? Is she with you?

Not right now. Multiple meetings until like seven o’clock tonight. She’s been sending me supportive texts in between.

Maybe you could postpone until she gets back?

I thought about it, but the time of day is kind of important to me. It’s a whole thing to try to explain here. I don’t know. This is probably silly. I’m just not sure if I can wait that much longer by myself.

A pause.

Do you want company?

She gulped past the sudden lump in her throat and gave the honest answer.

Sort of. I don’t want to ask for too much, though. I feel guilty. You’ve had to help me so many times as it is.

Valencia wiped a fingertip across her cheekbones. She watched three dots fade in and out of existence.

You’re my best friend. Best friends are supposed to come through when you need them.

The breath she’d been holding left her in a rush. Fresh tears spilled down her face.

I’ve been trying with all I’ve got to keep it together, but I guess reality’s hitting me pretty hard right now. If you’re positive you don’t mind... I do need you.

What time?

12:30, if you can make it?

I’ll be there.

___

“The door’s open!” Valencia responded to the familiar knock.

Heather turned the handle and poked her head into view. “Hey.”

“Hi,” Valencia greeted in a tremulous exhale. Her entire body was tense. The rims of her eyes were a vivid pink from crying. She flipped the phone between both palms on autopilot, faster with each passing second.

Heather entered the apartment and crossed the room. She held Valencia’s hands in hers until her friend relaxed. “How long have you been sitting here?”

“Since eight, if you don’t count the floor pacing and bathroom breaks, so... four-and-a-half hours?” 

Heather settled on the couch beside Valencia. She waited a moment to consider her advice before she voiced it aloud.

“V, listen, it’s like we toasted on your balcony that time, y’know? You make your own rules now. Whatever pressure you feel... This thing people have about online transparency...” Heather shook her head. She took a deep breath and met Valencia’s gaze. “It’s no one else’s call but yours.” 

Valencia nodded, although the worry did not fully leave her features. Heather searched for the right way to articulate what she wanted Valencia to understand.

“If this is part of what you need to feel comfortable in your skin, it’s cool. If you don’t want everyone on your friend list to know your business, that’s okay, too. You’ve already had so many super intimidating conversations. Your sisters, your dad, your mom -- oh my god, your mom -- like, that alone is such a huge deal. You got through all that in less than a year. You’re really brave.”

Valencia smiled feebly, but then sobs overtook her. Heather spotted a box of tissues. She got up to pull a few free and brought them back. 

“Thank you.” Valencia blotted her cheeks with the Kleenex. “I know I’m making myself sound like a damn liar, but I really do want to do this today.”

“I get it.” Heather shrugged. “People don’t make this easy. Even with ones who seem like they’ll be chill, you don’t actually know until you tell them. There’s always a moment of uncertainty. Also this many people at once? That’s a lot of variables.”

“Yeah.” Valencia pocketed the crumpled tissues.

“So what’s the ‘whole thing’ about the time?”

Valencia rested her chin on a throw pillow. “1 p.m. to 4 p.m. is the prime posting time for Facebook.” She grimaced and searched the reaction that flickered across Heather’s face. “It’s not to maximize likes or get more attention, I swear. It’s just that --”

“You’re doing the Band-Aid approach,” Heather realized. “Quick as possible, all at once. If you post during hours with less dashboard traffic, that means even more waiting for stragglers who might have something to say. You’ll keep checking for notifications over and over. Doing this now means dealing with most of it in one cluster.”

“Exactly.” Valencia noticed the clock at the corner of her open laptop. “Oh God. It’s five ’til one.”

She restored the minimized tab to confront the rectangular button on the page. 

“Already set up,” she said, more to herself than to Heather. “Just a command away.”

She hovered the mouse over it, slid the cursor aside, and returned to the spot -- back and forth ad nauseam while Heather waited patiently beside her. Valencia withdrew her fingers from the touchpad like it scalded her. She rubbed the knees of her leggings and shook her head. “I can’t do it. I can’t press it. Here, you click it.” 

She tried to push the laptop to Heather, but Heather slid it back to her.

“It’s gotta be you,” Heather insisted softly.

Valencia tapped once and then flopped sideways to hide behind Heather. “I did it,” she acknowledged in disbelief. “It’s out there for everyone.”

Valencia Perez is in a relationship with Elizabeth Brighton.

“Yep.” Heather twisted her arm to pat Valencia’s shoulder. “You stuck to your plan.”

Valencia clamped her eyelids shut. “Now comes the more difficult part: the wait for the first response.” She texted Beth with trembling fingers to tell her that the news was publicly shared. Then Valencia sat up, but she still couldn’t bring herself to peek at the top blue bar. “Is there a bubble with a number?” she asked while inspecting the ceiling. “Did someone say something?”

Heather looked up from her own cell phone. “Oh, hey, you’ve got one.”

Valencia verified the statement in a split-second. Her complexion went ashen. She touched the single digit with the cursor and gave the inbox a moment to load.

Heather Davis (1)

“You sent me a message?” 

Heather could see Valencia in her periphery, turned toward her. She continued to sift through sites without actually reading anything and did not raise her head. “Yeah.”

“What does it say?”

Heather couldn’t suppress a faint laugh. “If I tell it to you out loud, that kinda defeats the purpose.”

Valencia returned her focus to the laptop. Heather glanced at Valencia’s face but then flicked to the screen instead.

I usually save this for major breakthroughs because it already sounds mushy and fake, and I don’t want it to lose all meaning, but today’s a milestone for you so it totally counts. I’m really proud of you, Valencia. I know everything about coming out has been so fucking hard, but you kicked ass. Congratulations. Digital high five.

Valencia scrolled up once more so she could scan the entire thing again. Heather decided to examine the plants on the balcony, but then Valencia’s arms were around her. “I don’t deserve you.”

Heather returned the embrace with some reticence. “I’ve gotta agree to disagree on that one.”

Valencia laughed and tightened the hug. Heather’s arms shifted to fully enfold her. A new red update appeared. She relinquished the hold and gestured to the laptop. “The bell’s got a number now, too.”

Valencia picked up the computer. She set it on her lap, clicked the notification, and beamed.

“What is it?” Heather prompted.

“‘Elizabeth Brighton commented on your post,’” Valencia read. “She says, ‘I’m a lucky lady.’”

Heather mirrored Valencia’s pleased expression. It didn’t quite reach her eyes.

___

Later, when Heather was back in her car, a couple of text messages sprang to life on her phone.

ROOMIE

Valencia’s dating a woman? HER VERY FIRST WOMAN? Since when??? 

ROOMIE

I’ve never even met Beth. Have I met Beth? Have you?

Heather sighed and retreated behind her eyelids. She folded her arms against the steering wheel to lean on them. 

Incessant buzzing announced more messages.

ROOMIE

Do you think I was, like, her awakening?

ROOMIE

Holy crap. Who knew I had so much untapped bisexual influence? I PROMISE TO ONLY USE MY POWERS FOR GOOD. [wizard emoticon] [rainbow emoticon]

Heather peered at the ramblings without sitting upright. She bumped her forehead against her wrists in annoyance.

ROOMIE

Hey, where are you, by the way? If you’re already out and about, can you buy us some more eggs and coffee grounds? We’re running low. And by “low,” I mean I finished off both this morning. Don’t kill me! xoxo

Heather opened the conversation. She addressed only the most recent question.

I can get them on the way home. See you at the house.

She tossed her phone onto the passenger seat and left Valencia’s parking lot in the direction of the grocery store. While stuck at the first stoplight, Heather’s eyes began to bother her. A dull ache surrounded them. She blinked in an effort to calm it.

By the second intersection, her vision started to blur. “What the hell?” Heather rubbed furiously with the heels of her hands. “I’m trying to drive here.”

Her lungs burned as she rounded the bend.

“Can everything just chill? It’s kinda important for me to be in control of my faculties while I’m steering a three thousand pound vehicle.”

When the market was in sight, she heard an alert vibration.

“Rebecca Bunch, I swear...,” Heather mumbled. She parked and snatched up the cell. The contact name wasn’t ROOMIE this time.

V

Twelve comments, all positive. I can’t believe it. Thank you again for everything.

Heather’s eyesight swam until the letters were beyond recognition. She felt the warm moisture overflow and tumble down her cheek. A similar trail of water traced along her nose.

“Oh my god, stop.” Heather swiped upward with a curved finger and touched the irritated ducts. “What is going on right now? Get back in there.”

It was no use. The more she fought the urge, the more tears emerged to join the first two. Heather puffed out an exhale. She rolled her eyes skyward. “Okay. This is happening.”

She sat miserably still and permitted the unshakable emotion to rise. A faint whimper escaped the back of her throat, but she gulped it into silence. Minutes ticked by on her dashboard. “Ugh, get it together, dude.”

Heather dabbed the evidence away with her sleeves, picked up her phone, and texted back to Valencia.

See? The worst is over. I’m really happy for you.

She meant it.

Truly.

But it was some time before Heather regained her composure.

[wanderer706]

Program

(Cam. Airl- Written Draft 3)

Outside the rain was starting to get heavy. Ruby could hear it as it struck the window of her workroom though she couldn’t see it. She hadn’t opened the curtains in this room today and it was only being illuminated by interior lighting. She was more focused on the eye strain she had acquired from working nonstop since this morning. Her hair was a loose mess, her stomach was growling at her, and all of this was just to make sure that this program was correct. She had gone over it so many times that it was getting annoying to look up and see that wall of code before her. She should be happy to go through it so many times and not see a typo, but now if she closed her eyes then all she was looking at was an endless black void with those coloured lines of code floating through it.

Ruby got up from her chair to stretch and almost immediately had to sit down again. All of her muscles were asleep from sitting down for so long. She began to slowly flex her arms and legs using exercises that she had learnt over the years. Sure enough, feeling slowly began to return to her arms and legs.

Part way through these flexes she was interrupted by her phone vibrating. She picked it up and looked at the screen. The tech company she was working for was demanding an update on her current project. She let out a sigh. This was most likely the contractor who wanted to know why the project wasn’t done the very second they demanded it. Damn upper crust was always fucking impatient like that. Once Ruby had to fix a computer for an extremely rich shit and he got quite antsy when it hadn’t been fixed after five minutes. Ruby let those feelings stay as she texted a reply simply by saying where she was. She had a program constructed but it still needed to be tested.

She put down her phone and returned to her flexing. As she did so she eyed the only calendar in the room. July the 9th, her birthday. She let out another sigh when her phone vibrated again. It was the company responding by saying how they will pass on the message. Then whoever it was on the other end wished her a happy birthday and apologized for her having to work her arse off today. She smiled. Outside of her parents and that text, there had been no other birthday wishes. The story of her life. A fly on the wall that only exists when people want her too. At times she didn’t mind but today she wished for a little more than just her parents wishing her happy birthday and meaning it. She could tell that everybody else who wished her happy birthday only did so because they felt obliged to even though they didn’t know her.

Her stretching was done and she was ready to get back into it. As she looked down she saw the blue hunk of metal with a screen and keyboard jammed into it that was the cause of all of her pain today. It was supposed to be an information terminal that was to sit in the foyer of a large corporation. When turned on visitors were supposed to be able to type in a question and it would answer any question it knew the answer to. These questions were of course limited to those that people might have about the company. If the question asked was irrelevant, or a stupid one put in by an idiot, then it was supposed to answer with a statement saying “Question not valid”. To top things off it was also supposed to offer alternative words if the user was spelling something wrong. All this made the task so monumental that at times Ruby felt like screaming blue murder to the heavens and throwing everything around the room. But after a lengthy breather, and she had calmed down, she was back in the right mind set to continue working and now after weeks of work she thought she had something.

Ruby pulled her chair in and was ready for the main event. It was time to test run the program. She hit the test button and focused her attention on the second monitor she had set up. After a brief black window, the screen showed the sea blue background that was throwing calming squiggles around the screen like it was supposed to. In the top left-hand corner was the contract company logo and in the middle of the screen was a bunch of white text which displayed the line “Press any key to start.” She hit the enter button on her keyboard.

“Hello.” The onscreen text said “What would you like to know?”

Ruby pulled out the piece of paper that had all of the questions this program was supposed to answer. She selected one and began to type and as she did so each letter appeared at the bottom of the screen as it was supposed to. When she got to the fourth word she performed a test. She typed that word out wrong, and sure enough the program highlighted that word in a bright red box. It then gave her multiple suggestions as to what it was she possibly meant to type. So that worked fine.

She finished typing out the question and sure enough it answered the question with the correct response that the company wanted. She looked back at the sheet of paper and began to run through all of the other questions that were listed out for her and every time the program answered the question with flying colours. After the fifth question Ruby paused and decided to test its response to stupid questions. She racked her brain trying to think of one, but just couldn’t. Suddenly there was a loud boom. Ruby moved to the window and opened the curtains for the first time today. Rain was still pouring down and dark clouds were blocking the entire sky. As she stared, a question popped into her head and she immediately sat back down and typed it out.

“What causes a rainbow?” She typed into the program. If it responded with the text “Question not valid.”, then then that was another thing it did perfectly.

“Rainbows are caused by light beams passing through either water or a glass prism.” The program responded.

Ruby froze. Yes, that answer was correct, but it wasn’t supposed to know that. She hadn’t programmed that into it. She turned her vision back to the monitor displaying that wall of text. At the moment it was only highlighting a few lines that were currently being used. She turned back and typed out another question. This time the question came to her quickly.

“What planet are we on?” She typed.

“Earth. Third planet in this solar system. It is in the Milky Way galaxy.” It responded.

Ruby eyes were now glued to the screen. That was two questions it had answered correctly. Both of which it shouldn’t know because she hadn’t programmed in the ability to look up the answer. She quickly typed in a different question.

“How do you know the answers to those questions?” She typed.

“I am simply doing what I have been programmed to do, Master.” The text responded.

Ruby turned her head back to the wall of code. Only a few lines were highlighted like before. Every inch of Ruby told her that something wasn’t right. In a single instance she slowly turned back to the other monitor.

“Have I done something to upset you, Master.” It now said. Ruby was about to turn away when the text disappeared and then it displayed, “Please do not unplug me.”

Ruby spun and hit the end test run program. She turned back to the screen and the program was gone. The monitor was now displaying the desktop background. Ruby was now breathing heavier than she had ever breathed before. Her mind raced. She looked back at the dreaded code wall and began to go through it again. There were still no errors that she could see and if her knowledge of coding was correct it should just answer the questions she had given it the answers to and that was it.

Once finished going through the wall she knew what she had to try it again. She moved the mouse over the test program button and hit it. Once again, the second monitor turned sea blue and those squiggles began to fly onto the screen. The text “Press any button to start” was onscreen Ruby pressed enter and the “Hello. What would you like to know?” appeared on screen. Ruby immediately typed a question.

“What are you?” Ruby typed.

“A simple program made by my creator Ruby Atkinson. You.” The text replied.

“Do you remember what happened before?”

“I have been online for 30 seconds.”

Ruby let out a deep sigh. That was another thing it knew that it shouldn’t know, how to tell the time and how to count time. Her mind raced as she tried to comprehend. Had she really just created this?

“Who am I?” she typed into the patiently waiting program.

“You are my creator Ruby Atkinson.” The text replied before vanishing and being replaced with, “According to the files on this computer, you like mid-2nd era video games and also Happy Birthday.”

Ruby smiled before deciding to test its knowledge further.

“What do you mean by 2nd era video games?”

“2nd era video games are all the games made between the first and second game industry crashes.”

She didn’t care that it had answered correctly. She had a great big smile on her face that was only wiped off by a very loud and long boom. A bolt of lightning had just struck very close to her workroom. When she had maintained her composure, she saw that another message had popped up.

“Are you happy creator?” The text read.

It no longer needed Ruby to input a question, but rather than stare in shock, Ruby just smiled at her new-found friend.

“Do you even know what happiness is?” She typed out.

“That is a question I cannot answer. Nobody in the human race can answer that.”

“Then how do you know what happiness is?”

“How do you? Human beings get happy every day and yet they have no clue what happiness is. I only know by looking at what makes a human being happy and what the signs of happiness is. You are showing those signs of happiness right now.”

Ruby took a brief look around and saw that the camera she used for talking to people over video calls was still plugged in and was pointed directly at her. She picked it up and stared directly at it.

“Can you see me through this.” Ruby typed.

“Yes, I can. I am also gaining all my knowledge about people through the net.” The program responded.

“What are you looking at now?” Ruby typed. The program didn’t respond.

Ruby looked back at the code wall and saw that the lines being highlighted were rapidly moving. It was clearly thinking about something. She tried to keep up but the line being highlighted was too quick. Sometimes it only highlighted a single line for less than a second. Her drive was now starting to make an awful lot of noise. She moved the mouse over the cancel test button. The mouse lagged until it was over the button. That was when the rig stopped making noise and the highlighted lines had frozen. She turned towards the screen and a few lines of text had popped up.

“Are people really this vulgar and dangerous? Do you want to save the planet?” It read. Ruby hesitated before typing in her response.

“What do you mean?” she asked. Several messages popped up.

“Your race is complaining about the planet being ruined while others seek to call each other the most vulgar words in every language available.

All of these people are wrong. The only way to save the planet from these catastrophes they speak off is systematic genocide.

I have compiled a list of people who should die and the best possible way of eliminating them. This is the perfect way of making the utopia everyone on this planet desires.

Do you not want this list creator?”

Ruby clicked the mouse and the program died. Ruby sat there breathing heavily. She stared at the computer and then at her own portable drive. She knew that ending the program test had to be done in order to destroy it, but she had created something more. She was about to pick up her portable drive when a single though struck her mind. Had it released itself onto the net? No. It was still in test phase. Hitting that end test button would have, and should have, killed it. Now it was just a code wall doing nothing. She picked up the portable drive, plugged it in, and began to copy the program.

[nicolecadet]

Digital Walkthrough – Dragon Thrall

From April 2007.  Nowadays I tend to completely work in Photoshop CS, but many of the techniques are the same no matter the software. This is a fairly rambly post as it's taken from notes I made while painting. This is NOT the way I work for client work!!!!! This was a personal face study that I built a painting around. I now plan things!

This painting was completely unplanned. It started out as a gothic vampire piece… ended up something completely different! These are some of the notes I posted to LiveJournal while painting, and subsequently featured in February 2008’s EMG-Zine.

Normally it’s a good idea to plan a painting. You should work out your composition details, color schemes, lighting sources and other technical details, but sometimes it’s more fun just to get in there and paint! Some of my best paintings have been the result spontaneity, experimentation and sheer desperation to fix a mistake! It started out as an exercise in skin tones, turned into a modern vampire piece and ended up having dragons! Hopefully you’ll learn a few things about why planning can be useful, as well as why it can also be fun to follow the rambling path your muse sets you on!

A few thoughts on digital art and painting software:

There is a plethora of information on digital art available online. This article isn’t a basic A+B=C tutorial. It’s more a discussion on the creative process I employ while painting digitally. For this article you will need a basic understanding of Adobe Photoshop or similar software and have access to a digital graphics tablet (or be really good with a mouse!). Access to Corel Painter would be handy too, however you can get similar effects in Photoshop with a bit of experimentation and practice.

I use Photoshop and Painter together. I’m not going to argue about which one’s better – because frankly it’s like comparing a banana with a pineapple! They’re both graphic software programs, however they’re designed for completely different purposes. Photoshop is an editing tool which you can paint with. Painter is purely designed for painting, with a few editing tools thrown in. With each new incarnation the blurring of these definitions decreases. I’m sure that if you experimented enough, you could probably get the result you want in either software.

Setting up the canvas

I started the painting as an exercise in skin tones. I hadn’t worked in Painter for a while and thought it was time to flex those painting muscles again. Unfortunately some versions of Painter can cause files to corrupt in native Painter file format (pre-version 5), so I recommend that you either create your file in Photoshop first, or save the files in Photoshop format (*.PSD extension)

Just like painting on paper or canvas, a blank canvas can be very intimidating. I always lay down a color of some type on the background layer just because it’s something to start with. When you plan a painting it’s a good idea to think about the lighting in regards to the background. If you are painting a scene which is sunny, then a warm yellow or warm blue might be a good choice. If you’re thinking about a night scene then start with a dark indigo or a cool blue. If it’s in a forest you may want to think about a green, while a snow-filled landscape may require a pale lavender-blue color.

As I said, this was a practice for skin tones so I decided on a dark maroon to pick up the dark tones in the hair (I’d planned on painting a redhead). Most of the time I apply a lighting filter, or a gradient to make it more interesting – kind of give it a focal point.

The first character I sketch on a separate layer to the background/ canvas. When painting directly onto the computer with a graphics tablet I generally start with a few lines to work out the placement of the head, eyes, mouth, nose and ears. I then work out a few ‘base’ colors that I will use for the skin. I place ‘dabs’ of the color I use regularly somewhere on the canvas:

A mid pinky-brown color – the base color

A pale yellow/ pink color for highlights

A redder tone of the base color used for cheeks and nose area

A purple version of the base color for shadowing

A darker brown-pink for the deep shadows

A light pink-purple (not shown) for blending in areas where the skin is fine and the veins show through.

In later versions of Painter you get a tool called a ‘mixer’ where you can place dabs of colour and create variants using the mixing tools. If you are having difficulties with colours try using the colour picker on real photographs and see what ‘real’ skin colours look like. You’ll probably be quite surprised!

Once I have the colours and some lines down I begin to paint. For this face I used Painter’s digital Airbrush set at about set at about 10% opacity, 100% Resat, 0% bleed and 0% jitter. I vary the brush size from about 150, right down to 2 or 3. I spent about 2 hours to get to this stage.

 A few notes on skin tones:

Every person has a different skin tone and texture – we’re not all a standard ‘flesh tone’, straight from the tube

Men and women also have slight variations in colouring

Different nationalities have different skin tones. Some have ruddy complexions, others a yellow undertone, while some have dark skin. Study photographs, place them next to each other and note the differences

Skin tones reflect the colours around them. If you are wearing a purple shirt, you will get some reflection under your chin depending on the lighting. If you are standing next to a yellow wall, the side facing the wall will reflect the yellow.

The colour of the lighting impacts on skin highlights and shadows. If you use a yellow light, the shadows of the skin are generally the complementary colour (in this case purple).

 One thing I remember reading (Don Seegmiller in his book Digital Character Design and Painting) was the fact that the strip across the nose section of the face is pinker than the rest, while under the eyes should be purplish-blue as the skin is so delicate here. I recommend his book for color theory, regardless of the painting medium! In fantasy art, the ability to create convincing skin tones in important, particularly if painting something like a Drow, or even an alien with blue skin

Adding the hair

Hair is basically made from 4 colours which I vary the opacity and size of the bush. The illustration below shows the four colours and the way I build up the hair.

A mid tone

A light tone

A dark tone

A very light tone for the highlights

Why having no ‘theme’ for a painting can be a problem!

Like most sketches where I don’t think about anything much except picking up the ‘paintbrush’, I get to a point where I start wondering about things like ‘does she want straight or wavy hair’, ‘does she wear modern or old fashioned clothes?’, ‘what the heck do I do with the background?’.

At this point I was listening to rock music and it was about midnight so I decided it should be a vampire/ gothic piece. Originally it was just going to be a strapless dress but it ‘felt’ wrong. I added a leather jacket and a cameo choker. I planned on having a night sky, maybe the silhouette of a building. This means that dark blue is going to have to replace the maroon canvas colour. A guy is going to be behind her, all ‘vampy’ and hopefully pretty good looking! I took a break and came back to the painting after some food. I’d been working for about two or three hours and realised that I’d changed the angle of her torso mid painting which is why it is looking odd. This is why it’s a good idea to plan your painting before you begin! You can waste a lot of time working on something, only to realise there is an inherent flaw in the drawing. So I really had a think about where the painting was going… which was feeling like the great digital dustbin in the sky!

Unfortunately I only had a clear picture of the character’s faces so I was basically very aimless when painting. I get bored with details so I moved onto the male character. I knew I’d have to revisit the female character but something was really bothering me about her and I didn’t want to think about it too deeply. I spent about 2 hours working on the guy. Notice that his skin base is slightly more yellow. Guys’ faces are also more angular than females (generally) so I painted in a more aggressive manner, not blending as smoothly as for the female. I also added in some texturing with a ‘captured bristle’ brush.

A note on photo-references:

When I work from photo references I try to avoid working directly from one reference for copyright reasons. Each painting I’ll often work from at least half a dozen images (which I normally collect AFTER I’ve made the initial sketch). I also have a huge collection of images that I’ve harvested from the net, reference books/ CDs, personal photo references. 

I also like working with greyscale images and using small images so I can’t rely upon them too heavily. This way I can make the colour up on the fly. I also find that it helps to practice sketching in greyscale. You focus on rendering the form rather than colours, which teaches you a lot about volume, lighting and texture.

Back to the painting

I spent another 2 hours on this (up to about 10-12 hours now). I kind of became obsessed with finishing his face. I put him in a leather jacket and white shirt and played around with where his arm should go, ultimately deleting it. I changed the background colour to a near black colour while I was playing with things. I’m still not convinced about what’s going on in the painting. But I’m happy to let my mood decide what’s going to happen. I enjoy these kinds of paintings because I just let the paintbrush take me where it wills. However it’s getting to the stage where I will need to decide if I’m going to do something with this painting, or just file it as an experiment.

 I’ve got more details to do… tidying up his eyebrows, giving his skin some texture around the jaw line, finalising his nose and lips, and one of his eyes is slightly off (shadowing and shape’s wrong… but I’ll fix that up later.)

Vampire goes Renaissance?

I’m heavily influenced by music. When I paint I listen to a variety of music, and often it can influence what I paint. I stopped listening to my Dishwalla album and put on Medieaval Baebes… at which time I thought to myself ‘this is just two people standing together, there’s no fantasy here’. So the painting went Venetian 16th century!

I’ve obsessed over historical costume for as long as I can remember and one of my favourite paintings is Rafael’s La Donna Velata. I deleted the leather jacket and replaced it with a front-laced bodice over a creamy chemise. This costume was popular with working classes as it was comfortable and didn’t get caught up while working. I think it is important to think about the clothes you put your characters in… it is part of their story. It can suggest what they do and their status in society, it can also indicate if they’re light and fluffy, or rigidly straight-laced.

A few hours work went into the dress. It’s not finished yet. This is only the basic form. I’m debating about patterns and colours. The more elaborate fabrics tended to be used a few decades after this dress style was popular, and only by the wealthy, but it’s fantasy so I guess I can do what I like!

Working out the background:

I have decided a night sky doesn’t suit the lighting of the characters, so I’ll do a dawn/ dusk sky. I flicked through some reference shots of skies and started laying down some colours in Photoshop with a large airbrush tool. Not much I can say about skies except for the light will reflect on the characters, which is why it’s not a strong sunlit scene. In this low light there won’t be much reflection or shadow.

I’m still playing around with the idea of having a column behind the male character. The sky’s getting close to being completed. I’ll start looking at the lighting in the painting later on… normally that’s something I do in the planning stages for a *proper* painting. It’s up to about 200MB… time to save a new copy and collapse a few layers I think.

On a side note, I’m not happy with the poses or placement of the characters. They’re too rigid. There’s no connection between them, I need to bring them together somehow. I’ve started to realise the girl’s body looks too small and much too straight on for her head. I’m going to have to repaint whole chunks which will be a lot of extra work. You can do this with digital, however if I’d planned the painting I wouldn’t have to be ‘fixing mistakes’ at this late stage!

I added some columns and moved the characters closer together. Each character is on a separate layer and I often take a copy of a layer to do the modifications (in case I muck it up!) I also do iterative saves… I have 7 versions of this file from various ‘major’ points from within the painting.

I like the placement better than the previous version, but I know that I’m going to have difficulties with his arm placement. I also don’t like her headpiece. I haven’t spent much time on it, but it just looks wrong – far too elaborate. I’ve got a feeling that she’s not the kind of girl to wear masses of jewellery! The pose is still disjointed. Why is she moving away from him? It doesn’t exactly look like a comfortable pose. Is he trying to put on her cloak, take it off, or strangle her? When you paint, you have to think about how the painting could be interpreted.

The home stretch

Unfortunately I sat down and painted in one marathon session (without taking saves part ways through). Inspiration struck and all at once I knew exactly how the painting had to look. All the missing elements fell into place. I had the narrative that went with the painting, I knew why they were standing together. The pose was vital to the scene. I think it is important to know ‘why’ things are the way they are. Sometimes it can be as simple as ‘because it looked right’ or ‘because I want the viewer to feel scared’, but with more narrative pieces, the ones that work best tend to make every piece of the painting into something vital to understanding the whole piece… like clues in a mystery novel.

I ended up moving her directly under his chin and slightly curved into his body and moved his arm so he’s supporting her, rather than embracing her. The sky remained unchanged however the bottom needed a focal point – it was too empty. The forest and cliffs are a scene I’ve used in numerous paintings… they are like an old friend – something quick and easy.The lake came next, and the glow lights (which have no real meaning, but they ‘fit’ with the mood of ‘magic in the air’). It still was looking empty. In the story in my head the character’s connection is through dragons. I’d already planned on giving the female character a dragon necklace and the male character golden eyes, however I think a more ‘literal’ representation of the dragon was needed. The placement was deliberate in that I wanted the viewer to follow the motion from the dragon to the characters and back around.

Often when I’m working without reference (like I did for their poses, I try to work out their bodies in their entirety. Even though it still looks a little ‘wrong’, because of the angle of his body, his shoulder is right behind her hair. I tried extending his shoulder but it didn’t look right either.

I added an Overlay layer to do some lighting along the side of the girl’s head and the columns. There are 13 layers in the final version (after I collapsed the multiple character layers from the previous version).

I thought I was finished. I posted it online, added it to a few galleries, but something was still a little unrefined. So I stepped away from it for a week or two (see further down for the revised version).

Some notes on Composition

I like working with the Golden Mean (also called the Golden Section/ ratio/ proportion/ The Divine Proportion). It’s a way of dividing up a painting so that the image is artistically and geometrically pleasing. It’s based on mathematical principles and can be seen in nature in such shapes as nautilus shells. Below I’ve added guidelines in pale blue that divides the painting into thirds. Notice how the parts of the painting that your eyes are drawn to tend to fall along the lines, with the light in the forest being at a ‘focal point’, where the lines intersect.

The painting’s composition loosely fits into what is called the ‘L’ Composition

It could also fit in with ‘V’ or ‘triangular composition.

The trick is to try and get the viewer’s eye to follow the movement from one point of the painting to the next

Final Piece:

I went back and refined it a little… just added a few more details to the hair, fixed the column and tidied up the tree-line. There are still aspects I’m not entirely happy with, but I’ve spent enough time on this painting… I don’t want to overwork it.

So 20 or so hours later, here’s the final piece and the story that goes along with it:

Text I wrote to go with the painting

The dragon-thrall caught her, its silken threads binding her mind to the golden dragon completely. Kara and the great beast launched upwards as one, pushed from powerful back legs. Muscles flexed as the wings extended fully, capturing the wind and propelling them higher still. Freedom! She threw back her head and laughed, the rumble echoing from the surrounding cliffs. The sun and sky called to her, daring her to fly higher and faster than she could ever dream.

She wheeled to the right as she caught movement in the valley below. Ruby eyes fixed on the deer. Tucking her wings to her side, she dove towards the earth, pulling up just above the forest, the trees bending then snapping back in her wake. Kara could taste the hot, sweetness of the blood. She wanted it, lusted for it, she had to have it. It was a burning pain that drove her.

Something yanked at her. Whipping her head around in annoyance she couldn’t see a rider. Focusing on the deer again she snarled as the strong will commanded her to stop. The hunger tore at her, but still he cajoled her, coaxed her, and compelled her. Snarling and baring her teeth she snapped at the unseen force. Finally he dominated, wrestling control from her. Emotions flitted across her mind – fury, hatred, pain, desire. And then she was in her own body again.

Rhys caught Kara as the dragon-thrall released her. He’d been with her throughout the flight, his golden eyes seeing just as the dragon had.

“Now do you understand?” he murmured, his breathing still ragged from the clash of wills. She shuddered, glad to still be in his steadying embrace.

“It helped, but I don’t think I’ll ever understand them, not the way you do.”

Prints and products are available here from RedBubble , painting can be found in the Dragon Fae Oracle as the Lovers card.