#will try and make colored art of her eventually

[ripdragonbeans]

Do You Believe In Fate? // Pt. 1 // Aegon II x Reader

Artwork: @emilykaldwen // Beta: @exitpursuedbyavulcan

Summary: Falling in love with Aegon wasn’t easy. You would think the years gone by would make it less difficult but it turned out that was not the way fate worked. Fate brought you together but would it keep you apart as well?

Warnings: eventual smut, bodily harm, gore, hurt/comfort

A/N: I tried posting it all at once but Tumblr said it was too long so I guess I'm breaking it into parts lol

Part 1 // Part 2 // Part 3 // Part 4 // Part 5 // Part 6

Aegon has always been loud, that’s just who he is. And he was your neighbor. As cliche as it was, you fell in love with him. It wasn’t all at once. It was one year, one step at a time. You always found yourself drawn to him in some way. You swore up and down that there have been glances between you two over the years, lingering touches, soft words. It all happened so quickly that you could never be sure if they were real. Despite everything life threw at you and Aegon, you two would always find each other, even if sometimes you didn’t want to.

Being two years older than you, Aegon acted like he always knew better than everyone else, especially when it came to his younger siblings, Helaena and Aemond. You and Aegon were civil at most. A passing nod here and there; a kind smile every now and then. When you were younger there were rarely any genuine conversations but he was always around. Always around you.

Unlike your relationship with Aegon, you were close to Helaena and Aemond, always have been. Helaena was your best girl. Together you two would giggle over boys and girls and talk about your favorite things. Aemond was your best guy. You would work on homework together and have debates simply for the fun of having a debate.

Within the first few years of meeting Aegon and his siblings, a steady rhythm between the four of you was found. You’d hang out with Helaena and Aemond while Aegon would do his own thing near you three. Most of the time Aegon was on his Gameboy but he was always paying attention. Sometimes you thought that he needed friends, that he should join you and his brother and sister, but his attitude would say something different. Sometimes, the three of you would try to play somewhere away from Aegon but he would always end up in the same room anyway. You considered it a lose-lose situation.

“Aegon, come play with us!” Helaena called out.

“Let me think about it.” Aegon waited a few seconds. “No.”

Aemond picked up the biggest dragon and flew it over your head. “If you’re just going to sit, go sit somewhere else.”

Aegon stuck out his tongue. “Just because you said that, I’m staying, little brother.”

Aemond cringed. He hated being the youngest of the three.

You rolled your eyes and continued to play with your dragons and your blocks. You focused hard on making the most perfect castle for everyone’s dragons to live in. Red, blue, and yellow blocks were stacked on top of each other with a yellow triangle block adorning the top of the castle as the roof.

You were admiring your hard work when a thought occurred to you. “Let’s make flags for our castles!”

Excitedly, you turned towards your friends only to find them already on their feet on their way to grab art supplies. You laughed as you got up to join them but stopped at the doorway. You didn’t like that Aegon wasn’t joining you.

“Would you like to make a flag, Aegon? I can make you your own castle, too.”

“Pft, I’m eight, I can make my own castle,” he proclaimed. He got up from his comfy chair and put his Gameboy down. “But yeah, I’d like to make a flag.”

You gave him a big grin. “Yay!”

Aegon followed you as you led the way to the big dining room table that was now littered with art supplies. Helaena and Aemond made sure to get everything. There were glue sticks, pom poms, crayons, markers, colored pencils, paint, paper, scissors, and little sticks for the flags. Helaena even pulled out her special foam stickers for the occasion.

“Come on, you guys! You’re slow!” Called Helaena.

She was already working on her flag, picking out the stickers she wanted. The outline of a butterfly was on her paper, colored with purples and pinks. You peered over at Aemond and saw the outline of a dragon blowing fire.

You turned to Aegon. “What are you gonna put on your flag?” you asked.

“Oh, I know exactly who’s gonna be on my flag.” A mischievous smile snuck its way onto his face.

Your eyes widened in horror at the implication but you caught yourself before you could say anything stupid. Aegon strolled into the room and plopped himself into an empty chair.

You took in all the art supplies laid out in front of you. A smile spread out across your face as you reached out and grabbed whatever caught your eye. Crayons of various colors were soon in a pile in front of you. Ideas bounced around your head and it was hard to pluck out just one. Thinking hard, you turned your attention to Aegon, curious to see what he was working on. You couldn’t see much but you did see a swarm of purple. Just then an idea popped into your head.

“And done!” Aegon exclaimed as he jumped out of his chair. Even though he was the second last to start on his flag, he was the first to finish. Aegon stood tall and proud as he showed off his flag. “I present to you the flag for the House of Waluigi!”

A once white piece of paper now had a carefully drawn picture of Waluigi from the Super Mario games. He was tall and gangly and had a long, pointy nose that Aegon had extended all the way to the edge of the paper. His purple hat covered his eyes almost completely but a clever glint could still be seen. Waluigi’s limbs were just as long as his nose, if not longer. Aegon drew him almost like a long legged spider creature.

It brought a chuckle out of you, seeing the flag. It was just so…Aegon. He locked eyes with you and smiled when you laughed and you felt yourself blush. It was a simple thing, and you didn’t know why, but it made you happy for some reason.

“Okay, I’m next,” Helaena said. She made a big deal of folding it up as she stood up so no one could see it. Slowly, she unraveled it. “Ta-da!”

Helaena’s flag had a butterfly with blue and green wings on a pink and purple background. It had a giant smile on its face and curly antennas that made a heart at the top of the paper. It was bright and colorful, just like her.

“I guess I’m next,” said Aemond sheepishly. There was no flourish in his showing of his flag but there was still a glint of pride.

Aemond’s flag was black with a large green dragon breathing fire. It was fierce, despite being drawn by a four year old. “Her name is Vhagar and she’s the mightiest dragon!” he let out a giant laugh.

Giggles erupted from all of them. Aemond was sweet and quiet, no one really thought he would choose a dragon for his house.

“I’m last so that means mine will be awesome!” you said between giggles.

You took a breath and flipped your paper over to reveal your flag. It was a three headed dog, with one head looking silly and lopsided and the other two looking fairly serious.

“He may not breathe fire but this dog is really big and can probably fight your dragon, Aemond,” you teased. “And her name is Jeremy Triangle Dot but we call her Dot for short. Mainly because Dot is the boss. She’s the middle head.”

Aemond rolled his eyes. “Vhagar is a dragon. A dragon.”

“I bet if I put Waluigi on Dot we could defeat Vhagar!” Aegon jumped in.

“Hey, not fair!” Aemond pouted.

“It’s okay, Aemond. My butterfly will be super big and protect you with her wings.” Helaena piped up.

“Auntie Alicent!” You called out for your friends’ mother. She was a mother figure for you as well. “Look at our Houses! Who would you pick?”

Alicent came to the table and smiled at all of you.

“They all look amazing! I’m afraid I can’t pick one house. But we can say that I rule over all your houses as a queen,” she joked.

“Queen Auntie Alicent!” you cried.

“Queen Mother!” the siblings yelled in response.

“Okay, Queen Mother I am then,” Alicent laughed and messed up Aegon’s hair. “You children are so creative. Would you like smoothies?”

“A strawberry one!” Aegon yelled out.

“Yes, yes, I know, Aegon. I’ll get you all your favorite smoothies.” She left after pressing a kiss atop all of your heads.

The four of you spent the next two hours making up stories of your Houses and how they all lived together in the same kingdom. The House of Waluigi warred with the Vhagar House while Butterfly House and Dog House stayed neutral through almost everything. The only time those two Houses warred was when the kingdom's flavor of ice cream had to be chosen.

It was the first time you, Helaena, and Aemond had fun with Aegon. For once, Aegon wasn’t on the side playing on his Gameboy or doing his own thing. The four of you grew together; the relationship between the siblings being the best it’s ever been and the relationship you had with them being built on a strong foundation.

Seven years went by and you were all still as thick as thieves. The only difference was that you found yourself hanging out more with Aegon than Helaena and Aemond. It wasn't noticeable to anyone else but it was to you. You found yourself sitting next to Aegon and talking to him more. Whenever you were playing a game with the siblings you were always on the same team as Aegon.

Together, the two of you were inseparable, even at that young age. Through some sort of finagling, your mother and Alicent got you, Aemond, and Aegon all on the same football team. Really, though, the three of you should not be in the same age bracket. To make things a little even, however, you and Aemond, at the age of ten, played with Aegon’s team; them at age thirteen. Nevertheless, it was chaotic fun for the three of you. Helaena, on the other hand, preferred to stay off the pitch and cheer you on from the sidelines.

“Aeg, through! THROUGH!” You called from the other side of the field. If he would just pass the ball, you could sprint through the two defenders in your way and take a shot at the goal without being offside.

Aegon was being a ball hog, playing around with the ball just to show off and keep it away from the opposing team. The opposing team actually being the Targaryen’s cousins’ team.

“Aegon, focus!” you tried to get his attention.

Eventually, Aegon looked up and saw your plan. He gave the ball a strong kick. It flew through the air, over you and the other defenders. You sprinted as fast as you could. Since you were behind the defenders when Aegon kicked the ball, if you got to it before they did you would be safe to continue towards the goal without any penalty.

One of the defenders, a cousin of the Targaryen siblings, Jace, came up next to you, also sprinting his heart out. The two of you locked eyes in a heated battle of dominance. Smirking at him, you dug deep for that extra burst of speed you needed to beat Jace to the ball.

The ball was still making its arc in the air when you finally passed Jace just a tiny bit. When it hit the ground it bounced once. Twice. Three times before you were able to catch it with your foot. Jace was right behind you. Already you dug yourself into the ground, ready for any hit from him that could push you off the ball. You dribbled fast, dodging the defenders that have come up to catch you. Swerving in and out you saw the perfect opportunity to take a shot. Grabbing that burst of energy deep inside you, you gave one final push so it was just you and the other team’s goalie. He dived at you but you were quick to avoid him and kick the ball to the back of the net.

Aegon whooped and threw his hand in the air before tackling you in a hug. Helaena and Alicent were cheering loud on the sidelines and Aemond jumped up and down in his goal box, getting ready for the next kick off.

Jace started the kick off. He passed it to his little brother, Luke, and they went straight for the goal. Pure force. That wouldn’t work, not with your team to stop them. Luke was fast but you were faster. You caught up to him easily and fought for the ball. You were able to kick it out of his control and pass it on to Aegon. Aegon took it and tried to boot it down the field but Jace got the ball back before he could. He was about to reach out and grab Jace’s jersey.

“Aegon!” you warned him. He didn’t need to give the team a free kick, not now.

Aegon looked at you and scowled but quickly replaced it with a playful wink. Then off he went, chasing after Jace.

Jace was a decent distance from the goal box when he let the ball fly. It didn’t actually go through the air, but was a fast and strong kick that stayed on the ground. Luke followed the ball and Aegon followed Luke. As Aemond dived for the ball, Luke attempted to slide tackle the ball out of Aemond’s reach. Instead of hitting the ball, though, Luke hit Aemond’s eye cleats up.

A scream of pain.

Blood.

So much blood was pouring out of Aemond’s face.

Luke just sat there, stunned at what just happened. Jace was quick to run to his younger brother and make sure he was okay but of course he was. He wasn’t the one who got cleats in his eye.

You grabbed Aegon’s hand and ran him over to his brother.

“Aemond, you’re gonna be okay,” he told his brother.

Aemond was holding his face with one hand. The goalie glove he had on was soaked in blood. He couldn’t speak. All he could do was barely shake or nod his head.

Alicent was running onto the field. “Aemond! AEMOND!”

Coach Otto, Alicent’s father, also ran to Aemond. He picked him up effortlessly. “I got you.”

Aemond mumbled something but you couldn’t make it out.

“Keep that hand on your eye, gotta keep the pressure there.” Coach Otto turned to his daughter. “Meet us at the emergency room.”

Alicent nodded silently. She looked at her children, her children and you. “Helaena, Aegon, and my dear, are you alright?”

Helaena nodded her head. She was in shock. You went over to her and gave her a tight hug. She held onto you hard.

Aegon just lowered his head. He didn’t say or indicate anything. All you could tell was that he was angry.

“I’m… I’m fine. I think,” you told Alicent. “I want to go with you to the emergency room. Is that okay?”

Alicent enveloped you in a hug of her own when you let go of Helaena. “Oh, my dear, of course you can.” She let you go. “Come now, all of you.”

With Alicent leading you all, you ran to the car and piled in. Alicent was normally a very safe driver but this time she was aggressive. When you arrived at the emergency it was clean. Almost too clean. You and Aegon stood out in your dirty football uniforms. Holding Helaena’s hand, you followed close behind Alicent.

“My son, my son, Aemond Targaryen was taken here. He was being carried by my father. There was blood pouring from his face,” she was telling the front desk.

“Yes, him,” the lady at the front desk seemed to be in no rush.

“Please, I’d like to see him.”

“You’re going to have to wait a bit -”

Aegon snapped. “Let us see our brother!”

“Aegon!” cried Alicent.

“Aegon, please, everything is going to be okay,” you tried to comfort him.

The lady coughed. “As I said, you’re going to have to wait. He was taken in for emergency surgery.”

Alicent’s face lost all color. “But, he’s alive, yes?”

“He should be fine.” The lady’s eyes softened. “Take a seat, it might be a long wait.”

“Thank you,” Alicent nodded her head.

You grabbed Aegon’s hand and took him aside to some chairs in a corner. Once you got to them, Aegon yanked his hand out of yours.

“Aegon, what’s going on?”

“What’s going on? My brother is in a freaking surgery because I couldn’t keep the ball away from our side. That’s what’s going on.”

“It isn’t your fault he got hurt. He’s a goalie, he knows the risks.”

“That risk shouldn’t be losing an eye!”

“It was Luke. You know it was. He shouldn’t have slide tackled like that. It’s illegal.”

“Yeah, and look where that got him. Luke isn’t the one facing the consequences,” Aegon spat. “Instead, it’s my little brother!”

You tackled Aegon in a hug and held him tight. His breathing, once rapid, slowed down. You felt his arms slowly circle around you, as though he was scared to do so. One deep breath. Aegon lowered his head to your shoulder and you felt his shudder. He was crying.

“It should’ve been me,” he whispered against you.

“Shh, I’m right here for you.”

You held him close and didn’t let him go. You’d never let him go.

By the time Aemond got out of surgery, Aegon was asleep with his head on your shoulder. Aemond had lost his eye. He came out with a white gauze taped over where his eye should’ve been. You shook Aegon awake when Alicent brought him over. Aegon looked at Aemond and instantly guilt filled his face.

“I should’ve done something. I’m sorry,” he told his brother.

“You weren’t the one who slide tackled into my face,” Aemond offered him a weak smile.

“He’s right Aeg,” you bumped him with your shoulder. “Everything is gonna be okay.”

After Aemond lost his eye, Aegon started to change. You don't know whether it was just because he wanted to or if it has something to do with not being able to protect his brother. He was more protective of Aemond but he started losing himself. His temper was a little shorter and he learned to hurt people with words. It was as though his thought process was that if he couldn't protect him then he might as well do nothing.

Throughout middle school and junior high he made friends with kids…different from you and his siblings. They were wilder and louder. It seemed as though Aegon thrived with them. He soon started to taunt you and his brother and sister in front of them but would be quick to apologize when you'd walk home together. Away from everyone else. It was as though Aegon, the real Aegon, wasn’t good enough to be at school. Instead, he created this caricature of himself who’s even more obstinate than he already was. For a while it seemed as though he thrived on the attention but you could see it in his eyes that it was tiring. Yet he kept it up.

His relationship with Helaena and Aemond faltered. They were no longer the close siblings they once were. Aegon’s actions outside of home began to drift in. He would ignore Aemond, order around Helaena, and make snide comments at both of them. Your relationship with him changed, as well. He was less genuine with you, his jokes were even more crass than they used to be, and he’d ask you to get to know some of the other girls so he could know who to flirt with.

But there were still small moments when you thought everything would be okay. You’d share a sweet smile with him over a stupid joke. He’d tease you by taking away your water bottle but then playfully give it back. Every now and then he’d surprise you with a big bear hug but then linger just a little bit. Aegon would look at you sometimes and refuse to look away, even if you caught him. If he saw that you caught him, though, he’d play it off with a cheeky wink. When he thought you weren’t looking you could see how soft his eyes were, how they lit up when he looked at you.

Those moments would never last too long. As soon as someone else would sit next to Aegon he broke out of whatever spell he cast on both of you. It was like nothing ever happened. Like you two never even met. You thought you’d get used to the disappointment and dull pain in your heart but you never did. Your emotions were bottled up and they festered deep inside you, ready to burst open at any moment.

“Why do you do that?” you asked Aegon one day.

The two of you were at his house working on some homework.

He looked at you, confused. “What do you mean?”

“Why do you hang out with them?”

“You mean my friends?”

“Yeah, them.” You leaned back in your chair.

“Because they’re my friends,” he said slowly.

“But they’re nothing like us. Me and your brother and sister are on completely opposite sides.”

“I’m allowed to have more friends, it’s not a competition.”

You looked at him, wondering if he was avoiding something else. “Okay. I just worry about you hanging out with other people, especially them.”

“I’ll take care of myself, don’t worry.” He gave you a reassuring smile then returned to his work.

[yaniasogames]

poem and (messy) sketch dedicated to lacey

[worm-in-a-trenchcoat]

I haven’t like sat down and drawn in a long time, but I got a new sketchbook recently and I’ve been trying to draw in it whenever I have time and I drew this today :)

I made this picrew for reference!

Obviously I didn’t want it to look exactly like the picrew, but I was gonna give her a shirt like the picrew but then I decided to give her like a baggy sweater type deal??

Idk if that translates well cause I’m not the best at drawing clothes, but the idea is that it’s baggy in her because it’s Howleen’s (who I imagine purposefully wears oversized clothes for the ✨aesthetic✨)

-

I also tried giving her a “bedroom eye” look cause I imagine Twyla to always be kinda sleepy lol.

[twilightarcade]

meow :3

color refs for me 🔥🔥🔥🔥

nevaeh thompson, she/he - secretary but not in a sexy way more of a bit of a loser way. They’re all losers

Jacob “”””””jake””””” Mulligan, he/they - always put a particular amount of spiteful emphasis on his nickname being jake if you do mention it, unless you just want to be normal about it

going to let you in on a little secret everyone here really uses any pronouns because like. That’s not my job. Make ur own pronouns dude. But also they CANT so I’m sitting here assigning arbitrary pronouns to them

[inkskinned]

the thing about art is that it was always supposed to be about us, about the human-ness of us, the impossible and beautiful reality that we (for centuries) have stood still, transfixed by music. that we can close our eyes and cry about the same book passage; the events of which aren't real and never happened. theatre in shakespeare's time was as real as it is now; we all laugh at the same cue (pursued by bear), separated hundreds of years apart.

three years ago my housemates were jamming outdoors, just messing around with their instruments, mostly just making noise. our neighbors - shy, cautious, a little sheepish - sat down and started playing. i don't really know how it happened; i was somehow in charge of dancing, barefoot and laughing - but i looked up, and our yard was full of people. kids stacked on the shoulders of parents. old couples holding hands. someone had brought sidewalk chalk; our front walk became a riot of color. someone ran in with a flute and played the most astounding solo i've ever heard in my life, upright and wiggling, skipping as she did so. she only paused because the violin player was kicking his heels up and she was laughing too hard to continue.

two weeks ago my friend and i met in the basement of her apartment complex so she could work out a piece of choreography. we have a language barrier - i'm not as good at ASL as i'd like to be (i'm still learning!) so we communicate mostly through the notes app and this strange secret language of dancers - we have the same movement vocabulary. the two of us cracking jokes at each other, giggling. there were kids in the basement too, who had been playing soccer until we took up the far corner of the room. one by one they made their slow way over like feral cats - they laid down, belly-flat against the floor, just watching. my friend and i were not in tutus - we were in slouchy shirts and leggings and socks. nothing fancy. but when i asked the kids would you like to dance too? they were immediately on their feet and spinning. i love when people dance with abandon, the wild and leggy fervor of childhood. i think it is gorgeous.

their adults showed up eventually, and a few of them said hey, let's not bother the nice ladies. but they weren't bothering us, they were just having fun - so. a few of the adults started dancing awkwardly along, and then most of the adults. someone brought down a better sound system. someone opened a watermelon and started handing out slices. it was 8 PM on a tuesday and nothing about that day was particularly special; we might as well party.

one time i hosted a free "paint along party" and about 20 adults worked quietly while i taught them how to paint nessie. one time i taught community dance classes and so many people showed up we had to move the whole thing outside. we used chairs and coatracks to balance. one time i showed up to a random band playing in a random location, and the whole thing got packed so quickly we had to open every door and window in the place.

i don't think i can tell you how much people want to be making art and engaging with art. they want to, desperately. so many people would be stunning artists, but they are lied to and told from a very young age that art only matters if it is planned, purposeful, beautiful. that if you have an idea, you need to be able to express it perfectly. this is not true. you don't get only 1 chance to communicate. you can spend a lifetime trying to display exactly 1 thing you can never quite language. you can just express the "!!??!!!"-ing-ness of being alive; that is something none of us really have a full grasp on creating. and even when we can't make what we want - god, it feels fucking good to try. and even just enjoying other artists - art inherently rewards the act of participating.

i wasn't raised wealthy. whenever i make a post about art, someone inevitably says something along the lines of well some of us aren't that lucky. i am not lucky; i am dedicated. i have a chronic condition, my hands are constantly in pain. i am not neurotypical, nor was i raised safe. i worked 5-7 jobs while some of these memories happened. i chose art because it mattered to me more than anything on this fucking planet - i would work 80 hours a week just so i could afford to write in 3 of them.

and i am still telling you - if you are called to make art, you are called to the part of you that is human. you do not have to be good at it. you do not have to have enormous amounts of privilege. you can just... give yourself permission. you can just say i'm going to make something now and then - go out and make it. raquel it won't be good though that is okay, i don't make good things every time either. besides. who decides what good even is?

you weren't called to make something because you wanted it to be good, you were called to make something because it is a basic instinct. you were taught to judge its worth and over-value perfection. you are doing something impossible. a god's ability: from nothing springs creation.

a few months ago i found a piece of sidewalk chalk and started drawing. within an hour i had somehow collected a small classroom of young children. their adults often brought their own chalk. i looked up and about fifteen families had joined me from around the block. we drew scrangly unicorns and messed up flowers and one girl asked me to draw charizard. i am not good at drawing. i basically drew an orb with wings. you would have thought i drew her the mona lisa. she dragged her mother over and pointed and said look! look what she drew for me and, in the moment, i admit i flinched (sorry, i don't -). but the mother just grinned at me. he's beautiful. and then she sat down and started drawing.

someone took a picture of it. it was in the local newspaper. the summary underneath said joyful and spontaneous artwork from local artists springs up in public gallery. in the picture, a little girl covered in chalk dust has her head thrown back, delighted. laughing.

[anniflamma]

Do you have any designs or ideas about Poseidon's wife, Amphitrite? Or either her personality or how their relationship is? I really love your art and you have some really fun and unique ideas so I'm really curious!

Have a wonderful day! :D

I did have a hard time picturing how Amphitrite would look!

I like the idea of her being the opposite of Poseidon in terms of colors, maybe? Essentially, I want her to look more put together compared to Poseidon, and for it to be clear that she’s the queen of the sea. I looked for some Minoan inspiration, but in the middle of drawing her clothing, I went off the rails...

I’m not too keen on this design, to be honest. I think she ended up looking too young, (maybe this can be when Poseidon was trying to marry her??) so I’ll probably give her sharper features later on. I want her to have a softer look but also embody something more terrifying—like the sea!

As for their relationship, they do love each other in their own weird way, and it's much "healthier" compared to Zeus and Hera’s. But they have their issues, especially when Poseidon goes off to have fun with others. She becomes more withdrawn from him when that happens. After his escapades, he tends to love-bomb her, being all lovey-dovey, but she sees right through all that shit. But eventually forgives him just to make him shut up and then the circle starts over.

I think their relationship would be strongest if they just remained friends. But it’s one-sided because Poseidon wants it to be romantic, hence all the spam love-dolphins he sends her.

It was pretty fun drawing Poseidon being all cute and so maybe you all will see more 💕

[bunniesanddeer]

Hi! I hope you’re having a wonderful day or night.

I saw your asks are open and I had an idea. What if it’s a protective Alastor x Reader who is the daughter of a protective Lucifer? Maybe she kept in contact with her dad so they are closer and she is older than Charlie. When Lucifer comes to visit the hotel him and Alastor cause some drama

Thanks!

W.P💚

I hope this is what you were looking for? I am very new to doing things like this!

Daddy's Girl

Pairing: Alastor X Lucifer's Daughter! Reader

Tags: Sisterly love, some sexual connotations, spoilers, some angst maybe? idk, swearing, Mimzy.

SPOILERS FOR "DAD BEAT DAD"

Word Count: 1,775

The hotel was eerily quiet when you awoke, so you made your way downstairs to see if anyone was awake. All you could hear as you made your way down the stairs was your quiet footfalls and weird murmuring. As you turned towards the sitting area, you realized the muttering was coming from your younger sister, Charlie.

Charlie was pacing back and forth in front of a pin board covered in colorful papers, and strings. She tugged at her hair, her muttering growing more frantic. As you took in the scene, you realized there were a few people standing and watching her. Niffty was bouncing on the couch, her face full of a strange glee. Husk and Sir Pentious were watching with mixes of bafflement and curiosity.

“Hey, Char Char? Are you ok?” You asked, walking around the couch to get a better view. You saw Angel and Vaggie approach from your peripherals as Charlie whipped around frantically.

“Nope! No. Not really! Haha. Hah…” Her false smile falls as she rips a page off the board. “I have been up all night trying to figure out why the hotel isn’t working! We’ve done every single trust exercise and arts and crafts project I could find! We’ve talked about our feelings and… nothing is working!”

You frown. You knew that things taking so long would eventually get to her, but it was sad to see just how severely. She needed more help. 

You walk up to your sister, and set your hands on her shoulders. “I think…”

Her expression collapses. “Please don’t say it.”

“We should call dad. And ask for his help.”

She winces. She clearly doesn’t want your dad’s help. You can’t exactly blame her, either. The two of you were raised a little separate, and it had affected her relationship with Lucifer pretty badly. Although, you were older, and it had afforded you time with Lucifer before Lilith had started to separate herself from him. Charlie had only had a handful of years before their relationship went south. It showed in her anxiety with him, and Lucifer’s inability to talk to Charlie openly. It made you sad, but you weren’t sure how to fix that rift.

“He’s the reason the extermination happens to begin with! He just let it happen! He doesn’t even like sinners! Why would he help me?” Charlie hugs herself, looking off to the side. “He’s always preferred you anyway.”

You hear some audible winces from the audience by the couch, but you ignore them. You pull her into a tight hug, her taller frame putting you at her collarbones. “You know I would change that if I could, honey.” You squeeze her tightly and say, “We can at least see if he can get you a meeting. Anything to give you the advantage, Char Char.”

She sighs, and hugs you back. “Yeah. I guess we can at least try.”

You pull back. “I think you should call him. I bet he’s dying to hear from you, even though he sucks at showing it.”

Charlie rubs her arm and nods. “Alright. I’ll do it!”

As she struggles to start the phone call, Husk makes comments about her having ‘Daddy Issues’, and you blanch. How rude! (Even if it was true). The others make comments about meeting Lucifer, but you and Vaggie just keep your eyes on Charlie. She seems so nervous, and it makes your stomach twist in knots. 

She finally calls. It rings three times before a faint, “Heyyyy bitch!” rings out on the other end of the line. You facepalm. Good going Dad.

When all is said and done, Lucifer announces he is visiting within the hour, after much cajoling and guilt-tripping on Charlie’s part. Although, from what you could hear, he seemed excited.

Charlie is excited, and so is everyone else in the hotel. You cheer for her, and then the realization hits you. 

Alastor. Fuck.

As the final touches are finished, you sidle up to Alastor with a small grin.

“Please, please don’t start shit. Charlie needs this to work. And I need this to work for Charlie,” you murmur to him. 

He barely glances at you. “Worry not, sweetheart! You know I would never do anything to risk the reputation of the hotel! Charlie will get the help she needs!” His arm wraps around your shoulders, and he squeezes you into his side. For just a moment, his head ducks down, and he whispers into your ear. “Just need to make it clear whose little girl you are now.” Then he perks right back up like nothing happened.

Your face burns hot. How dare he! But you don’t get to do anything in retaliation, because Charlie is opening the door.

“Chaaaaarlie!” Lucifer exclaims, immediately pulling her into a tight embrace. Your sister’s face is full of shock, and you just want to laugh. Ha! You were right! He continues talking to her in the slightest baby voice, and you can’t help but let some giggles escape you. Your dad could be just so silly! “Oh, it’s so good to see you!”

He lets go of Charlie as she welcomes him to the hotel. He spots Keekee first, and pets her. Then greets Razzle and Dazzle. You watch from the sidelines with a small smile. It was nice seeing your dad outside the home. He had been holing himself up for so long… You look up at Alastor, who hasn’t moved an inch since your dad came in.

You elbow him gently. “You okay?”

Alasotr’s expression is tight. His eyes flicker to you for a moment, before landing back on your father. He merely hums in response, making you frown. How odd… You knew the two wouldn’t get along, but for Alastor to dislike him already?

 Then your dad spots the bar. “Oh! What in the unholy Hell is that?” 

Alastor immediately shadow-walks to the other side of the room, and you know it’s time to intervene.

“Oh! Just some of the renovations we’ve made.” Alastor gestures with his mic, before continuing. “Adds a bit of color, don’t you think?” 

You wince, and make your way to Alastor’s side. 

“Hey, Dad,” you say, trying to prevent your dad making any further comments on the decor. That's a good way to piss off Alastor.

“Sweetheart!” Your dad runs up to you, and tries picking you up. You laugh at the tights squeeze. “How’s my girl?” His hands squish your cheeks, making it hard to respond.

You giggle through the ministrations, and finally push his hands back so you can respond. “I’m doing great, Dad. Figured I should introduce you to Alastor here.” You gesture to Alastor, who looks the closest to not smiling that you have ever seen. It makes your stomach feel like lead, as you keep talking. “He’s our facilities' manager, and my…”

Your voice trails off, and you look at Alastor, as if hoping he has the word you are looking for.

“I’m her lover!” Alastor exclaims, quite loudly. His static drops for a moment and then bursts back up in volume, making you wince. Great. He just announced that to everyone in the room. The ‘everyone’ being everyone who didn’t know. You can hear Charlie ‘whoop!’ in the background, and several variations of ‘what the fuck’. “She’s quite the darling. I just couldn’t resist this sweet face!” Alastor grabs at your cheeks, similar to how your dad did, and squishes them. “See?”

You risk a glance at your dad. He looks ready to kill. Fuck. This is absolutely not how you wanted to tell your dad. He nearly killed the last partner you had for ghosting you. You can see your dad’s horns growing, and you push Alastor back.

“Haha! Yeah. Uh. Sorry. I would have told you before now, but we’re kind of new! We were trying to keep it on the down-low for now but…” You glare at Alastor, but he just has this shit-eating grin on his face, and you know he doesn’t care. 

“Right.” Your dad continues glaring at Alastor. You wince, and decide to go over by the snack table. Angel is just giving you this look, and you know he will be asking about Alastor’s dick, which you have not seen, later. Husk seems disappointed in you, and you absolutely know why. You just give him an apologetic shrug, and watch as Alastor and your dad seem to start a pissing match. 

It ends with Alastor in his face saying, “Fuck you,” and your knees nearly give out. Holy shit. 

Charlie finally intervenes, and Lucifer, after some more glaring at Alastor, get her to introduce him to the rest of the residents.

Alastor lays a hand on your shoulder as your dad greets both the guests and the staff. You can feel his thumb rubbing back and forth, and it sends shivers down your spine. You look up at Alastor, but his gaze is still locked on your dad. Annoyed, you roll your eyes with a huff, and look back to the meet-and-greet. Your dad is looking back at you, his frown deep, and a barely audible growl making its way to your ears. Your dad is fucking growling at Alastor. What the Hell?

A rumble builds up in Alastor’s chest, and you can feel it against your back. This one sets heat back up to your face. Gosh, this man needed to get his shit together. No need to start stuff with your dad! Alastor’s hand tightens on your shoulder, before he lets go and stalks back towards Charlie, who is trying to convince your dad to help her. 

And then they’re singing. Because of course. Alastor joins in, saying some things that seem to really piss off your dad, but you can't hear much over the blood rushing in your ears. Sometimes these two could be so embarrassing. When your dad pulls out the golden fiddle, you nearly die laughing. (He still wasn’t over losing that one time!) Everything comes to a head, with the two men yelling insults in each other's faces, when suddenly-

“It’s ME!” A woman barges in through the lobby doors, yelling and calling herself Mimzy. She’s blonde, and dressed like a flapper. Alastor seems to recognize her, so you don’t worry. 

Later that night, when your dad has finally agreed to help your sister get that meeting, you all settle onto the couches, making a game plan. Alastor sits beside you, one foot resting on the other knee. You lean over and ask softly, “What did you say during that song, anyway?”

Alastor’s grin sharpens, and he presses his lips near your ear, again. “Charlie calls me dad, and your eldest calls me Daddy.”

If you nearly choke on your own spit, you refuse to admit it. 

[rel124c41]

THE LOST ART OF KEEPING A SECRET. jade leech & floyd leech

The aquarium receives new additions perhaps once every two weeks; usually they are cute little things with rainbow fins and gem eyes. These two are not cute little things; they're huge and they have human faces. "Well I've got a secret, I cannot say" - Queens of the Stone Age, Track 2 on Rated R. a gift for @hallowed-father; based on their beautiful fanart 💕

tags: aquariums, late night conversations, captivity, situational humiliation, dehumanization, mutual pining, dubious ethics, kidnapping, vivisection, nursery rhyme references, eventual happy ending

word count: 12,668

The first two times you try seeing them, all you see is your reflection. 

It makes sense unfortunately. With the lack of any light, you are going to have a hard time seeing them. Cloudy black settles over the skeleton and hair shaped vegetation. You can turn your head on a swivel (which you do on the second try) but there is no way to discern what swims through darkness. Instead, all you see in the aquarium tank’s water is your face. 

Each uniquely human feature of yours squints in the nebulous, oscillating dark. To an observer, it would seem that you think if you flatten your eyes into pressed almonds something will reveal itself to you. Nose scrunching, you squint in a grandmother who lost her glasses way that is simply laughable. 

There must be something inside the exhibit.

Nothing. Nothing but your desolate reflection. 

On a small plaque, the words no use of flash photography wags a censure finger at you. Besides the cerulean halo on the corners where the wall meets ceiling, the room must remain dark at all times. Even during operating hours – or so you have heard from Deuce – they refuse to allow any other light in the secluded room. 

Besides the ultramarine ouroboros, the oval-shaped room is dark beyond dark. An extreme that is on another level than what you are familiar with. As a nightguard, you are familiar with the dark. Quite familiar. 

For example, there is one aquatic animal that you managed to see that other people cannot find nine times out of ten. In the shadows, spider crabs hide. They call their environment interestingly enough: the twilight zone, a part of the seafloor that gets little light and is very cold. With only three crabs in a sizable aquarium, it is understandably hard for others to find them. While the guests that linger after hours or closing staff puzzle over their location, you find them with ease. Behind the ship, by those bones, in the left corner no no higher in the left corner;  your eyes have long since adjusted to the nocturnal proclivity of your job. 

(One of the closing staff employees joked you were like a cute, little opossum. You think he meant it as a flirt; you found it insulting. Pressing your shades higher up on the bridge of your nose, you clocked in with your head down, vexed.)

However, in the tenebrous depths before you, you are like a disgruntled archaeologist standing in a desert of Swiss-cheese holes. Unable to locate anything. Tilting your head in a slightly different direction, your eyes squeeze into petite slices, searching. 

The flashlight in your hand is a heavy temptation. If you just raise it, the absence of light will readily receive it. Melted pinks and greens of vegetation will pop, brown and amber of decorative rocks will shine, and whatever colors lie on these new fishes will certainly look like a gorgeous splendor under visible light. It would take the smallest wrist motion. Your reflection held in black water stares back at you, glaring daggers. ‘C’mon, do it,’ your reflection urges.

Light slugs over your sneakers, contemplative. ‘Perhaps not,’ you think with regards to the penlight. You know that you loathe having any type of light in your face; do unto others as you would have done onto you. The button of your tool clicks off. By now, you should already be down by the stingrays. 

‘Third time might just have to be the charm,’ you think with a frown. 

In the fishbowl glass, mummified with shadows, your reflection mimics that childhood disappointment.

‘I’ll try again tomorrow.’

Turning to leave, spine to the aquarium tank, you miss the first instance of light emerging out of dark. 

It pulls upward like an ember blown skyward out of a campfire pit. The movements of it are languid. Flickers of yellow orbit in a whirlpool, lazy like they have just woken up. That clean circle becomes distorted, shrinking and growing like window-shades are being maneuvered over it. Then, a twin of yellow joins the first, a hair keener than the first. Both circles of light hang in the shadows, not brightening or shining beyond an intensity that is noticeable. Shrewd with their intentions.

When the door to the oval room clicks close, the window-shades pull down like a blink and the aquatic water changes from being speckled with playful yellow back to tenebrous black.

As it turns out, the phrase ‘third time's the charm’ holds an eternal merit. Because the next night, which is the third time you look into the aquarium tank, your wish is granted. 

The unluckiest charm; the unluckiest wish.

The aquarium gets new deliveries once every two weeks. As the nightguard, you are not kept on the up-and-up unless Deuce Spade is working. And as an honor college student, Deuce is usually scheduled – during daylight hours of course – on the weekends when exam season is not keeping him occupied. So, you missed the news about this new delivery initially. All you knew about them was from the very insightful texts of Deuce Spade (two in total):

The new deliveries can’t be around light. Think it's anglerfish? 

and

Apparently not anglerfish, those have to live under pressured water. Why do people act like that’s common knowledge to know??

Your available information is: they are not anglerfish. That is all.

You really are left with no hints to what hides in murk. After two weeks, no plaque detailing the species is nailed to the wall or statued on a slanted board. The room is void of identification. Perhaps that is the reason your body seems so magnetized towards deciphering this mystery. No identification by now is unusual. Plus, night shifts drag like limping feet; why not try to stall off boredom?

This time around, you power off your penlight before entering the room. Instead of letting the light stamp a circle of itself on the ground, you enter pure darkness. Blue vibrates above you. Not complete darkness, you correct, stepping on the path that limited blue illuminates. 

The room and tank resemble an egg with a cut-off top. The room is oval shaped but missing a quarter of its full shape, the top half knifed off to make room for a tank full of about five hundred gallons of water. When you reach the wall, the length is forty feet, this sliced egg-top, you place determined hands in your slacks pocket. 

And squint until the muscles in your eyes quiver with strain.   

Penguins must be kept in cold waters. Vents are constantly blowing cold air into the exhibit to keep it under forty degrees. As your breath comes out in a puff of frosty air, you wonder deeply just what kind of species can be kept in such frigidness. Deep sea penguins? That would certainly be interesting. 

Your reflection challenges you with a mimic of your squinting. Keep dreaming, it says. No matter which way you look over tenebrous shadows of vegetation and rocks, nothing is making itself clear to you. This time you risk inching closer. From this distance, you can count the vertebrae-esque leaves of a winding ludwiga. Ice seems to heartbeat off the glass, kissing your features. 

What can you see?

Nothing. Nothing but your desolate reflection.

That is until a little organic lantern – small like a dragonfly– comes alive in the water. Despite your excitement, you keep yourself frozen and still. Your tiny gasp bleeds out your mouth and hits the glass gradually. The dragonfly powers on and off in two blinks. Morse code for ‘I’ but you doubt this animal knows that – you just happened to take a college elective for Morso code. You watch this single, pinprick lantern with great interest.

‘I think it really is an anglerfish. I mean, it makes complete sense. Deep sea water temperatures. The utter lack of light. Maybe, the researchers found some way to replicate the pressures, and the staff just doesn’t know yet. That would be revolutionary.’

Then, a second dragonfly joins the first. On a black-emerald and black-turquoise torrent, the ember dips down low. Glittering like a sun-rays on water, it slithers closer with curious intent. It was leagues keener than its twin, metaphorically hexagonal instead of circular. This dragonfly too powers off and on in quicker blinks. Four blinks which is ‘H’ in Morse code … useless knowledge. 

Anglerfish cannot communicate. The entire ecosystem of a brain from fish to human is different, like trying to compare a tropical amazon to a winter wonderland. Just far too different to understand one another.

But, it is impressive that the aquarium was able to get such a deep sea creature to survive in a simulated habitat. 

“Hi there.” You wave your fingers. Pressing yourself closer to the glass, you wait for your eyes to adjust and register the razor teeth and fat jowls of an anglerfish brown face. Cold air starts to swim under your jacket, your body’s tilt causing the material to slip. Then, you make eye contact.

Eye contact? Eye contact. Turns out those lantern-shaped dragonflies you are looking at are not the bait anglerfish have attached to their bodies. It is not a hunting evolution you openly leer at. Rather, you look them in the eye. 

All the fire of your wonder extinguishes like a pinched match.

As if the vents are working overtime, a sudden chill falls over you. Goosebumps settle over your shoulders. You jump back and misty gray air (your gasping breath) explodes in front of you. It is not your desolate reflection that swims in front of you. Someone else’s face is in there.

There are creatures in there; that is undeniable. What fights to make itself conclusive in your reeling mind is the image of the creatures. Creatures – so completely alien when compared to the mixture of muscles that make up an anglerfish– with human faces. Human features. A nose. A pair of lips. A pair of squinting eyes, staring right back at you. 

One of them throws their head back in laughter when you fall to your ass, reeling inward and outward. What the fuck is a human – two humans! – doing inside an aquarium tank at 2 A.M.!

You climb back up to your feet with all the grace of an injured crab. Your left arm feels longer than your right; you feel like the ground has morphed into quicksand and is suckling on your right boot; all of your world has become disoriented. In your jacket, your penlight weighs down your left side like a brick. Pulled by a mental riptide, you wrestle until you finally stand on two (trembling)  legs like all bipedal humans should. Earth tilts as you watch the one who laughed move forward, blue blanketing him. 

He taps the glass. Exact over the bullseye point of where you stand, reeling, in the glass from his point of view. In intelligent acknowledgment of you.

You two lock spheroid eyes, analyzing each other with hell-bent resolve. Mapping the features of each other in your brain’s fusiform face area so you can recognize each other at later times. His human features settle like all the others before him in your cerebrum. Packaged in the inferior temporal cortex, packaged in the fusiform gyrus. The human visual system that specializes in recognizing faces accepts him. 

‘That is a face. I will recognize it later and recall it as one thing only: a face.’ Just like that, your brain, your fusiform gyrus mails you the annotation. 

A part of you wants to cry and the other wants to puke. You do neither. You react with a different system of your body.

Muscles press your flashlight’s button on and muscles move it up quickly when the second one starts to move closer to the glass. You do it out of fear. And with strange, instant regret. 

The one closest to the glass folds into himself, seething. A webbed, tooth-white-with-green-gradient hand covers his eyes in agony. His other hand slams the tank in a tight fist. It knocks the world back into orientation. You flee the scene with your flashlight swinging wildly back and forth with your sprint. 

This time there is no laughter.

You rush out like they are chasing you, laughing over your shoulders. With a harsh crash to the ground, panting in disbelief, you pull trembling knees towards your stricken face. What the fuck – what the absolute fuck! A carapace cloak falls over your brain to ignore knocking thoughts and rationalization. Wordless beyond three words, they swirl in your head. What the fuck – what the fuck.

Your spine lies on another exhibit. Stingrays lie underneath the aquarium’s sand, sleeping and unaware of you. Part of you knows you will not be able to sleep in the morning. 

“What the fuck.”

You unlock your phone with your face when you get home. 

The lamp glows, allowing your phone to register the face identification. As quickly as the string is pulled on, it is tugged off. Dawn rests against your black-out curtains like zombies pounding on doors sheltering food. Brightness on the screen is kept down to the lowest possible setting. You type the name of where you work into your phone.

‘There has to be information on them. You can’t just have that’ – pale-green faces with matching gold eyes – ‘that living in an aquarium. And if it’s in an aquarium, shouldn't that aquarium be like inside Area 51 or the Oval Office. Anywhere but nowhere!’

You click on the website of your place of employment. The types links are highlighted in white bubbles: GET YOUR TICKETS, WAYS TO SAVE, and ANIMALS UP-CLOSE. Your finger follows the last tab and you come across a Let’s Get Started sheet, asking if you are a member and, if not, to start booking. A colorful curse parts your lips.

You return to the home page. Take in the organization again. Okay, there are some links above too: Visit, Animals & Exhibits, Learn, Research & Conversation, News & Events, Support Us, Shop. 

Gravitating towards Animals & Exhibits, you watch as a list unfurls like a scroll. None of them are unusual animals. From beluga whales to steller sea lions, you are looking at a dead-end list of regular animals which you have passed multiple times on your nightguard route. Aquatic animals whose features do not turn your entire morning full of sleep into restless pacing. 

This is nauseating. For piscine features to be manipulated like that. Sea creatures come in a variety of features that are unique to them; eyes that reveal the innate instinct to survive above compassion or companionship, dorsal fins that branch off their body like tiny mountains, or those puckering lips that circle to suction fish-feed from the surface of their tanks. Those features you can compartmentalize with the aquarium you work with well. They belong there with the other undersea creatures. Your heart pangs in disgust.

This is immoral. For human features to be manipulated like that. A face you might see walking out of a movie theater, hand in hand with his girlfriend. A face you could have the possibility of getting to know if you were not a college dropout; someone in your biology or english elective or calculus class that would ask for help with a certain question. Staring into that man’s left umber eye and right gold eye, you realized how all those features made him human. Your heart pangs in sympathy. 

This is? You take a tranquil breath that soothes you like medicine from an inhaler, and the next thought sets your world back on the correct axis. This is out of your paygrade.

You return because, fucking, of course you do. A job is equivalent to a life. You experience less hardships when you have a good job – which you thankfully do. You have a good job that you must keep.  

One: legally, graveyard shifts pay more than others in your state. Two: it was ideal for the degenerative disease you have. Three: “I need money. Money is good. I need money. Money is good. I need money. Money is good. I need money. Money –'' There have certainly been better mantras sung in your car; though, this melody keeps you sane. Most importantly, it keeps your foot steady on the accelerator. So with three very good reasons – really just two overlapping ones and a single unique one – you return to work the next day like nothing is wrong. 

Thus, you are going to ignore it. Thus, “I’m going to ignore it,” you tell yourself. Thus, you are going to stand in front of the oval-shaped room’s door for the larger half of thirty minutes, studying the steel. Ah, this is far from ignoring it.

It is just … absent of sentimentality, you know that they are only fish. Fish that you see on guys’ dating profiles, fish that you eat with a medley of dipping sauces, fish that shit in the very water they swim in. You are no PETA advocate that will say fish are like the monkeys of the ocean, learning to use rudimentary tools and are sophisticatedly smart because they form social groups. However, despite this, there is a tiny pebble in the river that manages to disrupt the entire flow; the pebble wants you to apologize to them.

Which is outlandish and pure insanity!!

Which is really why you should not push the door open with your hand. And, which is why you glare at your traitorous fingers and listen to the creak of an opening door, bemoaning how utterly stupid you are to be opening this Pandora box of possibilities.

You let the flashlight sway once in an overarching cut across the room. Then, you point it at the ground and squint at the aquarium again. Besides a few layering shades of ebony speckled with blue, there is really not much for you to distinguish in the stomach of shadow. Putting yourself on an even playing field, you flick off your flashlight and step forward. 

Feet shuffle inch by inch. Looking straight, your acuity of vision decreases bar by bar. Gravity shifts like a restless faultline has awoken under your feet. You want to run away while you walk forward.

When you touch a hand to the frigid glass, you finally feel steady again. Once more, your exhale makes itself physical in a small cloud on the tip of your nose. The temperature is graciously grounding. 

“I’m okay,” you remind yourself. You blink to stabilize your vision.

Apologize to the fish then you can finally leave. Simple enough.

Yet, as you wait and squint, no glowing eyes emerge in the dark. You hold yourself there, waiting for just a flicker of motion in what seems like everlasting comatose. 

This is pointless. Why am I even here? I doubt they remember my face, much less hold a grudge over it. Fuck, why did I let myself get sentimental over some eldritch homunculus that is an affront to biological evolution! Why aren’t they at Area 51 or the Oval Office – why did faith push them here?

Inner seething concluded, you turn your flashlight on and the room brightens. For a split second, your face lies its reflection on glass with a resentful aura. You maneuver light towards the door with determination. Your body follows, making a hasty turn towards your exit. There are rounds around the aquarium to be made, iced frappuccinos in the breakroom you want to drink, and momental, life-altering plots to be ignored forever.

Until the glass behind you thuds in tension-raising noise like when a bird hits window-panes with little to no warning.

Breath caught in your throat, you whirl around to make eye contact with him. He wears such a handsome face, one that could belong to a heartthrob actor if not marred by the fins replacing his ears and the mossy green hue of his skin. His playful inquisitive eyes are entirely human in shape and structure; the black pupil and then the color ring of an iris. Too bad they too are disfigured by rare and nauseating colors, olive-umber and gold. 

That right eye reminds you of lighthouses on the coast. Captains are not supposed to stir towards lighthouses; they avoid the light, even if it carries a certain warmth. Why is he looking at you so warmly?

Somehow, you just manage to catch out of the corner of your eye the motion of his hand. An acute nail points down at your beaming flashlight which imprints a halo of light on the carpet floor. Then, he raises his hand up to around his shoulder. His fingers move in the starting shape of someone about to play thumb-war before he starts to move his thumb up and down. Clicking an imaginary button, signaling for you to turn off your flashlight.

Stunned, you numbly do. Light is pulled and magnetized back into the pen’s surface, like an object beamed up into a spacecraft, at a speed unseeable to the human eye. The eye contact between you two is almost an intense lip-lock that both of you cannot part with. 

This is one you shined the flashlight at. Right into those encapsulating eyes. The right one is yellow like liquid spilling out of a pineapple. Bright and playful.

“I- I uh,” you fumble with your apology. He probably won’t understand a word. You purse your lips nervously. Are there any words in the English language that can package up your sympathies from homo sapien to fish; is opening your mouth even worth it? “I wuh-wanted to –.”

Your apology withers when the eel-mer starts to tap on the glass. 

Intentionally, you listen. Yet irrationally, you expect to see or hear more Morse Code. Perhaps it is his anthropoid features that misled you to the conclusion that he might know the coded language. With a needle-hook nail, he taps a rhythm. 

It’s nothing though? The letters are gibberish, with even the number 5 sitting pretty between an O and a C. Of course it is not a code. Coming to your senses, you doubt he could even understand your apology if you gave it to him. There is a fine line drawn in the aquarium’s sand: fish and humans are not equal, one is more intelligent.

With some infinite patience, the fish taps the glass again. You listen and recognize it as the exact same taps and pauses from before.

“This is ridiculous,” you mutter under your breath. You hold eye contact, scrutinizing him. So used to having zero company, you surmise aloud, “I must be so sleep-deprived and loopy that I dreamed you up … A piece of undigested beef like Scrooge said.” As if to solidify his independent self and independent thinking in your solipsistic world, he taps the rhythm again.

This time – you think because of the repetition – you finally understand why he is tapping. It almost sends you flat on your ass once more. 

Oh. You throw a hand up to your mouth, faintly covering up a disbelieving laugh of joint horror and amusement. Disbelief crystallizes itself in the air; a tiny cloud of your reeling mind dissolves in front of you as you drop your numb hand. “Hah.”

The fish taps a nursery rhyme. One you know from kindergarten. One you would clap the rhythm of with your hands. You remember vaguely the pattern you’d move your hands to play with another child. The vague lingering sense of being hushed and secretive while playing your little singing games, giggling in the back of the classroom, bites your goosebumped flesh. 

How appropriate for a man trapped in an aquarium to know the nursery rhyme A Sailor Went to Sea. He does it again, the lyrics plucked from the cobwebs of your memory: A sailor went to sea, sea, sea; to see what she could see, see, see; but all that she could see, see, see; was the bottom of the deep blue sea, sea, sea. 

You don’t know fully how well your sight would fare in the bottom of the deep blue sea, sea, sea. Still, with a hesitant squirm, you approach the frigid glass. The man inside the aquarium waits this time rather than launching right back into tapping.

Raising your arm, you make certain to dig your nails into your palm. A little reality-checking pinch never hurt anyone. One of those pallid nails rises up and taps back. Feeling like you are the spinning ballerina, you listen to the melody of this Pandora box plays unchained and uncaged in the ice cold air:

A sailor went to sea, sea, sea

To see what she could see, see, see

But all that she could see, see, see

Was the bottom of the deep blue sea, sea, sea

There is no way to get around it. The third shift is lonely. Here in this aquarium? They only require one person to clean all the tanks, turn off decorative filters, and supervise aquatic life. That sole person has been you. With an iced frappuccino and penlight as your pirate’s sword and hooked hand, you have managed the task of protecting this vessel well.

Just because of your longevity of working as a third shifter, it does not make it come easy. Two tabs in your eighteen open Safari tabs are on articles about coping with night work. Coping with solitude when the entire world works in the opposite of you. One article details trying to stay on top of social interactions. All these shifting hours have been mistakenly used up. As you move through hallways like a haunting shark, you roll in your mind all the lost opportunities and all the regrets of having people in your life that you could’ve formed relationships with but never did.

Your metaphorical ailment has been sleep apnea. Eye scorned. Unable to catch your breath. You've been awake for years with no company. Along with being alone, you have been so achingly tired. Circadian rhythms in a body never change.

Your friend plays well in rhythms. The instrument of his disposition is easy to read after a month of ‘knowing’ each other. He has the attitude of a drummer. 

It is hard to get yourself used to his existence at first; he remains uncaring to your fretting. Lacking melodies or harmonies, he seems like the type that would rather keep things easy and simple than embellish. 

You come to visit? He wants to play. You’re too exhausted to play? He can entertain himself. What you have is very plain sailing and hardly involves any talking unless you start it. Besides, he is still just a fish and thus cannot converse with you. 

He really enjoys tapping on the glass. He plays a variety of rhythms; ones you do not know then, very strangely, some that you do know. As night by night moves along in time’s steady march, you grow comfortable enough to play back. He will play a rhythm only once, you copy it back with aid from your memory. You have even started to show him music on your phone, seeing how quickly he can pick up on certain beats and mimic them for himself.

Sometimes though, all he wants to do is simply listen. Which is activity the two of you share in tonight, absent of that third member who you are sure is hiding deeper among the burrows and the oscillating, five ribbed kelp. That distant drummer in your phone floods the cold room with music.

A small booklet covers your heart as you lie wistful. The floor is rough cement. There is no better place to lounge though. Underneath your head, a furry gray seal pup you borrowed from the toy store acts as your pillow. You try to think of yourself weightless like you are in water as you remain close-eyed and contemplative.

Like a siren call, music slithers out of the bottom of your phone’s speakers. Legs crossed over one another, you briefly tap your foot along to the rhythm that you are sure your friend is enjoying. “Look for reeeflections, in yo-our face; canine devotioo-ton, time can’t erase; Out on the cor-ner or locked in your room; I never buh-lieve them and I never assume-uh!”

Speaking of your friend, you have not bothered to check on him in a while. One of your diseased eyes peels open. Face held in a wink, you estimate if your friend is close enough to the glass that you should be able to see him clearly enough despite all the darkness. 

You do not expect him to be lounging right there beside you. It gives you a little shock of surprise. A moment passes by and that feeling suddenly intensifies to a shock of the heart. Not in a romantic way but in the way of a death row prisoner being electrified to death. 

You bolt upright, skull and hair flying off the seal pup plushie. Prescription sunglasses tilt down from their forehead perch, landing crookedly on your nose. The creature waves a sharp set of gradient-covered claws in your face. The only reason that your electric heart runs above its normal BPM is because that glowing lighthouse-esque eye is on the left side rather than the right.

“It’s you.” The creature, who you have not been becoming friendly with for an entire month, smiles at you and your shocked voice.

Though you are certain he has been watching you – not just while you were resting your eyes on the ground for a much needed cat nap, but for the entirety of these thirty-one nights – his eyes still flutter around the space where you sit in observation. He takes in each individual item around you like trying to find certain objects in spot-the-difference puzzles. After a moment, you ask while pointing to your phone, “Do you not like the music?” His wandering eyes are magnetized to your face when you address him.

Hell, they are intense. Intenser than any eyes you have really looked in before, rivaling even the strictest teachers you had or the meanest secretaries you have known. The colors in his gold and umber iris swirl like tiny galaxies of brown dust and broken stars. Intelligent eyes like those are daunting and, thus, terrifying to level your gaze with.

Despite knowing you will not get an answer, you march on in your one-sided conversation, “I get it that music isn’t everybody’s thing. Does it disturb you?” You wait. The newcomer does not talk either. “Ah, not a fan. I get it.”

You may receive no verbal answer, however you sense he does not want to play patty-cake through a sheet of reinforced aquarium glass. “Whatever yooo-u dooo-oh, don’t tell anyone; whatever yooo-u dooo-oh, don’t tell –” The song cuts off as you press the pause button.

“I should have been more considerate,” you apologize, able to steadily carry on this solo because you have grown used to it. You do talk a lot to the other fish. Almost in the same way one can carry on an unbalanced conversation with a pet cat or dog. “You just swim over to let me know and I’ll turn it off. I would never want to disrupt anyone’s sleep.”

‘Just like I would never again want to shine a light in anyone’s eyes.’ You still regret that with each fiber of your being.

For a silent moment, you two observe each other. Though you are a hundred percent certain this is not his first time scrutinizing you. You realize his hair is a mirror-flip reflection of the other fish’s just as he raises one of his hands. 

Maybe he is like the other fish. Despite not giving the impression of a drummer, he might still want to play that rudimentary game of patty cake where you two match and copy each other’s rhythm. Perhaps it is all their fish brains can comprehend. Even though his eyes might seem intelligent, he is nothing more than a piscine creature. However, that thought stalls when a single, black-dyed claw reaches up to his own throat, tapping it delicately.

“Hm?” You tilt your head curiously. 

In response, he takes his index and middle finger and taps once more his own throat. Then, he takes those fingers and depresses them over the reinforced sheets of glass. 

“Do you want me to,” you trail off, eyes stuttering over the items at your disposal. “I can’t sing if that’s what you’re getting at. I’m no singer.”

 Eyes, one of them full of shattered stars and the other full of blown-up planets, stare on. Unchanging and showing you no inclination of what he wants you to do. The other fish will at least whine, squint, or show joy if he thinks whatever words your vocal cords stretch into will entertain him. “Though, I could,” you trail off again.

Trailing off is an awful habit of yours. You rarely can make full, complete conversation after almost half a decade of night shifts. However, those intense eyes encourage you to go on. “I could read to you?” Your fingers point towards the booklet that had fallen off your chest. “If you want?”

Once again, no answer. But, at least you are not staring alone at your desolate reflection. His figure behind the glass – the yellow eye on his left side watching each of your body’s movements – is so very real and alive. At least, you are not alone this time. Though, the company is unorthodox biologically.

“Reading … I can do that.” Only for a little while though. Eventually, your eyes will start to blur at the tiny scripture. However, as you pick up the book and place it in your lap, the first line is big enough that you can read it easily, “Once upon a time –”

As a wedding gift, Pandora received a box from Zeus. Though gifts by definition are simply something given from person to person, the word gift carries with it a subliminal, secondary definition. Gifts are to typically be opened.

Acting against that thought, Zeus warned Pandora to never open the box. You never understood that. 

Why would one dangle temptation in front of another’s face? Why even plant an apple tree in the Garden of Eden? Why even craft a box if it should remain shut evermore? Temptation is a seductive thing. It slithers up into a body with shining honey eyes and lures like a hook. Because of this, it is best to keep it under lock and key.

If Zeus really did not want the box opened, he should have kept it as a hidden secret underneath thousands of layer crusts in the mountains.

As the story goes, curious Pandora opens her wedding gift. From it, the four horsemen of Judgement Day leap and gallop out, thick plumes of disease rattle out of the box in shaking coughs, and envy and greed claws their way out with black, knife fingernails, raping Pandora of her beautiful face and stealing her glittering necklace. Bleeding scratches upon her cheek and lungs filling with disease-ridden smoke, Pandora slams the box shut with a regretful hack. 

Only one thing remains in Pandora’s box. Hope remains trapped inside the wedding gift. Alone, hope paces the perimeters of the box in their curiosity. Marveling at how much room and space they have to stretch out, hope takes a long, peaceful nap for all eternity.

You wish you could take a long, peaceful nap. You have a lot of trouble managing to fall asleep fully without waking up in intervals. When you work against your body’s natural circadian rhythm that is simply what happens.

Today, you have what Doctor Safari’s helpful tabs are telling you is a third shifter headache. To alleviate them you take no pills. Far too smart of an idea to take those. Instead, you take an iced frappuccino out of the break room’s fridge and turn off every single light in the aquarium, down to the blue LEDs that snake on the ceiling.

“Much better,” you sigh to yourself in relief. In nebulous black, your feet carry you to the place where company awaits and has been awaiting for about two months now.

It has been a slow trail of companionship. Progress is not fully linear. Part of you has forgotten how hard it is to socialize after years of isolation. 

To be honest, you feel like a man who has lived up in the mountains alone for years, living and hunting by nomad methods, only to be shown a cellphone as soon as you reach the mountain's descent. However, they must feel the same way. They have lived down in the ocean for years, living and hunting in aquatic methods, only to be brought up and shown the eye of a penlight shining in their face. The three of you are all just struggling along in finding how to make companionship work. 

But God, does it work. You hesitate with it, suddenly remembering the fins as placeholders for ears or the tails under their belly-buttons. Yet, human eyes and smiling lips will restore your content in the next moment. Something about them solves your loneliness.

They may never speak. However, you often have trouble navigating the maze of words.  In the end, you consider them friends in an unease definition of the word.

By the time you make it to Pandora’s box, your coffee is drunk down to the last drop and you use the chilled glass container as an impromptu ice pack across your forehead. Where you come through is not the typical oval-shaped room. Instead, you venture up a tongue of metal steps to the top of their aquarium tank. It is a circle-shaped room. Designed largely like a pool, the only lighting is three spheres on each wall. The room consists of a gaping black hole of water and a slight drop in floor elevation so staff can stand ankle-deep while feeding or caring for them.

At least, you assume. Because the first time curiosity lured you to the top of their tank, your fingers had been nibbled at. Nothing extreme and more like dogs cobbing to show affection, but it still surprised you when the right-gold-eyed one took your hand in his.

Now, you carry along with a plastic bag of treats and tread into the water without hesitation. Walking in the familiar steps of your companionship as you have done night after night. They are eager to see you it seems.

Too bad the world tilts and you are suddenly no longer looking down on them but eye to eye. You realize what has happened with gritted teeth. A careless trip of unbalanced feet, now you sit on hands and knees in inch-deep water.

You also realize something with more horror than before. The prescription sunglasses that were perching on your forehead have been knocked off and are slowly slipping inside the tank’s depths. 

“No, shit!” You cry out before, with one-track-mindlessness, you duck your head underwater like a hungry mallard. 

Your eyes fly open as soon as you submerge yourself. You watch as languid sunglasses drift lower and lower. Ribs tight on the cement floor, you spear out your arm in a panic, missing the edge of the glasses by a finger’s width before they go down further and further.

No, no, no! Those glasses cost a fortune! 

Stupidly, you consider the idea of diving right into the rest of the tank before you realize another thing. It paralyzes you, shocking and binding your heart. The entire sight of the tank is so easy to see. The bottom of the ocean floor is as clear as crystal, enough where you pick out each gradient of sand. It is comparable to being a person putting on their prescription contacts in the morning, everything clearing up with the right correction lens. 

Usually, your vision is always mildly blurry. Enough where you can navigate night to night without any serious medical aid. But that lingering, splitting-headache pain behind your irises dulls like a blanketed sound. 

It allows you to watch clearly as delicate, black fingertips scoop up your ebony pair of sunglasses. 

Relief fills you as the fish with upturned eyes gently brings them up to you. You surface from water just as both fish break the surface too. It dawns on you that you haven’t been this close, eyes parallel to one another with you on your knees. 

No reinforced aquarium glass separates you this time and yet, calmly, you say, “Thank you. I really can’t thank you enough for retrieving those for me.”

A giant grin grows on the one with downturned eyes. Though you hold a hand out to the other, this one seems to think your gratitude is for him for he loops his arms around your neck, squeezing you. He starts to pepper kisses on your cheek, which you suppose resembles how dogs like to lick their owners.

Your outstretched hand never receives the glasses. Instead, the fish with upturned eyes takes to placing your sunglasses back on the perch of your head. The temple tops fit snugly behind your ears. You watch as the fish with shrewdness in his eyes starts to move the tendrils of wet hair out of your face. 

As your hair is tucked and your cheek is kissed, you wonder just once more why faith has brought them to you.

“(Name)?”

You smile at Deuce’s surprised gap. Today, you wear Noir sunglasses. The lenses are as dark as vantablack, refusing to allow any light touch your retinas. Even the artificially colored lights of an aquarium during operating hours is too much for you. 

Deuce is in charge of the photography printing booth today. Twenty or so different families, couples, groups of teens flicker in rows across the screen he stands in front of. 

“You sound almost disappointed.”

“No, no, not at all,” he rushes to amend. “Just haven’t seen you out in –”

“The sun?”

“Yeah, that.”

“Even a vampire needs a change of pace.”

Like an examined showhorse, you show off your plain teeth. No fangs or shark teeth to be found. 

“I’ll tell you though. Driving here? A complete nightmare.” And, it really was. Usually you drive one handed. Your right hand lies on your thigh, tapping along to the rhythm of the radio’s drums. Today, you had to grip the steering wheel with both hands.

“Well, it is a summer weekend after all. Sucks to get stuck in traffic. ” Deuce nods his head in sympathy.

“Ah,” you look to the side. “Actually it was kind of just weird driving with other people on the road.”

Deuce’s eyes brighten in particle understanding. He might not entirely comprehend it but he still goes, “Oooh. Because you’re so used to driving at night.”

It is not that entirely. “Yeah,” you give a small, lying smile. When you remember driving, you remember it like a dream. You drive in a single lane, all alone in your white truck. Bordering you, two lanes of heavy, steady traffic move in succession towards the opposite direction. Going somewhere you are not. 

Your isolated Chevrolet Silverado was so high up on the ground that you felt a bird. The width of your truck was so wide that you felt you were shouldering your way through a crowd. That is only what felt like happened, not reality. “I just felt a little disjointed.”

The photographs on the monitor keep changing in flickers. Your eyes fall on them. Mother with daughter. Boyfriend and girlfriend. Father and mother and only son. Three girl best friends. Grandfather with two girls and one boy. Blank. 

“Did you get your photo taken?” He asks. He must have noticed your gaze. Has to do his job after all. 

“Ah no.”

You look at the empty block of spotlighted blue. Dark cobalt around the edges and white in the center. How many photos do you have of yourself? You feel in that moment … if you ran away somewhere, no one would notice; there’s no photographic evidence that you exist.

“Nah; had to fight to let them let me pass. Oh, it’s just mandatory. Completely free of charge. And then, they started thinking I was insecure or something so they started complimenting me. Had to explain,” you tap the side of your sunglasses in reference, “and then, finally they let me go. So much fuss for just a photo.”

“They’re really that insistent on it?”

You nod. 

“So what brought you out into civilization anyways?”

“Wow, rude.” 

Deuce laughs. You smile strained. Every time you speak, it feels wrong. You are being too mean or not engaging enough. God, why can’t you just talk to someone like a normal person and carry a conversation smoothly? There is no desolate reflection for you to spy on the laptop, just an empty space of spotlighted blue.

“Visiting some friends.” is your reply.

The publicity on them is quiet and hush. So much so that you feel the world has already known about them – two merman pulled from the bottom of the deep sea, sea, sea. It is entirely possible. With how disjointed you are compared to 99.9 % of the population, it is not so far-fetched to think that they have been in the public’s eyes for a long time and wonder over them has died down. 

However, this exhibit is still listed as the first one. Out of how many? Well, you suppose you will find out later if more are to come, if this is going to be a big success. You only found out from working the night shift, seeing the date on the break-room calendar. 

COME SEE, FOR THE FIRST TIME, CREATURES FROM THE BLACK LAGOON! That is the first message you spy on the aquarium walls, following along with the crowd. Must have been put up by the morning crew. In bright letters, strung underneath party streamers, a multitude of phrases bounce and shout. Instead of being in awe over the pictures of them, your mind focuses on each line detailing: unprecedentedly new; for the first time; never seen before!

Yet, no one shrieks in terror at the sight of them in the posters. Even when you and others are filed into the aquarium auditorium, the crowd murmurs to themselves softly instead of shouting. Under the hypnotic spell of voyeurism, everyone seems more anticipatory than agitated.

You fixate your glasses tighter to your face as you scale up metal stairs, looking over your shoulder at the water. This is where they do the sea lion or seals show. You have not seen a single one in an entire decade. Under the shadowed surface, you can spy two serpentine lengths flowing through currents. 

“Bet this whole thing is a scam. We should go back to Disney in Florida next year; it’s warmer there. More stuff to do too.” You cast a glance at the daughter in her early twenties sitting next to her mother before moving further up.

You do not pick the top row but you do pick an isolated section. Sandwiching yourself next to a stone pillar, your butt lands on the rickety metal bench. Just as you are about to readjust your glasses, making sure that sides of the lenses are atom to atom on your skin, you are interrupted by a loud, consecutive ‘woah’ that you are not a part of, that swims through the crowd.

But, you manage to see a glimpse of it just in time.

You are not sure which one of the two it is. Yet, all the same, you watch entranced as one of them breaches that ink pool. Bioluminescence tints his body in glittering blue topazes. It is like watching a shooting star suddenly fly across the dark night skies. 

The porcupine quills of black that make up his fins bend and the dragon tail of sapphire that makes up his lower body arches. Aerodynamic, he flies through the air and manages just in time to snag the large, squirming spider crab that hangs from a ceiling beam on a metal wire. He disappears with the same speed as his appearance, taking with him into the black hole of water his meal.

Yet, before anyone can close their hanging jaws or the water can stop rippling with the impact of the eel-mer diving back under, music blares from the speakers, moving spotlights suddenly slide over the water and crowd, and a man comes out of the backroom and onto the stage.

You are just done wincing from the bright flash of a spotlight surfing over the bench you sit on when the man suddenly exclaims, “How are we all doing?” You stay tight-lipped as the crowd cheers. “C’mon, you can do better than that! How are y’all doing today?” The crowd cheers, claps, and responds in a long Goooood! 

Cringing with shut lips, you suddenly remember why it has been a decade since you watched an aquarium show. The script is always a bit childish. 

“We have two very special guests for you today. The strong guy you saw just a few moments ago was Flotsam. His brother, Jetsam, is here too. Jetsam, why don’t you come out and say hi to everyone.”

You lean forward, enraptured with the sight. Serpentine coils cut through the water, water jetting up with the force of how quickly he swims. Onto the wayward platform that bobs in the black hole, Jetsam pushes his body up onto it. Instead of a pair of flippers, he waves his clawed fingers to the awestruck audience. 

“Flotsam and Jetsam are both eel-mers. Found and rescued from the northern waters, they are the first of their kind and are very excited to show you all what they can do!” Thus, the spectacle begins.

They go through a variety of tricks. From doing a few figure eights in the water, shooting balls into hoops, and even a freeze dance to the music blaring through the speaker, the mixture of tricks they do feels almost infinite. When the staff member rolls out a clownfish mailbox, announcing the birthdays of a few children in the audience, you wonder how long they must have been training. Days upon days of practice drilled into their memory. 

Birthday children come up to the auditorium’s yellow line as the eel-mers hand out little high-fives to them. One child even proclaims, “Ew sticky!” before his dad tickles him under the arms and picks him up, returning to their bench. Even though it is their first show, Flotsam and Jetsam seem so well-versed in social etiquette. 

However, you cannot help but find it a little demeaning. It seems so beneath them to have to perform like this to a leering audience. Sure, the rewards for each trick is generous, a stocky Japanese spider crab tossed and crushed in their razor sharp jaws, but it feels so ignominious. 

Despite the horrified joy swimming through everyone’s gasps and aws, your heart is so sad.

Another round of tricks starts up. This time it involves a dual pair of bongos. As the staff member picks up a squirting spider crab from the cage onstage, he speaks into his echoing earpiece, “Now, our here, Flotsam is an exceptional drummer. We often find him playing something new every morning, completely of his own free experimentation.” Flotsam swims and props himself on stage as the staff member continues, “Today, we’re going to have him show off a skill to you fine folks!”

Your heart buries itself deeper and deeper into sadness. Perhaps, he never was intelligent. Perhaps, he is just another dumb fish. Canine obedience hammered in through reward and punishment, rhythms only learned because it is trained in him. As you two lock eyes, you cannot find anything that would dispute this theory.

You wait, as does everyone else, for Flotsam to start drumming away as promised. In addition, you wait for his eyes to flicker away from your unrecognizable face hidden by your sunglasses. Neither happens.

“A little indecisive today. I understand, there is just so much good music in the world,” the staff member stalls for time. He rips off a crab leg, holding out the reward by Flotsam’s suddenly demure face. “Why don’t we start off with something easy, buddy. A bit of the musical scale. Do-Re-Mi?”

‘You want to watch out for his teeth,’ you think, rubbing your fingers over the little scars you have from his nibbling. They really are such sharp instruments to break through the shell of a Japanese spider crab.

Thoroughly entrenched, the audience watches the repercussions of a box that was supposed to remain closed being opened.

Disbelief ripples through the crowd like one subtle wave. It is the only sound you participate in. Finally, in sync with the crowd of awake people. Someone to your left moans out of a low groan of phantom pain. The volume of interlocking disbelief grows when the staff member raises his hand up into the light. His trembling red hand hovers in front of his face to verify the view, his ring and pinkie finger bitten clean off. 

Poor bastard’s wedding ring is probably sinking down to the bottom of the tank alongside the crab leg that Flotsam spat out.

Volume pitches and rises. A woman screams. Naturally, that rouses up the attendance like puppet strings. The staff member falls on his bottom then crawls backwards. Crawling away from Flotsam like one, big stumbling crab. Since the seatmate to your right is a stone pillar, there is no one to trip over your feet in their rush to leave but you watch hypnotized many individuals shove and trip their way through bodies blocking the stairs leading down to the exits. Then, calmly, you stand on your metal bench to overlook the crowd. 

Flotsam’s eyes are wide as he stares at you. Reminds you of two tunnels branched off in a cave’s stomach. His fusiform gyrus lights up like newly plugged in Christmas lights, recognizing you. The little pea that makes up your fusiform face area– that clocks in every night to a job rarely done, cobwebs on the cubicle's laptop and dust as a seat covering – recognizes him too. 

It already was recognizing him, seeing him as what he really is. Your lips crack open, “Flo -.” Then, you start barreling down the metal steps. 

Weaving in and out of the disjointed crowd, you race down, sometimes landing on the cement floor and sometimes landing on the metal benches in your hopping steps.A shoulder jostles you so harshly that your sunglasses fall off your face. Between rows of benches, they dive to the floor. You trip, trying to make the leap onto a metal bench. The sound you make as you fall onto metal is so tiny in the cacophony. 

The world goes white. It is like flash blindness from a nuclear explosion. 

Tears pour out your eyes. You clap a hand over them in shame and to hide from the bright … too fucking bright … lights. 

When you finally pick up your sunglasses, marks of shoe soles stamped like tattoos on your upper arms and hands, the auditorium is empty of a single soul. Not even they remain swimming in the tank. Someone must have sedated them and dragged them out. You are alone once more.

That night, you dream a dream that is more memory than a mystified fabrication of wonders or terrors. 

Tender like a newborn, you lie on a wafer-thin sheet of paper that unrolls itself from a cylinder like one big, white wave. Perhaps an iceberg is more appropriate. Hospitals are as cold as the arctic. On the paper iceberg, on the fence of girlhood and the fated teenage years, on the tongue of a vivisection, you balance with broken ankles. Under your thin gown, flowing air and goosebump-freckled skin collide. Blue tints your bottom lip.

You are laid down, anticipating future pain.

“Lay down and I will be with you two shortly.” He had said this and nothing more.

The scent at the doctor’s office is ozone with a hint of vanilla. Near your toes, the long neck of a giraffe stretches skyward, painted on the bricks. Under bright, too fucking bright, light, metal tools glitter like slick seashells. You can feel the prescribed numbing droplets in your eyeballs slowly seep in.

You pinch your eyes shut, feeling like there is a cement block lodged and scraping between the bones of your temple. Why wouldn’t they give you something for the pain? When you open them, they are held open by a speculum and hooks like you are nothing past being an animal in a zoo doing your daily checkups. 

Oh, and you are sitting upright on the paper iceberg now.

Must be the dream’s altercations. Time skipping forward in intervals. 

Dreams are always like a pile of bones. The skeleton all jumbled up and disorganized that you move from femur to ulna. You are not graced with a lot of time to think on the analogy as a very big kitchen knife leans towards your pried open eye. 

The muscles in your cheek twitch when it cuts. With the skills of a head-chef slicing an egg, your eye is cut perfectly down the imaginary midline. Both sides are even. 

He scoops out one side of your eye like a person pulling back from a whole cake with a single slice. It is more inky black and sickly gray. The hues of your eye-cake that is. Far from the bright blue or pink frosting of a cake, it stays saturated in montone hues. You always thought an eye would look like the diagrams in school, colorful with reds and blues, but it is a sickly ebon and ashen gray.

The cornea is hard as a freshly cut nail and the half globe of retina slimes in his gloved hand like glue. Now looking at it, it appears the flesh inside an eye reminds you more of a bruised plum’s insides. A muted hue of purple-black rather than full ebon.

It is the lens of your eyes that really captures the doctor’s attention. He takes the half-cut marble in a pair of tweezers. Between those lobster claws of thin steel, your lens which makes up a pupil is rotated back and forth in observation. 

An eye, though entirely soft and vulnerable, has only one hard bit inside like the tough seed of a peach. It can be cut but it will give resistance. With one good eye and half of your other, you watch the hard material between the lobster claws be pinched in and out to test the give and resistance of itself. Steadfast, it does not bend under the squeezes. 

That half-cut pearl glitters.

Time skips again, moving bone to bone like switching channels. Instead of smells and sights, sound takes over the scene. The faint buzzing of the air conditioner as it breathes over the giraffe’s neck. Water oscillating back and forth over rubbing soapy hands cries loud in your ears. Though, faintly, you can hear the blood from your eye that slips down your chin hit the pad of the paper iceberg you sit on.

The tissue in your hand crinkles softly in sound as you wipe away blood tears. In a chair that might as well be across the globe of Earth, your guardian sobs in intervals with a trembling chin. “Guuuh … gah … hu-hu-hugaaah.” You keep soaking up blood, dabbing the tissue against your face as it whispers in light friction. 

After he finishes washing his hands of your sanguine, the doctor intones two words like a priest giving the final prayer at the start of Armageddon, “cone dystrophy.” That is the last sound your ears can bear to hear before you jolt awake.

Your current doctor has given you exactly twenty-one little sheets. Ishihara tests; multiple circles with a number made of circles in the center. They are tests for color blindness. 

That morning, the colors red and orange permanently fuse into one shade. 

You took three nights off work. A little mini-vacation. The first was so you could spend the daylight hours watching the show with Flotsam and Jetsam; the second was so you could attend your doctor’s appointment; the third was so you could clean up what has been neglected in your apartment. Vacations are supposed to relieve the average worker of stress. You find yourself an outlier, once again.

“Blind by thirty? Blind by fucking thirty?” You bundle up the graphic shirt you were trying to fold into a circle and punch your mattress. The pile of already folded shirts tilts and falls in an arch to your right. “That fucking asshole,” you sneer.

Unraveling the graphic-tee-ball, you straighten your hunched posture with a deep sigh. No use taking your frustration out on innocent clothes. The wrinkled shirt joins the tower once you rebuild it. You reach out and grab a pair of socks. Foolishly, you thought organizing your apartment up for a very overdue spring cleaning would help to organize the disorder running rampant in your head. 

Forlorn and desolate, you look at the laundry mountain. Too bad that is far from happening. 

It is just … A person takes a guess at jars full of jelly-beans or what they’re significant other might have made for dinner, those are the true purpose of guessing games. The audacity of a person to guess when someone else is going to blind. You almost tear the sleeve off your cardigan when you pull in from the mountain’s maw. How dare your doctor estimate your finite health with such casualness. 

You suppose it makes sense. The Salvador Dali-esque dream you had the night before, coupled with losing the ability to differentiate between red and orange; all of these were just the bad omens setting up the stage for your doctor’s appointment. 

Mostly a homebody and not a frequent traveler, there aren’t many sights you are dying to see. However, the idea of losing your sight causes you to grieve it prematurely. Mourning the death of yourself. To just wither up inside this box-shaped apartment as a tomb, the thought of that is odious. You shudder and fold a towel.

Across the mattress, you look at your CRT television cloaked in a thin, see-through blanket to dim the lighting. On the square, a blue pick-up truck punches through metal and wooden gating. Even though the movie wrongly uses the sound effect of glass breaking, it is still impactful as you watch the pick-up truck reverse into an open boating harbor connected to the ocean. The whale and little boy harnessed to the back slowly sink in. 

Freeform is playing Free Willy. To be honest, you are just biding time until the Harry Potter marathon starts up. Thank God, this movie is nearing its end because it is putting dangerous thoughts in your head. You just want to see little Daniel Radcliffe under the staircase and be interrupted by commercials every twenty-five minutes.

The orphaned boy pushes the orca whale out to sea. You fold another article of clothing, unsure if it is orange or red. The hope that Pandora kept in her box begs for freedom.

It is an open secret now. That is a little contradictory, if you do say so yourself. 

However, it is the truth. The public now knows them without embellishment. With the shining gandour and seductive metaphorical-lingerie, it comes to their attention that predators are still predators. No matter how human they may look. 

The thought saddens you. Slowly and unsurely, you have been starting to humanize them in your mind. When you wrestle with the locked doorknob of the oval-shaped room, you grow sadder. 

It makes sense though. Flotsam and Jetsam? They should have been kept in the Oval Office or Area 51; instead they were brought to an aquarium in the middle of nowhere, used for publicity. The crux of humanity rears its ugly head. Sharing each fetish and body part to the audience is the sin of being a curious human. Everyone is a voyeur for something. No one can keep their mouth shut nowadays, always needing to post about their lives. So, they brought Flotsam and Jetsam here to do the exact same thing.

To think there was a time when you were disguised by their humanity. And now, it's all you hope to preserve and keep safe. Ascending the stairs to the circular-shaped room, you contemplate if there could ever be an inch of humanity in an animal. As a set of honey eyes peer at you from across the black hole water, you wonder if it is only canine obedience in their faces. 

Two against one, you all take a moment accessing each other. There are no plastic bags of yummy treats hanging from your arms. No thumping rhythms of songs echo on the walls. Instead of familiar friendliness and comfortable companionship, you all seem incredibly wary of each other. 

“Ya can come closer … We wouldn’t hurt ya, Shrimpy.”

Who the fuck said that?

Frozen in disbelief, you can do little besides watch the black hole ripple in violent sprays. A harsh slap echoes off the wall as a clawed hand breaches water only to grab the face with a right gold eye. Both drop under the water as your mind reels, spinning around options like a broken, juiced-up carnival ride. 

You are tired! You are so tired that you must have hallucinated that! Being awake for so long on the night shift … Why, it must be entirely possible to hallucinate every once and a while! An evolved headache of sorts! 

Yes. You grab onto that thought. Those words were hallucinations. Too bad your grip on the thought grows flimsy when Flotsam breaches the water, snarling, “I wanna talk to Shrimpy! Jade, lemme go! Get off!” A clawed hand grips the back of his hair and pulls him right back under.

A vivid hallucination you are having. Yes! A paragon of hallucinations and headaches after so many night shifts!

Despite the fear, you stay rooted in your spot. Not close enough to where the spilling water of the tank touches your shoes but close enough where you can watch the water steadily. Every once in a while, the sound of rocketing water echoes in the room. Dragon tails of green-blue fracture the surface. A clawed hand will rise up like a zombie breaking dirt only to disappear in seconds. Water flies in turrets and towers. 

Maybe because of the fear, you stay in your exact same spot and watch. Things start to calm down eventually. Bubbles pop on the surface like they are conversing under there. But, that is impossible because fish cannot speak.

‘Don’t backtrack (Name),’ you think to yourself. ‘Their entire existence is impossible. It’s been impossible since the beginning. This is just another step into that twilight zone. Another unorthodox secret brought to the surface.’ The thought makes you feel disjointed like a pile of bones.

It had hurt. The day of the show. You do not why but it had hurt to know they weren’t yours alone. That the secret had been open for some time and it was not just you and them. Thus, you stay and wait for them to breach the surface one more time.

They both do simultaneously. Water cutting the visage of the rest of their body from the shoulders down. Red returns to the scene, staining both Flotsam and Jetsam’s faces in thick scratches. You barely get a second to analyze the wounds before Flotsam shouts, “It was haaard, ‘kay? I wanted to tell them the pretty nickname I made for them! And tell them I liked the new rocks they put in our tank!” He pouts childishly. “It’s so borin’ not being able to talk. I got so bored! You’re boring.”

Even when Flotsam snaps his sharp teeth at Jetsam, he remains unpulsed. “Forgive me for trying to look out for your well-being, but both of us agreed in junction that we would under no circumstances talk to humans.”

“But Shrimpy’s different from the rest!”

“Under no circumstances, Floyd.”

“I knooow,” Flotsam? Floyd? whines. Then, his downwards angled eyes slide over your comatose form. An excited grin comes up to his face. “Doesn’t matter now though. Shrimpy!!”

You are barely given a second to gather your thoughts before Floyd barrels towards you. Spindly arms wrap around your neck and suddenly you are down on your knees in an inch of water. The kiss on your cheek this time feels much less like a dog licking to show affection; it resembles more a human kissing you on the cheek which causes you to fluster. 

“Truly, you make things so difficult at times,” Jetsam? Jade? tuts. The sound of him swimming through the water draws closer. His deep timbre sends a cardiogenic shock through your ribcage as he addresses, “I do apologize for my brother. He was a bit desolate without you here the past two nights.”

For some reason, you wonder how Jade felt in your absence too. Hands holding onto Floyd’s upper arms for a semblance of balance, you reply, “Uh, I took — I took a vacation.” The words feel like marshmallows rolling off your tongue. Gluttonous, fluffy, unreal with their texture. This really is happening, and you have to come to terms with it.

“Told ya it wasn’t because they were scared of us.”

“I never made such a connection. Merely hypothesizing.”

“Mmh, hypothesizin’ my ass,” Floyd grins as he turns to … sniff your hair?

Pushing him away to gain a bit of distance, you address the one you find the least distracted of the two. “You — You can talk? Why — Why didn’t you say anything to me before?” The companionship you had? Was it truly so fragile that you two had to keep secrets from one another?

“Well, you see, (Name),” — your name is so tantalizing coming from his voice that you feel like you are being resurrected from a heart-attack, defibrillator pounding away on your chest — “it was a matter of safety for my brother and I. If we were to say anything —.”

Floyd interrupts, “Everyone’s kind of a bigmouth buffalo fishy here so we keep ours shut.”

“The day to day conversations of the staff, the chatter from the people who visited us in the daylight hours, the unending gossip. We figured it was best to keep our lips sealed for the time being. Who knows how they would have reacted.”

“Nothing’s better than having a few tricks up your sleeve, Shrimpy.” Finally, you are done being squeezed as Floyd falls back into his tank. He rests his hands behind his head and floats buoyant.

“It is an epidemic, I fear. Fufu. Secrecy is such a rare trait to find nowadays.” Jade crosses his arms on top of the cement incline that you kneel in, looking at you sweetly. “Almost a lost art of sorts, eroded away after centuries of geological and evolutionary advances.”

Then, ping-ponging back and forth, they start to slip each secret (that others would probably want under lock and key) they’ve heard.

“Your manager’s wife is infertile thus he avoids conversations about children or preschool.”

“Lucas hit a guy with his car two years ago in a hit-and-run. Didn’t kill him but still.”

“Martha’s daughter just had an abortion. She gripes to Tatiana about how to possibly be supportive about this.”

“Ashley doesn’t like her boyfriend and they’re breakin’ up soon.”

“Deuce is going to fail his statistics class if he scores lower than a 95 on his next test.”

“Patrick is proposin’ to his girlfriend on December 1st.”

“We could keep going,” Jade says with a sly grin. “However, I think the point has gotten across.” He trails one fingernail across your thigh and smiles when you do not flinch. “All that useless prattle makes for some divine entertainment. Besides, matching up with more animalistic expectations can mean others are wildly underestimating us. Having the upper hand is better, always.”

Scrutinizing over his wandering fingernail, you ask quietly, “Is that why you attacked that man?” The question is meant for Floyd. Jade pulls his keen nail back all the same.

“Nah,” Floyd does not look at you as he answers, fixated on the ceiling. “It was humiliatin’. Being looked at that way by ya, Shrimpy.”

You blink in surprise. Shame is such a human trait. Born of social circles and social behaviors that are just uniquely tied to the bipedal species you are. The look on Jade’s face seems to agree with the consensus. You watch green-blue muscles glide through the water, simply drifting to a tame current. You watch black fingernails tap on cement in a tiny rhythm. 

Floyd continues, noticing your silence, “Shrimpy’s the only one that talks to us like people. Everyone else just treats us like a spectacle.” 

The heart in your ribcage knocks. You cannot Free Willy the entire aquarium. But, your Chevrolet Silverado has enough room in the bed for a kiddie pool or two.

Faintly, you recall a distant memory, when you read to Jade so many weeks ago, just as you open the oval-shaped room with the stolen key:

“The creatures stung Pandora over and over again and she slammed the lid shut. Epimetheus ran into the room to see why she was crying in pain. Pandora could still hear a voice calling to her from the box, pleading with her to be let out. Epimetheus agreed that nothing inside the box could be worse than the horrors that had already been released, so they opened the lid once more. 

“All that remained in the box was Hope. It fluttered from the box like a beautiful dragonfly, touching the wounds created by the evil creatures, and healing them. Even though Pandora had released pain and suffering upon the world, she had also allowed Hope to follow them.”

For the past decade, photographic evidence of your existence has been nonexistent. You have found yourself to be an outlier; the world operates to a different rhythm that you have not been able to copy, relicate, or even play along to. Living in perpetual sleep apnea of the soul, you have only found true connection with two other people.

The blue ceiling lights are off as is now the new normal. Without the aid of your penlight, you make your way into the space with confident steps. Sunglasses perched on your head, you find that what has been slowly developing has reached the summit of itself. An impromptu, unorthodox Free Willy plagiarism.

The dark is easier than ever to see through tonight. You smile back when they smile at you. 

Floyd is curled up close to the glass, calling for your undivided attention with his placement. Subdued yet stealthy as ever, Jade lingers behind yet close enough to be seen. Floyd crosses his body across the glass-canvas up and to your right. Jade crosses his body to your left, floating demurely lower. 

The glass-canvas is painted with a few smudges of handprints. Some are from yourself and others from the only and only drummer. He depresses his dominant hand on the glass, leaning in close. His right hand waves up in dark waters in a fervent, warm greeting. His excitement to see you is palpable. You raise your own. 

Both of their eyes shine like spotlights. The only light that you have looked into and found it does not hurt. Jade’s anticipatory smile slithers onto your face in a perfect mimic. You are going to rob the aquarium of those glittering gold dragonfly eyes. Tomorrow, there will be nothing for the staff or customers to find in nebulous darkness. 

Nothing. Nothing but their desolate reflection.

[fuctacles]

The first one of many

for @stevieweek Day 4: Special Outfit + first dress + fantasy and for @steddiemicrofic "one" G | 1111 | no cw | ren-faire, pre-relationship, transfem Stevie, smitten Eddie | Ao3 Stevie Week: Day 1 | Day 2 (art) | Day 3 (art) | Day 4 | Day 5 | Day 6 | Day 7

"Do you like this one?"

Eddie appears by her side so abruptly, she jumps out of her skin. He smiles apologetically.

"Sorry," he says, but doesn't let himself be distracted. He reaches out to touch the sleeve of the dress Stevie's been eyeing.

It's yellow and white, with a floral pattern and a square neckline. The sleeves are slightly puffy, and the corset can be laced on the front for adjustment. It's one of the flashier ones at the stall, but Eddie wouldn't expect anything less from the girl standing next to him.

He's still surprised she agreed to come with them, to for a few days taste and touch the world her friends love so much. She told him earlier, that she liked everyone's costumes, but it's the first time anything has captured her attention like this.

"Do you want to try it on?" he asks.

"No, that's okay." She shakes her head immediately, but he won't be having it.

"Come on, we're here to have fun, all of us. And if trying on dresses is fun for you, then let's do it!" he encourages her, putting his infectious enthusiasm into the words.

She's still hesitant, but he can tell the garment in front of them is like a siren's call.

"I don't know..."

Dustin bumps into them while eyeing some of the leatherwork displayed nearby, and Eddie holds his breath, hoping it's one of these times his lack of filter is helpful. The boy looks at his friends and the garment they're facing.

"You guys buying a dress?"

"No," says Steve.

"Maybe," says Eddie.

Dustin studies the dress with his judgmental eyes, gaze darting from it to Stevie and back again.

"You should at least try it. It's your color," he says, before walking away.

Eddie turns to his friend triumphantly.

"Well?" he grins. He can see in her eyes that she wants to but is having a hard time admitting it.

"I guess?" she says eventually. "I mean, it's just for fun, right?"

"Of course!" Eddie quickly flags down the seller, before she can change her mind. "Excuse me, good sir! Is there somewhere we can try it on?"

Which ends up with them ushered to the back of the stall, with instructions on how to operate all of the dress's clasps and lacings.

"I'll wait here. Tell me if you need any help," Eddie says before pushing his friend behind the partition, dress in her hand.

He can hear the rustle of fabric behind the heavy curtain, Stevie's clothes dropping heavily to the grass beneath while he's doing his best not to think about her undressing. She's cursing and huffing while pulling on the new dress and it helps to quell his nasty thoughts a bit. And then everything goes silent.

"Stevie?" He frowns. "You alright there?"

"Yeah," she answers, but it's so tiny he can barely hear it.

"Can I come in?"

"Uh-huh."

He pushes the edge of the green fabric aside and slips inside the little alcove. In the tight space, Stevie is staring in a full-body mirror, hands smoothing down her hips, pulling her hair forward, pushing up her breasts.

Eddie finds himself enchanted by her, not for the first time.

"You look beautiful," he says.

"You think so?"

"Yeah. Though, your corset lacing needs some practice." She huffs at that. "Can I?"

The way she turns to face him, full of trust, makes his heart melt and slide down his ribs.

Delicately and trying not to touch her chest, like a true gentleman, he unlaces the corset to tighten it at the waist. Her gasp makes him bite his lip painfully.

"Sorry."

"No, it's fine. You can go a bit tighter."

They work together until her waist and hips make a beautiful curve, and her tiny breasts are pushed up in a flattering way. She seems to be especially fixated on them, on the bit of skin peeking out from the low neckline.

Eddie can share that sentiment.

"Thank you," she whispers once she's facing the mirror again, fingers tracing the newfound shape of her body.

"There's nothing to thank me for, you're just naturally beautiful." Eddie smiles, reaching out to tug her hair forward again, so it falls against the bare skin of her collarbones. The sight makes his mouth go dry so he decides to move his thoughts elsewhere. "I think it's the first time I've seen you in a dress."

Stevie hums.

"That's because I don't have one."

"Huh?"

"I've tried on Nancy's or my mother's, but I don't have one of my own," she clarifies with a shrug.

"That's unthinkable," Eddie declares. "We're getting it." The thought that her first dress could be a nerdy, ren-faire one, makes his stomach flip.

"It's too expensive." She shakes her head, but he can see she's sad about it. "I can get a dress at the mall for a third of this price."

Eddie nods along.

"Yes, you could get a cheap, boring rat mall dress," he agrees. "Or you could buy one of a kind, handmade with passion and care, worthy of a princess."

Watching her cheeks flush is worth the risk of exposing his feelings.

"Where would I even wear it?" she keeps digging her heels in the ground. And, while she has a point...

"Here, for starters. And any other ren-faire I'll take you to just so I can show off how pretty you are."

With the way she looks up at him, she might already know.

He just hopes he has enough money. He pulls out his wallet and Stevie frowns.

"You're not getting it for me."

"Oh, I am." He hopes he is, at least. In a rush of bravery, he smiles to add, "Consider it my first courting gift," and leaves before she can protest.

When he's counting his money and wonders who he can beg for a loan, Dustin approaches him with a wad of cash.

"I saw the price earlier and figured you guys could need it." He smiles with that self-satisfied smirk of his, but for once, Eddie doesn't mind.

He hands the money to the merchant and runs back to Stevie.

"Hey, does it count as a courting gift if the twerps pitched in?" he asks through the partition and is promptly pulled inside.

"Are you serious about the courting?" Stevie asks, with her face so close to Eddie's, he has trouble processing her words.

"Deadly," he whispers, hoping they're on the same page.

"Is there, like, a nerdy ritual I have to follow for it?" she asks.

"Uh, a kiss would be nice," he says. Pleads.

She smiles and leans in.

[thesummerestsolstice]

Hair Headcanons for the Feanorians:

Maedhros: Got Nerdanel's red hair, but filtered through Finwean Hair Magic™️, so instead of looking like normal red hair it looks like flickering flames, with deeper red tones and golden orange highlights, especially under Laurelin. After Angband, the gray streaks in his hair add the illusion of smoke. On the battlefield of Beleriand, he wears his fiery hair long and loose, almost an invitation to try and grab it. Taking that invitation is usually the last mistake his enemies ever make.

Maglor: Has dark, wavy hair with iridescent blue tones inherited from Feanor. Sometimes he puts some blue sparkle in it to really enhance the effect. It's always perfectly wavy and bouncy, and often tied into complicated up-dos for his appearances in Valinorean theaters and concert halls. His hair remains suspiciously luscious and styled even after thousands of years of being a beach hermit. His clothes are tattered, his skin is dirty, his eyes are bloodshot, but somehow, even the driftwood in his hair looks fresh and artistic.

Celegorm: He inherited his albinism from Miriel, and like her, has very light blonde/white hair. But because of the Finwean Hair Magic™️ his light hair actually has opalescent tones– light blues, greens, pinks, and oranges can all be seen in it from different angles. This is part of why he's called "the fair," his hair is light, but it's also as fair and beautiful as a polished opal.

Caranthir: Dark, relatively straight hair, with iridescent purple tones inherited from Feanor. A tangle has never been spotted in it, and he often keeps it up to avoid even the slightest chance of it getting dirty. He particularly appreciates the purple undertones in Beleriand, where purple dye is associated with luxury– it makes him look even richer than he already is. (tax fraud pays very, very well)

Curufin: Has hair very much like Feanor's, but his undertones are mostly on the green/teal side. Like Feanor, his hair doesn't really burn, even when it ends up in the forge fires, and as a result, he actually invents a kind of prototype curling iron and uses it to style his hair, since the heat doesn't damage it. He eventually abandons the curling iron, only for a young Celebrimbor to find it a few centuries later.

Amras: He's the darker haired one of the twins, and his hair is more reddish-brown than properly red. It's very shiny, and curly, and has very deep, rich colors. After Losgar, the ends of it always look dark and scorched.

Amrod: He's the lighter haired one of the twins, with hair that's more orange. It's bushy, shiny, and only Finwean Hair Magic™️ keeps it from being an absolute nightmare to brush. After he almost burns at Losgar, it becomes significantly darker, and loses some of its shine. Amrod always wore his hair long in Valinor, but typically wears it pretty short in Beleriand.

The headcanons for Maglor, Caranthir, and Curufin here are largely based on Sesamenom's wonderful art.

See headcanons for Finwe and his kids here.

[genericpuff]

Are there any things you like about LO? Or is it all shit to you. Personally, I think it could be a great storyline with the right execution, but a lot of the stuff and plot is unnecessary (I.e. Hades being thousands of years older than Kore and making characters fall in love with people they are racist/classist towards 😨😨)

Oh there are LOADS of things that I liked and still enjoy about LO despite all the shit I've thrown at it. I love love LOVE a lot of the older art-

Like, damn, that shit is so charming! I swear I had that Tower 4 panel as my phone background for like, 2 years LOL

Rachel had a really strong understanding of shape language, composition, color theory, and expressive linework in a way that was really appealing and unique at the time, but along the way it was just lost, undoubtedly due to her taking more of a backseat in the character art process and leaving it to her assistants.

That said, there's a lot of... not so charming, too.

I think, on the one hand, there's a lot to appreciate in the old art that shouldn't be rejected as we criticize this series. At the end of the day, as much as we riff on it, many of us did love this series at one point in time, so we shouldn't cringe at what it used to make us feel or pretend like we were ever above it when we were very much lost in it for ages before it went down the tubes.

But there is a lot to be said about the effects of rose-colored glasses, and how LO was never perfect. The reality is that much of Rachel's work is exemplified by the odd beautiful thing that sticks in our memories, but when we actually go back to relive those memories, we find they're all strung together by some not so beautiful stuff that makes us go 'wait what???'

Case in point, with LO we remember beautiful compositions like this:

But then within those same episodes we get:

And it's like oh. Yikes.

Aside from the art, there was also the SA plot as well as the Act of Wrath. The SA plot felt really special to me at the time because I was someone who was once in Persephone's shoes, being pressured into sex that I wasn't ready for but wasn't capable of saying no to. I can appreciate what Rachel was trying to do with that plot, but over time it became clear that she wasn't committed to seeing that plotline through and so I kind of just dropped my expectations for it entirely.

That said, it wasn't the SA plotline that set me off. I had good faith in that one still that it would be addressed eventually. It was the Act of Wrath plotline that did me in. The premise of it was totally my cup of tea in the way of "quirky character has a dark evil backstory!" which is shit that I absolutely LOVE, but then when the "twist" happened that Eris was the one to give her wrath, that was literally when I had my almost "canon event" moment of realizing "wait... I don't think Rachel knows what she's doing." And then it was just all downhill from there. The S2 finale sealed my fate LOL

All that said, as much as my brain is often defaulting to "ew! gross! bad!!!" in all honesty I do still appreciate what LO meant to be back when I still enjoyed it. It meant enough to me that I just couldn't let it the fuck go when it started to go downhill, so much so that I started making my own version of it! And that's something that sets it apart so much more from other comics I really don't like anymore (or comics I never liked to begin with) like Down to Earth, The Kiss Bet, Let's Play, etc. where I really can't even be bothered to think about them let alone talk about them to the extent I do about LO. I may be full of beans when it comes to LO, but I'd still rather be talking about it and all its failings and what it used to mean to me than about any of those other works. I loved it enough to still want it in my life and that's what Rekindled has accomplished for me.

[zerobasekazuha]

“Shhh quiet we can’t get caught!”

Pairing: AMAB Venture x Fem reader

Warnings: Oral (fem giving) cursing

Genre: Fluff/Smut

A/N: So I came across this tweet in Twitter from the same user who inspired me to do the pizza person Venture. They have such amazing ideas and y’all should def follow the twitter @/staplesquid thank you for the ideas!!

Who told Sloan that this would be a great idea?Oh right, Y/n did. So how did they get stuck in this situation where they are body to body pressed against their best friend in between a very small alleyway with their hand over her mouth? And to top it off with police who are looking for them. Well it started earlier on that day..

Y/n was an artist. They used many different materials and techniques. Her art style changed ever so often. This point in time it was graffiti. She brought multiple cans in different colors. She researched spots in town and even asked around on online forums and eventually came across the perfect spot. However it was in one of the most crime ridden spots in the city. And with no other choice she contacted Sloan to come with her.

Sloan just finished in the shower their hair was dripping wet as the windows and the mirror was fogged up. They noticed their phone light up, quickly turning down the music they had blasting then right back up to the main volume. It was a text message. They took a quick glance at it only reading the words city and alone.

It alerted them and they quickly picked up their phone trying not to drop it in the toilet as well before opening it and reading over the text. They took a sigh of relief when they read the entire text. Y/n asked if they wanted to go to a certain part of the city together because she didn’t want to go alone. They quickly sent a text saying that they would and they would be finished getting ready.

Y/n told them to wear baggy clothing and that she had a gas mask for them. And soon enough there they were taking the number 67 bus down to the worst part of the city. They looked unsuspecting enough. Two people wearing baggy clothing, one with a larger tote bag and the other carrying yet a smaller one. Both however wearing black masks. Any normal person would think they were a couple. Eventually they got off at a stop down the street from where the location was.

It seemed to be a poverty stricken street. There were deteriorating homes and people sleeping outside. Depressing to look at. The streets were also a mess with all kinds of trash around. Sloane looked at Y/n and wondered why the hell she was bringing them out here. “So…Sketchy part of town…? Going to explain why we’re out here?” They asked not knowing what was even in her tote bag.

“You know how I mentioned I wanted to do something new with my art?” Y/n asked smiling at them. They nodded wondering what point she was getting at. “Well we’re going to do some graffiti.” She said quieter than before. Sloan was completely surprised. They didn’t expect this from her. Especially considering that graffiti was a crime in their city. They continued walking with Y/n with their heart pounding in their chest as it progressively seemed to get darker.

The two ended up at an abandoned subway. Ever since the city built new lines older ones like these got left behind to just deteriorate. Little did they know the cameras were still in tact. Walking past all the other pieces if art Y/n stopped them at a close enough blank canvas. She set down her tote bag and the cans seemed to clatter inside as she opened the zipper.

“Take this.” She tossed Sloan one of the gas masks. Making sure that they changed the masks in the dark so nobody could suspect the two. After she turned on the flashlight. Pointing it at the canvas. “So take a can and go nuts.”

They spent around an hour doing what they could all the different colors and layers. Eventually it was an outstanding piece of art that differed all the others there. While Sloan drew mini stick figures. Sloan stood back to admire the painting of what had been made. “You’re such a great artist! How did you ever think of that!?” Y/n smiled under her mask. “Oh just some inspiration.”

But their time to bask in the art was limited. They could hear police sirens in the background. Then footsteps and the sound of a radio got closer and closer. The two ran off, leaving behind the extra spray cans and the flashlight and only took the empty tote bags with them.

The police chased after the two not too close behind them but not to far as well. Sloan hadn’t felt the first rush of adrenaline in forever. They kept running and running turning corners and going any direction to loose them. Sloan then found an alleyway and pulled Y/n in there with them. Pressing their bodies right next to each other and with them covering her mouth.

And that’s how they got there. The two were slowing their breathing as the police walked down close to where they were. She almost began to panic. Sloan could feel it with how she was beginning to hyperventilate. Sloan leaned down to reach her ear. They whispered in it because the last thing they wanted was a felony for abstracting federal property. “Calm down. Hush be quiet before we get caught.” They said slowly but also almost sweet like honey.

Y/n listened to them fixing her breathing and just resting against them. But feeling how close Y/n was to them was so…addicting to them. Of course she’s sat on their lap before when needed but this was different. This was the worst time to be getting aroused but they almost couldn’t help it. They thought only for a split second how sexy it would be to do what they wanted there while also hiding out away from the police. Public indecency and defacing federal property didn’t sound like two terrible charges to them.

Sloan had to think straight. They shook their head as the gas mask rested against their neck. They must have taken it off when they ran. They were thinking about her, until she seemed to be moving against them. Knocking them out of their slight daydream. The friction Sloan was feeling made them clench their jaw just slightly. “What are you doing?!” They whispered trying not to enjoy how it felt.

“It’s just a tight squeeze. My legs are falling asleep.” She whispered back trying to get comfortable. The police footsteps getting closer. She stopped moving, feeling something rest against her. She looked back at Sloan in the darkness. “Really? Now?” She whispered to them. Sloan blushed trying not to look back at her.

“I can’t help it!” Sloan whispered. They covered her mouth once again as they heard the footsteps get closer. Walking right past them. She squirmed in front of them almost on purpose feeling how much harder them seemed to get. In Sloans mind they could only wonder what she was doing to them? Was this to tease them on purpose?

The police seemed to get only slightly farther before stopping and having a conversation. “Those damn kids. Those little fuckers do this all the time. We ain’t gonna catch one.” Said one of the officers kicking a rock into the distance. “Let’s go back to the station. They need to hurry up and demolish this piece of shit so we don’t have to keep going down here.” The other said. Eventually the footsteps and the radio chatter faded. And now it was only the two of them left.

Y/n managed to turn around to look at them. “Okay their gone we should-“ Sloan kissed her. One hand on her waist and the other on the wall to support them. Y/n was surprised but kissed them back. Once Sloan broke away they looked down at her, loosing all sense of rational thought. “No you don’t get to go just yet.”

“W-what but the cops-“ “I don’t care about the cops they’re gone now. You don’t get to do that and act all innocent.” “Do what? I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Very clear lie from Y/n. She knew she was lying. Something about seeing their best friend try to hold back from her is arousing to say the least. In her opinion.

“So how about I show you because you don’t know.” Sloan took her hand pressing it to the bulge that seemed to be proud in front of the cargo pants they wore. Y/n looked down at it then back up at them. “So what?” She asked almost hoping they would give her the green light to do something about it.

“Well genius, you dragged me out here, nearly got both of us a felony…a misdemeanor couldn’t hurt.” Y/n looked around it was dark, nobody would catch them but public indecency isn’t just a misdemeanor. “You mean us being put on a list?” “Oh right. Well it won’t happen if we don’t get caught. You just have to stay quiet.”

It didn’t take long for Sloan to kiss her again, this time much more passionate and deeper. Almost like they were yearning for her all this time without saying anything. But there was something else underlying in the kiss. It was hunger. Their hands first rested on her waist, however they could feel hers pulling them closer in the already cramped alleyway.

Sloan wasn’t even sure they could fully go through with anything here but anything is possible. They had to rush however, it was getting darker and darker and they wouldn’t want to miss the last bus that ran in this area. They could feel Y/n wrap her fingers around their belt loops, unbuttoning the front of their cargos and sliding it down their legs. Sloan almost was at a loss for words.

Feeling her hand palming their boxers made them sharply inhale, their head tilting back against the wall. They were too in bliss to realize that instead of her hand they felt her lips around the tip of their cock.

Each second that passed feeling Y/n take more of them down her throat, the saliva running down the side of her mouth as she looked up at them in the darkness. Sloan grabbed the top of her head squeezing her hair feeling each movement of her tongue on them.

Sloan bit their lip to prevent themselves from moaning. They didn’t want to make more noise than they were supposed to. They took sharp breath before looking down at her, their eyes almost showing how desperate they were. With each moment that passed the closer they got to their release. Almost like it was within grasp.

“Oh please I-I’m going to-“ Y/n pulled back using her hands as she heard Sloan. They couldn’t stop themselves as they came on her hands. They tried to catch their breath as she looked at the mess on her hands.

“So uh…again at my place?” Sloan asked as they walked out the abandoned station together, going back to the bus stop to wait for the next bus. “I don’t see why not.” She added smiling at them before the bus pulled up.

This came out extremely late but I had severe writers block and I had to use that time to do other hobbies. But it’s here like I said it would be!!

[haliteatiger]

Happy Werewolf Wednesday, ya'll! We're serving up a big pot of tea tonight so get those cups ready!

Special thanks to Blackbackedjackal and King for their help in putting this together, editing, and especially to Jackal for being so supportive and encouraging. I'm very much not normally the type to do call-out posts, but people need to be aware of Dogblud, as she has hurt, not only myself, but quite a few others as well, and seems to have somehow gotten away with behaving like this for 20-odd years. I'm of the mind she shouldn't be allowed to do so any more, hence this post.

TL;DR - Beware of Dogblud, aka Ashryn, aka DogofBlud, aka ThatDogMagic. Very, very long post under the cut.

With everything happening with DogBlud and Blackbackedjackal's studio, I felt emboldened to come forward with my own experiences with her. This is something I've been carrying around since it happened roughly 2 years ago. It was one of the main reasons that put me off drawing werewolves, my own characters, or engaging any more in the fandom. I've hinted at it a few times but I've never had the energy to come forward and deal with the fall out. I wanted to move on with the rest of my life because IRL was more important than online drama. And I knew her behavior would come back to bite her sooner or later, regardless of what I did. 

It's been very validating to see that I was right.

It was around the time that Blud and I became friends that I was feeling a bit burnt out on werewolves. I'd been trying to pull together my own werewolf-related project for something close to 12 years. The past 4 years had also been pretty draining on me creatively and socially, as it had for a lot of artists with regards to the pandemic. I also had some IRL things I was dealing with: mainly with my marriage and transitioning between medications to manage my anxiety + bipolar.

Unfortunately, I didn't have the foresight to screenshot everything at the time. I do have logs from back when we roleplayed together. There are several conversations in them but because they were saved as text documents, they're pretty dubious in terms of solid evidence. 

It would have been better if I had taken screenshots as it was happening, rather than just saving the logs. With what I *do* have, however, I feel as though it may be enough to make the point that I'm trying to make, and to exhibit how horrible things got.

I'll provide some context.

I had talked with Blud on and off over the years, and we had always gotten along. We had a lot in common and after we had started talking more, our friendship eventually grew into a collaborative project. We were going to combine our stories and write a comic based on it. We had a lot of discussions on how Blud was reticent to do this in the beginning and how she wanted a contract to be made up so that in the event that something *did* happen, we could both walk away feeling like it was handled fairly.

Honestly, I should have listened to the first alarm that went off in my brain, when, in an act of ominous foreboding she said something along the lines of don't be so sure, it could happen. It was in response to me being like "we're getting along so well and share so much of a bond right now. I can't fathom that being a problem!" 

The contract never materialized. It was something we had decided to do *after* we had put together something of a prototype project to see how well we worked together. It made complete sense to me at the time as we were both eager to focus on the fun parts of writing and drawing together.

It was decided that I would be the lead artist (doing coloring and final lines) while Blud would do everything else (which was inking, layouts, and the majority of the writing). The both of us felt that she had more experience in those areas. I also believed that she had a better knack for it as well. I had felt that she had a better understanding of story structure than myself. And I thought that Blud had felt the same way about my art. That I had the experience to take point on that. 

Since I had collaborated with other artists and writers before, I attempted to approach the project with the same sort of professionalism I always do. Especially the projects that I genuinely thought stood a chance of being published in the future. We had started out trying to get a feel for each other's flows and rhythms. I had expected Blud to try and meet me in the middle of where our processes would potentially differ from one another, so that we could develop a fairly smooth workflow.

I had also expected, according to our discussions on the matter, that we would value each other's opinions on things and take them into consideration. We had such good synchronicity already.

In the beginning, there wasn't any unusual behavior that caught my attention. Blud was a bit uncomfortable with trying out new things but I did my best to accommodate her so that our project could move forward without too much turbulence. She had also mentioned to me before that she was autistic, and since my husband is also autistic, I knew how difficult it could be when it came to adapting to new routines. But when it was time for her to deliver the first set of layouts, it wasn't at all what I expected.

What I had expected was something with margins, clearly marked boxes, and figures that I could do rough lines over. I also expected notes that confirmed what we had discussed earlier about the project; that way I knew what she wanted or if there would be any changes. She took offense to this, feeling like I was violating our agreement. Though Blud did try to give me space with regards to the actual art, and while she would offer criticisms here and there, I trusted her opinion as an artist and as a friend. But apparently that didn't go both ways. In fact, Blud seemed to be offended that I expected more from her.

Blud agreed to concede. She suddenly seemed fine with the changes that I had asked for after seeing the layouts. I guess she was feeling overstimulated by the change and I might have been applying too much of a critical tone to her responses to begin with. I have had to deal with rejection sensitivity throughout my life and it's certainly prompted me to approach what people say to me online with a bit of scrutiny (sometimes too much).

And while I was mildly annoyed, although admittedly I was more concerned with Blud's overall reaction to my asking for clarification about several things in the layouts, I let it go. But it seemed like there was a problem. The majority of my ideas were either rejected or outright overridden with Blud convincing me that my faulty memory had made me unable to remember what we had agreed upon. Or that I might have been misremembering in my own favor.

There was one time where we were discussing a monster's design. Blud had already decided to settle on one design that she had come up with, even as I continued to offer other suggestions. The story was to take place in my setting, so I was under the impression that I got to decide what kind of creatures should populate it. The conversation ended somewhat ambiguously. I had assumed that we'd come to a solid conclusion later. 

I came back the next day and it turned out that we were using her design because that was what we had decided on. "Don't you remember? You really need to do something about that faulty memory of yours, Tek. I can't be doing this for you all the time."

At which point, Blud would go back and meticulously scour the conversation until she managed to find a set of lines that would make it seem as though I had 100% agreed. Even when I tried to explain that I had meant something else, she took it as an affront on her inability to understand nuances due to her autism.

I admit that my memory isn't that greatest at times, but I've never had anyone complain about it before. And none of my friends have ever minded providing reminders to me if I did misremember something incorrectly. We all forget stuff at times, right? It's *still* something that I'm self-conscious about because (like a lot of people with ADHD) my memory seems selective at times. This was, apparently, a problem that I needed to manage. 

And even as I'm remembering these incidents to the best of my ability, I've already spent so much time recounting all of this to friends. I feel confident in my recollection. There are some details that may overlap or become entwined with other things, but it all basically tells the same story. Especially in conjunction with what's been said by others. You're free to take it as hearsay since I do not have screenshots to back this up.

I will mention (since I've been told it's something that Blud has taken particular interest in) that at one point, I did have a crush on her. I was having some problems IRL, and it was nice to have someone whom I felt actually understood me. I also felt like I saw a lot of myself in her. I think that, at one point, I did describe her as the kind of "girlfriend" I would want. Blud seemed to indicate the feeling was mutual.

Between our collaborative partnership and all of the details we shared about our lives, it did feel like an intimate relationship at times. I had no intentions of pursuing it. We were not compatible in our romantic and sexual identities, and I had no intention of leaving my current partner for her.

I had begun to notice red flags, even if I wasn't ready to accept them yet.

I've had experience with abusive relationships in the past but they were in person, and not online. I knew what to look out for and yet I was being willfully ignorant about our friendship. I wanted to give Blud the benefit of the doubt. I wanted the project to work *so* badly that I was willing to work with her increasing demands as the months went by.

I had no idea that those demands would change into, quite literal, temper tantrums. It would then trigger my fawning response which was due to an abusive family situation that I had dealt with before I moved to Canada. The tactic was this: concede to someone until there was a time that they either understood reason or I had the chance to use it against them if necessary.

I started to take screenshots. I wish that I had taken a lot more of them so that everyone could get a better idea of what was happening. I did go back and manage to record the majority of the first outburst. It was the first inkling I had that Blud wasn't playing with a full deck of cards. I knew that that would be one of the first conversations that she would promptly delete. And consequently, I was right.

This assortment of screenshots will exhibit the first serious confrontation that Blud had with me. I am absolutely *not* proud of how I handled this. I was literally panicking at the time and doing whatever I could to get her to calm down. Because I have a temper that can look similar to this in person, I knew that I had to wait until the post-tantrum clarity would hit Blud. I tried my best to not lose my own temper in turn but looking back, I feel that I came off as sounding too timid.

I didn't want to ruin this project.

I wanted to make a comic with an individual that I admired and respected as a fellow artist. And, with me not knowing how to respond, my main priority was to not make things any worse than they already were.

Below is the conversation in its entirety:

I had taken this screenshot on my phone after I had stepped away to compose myself. Blud had handled the confrontation and criticism with a reasonable amount of apprehension. But what had not occurred to me was that I could have said something that would remind her of past experiences with a roleplaying group.

It was something that had evidently scarred Blud for life.

I took away the wrong things from what she had told me, choosing to focus on the aspects of the "betrayal" that had appeared to bother her the most. And in hindsight, I did not see the correlation. I was genuinely apologetic that I had hurt her feelings.

But I *will* critique Blud for her poor handling of the situation. Whether or not I had hurt her feelings, no one is entitled to act like this or claim that this is what attempting to resolve a problem should look like.

I wasn't sure on how to initially respond to Blud. It had been ages since I'd had to deal with someone flying off the handle like that.

The following screenshots are where the conversation picked up, after she had already deleted the above message:

We had weathered the "storm" and after Blud calmed down, she was ready to communicate. There was a part of me that was genuinely sincere when I apologized to her. I did mean it when I said that I had no intentions of hurting her and that I hadn't considered how my statement would sound to her.

I had hoped that this had been a stress response due to factors outside of our collaboration. And especially when I took into account how she had interacted with me in the past. I knew that Blud had a lot going on IRL, and that she had already put a considerable amount of energy into this project.

I had taken her meltdown more personally than she could perceive that I would, because this was something that was acceptable to her. She had a "condition" that would absolve her of these abhorrent meltdowns and I needed to get used to them if we were going to continue working on that project together.

I was shaking the entire time we were typing in the chat.

I was sincere in my responses. I really did want to work things out with Blud and give her the benefit of the doubt. I could have been taking the things that she said too personally or maybe I had been reading too much into the situation. Was there a chance that I could have been misreading her outburst? I tried my best to keep an open mind though I was still somewhat baffled by the fact that she would have meltdowns as often as she did.

I confided in my husband and some other friends about the situation. They were also bewildered by Blud's actions.

By this point, I was struggling with the reality that this collaboration was most likely *not* going to work out but I still wanted to try. I still cared about Blud. We would still hang out together and talk about things like music, our characters, or our stories.

While I did have the foresight to go back and screenshot this section, I wasn't fast enough to get screenshots of everything else that I will be going over. Blud *did* admit to going back and deleting certain exchanges due to a mixture of shame; not wanting to look at them when she would scroll through our conversations. 

In retrospect, it was very telling.

And even after that meltdown, I still enjoyed the friendship that I had with her. I kept my guard up but I was willing to make compromises on her behalf if it resulted in better communication between the two of us. Blud made me promise to immediately tell her if I had a problem with something. I also agreed to keep notes of our conversations.

It worked for the most part.

In the end though, it became apparent that Blud wasn't willing to do the same for me (even after we had an extended conversation about it). I then realized that I had been tasked with basically *managing* her autism for her. I was already busy with my supposedly "bad memory" at the time; and Blud was more than ready to scroll back up through our conversations to cherry-pick a line or two of text to remind me of what was said earlier.

Because, for her, circumstances couldn't ever change. If they did, it would mean that Blud had lost control of the situation and that she was in the wrong. She could *not* be in the wrong. 

And if she was in the wrong? It would take solid evidence, three witnesses, and a court of law to prove it.

She had two other major meltdowns after this. I managed to step away from communicating with her through one of them and I don't remember the other meltdown lasting very long. She immediately deleted the texts of both of those instances before I could take screenshots of them.

It seemed like I could do nothing right when it came to Blud, no matter the lengths I would go to accommodate her. I knew that it was a common tactic used by abusers. I finally accepted that our partnership wasn't going to work out and I began thinking about an exit strategy. The final straw was when she began to expect me to be at her beck and call.

I had promised that I would be there for her, within reason, and I was willing to offer reassurances whenever she would ask me for them. The promise had been made back when we had first started to talk to one another with more frequency, before Blud had shown me her true colors. I would end up completely underestimating just how badly she would need reassurance.

To be frank, I underestimated a lot about Blud in the beginning.

I would end up mentioning that I enjoyed my space in several different conversations with her. That there was a chance that I might be offline for several days so I could take care of things IRL and recharge my social batteries. I'm somewhat of a recluse. And an adult who enjoys things that aren't online.

She said that it was fine.

I became incredibly anxious when I would talk to Blud, especially after her somewhat abrupt change in personality.

I then attempted to put my foot down about boundaries and this is what she had to say:

I decided to walk away for a bit and I came back after I had had some time to think things over. This wasn't healthy for either of us. I wrote a couple of sentences to say goodbye to Blud before I blocked her. I knew that my actions would probably infuriate her. She had told me in the past that she *hated* not being able to have the final word... which she was able to do through email:

“And I'm not letting you pretend you have control over the situation, or the high ground. You distinctly have neither. But since you're determined to stick to your 'principles' on this, I've decided to make it easier for you.”

She thought that she was absolved of all sins just because I had said that I would stand by her at her worst. And at the time that I said that, I had no idea that her worst would be her trying everything possible to protect her boundaries while stomping all over mine. It didn't matter what she said or how often she would apologize when I would confront her. She kept doing it.

I admit that I wasn't perfect in this situation either.

There were times when I was condescending, critical, or downright mean when I talked to Blud because that was the way I had felt when she was talking to me. I soon realized that it didn't matter either way. I could have been using the friendliest tone imaginable and she still would have perceived it as either mocking or dismissive on my end. There were even a few times where I would preface my explanations with an advisory “please know that I am not attacking you and try to read this in an understanding tone,”etc. I would then post an explanation I had spent hours picking at to ensure that there was no way she could misinterpret the intent. Even so, she still read the majority of what I said as criticism and would take it to heart.

I never expected Blud to do something that made her uncomfortable; nor did I expect her to overextend herself when it came to our project. I would go out of my way to make sure everything was fine when we would talk about it. I only expected mutual respect in return.

When we would get into discussions (arguments), she would never attempt to understand my point of view or let me explain myself. It would have made it about me when it should have been about Blud and her needs. She sometimes would agree to come to a compromise about something, but only if I would admit that I was in the wrong.

I know that if Blud was to look at these screenshots, she'd be incredulous that I'm trying to distract from the horrible things that *I* did. And those horrible things that I did? I tried my best to work with her.

It wasn't just her poor teamwork that bothered me. It was her attitude and the lack of respect that she showed me. She would never ask me to clarify something that I said; always assuming that it was a criticism against her. I can only speculate that Blud did not want to hear about how any of this was her fault, like in the email she sent me.

I don't know if I was actually her friend at any point. Friends make efforts to understand one another. Ideally, they’d want their friendships to continue, and they would want everyone to be getting along and having fun. She seemed to actively defy that.

I would argue that things like this don't just happen in a vacuum. There's almost always a reason for such things, but it's honestly a mystery to me as to where this vitriol comes from. I don't know why Blud sees monsters in every word, especially if they come from a  "friend". 

I've seen her viscously mock herself during meltdowns; it seems like she hates herself and expects everyone else to hate her too. I think that she wants it to be the truth, so that it validates the feelings she has about herself. The behavior patterns that I'd been exposed to are consistent with the idea that Blud is seeking confirmation about the personal assumptions she has about herself. It's what makes her so volatile to those around her. Yet, she refuses to break the cycle.

I hope that she can make that choice in the future but at this point, I'm not holding my breath.

[spookberry]

Shadow High series 3 my new beloved

I didnt even like most of em until i saw them in person, but the knowledge that they'll probably never be in the show has my brain in a "well its free realestate" kinda mood

Random list of information cuz ive been plotting out friend dynamics and background lore

-i like to pretend Rainbow High/Shadow High are actually Rainbow University/Shadow University cuz im in art college Right Now and i think it makes more sense with the whole dorm room situation. And also major makes more sense than focus IMO

-I changed Pinkie's major from film to just undeclared. I think she eventually does land on Film. She just has a lot of interests! Her dream has always been to one day direct films, and I think she comes to love them even more while developing ideas her with the group as she winds up in a Director/Producer position for most of them. BUT also every time she takes a class in a different program she cant help but fall in love with that way of making art too. So she has a hard time picking for a while and changed her major a couple times before landing on Film.

-Pinkie and Berrie bond a lot over a shared interest in vocal synths (tho Berrie knows more about them than her).

-The two made Pinkie's vtuber model together!

-the fandom wiki says PJ is from germany?? Idk how canon that is tbh but ive decided to embrace it i guess

-Rooney's canon name is Scarlet Rose, but i thought it was kinda lame especially when Rosie Redwood is also in this line sooo I renamed her! Stuck to the color name puns tho. Mar Rooney. Maroon. Haha

-Speaking on her though i love that shes from texas and likes writing scifi mystery type stuff and that being said i just Know deep in my bones that she was a Voltron Legendary Defender fan and Keith was/is 100% her favorite. She has a continued fondness for mothman specifically cuz of this.

-PJ and Rooney actually talk about fandom and shows/movies ALL the time. They dont have a ton of overlapping interests, but where they do? The two literally never shut up.

-Rosie is such a random character, like outside of her design she feels very poorly considered. So I scrapped the cosmetology thing and made her an illustrator instead! I think it works better with her love of making art in nature. I can see her being really into illustrated guide books. I think shes a bit snooty when it comes to art too. It takes being friends with other artists to become more open minded.

-I like the idea that Rosie is mainly friends with Rooney and Berrie ontop of that. The three of them often tag team storylines and how theyd interpret them into different mediums. Rosie will draw up a bunch of concept stuff while Rooney writes up a pitch bible and Berrie will start making shit move and throwing in her own ideas on camera angles and character designs.

-as an animation major Berrie was required to take a sound design class early on, which is where she met Oliver! Hes very laid back, and likes to go with the flow, but functions a little like the "mom" of the group. Often reminding the girls to take breaks, drink water, stop looking at their screens lest they get eye strain etc. He's multi-talented tbh but Music is his one true passion and he likes how the girls are always giving him collaboration opportunities.

-Oliver and Rosie like to talk sports a lot, both having played a bunch when they were younger and throughout high school.

-Lavender Lynn is Oliver's number one "person who needs constant reminders to settle down" she is in a constant buzz of trying to get the best shots and is utterly obsessed with the process of artistic documentation. Everything must be documented.

-the whole school loves her for this actually, she has a whole side gig where other students hire her to help photograph their projects. She saves everything she earns from this for her future dream plans to visit paris. She has it set really, many of the artists who she helps photograph now will remain steadfast clients of hers forever onward.

-PJ and Lynn actually took a print media class together at one point. Which didnt at the time spark an everlasting friendship. But it did give PJ an easier in to ask for Lynn's help documenting a project the group was working on. One of Lynn's first times photographing them work happened to fall on a day where Rosie had planned to trick everyone into going on a nature walk sans devices... Lynn wound up really appreciating this outing and decided to continue hanging around the group even after that project had ended.

[weird-addiction]

Savage Within

Pairing: House of the Dragon x Male!Targaryen!Reader 

Genre: Angst

Warnings: Mentions of childbirth, murder, burning down an entire city, dragon death, threatening people, bloody duels, graphic descriptions, gore.

Being the first born of King Viserys was not easy, being the heir and prince of dragonstone, Y/n hated it. He was the first born son of King Viserys, older brother to princess Rhaenyra Targaryen. 

He was three years older than his younger sister, making him already ten and eight years old, a dragon rider since he was seven years old. Trained in the art of the sword ever since he could stand, the responsibilities weighed down on him. He wanted to be free, not free in the normal sense, free in the mental sense of things. Y/n felt like he was trapped in his mind prison, the key burned away in his blood that was set alight by the dragon flame. 

There was a side of him that could not be unleashed, if it did the end of days will arrive sooner then how Aegon the Conqueror dreamed of it.

The Red Keep was that he has known, he was born in these very halls, in the same birthing bed that his mother Queen Aemma has had multiple miscarriages and stillborns on. His father has always said when Y/n finally was brought into the world, his cries were all the Red Keep heard, when the midwife said it was a boy, Viserys cried happy tears as his wife held the babe in her arms. 

Y/n had the natural silver hair and violet eyes of his Valyrian forefathers, as he grew into a man his hair got longer and eyes got sharper. Growing into a handsome prince, most of the ladies at court would chase after him, greater and minor lords would offer their daughters, nieces, sisters and cousins as his future wife. 

He wanted nothing to do with them. Marriage. Children. A wife. His own family. None of it, he did not want any of it.

Walking to his mother’s room, he was in riding gear as he was going to the Dragon Pit after visiting. Pushing open the door, the room had incense burning, maesters, midwives all attending to the pregnant queen.

“Mother.” He called out as he walked over and sat down next to her on a smaller stool.

“Y/n. My beautiful boy. How are you? Are you going to go riding again?” She asked as she fanned herself.

“Yes, Seiphax has grown restless within the pit. I heard from the Dragonkeepers that they would cry out at night.” A smile adored his features, the carefree nature of his was on full display.

Y/n’s eyes fell to his mother’s belly, swollen with child. Aemma saw this and laughed. “Your new sibling will be here soon.”

“Mother, I worry for you. You keep on trying pushing out heirs, your body will be eventually destroyed, you cannot keep this up.” He said with worry. “Father already has me as heir, why does he need anymore children? Does he not know of your miscarriages?” 

Aemma gestured for her son to come forward, putting a piece of hair behind his ear when he got close enough. “Queen Alyssa had nine children..” Y/n rolled his eyes and pulled away from her. “I know, you have told me that since I have not wanted to marry.”

“As queens, we have to do our duty to the realm.” Y/n crossed his arms before his eyes. “But mother…”

He shut up as he saw Aemma give him the ‘look’. Letting out a sigh before putting up his hands in defense. “Alright. Alright. I’m just gonna go…I will think about my marriage I guess.” Y/n turned and left the room, going to the dragon pit and mounting Seiphax.

Taking to the skies, getting as far away as possible from King’s Landing at the moment. If he was not heir, he would have already fled across the Narrow Sea and escaped and lived freely.

His dragon was the same size as Caraxes, if not bigger, its wingspan was bigger than the Blood Wyrm but its neck was not snake-like. The scales were a shiny black color, when the dragon first hatched his father had thought it was Balerion reincarnated. 

Within the clouds, above all cities and the people, the wind that blew through his hair gave him the peace he wished he could have. Any other boy would love to be in his position as prince. He knew of what the smallfolk said about him.

The dragon sat in midair as it floated above the clouds. Y/n’s bond with his dragon was strong, sometimes even without High Valyrian, it was like his dragon could understand what he wanted to do.

Y/n was beginning to slip off the saddle, his dragon realized what he was going to. His body weight shifted all to one side and soon he was free falling to the ocean below. Seiphax flew after him, flying as fast as they could and eventually caught him on his back again.  

“Just let me fall Seiphax…..” Was all he said before he took control of the dragon again and flew back to King’s Landing.

Landing back down at the Dragon Pit’s entrance, he got off as he soothed the beast. “Good to see you back prince. Your sister arrived not long after you left.” He walked over to the horse they had brought for him.

“Right. Let’s get back to the Keep before my father freaks out again.” 

—-------------

Things have moved too fast for him, the tourney, the death of his mother and brother, his uncle getting exiled, his father getting remarried, Alicent getting pregnant, having a half-brother, Rhaenyra getting betrothed, the wedding leading to someone dying.

Time flew by and soon ten years had gone by, he was in the same if not worst state he was in before. His nephews and half-siblings have grown up now, all were now at least children that could understand the world that goes around them.

His uncle has married Lady Laena Velayron, giving him twin girls of pure Valyrian blood; Baela and Rhaena. 

His sister getting pregnant again with her third child.

Everyone around him is getting on with their lives, but him, Y/n was heir, and yet he was still alone. Every time they talked about him getting married he managed to sneak away to the dragon pit and fly off into the skies, he would fly for hours and would not come back unless they dropped the topic on his arrival back.

This day, when he arrived back to the Red Keep he saw his sister walking the halls with a newborn in her arms. He saw his brother-in-law Laenor helping her as she had a limp, he went over and got her other arm. 

“Sister, why are you walking? You should be resting after your labors.” His voice was laced with concern.

“The queen has asked for the baby.” Laenor replied, disgust written all over it.

“Again? Thought we were over this.” Y/n shook his head.

“That’s exactly what I said.” The other male said with a sigh.

Soon, they arrived at the queen’s chambers. Even Alicent looked shocked at Rhaenyra walking. 

Y/n could only stand awkwardly to the side as he eyed everyone and practically everything in the room. His father walked in shortly after, but he could care less. He knew more than everyone else in this room, he knew it was all the Hightowers doing, he knew Alicent was the one spreading the rumors, Otto Hightower was the vulture he wanted to hunt and shoot through the eye with an arrow. 

Alicent then came over to him. “Prince Y/n. Your sister has delivered another healthy babe, it is only a matter of time before you need heirs of your own. Me and your father can find you a suitable match..-”

Y/n groaned and rolled his eyes. “Stop. Your grace.” He began to turn away. Y/n gave a silent glare before leaning in and whispering into her ear. “I know you and what you are, a snake and a vulture on the throne. Once my father is gone and dead and cold in his grave, you will overlook me and my sister and install your own children on the throne. If your father did see me as the true heir, he would not have made you marry my father. He only wishes to see his own blood on the Iron Throne.” 

Pulling away, a frown was on his lips. Alicent had an unreadable expression, she was stunned at first but then spoke up anyway. “I’m sure that is not what my father intended for my prince. You are the first born to King Viserys, you are the heir with no doubt.” 

Y/n could only scoff as he decided to walk out of the room, going off to the dragon pit again as he wanted the comfort of his dragon.

His dragon has grown double in size, almost bigger than any dragon in the realm save for Vhagar. It was bigger than Caraxes, bigger than Vermithor, bigger than Dreamfyre. 

Perhaps it really was Balerion again. 

—-------------

Lady Laena has died to Vhagar, setting herself aflame by the dragon’s fire. Everyone was gathered on Driftmark to her funeral, the princes and princesses clearly seemed bored and did not want to be there. 

Y/n stood next to his half-sister Helaena, he was her elder by many years, but Helaena thought comfort in him. Y/n knew she was a shy girl, and did not want to converse with others often. He saw Rhaenyra in the distance, he excused himself to go see his sister.

“Nyra…I know you want to see him.” He said, taking a goblet and filling it with wine.

“I do not know what you speak of brother.” 

She was still trying to deny it, he knew this well. “I know how you look at uncle. You can’t fool me.” 

He did not say anything more, he wanted to drink and get rid of this unnecessary stress. Standing off to the side as he drank, soon his half-brother Aegon spotted him. The boy came over to him, also holding a cup in his hand. “Drinking so soon brother?” The younger asked.

“I should be asking you that, though it’s not a surprise considering it’s you. Guess you take after me.” Downing his wine in one gulp.

“Guess I do, I don’t really see that being a bad thing.”

Y/n gave him a warning glare before walking away. His family has not been the same ever since Alicent married his father, and at this rate there was more infighting going on then Aegon’s conquest to conquer the Seven Kingdoms.

He walked away from the ceremony and to sanded areas of Driftmark. His dragon slept along and behind one of the hills, spotting it was easy as the black scales shimmered in the sunlight.

Seiphax growled as he sensed Y/n’s presence, nuzzling into his rider’s warmth as Y/n patted its snout and soothed him. Seiphax growled more, suggesting to his rider that he wanted to fly and stretch its wings. “I know boy, I’ll take you tonight. How’s that?” The dragon growled in delight at the question.

“Alright. I will be back. Right now I need to go….” He cut himself off, he felt a strong urge to do something.

“I will come back. Just rest for now, yeah?” He patted the dragon’s snout before walking away. 

His hand on his sword, though there was no need to bring a sword to the funeral, Y/n does not part with his blade.

Y/n wandered for a while, he does not know where he went, he just knows he ended up in a forest. There was something pulling him here, and he answered the call. 

The further he got into the forest, the pull began to get stronger. He got to an area where some people were gathered, it was there he felt it. He felt something pushing towards them, his hand gripped his sword harder than before. 

“Kill..”

“Huh?” He heard a voice, he was sure of it.

“Kill them all..” 

“What?” The voice was there, he could not have been wrong. 

“Kill them and prove your worth..” 

He walked closer to the gathered folk, seeing them up close, he realized who they were. They bore the sigil of the Hightower, wearing the green colors with pride, the tower sigil representing their power. 

Seeing it made his blood boil.

“Do you remember the dress Alicent wore on your sister’s wedding day? It was green. What colors does the tower fire glow when Oldtown calls its banners to war?”

“Green..” His voice was laced with hatred. It was clear to him now what Alicent did when she wore such a dress. Queen Visenya should have burned the faith and the Hightowers down when she had the chance.

Unsheathing his sword, he walked, then it turned into a run then a full on sprint. 

He plunged his sword into the first man, after that everything was a blur. He fully blacked out.

—---------

Vhagar had been claimed, but nothing was without a price. Prince Aemond has lost an eye, cut out by his own nephew Luke.

Everyone was gathered back to the main hall, Aemond was getting his eye stitched up after getting it fully taken out. Luke had a broken nose, the others all had bruises. Aemond was trying so hard not to scream, in the moment he wanted to hold his half-brother's hand, Y/n was the only one who did not judge him for not having a dragon.

“Jace? Luke!” Rhaenyra bursts into the room, going to check on her children.

“Where is my son? Where is my heir?!” Viserys shouted at the guards, the kingsguard could only look at each other as they knew not of where Y/n was.

“We have not seen him at the fight Your Grace, perhaps he was still in bed.” One of them said, unsure of his answer. 

Viserys looked toward the kids, looking for some sort of answer to where his heir would be. Most of the children looked away, not knowing where Y/n was at all. All except for one, Helaena, but she stood still as she casted her gaze towards the ground instead. She was mumbling under her breath, but no one managed to catch what it was. 

Aegon stood off to the side as he was drunk and asleep but then woken up by everyone else, he didn’t know anything and yet here he was standing here as if he was on trial for a crime. Aemond sat in the chair with only one remaining good eye, he also did not see his half-brother during his fight, or even when he claimed Vhagar. 

Jace and Luke both looked away not knowing where their uncle was, Luke clutched onto his mother’s dress skirts and tried to hide behind her as much as possible. Jace just stood, his eyes anywhere but to look at his grandsire. Rhaenyra had a hand on Luke’s back as she tried to comfort him. 

Alicent could only look away as she also did not know, she stood over Aemond as she tried to offer some sort of comfort to her son who had just lost an eye. Squeezing his hand in hers as they both stayed silent. 

“Does anyone know where in the seven hells Y/n might be?!” Viserys shouted again, no doubt some of the kids flinched at his tone.

“Father..” Rhaenyra pleaded.

“The towers that glowed green, they would be engulfed in dragon flame..” 

Helaena mumbled under her breath, the only person close enough to her was Aegon, but he only brushed it off as nonsense.

“So does no one know where my son is?” He looked towards his guards again.

“He was not in bed.” Aemond finally said. “I have not seen him since the ceremony.”

“When did you last see him, Aemond?” 

“He was with Aegon.”

“Me?”

Viserys then turned to his second son. “And you boy? Where is your brother?” Aegon did not reply.

“AEGON! Your king demands an answer!”

“None of the children has seen him since the ceremony. Indulging his dragon I would believe, I saw him walk away.” Alicent finally spoke up.

“The towers that glowed green, they would be engulfed in dragon flame..” 

Helaena continued to mumble.

“Send people out to look for him, check where his dragon is.” Viserys said to the guards as they bowed.

“Husband, Aemond has lost an eye! We can look for him in the morning, but his eye cannot.” Alicent argued, she wanted justice for her son.

“I cannot restore his eye, Alicent.” Viserys said sadly. 

“Because it has been taken! He’s your son Viserys! Your blood!” She was on the verge of crying and shedding tears.

“My sons were the ones that were attacked and forced to defend themselves! If my brother were here he would say the same. Vile insults were levied against them.” Rhaenyra said, pushing the two boys behind them.

“What insults?” Viserys was now confused.

“The legitimacy of son’s birth were put loudly to question.” Rhaenyra chose her words carefully.  

“He called us bastards.” Jace added, looking back at Rhaenyra.

“Wh-” Viserys was cut off as a guard came into the room, catching his breath as if he just ran a couple of miles.

“The Heir’s dragon…” He said catching his breath.

“What? What has happened to Seiphax?” 

“The dragon was flying by itself! The prince was nowhere in sight!” The guard managed to say.

At that moment, before anyone could say anything about it, a loud roar could be heard from outside of the Castle. The roar was so loud it seemed like it shook the whole of Driftmark itself. 

The room went silent, the adults took the kids to bed as the guards went outside and assessed the situation. Rhaenyra took the kids to bed, she looked over to Daemon and silently told him to bring her brother home.

—---------

A dragon with shiny black scales can be seen flying overhead of Driftmark, taking to the skies and disappearing among the stars.  Its scales make it blend in perfectly.

Flying under the moonlight, flying over to the distant forest. It slowly lowered itself down in the middle of the forest. Folding its wings in and dipping its head down, a hand slowly patted him. 

“It’s alright boy, you found me.” Seiphax let out a low growl, turning its head to the dead bodies that lay upon the grass and dirt of the forest floor, the blood slowly sinking into the earth below.

The dragon eyes narrowed at the dead, through his eyes, he was asking if it was his rider that killed them. And Y/n already knew. “It was me. I first thought they were fake and I had thought I had gone mad, but since you can see them I don’t know anymore. Maybe you can see them because we are bonded.” 

He leaned his forehead onto the cold scales of Seiphax, as if telling the beast he was still alright. Y/n then pulled back and went to grab where his saddle was, getting on top and making himself comfortable before yelling out a single command.

“Dracarys.” 

The dragon readied itself before spitting out its flames, burning the corpses of the hightower. Y/n watched as the banner of Oldtown fell, the red and yellow flames engulfed the green. However, the flames begin to change, they begin to darken, turning to a pitch black color. 

Soon the flames came to an end, Y/n felt a sense of relief as he watched the corpses burn to nothing. The only thing left was a banner of a half-burnt Hightower banner, and the burnt grass below that has been scorched. “Soves.” Was the only word that left his lips, the dragon spread its wings out but not entirely, before taking off into the sky once again.

“I owe you this flight.” Seiphax let out a sound that sounded like he was laughing, which brought a smile to Y/n’s face. 

They flew to a different mountain cliff, Y/n sat cross-legged as his dragon climbed over the top of the rocks behind him. He managed to get some sleep, just barely as they soon saw the sun rise over the horizon. 

He has never seen a full sunrise before, not out in the wilderness where the nature of things go undisturbed. It was silent save for the sounds of birds and the wind blowing, nothing else was there to disturb him. There were no people, no family drama, no politics, no duties, no pressure of being the heir. He can just relax.

However, nothing ever lasts forever. It was not long until he heard the screech of the blood wyrm, telling him that his uncle was nearby and ready to take him home. Upon hearing the red dragon, his own dragon Seiphax climbed over the hill of rocks and also roared at it. 

Daemon was taken back at how big his nephew’s dragon has actually gotten over the ten years, now it was bigger than any other dragon in the realm, it was bigger than Caraxes he was sure. In a few years it could even rival Vhagar. 

“Nephew. Let’s go.” Daemon simply said. Y/n looked tired, but he only shook his head not wanting to move. “Everyone wants you back. Your father is worried.” Daemon said again.

“No.” Y/n said. “I hate going back. Everytime I go back, the snakes and vultures that rule within my father’s council only wish to see me fall! They do not care if I am the heir, they do not think I am ready to rule. They would rather have my brother because he has the conqueror’s name!” He yelled out, almost all of the pent anger from over the years. 

Daemon got off of Caraxes and went next to his nephew, putting a comforting hand on his shoulder. “Then prove it.” Daemon said.

“What?” 

“I hate the Hightowers as much as you do. Only you and me and Rhaenyra see what they truly are. We are the blood of Old Valyria. Our ancestors were conquerors, we don’t wait until the moment. We take it, either if they are willing or unwilling.” 

That moment, something lit up inside of the heir. If it was only a spark before, it had turned into a flame, a flame that cannot be tamed no matter how much you throw it at the tides.

—---------

Moving to Dragonstone with his sister and uncle may not have been a smart move, however, Y/n refused to stay at the court of green any longer. After Rhaenyra and Daemon married, he had hopped onto Seiphax and flew to Dragonstone by daybreak. 

Little did he know how fast time moves, six years has passed, now returning to King’s Landing to defend his nephew Luke’s title as the future Lord of the Tides. 

The wheelhouse went from the dragonpit to the Red Keep, and when it stopped Y/n mentally prepared himself as he stepped out after Daemon.

“Y/n Targaryen, First of his name, Prince of Dragonstone and Heir to the Iron Throne.” They announced his arrival. 

Once they went inside, he no longer saw the Targaryen sigils of the three-headed dragon. Instead it was all replaced by the seven-pointed star of the Faith of the Seven; the Hightowers have taken over the Keep that was built by their ancestors. 

“I would say it is nice to come home, but I barely recognize it anymore.” He and Rhaenyra said at the same time, they looked at each before he nodded for them to proceed. 

They walked the halls they had grown up in, the familiar hallways and corridors became weird and no longer felt like it was home. Their steps stopped as they reached the doors of the King’s chambers. 

Y/n went over to his father, seeing him practically bedridden brought him a sense of sadness. He promises that he will burn House Hightower to the ground. 

“Father, it's me. Y/n.” He spoke quietly.

“Y/n? Oh Y/n…my heir…” Was all Viserys could say before Y/n pulled away to let his sister take over. 

“I’m going out.” He said to Daemon before he left, which Daemon gave him a nod to.

In truth, Y/n had no idea where he was going to go. He wandered around for a while trying to clear his head, but soon he found himself in the training yard.

He saw his nephews there as well, watching someone going against Ser Criston Cole. When the view changed, he saw the silver haired prince was none other than his half-brother Aemond.

Something was definitely going to go wrong. 

During the council to determine Luke’s claim to Driftmark, halfway through King Viserys came in after all. Viserys deemed his grandson Lucerys the rightful heir to Driftmark and yet Vaemond would not have it, Viserys decided to also have Y/n say who he would pledge to as the rightful future Lord of the Tides.

“I would pledge to my nephew Lucerys Velaryon as the future Lord of the Tides, as the heir I will have him rule driftmark while Jacecerys will have a place in my court.” Y/n said with his head held high for the Hightowers to see, he has not even spit fire yet and they looked scared in the mere presence of a dragon. Scratch that, they were in a room of dragons and yet they were only scared of one.

“You may run your house as you see fit, but you will not decide the future of mine! My house survived the doom! And a hundred tribulations besides! And I will not see it ended on the account of this-”

“Say it.” Daemon whispered as he nudged Y/n on the elbow.

“Her children are BASTARDS! And she is a whore.” Vaemond spat. Many gasped around the throne room.

“I will have your tongue for that.” Viserys managed to say as he got out the conqueror’s blade.

Y/n in one swift movement cut off the top of Vaemond’s head, just above where his tongue was. “He can keep his tongue.” He said, looking down at the corpse, before tearing his gaze to the Hightowers; especially Otto. 

“Disarm him!” Otto yelled, but no guard dared to move. 

“I am the heir, you have no say over me. No. Fucking. Need.” He wiped off his blade and sheathed it.

That was the first taste of fire the Hightowers got directly coming from Y/n Targaryen, it will surely not be the last that they see such flames.

—---------

The family dinner was a disaster, Y/n managed to break up the fight between his half-brothers and his nephews before it got even worse. 

They left that night on dragon-back, getting away and hoping the drama between everyone would die down for a while.

Little did they know that Viserys passed away just as quickly, and soon the greens have taken advantage and have usurped the throne from the rightful heir and placed Aegon on the throne.

While Y/n was on Dragonstone, he had no idea of what had happened. Until Daemon came and told him. 

Which led to this very moment.

Standing around the painted table, plotting the war to get Y/n back on the throne. While the men were all standing around the table, pointing out possible allies and places for resources if possible. Y/n stood next to his sister, unsure of what he needed to do, this is the worst he had feared of what was going to happen and now it has become reality.

“The greens also have dragons uncle, there has not been a dragon fighting another dragon since Maegor’s reign.” Y/n argued. 

“We also have dragons. They have three adult ones by my count, we have Seiphax, Syrax, Caraxes, Vermax, Arrax, Tyraxes, Meleys. Baela has Moondancer. There is also Seasmoke who is riderless, there are also wild dragons here on Dragonstone. We have over ten to their three, we easily outnumber them.” Daemon said, wanting to already have this war started.

“No.” All eyes turned to Y/n now. 

“What do you mean Your Grace?” One of the Maesters asked.

“If we go after them with force, we will only come back with broken bones, injuries, burn marks and most likely dead dragons. I would not underestimate Aegon so easily.” Y/n spoke, focused on the map in front of him. 

His eyes drifted to the end of the table, there was always one place that the greens would have control so easily, that place also had one more dragon. 

“No one takes action unless I say so. Get as many allies as we possibly can, prepare the ravens Maester.” He said walking around the table, getting to the other end of it. The bottom of the map where the name Oldtown sat. 

“We should bear those messages uncle.” Jace offered.

“Did you not hear what I said? I will be the only one taking action unless I give you permission. You need to stay here in case something goes wrong with me. Do you understand?” Y/n’s gaze hardened on his nephew.

Jace nodded at his uncle’s words. Rhaenyra on the other hand followed her brother out of the room. 

“Brother, what are you doing? We can’t sit by and do nothing while Aegon sits on your throne.” Rhaenyra spoke quickly. 

“Who said I’m doing nothing? The best way to handle such things is not to go after it with force, but rather use what we can to force it out. The greens will be on their knees begging for mercy after what I do.” Y/n turned away with a wicked smile.

Going to Seiphax, climbing onto its saddle that was just barely able to be put onto the dragon’s back, it seemed that the black-scaled dragon had once again doubled in size. It was almost as big as, if not bigger than Vhagar.

“Soves!” Seiphax took to the skies once more, this time it was not for anything nice. 

They flew south for three days, before they finally got a glimpse of Oldtown from above. The city has not yet seen the dragon, but Y/n did not care as he began to fly lower and lower, until the entire city had the dragon’s shadow over it.

And that is when he heard it, the battle horn being blown. Oldtown has called its banners to war.

The fire of the tower had turned green, the banners of House Hightower rose as the armies formed quickly to defend its city. But what could they do against a dragon? Nothing. 

Y/n’s target was not the city first, it was the Starry Sept. The place where the high Septon had once called his family 'abominations’. Queen Visenya was right, they should have burnt it down while they had the chance. Visenya had once said to King Aenys to burn it down and turn it to a second Harrenhal, well it was going to be just that. 

Circling above the Starry Sept before he flew down quickly and yelled out a single command. 

“Dracarys!” Seiphax complied with his rider’s command and began to set aflame to the sept, roasting whoever was still inside. 

Y/n had Seiphax breathe his flames over the sept at least five times before he decided to burn the city; the dragon’s flames were no longer red or yellow, but rather the flames had turned black. 

The burning of Oldtown as a whole had turned into a second Harrenhal, the city was engulfed in Seiphax’s black flames. Y/n had single handedly destroyed the entire line of House Hightower, as no one had managed to get out of the city under his eyes. The Hightowers all hid inside of their home, the dragon’s black flames engulfed them entirely and soon were nothing more than ash and bone. 

What Y/n did not expect was another dragon meeting him in the sky, it was Tessarion and its rider Daeron Targaryen; the youngest son of Viserys and Alicent Hightower. However, Tessarion was no match for the powerful Seiphax. 

Tessarion circled around the bigger dragon making it harder for Seiphax to catch him, but what Daeron did not know was that Y/n had no intention of backing down, Y/n’s goal was to kill the dragon.

Tessarion continued to circle the bigger dragon until Seiphax had enough and began to charge, turning its head to follow the smaller and its circling. The bigger dragon followed its movements before speeding up, its wings catching the wind as it went after Tessarion. Seiphax blew its fire towards Tessarion hoping to slow him down, the smaller dragon slowed down but Seiphax managed to catch up completely. Daeron managed to get his dragon to duck out of the way, but this only caused the dragon’s downfall.

When Tessarion moved away, Seiphax flapped its wings harder to speed up. Seiphax comes up on the right side of Daeron’s dragon before digging its teeth into Tessarion’s right side, the bite was not deep as Seiphax retreated its bite. 

Only for Seiphax to rip out Tessarion’s right wing. The blue queen roared out in pain before it began to fall towards the earth. Daeron tried to hold onto the ropes of his saddle, but his grip slipped and began to free fall. Y/n had Seiphax fly downwards, the heir had managed to grab ahold of Daeron’s arm and pulled him up.

Daeron tried to kill Y/n as he pulled out a dagger and attempted to slice the other’s throat open. The older dodged out of the way and slapped the dagger out of his hands. “You do anything else, I will drop you. No one, not even your own mother will find your remains.” Y/n spat with a glare, looking over his shoulder. 

Daeron could do nothing, his dragon had just died, he had no other weapon, Oldtown was burning, all of the Hightowers had died. There was no one to help him anymore, he could only do as his half-brother says and hope for the best that he does not die. 

Seiphax flew back to Dragonstone in only two days' time, the dragon picked up speed and managed to get back early. The morning they arrived back, everyone had been awoken by the sound of wings flapping outside and a roar that shook the earth. Landing beside the castle of Dragonstone, Seiphax let his rider down along with his hostage. 

Dragonkeepers and guards gathered around to see what had happened, many were shocked to see Prince Daeron covered in ash and soot, but was also surprised to see Tessarion was nowhere in sight. 

“Your grace, what has happened.” 

Y/n pushed Daeron to move forward as he got off of Seiphax. “I’ll explain inside. Put his hands in chains, he has already tried to kill me on my dragon.” The guards nodded and took Daeron away. Y/n gestured for the maesters to follow him inside. 

Walking through the gates of the castle, he was greeted by different guards, servants and a very worried Rhaenyra. “Brother, what did you do? I just saw Daeron being taken away by the guards, did you go to Oldtown?” She asked, tugging on his sleeve.

They walked to the room with the painted table, where a bunch of lords and Daemon were present as well as his nephews. He waited for everyone to quiet down before speaking.

“Oldtown is in flames. The Starry Sept is burnt down, every member of house Hightower is dead within Oldtown. I have captured prince Daeron, for now he is our hostage. He is defenseless, he has no one to help him.” Y/n simply said. Daemon had a smile on his lips as he heard the words of his nephew.

Everyone around the table began to whisper, but no one dared to actually speak up against the heir, that is until Princess Rhaenys spoke up. 

“Your grace, when I fled from the dragon pit I could have burnt them but I chose not to. Because that would have been the starting of a war, I would not have it start because of me. But now, Oldtown and the Starry Sept have been burnt, Alicent would not hesitate to come after us and burn us as well.” Rhaenys reasoned. 

Y/n’s lips pulled into a wicked smile. “Why do you think I have Daeron?” The room was silent, all one could hear was the fire cracking.

“Alicent would be too scared to come after us, the only thing she can do is order Aegon around. But, if we have enough allies secured, and we have Daeron as a bargaining chip. She would not dare have Aegon hurt him. Once word reached to her Oldtown has been burnt to ash, she will know who she is dealing with.” The last part felt like spitting fire, the flame within has been caged for too long now he was letting it out.

“If the greens do decide to fight back? What then?” Someone asked. 

“If they do decide to fight back, we still have enough dragons to outnumber them. Along with armies and allies, we can have every green’s head on a spike before the fucking moon turns.” Daemon said, his words made Y/n smile.

“We are Targaryens. If it is me who started this war, I will see it to the end. Descended from conquerors, we do not run from our fight.” 

Rhaenyra looked to her brother and smiled, same with Rhaenys through her eyes said ‘you know the consequences’. Daemon smiled, Jace, Luke, Rhaena and Baela all looked at each other knowing they would win.

Everyone else in the room begins to plot their battle strategies, seeing which allies they have and who has been secured. 

Soon enough, word had reached Alicent Hightower and her father that Oldtown had been burnt down. They say it was a black dragon that was as big as Vhagar that had done it, no one had made it out of the city. 

Alicent already knew it was Y/n, years ago Y/n told her that he knew of her family’s intention, and now she was paying the price for not taking the words seriously. Days later, a raven arrived at the Red Keep telling Alicent that her youngest son Daeron was on Dragonstone being held hostage. 

‘If you want your son back, dethrone Aegon and I will take my place as the rightful heir. I will spare your family, your children will have places in my court and no harm shall come to them. Make your decision quickly. Not much of my patience remains.’ 

That was what the letter wrote, Alicent did not know what to do. Y/n would not put her children to the sword if she surrendered, but Aegon was still on the throne and now he would not back down so easily. So, she merely told Aegon to go and speak with Y/n, bring Aemond if he wished. 

A week later, Aegon showed up with Aemond on both Sunfyre and Vhagar. Y/n had been expecting them, and so Seiphax was behind him. The dragon was now seen as bigger than Vhagar. 

“Brothers. Come to take back my hostage?” Y/n said in an unusual tone of voice.

“Give us back Daeron, and no one would get hurt.” Aegon spoke sternly. 

Y/n let out a heartful laugh before replying. “Hurt me? Have you seen Seiphax? He could destroy you both! But enough about me, you would at least want to see Daeron right?” He gestured with his hand to bring him forward.

They made Daeron kneel as he was brought forward, Aegon and Aemond were stunned to see their brother in chains. “Let him go.”

“And you promise to dethrone yourself, Aegon?” The said male stayed silent. “No, I didn't think so.” 

Meleys and Caraxes landed behind them. “So what will it be?” Aegon and Aemond both unsheathed their swords.

This battle went down in history as the one the bloodiest duels that ever happened during the Targaryen civil war. 

Y/n Targaryen had managed to disarm both Aemond and Aegon before he injured them badly that they could not even move, one of Aemond’s hands had suffered so much damage that it would not stop shaking. When given the opportunity to pick up his sword again, the sword would slip through and his hand could not even lift it. Aegon on the other hand had both of his legs broken so he could not stand, but as Y/n claimed it so that ‘you may never go back on Sunfyre and fly again.’ 

Both of Aemond’s legs had also been slashed and stabbed as well, this was done because Y/n said it was ‘your consequence of following your brother.’ 

Their dragons did not have any easier fate. 

Meleys had managed to injure Sunfyre and rip off one of its wings. 

Caraxes had almost killed Vhagar if it wasn’t for Y/n telling Daemon to stop. 

“It is Queen Visenya’s dragon, let it be. If it dies, it should die on Dragonstone, the place it was hatched.” 

Both Aegon and Aemond had stayed on Dragonstone for a few days before they left for King’s Landing. 

The smallfolk looked up and saw large shadows of multiple dragons; Seiphax, Syrax and Caraxes. Y/n, Rhaenyra and Daemon were back, Y/n had come for his throne. 

The queen stood in front of the gates with Helaena, shielding her from the three that had just landed. Rhaenyra and Daemon had dragged Aegon and Aemond beside them, the queen was horrified to see her sons broken and hurt.

“Dethrone your son Alicent.” Bringing Aegon beside him and pulling him up as he could not stand, Y/n unsheathed a dagger from his belt and put it to the underside of Aegon’s neck. “Or I will do it myself.” 

“Mother…please…” Aegon practically begged and pleaded to his mother that she do as his brother wanted. Alicent could only nod as she blinked back tears.

“Wait…where is Daeron?” She dared to ask. Y/n tilted his head as he sheathed his dagger. 

“I am true to my word unlike you. He is safe on Dragonstone, after I am crowned he will be brought here. He will be properly taken care of.” He handed Aegon over to Rhaenyra as he began to walk inside. 

Pushing open the doors of the throne room, the guards almost attacked him but then stopped as they saw their king in the hands of Rhaenyra not being able to walk, while Aemond was being held by Daemon who had Dark Sister strapped to his belt. 

Walking up the steps to the Iron Throne before he finally sat down, he had got the throne but there was something missing. And he knew what it was.

Going down to Aegon as on top of his brother’s head was still the conqueror’s crown, taking it for himself but his uncle Daemon offered to crown him. Y/n nodded as he knelt down as Daemon put the crown up on top of his nephew’s head.

This was a temporary crowning as the ceremony will be the official one that deems Y/n king of the realm. But, Y/n had a reason he wanted the crown now.

“Bring Otto Hightower to me.” He said to the guards, Daemon glared at them which made them comply, but also because of their scared queen.

Otto was soon brought into the room, looking confused before his expression turned that into a scared one. “Your grace…” Was all he could say.

“Otto, you really are a snake. My father could not see it, but I surely can. Even from a young age I could tell all you wanted was your own blood on the throne. But look here we are, your grandsons barely able to move or even just stand.” Y/n said all with a wide smile.

“You got what you wanted, but why did you burn down Oldtown?! My family had no part in this!” Otto shouted back.

“Right, it wasn’t the Starry Sept that called my family abominations. It was not Oldtown that supported Alicent to do what she did. But, that was all in the past. The real reason?” Everyone waited for his answer.

“History remembers names, not blood. If this war was fought and we still won, it would be Aegon’s name that is remembered, not mine. I needed to do something I could be remembered for when I sit on this throne. I turned Oldtown into a second Harrenhal.” The wicked smile is not leaving his face.

 Before Otto could even reply, Y/n had gestured for Daemon to put on his sword to the Hand’s neck. And with one hand gesture, Daemon slit Otto’s throat. 

“Tell servants to clean up the mess. Take Aegon and Aemond to the maester to get treated, I have other things I must see to.” Was all Y/n said as he left the room.

Daemon and Rhaenyra looked at each other before nodding, they would go back to Dragonstone to prepare for everything else. 

Seven days passed before Y/n Targaryen was officially crowned as the ruler of Westeros and of the Seven Kingdoms as a whole, they found a septon that had remained in King’s Landing to host it. Daemon may or may not have threatened him a bunch of times.

During the coronation, Y/n’s family all stood to the side. His half-siblings on one, while Rhaenyra and Daemon and his nephews stood to the other. 

“Y/n Targaryen, First of his name, King of the Andals, the Rhoynar, and the First Men, Lord of the Seven Kingdoms and Protector of the Realm.” 

With that, the conqueror’s crown was placed on his head. Looking to the crowd as he unsheathed Blackfyre. The crowd cheered for him as they saw the rise of their new king. Daemon was now his hand and so was Rhaenyra, it was the only time in Targaryen history that a single king had two hand of the king. 

Aegon and Aemond were given places in court as Masters of Whispers, Helaena became Rhaenyra’s lady-in-waiting, Daeron was with his brothers but he became a personal guard to court. To Y/n, they were still family and in their youth they had been friends at one point. 

Alicent. She was basically on house arrest as she was not allowed to leave the Keep. Her children took care of her as she grew older. 

Y/n never did marry. He refused to have children, and as he was crowned he made it so that his sister would succeed him if he died, and Daemon would be king consort alongside her. Then, Jacereys would take after her. 

Aegon and Aemond never again flew on their dragons nor did they ever pick up a sword, but they knew they were already spared from their brother’s executioner. Same with Daeron as well. All three men knew they were already far from the flames of Seiphax.

The Targaryen civil war that would be known as the dance of the dragons would go down in history, however, the final act to end the war for everyone to remember is that Prince Y/n Targaryen burnt down Oldtown and the Starry Sept beyond repair. But also, he would be remembered for ending the entire Hightower bloodline single-handedly, turning that city into a second Harrenhal. 

His dragon will also be remembered as they lived beyond the king’s years. 

Seiphax; the second Balerion.

Y/n Targaryen would go down in history being remembered as a king. 

His title?

King Y/n ‘two-faced’ Targaryen. First of his name, King of the Andals, the Rhoynar, and the First Men, Lord of the Seven Kingdoms and Protector of the Realm.

The unpredictable king. The virgin king. The second conqueror. 

But one thing was for sure.

He mended House Targaryen so they forever stood strong. 

Y/n Targaryen was the true blood of Old Valyria. Just like his ancestors, he was a true Targaryen. 

[gloomy-prince]

SUPER OLD RAINBOW! ART THREAD!!! Open only if you are brave enough to face teen me's cringe art...

(mostly joking but fr white Mimi and skinny Boo jumpscare below)

Very first digital piece of Boo and Mimi circa 2011!! I was 14 when I drew this. Usually I'm able to look back fondly at super old art of mine but this one does make me cringe a liiiiittle bit. Mimi girl what are you wearing, why are you white. Boo also had pink eyes in the beginning, which she would continue to have for several years to come (even in the current iteration of RAINBOW! they were pink at first, I later recolored those pages) but it was only later that it was due to the color scheme of the comic and not because they were literally pink. I'm pretty sure they were meant to be contacts, because their hair is and always have been dyed rather than anime-esque natural colorful hair, so that was some crazy dedication from Boo back in the day.

More 2011 art showing off Mimi's goth/scene-ish style and green eyes. They were initially meant to have pastel and neon fashion senses, respectively. The story was already named at this point, only a few days or maybe weeks into its inception, which is impressive considering it has taken us literal years to name other stories (I'm looking at you, Phantom Pains)

this one is from super early 2012! Interesting to think that this was less than 9 months later since it feels completely different to me. The first version of the comic had started at this point, and the pink and green color scheme was just starting to develop. This lineup features some characters that would later be cut. Lucian and Lily were friends of Boo, and Cecilia was Mimi's ex girlfriend. Notably Clarice is not on this lineup, and frankly I'm not sure why.

A picture I drew to commemorate 50 fans on RAINBOW!'s smackjeeves page, mid 2012. Boo's outfit resembled a recolored version of her 2011 outfit, but I have no idea what Mimi is wearing. What. are. you. wearing.

Chibi-ish drawings of Boo and Mimi cosplaying various characters, from early 2013. Homura Mimi is very funny to me, I really don't know why I didn't draw her as Kyoko. I assume I was trying to keep them as paired characters, but I didn't do that with the Sailor Moon or Disney ones, so I who knows why I did it with PMMM. Mimi's hairstyle changes to a shaved cut somewhere around this time, but it is much more dramatic than her current undercut, and her hair is still pretty long. Boo is wearing a closet cosplay of Fluttershy that I myself wore once. These also resemble the chibi-ish drawings on the chapter intermission pages of RAINBOW! Vol 1.

A character study I did in late 2013, which would be shortly after I made a major style shift into the art style that would eventually develop into the one I currently have. At this point, Boo was meant to be fatter than Mimi, but the execution wasn't really there at all. There is also a doodle at the bottom of me and Sunny at the time (I am the one with long hair), expressing thanks for 300 fans on smackjeeves. Considering it had 50 in mid 2012, the readership was pretty slow growing back then.

outfit exploration for Mimi, circa 2014. At this point I started to expand the color scheme a little bit more so that not every character would be paper-white, though she is still very pale even though she is no longer meant to be white anymore. None of these outfits really resemble her current style, and I don't particularly like any of them either. It took me a very long time to settle on a fashion sense for her.

an Adventure Time-eqsue drawing of Mimi and Boo that I actually drew less than two weeks after the previous image despite the difference in things such as the way the hair was drawn. I had to include this one because it blew up overnight, which was a huge deal for highschool me, I remember checking my phone at school a lot because it was just getting hundreds or even thousands of notes over the span of the day. I think it has something like 16,000 notes. Still the post with the highest number of notes I have by far, so I guess I peaked in high school, whomp whomp

More fashion exploration, this time of Mimi and Boo, from early 2015. The color scheme is starting to approach what it currently is, but much more dull since I used to be afraid of bright colors. Mimi's fashion sense is starting to get closer to what it currently is, but the pastel goth influence that was popular in early-mid 2010s tumblr is apparent. In chapter 1, Boo wears an outfit that is extremely similar to the one with the bear shirt, except it's a rabbit instead. The dress that Mimi gives to Boo is also almost identical to the depiction of it here. This drawing implies that Mimi was originally going to be present in the film noir scene where Boo finds her mom, which is interesting...

Another cast lineup! This one is from late 2015-early 2016. Mimi is wearing an outfit pretty similar to what she wears in chapter 1 but with the colors altered. The execution of Boo's body type is starting to improve but she's still kind of pear-shaped. Mimi is also a little more square, and her hair finally looks like the style she has now. Clarice gets to be in the lineup this time and she is SUPER tall. I think she is still taller than Milo. And Mimi is around 5'7"-5'8", so Clarice must be around 6 foot by that logic.

The original version of chibi-ish Boo riding a bike in her Kiki outfit, from 2016. I think it was meant to be a banner of some kind, possibly for tapas or tumblr. A newer version of this drawing features as a chapter intermission drawing in the physical book.

The original cover for RAINBOW! from 2017. The color scheme is finally starting to get a little brighter! This is actually a redraw of an older drawing from 2014, I want to draw it again someday. Also, I was going by Rain at the time.

A drawing I did in late 2017 for a class in which we were meant to try digital painting and I went for a very simple approach. I like that Mimi's legs are a little noodle-y. This is also the first drawing where Mimi's eyes are no longer green, but dark pink instead. By the language of RAINBOW!'s color scheme, that means they are brown. Boo's eyes are still pink, however.

Another drawing for a class, this time from 2018. I can't remember the specifics of the assignment, but I used the opportunity to draw the playground and Max, the dog, for the first time. I like the way the trees look in this. That little snip of hair by Mimi's ear also made a reappearance here for some reason.

The original version of the drawing that would become the cover of RAINBOW! Vol 1, from mid 2019! I believe I drew it to be a banner on Tapas, but I used it for tumblr as well.

And lastly, Boo and Mimi outfit sheets from 2019-2020. I messed with them for a while, hence the timeframe. Boo's eyes are finally green, which I changed since I liked the idea of Mimi having green hair and pink eyes, and Boo having pink hair and green eyes, as if they are reflected a bit in each other. Outside of RAINBOW!'s color scheme, Boo's eyes are actually blue though. It took about a decade, but I finally settled on a fashion sense for Mimi.

BONUS ART!!! 💖💖✨✨ I thought these would be better grouped together rather than chronologically with the rest.

RAINBOW!'s banners from its era on smackjeeves! Smackjeeves didn't have square/circular icons but rather these thin long banners which could also be animated. I thought that was so fun, so I always animated them at least a little, even though one doesn't seem to work. It was customary to write girls love/boys love on the banner of mlm/wlw romance stories then, so almost all of them say that. I still see that trend on some comics on webtoon and tapas nowadays. They are from 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, and 2017. I don't believe the 2017 one was ever used.

And RAINBOW!'s icon throughout the years! I always refused to change it, only update it, because I thought it was really cute. They are from (approximately) 2017, 2018, 2020, and 2021.

And finally, art from 2021 of Mimi with her cousin August, who will be the protagonist of our next comic, Phantom Pains. Weird to think that we'll be on that comic in foreseeable future, since it is also over 10 years old now. Bit of a passing the torch type drawing to end on. 💕 If you made it all the way here, thanks for reading! Hopefully it was fun and didn't hurt your eyes.