#i wanted to draw something for mermay before this month ends !! so here are some cute mermaids 💚💖and a really cool fish-man💙 | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

starkstruck27 · 11 months

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One last little mermay fic because it's the last day and I thought it would be cute (also I may be posting on June 1st technically, but I wrote the bulk of it yesterday so...).

Steve hadn't been working at the aquarium for long, but he loved every second of it. He'd moved out to California a while ago and he'd been down on his luck when Dustin came out one time to visit, all jazzed up about marine life, since it was his latest obsession, and he'd suckered him into a trip to the place before he left again for Hawkins. Steve had never had much interest in undersea life before, but as Dustin dragged him through the exhibits, he found himself in awe of all the beautiful creatures. At the end of their tour, he was buying Dustin a souvenir in the gift shop, when a large "Help Wanted!" sign caught his eye.

"That, uh, that sign," he asked the girl who was scanning the barcode on Dustin's stuffed seahorse and new San Diego Aquarium cap, "Is that just for the gift shop or is it the aquarium in general?"

"No, it's for the whole place. We are looking for a few people to be cashiers in here and the food court, but we're also looking for tour guides and trainers. The trainers have to have some kind of prior experience working with animals though, so just keep that in mind. Would you like an application?" She asked, her smile bright as she handed the younger boy the bag.

"Yes, please," Steve smiled back, and the girl handed him a small packet of papers fill out before smiling and greeting the next customer.

By the time they left, Steve had already returned the packet, completely filled out, to the right box, and two days later, he got a call to come in for an interview. He went, and an hour later, walked out with a job as a tour guide and a date to come in for his first day of training.

By now, nearly two months later, he knew the ins and outs of the entire place, and he could spit facts about sharks or jellyfish or anemone or sea cucumbers like he was listing the days of the week. He was one of the favorites among the tour groups, since he often made stupid dad jokes and gave out aquatic themed stickers to the kids. It was a hands-on aquarium, and a lot of the parents liked the gentle encouragements he would give their kids if they were scared to touch a certain animal, and the kind ways he would explain how to do it properly so as not to hurt the animals so that everything went smoothly. He was often handed tips from appreciative parents, and even though he always tried to refuse them, they always insisted he take them for helping their young kids to have such a positive experience. His fridge in his apartment was running out of room on the front of it from the amount of drawings kids would do for him, and he had made a note to get himself a little scrapbook or binder or something to keep them in so that he didn't have to throw them away to make room for new ones.

So yeah, Steve absolutely loved his job.

And when his boss pulled him aside one day and said that he wanted him to be the one to help launch the newest attraction on May 1st, he was more than happy to do it. He was just supposed to lead the families into the amphitheater that faced the biggest tank in the aquarium and get them pumped up to see some kind of show involving mermaids. He had no idea what it was or how it was going to work, but he was excited to do it, so he did.

Finally, May 1st rolled around and Steve was about to do his first presentation for a packed theater. He scrounged up some of the old confidence he'd had in high school and put on a huge smile as he walked out in front of the tank with his notes, quieting the families and greeting them before asking if they were ready to see some mermaids.

That's what the whole thing was about. It was supposed to be like that one attraction in Weeki Wachee, Florida, where they had the actresses that dressed up like mermaids and entertained families in while swimming under water. It was pretty much the same as that, but while the actors and actresses were swimming around, Steve was supposed to give a presentation on some fun facts about mermaids and then, at the very end, the families would get to pose for pictures with the actors while they were still in the tank. They were going to be going down with air nozzles from oxygen tanks in their hands, so that they could make cool bubble effects, but also so they could still breathe as they were underwater. It was actually really cool, in Steve's opinion, and he was excited to be giving the presentation.

"Okay, so as long as you're ready to meet our merpeople, we have to try and call to them so that they'll come out to see us. Merpeople are king of shy, so we have to be really loud when we call their names, okay? We have a lot of merpeople here at our aquarium, but the ones you're going to see today are named Pearl and Nero, so on the count of three, we're all going to say really loudly 'Hi, Pearl and Nero!', okay?" Steve said as he continued his opening, smiling wide along with a lot of the kids. They all nodded as he counted to three, and they shouted out for the two actors, and they swam over from where they'd dropped into the tank, somewhere off to the side where the audience wouldn't see them going in.

The first 'mermaid', a girl with curly dark hair and tan skin, swam over, wearing a bright red shell bra and a shimmering red tail that caught the light beautifully. She pretended to be shy as she swam over, but she smiled as a manta ray came up to her, and she pet it gently as the kids all oohed and aahed.

"Everybody, this is Pearl," Steve said, gesturing at the tank, and the actress waved back at the audience, flicking her tail as she swam all around and did little tricks. She could hold her breath for an incredible amount of time, only having to use the breathing tube thing once or twice in the past couple of minutes.

"Now, Pearl is a little bit more brave than our other merman, so we have to call out for him again to get him to come out, okay?" Steve said, and the kids all called out for the guy again. The actress in the water even gestured over to someone with her hand as she swam around and played with the fish and other creatures in the tank with her. Finally, the kids all cheered as another actor swam over, looking more timid as he did.

"Everybody, this is Nero," Steve said, and he gestured at the tank, almost forgetting his next bit in the script when he saw the man. He had blonde hair that flowed around his face in ringlets. He had a tiny hint of a mustache on his top lip and the most striking blue eyes Steve had ever seen. His tail was also blue, probably to match his eyes, and as he waved to the audience and smiled, Steve nearly fainted. He was muscular, but not overly so, and his arms looked strong and sturdy, much like the rest of him. And his smile was bright enough to light up the entire ocean if he wanted to.

Steve made himself refocus on his presentation as the actors played under the water, swimming around and playing with both each other and the creatures in the tank with them. They interacted with the crowd as Steve gave his presentation, doing certain motions to go along with the fun facts Steve was spouting, and just seeming to have fun with it. Steve was too, once he got over the initial shock of that gorgeous man swimming around behind him, and when the presentation was over, he both happy and sad about it. The next show was going to be done by another one of his coworkers, and two other actors would be playing the merpeople, so Steve decided to head back to where he knew the actors would be taking their breaks to see if he could get a chance to talk to the guy.

He found him and the other girl laughing backstage as they ate lunch and gossiped, and he was almost afraid to go in and talk to them. They both had towels wrapped around their heads to keep their long, wet hair out of the way as they ate, and they both still had their tails on, since they had one more show to do before they got to leave for the day.

"Oh, speak of the devil," the girl said to the guy, and she gestured to the door that Steve was standing at, smiling widely. "You're our presenter, right? We were just talking about you. You did a great job hyping up the kids for us. Although, your jokes were absolutely terrible. I'm Heather."

"Oh, uh, yeah, I'm Steve," the man said, walking further into the room with them and tucking some hair behind his ears nervously. "Sorry to interrupt, I just figured that I should probably introduce myself to you guys at some point since we'll be doing a lot of shows together. And I wanted to compliment you on your performance, it was really, really cool. I don't know how you can hold your breath for that long and keep your eyes open underwater and still to all those tricks and stuff. It was just really amazing."

"Thanks," Heather replied, taking another bite of her sandwich, "And to tell you the truth, it's really nothing special. Just lots and lots of practice."

"And the oxygen tanks help a lot," the man said, the first time he'd spoken since Steve first entered the room. He didn't seem like he'd be a quiet person, but Steve figured that maybe he just didn't really like new people. He could understand that. Still, he'd hoped that maybe he'd have more to say than just that. Heather seemed to notice this, because she looked between them for a second, rolled her eyes at the man, and then reached down to unzip a part of her tail and stick her feet out so that she could shuffle off into another part of the room, saying something about needing to use the bathroom and leaving the two alone.

"I meant what I said," Steve said, stepping closer to the other man, "Your performance was really good. I've never seen so many happy kids in one room before. And you didn't even seem like an actor half the time there. You actually seemed like you lived in the water for real. And I'll tell you, you got a set of balls on you, too. I'd never have the courage to swim straight up to a hammerhead and just start petting it like you did."

"Thank you," the man finally cracked a smile as a cute little blush rose to his cheeks. "Yeah, I've always loved the ocean and anything having to do with it. And normally, I wouldn't have the balls to swim right up to a shark, but we keep them pretty well fed here, so I had nothing to worry about. But still, thanks for the compliments." The man paused again, setting down his sandwich, wiping his hands on a napkin, and training those striking blue eyes on Steve while he stuck out his hand and said, "I'm Billy."

Steve shook his hand, and he could feel his own face lighting up with a smile.

"Nice to meet you," he said, his heart fluttering when the other man's face finally broke into a full grin.

"Likewise," he said, and they began to slip into a more casual conversation as Heather returned and she and Billy finished their lunches and got ready for the next performance. Steve would have to leave soon to get his microphone and his notes sheet again, but he stayed for as long as he could, quickly becoming friends with the two actors and making a few plans to make their next show an even bigger hit than the last one was. Finally, it was just a few minutes before Steve would have to start welcoming families back into the theater, and Billy went off somewhere to do one last thing before the show.

"Oh, and hey Steve, I have a quick question for you," Heather said, just before he left.

"Yeah?" Steve asked, stopping just short of the doorway.

"Can I get your number?" She asked, thrusting a napkin and pen into his hands. "It's not for me, though, it's for Billy. Y'know, just in case you were wondering. He nearly choked in the tank earlier when he first saw you through the glass, however blurry. And he said you had a nice voice. But he's too much of a wimp to ask you himself, so write a corny little note and leave him your number so that I don't have to hear about how out of his league you are for the next fifty years, because he will complain for that long."

Steve was taken aback at first, but he was flattered, and he liked the other guy, too, so he decided, why the heck not? He scribbled down a note and his phone number quickly, then high-tailed it out of the room to be in the theater for his cue, just as Billy came back over.

"Steve asked me to give this to you," Heather grinned like a shark, handing him the note. Billy took it, puzzled, and almost missed his own cue to get in the water as he read and reread it to make sure it sunk in.

Steve left him his number. And a terrible dad joke, but mostly his number, and said he wanted to go out with him sometime. He'd said he wanted to be 'part of his world', and as much as the pun made Billy roll his eyes, he couldn't help but find it cute. He could definitely arrange that. But first, he had to get back in the water, and hopefully nobody would notice as he stared at Steve's ass through the glass.

And if they did, he could just pass it off as a merman curious about how the humans walked around on their two large fins.

#harringrove #billy hargrove #stranger things #steve harrington #billy hargrove x steve harrington #mermay #ficlet #meet cute #merman!billy

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flowerchildwren · 4 months

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2023 Art Recap

Every year I like to look over an art piece from each month and go over what I like and don't like about it as well as how my art has changed over the year. Also I consistently posted my art on tumblr for a whole year which has never happened before I think

January

It's weird seeing SVO stuff after making the decision to reboot it like a month later. I don't know what is going on here perspective and anatomy wise this piece is just bad.

February

The only piece of Tome art I drew this year, SVR has kept me busy. After doing so much character design this year I look back on some of these designs and think about ways I could make them better but that will have to wait. I don't have to much to say considering this is just a sketch page.

March

I still really like this, It's not my favorite but I like the motion. I think the design and anatomy could be better but I'm just glad I made something considering my biggest issue this year was just not making things.

April

Nothing! Actually it's all just beta designs for SVR most of which are outdated at this point and contain spoilers so I don't want to post them, sorry.

May

Mermay art, Idk what to say, its fine. The shadows on the skin look more like light which doesn't look awful but It's a pretty obvious mistake

June

I'm a big fan of bright cool colors if you couldn't tell. I wonder if next year I'll play with Aria's design more, I feel like I nailed her design pretty early. I hope to have the comic up next year though so I might not.

July

I had not original art here's a study that I did. It doesn't look much like the original and kinda sucks but the point of a study is to get better so it's fine I guess.

August

Where's that Gordan Ramsey "wheres the light source" image I think it really applies to this image. Idk why I decided to draw an image with so many light sources when I already struggle with that.

September

I joked about how the shading on this sucks but honestly I kinda like how it turned out. I have no idea how I ended up doing this and have been trying to figure out how to redo and have failed every time.

October

Backwards hands. Well not really but they're in a really uncomfortable position. I had a lot of fun with this piece but I think that's just because It's Saph and I love her.

November

PFP redraw, I don't actually draw wren that much which is why their design hasn't changed in years. This piece also has the shadows being way to bright because I really wanted to use purple. My brand I guess.

December

This piece destroyed me, I started it during finals as a way to de-stress but it escalated. I do love it though (probably because I spent 12 hours on it) I said last year that 2023 was going to be the year I worked on backgrounds and I just decided to cram all of that into this one piece.

Goals for next year are to start publishing SVR (I'd like to finish act I but knowing me that isn't going to happen)

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mirukimary-artarchive · 1 year

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"Mary's 2021 Summary of Art" - Published: Dec 31, 2021

(Warning: This is going to be a wall of text.)

January in January i was asked by a friend "Hey, i wanna learn how to make Live2D models. Wanna join?" At first i thought i couldn't do it, but in the end decided "Why not?". That's the mindset i wanted to carry through the year. Pictured is the result. I've been asked to try and complete said model, so next January will be fun! This month i also took part in a FFXIV tag on twitter, where we made fake screenshots for a dating sim. That's where i decided i wanted to try and work on a visual novel, at least once. It has always been one of my dreams after all!

February ...And so i jumped on the lemmasoft forums to look for work. Found a person making a cute little self-love tale for the Valentines Jam and figured it was a good idea to give it a try. It was so much fun. Took the challenge as far as i could, and i'm still really proud of being part of this! Still not sure if game art is for me, but felt great to finally give my dream a try. If you take anything from this text wall, let it be "Wanna do something new with your art? Try it out!"

March I think it's around this time we started playing our TTRPG game (Asera)? Ok i forget when we started, but this was the month i sat down and designed my little thief (Layla) and my boyfriend's fighter (Daimyorus). Also made designs for Layla's family. It was a rather busy month (character design is time consuming!), but nothing really 'wow' to show off for it.

April This month i drew some memes for Asera, and sketched a bunch of illustration ideas... That are still sitting there, unfinished. You see, this same month i got accepted into my first zine ever, as a merch artist! Trying new things continued to pay off~ I got stickers done from sketch to flat colors around this time.

May Finished the sticker sheet for the zine (pictured), then proceeded to take...around a week on the phone wallpapers. I restarted it so many times before... When the idea finally clicked i stayed up till 4am drawing >>;;; I was terrified I'd miss the deadline, and had an apology letter on the back of my mind the whole time LOL Thankfully, it worked out and they were delivered in time. Sadly had to skip Mermay because i was busy with miscellaneous projects (only drew 1 mermaid for it, which I wanna redraw someday). Started making little chibi faces for my OCs so i could have a catalog... Which is an idea I wanna revisit later. Having a good reference of everyone would be really nice! (...even if i never do anything with them lol)

June Asera bug bit me again, and i spent a while making chibis for our characters. Also made chibis for NPCs. Designed more NPCs. Designed some of our weapons. For work, got commissioned by a VTuber to draw them and their pet (pictured). Technically finished on July3, but worked on it most in this month so eh LOL

July I made an off-hand comment about working on commissions a month or two before, then on July my friend approached me like "Hey, so you said you're doing comms... Can I get one too?" I had! So much fun! This is also the first time i recorded my drawing process (i do have plans on making a youtube channel eventually). It made me realize i... Take a bit too long. This one was 36hs. That's a bit much LOL But hey, i'm proud of it and both friend&his girlfriend like it, so 100% worth!

August Another busy month, drew some twitch screens for a friend, updated an old drawing (xmas chibis), filled some ff14 memes, experimented with a more sketchy style so i can have a faster type of drawing (...why didn't i post it?) Pictured is the bday gift i made for my boyfriend. Still haven't posted it here, but it's on my stash somewhere >>; It's filled with love!! Maybe that's why I'm still proud of it.

September Made the final twitch screen (pictured), and designed more outfits for Asera (fashion design is indeed my passion). Cleaned up twitter and started working on a TOS so i can maybe open commissions soon... Speaking of commissions, this is when i drew the Dauntless illustration. Nature BGs are my favorite thing ever!

October A very busy month. Worked on commissions (all 6 of the characters O_O) + bunny boy for the EW countdown. The original sketch for the commissions was.....interesting....idk how that got approved LOL But the final result is something I'm very proud of! For the rest, drew more sketches and outfit designs for Asera, plus a chibi sketch to commemorate EW's release (bf's wol and mine ON THE MOON)... Having no idea it would be delayed very soon LOL

November Got into a bit of an art block, which was broken by... Asera characters as Animal Crossing villagers!! Why are drawing memes/challenges the best thing ever?? After that, i managed to start working on a commission my sister asked. Drew all of her students and their favorite toys. They're all so friggin adorable ;_; Was stressful, yes, but also a great experience. Also i think this was my first time drawing real people? Well, my first time doing that for a commission at least!

December Sadly another art-block month. Made yet another Asera sketch (bc i don't have enough of these!), and twitch badges/emotes for ADigitalKing (pictured, also sorry for the hideous watermark, but they paid for it ok TT). Currently working on twitch emotes for my friend, but struggling to have them on a quality level i'm comfortable releasing.

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Phew, what a year! My journey for a year where i have finished art to post on every month continues, but i'm proud of how much closer i got this time. Also got to try so many new things too! Overall, a good year.

Onwards to 2022!

#maryart #summary of art 2021

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thiswasinevitableid · 3 years

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for mermay, 24 indruck nsfw?

Here you go! 24 was Lighthouse, and I made it a continuation of this space mermay fill. NOTE: this fill contains oviposition.

Communication Log between Lieutenant of the Amnesty and Chief Astrobotantist Duck Newton.

Joseph: Storm is forecasted to last four days at least. We won’t be able to land on Atlantia to pick you up until it passes.

Duck: Roger that. We should be fine here; ‘Drid says the storms are dangerous for spacecrafts and travel but not for buildings. I’ll keep testing the specimens we found in the meantime.

Joseph: if it gets too dangerous, let us know and we’ll try to get an emergency retrieval ship to you.

Duck: Will do. Duck out.

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Atlantia, one of the four moons of the planet Oceana, is off limits to most. It’s home to precious minerals that the residents of the moon Aquaria have been known to go to war over, fighting to see who controls the territory in which the substance resides. To avoid these conflicts, the whole moon was declared a public resource, and all but the native Atlantians must acquire elaborate permits to visit. Outsiders are practically forbidden.

Unless said outsider is married to one of the most valuable individuals in the whole lunar system and said individual is suddenly very willing to throw his weight around for the sake of his beloved’s research.

Indrid’s negotiations were only able to secure permission for him and Duck, not the rest of the Amnesty, and so Duck spent the better part of two weeks scouring the plant life and trying to discern if the mineral make-up of the soil produced plants more likely to contain the curative properties he’s searching for. When the storm picked up, rendering the surface of the moon unsafe, Indrid apologized profusely for not foreseeing the change in the futures. Duck pointed out that it was sudden enough that the two of them had already arrived at the pick-up spot before the storm turned violent.

Of places to be sheltering during a storm, an Oceanic Beacon is at once an excellent and terrifying choice. It’s a combination of a lighthouse and landing strip, alerting travelers to the presence of land and the location to dock their craft. Because light from the beacon has to reach a massive distance into the sky and across the waves, the building lives beneath a dome of specially engineered, see-through glass. A storm has never so much as cracked one. But it means that Duck has a perfect view of the gigantic waves washing over them which, while awe-inspiring, makes his lizard brain certain he’s about to drown.

So he spends most of his time in the terrestrial rooms researching to keep his mind off the weather. Except for when Indrid swims up from the heavily fortified subaquatic portion of the lighthouse to visit him. Then he devotes every last bit of his energy to his husband. Most of the Aquariads he meets are shocked to discover he’s not only happy to be married to the eerie, formidable seer, but that he actively misses him when he’s out on his missions.

“The others are not too worried I hope?” Indrid swims to him as he comes down the stairs from the communication pad.

“Nope.” Duck pulls off the top of his uniform, “once you knew we had food to last over a month if we had to, I got a hell of a lot calmer too.” He drops into the pool, water carrying a hint of heat, as Indrid curls the celestial expanse of his tail around his waist. Duck is a strong swimmer, but Indrid’s ability to carry him to and fro without getting so much as winded makes him want to feign helplessness and spend his days in those undulating scales.

“In that case, sweet one, care to join me for a swim before dinner?”

Duck smiles, “You know it, sugar” and draws the alien in for a kiss as the lights of the beacon make gemstones of the salt spray on the glass.

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Two days down, two to go, and Indrid wishes he could enjoy their little impromptu second honeymoon to it’s fullest (he’d taken Duck on a proper one his first visit back after joining the others on their expedition). His body has other plans; it seems to have caught on to the fact his partner keeps coming and going, and that if he wishes to have offspring with said partner, he needs to be ready (never mind that he and Duck cannot have offspring through any sort of biological means). So when Duck’s scent fills his nose and his laugh floods his ears, his body decides to fill his ovipositor.

Thus, he’s spent the last three days increasingly uncomfortable, the weight noticeable in his abdomen. His initial plan was to excuse himself early in the evening when they got home and masturbate until they were all released. But the beacon, while spacious, has very few rooms closed off, and the water is so clear that there are a high number of futures in which Duck catches him in the act.

Which is why, as the human sleeps a very safe distance from the edge of the pool (“‘Drid, if I fall in the worse that’ll happen is I get a hell of a wake up call” “yes but I cannot bear even the slightest risk of you drowning”), Indrid is squirming in an attempt to get comfortable. He doesn’t even realize he’s chirping in frustration until Duck murmurs his name.

“It, it is nothing sweet one, go back to sleep.”

“Darlin, your spots are goin’ green.” Duck indicates the flickers of sickly chartreuse in the water, “you feelin sick?”

“No. Or, ah, not in the sense you are thinkingoh, ohhh” he sighs, rubbing his face against Duck’s palm as the human gauges whether he’s feverish, “but I am achy and restless.”

“And hot, christ ‘Drid, there are med supplies here right? I mean, I got some in my bag, but they’re for humans-”

“I am not sick. It’s this” He rolls onto his back so Duck can see his cock straining to emerge.

“Sugar, you know you can ask for help with that any time.” Duck’s smile is sweet sin.

“No, it’s” Indrid whines as the tip emerges, the bulge of the first egg painfully obvious.

“Oh. Huh. Kinda figured you weren’t due for that again for a year or so. Not sure why; guess I just assumed Aquariads had a matin season.”

“Unfortunately it can happen quite often. If, if you do not mind, I will excuse myself and deal with it. It’s to the point where the eggs need to come out sooner rather than later.”

“Sure. Or, uh, if you want, I could, uh, help you out?”

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The widening of Indrid’s eyes and the shock of orange that travels up his tail and fin suggests Duck has just done something remarkable.

“Surprise you, sugar?” He tucks a strand of silver hair the behind the aliens fanned out ear.

“Yes. There, there were no futures where you offered, why in the name of the deep did you?” His colors have turned nervous, but Duck spots occasional bursts of desire.

“Because” He sits up, patting his lap so his husband will rest his head in it and let Duck rub the knots in his neck, “you’re my ‘Drid; I wanna help you out, make you feel good too. And uh, I gotta admit, I been a little curious about it. Plus that holo-porn compendium you sent me while I was gone time before involved it a lot and it seems like it could be fun.”

“So you did watch it” Indrid looks up, grinning.

“Course I did. Gotta learn how to please my Aquariad husband.” He teases, kissing Indrid’s forehead.

“You need no help in that area whatsoever. I could not ask for a finer husband, human or otherwise.” Indrid kisses Duck’s belly through his thin shirt, then pauses, “you are not offering this out of a feeling of obligation, right?”

“Right. I want to do this with you, ‘Drid. Cross my heart.”

Red eyes skate up to his face, “In that case, disrobe and get in the water at once.”

Duck sinks into the clear depths the instant he’s naked, Indrid swimming back only long enough for him to get in before crowding him against the edge of the pool.

“My love.” Indrid purrs, kisses so languid and gentle they almost disguise the heat in his fingertips as gropes Duck’s ass, the force with which his tail forces his legs apart.

“You know itAHhh, fuck, fuckin love that” he groans as the tendriled tip of his cock teases Duck’s own, “so, uh, this gonna be that different from the way we normally do this?”

“For starters, I will not cum until all the eggs are deposited.” Indrid’s fin flickers pink, “and it will be more intense on your end, not only because of the stretch but because I have to be rather, ah, vigorous in order to make sure they all come out.”

“As opposed to all those times you don’t fuck me like there’s no tomorrow.” Duck snickers, wrapping his legs around the dark scales to help ease Indrid’s cock into him.

“It’s not my fault you are the most delectable, ah, ‘piece of ass’ I have ever seen. Did I use that correctly?”

“Yep” Duck tips his head back, allowing Indrid to kiss it as he pauses his thrust so his tendrils can stroke his G-spot before continuing deeper, “you been watchin earth porn for ideas?”

“Indeed. I also found some featuring an actor who looks rather like you, and watched it an embarrassing amount during your absences.” He chirps as he bottoms out and Duck toys with the sensitive band in his fin as Indrid positions them so the bottom half of his tail is flat against the wall, which lets him keep Duck pinned to it.

“You are going to squirm, and I do not want you doing so and coming off my cock.”

“Seem mighty confident you’re gonna get that reaction.” Duck nips his ear.

Indrid’s sharp-toothed grin takes on a hungry glint, “The futures tell me so. But since you seem to doubt them…”

“AhFUCK!” Duck’s back bangs into the wall as Indrid pulls halfway out and then drives back into him, “fuckyeah, sugar that feels so fuckin goodOHwhatthefuck” the bumps in Indrid’s cock are moving, the ones towards the base of the shaft grinding on Duck’s dick as they do.

“Nmmmm, I told you I was pent up, oh, oh yes, yes sweet one, get ready to take the firstAHhhnnn.”

“Jesusfuck” Duck bucks his hips as the first egg pushes into him. It’s not hard like a birds egg, more soft and squishy, but all the same his body convulses as it registers something inside him. His brain, however, sends a moan from his mouth because as alien as the sensation may be, the fact it’s Indrid doing it makes him wetter and harder than he’s been in weeks.

Better still is the look on Indrid’s face, his head tipped back in bliss as he fucks him. It’s only when he looks down that Duck sees the tears threatening his eyes.

“You, I, I’ve, you are letting me lay in you, letting me mate with you, no, no one has ever let me do this before.”

The heat spiking through him on the word mate changes to fierce affection at the thought that Indrid was denied such closeness, or any closeness, for so long.

“Oh darlin, c’mere” he guides the alien into a kiss, then moans as another egg presses into him. Indrid swallows the sound down, keeps Duck in the kiss until the pressure has subsided.

“Such a lovely little mate.”

“Do my best.”

Indrid rubs their cheeks together, “That is why this has been so frequent, you know. I am so very enamored with you that the primal parts of my system want nothing more than to fill you with my eggs, keep you here pampered and fucked out until we have a whole little school swimming about the house. I, ahhhn, I could even look after them on my own while you are away. Or, or if we decide that is not for us I want to lay in you every day so no one else will ever dare to think you could be theirs.”

“Not a fuckin chance, fuck, darlin” his thighs tighten around his tail as another egg pulses out of the tip, “it’s so fuckin hot when you talk like that.”

“Really? I was afraid I was babbling. OhOHohdear, ah, this is unexpected.”

“Uh-”

“Not in a bad way, but I am so aroused the eggs are going to start coming out more quickly. Which means, my darling husband, I suggest you hold on.”

“Way ahead of youUUUshit, fuck” his hands switch from gripping Indrid’s shoulders to thrown around them for dear life as Indrid bounces him roughly on his dick. There’s not pause between the fourth and fifth egg and he’s starting to feel full, squirms when the sixth egg almost pushes Indrid’s cock free.

“I, I told you so.” Indrid purrs, hands holding tight to Duck’s ass as another egg emerges, “but you are not going anywhere, little human. You are, nnng, staying right here, taking every last one of them, because you are my mate and if I want you full to burst you will be.”

“Holy fuck, ‘Drid” Duck buries his face in his husbands neck as his cock shifts backwards. The tip opens wider, covering all of Duck’s folds as the tendrils return to his dick, “fuck, fuck, sugar I’m gonna cum.”

“Yesss” Indrid growls, tail rippling as he forces the next egg into place, “that’s it, sweet one, cum for me, cum while I stuff you full, my perfect, perfect, wonderful one.”

Duck can’t even get words out as his orgasm races through him, muscles spasming in new ways around the eggs. He whines as Indrid continues bouncing him, eggs shifting and keeping his muscles from relaxing, tendrils keeping a rapid tempo on his dick.

“Oh, ohohohoh I am close, ohyes, Duck, my sweet Duck, you take me so well, take a little more, be a good mate and take the last one, take my cum, you are going to hold all of it until I am satisfied that you are mine AH, ahhhhyes” he trills and Duck grunts as he’s stretched wider by the last egg and flood of cum. Indrid clings to him, chirping and trilling as his tail twitches, until his cock retracts. Then it’s just the storm and the sound of their joint panting as Indrid swims them weakly backwards to a shallow section of the pool.

“Here” the alien guides Duck to recline half out of the water, “if you spread your legs and relax, most of them will fall out on their own.”

“Gotcha.” Duck can neither keep his eyes open nor stay upright, so Indrid adjusts so the human is resting atop him, back against his chest. One by one, the eggs slip out dissolving in the water after a few moments. The last two prove stubborn and Indrid massages his abdomen, cooing about how wonderfully he did, until they too slip away.

“Thank you.” Indrid murmurs, nestling his chin on his shoulder.

“Any time, darlin. Or, uh, maybe not too many times back to back. Not sure my junk can take it. Still, better we did that than tryin it up my ass. Woulda lead to some awkward med records and my crew never lettin me live it down.”

“Do not be so sure. I suspect Joseph would have been envious.”

Duck snorts a laugh, looking over his shoulder in surprise.

“I read his sexual preferences on those forms they made you each submit.” Then he smiles like a sunrise welcoming Duck home, “but I think I made the right choice, don’t you?”

“Yeah, sugar, I do.”

#indruck #indrid cold/Duck Newton #mermay #mermay fills #terato #exophilia

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crystalninjaphoenix · 4 years

Text

MerMay Day One An Ending and a Beginning

A cool breeze drifted over the ocean. The sun was setting, nearly fully gone, lighting up the water until it turned into liquid fire. The main beach was still dotted with families and couples, but this small section, rockier than the other, was closed to the public. That didn’t stop the pair of teenagers from strolling down the sand. The couple was holding hands, neither of them looking any older than sixteen or seventeen. The boy suddenly broke off, running forward to a private dock extending off the beach. He turned back to look at the girl, grinning. “C’mon!”

The girl laughed. “Slow down, Chase!”

Chase laughed as well, stopping just before the dock. He pulled his gray cap off his head, ruffling his hair. His expression suddenly shifted into something more serious as he turned around to look at the setting sun. “Hurry up, Stacy, this is time-sensitive!”

Stacy sped up to catch up with him. Once even with him, she sighed, brushing away flyaway strands of honey ginger hair that had escaped her ponytail. “It’d help if you explained what this was all about.”

“I told you, it’s a surprise,” Chase insisted. “Besides, I don’t know how I’d explain it. You need to see it.” He started walking down the dock. “C’mon.”

The two of them walked all the way to the end, where they sat down, dangling their feet over the water. Stacy sighed, a smile drifting across her face. “It’s beautiful.”

“The sunset?” Chase asked.

“Yeah. They’re always good on the ocean, but this is especially pretty.”

“Hmm.” Chase nodded in agreement. “Hey Stacy...do you remember when we met?”

Stacy laughed. “Yeah. Just over there.” She waved down the beach, towards the more public section. “You know...I thought you were acting a bit weird at first,” she confided. “But that was before we really knew each other. If I’d known about the illness, I would’ve been nicer.”

“You were plenty nice,” Chase assured her. “I was a bit of a weirdo, I’m surprised you didn’t just laugh and walk away.”

“Still.” Stacy scooted closer to Chase. “Y’know, you’re a good kind of weirdo.”

Chase laughed. “Thanks.” For a moment, the serious expression returned. “Did you know that was a year ago?”

“Really? Huh.” Stacy shrugged. “No, I didn’t. Then again, summer beach days all blur together to me.”

“It was actually a year and a day ago,” Chase said. “Would...you think I was...the bad kind of weird if I said I’d seen you before that?”

“Uh...I mean, I guess it depends in what way.” Stacy was still smiling, but it faded a bit. “Like, if you were following me around, or if you’d just ran into me, or…?”

“I mean, like, I saw you when you came to the beach,” Chase explained. He looked down, playing with his hands. “With all your friends. I could hear what you were saying sometimes, and...I-I wanted to get to know you better. But I couldn’t. I know how that might sound, but I-I didn’t mean anything of it. I just wanted to know you. I didn’t think we’d end up...you know.”

“Dating for five months?” Stacy asked.

“Exactly.” Chase looked at her, placing his hand on top of hers. “But I wouldn’t trade it for anything.”

Stacy raised an eyebrow. “Is this going somewhere, Chase? We sneak onto a closed beach at sunset, a year after we met? Were you planning this for a while?”

Chase looked over at the sunset. The orb of the sun was almost completely under the waves. “I mean, yeah. Look, you’re gonna have to roll with me for a bit.” He took off his cap, placing it beside him, then slid off the dock and into the water, briefly disappearing under the surface. He stayed down under there for a second. When he popped back up, he threw his shirt, pants, and sandals up onto the dock.

“Whoa, Chase.” Stacy leaned back, pulling her legs back onto the dock. “I know we’ve—well, y’know, but I don’t think I’m up for anything right n—”

“No no no, I’m not asking you to get in the water too,” Chase hurried to say. “I just need to show you something.”

“Um.” Stacy raised an eyebrow. “That doesn’t sound much better.”

“Trust me, it’s not what you’re thinking.” Chase looked back at the sunset, watching as the last hint of sun disappeared. He glanced back at Stacy. “Just don’t freak out.” And he ducked under the water with a splash.

Stacy was left staring at the spot where he disappeared. Left staring for a long time. A long enough time to get worried. She scooted closer to the dock edge, looking down into the water.

Something white and orange splashed out of the water. Stacy yelped, drawing back. Chase burst out of the water, shaking his head and causing drops of water to fly everywhere. He smiled up at her. “Okay, you were saying I’m weird? This is the weirdest part of me.”

“Chase! What—” Stacy cut herself off. Her eyes widened. Chase looked different. There were...there were little orange fins on the side of his head. She gasped. “What the fuck?!”

“Yeah, I...I know this is a shock.” Chase smiled softly. He grabbed the edge of the dock and lifted himself a little bit out of the water. There were more orange fins on his wrists, and white scales across his chest and upper arms. “So...yeah. I’m not exactly...normal.”

Stacy gaped. “You’re a—a—you’re a mermaid?!”

Chase frowned. “Well, no, ‘cause I’m a guy. I’m a merman. Or if you just want to use the gender-neutral term, I’m a merm. But, um. Yeah.”

Stacy stared at him. She wondered if this was some kind of prank, if Chase was wearing some kind of makeup. But no. The fins and scales were real. Her entire world shifted. “I—I didn’t know you were—were real.”

“Well, yeah, we are.” Chase laughed awkwardly. “I guess it makes sense now why my favorite movie is Finding Nemo.” A tail flashed out of the water, orange with white and black.

“But—I—how do you—you were walking,” Stacy stammered. “You went to school. Wait.” Her eyes widened. “Oh my god, there was never any illness, was there?”

“You mean the one that kept me home most of my life and was the reason I couldn’t walk right? No, I-I made that up,” Chase admitted. “There had to be a reason for why I didn’t know anything.”

“How did you—how did you have legs, though?!”

“Well, y’know, I think Hans Christian Andersen must’ve known more than what most people would think,” Chase said. “He got...he got things really right.”

“So you met a sea witch?” Stacy asked.

“I mean, he lives in a lake, but yeah, I guess you could call him a witch.” Chase shrugged. “He’s a friend of mine.” He lifted himself further out of the water. “Hey Stacy. I told you, I saw you at the beach. I wanted to get to know you, but, well, it was impossible to do that when I’m like this.” His tone lowered. “There aren’t a lot of merms left, Stace. We can’t risk humans finding us. For good reason, too. But you seemed so cool and funny and you’re so active and I love how you live life to the fullest, and still really care about people, and you’re a lot smarter than you think, you know—” He shook his head. “I’m getting distracted. Anyway, I wanted to know you. So I went upstream to visit my friend, and ask him if he knew a way I could.”

“He turned you human?” Stacy asked softly.

“Not permanently,” Chase said. “Just for a year and a day. There’s a spell to permanently make the transformation to human, but it’s difficult...and irreversible. He wanted me to be sure. But the designated time period has passed, and the spell’s worn off. I...I have to decide if I want to become human forever.”

Stacy laughed awkwardly. “Well, it seemed like you had a good time. But...do you want to?”

“Actually…” Chase smiled sadly. “I don’t think I would. It’s not as great for me as you think. I love some of the stuff up here, but...you know in the original Little Mermaid, she felt like she was walking on knives all the time? It...it’s a bit like that. It’s not normal for me to walk, Stace. I don’t think I can get used to it. And everything is loud and bright and close together. The only reason I really would want to stay is...is…” Chase reached up, and took Stacy’s hand. “Is if you would stay with me.”

Stacy blinked. “Stay with you? You mean, forever?”

“If you want to, of course,” Chase said. He looked up at her, eyes shining. “But I love you, Stacy. I love your charm, I love your zest for life, I love when your gentle side comes out. I think living on land would be worth it, if it was with you.”

Stacy stared at him, mouth gaping. She didn’t know what to say. She couldn’t lie, she was touched by Chase’s passion. And she loved him too. She loved his sense of humor, his kindness, his determination. But… “Chase, I…”

Chase’s face fell, picking up on her tone. “Do you not...feel…?”

“No, Chase, I love you.” She squeezed his hand. “But I’m seventeen. I-I know I like to do some things people would call ‘rebellious,’ but I know...I know I’m just seventeen. I still live with my mom. I still have to go to college. I can’t...I can’t commit to this. What if we found out we aren’t as good for each other? We’d have to separate, and you’d be left here, on land, where you don’t want to be, constantly hurting. I can’t do that to you, Chase. To either of us.”

Chase’s eyes dulled. The fins on the sides of his head seemed to droop.

Stacy smiled at him. “Hey...tell you what. Let’s meet up again in four or five years. We can meet here, on this beach, and see if anything’s changed.”

Chase bit his lip. He nodded, slowly at first, and then more enthusiastically. “Okay. Four or five years. We’ll meet up on the same day.” He smiled at her. “I’ll wait.”

“I’ll wait, too.” Stacy leaned down. “Chase, can I kiss you?”

“Yes,” he breathed.

She closed the distance, pressing her lips against his. They were wet, but otherwise, felt the same as ever. They lingered for a moment before both pulling away.

Chase smiled at her. “I’ll see you then,” he whispered.

Stacy picked up his cap, placing it on top of his head. “I’ll see you.” She smiled as well.

Chase pulled the cap down over his wet hair, backing away from her. He waved, and ducked underwater. His tail flipped up over the surface, and then he disappeared under the water with barely a splash.

#jacksepticeye #jacksepticeye fanfiction #jacksepticegos #septic egos #chase brody #brigid writes fanfiction #mermay snippets

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ettawritesnstudies · 4 years

Text

Etta’s big creative to do list for when I’m not drowning in final exams

(the rest are below the cut because this got LONG! I am putting this here so you have some idea of the stuff I’ll be posting about come Monday 5/11 and also so I can find it again instead of putting it in my notebook where it will inevitably get lost among my fluids practice and history essay jottings. if you’re curious about the fact that I am not yet done with my semester, yes, I am absolutely procrastinating an essay right now by writing this. don’t worry about it.)

FINISH STORGE!! I’m only like 3 chapters away from writing The End and I desperately want to do that this year so I can edit and start sharing snippets with alpha readers by this time next year at the latest :D

Outline the Laoche Chronicles

this includes the trilogy outline in broad strokes to make sure everything sets up the next points

a detailed outline for the first book which will need a name eventually

(my outlining process can be found here!)

Character profiles for all the new OCs

(this process can be found in this post!

worldbuilding write-up questionnaire for the new civilizations that’ll feature in the main trilogy and differ from Storge

Learn how to make edits for tumblr because graphic design and anything resembling Proper Authors Platform Branding continue to elude me

This won’t happen this month, but I need to do a cleanout of the social media’s I do have so I can put writing stuff there too and start a proper Author’s Internet Presence. If I do finish Storge this year, I’ll be looking for beta readers eventually and I need to have something to show for myself. This includes...

doing a mass edit of this blog and organizing my tags

teaching myself HTML/CSS and making a custom blog theme that works for my needs or commissioning someone to do this for me

making a Laoche Chronicles wip page

buying a domain and designing an actual authors website

making an #aesthetictrash book Instagram? I’m vaguely aware this is something people do but I only use insta for it’s chat feature with my college friends so I know not the first thing about how that works

I have a disasterous Pinterest that’s 100% private boards for my various bits of nonsense that needs to be turned into a place to showcase WIP aesthetics

I refuse to touch twitter nor facebook nor snapchat nor ticktock with a fifteen foot pole

if you couldn’t tell by now, I was that kid who had a brick trac-phone until 10th grade, and used my smartphone primarily as a music device until very recently

Write a considerable backlog for my Newsies fanfic so I don’t fall behind whenever I go to my internship in a month

Finish the intro for my Vampire Plague Doctor Buddy Cop story and the Chaotic SFF Academia idea that I started last month, and write a few one shots for those Maybe start posting them somewhere if I’m happy with how they turn out?

Make a proper quilt from the 10389238320923 old event t-shirts I have sitting in a pile in the basement so I can take it to college with me in the fall. (also maybe mockup a walking skirt out of an old sheet, so I at least have an idea of what to do whenever proper fabric stores open again)

It’s going to be below freezing tomorrow for SOME REASON despite being MID- MAY, but I need to plant my garden and make a compost pile at some point

Make a list of art skills to start practicing so I can tackle the concept of “learning to draw” in a logical manner like you would in a class, and start doing these drills

Also participate in the rest of MerMay

Read a few books! My current next list of TBR looks like this

Illthdar! I have been dying to get my hands on @illthdar‘s book but I didn’t want to start it during the school year and then have to inevitably put it down like two chapters in because I had boring real life obligations to attend to, so this is my first read for as soon as I’m done with the semester on Sunday.

Pride and Prejudice, which I've heard is excellent and regrettably not actually read yet (nor any of Austen, yes I’m a heretic I know, but I’m also an engineering student and 90% of my time is spent doing maths)

Storm of Fire and Blood - I have had this book for a year and put it down because of school which is a crying shame because I really love this series! For any religious/historical fiction fans I highly recommend the Sword and Serpent trilogy! It’s a retelling of the story of St. George and the Dragon long before he’s ever a saint. I think anyone could enjoy it, but if you’re Catholic or enjoy early Christian history, you’ll get a lot of the references and saint cameos and it’s just! A lot of fun!!

also my patron St. Katherine of Alexandria is a major character in the 2nd and 3rd books and she’s absolutely wonderful so I might be just a little bit biased

Make a few watercolor maps of the world of Laoche! Including detailed maps of the city of Maaren where Storge takes place, and Arga (one of the countries in the later trilogy)

update my bullet journal which has been languishing unused on my dresser since march when I moved home from college

Carve new dulcimer hammers and teach myself a few songs. (also maybe try to make a longbow or new bridges for the dulcimer but that’s all probably a BIT of a stretch)

Brush up on my piano and guitar practice because I am very very rusty. I need to find some new songs to learn because I don’t really want to relearn Debussy or Chopin again, but I need to find some good ones first...

If you’re still reading this. Wow. Congratulations. That was a lot. and thank you! But yeah! This is what’s been knocking around in my head recently while I was supposed to be studying, but now that it is out of my head and into a post hopefully I will be able to focus again :P This is extremely ambitious and I 100000% will not be able to finish everything on this list, but! it is a plan! Wish me luck!

#etta rambles #to do #planning #things to do after finals #creative to do

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prism-sakura-s · 4 years

Text

Saltwater Brew

A/N: So um... @sliceofmaggpie idk if you remember but I said I wanted to write a fic inspired by one of your mermay drawings and I know it’s been seven months but I finally finished it so. here it is.

Warnings: murdering/drowning/eating people mention (the cannibalism is more brief though), mentions of loved ones going missing, pain (?)

Word count: 7k (yeah I... kinda went crazy w this)

Pairing: Paulkins

Emma blew a stray lock from her face, growing bored out of her mind. Honestly, curse the gods with making her the way she is. They made a siren who hates sitting and singing all day long. Who does that?

A sadist, probably, thought Emma. Which is, accurately, what most of the gods are. That's what she's learned anyway.

Sure, she would admit, when you first start out as a siren you have fun watching the male sailors plummet to their deaths, or drowning anyone who managed to survive. But after a few hundred years or so it becomes boring. At least, to Emma it does. The other sirens don't seem to tire of it at all. She wonders why.

Oh, and there's the fact that killing people isn't exactly the best hobby to do in taste. In Emma's opinion, the sailors should be grateful they're being spared from living any longer, but she recognizes the fact that, strangely, people would prefer to live a little longer in this cruel world.

"Emma!" a cheery voice called.

The siren in question groaned. Gods, not another one, she pleaded uselessly.

"Emma!!!" The voice was louder and much more urgent, though somehow, it still kept its chipper tone.

"I'm coming!" Emma called back, exasperated. She promptly turned her tail into legs before standing up. She took her time making her way to the strangely smooth cliff.

Upon arriving she saw the rest of the sirens looking and grinning in the direction of a ginormous wooden ship sailing towards the direction of the rock. Emma sighed and walked towards the crowd before plopping down and stretching her legs. She still didn't understand why they had to show them off instead of just keeping their tails. Not that she didn't like the legs, she really saw them as a convenience, but seeing as the songs did the trick anyway, there seemed to be no need.

"Men are most likely to jump if we show them off," Zooey had explained with a big, dumb grin that Emma wanted to punch.

"But men will jump if we sing anyway," Emma had argued.

"So? They will still be more likely to jump if we have legs," Zooey insisted. Emma had left the conversation at that, worried that she would lose more brain cells if she kept it up.

The ship wasn't too far now, and the chattering around Emma grew more frantic and excited. She saw Nora and Zooey climb on the highest rock.

"Alright everyone!" Zooey called in her high, joyful tone that Emma oh so despised. "Let's go get this one!”

Everyone except Emma cheered. Emma, in turn, groaned, grateful that it was drowned out in the noise. If anybody heard her, they would surely her ask if there was something wrong, then continue to talk for a long while Emma slowly dissociated.

"Okay everybody!" Nora called. "Ready?”

"READY!" the crowd yelled.

"ready," Emma slurred.

"Let's sing!" Zooey yelled.

Emma took a deep breath and sung.

Their voices immediately blended together, creating a single tune that flowed seamlessly through the air. The harmonies wove together and made their way to the unassuming sailors. The melody captured the men as a net would catch helpless fish.

Emma saw the men jumping off and cringed inwardly, but didn't stop singing. If she did, the song would break, and she would get in trouble. So she had to wait.

Suddenly, Emma saw something. A man had walked off the mast and fallen, but he had plummeted straight down. Her eyes lit up; that meant that sailor was still alive.

Please end soon, Emma thought.

Thankfully, the gods had mercy on her, the first in a long time. The ship seemed to have a small amount of sailors, so the song ended about a minute after the man Emma saw jumped.

“Okay girls!" Zooey said, her legs morphing back into a tail, "Have fun!”

Emma took a running start and dove right off the cliff. She heard a chuckle from Nora as Zooey exclaimed, "Looks like Emma's excited!”

You absolute buffoons, Emma thought, snorting as her tail returned. She plunged head-first into the water.

It didn't take Emma too long to find him. He was about 20 feet away from the cliff's face, thrashing and flailing around in intense panic. Emma caught him just as he was trying to swim back to the ship.

"Hey!" Emma said, trying to catch his attention. The sailor whipped his head towards her with wide eyes. There was a beat of silence before the man spotted Emma's tail. His eyes grew impossibly wider as he screamed and tried to swim away.

"Wait, hey hey he- oh." Emma stopped as she saw the man was gasping and coughing. "I think you swallowed some water.”

The man's movements became more sluggish, and Emma realized that she needed to act soon. And that she needed to sing.

Emma wasn't concerned with making him too entranced, she knew that without the others the song wouldn't do much. She just needed to make him drowsy or knock the guy out so she can easily drag him to her cave.

Emma sighed and took a breath. "Hey Mister Business, how do you do?”

She continued singing, watching the sailor's eyes droop. She quickly made her way to the foot of the rock, careful as to not stop singing or let go of the man.

As soon as she saw the hole on the side of the island, Emma moved ever faster. She only slowed the once she reached the mouth. She crawled onto the small patch of land in front of it and through the small entrance and turned her tail back into legs once she reached the dry part.

Emma laid the man down onto the cloth bed on the floor of the cave. She found the flint and lanterns she had salvaged from dead sailors and shipwrecks and quickly lit all of them. Emma then scrambled back to the sailor. He didn't seem to be breathing.

"Oh come oooonn," Emma said under her breath.

She pressed her hands to his chest and started to pump it. Water came spurting out of his mouth and the man began to cough and sputter. Emma quickly withdrew her hands and sighed in relief.

"Hey," Emma said, a relieved smile on her face.

The guy sat up and looked at her for a few seconds, trying to register what he was seeing. In this time Emma noticed his bluish-grey eyes, filled with wonder and fear.

Pretty, Emma thought, barely noticing it.

The sailor suddenly realized what was happening and yelled again. He scrambled to the wall and shrunk, hugging it desperately. He stared at Emma with more panic in his eyes than the actual personification of Panic.

"Hey, hey, don't scream!" Emma whispered desperately. "They'll hear you!”

"Are you gonna eat me?” he asked, his voice meek.

Emma blinked and laughed at the assumption. She failed to notice the blush that suddenly appeared on the sailor's face. "No, I'm not going to eat you," she said. "Really, you are already funnier than most humans I find. 'Eat you,' that's cute. No, I won't eat you, I promise." Emma stood up. "The others might if they hear you though, so I suggest you keep quiet." She walked over to a tarp covering something sitting on a high rock. She pulled it off to reveal a large chest. Emma opened it. "What can I getcha?”

"...so you're a nice siren?" the man asked, calming down considerably. He straightened his back and muttered, "That's new.”

"Yeah, well this doesn't happen a lot," Emma said, rummaging through the chest. "I've only saved about... well, more than ten sailors over the course of a decade... or so." She made a face. "I wouldn't really know, I kinda lost track of time over the centuries.”

"How did you know I was alive?”

"Experience, buddy," Emma replied. "The sailors who fall straight down survive the most.”

"Uh huh," the sailor glanced around, then looked back at Emma since there wasn't much to look at. "So, the other sirens are going to eat me?" He made an uncomfortable face. "I don't want that to happen.”

"Well, maybe." Emma took out a pot and dry firewood. "Soup?”

The man was surprised. "Yeah, sure.”

Emma took out more utensils and ingredients. "You see, we sirens choose what we want to do," Emma explained. "All of us lure sailors to their deaths. Although I-" She turned and tapped a ladle to her chest. "-am sick of doing so." She turned back to the food. "But some choose what to do with the bodies, just as they choose whether to live under or above water." Emma walked over to the water trickling in and filled the pot with it before walking back to the chest. "Some just take the sailors' stuff, either from their bodies or the shipwreck, or both." She put some firewood on the floor. "And sometimes... they eat the bodies.”

"Oh," the sailor scrunched up his nose, which Emma thought was adorable. "Well, at least I was saved by you." He looked up at Emma. "Thanks, I guess.”

Emma smiled. She turned back to the fire she started and started to cook the soup.

"No problem." She chopped up some onions and dropped them into the pot. "What's your name?”

"Paûlos," he said, "but I met a guy on my travels who called me Paul, so I've been going by that since.”

"Paul. That's a nice name."

"Thanks," Paul said, and smiled a little. "What- what's your name?"

"Emma," she replied. She then turned back to the soup. "I'll be working for a while, so...hm.”

Emma got up and took a stone bowl and a cup from the chest. She went out of the cave and returned shortly after, the bowl now filled with water. She then heated it and added some black grains. Paul tilted his head.

"What is that... Emma?" he asked.

Emma shrugged. "There was an Ethiopian guy who gave me this, said I should put these in hot water. I haven't tried it until now, so…"

"Wait. How long have you had that?" Paul asked, concerned.

Emma frowned at the bowl as she poured it into the cup. She was silent as she stared at it, trying to remember, then gave up and handed the cup to Paul. "A while," was all she said.

Paul looked into the cup, then back at Emma.

"Don't worry, I don't think you'll die from that," Emma said, adding more ingredients to the soup. "Those grains still seem to smell the same as when I first got them.”

Paul nodded and glanced back at the mug. Taking a leap of fate, he sipped the black concoction and savored it before it disappeared down his throat.

"This... is actually pretty good, Emma," he said, surprised.

Emma looked back at him, seemingly pleased. "Well, that's good then." She turned back to the fire. "Soup's done."

Emma poured the soup into a different bowl and put a silver spoon in it. She handed it to Paul.

“Thank you," Paul said, putting down the mug. He downed a spoonful and hummed in delight. "This is delicious!”

"Thanks, I learned it from this Spanish sailor I saved once.”

Paul nodded again as he ate a bit more. "Say, what made you want to start saving people? It's not a trait I've ever heard of from a siren.”

"Well, Paul," Emma said, "I got bored.”

"Bored of...?" Paul pressed.

"Sitting and singing all day.”

"...that's all?" Paul was confused.

"Oh, and killing people is, I've heard, not exactly tasteful for your species.”

"You say that as if killing people is a minor setback to you." Paul noted, concerned. He momentarily glanced at the entrance.

Emma sniffed. "Don't judge me, we were trained from birth to kill, we're much less skittish with it than you human folk.”

"That's understandable." He went back to eating the soup. "But you won't kill me... right?”

Emma looked at Paul and softened. "No, I won't.”

Paul nodded, still slightly on edge. He continued eating, taking a sip from his drink every now and then.

"What gave you the impression I was going to eat you in the first place?" Emma asked.

"Your teeth," Paul answered, his mouth full. He quickly swallowed. "They're very sharp."

"Oh, yeah they are. We're all born with them for some reason.”

After saying this, Emma realized that Paul was still quite wary of her, though why she failed to see this until now was unclear.

"Hey, look," she said, "I swear, if I wanted you dead, you would be dead by now. Normal sirens are barbaric in their own right. But I'm not normal. Hell, everything about me indicates that. I hate singing, and I hate causing other people's deaths against their will." She paused, and sighed inwardly. "Look, I'm trying to help, okay? And for me to do that, I need you to trust me. You're a smart human, you can do that, right? Wait-" she snorted, "-that sounded threatening. Sorry. Just... just know that, if I wanted to, I could just knock you out and kill you whenever I want, so resistance is futile, alright? But please assume-" she closed her eyes and held up her hands, "-I'm perfectly safe.”

Paul nodded. "Yeah, I guess that makes sense," he said softly. He paused before handing the now empty bowl to Emma. "Can I just... have more please?" he implored sheepishly.

Emma smiled in relief and nodded before taking the bowl and refilling it.

She gave back the bowl. “Anyways, you’ll be staying here a few days, so get comfy.”

“Wait what?” Paul suddenly stood up, nearly spilling the soup and knocking over his mug on the floor.

“Careful with that stuff, they’re about a hundred years old,” Emma said, removing the pot and adding more wood to the fire.

“I can’t stay here a few days, I have to go back!” Paul exclaimed, panicking.

“If you go back now, the others will see you.” Emma stood up and faced him. Her face was serious. “Then they’ll kill you. The safest thing to do is to stay here while I build a raft for you.”

“But I-“

“No buts, buddy.” Emma grabbed his arms. “Listen Paul, think about the implications if you go out there. Think about them.”

Paul stared at her, afraid. Emma wasn’t sure what he was afraid of.

“Paul, I’m perfectly safe, remember?” Emma reassured. “They’re not."

Paul finally sighed and nodded. “Okay Emma,” he said. “But I need to get out as soon as possible.”

“Agreed,” Emma said. She let go of Paul’s arms. “Now, stay here, I’m going to get supplies from your ship.”

“I don’t suppose I can take the ship, can I?” Paul said, sitting back down.

“Nope,” Emma said simply, standing at the entrance. She crouched down and took one last glance at Paul. She smiled. “Don’t do anything stupid until I get back.”

Her legs morphed back into a tail and Emma crawled through the opening, leaving an open-mouthed Paul.

☆

A few days passed as Emma built the raft. Over time she and Paul had time to bond. Strangely, Emma felt endeared to his personality. He was a shy guy, very polite. He seemed to be afraid of offending Emma, though there was really no need. Paul, on the other hand, soon became aware of the fact that, just as Emma said, she would have killed him in at least the first few days if she really wanted to. So he grew more relaxed around her, growing to appreciate her company. Paul even told bits and pieces of his life. He had hailed from Athens and was interested in theatre as a kid.

"Theater? Like, the thing Zooey organized one time?" Emma said.

"What thing?”

"It was like storytelling, but everyone randomly sang and made weird movements sometimes," Emma explained.

Paul made a face. "That sounds weird. And terrible.”

"It was," Emma agreed.

"Well no, I just like storytelling in general," Paul digressed. "I loved watching the plays in the Temple of Dionysus and the festivals. I wanted to become an actor one day. But my dad said no.”

"Why not?”

"He wanted me to become a sailor. Said it made more money, or whatever. So I honored his wishes. I got a job shipping different supplies abroad. There was just one thing I overlooked." He chuckled self-deprecatingly. "I was not sea compatible.”

"What do you mean?" Emma asked, eating some grilled steak.

"I got seasick easily," Paul said. "And I'm not the adventurous type, really. I'm not even that willing to move from Athens. I'd be content staying in my hometown.”

"But does it make you happy?" Emma inquired, taking a large bite out of the beef.

She chewed for a while before she realized Paul hadn't answered. She looked at Paul, who seemed to be lost in his own thoughts.

"Does it make me happy?" he asked. After a while he shrugged and settled with, "Well, I don't really know, Emma, I guess I never questioned it. I had a home, a dad, an interest, although I never really acted on it... well, I had a life. I never asked for anything else.”

"Did you have anyone else?" Emma implored. "A girlfriend, a boyfriend...?”

"Definitely not,” Paul said, laughing at the idea. "I liked people but... I'm not exactly the ideal male.”

"Well, you seem like a nice guy, Paul,” Emma said. “You probably deserve to follow your own passions.”

“Well thank you Emma,” Paul said, smiling a little. He continued to eat his own slice of cow.

Conveniently, Paul had decided to help Emma with the raft as he had some experience with woodworking. Emphasis on the “some.”

“I tried it out once,” Paul said, tying together two planks. “Got several splinters and they hurt a lot, so I ended up quitting.”

“Seems like you’re not exactly the type of guy to do anything dangerous,” Emma teased.

Paul chuckled. That was another thing Emma liked about him for some reason. It was probably unrelated to the fuzzy feeling in her chest.

Oh Tartarus, she’s not stupid. She knows it’s probably directly related to the fuzzy feeling in her chest.

“No,” he said, finished tying together the planks, “I guess not.” He aligned it to the rest of the tied wood. “The only reason I’m doing this is to speed up the process.”

Oh great, there was a pang in Emma’s chest. As if this could get any better.

☆

On the night they finally finished the raft, the two sat side-by-side on the tarp Paul had been sleeping on for the last few days. They stared at the raft and the oar sitting on top of it. The raft honestly wasn’t that impressive. It was a bunch of wood tied together securely in the shape of a rectangle. But there was a sense of accomplishment nonetheless, and the two appreciated it in silence.

“It’s… bad.”

They both nodded in mutual agreement.

“Well,” Paul noted. “If this kills me then you’ll have accomplished your actual purpose.”

Emma snorted. “Well, if this breaks it will probably break early on, so I might be able to save you.”

“Let's hope for the best,” Paul said.

Emma nodded. “So, you want to go now, or…?”

“You know,” Paul yawned, “I think I need some proper rest before I go. Don't want to collapse while in view of the island.”

“True.” Emma stretched. “Well Paul...” She stood up and smiled down at him, though there was an underlying emotion behind her eyes. Paul couldn't quite identify what it was though. Emma, on the other hand, knew exactly what it was, and hated it so, so much.

“Let’s get ready for tomorrow.”

Paul settled down as Emma blew out all of the lanterns. As she reached the last one, she glanced back at Paul, who was lying down on his tarp, a folded piece of cloth under his head. He glanced back at Emma.

“Goodnight,” she said, smiling at him.

Paul smiled back and closed his eyes.

As Emma lay down on her own cloth, she had the desire to rip that weird feeling out of her chest and beat it up. It was unnatural. She had never felt this before, and if she did, it was a long time ago and she didn't remember.

Emma sighed and lay silently in the dark for a few hours, unable to sleep. Tiring of the effort, she got up, deciding that maybe a late night swim would not be unfavorable.

She exited the cave and regained her tail. Emma plunged into the sea. She recalled a man who told her once that water was cleansing. Perhaps he was right. Emma felt some weight lifted as she swam freely through the warm water. She ran her hand along the seafloor, disturbing some fish along the way.

“Sorry,” Emma mumbled. She lifted her hand and ascended a bit.

Emma circled the island, growing a little weary. But still, the exercise was freeing in a way. She wondered why she didn’t do this more.

Emma closed her eyes, letting the feel of the water flow around her. She twisted her body through the sea, marveling at how easy it felt.

Someone abruptly grabbed ahold of Emma’s shoulders. Her eyes shot open to see a face grinning widely, hair like tentacles swimming around wildly as if it had a mind of its own. Emma yelped, startled, and swam off as fast as she can.

“Emma! Wait!”

Emma halted. She knew that voice, despite having not heard it in a century. Could it be…?

Emma turned slowly. She saw a figure of a woman with… normal brown hair with black highlights. Similar to hers, though longer. She seemed taller than Emma. Her eyes were a deep dark brown.

Emma couldn’t believe it. It was her.

“Jane?”

Jane smiled and swam towards Emma, who was trying not to cry.

“Hey Emma,” she said.

☆

“I see your little crib hasn’t changed much,” Jane joked, looking around the cave. “Except of course, a raft and a guy. Who is not dead.”

“Yeah,” Emma replied, plopping down on her makeshift mattress. Jane followed her. “What happened to you anyway? You’ve been gone for a century!”

“Ah.” Jane plopped down beside Emma. “About that.”

“You didn’t tell anyone. You disappeared without a trace. We all thought the worst.” Emma couldn’t contain herself any longer. “Why did you leave? I was afraid! Afraid I’d never see you again! I-“ Tears spilled out and she started sobbing.

Jane enveloped her in a hug, rubbing her back. “Hey,” she whispered. “I’m here.”

“I missed you so much,” Emma sobbed into Jane’s chiton.

Jane only sighed and nodded. Guilt was starting to weigh on her shoulders.

After Emma had calmed down a bit, Jane had offered to make something for her. Emma had asked for tea and guided Jane through the steeping process.

“So, I’m going to explain why I disappeared, but to be honest? I don’t think you’re going to like it,” Jane confessed, leaning on the platform where the chest was.

“That sounds promising,” Emma said sarcastically. Now that her sadness was taken care of, all that remained in Emma was light bitterness.

Jane sighed and chewed her cheek. “So, truthfully…” She inhaled and looked Emma in the eye. “I… met someone.”

Emma raised a hand. “Stop, stop. I want you to stop right there.” She looked at Jane with an unimpressed raised eyebrow. “You left because you met someone?”

“He washed up in my cave!” Jane protested. “He caught me by surprise. And besides-“ She walked over to Paul, freaking out Emma a little, and gestured toward him. “-I don’t think you have the right to question it.”

Emma’s face reddened madly. Jane smirked, a little amused and feeling victorious.

“Oh shut up,” Emma snapped. “He’s not the first one I’ve saved.”

“Yeah, I know,” Jane said, checking the water in the pot.

“Yeah, well- wait. You know?”

“Yeah. Sometimes I’d see you zoom underneath the water carrying some guy in your arms. Then I’d hear some grunts and you talking to a deeper voice several nights later. My cave’s not far from yours, you know. And I had nighttime swims too. Or walks, depends on what I felt like. Oh look.” Jane crouched down next to the pot, where the water was boiling. “The water’s ready.”

Jane grabbed a ladle and poured the water into two mugs with tea leaves. She handed one to Emma, who fumed silently. Jane sat back down and blew on her own tea.

“But from what I’ve gathered, this guy right here-“ She looked at Paul, then glanced back at Emma with a smile on her face. “-is very different.”

“Why did you come back anyway?” Emma said, trying to steer the conversation away from the present topic.

Jane’s smile disappeared immediately, and Emma almost felt bad.

Jane looked into her cup. “Mortals don’t last very long,” she muttered. “I should’ve known, but… I don’t know, I thought they’d live for at least two hundred years? But they don’t. Xanthos, he became… old and wrinkly at a much faster pace than I was expecting.” Jane shivered. “But I still loved him in a way. So I stayed by his side until he… died.”

“Oh,” Emma mumbled. “I’m sorry.”

Jane chuckled sadly and shook her head. “Don’t be,” she said. “It happens to all humans, I just wasn’t knowledgeable enough. Not…prepared.”

Emma took a sip out of her mug and patted Jane on the back, unable to recall any other types of comfort.

“Thank you sister,” Jane said dryly.

“Don’t thank me,” Emma snarked back.

Jane giggled and smiled at Emma. She took another sip of her tea and glanced back at Paul. “So,” she began. “What’s the deal with him, huh? He seems pretty cute.”

Emma nearly choked on her tea. She ended up spitting some of it back out. “I-I guess? I mean,” Emma cleared her throat, trying to ignore Jane’s grin. “He’s like a… calf. Fragile.Sweet and shy. Polite.”

“You seemed pretty endeared by him,” Jane said, still grinning.

“You had a lucky guess!” Emma exclaimed.

Jane chuckled. “True, you got me there.” She drank her tea. “I just wanted to get back at you.”

Emma sighed and tried to finish the rest of her tea in peace.

“You probably want to go with him, don’t you?”

“What makes you think that?” Emma said.

“Well, have you ever felt like this with any other poor sailor you’ve rescued?” Jane asked.

“…no,” Emma admitted.

“I imagine it must be disconcerting for you.”

“It’s terrifying. And unnatural. I’ve encountered so many other people before, why did this-” she stabbed herself repeatedly with her finger, “-only come out now?!”

“You become attached… sometimes,” Jane stated, drinking more tea.

Emma took in the sentence, moving it around her head and getting the feel of it. “Yeah… yeah I guess you could say that.”

“Trust me, I know what you’ve been through,” Jane assured. “When I met Xanthos, the feeling I had… well, I actually had a similar reaction to you.”

“Why didn’t you tell anyone?” Emma asked.

“I… didn’t want to risk anyone knowing.”

Emma felt hurt from that. “You didn’t trust me enough to tell me?”

“Look Em, I’m sorry-”

“No, don’t bother,” Emma interrupted. “I’m too tired to get mad at you. So I forgive you, though that was a jerk move.”

“Thank you Emma,” Jane sighed. She went back to drinking tea.

“Okay, well, maybe I do want to go with him,” Emma admitted quickly, “but what if the same thing that happened to you happens to me?”

Jane shook her head. “It won’t happen to you, Em.”

“What do you mean?”

“You hate the island.”

“Undoubtedly,” Emma agreed.

Jane snorted and continued, “All of the siren’s lifelines are connected to it, tied to it. Like… there are strings on us that are also attached to the island. As long as we stay here, that string won’t break, we won’t grow old. I never hated my life, so my string never broke, just became longer. But your string…” She gently took Emma’s wrist and traced an invisible thread from it. “It’s already frayed.” Jane made an exploding motion with her hand. She put Emma’s wrist down. “If you leave, you become mortal. So you’ll just be dying slowly with your fella over there. Hardly any emotional pain.”

“I don’t think I’ll be able to handle that,” Emma said, uncomfortable.

“I think you have a while to get used to it.”

Emma huffed and set down her mug, folding her arms. “How do I know you’re not just getting rid of me?”

Jane chuckled. “I’m telling you this so you can do what you want. I’m not telling you to leave, that’s up to you. But I do know that you want to leave this life, you just needed a reason.”

Emma glanced back at Paul and sighed inwardly.

Jane noticed this. “See? You agree.”

Emma glanced back at Jane. Technically, all of the sirens were sisters, but Jane was the only person Emma really regarded as a sister. They were very close, and when Jane left, Emma felt like she had lost something important to her.

“What about you?” Emma asked softly. “I mean, I could visit you from time to time, but… if I go, I’ll be gone for a long time.”

“I realize that, and I’m not entirely happy with it,” Jane said. “But I know you, Em, you want to be free. You started saving sailors just to defy what you were created for. You hate being a siren, and nothing would make you happier than simply not being one. And then you meet this guy that you may really like and want to spend more time with him, so maybe, you think, you want to go with him. And you’ve found your chance Em! This guy-” She gestured wildly to Paul, “-is your chance! To be truly happy!” She took Emma’s hands in hers. “And you should be happy! Honestly… that is something everyone should have.”

“True happiness, huh?” Emma said, bowing her head.

Jane nodded, smiling. “Well, if he turns out to actually be a jerk or becomes too boring, you can always come back.”

Emma chuckled, then nodded back slowly. “I… do want to go.”

“Then you go with him tomorrow. You fulfill your dream.”

“But… you just came back.” Emma looked at Jane with sad eyes.

“If you get homesick, you can always visit,” Jane assured. “Your little sailor friend can help you. But you definitely won’t regret leaving, I know it.”

Emma smiled, relieved. She chuckled and lightly punched her sister’s shoulder. “You better miss me.”

“Oh trust me, I will,” Jane promised.

The two sisters embraced each other.

☆

Paul opened his eyes blearily. He yawned and sat up, trying to process the sight. To his surprise, Emma was still asleep, and seemed well-rested. And even more surprising was the presence of another woman hugging Emma in her sleep.

Well, in Paul’s case, surprising, yes, but also terrifying.

Paul screeched.

Emma immediately woke up and stood facing Paul. “What is it?” she screeched back, panicked.

Paul pointed at Jane. “Who is she?” he whispered desperately.

Emma relaxed and looked at where Paul was pointing. “Oh, Jane?” she asked.

Paul nodded fiercely.

“Oh, she’s my sister. She went missing a long time ago. Apparently-” Emma shot a stink eye at the sleeping figure, “-she ran off with a cute sailor who washed up in her cave,” she said in a mocking voice.

Paul snickered, and Emma smiled again. You know, she mused, Jane could be right.

“I might follow in her footsteps in a while,” she said. “Coffee?”

“Yes please,” Paul said, sitting down again. “Wait- what?”

“What?”

“‘Follow in her footsteps?’ You’re gonna run off with someone? Who?”

Emma processed his words for a second as she collected water before bursting out in laughter. “Who else do you think?” she said.

Paul reddened. “Wait, you want to go with me? Why?”

“Well Paul,” Emma said, starting a fire, “I don’t think it’s gone unnoticed by you, but I hate being a siren very much.”

“So much so that you’re willing to run away?” Paul inquired, surprised. “I didn’t think you hated it that much.”

“Well I do, and I…” Emma thought of what to say. “...decided to leave for once, with you.”

“Can’t you go on your own? You don’t exactly need a boat to leave.”

Emma didn’t reply. She only sat by the heating water, desperately trying to think of an excuse.

“Weeeell… I guess… some things are worth it,” she said, turning to smile softly at Paul. “And, I mean, I kinda had a job rescuing sailors, but Jane has graciously offered to take over for me,” she quickly added. “I’m free. So I guess a little adventure won’t hurt.”

“You know I’m not fond of adventure, Emma,” Paul pointed out, a little amused.

“If you go anywhere in this great expanse of water, you are asking for adventure,” Emma said, sprinkling in the black grains.

“I… guess that’s true,” Paul muttered.

“So, I believe-” Emma poured the drink into a mug and walked over to Paul, “-I’m going with you.”

Paul couldn’t help his smile as he took the mug. Emma saw this and felt the return of the fuzzy feeling.

Goddammit, she thought, but didn’t make any other internal comment.

Emma heard a grunt from the other side of the cave. Jane was awake.

Emma looked back to see Jane sitting up and yawning. She looked over at Paul and Emma watching her curiously. Jane grinned.

“Well good morning, you two,” she said, standing up. “What’s this you got here Emma?” She stared at the brew in the pot.

“It’s a concoction… of sorts,” Emma explained. “Paul, this is Emma.”

“Hi,” Paul greeted quietly.

“Hello there, human.” Jane greeted back. “Emma has told me quite a lot about you.”

Emma blushed. “Jane!” she hissed.

“Sorry,” Jane said teasingly. “Mind if I have some of this drink?”

Emma huffed, the heat retreating from her face. “Sure.”

The day went on normally, Emma collecting fruit and vegetables for them to eat. Paul took some and placed them in an old purse from a shipwreck for the travel. Jane hung out in Emma’s cave, striking up small conversations with Paul while Emma salvaged for supplies just in case. She cooked stew and found bread from the most recent ship.

The sun settled below the horizon and turned the sky dark, allowing the stars to come out. Emma peeked out of the cave, hoisting the raft behind her. Paul held the other end back in the cave as Jane carried their supplies behind him.

Emma glanced towards the top of the island. She heard the chattering of the sirens die down and the lamps going out. She saw a few of the others diving down into their own caves underwater. Soon everything had quieted down and the moon was in the sky.

“Alright, everyone else is gone,” Emma whispered. “Push!”

Paul grunted as he heaved the raft out of the hole. Jane followed after them, watching the environment waringly.

“Everyone’s asleep?” Paul asked. “No one will hear us?”

“Well,” Emma grunted, pulling the raft fully out of the hole, “if we’re quiet enough. Some of them could still be awake, but they’re pretty far from us so… no. Hopefully.”

The raft plopped into the water with a quiet sploosh. It bobbed up and down as the waves pushed it around. Paul turned slightly green. Emma caught his expression.

“Paul?” she asked, seemingly concerned.

“Yeah?” Paul squeaked, turning to look at her.

Emma smirked and jumped into the middle of the raft, wobbling slightly.

Sploosh, sploosh.

The raft bobbed more frantically. Paul gulped.

“Come on,” Emma said, walking to the edge. “Or would you rather stay here with the murder maidens?”

“Of course, I can take care of you if you choose to stay,” Jane offered, shrugging. Emma shot her a dirty look and she chuckled. “Seriously though Paul, it’s not so bad. Try to suck it up. Or if you can’t, just puke into the ocean.”

“Don’t, you’ll inconvenience the fish.” Emma held out her hand to Paul and smiled comfortingly. “Let’s go.”

Paul nodded. “Okay,” he muttered, still slightly unsure. He took a deep breath and took her outstretched hand. Paul stepped onto the raft.

Emma smiled wider. “Alright, and the other foot…”

Paul did as he was told and put his other foot on the raft. Immediately the vessel was put off-balance, making Paul yelp and flail his arms, staggering backwards, threatening to fall.

Emma panicked, grabbing both of Paul’s arms and pulling him to the middle of the vessel, determined to keep balance. She gasped and tried to calm her breath. Emma looked up at Paul.

“Are you okay?” Emma asked.

Pau’s eyes were wide and he was breathing hard. He was panic-stricken. Paul looked down at Emma’s concerned face.

“Y-yeah,” Paul said. He was starting to calm down. His mental stability was that of the raft, slowly going down to gentle bobs on the sea. Paul realized he was clenching Emma’s arms too tightly and relaxed them.

“Oh sorry,” he apologized.

“Oh no, no it’s okay,” Emma assured.

After saying that sentence, Emma realized their exact position. They were grasping each other’s arms and staring at each other blank in the face.

Emma blushed and awkwardly detached her arms from Paul’s. “Um, alright then,” she said. She took another glance at Paul before walking over to Jane, who was watching them amusingly.

Jane, thank god for the small sliver of mercy in her, merely held out the bag of supplies and smirked, but otherwise said nothing. Emma very graciously snatched the package from Jane.

“Thank you,” Emma said.

Jane’s smirk morphed into a genuine smile. “You know, Emma, I’m actually really proud of you.”

“And that’s a surprise, now is it?” Emma joked.

Jane chuckled and sighed. She looked at Emma and smiled, a little sad. “I hope you have a good journey. And a good life.”

Emma smiled a little. “Thank you, Jane.”

Jane spread her arms, inviting Emma. The latter accepted and hugged her sister tightly.

Once they separated, Emma put down the bag of food and picked up the oar. She smiled, then grinned at Paul, feeling a little confidence build up within her. She grasped the oar tightly and lowered the paddle into the water. Slowly, but surely, she pushed it through the water.

The raft bumped against the land.

“Uh…” Jane said, “you’re supposed to row the other way.”

Paul, who turned a little nauseous again, nodded weakly.

“Right,” Emma quickly corrected, a little flushed.

She quickly pushed the oar behind her, and the raft started moving away from the island.

Emma truly smiled this time, and pushed it again.

And again.

Emma whooped happily as the few inches between her and the island became a few feet, then a few meters. She looked back at Jane, who was grinning too.

“Goodbye, Jane!” she called, waving happily.

Jane whooped too and waved back.

Emma grinned wider and glanced at Paul, ignoring the sudden yank in her gut. He seemed calmer now, and happier now that he was leaving the island and going back to his home. Emma was happy too. She felt it throughout her, leaving a warm feeling in her face, her chest.

Yank.

Emma grinned at the moon, feeling the wind brush her face. They were leaving.

Yank.

Emma was rowing a raft away from the island she hated with a man she felt some sort of strong connection with.

Yank.

It felt great. Emma was invigorated.

YANK.

In a rush of joy, Emma suddenly turned towards Paul and took a step towards him.

SNAP!

Emma screamed as pain overtook her body. It flooded her mind. Some part of her - she wasn’t sure what - was being pulled from her body.

“Emma?” she could faintly hear Paul say. “Emma!” he yelled.

The siren screamed as the pain throbbed, spreading throughout her body. Emma’s vision dimmed and Paul’s panicked face started fading until all she could see was black.

☆

Emma’s eyes opened to a dark night sky. The stars twinkled overhead, greeting Emma and her headache.

Emma sat up and groaned. Most of the pain was gone, but some had apparently remained. She clutched her head and shut her eyes, hoping that it would help dull the migraine.

“Oh my gosh Emma!” Paul exclaimed, dropping the oar he had been holding and rushing over. The raft wobbled, and Paul immediately halted to steady himself.

“Sorry,” he apologized, now walking slowly towards Emma, “I’m still not used to how unsteady this is. An actual ship is much more stable.”

Paul gently kneeled down beside Emma’s propped-up figure and gently smiled at her. He clasped his hands. “Are… you okay?”

Emma nodded. “Yeah, my head hurts like Hades, but otherwise I’m alright.”

Paul frowned and turned towards the supply bag. “Just lie down, alright? I’ll get you something to eat.”

Emma nodded again and lay down. She felt the bobbing of the raft as Paul moved towards the pouch and observed the speckles of light dotted across the sky.

“How long was I asleep for?” she suddenly asked.

“Oh, um…” Paul, tight-lipped, tapped the rim of the bowl he held in his hand. “I think it was… two days.”

“What?!” Emma shot up and immediately yelped at the sudden sting in her skull.

Paul turned to look at her, eyes wide. “Emma, don’t do that!” he squeaked. “Just lay down, please?”

“Mmhm,” Emma responded meekly, eyes closed. She lowered herself again, feeling the ache swirl around.

Emma sniffed, then asked again, “Was it really two days?”

“Well, it might have been three,” she heard Paul reply.

Emma sighed. “Zeus damn it. And we’re not near land?”

“There’s only two of us rowing this raft- well, one of me in the last few days,” Paul said. Emma heard a delicate trickle into a bowl coming from his direction. “And this is a very small vessel, so it’s no surprise we’re moving slowly. Here.”

Emma felt a nudge on her shoulder and opened her eyes. Paul was handing her a stone bowl filled with soup.

“Get up slowly,” Paul implored.

Emma did as he asked, propping herself up. She gratefully took the bowl from Paul’s hands and began drinking it. It was cold, but she wasn’t to complain - they had been in the middle of the sea for a few days, after all.

“So… what happened to you?” Paul asked, his voice tinged with worry. “I was… really afraid you were dying. As if a god had smitten you.”

Emma lifted her head, licking some of the soup around her mouth. “No, I think…” She furrowed her brow. “Jane said that once I would leave, the connection between the island and I would sever.”

“Connection?” Paul inquired.

“She described it like a thread, tying me to the life force of the island. It was already loose since I hated it there, but it wouldn’t fully cut off until I left for good.” Emma winced. “Which means… I’m not immortal anymore.”

“Wait, you’re not?” Paul blurted. Emma detected disbelief as well as guilt in his voice. “I- are you going to be okay?”

Emma shrugged. “I suppose so. Being a mortal can’t be that bad. I mean, you’ve turned out okay.”

“Barely,” Paul mumbled, worry lines still etched into his face.

Emma noticed this, and quickly tried to reassure: “Hey, don’t feel bad about it. It’s certainly not your fault. I asked for this, and it’s honestly better than my crappy life as a siren.”

Paul nodded, a relieved smile making its way onto his face.

“Well, get some rest,” he said, carefully standing up. “I have to man the raft and see if anything wants to, uh, eat us.”

Emma smiled up at Paul. “Sounds good to me.”

Paul lingered for a bit before walking over to the oars at the other end of the raft.

Emma finished her soup and put the bowl back into the bag. She gradually laid back down, hearing the gentle splish, splish of the oars as Paul began to row. She took a deep breath and took in the sight of the stars twinkling down at her. She processed the fact she was now free.

Emma was free.

Slowly, as the boat rocked her like a baby in a cradle, with the comfort the stars provided and the calming sounds of the ocean clouding her mind, Emma soon drifted to sleep.

Maybe, just maybe, the gods were kind sometimes.

#tgwdlm #the guy who didn't like musicals #starkid #team starkid #paulkins #paul matthews #emma perkins #paul tgwdlm #emma tgwdlm #the guy who didnt like musicals #tgwdlm fanfic #tgwdlm fanfiction #tgwdlm fic #starkid fanfiction

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awkwardtaco056 · 4 years

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so now that i’m no longer in the Hell that was school and after finding the lovely blog @endcringe i’ve decided to talk about my own experiences with cringe culture, bullying, and why it’s Really Bad to not let people enjoy inherently harmless things, especially neurodivergent people (read more because this is gonna get long and triggering at times, TW for mentions of bullying, suicide, child abuse, a brief mention of incest shipping. I won’t be naming any of the peers that I discuss my experiences with, because my point with this post is Not to “cancel” anyone, I just want to speak out on my experiences)

I’m neurodivergent; I was diagnosed with ADHD when I was 8 years old. I didn’t know a lot about it, and a family member even painted it as “oh it’s nothing blah blah blah just apply yourself more. Because of this, I had no idea about the concept of hyperfixations until I was in my late teens. Due to that, I would obsess over random things and my family would shame me relentlessly for it. My mother said I had an “addictive personality” and that she feared I’d end up a drug addict or alcoholic because of it.

I look younger than what I am, I’m short, and small. AKA, the perfect candidate for being picked on by people bigger and stronger than me. People made fun of my art when I was around 13, but fortunately that was an instance where spite fueled me to improve drastically. However, just because I happened to take the shitty comments and have it fuel me then does NOT mean bullying people will have that effect all the time. At some point someone put my old South Park fan art on a cringe blog. I was temporarily hurt, and a little angry, but I realized that if someone was making fun of a 15 year old’s art, they probably didn’t have much going for them in life, so I moved on.

Fast forward to high school. Everything was horrible and I’m not exaggerating when I say I barely made it out alive. I was living in an abusive household up until January 2018 and I found comfort in many different interests. I’ve always found great comfort in music and the arts in general. In 2016, I drew a picture of a mermaid. I was inspired by the chocolate opal gemstone, and I thought it’d be fun to draw a gay chubby mermaid with dark skin and a rainbow tail and freckles. Junior year was lousy and I wanted something that sparked Joy. I was immediately told that “scientifically, mermaids wouldn’t look like that. Mind you, my take looked like this:

Obviously I wasn’t going for realism, I just wanted to draw a cute mermaid. However, they continued to tell me that they wouldn’t look like that, going as far as writing so on the back of said drawing. When I got angry at her for taking it too far (as I’d established before that I didn’t like it when people wrote on my art without permission), they got angry back, accusing me of being unable to take criticism. Heated by the accusation, I went as far as asking my art teacher if it was fair for them to say that, and she said no, stating that constructive criticism would be talking about how I could improve my lineart and coloring in the digital version. I took her actual helpful criticism and since then have improved Drastically in digital art. Even with that being said, I found myself hesitant to participate in things such as MerMay because I was leery of hearing that peer berate me for having cartoony mermaids.

During high school I grew to love many musicians, a lot of emo/alternative stuff, a couple being Twenty One Pilots and Melanie Martinez. I love how unique TOP’s style is, their open discussion of mental illness, and as someone who had a rough childhood, I connected with every single song on Cry Baby. It was like nothing I’d ever heard. I started listening to mashups featuring all these different artists I love, adoring how they could change the tone and sound so drastically. A peer Bully of mine in junior year condemned these two artists, declaring that they made “Bad Music” simply because it didn’t fit their tastes. They’d throw my drawings on the ground, write over them in pen, steal my headphones so I couldn’t listen to music, push me around, complain that mashups sucked and gave them a headache, and in general shit all over conetnt that was actively preventing me from committing suicide.

Some family members were no better. Once high school hit, I began listening to Fall Out Boy, Panic! at the Disco, and My Chemical Romance. Their deep complex lyrics stuck with me. I would write down quotes from my favorite songs and thanks to hyperfixating, I remember each studio album in order My mother resented when I fell in love with the “Emo Trinity” because “the Columbine shooters were emo and that event traumatized me” Despite that, not only did the Columbine tragedy occur in 1999 and none of the bands got together until the early 2000s, but I have a pretty good feeling those groups aren’t For gun violence. The other side constantly criticized the fact that I love FOB, P!ATD, and MCR because I’m black and “why must you listen to that white people music.”

I grew fond of Dan and Phil in high school (and I’m still a fan to this day!), I loved Phil’s kindness and positive aura and I deeply connect with Dan’s sense of humor and personality. Their content made me happy during some very dark times in my life. It’s November 2017, I’m over a close peer’s house at the time, and notice PINOF is upon us. I drew the PINOF whiskers on my face, my plan being to quietly watch them in the corner of peer’s bedroom on my phone through headphones, the others were doing their own thing and I knew they didn’t like them, so I thought they’d respect it if I silently indulged in it. Unfortunately, the complete opposite happened. I was immediately shunned and locked out of the bedroom, told that I’d only be let back in if I washed the whiskers off because “absolutely not”. Me, being stubborn, washed them off temporarily but drew them back on in the room. Life during then was especially bad for me, as the abusive household I was in was getting worse. They noticed, of course, and even though all I wanted was to enjoy this small tradition in a time during a deep depression, I was immediately shoved out the room and locked out, only to have said peer’s family members notice. I’m a relatively shy person, so this was honesty a really harrowing experience that had a lasting effect on me.

I grew to adore Sanders Sides as well, but the moment I found out most of my peers didn’t like Thomas, I was terrified. I stopped watching Dan and Phil’s content for months and shied away from other fandoms too, only occasionally indulging in times of complete solitude. One time when said peers were due to visit my house for the first time, I saw the Phandom and Fander stuff I’d hung up on my wall in my little sanctuary that was my bedroom (it was the first time in years I’d had my own room), and I was filled with panic and fear. I took them down and hid them away, genuinely terrified of what they’d do to me if they saw. It’s still incites so much anger in me to this day because they turned around and ended up shipping incest, but somehow liking D&P and Sanders Sides was So. Much. Worse.

They were baffled by my actions, despite having humiliated me Twice by going on a private blog of mine separate from everything so that I could fully indulge and laughing at everything on there, once at a peer’s house, once right in school. I don’t think they realized how traumatizing it was to have a large group of people in public laughing at something I was deeply self conscious about for all of my life. I put on a brave face at the time, but ended up crying in the bathroom after first period began. I continued to be treated as lesser until things came to an ugly head August 2018 when I ended up in the hospital because I nearly attempted suicide. Years of child abuse, bullying, and being deemed “cringy” made me feel like I didn’t deserve to be alive, that everyone would be happier if I were gone.

After arguably one of the lowest points in my life, I cut them off and slowly began to embrace the Real Me. I started letting myself enjoy the things again, made true friends and even found love, my first boyfriend ever at 18. I still get choked up retelling it, but when PINOF 10 dropped, after he found out how much I’d been hurt over the incident in 2017, I was greeted with a photo of him with the whiskers on his face. I cried for a while, blown away at such a pure act of kindness. He listens to me ramble about my interests, he compliments my taste in music, he watched K-12 with me.

This got incredibly long, but my point is this: Cringe Culture hurts people. You might think it’s whatever if the Thing doesn’t apply to your interests, but content you’re denouncing as cringy could be something that’s keeping them alive, that one flicker of light in a void of darkness. When I was contemplating suicide, I listened to The Black Parade, repeating Gee’s words to myself over and over, that nothing in the world was worth hurting yourself over. Some friendly joshing here and there is okay, but actively ripping someone to shreds constantly to the point where they have a mental breakdown in front of you and later on plan their own demise is disgusting. Nobody should abuse anyone for having harmless interests, no one. Unless you’re participating in p*dophilic/inc*st/s*xual assault/inherently abusive ships/content and pretending it’s not bad because “Fiction doesn’t impact reality!”, you have every right to like what you like and be happy. Read homestuck. Play Undertale. Draw up the Wildest OCs you can imagine. And stay away from people who try to rob you of innocent fun, life is too short and in this cruel, unforgiving world, you deserve to be happy, whether you’re a 13 year old who draws cute furries, a 16 year old cosplayer on TikTok, a VSCO girl, a 30 year old who writes/draws self insert art or a 20 year old who adores Invader Zim.

Cringe Culture is just bullying under a different name, and it can lead to many instances of people, especially fellow neurodivergent folk to feel isolated and ostracized. Attempting to bully someone out of an interest they have isn’t going to fix them; it’s more often than not going to cause more damage. I suffer from diagnosed C-PTSD, anxiety, and depression, and sometimes I still find myself trying to over-justify my interests. To all who are roped up in bad homes and lousy “friends” who berate you for your innocent passions, I’m sorry you’re suffering, things will one day get better even if it doesn’t feel like it, and fuck those people. I’d also like to note that sometimes even if it seems more terrifying, it’s better to have one or two close friends you can truly trust than a whole group that walks all over you. You have every right to call them out for treating you poorly, and if things don’t improve, you also have every right to leave.

You have a right to live your True Self.

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mysticsparklewings · 4 years

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Sparkle By the Sea

Pardon me as I just barely squeeze a MerMay piece of art in. I'll be honest with you guys, I've been pretty lacking in artistic motivation since NaPoWriMo ended. Although if you've noticed my lack of uploads, you probably could've already guessed that. This isn't abnormal for the aftermath of a month-long challenge for me, especially with a brand-new video game calling my name at every moment of the day, but even so I feel like this particular motivation drought was a bit different. Part of it definitely had to do with the changes to DeviantArt that I'm sure I don't need to remind everyone of, but that's been more of me dreading seeing what the state of the community is than anything else. (However, I have noticed I'm not a fan of the new tag system over the old category one, as confusing as the category system could be sometimes.) Rather, I think this lake of motivation has more to do with the fact that being largely absent from all social media during NaPo reminded me...well, that I hate social media. This is really a bigger discussion for a journal or something, but suffice to say it did not feel good to realize just how many literal hours I had previously been spending trying to desperately to scrape up just a little bit of support on other social media platforms (namely Twitter), versus the more natural growth I see here on dA that also feels a lot more genuine and less forced/obligatory. I can't really explain it, but that reminder/realization really helped my brain slip back into a place where I felt like creating again. And with that, I'll transition into talking about the art and save the social media talk for, as I said, a journal or something later on. Naturally, I've been seeing a lot of mermaid art this month and every year I feel the urge to get in on the fun, though I know better than to try actually doing the MerMay Challenge (especially not this year after having just done NaPo), so I usually either do a one-off drawing or if I'm too busy with other projects I just skip it. But I was starting to feel that need to make art in my brain again and I've had a specific set of stickers from the dollar store sitting in my stash for quite a while now that more or less sealed the deal for me. How do these stickers fit into the mix? Well, I originally fell in love with/picked them up because they are mermaid-themed and absolutely adorable--See for yourself! And I thought they would make for nice decals in a book project since they're wall stickers and therefore repositionable with minimal adhesive-yuck. And at first, I thought maybe I'd end up making them into said hypothetical book project in time for MerMay...except that felt a little cheap in combination with my lack of uploads. Did I really want to come back with a book project featuring mermaids I didn't even draw? And for MerMay of all things? So I sat on the idea and left the stickers out where I could see them, and eventually I sat down and took a closer look at them. The art style, upon further inspection, actually didn't look like it would be too far outside my usual art-making realms...Most of the coloring looks a lot like watercolor, except for the skin which I thought was flat and smooth like alcohol marker and the glitter accents which from my perspective pretty much had to be digital, but could potentially be replicated with glittery/metallic supplies... And that was the moment the idea hatched. I decided I'd try drawing a mermaid myself in the same style. This would work for MerMay, have something to do with the stickers, and based on my plans would work well for me as a mixed-media project, which as I'm sure I've said before is where I think my artistic talent shines best. I thought the scariest part was going to be replicating the looser and less strict line style, and to a point it was, but it wasn't nearly as bad as I thought it was going to be. I find it's usually kind of tricky to explain this, but really what this part of the process boils down to for me (if I'm replicating an existing style and not using my own), is really just studying the original artwork(s) and looking for patterns, then trying to stick to those patterns. For example, the style here features fairly large & rounded faces, and the hands are more like hand-shaped mittens (which was great news by the way because hands are always a pain in the butt for me), so I did my best to emulate those features. As per usual, I did start with a sketch, but I tried to keep it looser than usual, and then when I did the inking I started with my 0.2 Micron, again trying to keep things loose and no be too fussy if I could help it. Then I went back with a brush tip liner from Prismacolor to get more natural variation in the lines and to force myself to not have quite so much control over the line weight. I was also very careful with my choice of liners because I knew pretty much everything except the skin was going to see a lot of watercolors, which meant the lines had to be waterproof. And of course, I went with watercolor paper (my nice 100% cotton stuff this time) to make sure I didn't have any issues with blending or layering. Now, at this stage, I didn't know what I was going to do for the background, though I was leaning towards the idea of making one separately and placing the mermaid on top afterward, as sort of a nod to the original mermaids being stickers. But I wasn't totally sure yet. What I was sure of was how scared I was to just dive into coloring. The sketching and inking and gone so well I was thinking I was in for a rude awakening at any moment. So, just in case, I scanned my uncolored lines as a fall-back if I royally screwed up. With my paranoid mind set at ease (for the most part), I could begin with color application. I started with the skin since it was the easiest; Just one good layer of alcohol marker, leaving a little white space here and there like the artwork I was emulating. Although 1. The marker color turned out a bit darker than I was expecting and later blended too well with her tail, so I had to lighten it in Photoshop, and 2. because watercolor paper really soaks up the ink, I ended up with less white space than I thought I would. But beyond that, this step went off without a hitch. So then came the second-scariest part: The watercolor. I used a mixture of my Master's Touch watercolors and Mermaid Markers (yes, that was a very conscious supply choice ) and tried to take my time and be mindful of the color balance I was looking for. I'd decided ahead of time that I wanted to try and stick with a soft-ish palette like the original art, but I still wanted my choices to be different. Since yellow/gold is featured in the original but not used for a tail color, that's what I went with, and I opted for the blue-y-purple hair since a soft blue and purple are also prominent in the original and based on color-theory would be a nice contrast to the gold-orange tail. Though I did also try to get some pink in both the tail and the hair for a bit of unity and calling back to the pink in the original art. The trickiest part with the coloring was actually the tiny lips and blush spots. I ended up using a fluorescent pink for that turned out as more of a red originally and had to be touched-up via Photoshop because of that and also because of the lightening I did to the skin. It's more that it was a bit of a challenge to get the shapes of these much smaller areas right and in the correct place, since I had to use very minimal pencil markings, lest I end up with nasty graphite marks mixed into the paint. Getting the hair to be dark enough without being extreme compared to the rest of the drawing was also a great test of patience, but it ultimately worked out, I think. I also had a hard time deciding what color the piece of coral in her hair should be, which is why it ended up as this vague dusky-orange color. And I got more pink on the sand dollar next to it than I intended, but neither of those things is a huge deal. While I waited for all that to dry though, I had to decide how I was going to go about tackling all that extreme sparkle the original art had. I could have just added it in digitally and not even attempted it traditionally, but everything else had gone so smoothly that I decided to push my luck this time. Originally, I started with just glittery gel pens, but I found pretty quickly that they were sinking back into the colors underneath them too much and thus just weren't doing what I wanted. I wanted high-impact sparkle. After some brief consideration, I turned to the metallic watercolor sets I have made by Art Philosophy, which are very high-impact metallic and pretty opaque, which would work well over my failed gel pen and would work wonders for the areas where I wanted that high-impact over an opposing color. (I.E. Where I wanted the blue sparkle over a very orange-yellow area, which would normally make brown mud if the color on top wasn't opaque.) The funny part about that is that I originally used a different shade of purple and gold for those areas of sparkle that I ended up completely covering with different shades (the purple needed to be lighter and the gold needed to be darker/more gold and less yellow). And her eye shadow cover saw all three colors before I settled; The purple just seemed wrong, and the gold blended too well with her skin. I thought the blue wouldn't work so close to her blue hair, but it actually ended up looking the best out of the three. Although, I do have to make a full disclosure that the high-impact sparkle you see here is in fact where I went in and re-did it digitally once I scanned the artwork in. Unfortunately, glitter and metallic supplies just don't scan very well and usually end up looking too dark, dull, or flat by comparison. The metallic paints work just fine in person since you can move the art and see how they reflect the light, but it just doesn't work in a still image that's been captured by having a bright light uniformly shined over it. Still, re-tooling the sparkle digitally ended up being an interesting challenge, especially since it's been a fairly long time since I was messing with digital textures like this. Also worth noting is that I had to re-paint some of the metallic areas because they weirdly lifted off onto the plastic cover I used to protect the art when I pressed it onto the background to make the glue stick. I'm not sure if it's because those were the extra-layered areas and they hadn't fully dried all the way down to the paper, or if that particularly plastic just picks up this metallic paint really easily or what. And speaking of that background... Like I said earlier, I wasn't really sure what I wanted to do for a background for a while, but after reviewing my mermaid-centric Pinterest board I decided a simple rock seat and something to vaguely suggest the ocean/water without getting too detailed would suffice just fine. Based on that, I felt like using gouache would work nicely (and I just really felt like using the gouache since I don't find a lot of opportunities to use it) and that a color scheme that flipped her hair and tail colors would be best for the effect I wanted. I've found I really like the Strathmore 400 series mixed media paper for gouache because of how smooth it is, so I cut a piece down to size and got busy. For the most part, I just kind of went in with the colors doing whatever felt right, and trying to use some gouache I'd already mixed from past projects (since gouache can be reactivated and I've found this kind, in particular, seems to reactivate really nicely) either on their own or to mix the colors I felt like I needed. And I also tried to do a lot of blending straight on the paper to get more variations in color and make things a bit more lively. Oddly enough, this ended up being a good example of gouache's covering power because I accidentally started applying the colors upside down--using more greens and blues on top and more pinky-purple on the bottom--and not only had to flip the paper around but also had to do a fair amount of covering the colors I'd already put down with colors you don't really want to mix with them because they don't make very pretty results. But it worked out just fine, so yay! I also added some clouds for a little extra ambiance, which I think looks quite nice. Believe it or not, the most difficult thing about the background was the rocks. I spent far longer than I care to admit (or bothered to document, for that matter) trying and in many ways failing to mix the proper shades of gray I wanted, and the end result didn't turn out quite as clean and graphic as I had hoped, but by the time I put the mermaid on top, you really can't tell because you can only see a fraction of what's actually there. And I mean, the end result isn't terrible, it's just not quite what I was picturing in my mind's eye is all. Personally, I know it's kind of an odd choice, but I really like how there's no defining line between the water and the sky, and yet you still get a clear idea that they're separate and the rocks aren't just floating in space. I'm not sure how, but I think I'd like to work with this kind of ambiguity more often. It's like a step between abstract and more structured art. Anyway. With the background done, the next step was to attach the mermaid, which I felt like doing in a more 3D and less flat manner, so I chopped up a cardboard box that previously held a chocolate bunny I had on hand and glued some pieces together to boost the mermaid up a bit. This where those deep shadows between her and the background are coming from. Here I feel the need to insert a comment about how difficult it was to get my tacky glue to dispense the glue for me, though there's a chance this is because I need to poke the opening in the tip to be a bit wider. (You have to poke it open yourself and I always felt like I never did get it open quite enough...unless you like strenuous hand exercises...) Of course, once all the above was done then I had to scan the art in, which I was admittedly a bit nervous about after the incident with the plastic cover peeling off the metallic paint (though fortunately, the scanner glass didn't have the same effect), and then all that was left wad the digital retouches. Overall, I'm really happy with how this turned out. It doesn't blend in as well as I originally wanted it to with the original art, but in the end, that doesn't really bother me. It's just a nice piece of art on its own that is also unique from what I normally do...except it's still got a lot of similar elements to how I normally make art. It feels a lot like the days when all I made was fanart. The key difference here is that I know myself better as an artist now and thus can use that knowledge to my advantage. I can't promise this a return to regular posting for me, though I do hope it's a gateway to me posting more frequently at least, but I can say I do intend on getting back to working on art more often and therefore being more present online again. At the very least, I can happily tell you guys that I have a couple of new art supplies en route to me that I've been wanting for a while and am excited to share with you once they arrive. If nothing else, we at least have that to look forward to! ____ Artwork © me, MysticSparkleWings ____ Where to find me & my artwork: My Website | Commission Info + Prices | Ko-Fi | dA Print Shop | RedBubble | Twitter | Tumblr | Instagram

#mermay

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geminineart · 5 years

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I wasn't sure about making one of these this year, but in the end I couldn't ressist!

2018 was a slow year for my art, but at least I found a little something to show for each month. Which proves that nomatter how inactive I may be at my social media, I never stop drawing! ;)

January: It seems like I always start with a Jessika! a basic portrait made for my first Art style Challenge, which has become one of my favorite pics of her so far!

February: This second month was very bad for my art, and I still cannot understand why! I couldn't find any drawing that I actually liked, but this mix up of my Candy Vampire characters and the Ouran High School Host club anime was the best I got!

March: I got the chance to practice again with watercolors, with some interesting results! So heres one of my "Candy Vampire, Japanese AU" pieces!♥

April: Some Fan art made for my patreon! I wanted to make a size-difference pic for a long time, and DianexKing couple (YES, I ship them. HARD.) was the perfect chance! I'm actually pretty happy with the result!

May: MERMAY, OF COURSE! ♥ Here's the first pic I made for the challenge, which ended up being one of my favorites!

June: June was a DEAD month for my art. I finished NOTHING!.... eeeexcept for a couple of SVTFOE-related pics, one of them being this Celena Butterfly!

July: I was working on some vampire species reference charts during June and July, and they're posted right now at my Patreon! This is only a sneak peek!

August: Found out about the "Draw this in your style" challenge, which lead me to draw one of the best pics of the year! Thank you all who have participated by redrawing any of my pics!!!! ♥

September: The month of the DEPRESSION... To make the story short, I was drawing 9 or 10 characters from Steven Universe, and I mnaged to finish Rose Quartz before the file dissapeared from my computer... ;w; This .JPG was the only thing left!

October: New image for my bussiness card, specially made for my participation at SOFA 2018! (My country's version of a comic-CON!)

November: After losing the SU-fanart file and having LOTS of work at SOFA, I decided I needed to take a break, and I only managed to make a couple of doodles during the whole month! Here's my favorite!

December: I think you haven't seen this one yet. I'll be posting it at my social media in the next few days! A "Draw this in your style" challenge, a redrawn from a cute pic from another artist! ♥

I hope you'll all have a happy new year. And I'll see you in 2019 for more artistic development!!!

#Art Summary #Art Summary Meme #Memes #Art meme #Artist meme #Original #Chart

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mothraballs · 6 years

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Sketchbooks From Over The Last Seven Years

I have a box of sketchbooks and random sketches that I’ve been adding to since I was about 12. Today I went through it all and I decided I’d make a post about it because. idk. why not I guess? So obviously its not every page of every book but like if anyone wants to go through about 7 years of bad sketchbooks and loose sketches and doodles its under the cut. Some nudity

.Going through this sucked a little because like who in the world ever wants to go through their middle school art??? Its hard not to get rid of that stuff because like not only does it suck but it makes me remember middle school and things like anime club and like. ew. But it’s nice to see how much less I suck at this, even if i’m not nearly as talented as I’d like to be. It also makes me sad to think of art i’ve lost, even if it was bad. I don’t have pretty much anything that I did digitally from like age 13-16 because I either deleted it or lost it when a computer broke because i didnt back that up since I didnt think id care but l kinda wish I still had some of that stuff, just like to compare improvement over such a big time period.

I wanted to find some of my actual finished art to post with this, but I couldn’t find it today, so it’s only sketchbook stuff (but I dont finish a lot of things anyway lol). Maybe I’ll make another post comparing old things I actually finished with new stuff once I can find it because I know it’s around here somewhere anyway heres sketchbooks!!

This is from 7th grade, so I guess I was 12. It’s god fucking awful, complete with drawings of memes (which I will spare u from), slenderman fan art, and a weird message about my middle school bike, which I still have in my garage, being stolen, which it never was. And the brakes do work.

why

This one is also from when I was 12, but it’s only about 1/4 of the way full.

i think i had a mental brakedown here lmao

@douche-mccoosh ‘s sexy page

This one was either from 7th-8th grade or just in 8th grade. Idk. Either way I was probably 13 years old. Just a warning: Mlp fan art starts here

1 (ONE) wolf

idk what this is supposed to be honestly

long forgotten OC

This one was also from when I was 13

I had this from age 13-14, I started drawing digitally a LOT more around age 14, so I guess I wasnt rly using my sketchbook as much

this was like straight copied from a piece I saw at an art magnet school I applied to (obviously I didnt get in lmfao) and I really did not understand how dark I needed to make the paper in some spots. And then I never finished it

A pony OC... she was a robot ok

I think I had this one age 14-15. The paper ended up being translucent so I stopped using it early on. Im kinda glad I didn’t fill it up because that actually might be kinda useful to me now

Sweet notes from @lmkno

This one wasn’t in the picture on the top bc I found it later. I think I might also be missing like 1 other one too tbh but oh well lol I think I had it when I was 15? really stopped drawing like a lot around this time, I wasn’t doing digital stuff either cuz my computer was broken at the time

This is also about when I stopped throwing away every single thing i drew on a loose piece of paper, so here’s some random sketches from the general timeframe

First sketches of my OCs Vonn, the fish man and Elliot, the girl with pigtails

Some of my art I’ve sorted correlating to the OC’s and the universe they belong in or whatever so here’s some OC’s that sort of came about around that time, some of the pictures are from when I was older though

Ginger

the TV head robot guy was named Seven

the guy with the fuckin,, circle head and weird face is Wolfgang, I still draw him a lot today but ive changed how he looks a l o t

I had this age 15-16, so like 2014-15. Maybe early 2016? There’s a lot of blank pages and scribbled out things. I

Wolfgang again

fukkin,,,, gaye ass furry roleplay oc

Sketches on loose paper from the time I think??? I honestly cant tell when all of these are from but they’re gonna go here.

first design of an OC named Eryl

A random D20 character

Eryl

Early drawings of an OC named Lucy Lucy Lucy Lucy Lucy Lucy Lucy Lucy Lucy aka Lucy Ninetimes

Lucy & Wolfgang

And heres more stuff I had sorted by OCs/universe or whatever

main OCs here are Pidgenfinger, with the blue or possibly stylistic black hair, and Chrissy, shes like. A mouse or something

main OCs here are Roland and Ansel, they were like siamese twins and then one of them died at birth and now this guy just has a ghost twin idk it was stupid

Finally we’re at the point that my phone started recognizing faces in my sketchbook. I had this one age 17, i might have started it like right before I turned 17?

Lucy & Wolfgang

Vonn and Elliot on the right side of the page

Pidgenfingersa

Roland & Ansel

Dont Starve fanart on the right

Elliot on the right

Lucy on the bottom left

Vonn & Elliot on this page too

Lucy & Wolfgang, this is dumb but w/e

Von, Elliot, and another OC, Eryl. The lady with horns never got a name

Random Sketches

Lucy

Wolfgang

I got this sketchbook a few months after id turned 18 if i remember correctly

Lucy, but decapitated

Lucy

Lucy again

Lucy yet again

Lucy!!!!!!!!!!

Wolfgang

(and Lucy)

I got this sketchbok as a gift from my wonderful boyfriend @the-lost-professor early january of this year, so technically when I was 18, I’m now 19

Eryl on bottom right

Stuff I did for mermay

some random sketches

My current sketchbok ft. Tsu This one was also a gift from my boyfriend ♥ I got it late June of this year

Wolfgang

Lucy

Wolfgang

Lucy

Wolfgang and Leah, and OC that i made a long ass time go and I dont have the original picture but I redrew her

Wolfgangs and Lucys

Eryl on the left

The last thing I did for mermay, which I technically finished after may ended

Lucy

and the most recent page! With Lucy and Wolfgang on the right

uhhhhhhhhh

im really fucking hungry now and im gonna go eat bye

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myaekingheart · 6 years

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summer road trip 2018 ; day five

Again, nothing too exciting today. I spiraled into a bit of a depression, though. More on that later. Woke up around 10:30am, got another bowl of Honey Bunches of Oats for breakfast and then passed out on the couch. Woke up around lunchtime, made myself a ham + turkey + cheese sandwich with mustard which was pretty good. Had some potato chips, too. My Pop Pop ran to the store again this morning and he picked up chocolate buttercream cupcakes because my grandmom likes them, even though they’re “off her diet” and “all her [Weight Watchers] points for the day.” Keep this in mind, because it comes back. So after I ate my sandwich and chips, my Pop Pop asks me if I want a packet of cupcakes. They’re the Tastykake ones so they’re the two cupcakes in a little plastic pack. I realize now just saying the word “Tastykake” probably gives a pretty good indication of where I am right now. Whoops. Anyways, I wasn’t sure but I accepted anyways. Deep down, I was really scared it would set off my IBS like the cookies I had for dessert did yesterday. As we were eating, we somehow got on the subject of health and weight which you should know already means trouble. I think it was because my grandmom decided to “be bad” and eat one herself. She’s hellbent on Weight Watchers which is great for her because she lost a lot of weight and got healthier but she’s still going at it to make sure she maintains and so every little goddamn thing has a point value and I swear, it’s as bad as counting calories if not worse. At least with calories, everyone has a specific goal they should reach every day based on their current weight and level of activity. With Weight Watchers, everyone has a certain amount of points that you cannot exceed and it’s applicable to everyone regardless of how much you weigh or how often you exercise. And every food has a goddamn point value so you can only eat too much before you reach the limit and have to eat either “zero foods” which I believe are fruits and veggies or just not eat anything else for the rest of the day. I mean, if it’s what works for you and shit then that’s great but I feel like there’s a massive margin of error especially as someone who is desperately struggling to recover from an eating disorder. Which is where the afternoon went south. We got on the subject of weight and my grandmom told me “Well, you can stand to gain some weight!” which then prompted my Pop Pop to (politely, at least) ask how much I weighed. He shot some guesses out there but they were all too high. When I told them the number, I guess they were shocked. Like how could I possibly weigh so little?!?! Le gasp!!! Seeing as I was already in a particularly vulnerable position, this did not help. My botched haircut on Saturday has had me feeling really self conscious about myself already, and I‘ve always been sensitive about my weight. When my parents and I showed up to the wedding on Saturday evening, the very first thing one of my aunts said to me was “Hey, skinny!” and then went off about how small I was and about how her granddaughter, my second cousin, had gained all this weight and I’m sitting there just thinking this is all so goddamn unnecessary. I tried to brush it off and forget about it, though, and it truly didn’t bother me. By the time I was working on my sandwich, I was even thinking to myself “Damn, it’s so nice being on vacation and not really worrying about my weight or whatever. I haven’t tried to count calories since we got here!” Funny how quickly life decided to throw that out the window. I forced myself to eat both little cupcakes even though I was terrified of what they would do to me, but after I was finished I found myself spiraling hardcore. I pulled out my laptop and sat on the couch meticulously calculating how many calories I’ve consumed in the past five days since our trip began. Then I asked my grandmom if I could hop on her scale, to which she said of course. That just made things even worse. I’ve been consuming a very healthy amount of calories during the entire trip, even if my eating has been slightly off in regards to physical amount (on Friday I barely ate anything after breakfast because my IBS was hardcore flaring and I was scared of making it even worse). Despite that, however, when I stepped on the scale I found that I haven’t made a single smidge of progress in the weight department. If anything, I lost a pound or two which was absolutely heartbreaking. I hopped in the shower shortly afterward once the laundry was done in the washer just so nobody would have to see me cry. But honestly, I hate myself. Like if I’m going to be completely blunt, I absolutely hate myself. Cannot stand myself. I look in the mirror and I’m disgusted with what I see. I need to gain weight, I know this. I’m far too fucking thin and it sickens me. I try so hard, though, and even if I do make progress, I will never weigh enough. I’m convinced of that. My weight will never be good enough. I will never be able to gain enough so that I’m healthy, rather than drastically underweight. And no matter how much progress I might make, all anyone will ever see is skin and bones. I am nothing to anyone but skinny. Nobody sees anything but my weight, or at least that’s the first thing they see and probably the boldest thing they see. It’s like that’s all I am, is skinny. If someone calls me skinny, or even that god-awful “Skinny Minnie,” one more time, I swear I’m going to kill myself. I’m so sick of it. They have no idea the struggles I go through with my weight, the heartbreak and desperation. And I have always felt this way. I have never been happy with my weight. I look back at childhood pictures of myself, when I was gangly and ugly and I had gigantic teeth, and I cannot help but hate myself back then as much as I do now. I’m still gangly and ugly and even though my teeth aren’t necessarily gigantic anymore, they’re crooked and disgusting. There are just absolutely no redeeming qualities about my appearance. I will always look disgusting and emaciated and stupid no matter what I fucking do. I’m kind of glad I accidentally cut my ankle in the shower when I was shaving because, as morbid as this sounds, I’m too chicken to actually cut but I get this little shred of disgusting satisfaction when it happens by accident. And this time was especially brutal because it was a rather nasty scrape that bled more than I expected it to. I felt like I deserved the pain. I didn’t tell anyone about it. I hid in the bedroom blotting it with tissues to try and stop the bleeding, then said “fuck it” and instead of asking for a bandaid (because I knew if my grandmom saw I cut myself, I’d never hear the end of it, even if it was an accident), I just folded up a tissue and hid it inside my socks. Nobody had to know, and nobody found out. So, essentially, it was a success. God, I’m so motherfucking twisted. But anyways, afterward I did my daily Mermay drawing, which is probably the most positive thing about today because I’m really happy with the way it turned out, and started reading a book I packed for the trip that I bought on Amazon months ago but never had a chance to actually sit down and read. It’s called My Heart and Other Black Holes by Jasmine Warga and is about this girl who finds this boy through a forum on this website for depressed people and they sign up for this thing called “Suicide Partners” where they promise to keep each other accountable in their attempts at killing themselves. Very morbid premise. Very appropriate for my mood today. And while all of this was going on, my parents were off drinking with their friends and having a grand old time. My grandmom kept pestering them over the phone about whether they would be home for dinner, because she planned to make a roast but only if they would be here, and she needed to know whether to start defrosting it or not. My parents ended up not being here by dinnertime, so we made pasta instead. Since pasta is perhaps my favorite safe food, I was pretty pleased with this. I devoured my entire plate, sans excess sauce because that’s a no-no. Mainly because stomach issues/I just don’t like excess sauce. I picked out the bits of ground beef but that was about it. Tonight I decided to skip dessert. It wasn’t long afterward that my parents did finally get here (they stayed in a hotel the past two nights to be closer to the friends and family they were going to visit). Like I expected, they were hungry when they got here but they picked up sandwiches and soft pretzels on the way so they had something to eat. Of course, my grandmom mentioned how I scarfed down the entire plate of pasta at dinner to which my mom jokingly replied, “Yeah, we’re going to fatten you up on this trip!” As if I needed to hear any more shit about my motherfucking weight. I confronted her about this later to which she told me I couldn’t let it bother me. Like thanks a heap, mom, I thought you were going to be my support system here. I was seriously hoping she’d be my backbone and shit but I guess not. My expectations of her are too high anyways. The only other good part, I guess, was that they brought back birthday presents for me from friends and family that they saw over the past two days. My one aunt, the one who made the initial weight-centric remark, got me some nice comfy boots. My other aunt got me a bracelet, which is perhaps the first birthday gift she’s ever given me that I’ve actually liked and will probably wear. My mom’s best friend got me a shot glass and a bracelet I will most definitely never wear. The thing about buying me presents is that I’m apparently really a hit or a miss because nobody, not even family, seems to know me well enough to know exactly what I’d like unless it has to do with Tangled. But I guess they figure I’m probably too old for that now. In just a few days, I’ll be 21. And I lowkey want to shoot myself for it. I hate the implication that I’m supposed to get totally hammered for my birthday, now that I can legally drink, but when you have a mother who you‘re convinced has a drinking problem, alcohol just isn’t appealing. Ironically enough, she was perfectly fine the morning after the wedding. It was my dad who was severely hungover. He almost didn’t make it out of the hotel, apparently. As a man who always says he knows his limits, and is always a responsible drinker, this was truly shocking. But then again, everyone was completely hungover the next morning. I just cannot possibly fathom how that is in any way appealing to absolutely anyone. Even living on my own without parental supervision like I do, I never drink. I go out to my boyfriend’s friends’ houses and they always have mixed drinks but I never bother with any of it. I am the ultimate party pooper-- another bullshit quality. I don’t drink, I don’t smoke. I don’t do anything fun. All I do is sit around and be the least productive person on the planet. The only reason I even showered today was because my grandmom expected me to and I didn’t know how to tell her no. And because showers are the perfect place to cry without anyone having any goddamn clue. I don’t know, I guess this trip is just weighing on me more than I expected it to. It almost feels like nothing is going right, between the haircut and then the remarks about the weight. I brought my mermaid fin with me with the hope of using it in my grandparent’s community pool but now I don’t even know if I want to solely for the fact that I don’t know if I have the strength to go down there in a bikini after all this. I’m dreading that cruise in a month, too, because I know the expectations of having that “summer body” and I’m just so disgusted with myself at this point that I don’t even want to think about any of it right now. Maybe I’ll just revert to wearing nothing but baggy black clothes to hide my ugly ass body and transform into the disgusting sore spot that I am on pretty much everyone’s lives. To make matters even worse, my boyfriend wasn’t able to come on this trip with us because he has work every day this week so I’m away from him. This is the longest we’ve been apart since we’ve moved in together and it makes me wonder how we ever managed to be long distance for a year. I’ve been away from him since Thursday and I already feel like death. I don’t know how I‘m ever going to survive the rest of this with everything that’s already happened so far. I had such high hopes for this trip and I will admit, there have been a few positive points like at the wedding reception on Saturday night, I ended up spending almost the entire time hanging out in the hallway with my cousin shooting the shit and fangirling about all the common stuff we love like cosplaying and cartoons. For the most part, though, this trip has been a little less than hell, it seems. I just wish things were different, I guess, and that I could actually enjoy myself rather than feel depressed about my shit haircut, my disgusting weight, and how lonely I am without my boyfriend here. Woo-fucking-hoo for Summer Road Trip 2018, I guess.

#summer road trip 2018 #ramblings

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starlightpen · 7 years

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August

Okay, here’s the August Update!

The sensitive content thing hit one of my 100 drawing posts, fortunately I had queued it so I was able to get it reviewed before it actually posted. That doesn't change the fact that two blatant porn blogs were in my recommended blogs while I was scrolling. Not cool staff. I'm putting together an email about that but haven't gotten around to starting that conversation yet. Friendly reminder to please tell me right away if an older post gets hit with a sensitive content warning so I can get it handled right away! I don't really post NSFW work and I don't plan to, so this is mainly a big inconvenience.

The 100 drawing challenge is going well, if you've been seeing my posts on that. (also if you want to see the new drawings as they come out head over to my instagram, where I've been posting them as they are made) According to my calendar, I'll be finished in late August, leaving over a month of dead space before Inktober hits.

(For context, I'm making a goal of having some sort of challenge going on year round, but I didn't know about Mermay or Phanniemay this year and started the 100 drawing challenge after finishing Marker March. Next year if I do one of the May challenges it will end mid-September, leaving less than a month before Inktober. I haven't done anything like this before but I need to know if I can keep up with the strain of constantly needing to produce something, even if that something is small.)

For the end of August and all of September I plan to be working on personal projects. For instance, I've gotten back into making comics. I've already made something, but nothing I really want to show. Yet

For that drawing down time I'd like to work on a new project called The Ink Eaters, which I'll go more into detail about next month but I'm really REALLY excited about because it's an opportunity to go outside of the usual cutsey art that I feel has made my work stagnant.

I'm also still working on stuff for the Cat Café event, which I still haven't gotten a date for? Which is okay up to a point, gives me more time to work out prints and a display, but I'm going to be asking if any specifics have been confirmed as soon as I get some business out of the way.

As a final note, adoptables didn't end up being a thing. I may approach it later, but despite the content of my 100 drawing challenge the concept just wasn't working.

All the best, Liz

#Yosstext #august update #100 drawing challenge #comics #cat cafe

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thiswasinevitableid · 3 years

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Furies (Mermay OT4)

Request from @angellioncosplay, fill is NSFW

The jagged edge of the harpoon slices into his tail.

Barclay knows he’s doomed but he thrashes and tries to dive all the same. He doesn’t know what the boar above wants, doesn’t care, he just wants to go home, he has to make it back to them, please, all he wants is to see them again.

A second barb pierces his side, blood clouds his vision.

In the darkness below, he thinks he sees two red lights racing closer. Then the harpooners tug, and the world snaps to black.

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

“Is he stable?” Duck whispers as Aubrey swims out of Barclay’s bedroom, shutting the door behind her.

“Yeah. I’m glad Indrid warned us when he did; if he’d lost much more blood, I’m not sure even my powers coulda helped.”

“And Joe and ‘Drid?”

“They’re gonna stay with him. I think they’re okay but, well” she sighs, shakes her head, “if that’d happened to Dani, I don’t think anything could make me leave her side.” She loops their arms together as they swim to the door, “do you wanna come stay with us? I know this is hard on them, but you had to, like, break a harpoon in half while one of your friends almost died.”

“Nah, oughta stay in case any of ‘em need somethin.”

“You want to keep Dr. Harris Bonkers for extra support?” She holds out her sea bunny.

Duck rubs it’s back, “I’ll be okay, but thanks for the offer Lady Flame. You get home safe now.”

“I will. Oh” She turns, swimming backwards as she adds, “if he needs any more healing between now and tomorrow, come get me right away!”

He promises he will, locks the house up for the night and floats into the kitchen to put it back in some kind of order. Indrid’s sketch pad and enchanted pen are still on the floor where he dropped them, Joseph’s book and Duck’s half-built model ship knocked sideways from the seer pushing away from the table in a flurry of silver and panic. And on the counter are the ingredients Barclay’d set out for dinner, the ones he was checking off when he realized he needed scallops and swam off with a promise to be right back.

Duck sighs, jumps when something whaps at the green-glass window.

“Jesus Winnie, thought you were in the bedroom.” He cracks the window enough to lift the octopus inside. See slowly slides off his arm, swimming across the floor to the pile of salvaged ship instruments Duck and Indrid found for her.

“Maybe this will keep her from stealing the silverware.” Barclay plucks a knife from the cephalopods tentacle.

Suddenly, he’s too heavy to swim. They almost lost him.

It’s simple, really. Duck is in love with Joe and Indrid. Joe and Indrid are in love with Barclay. But that doesn’t mean Duck doesn’t love the other mer; Barclay is one of his best friends, a sympathetic ear when things go south and the only one of the four of them capable of beating Joe at Ten Shells. Barclay also understands something about Duck that escapes many of their kind; that he can love Joe, curious and meticulous from his black hair to his dapper monochrome tail, and Indrid, strange and aloof until you gave him the right kind of stroke on his silver scales, with the same intensity. It just manifests in different ways.

Duck cracks the bedroom door open, finds the wounded mer on his back in their large, seaweed colored bed. Indrid and Joe are nestled on either side of him. Normally, they’d be an undignified, loving pile, but the bandages on his stomach and tail prevent it.

Indrid stirs, trilling in distress. His nightmares come and go, are most often the echos of horrible futures he was forced to watch over and over. Duck has a pretty good guess as the which one is playing in his mind tonight.

He wiggles down onto the bed, draping his arm over Indrid’s side and guiding his bony back and red fin against his chest. When Indrid registers his weight, the nervous twitches of his tail stop. Duck glances up, watches Barclay’s hand glide down the bed to hold Indrid’s own.

Someone almost took this from them. Almost ripped away pieces of the hearts of the mers he loves most in the world.

And he wants to know who.

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

“Dearest, how are you feeling?”

“Fine, totally fine.” Barclay tries to sit up as a demonstration, only for his whole body to convulse. He falls back against the bed, whimpering pathetically.

“Hmmm, I was afraid that would be the case. There were some timelines where you healed quickly, but it seems the monsters who attacked you did a great deal of damage.”

“No, no, it was just a twinge, if you give me a sec I can-”

“-You will stay in bed.” Indrid’s red gaze sharpens, “no mate of mine is going to re-open his wounds trying to make me breakfast.”

“Besides” Joseph looks up from setting all the med supplies they need in tidy stacks and lines, “it’s not like Duck or I can’t cook. You need to rest, big guy.” He swims over, strokes Barclays hair. Barclay leans into the feelings, trying to ignore the fear gnawing a new hole in his side.

In the three days since the attack, he hasn’t been alone. His boyfriends and friend take turns sitting with him, talking when he wants to and letting him sleep when he needs, bringing him food and changing his bandages without complaint.

It’s all wrong. That’s not their job. It shouldn’t be, that’s what they have him for. Some part of him wishes they’d been too late. Because he doesn’t want to face what’s coming.

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

“Any luck?”

“Some. Juno says she saw an unfamiliar hull pass by about an hour before Barclay got attacked, but she wasn’t close enough to see any details.”

“Damn it.” Joseph slams the book one human weapons in frustration, then cringes at his outburst.

Duck swims to him, pulling him up from the chair into an embrace, “We’ll figure it out, slick. Nothin else, happen to know we got a real smart mer workin the case.” He winks, kisses Joseph on the cheek.

He snorts, then looks at the floor, “Some part of me is worried about what will happen if we do figure out who hurt him. I...I don’t believe in violence outside of dire circumstances, but they, they nearly killed him. I’d like to say my motive in seeking them out is to make sure they can’t hurt anyone else but, well, that’s secondary at best. What I want is to make them pay.”

“That makes two of us” Indrid slithers in the door, “he’s sound asleep, not to worry. I have narrowed down our potential culprits with my visions, but I too am afraid of what I may do if I locate the humans who dared harm him.”

“I get the feelin, but right now we’re mostly borrowin trouble. Let’s wait until we know a little more before decidin whether to track ‘em down.”

Joseph nods, opens his mouth to suggest one of them retrieve dinner from the fishmonger down the block, when there’s a crash from the kitchen.

“Damn, Winnie must’ve gotten into the cabinets again.”

Indrid blinks, then frowns, “No, that is not her doing.”

Rushing into the kitchen reveals Barclay trying to arrange food on the counter. His upper body can barely move, and his tail is unable to maintain direction due to the bandages.

“Don’t worry about, ow, me” Barclay smiles at them, but Joseph spots panic in his eyes, “th-thought I’d do some meal prep since you’re all gonna be busy this week.”

He’s about to point out that a)they’re all capable of feeding themselves even when busy and b)Barclay’s only been recovering for a week and a half and Aubrey explicitly told him it would be at least a month before he could move around without help.

Before he can make any points at all, Indrid draws himself up to his full height, frills of his ears fanned out and gestures to the bedroom, “You will do no such thing. You need your rest, dearest.”

“But-”

“That was an order, not a request.” It’s a tone that never fails to make Joseph’s spine turn to mush, and by the flash of pink in Barclay’s tail, he feels the same way. Then his whole tail drains of color and he nods.

“Right. Sorry. I, I didn’t mean to upset you guys.”

Indrid’s frills flatten and he swims swiftly towards the other mer, “Barclay, I’m not-”

“It’s okay. I caused enough trouble already.” He catches Indrid by the chin to kiss him, blows a second kiss Joseph’s way, then disappears into the bedroom.

As Indrid flicks his tail nervously, Duck clears his throat, “Know I joke about him not havin a selfish bone in his body, but this is startin to get ridiculous.”

The silver-scaled mer sighs, coiling his tail around Joseph’s own and opening his arms so Duck will come give him a hug. When the three of them are close together he murmurs, “ I saw this timeline, but I had so hoped it would not be the one we ended up in. I have mentioned before that the culture Barclay and I grew up in as deep water mers is very different than what you have on the reef. One component of that was the belief that a mer who could not carry his weight in his home would not be in said home for much longer. His mate or mates not only could, but were encouraged to, throw him out to make room for a more useful partner.”

The entirety of Joseph’s stomach crawls up his throat, “He really thinks we’d do that to him?”

“I suspect so.” Indrid rests his head on Duck’s shoulder, “Barclay is already prone to such fears, in that he prides himself on taking care of others. And it is a deeply ingrained message and practice, so much so that there are times I still fear you three may turn me away should my powers disappear.”

“‘Drid-”

The mer purrs reassuringly, “But then I remind myself that I am not down there. I am up here, with you who love me regardless of my strength. Seeing the future helps a great deal as well; I can peek and see there are no timelines where you turn me away. Hmm” his tail taps Sterns lower back, “I wonder, is there a way we can mimic that experience for Barclay? Help him see his future here?”

Joseph gets an idea and, for the first time all day, the sense that he’s getting somewhere, “I have a plan.”

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

Barclay isn’t sure if this is some cruel joke, or if his boyfriends genuinely believe they won’t grow tired of him needing to be cared for all the time. Regardless, he doesn’t know what to do when Joseph lays beside him, kissing his cheek and shoulder as he talks about how they should go see the Kelpie migration this fall, and how he’s heard about a human beach where they serve a swim-up meal to mers and humans alike, and wouldn’t it be nice for all four of them to visit and try the food?

He doesn’t know what to do when Indrid gently sits him upright and combs his hair, jumping from topic to topic between kisses to the back of his neck but always returning to what they should do for Joseph’s birthday, or Dani and Aubrey’s anniversary, or their own anniversary.

He doesn’t know what to do right now, Indrid sitting and drawing while Joseph finishes changing the bandages on his tail. The one on his side came off a few days ago, scar tissue forming a jagged tooth of pink and white in his skin.

Duck swims in, greeting them all at once, his usually friendly expression somber.

“Joe, ‘Drid, could I talk to you in the kitchen? It’ll only be a minute.”

His boyfriends nod, assuring him they’ll be back even as they swim away. He wishes he could believe it, but he can think of only one reason Duck would need to talk to them alone. With a sad little groan, he rolls onto his uninjured side and pities himself to sleep.

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

“You’re sure that’s the one?”

“Positive. Minerva had a near miss with it this mornin, described the exact same thing Barclay did. Speakin of which, we know they’re down a few harpoons because the ones they sent after her she threw right back at them.”

“A fair response if ever there was one. Do we all agree on the plan?”

“Yep”

“Yes.”

“Good” A smile that could make a sea monster afraid, “then let us begin.”

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

Winthrop lounges on the deck of the Nemo as his guests and the hired guides mill around the edges of the boat. After that run-in with the mermaid earlier today, they’re on pins and needles, hoping to see and (finally) catch another.

Is poaching in a protected cove illegal? Only if you don’t have the money to pay the fine. Is it wrong to hunt the rare creatures that call this stretch of ocean home? Wrong is a deeply subjective concept.

Warmth leaves the deck as clouds swirl above the sun.

“I say, wasn’t it sunny a moment ago?”

“Yep. Could be again, provided y’all head to shore and never come back here.” A voice calls from the bow.

Everyone races forward, shouting in excitement when they discover the merman addressing them with an oddly calm expression.

“Don’t even think about tryin to spear me. You ain’t the only ones with weapons.”

A second mer surfaces, armed with a spear gun he clearly knows how to use.

“Joe’s a damn good shot.”

The other mer fixes them with a steely gaze, “This is your last warning. Leave this cove and never try to hunt here again.”

“Or what?”

The whole boar rocks as something massive bumps the underside. Screams draw his attention to the silver, serpentine shape gliding through the water. A red fin breaks the surface and then it’s gone.

Then the boat nearly capsizes as it rams the port side. In the darkening waves, the monster turns it’s head to look up at them. It’s red eye is the size of a steering wheel, but he forgets all about that when the creature rears up, jaws snapping, and narrowly misses dragging his wife off the boat between butcher-knife teeth.

“Our friend here is mighty angry with you” the first merman rubs the monster's fin as it swims by him, “in fact, he’s downright furious.”

“And it looks like he’s decided to build up some speed before hitting you this time. I don’t think your boat will survive that amount of force.”

“Alright, alright we’ll leave, we’ll go and never come back.”

A hissing screech from the monster.

“We swear!” He says, really meaning it this time.

The first merman points towards shore, “then get goin’.”

The boat speeds away, and Winthrop decides to never, ever look back.

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

“That was fuckin incredible darlin’”

“Thank you” Indrid returns to his usual form, groggy but pleased, “you were both wonderful as well.”

“Never been happier that you’re so into workin out how human machines operate” Duck kisses Joseph hard, one of Indrid’s favorite sights in the whole of the sea.

“If you like how I handle a spear gun, you should see how I handle, um, other things.”

“I am” Indrid yawns, “in favor of that idea. But first, I believe I am due for a nap, and Barclay is due for an update.”

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

“You did all that for me?” Barclay twists his fingers in the blanket beneath him, trying to sound pleasantly surprised instead of confused. From the look Joseph and Duck trade, he’s doing a shit job.

“Well, technically we also did it to keep the reef safe from hunters, and hopefully start a legend that will keep any like-minded poachers from coming within fifty miles of our home. Or our family. And yes, dearest, that includes you.” In the darkened bedroom, deep purple shimmers up Indrid’s tail. A signal to obey.

“I, I never said it didn’t.”

“Yes, but it has been on your mind for weeks.”

“I…”

“Barclay” Joseph settles beside him, taking his hand, “Indrid told us about what you two were taught about needing care or being helpless. I, we, none of us want you thinking that’s what will happen here. I promise.”

He doesn’t realize he’s crying, not until Indrid whispers “hush now, dear one” and carefully rests their tails together so that the wound is left untouched.

“I, I thought saying it would make it worse. Make you think I needed reassurance, which would just make it clear how useless I am. I, I know that sounds ridiculous.”

“It’s not ridiculous to feel vulnerable or scared after something traumatic.” Joseph traces his fingers up and down his arm and his scales ripple in reply.

“Nor to feel off-balance when you are unable to do what you usually do.”

“But you gotta tell us next time.” Duck rests next to Joseph, “we care about you, all three of us, but we can’t help if we don’t know what’s wrong.”

He flashes apologetic yellow, “You’re right. I’ll, I’m gonna try to be better about that. It’s just hard for me to let other mers take care of me sometimes.”

The purple returns to Indrid’s tail, and when he turns to look at Barclay his smile is no longer gentle and ethereal. It’s almost tangible enough to slice his chest and send everything he wants pouring onto the bed.

“It seems to me, my dear one, that you could use some practice in that area.”

“Yes” he murmurs, then yips when Indrid bites his throat, “I mean yes, sir.”

“Much better. After all, your convalescence has made such things difficult until now. And yes, Joseph, I will keep an eye on the futures to be certain no one is hurt. Speaking of which: Duck, please adjust so Barclay’s head is in your lap. You’ll need to hold his shoulders down should he try and disobey me.”

A shift of the bed and then his head rests on mottled green scales.

“Hey” He smiles up and Duck sends a crooked grin his way, setting more pink off in his tail. He may not want to fuck him, but Barclay’s not about to deny how handsome Duck can be.

This rumination distracts him from Indrid and Joseph’s conversation, so he’s pleasantly surprised when the black-tailed mer catches his lips in a kiss. It’s precise, down with calculated care that always makes him feel like the most interesting, important thing in the world.

“That’s it big guy, relax for us.”

“I’, I’m tryINGfuck, it’s, it’s kinda hard when Indrid is doing that.”

Indrid chuckles, continues teasing the scales in his upper tail, “Shall I stop?”

“No, please no-”

“Please what?” His slit opens at the steel in Indrid’s voice.

“Please sir.”

“Good boy. Ah, and here’s that lovely cock of yours. What shall I do with it, hmmm?”

“Anything you want sir.” He tries not to giggle as Joseph nibbles his ear.

“I was not asking you.” Indrid cocks his head at Duck.

“Huh” Duck toys with Barclays hair, “think I wanna see you suck it. Been too damn long since you had a dick in your mouth that wasn’t mine.”

Indrid licks his lips and then Barclay’s moans fill the bedroom as his boyfriend lovingly sucks the head of his cock.

“Is now the time to mention he sucked me off yesterday while you were at work?” Joseph smiles up at Duck, though his hand is busy teasing Barclay’s nipples.

Duck growls, “and you didn’t even give an encore where I could watch. Mighty rude of you. Both of you.”

“Don’t blame me” Indrid jerks Barclay off with one hand and fingers his slit with the other, “you know how needy our pet gets.”

“True. Guess I’ll have to put him in his place.” Duck looks down at Barclay, gaze soft in spite of his tone, “not tonight though. Tonight his job is to take care of you.”

“Speaking of which” Joseph turns his face into another kiss just as Indrid’s mouth envelopes his cock once again. He moans and whimpers between those perfect lips, a month of not even being able to touch himself meaning his body is already being dragged towards orgasm. His hand finds Joseph’s tail, petting it enticingly.

“If you AHnnnfuck, lay perpendicular babe, I can suck you off without hurting myself.”

Joseph glances at Indrid, who pulls off of Barclay’s cock and shakes his head, “Not tonight, dearest.”

He whimpers, tries to lift his head, use his tongue to tease Joseph’s retreating tail, only or Duck to hold him firmly in place.

“I know, sweet one, you do so love being inside our pet, whether with that talented tongue, those skillful hands, or this sinful thing.” He gives a final jerk, then uses his tail to guide Joseph into his former position, “And I would never deny you that pleasure. He’s such a good little pet after all.” He kisses Joseph posessively, then glides behind him and sets his hands on his waist, “which is why I am going to fuck him on you. I will control his movements, so as to avoid aggravating your injury.”

“And because you get off on it.” Duck adds.

“That too.”

“AHfuck!” Barclay’s whole tail lights up purple for an instant as Indrid shoves Joseph down onto his cock. He might submit to Indrid, but Joseph is the mer in the sea he most wants to claim, to fuck until he’s begging for more.

“Nghnshit, shit that’s so good big guy, fuck I missed this.”

“Ahem.”

“Thank you Indridoh, ohohohohfuck.” Joseph’s hands scrabble on Barclay’s tail as Indrid bounces him up and down. He looks so handsome like this, cock hard and slit swallowing Barclay to the hilt, dark hair loose and framing his head like a crown.

Barclay reaches for him, desperate for a touch, but Duck holds him down.

“Thank you, love, if he had moved just then he would have hurt himself.”

“Don’t care” Barclay growlwhines, “Joseph, babe, wanna touch you so bad.”

“You’ll get to, big guy, there’ll be plenty of chances after this.”

He growls, teeth clenched as the riptide of his orgasm pulls at him.

“It’s okay big fella, you can let go. We’ve got you.” Duck’s voice, as soothing as the hand he scritches down his scalp.

“Fuck” is all he gets out before Indrid pushes Joseph down and Barclay spurts up into him with moan.

“Better, big guy?” Joseph’s smile is as dazzling as ever.

“Uh huh.” His bones are mud, his eyes heavy, and he feels better than he has all month.

“Good. Come, let me look you over and hold you. Duck and Joseph will join us shortly.”

“But I thoughtAHfuck” is all he hears before the sound of Duck frantically fucking Joseph fills one half of the room, his boyfriends moan switching from charming to mouthwatering as Duck keeps fucking him after he’s cum.

Indrid builds them a nest on the other side of the bed, guides him into it to comb his hair and rub his aching shoulders, humming as he does. Eventually, Duck swims over to join them, Joseph more floating than swimming in his embrace.

“How do you feel, big guy?”

“Good. Really, really good.” He closes his eyes, safe in the knowledge that his home and family will still be his when he wakes up.

Then he opens them again.

“Wait, so what the fuck did you actually do to the guy who harpooned me?”

#OT4: Government Men and Their Cryptid Boyfriends #mermay fills #indruck #sternclay #inclay #agent stern/barclay/indrid cold/Duck newton #agent stern/duck newton

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