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liptonsbabe · 8 months

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Blood all along

Eugene Roe x fem! reader

Inktober "Snow"

Warnings: Mentions of death, blood, war, the usual in this fandom(?.

a/n: well hello! This is a little something that I did for the inktober! I'm not an artist but I thought it would be cute to write a few fics for our favorite boys on this month! Hope you like it!

Btw English is not my frst language so tell me if something's wrong

ofc this is based on the hbo series and the actors who portray the characters, no disrespect for the real heroes!

You hissed in pain as you disinfected the wound on your leg. You were lucky, the bullet had only grazed your skin and the only thing you had to deal with was trying to stop the bleeding that was staining the snow beneath you red.

Bastogne was being a complete nightmare, the air support that arrived a few days ago was not enough and the battalion's medical team was having serious problems helping all the wounded men.

Having to digging in right along the line and repel the German attacks was the worst moment of the war so far and having lost so many soldiers in such a short time was a very strong blow for everyone.

Malarkey, Muck, Penkala and you were inseparable since Toccoa and losing two of your best friends in the same night was so painful for you, especially cause you trained so hard to become a doctor and still couldn't do anything for them. Don talked to you right after what happened, making sure you were okay, but the truth was that he was just or worse affected than you were, and even if Donald Malarkey always knew what to say to lift others' spirits, at that moment the words were stuck on his lips. The only thing he could do was stay by your side, silent and holding your hand tightly.

Everyone in the company noticed your change in attitude after Muck and Penkala's death. Somehow you turned lonely, quiet, and your hands shook when you were near the soldiers' wounds, something that didn't go unnoticed by Eugene Roe, who asked you to step away from the line for a while and try to forget everything that had happened in the last few days.

But forgetting was impossible. Even if your friends hadn't died, you could never forget the warm, viscous feeling of blood on your hands, the smell of gunpowder filling the air or the screams of pain you heard every day, at every second. Now, every time you closed your eyes, the images of the wounded soldiers appeared among a dark cloud that slowly grew bigger and bigger, trying to choke you.

You hissed again, the cold making the wound on your exposed leg sting terribly. You took some alcohol from your backpack and soaked the gauze with it to disinfect the bullet graze. You smiled a little, remembering how you had gotten hurt.

If you had found the third battalion sooner, Babe wouldn't have fallen into that Kraut's foxhole and you wouldn't have to run through the woods with gunfire hot on your heels. It was kind of fun tho, but your leg was swollen like hell.

You heard footsteps approaching your position and without thinking twice you grabbed the knife that you always carried on your belt. You waited for the shadow to become clearer in the snow to attack, but then you recognized the silhouette and relaxed your body.

Eugene walked towards you slowly. His nose was red from the cold and his hands were hidden in the pockets of his uniform. You put the knife aside and continued cleaning the blood. Eugene sat in front of you, noticing the red snow under your feet.

“(Y/N), you're hurt.”

“Yeah, I noticed.”

“Wait, I'm gonna help you,” he said and rushed to examine the swelling on your leg. You pushed him away “You should've come to me sooner.”

"It wasn't necessary. Don't worry, the bullet didn't hit me. At least not completely. Plus, I'm a doctor too, remember? I can take care of this by myself.”

"Doesn't matter. I wish you'd let me check you properly. Edward told me what happened.”

"Who?" You frowned, not understanding who he was referring to. Then you remembered that Eugene never called anyone by his nickname “Uh, Babe.”

“Yeah.”

“I asked him not to do it, I didn't want you to worry.”

“Well, no matter what happens, I will always worry about you” then he removed your hands from the wound and took the gauze carefully. Roe cleaned your wound and took the time to check that it was indeed a simple bullet graze. He put some ointment on it and blew on your swollen leg for a couple of seconds. You sighed cause the air from his mouth felt like a kiss on your skin and relieved the burning momentarily. You admired the firmness of his hands and the way the blood no longer scared him. He pulled a bandage out of his jacket and started wrapping it around your leg.

“Eugene, how can you stand it?”

He looked up for a second while continuing to manipulate the bandage. “What d'you mean?”

"I mean this. Still standing after everything that has happened."

Eugene stopped. His fingers rested on your bandaged leg and he thought hard for several seconds. He looked at you and could see how broken and tired you were.

"I pray. Sometimes"

“There must be something else” You sniffled, wanting to stop the tears. Eugene sighed, “Something that makes you feel like it's worth staying here.”

“I think there is always something good at the end of the road. I think that… beyond this forest, beyond this frozen hell… there's something that gives purpose to what we are doing. And I hold on to the thought that everything I love will be there when I come back” he said and caressed your cheek “And maybe, with a little luck, I can convince you to come home with me” You laughed through your tears and Eugene squeezed your hand gently. “I'm sorry about Muck and Penkala. I know you feel guilty for not being able to help them, but I'm convinced that they believed firmly in you, and that if it had been different, you'd be there, trying 'til the very end.

Your tears were uncontrollable and Eugene hugged you tightly, he let your pain come out of your chest and let your tears be carried away by the heavy snow that fell from the sky. Roe stroked your hair and kissed the top of your head.

“Everything's gonna be okay and i promise you that I'm gonna take you home,” he whispered in your ear. “I promise, (Y/N), I do promise.”

#dick winters #band of brothers #eugene roe #hbo war #lewis nixon #bandofbrothersedit #carwood lipton #bill guarnere #bob #easy company

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vangold · 7 months

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Estimating the size of the creature by comparison with the diameter of the large trees near which it passed -- the few giants of the forest which had escaped the fury of the land-slide -- I concluded it to be far larger than any ship of the line in existence. I say ship of the line, because the shape of the monster suggested the idea- the hull of one of our seventy-four might convey a very tolerable conception of the general outline. The mouth of the animal was situated at the extremity of a proboscis some sixty or seventy feet in length, and about as thick as the body of an ordinary elephant. Near the root of this trunk was an immense quantity of black shaggy hair- more than could have been supplied by the coats of a score of buffaloes; and projecting from this hair downwardly and laterally, sprang two gleaming tusks not unlike those of the wild boar, but of infinitely greater dimensions. Extending forward, parallel with the proboscis, and on each side of it, was a gigantic staff, thirty or forty feet in length, formed seemingly of pure crystal and in shape a perfect prism, -- it reflected in the most gorgeous manner the rays of the declining sun. The trunk was fashioned like a wedge with the apex to the earth. From it there were outspread two pairs of wings- each wing nearly one hundred yards in length -- one pair being placed above the other, and all thickly covered with metal scales; each scale apparently some ten or twelve feet in diameter. I observed that the upper and lower tiers of wings were connected by a strong chain. But the chief peculiarity of this horrible thing was the representation of a Death's Head, which covered nearly the whole surface of its breast, and which was as accurately traced in glaring white, upon the dark ground of the body, as if it had been there carefully designed by an artist.

The Sphinx - Nother one of my favorites actually, although it probably is barely known, except by diehard fans of Poe. Can recommend it tho. Rather short and fun to read :)

Also fyi, although we got a bit behind schedule here due to illness and other rl crap, I in fact did manage to finish up all Inktober Pictures in time. Stayed up until three yesterday when finishing the final one. However gonna keep to 1 art per day for the final few here to not make it too crowdy ;)

#inktober #Creeptober #Creeptober 2023 #Creeptober Day 28 Sillouette #Creeptober Day 28 #Day 28 #Edgar Allan Poe #Artwork #Literature #The Sphinx #Moth #Skull Moth

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mumtendu · 7 years

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The biggest post poojo horror : alcohol.

Every time I catch a glimpse of the empty booze bottles in my room and try to find out why so much alcohol in a single week, these ghosts sneak out of the booze bottles to chant , “Liver please stay strong!”

Day2. Inktober

#inktober #inktober2017 #illustration artists #illustration #artists on tumblr #mumtendu #mumtendustic #calcutta2017 #durga puja #alcohol #liver please stay strong

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alarawriting · 4 years

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Inktober 2020 #24 - Dig

This comes from the latest incarnation of the very first novel I ever wrote.

When I was 10 I was blown away by a book called “The Girl Who Owned A City”, about a girl my age trying to survive after a plague killed all the adults. This predated the TV/comic series “Jeremiah” by a good bit. The book had a lot of weird shit in it that I now know is libertarian/objectivist bullshit, but at the time I was amazed by it. So, of course, I wrote my own version of the concept, “Below”, which was terrible because I was in 7th grade and in those days, without the Internet, we all sucked when we were young. Then when I was 13, I wanted to enter a contest for teen novel writers, and my mom “helped” me by completely rewriting Below into a totally different, equally terrible work that was terrible in a very different way.

Sometime in my 20′s, I started a rewrite, more or less using the plot skeleton of the original but completely rewriting from the ground up, but I only got, like, two chapters into it. In 2017, I picked up the rewrite again, and would probably have gotten farther with it if not for the 2018 cancer diagnosis. One of the things I did was to add an explicitly autistic character as a counterpart to the main character, who, being that she was originally based on me, is an undiagnosed autistic girl who more or less successfully fakes being NT most of the time. Andy Thorn is a boy, does not successfully fake being NT pretty much ever, and was diagnosed as autistic at some point in his life. He’s also anosmic because my older son is and I wanted to explore how not being able to smell might affect a kid in a world without adults, after a plague.

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The house was like most of the other houses Andy had visited. One window was smashed, but the front and back doors were still locked, and aside from the broken window, there was no evidence anyone had gone inside. “Stay, boys,” Andy told his dogs. They’d led him here, and he didn’t question their noses, but it was good to get independent corroboration.

He used the stepladder he’d been carrying around in the cart attached to his bicycle to climb up to the broken window. Carefully he reached inside, unlatched the lock on the window, and screwed two clamps to the lower rail of the window sash. With the clamps attached, he was easily able to open the window enough to slide inside without hurting himself on broken glass. The front door was deadbolted, but the deadbolt could be opened with the twist of a knob – it didn’t require a key. Andy opened the door and let his dogs in, and then pulled in his cart.

Clifford and Updog immediately began sniffing around, exploring the house. “Clifford. Find the dead thing. Find dead, Clifford.” Tail wagging, Clifford went in search of dead people. “Updog. Heel.” Updog took the appropriate position. “Good boy. Let’s go.” He followed Clifford, and Updog followed him.

They were in the master bedroom, of course. Two of them this time, two men. Their rotting bodies lay next to each other, as if they had huddled together before the end had come.

Andy was here to make a bargain with them. He didn’t need to talk out loud, because they were dead and couldn’t hear him, and because he knew they wanted what he had to offer. Or would have wanted it, if he had been able to make the deal when they were alive on behalf of when they were dead. The dead wanted to be buried. They didn’t want to rot in the pajamas and nightgowns or sometimes naked in the bedsheets that he found them, bringing maggots and disease to the homes they had loved when they were alive. They wanted to go down in the ground and have a stone to mark where they’d been laid to rest. And they would pay him in the bounties of their home, canned goods and medicines and other things Andy could make use of and that they couldn’t anymore.

Stealing was wrong. Andy didn’t like the looters any more than he liked the gangs. The looters stole from people who weren’t alive any more – generally speaking people who had died in a hospital, far away, because they stayed away from the houses that smelled like death – and the gangs stole from the looters. Stealing was wrong, even if you were doing it to survive, because it was wrong. Wrong things didn’t stop being wrong just because you felt like you had to do them. Andy had found another alternative. He performed a service for the dead, and the dead repaid him.

He found bedsheets in the linen closet. Wearing his gloves, which he never forgot because he hated touching anything because everything had germs on it, Andy wrapped the first body in a bedsheet, and then the second one. They didn’t fall apart too much. The skeletons were strong. Some of the meat had rotted enough to fall away from the bone, but it was stuck in the pajamas so it didn’t fall away from the body, and then it was all wrapped up in the bedsheet. Another bedsheet, he carried out to his cart and lined it, and then pulled the cart to the bedroom.

It was hard for a 10 year old boy to move the dead body of an adult man. It involved a lot of pushing and pulling, and eventually, the body fell off the bed onto the cart. Two dead bodies would be too much to carry, so Andy moved the first one first, going back to the front door. “Don’t worry,” he told the dead man. “Your friend comes next. You won’t be alone.”

Outside, he dug in the dirt. Clifford and Updog helped. They liked to dig. For sanitary reasons a grave should be six feet deep, but Andy wasn’t even six feet tall, and there was no way he could dig that much. He dug down about a foot and a half, wide enough for two bodies to lie next to each other, long enough that they could lay mostly straight without having to curl up a lot. It took hours. Not as long as it had taken the first time he did this, when it was his mom and his dad that he was burying; he was stronger now, even if his hands were sore and calloused from all the digging, but it was still hard and it still took half the day.

When he was done digging, he tumbled the body off his cart and into the shallow grave, and then went back for the second body. That one was dumped into the grave too, lying half on top of the first body. Then Andy started putting the dirt that he’d taken out back on them, forming a mound.

He ate two meals there at the house, while he was digging. The cheese that had gone bad in the fridge was covered with mold, but the mold didn’t go all the way into the hard cheese, so he was able to get it all off with a cheese planer. The bread in the pantry was moldy too, but there was an ancient hard baguette that was too crunchy and tough to have grown any mold. Water still ran from the taps, though the hot water was all gone by now. Hard baguette plus water made softer, more edible baguette, and cheese where he’d cut all the mold off tasted weird but satisfied his hunger. For his second meal he ate cold vegetable soup with milk made from powder, and had a dessert of a can of cherry pie filling.

There wasn’t any dog food in the pantry. They hadn’t had a dog. Most houses Andy visited didn’t have a dog, and the one he did find, the dog had eaten most of the old man’s body, making it very hard to collect all the pieces of the guy to bury them. He’d released the dog; as much as he liked dogs, it was a small yappy dog who barked at him and his dogs a lot and also growled at his dogs, so letting it free to join a wild pack was probably better than making Clifford and Updog jealous or stressed out. Andy did find canned Vienna sausages and canned tuna fish. He liked to eat those things himself, but Clifford and Updog needed meat in their diet; Andy could survive without it as long as he ate things like powdered milk and peanut butter, things with the protein he couldn’t get from most vegetables. So he fed the canned meat to his dogs. It wasn’t very much; they’d need another meal when they all got home.

It was close to evening as he finished shoveling dirt onto the mound. He heard a whistle, and turned. Three boys were standing outside the fence. He was face-blind, so he couldn’t tell from looking at them if he knew them from anywhere. One was a littler kid, maybe seven or eight, but the other two were around his age, 10 or 11 or so. One of the kids his age was white; the other two boys looked like they were from India or Pakistan or something. All three of the boys were wearing hoodies that had some kind of green blob painted on them, that looked as if maybe it was trying to be the same shape each time but whoever had had the can of spray paint wasn’t a good enough artist to be consistent. “Shit, dude,” the white boy said. “Did you just dig a grave for some deads?”

“Yes,” Andy said.

“This your house then? I thought this was the house where the gay guys lived.”

“Is that why they died together?” Andy said.

“Didn’t you know them?” the older brown-skinned boy said. When he talked, Andy recognized him. It was Nish Varma, who’d been in most of his classes with him. “How did you not know they were gay?”

“I didn’t know them,” Andy said. “I looked through all the envelopes in the house to find their names and I wrote them on this rock.” He showed the boys the rock he had written the men’s names on, in crayon because Sharpie markers didn’t stick to rocks as well as crayon did. Andy kept crayons in his pocket for that reason.

“What were you burying them for then?”

“That’s what I do,” Andy said. “I bury the dead. Stealing is wrong so when I need food, I go to houses that have dead people in them, and I bury them. That’s a service, so I take the food they left as a repayment. That’s better than stealing. There’s nothing wrong with bargaining for what you need and working hard to provide a service and getting paid for it.”

The little boy said, “How can you stand how bad it stinks? We don’t go to houses with dead people! There’s flies everywhere and it smells awful!”

“I can’t smell anything,” Andy said.

The white boy said, “Seriously? You can’t smell that? What’s wrong with you?”

“What’s wrong with me is called anosmia,” Andy said. “It means I have no sense of smell. It’s like being blind or deaf except for smell.” He gestured at his dogs. “My dogs here find the dead people houses for me. Dogs don’t mind dead people smells. So I bury the dead bodies. You’re supposed to make graves six feet deep but that takes grownup men a long time to do and ladders so they can get out, so I don’t dig as deep.” Andy had suspected that the main reason the houses he visited were usually untouched and unlooted – at most, a broken window or a jimmied door, but no food taken – was that people with a sense of smell couldn’t stand it, and as long as there were still houses where the owners had died in the hospital and so there were no dead bodies on the premises, other kids weren’t desperate enough to go to the houses of the dead. He knew dead people supposedly smelled bad; he just had no idea what a bad smell was actually like, since he couldn’t smell anything. But this was the first time he’d had it confirmed.

The white boy whistled again. “But still! You can lift dead grownups and you can dig a hole that big? You must be ripped, man.” He leaned on the fence. “Look, me and my dudes here aren’t here to get on your stake and take the food here. I can see you’ve got big dogs, and you look pretty tough.”

That surprised Andy. Most people didn’t think he looked tough. He used to get bullied a lot. “Maybe I got pretty tough from a lot of digging,” he agreed. Or maybe they were fake complimenting him in a sarcastic way and it was really bullying. Andy could never tell if that was what kids were trying to do until they started laughing. But he preferred to give people the benefit of the doubt and take their word for it until they proved otherwise.

“I’ll just bet,” the white boy said. “That’s why we’re here to recruit you. The Green Bears could use a strong dude like you.”

“You wouldn’t have to dig any more graves,” Nish said. “When you’re a Bear, you get fed. We’ve got access to gas-powered ranges that are still on, so we get cooked food.”

“We had spaghetti yesterday,” the little boy said. “With sauce!”

“Yeah, and me and my brother are vegetarian but the kids who aren’t vegetarian got meat sauce.”

“And you can live in your own house, since the Civic Center got too full for any more guys,” the white boy said. “The Bears are fucking huge, man.”

Andy winced. “That’s a curse word. You shouldn’t say that word.”

“Oh, like my mommy and daddy are around to wash my fucking mouth out with fucking soap? Fucking shit damn on a bastard son of a bitch. Who’s gonna fucking stop me?”

“No one,” Andy said, “but wrong things don’t stop being wrong just because no one can stop you doing them.”

“Fucking hell, dudes, we got ourselves a real Boy Scout here,” the white boy said, and Nish and his brother and the white boy all laughed.

“No,” Andy said. “I was never in the Boy Scouts.” The other boys laughed harder. Andy scowled. He knew they were laughing at what he said, and he was pretty sure it was probably in a nasty, making-fun-of-him way, but as usual he had no idea why they thought what he’d said was funny.

“Andy’s special,” Nish said, leaning on the fence. “If he doesn’t wanna swear I’m cool with that.” Nish hadn’t been one of the kids who’d bullied him in class. He had never talked to him or tried to be friends with him either, but at least he hadn’t bullied Andy. “How about it, Andy? Come join us!”

“No, thank you,” Andy said politely.

The white boy scowled. “Dude. You have no idea what you’re passing up.”

“That’s okay,” Andy said. “I don’t believe in stealing. Gangs go around stealing things from other kids, so I don’t want to join one. And I don’t believe in hurting anyone unless they hurt me first.”

“Bullshit,” Nish said. “In third grade you hit the teacher with a chair.”

Andy winced. He had done it because she took his book away while he was reading about dogs, even though he was already done with his assignment, because it was math class and he wasn’t supposed to be reading in math class. It had been totally unfair and triggered a complete emotional meltdown. He’d been suspended for three days and had had numerous Talks with his parents during that time. “I have a bad temper,” he admitted. “That doesn’t mean I think what I did was right.”

“I think you’d better reconsider,” the white boy said. “Carrie doesn’t like it when we report to her that some guy didn’t want to join the Bears. She’s psycho, man.”

“Who is Carrie?”

“Carrie Mulhaney. She’s Rich’s younger sister and second in command. When guys say they won’t join the Bears, she burns their houses down.”

“I’m not worried about that,” Andy said.

“I’m not fucking with you, man. I’m serious. She will burn your fucking house down.”

“With what?” Andy said. “Gasoline? Wood that’s on fire? Alcohol?”

“Are you serious?” the boy said. “With whatever! What does it matter?”

“My dogs are trained to smell dangerous things for me,” Andy said. “Fire is a smell they’re trained on. Gasoline is a smell they’re trained on. Natural gas is a smell they’re trained on. I don’t know of anything that can be used to burn down a house that isn’t a smell they’re trained on.” He smiled, with all his teeth, because a couple of kids in his class said that when he smiled with all of his teeth he looked like a psycho and he should stop doing that, except that right now, these boys were threatening him so looking like a psycho so they would leave him alone was a good thing. “I have guns upstairs in my house. If my dogs alert me that someone is bringing a dangerous smell to my house, I’ll take my dad’s rifle and I’ll shoot whoever is on my property. And dogs can smell a dangerous thing from a long way away. I could tell you all about how good dogs are at smelling, if you want.” Most kids never wanted to hear him talk about dogs. Occasionally adults would listen to him, but there were no adults anymore.

“Don’t let him get started,” Nish said. “If he starts talking about dogs he never shuts up.”

“Your funeral, man,” the white boy said. “If you’re saying no, you’re saying no, but I betcha Carrie isn’t worried about your guns.”

“That’s good,” Andy said. “If she’s not worried about them, then she won’t take precautions and it’ll be easy to shoot her if she comes into my yard.”

“Whatever,” the white boy said. “Come on, dudes, let’s go. We don’t need this loser anyway.”

“Weirdo,” the little boy said. “Creepy weirdo. We don’t even want him in the Bears.”

They left. Andy brought his dogs back into the house, sat down on the dead men’s plush, soft sofa, and called his dogs up on to the sofa with them. Then he hugged them while he cried. Emotional confrontations upset him, a lot. He’d gotten better at controlling his temper since third grade, and he could hide the fact that he wanted to cry until he was alone or with a safe grownup, but he couldn’t keep himself from crying indefinitely. Updog lay his head and paws down on Andy’s lap, which was heavy but comforting anyway, and Clifford snuggled close so Andy could hug him and cry against his fur.

After he was done crying, it was time to take his payment and go home. His dogs needed food, and he had candy bars at his house that he was saving for stressful times like this. He loaded his cart with the powdered milk and all the cans he could fit, as well as a bunch of fitness food replacements like energy bars and protein powder. Maybe tomorrow he’d come back for the rest of the cans; he didn’t know how fast dead smell cleared out of a house, though, so it was possible that other kids would hit the place before he had a chance to.

It was dark, and Andy had a hard time finding his way in the dark, but he trusted his dogs to know the way. “Home, Clifford. Home, Updog,” he said, and they trotted in front of him, pulling just hard enough on their leashes to lead him forward. Really, he was only holding their leashes to make them feel secure, because they were trained with leashes; he knew they would walk with him if he let go of the leashes, and it was hard to pull his heavy cart with one hand and hold onto two big dogs’ leashes with the other, but he did it anyway because his dogs expected it and he know how upset he got when things happened that he didn’t expect, so he imagined his dogs felt the same way.

#inktober 2020 #alara's october 2020 prompt fics #below

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papaartistakabettyrose · 4 years

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Prove to me that Instagram doesn’t hate queer bodies or artists by liking and commenting so I know if this post actually reached you. I’m pretty angry and frustrated about instagrams new algorithm screwing over small time artists like me. I’ll be fine, I just need to learn how this new one works so bear with me ❤️in the mean time please PLEASE COMMENT if you can see my post! Better still, comment, like, even save or share if you can. It helps me know how far my content is reaching and WHO it’s reaching I.e gender, age, country, so I can better understand my audience. I spend so much time creating so much free content and I LOVE the little community we are making on here so much that it’s breaking my heart to see my content getting so little response , really almost feel like giving up 😭 but we must stay strong ! We will get through this! #lgbt #lgbtq #papaclub #bettyrose #digitalart #art #queerart #queer #illustration #lgbtart #gay #illustrator #lgbtartist #lgbtillustration #graphicart #graphicartist #gaycomics #queerartist #digitalillustration #halloween #inktober #sketchtober #pinktober #witch #witchy #witchcraft #wicca https://www.instagram.com/p/CF9qqVZhAOs/?igshid=1sd7ki8h39dd6

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afoolforatook · 4 years

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Thank you, Wellies

So. I’ve been trying to do both class work and working on wips and just nothing is clicking. So, I thought I should go ahead and do this post, that I’ve been putting off, because.....it’s next week y’all.... So here goes.

Here’s my original post, that explains what this comic meant to me four years ago.

And here’s what it means to me now. (this is really long, sorry)

Man, I don’t really even know where to start this. How to start to say thank you. To Ngozi, to all of you.... It’s not possible to fully express what all of you have been for me the past four years. What this story has been for me.

So many things have changed since I made this post almost four years ago.

So many things haven’t.

I’ve been way less active in the fandom since starting at SCAD, and I really was never that incredibly active to begin with, outside of my small group of friends on a discord server.

And at times I feel bad about that.

But it’s not because I don’t care about or need this community anymore.

Rather it’s because this community, this story, gave me the strength to keep moving, and now I want to keep doing so, and make something that might one day even barely begin to show my gratitude.

So until then, all I can do is say thank you over and over. I can never possibly say it enough.

But still I wanted to thank you now, and try to explain to you what this comic about hockey and pies has meant to me, one last time before it ends. So that’s what I’ll try to do.

It was surreal rereading this old post earlier this week. Reading

“I think I could write a book just of our history and everything leading up to now and the details of this whole event”

When I wrote this post four years ago, I honestly couldn’t imagine a future where I’d be anything other than incomplete.Or even a future at all. Everyday was just getting up and making myself keep breathing, keep trying to push towards something, even though I had no idea what that could ever be.

For the first year I wrote daily journal entries, telling Emma about what happened that day, screaming at the universe for doing this, trying to help my future self remember little things, because everything was so hard to hold on to.

Update days were always something nearly sacred to me. And really not even from a fan point of view. I don’t read them around other people. I sit somewhere quiet, by myself, and read slowly. Because they are little moments I try to share with her still. The only person I want with me when I read them that first time is her, in whatever capacity I can bring myself to imagine.

A few months after the crash, I found one of Emma’s Spotify playlists. She made playlists for everything; birthday and Christmas presents, mood playlists, friend playlists, monthly playlists.

This was her May 2016 playlist. Last updated May 16th. Two days before the crash.

That playlist was literally the only thing I listened to for months on end. 38 songs.Over and over.

And as I listened I started to think that, just maybe, some of these songs she put there for me.

West Coast; the song me and Emma would send to each other after high school whenever we wanted to let the other know how much we missed them.

All I Want is to Be Your Girl. I mean??

Slowly I found lyrics in every song that even if just in my own fantasy, were little messages from Emma, telling me to keep going, how to stay strong.

I was always looking for stories, books, movies, songs, anything about someone grieving the kind of loss I was. Nothing I found felt like it really represented me. If it was about someone young, it was due to suicide or violence or illness. If it was a car crash, it was about a parent or child. If it somehow fit my other demographics, it was never queer.

I felt totally alone in the exact manifestation of my grief. Like no one else could understand all the tiny details that seemed, to me, to make this all more and more cartoonishly cruel.

(though one of the most touching moments of my life will always be when Emma’s step mom, the only person in her family who knows about us, sent me a book about grieving a spouse. I cried for hours when I opened that.)

I didn’t have outside representation, support. But I had journals. I had Emma’s songs. I had poems and a handful of inktober drawings. I had my little update moments of connection. And I had so much to say.

Months, years, of isolation gives you a lot of time to examine your feelings, to question the meaning of things, to think about what exactly grief looked like to you and about how you wanted to live the rest of your life, as someone grieving a love.

And slowly I began to connect those thoughts to individual lyrics from Emma’s playlist and that helped me actually write all those thoughts out, organize them.

And that’s how The Mixtape Project started (I still hate using the word memoir. I had to find something else to call it). A book about us. About Emma. About all those thoughts I’d had so long to sit with. Structured around the songs from her playlist.

I remember the exact moment that I realized that Check Please was going to actively change my life. I was talking to my dad about it, about why I loved the storytelling, the characters, the art, so much.

I’d told him many times before. But it was always tied to Emma in a way, or to the reasons that I identified with Jack. It was always a little sad in some way.

But this time. This time it was just excitement. It was just a kid who has always loved words, gushing about a story that fascinated them.

And I realized. It was the first time I had been just happy, excited, in the months since losing Emma. I remembered all those ideas Emma helped me with in high school, how we gushed over stories like that. I remembered what it was like to just love something and want to create, just because it made you happy.

I knew I couldn’t go back to UNCA, and none of the other creative writing programs I had looked at seemed like they would fit the new person I was.

So, for the hell of it, looking for some idea at how to start my life over, I looked at Ngozi’s personal story. And there was SCAD. There was sequential art.

Now. I’d never ever considered myself an artist. I went to an art high school, I knew art kids. I was never one of them. But that sequential part? That. THAT was what I wanted. That was what I could still be excited about.

That was how I could pull the Mixtape Project together. The writing, the poems, the art, the music. Comics. Sequential art. A graphic memoir that played with the format. That was the project that kept me going. That was what I was working for. That was the first future I was able to see now that Emma was gone.

So, for the first time since literally elementary school, I took an art class (also took a mythology class at the same time, which really helped keep my art and storytelling tied).

I loved it. I was actually happy with my work, surprised by my work and how quickly I felt like I improved (I wouldn’t learn about aphantasia until I got to SCAD, and understand that that drawing 1 class had been so fun, and in a way, easy, because it was all direct observation, and that drawing from memory and imagination would be a much steeper learning curve for me.)

So, when the class ended I thought ‘you know, maybe some kind of art school could be a good idea.’

And then one of my life long best friends, a SCAD animation student, encouraged me to apply, to just go for it.

And I did. It was a long shot, I was sure. We couldn’t afford it. Why would I get that in that kind of commitment, debt, after 1 art class? It wasn’t logical. But it felt good. So I did.

And then I got accepted, and the initial excitement soon fell away, to me and my parents knowing that it really wasn’t doable.

But we went to admitted students day, just to see. And when we got home, both of my parents cried for a long time. The first happy cry in our house for over two years.

Because they had decided that they had to figure out a way to make it work.

Because standing in Haymans hall was the first time they had seen me excited about the future since Emma died. It was the first time they’d seen me feel like there was somewhere I was meant to be, that there was somewhere I could fit again.

So we made it happen. I’ll still be in debt for years, and it’s not necessarily something I’d wholeheartedly recommend to kids getting out of high school, that debt isn’t worth it for many people.

For me it wasn’t really even worth it exactly for SCAD itself, and you’ll have plenty of professors tell you here that really what you pay for isn’t the education but the networking.

But for me. For me it was worth it.

Because I wasn’t wasting away in my basement.

And I really wasn’t where I’d have liked to have been, ideally, before starting. I was a BRAND new artist. My portfolio for my application was solely my writing work. I hadn’t ever done anything more than scribbled fan comics in my sketchbook. I was coming in wayyyyy behind where most other people were. But I couldn’t wait to feel like I was good enough to be there. There was a strong chance that it was quite literally, a matter of survival. I was reaching a breaking point after nearly three years of isolation and grief with no outlet. The future debt was less of a concern than making sure I didn’t have a complete mental breakdown or worse.

Now, of course, it hasn’t all been easy or fun or happy once I got here. I’ve doubted myself, I’ve had awful weeks, months, been stressed, unmotivated, in pain, near burnout.

The first quarter I was absolutely miserable because I had literally no social life.

Because I was an agoraphobic 23 yr old, living with 17/18 yr olds fresh out of high school. And if I wasn’t careful, I’d dissociate so easily. I’d let myself believe that I was still a teenager fresh from high school. That the past three years of agony hadn’t happened. That I could call Emma and it would ring again. She would answer again. And that illusion was a dangerous pit to fall into.

And it wasn’t until this fall that my social life really started to improve, beyond one or two close friends. And even still, while it’s much better, it’s nothing like UNCA, like the tight knit family I had that made me identify with SMH and the Haus atmosphere so much.

But I was moving forward. Agonizingly slowly sometimes. But still forward.

And then last Spring quarter, just about a year ago, I was in Survey for SEQA. Basically comic book history class. And our final was a 4 page research comic on a comic artist we admired. So of course, I was going to do mine on Ngozi.

The comic was due at the end of the quarter, the end of May.

Now, that quarter was the first time I was actually in SEQA classes; Survey, and Intro.

And those four pages would be the first fully colored, refined comic pages I had EVER done. It was intimidating. I didn’t want to mess it up. Especially because this wasn’t some big name of some far off artist you would never have any connection to. This was someone who all my professors knew.

I ended up getting extremely lucky and had the chance to email Ngozi and ask if she’d be able to give for a quote for the project, advice for current SCAD students.

She replied to my email the weekend of the 3rd anniversary. (I then spent hours on a thank you email - because that’s who I am, I can’t not over analyze anything I’m sending to someone important - and then I managed to save it to drafts instead of actually sending it...something I would not notice until literally months later and be absolutely mortified about my apparent rudeness of never thanking her.)

I still am not really happy with how that project came out. I still had (and have) a lot to learn, and it shows. I have, in no way, become an amazing comic artist overnight. I wasn’t expecting to.

But that short email exchange, falling on that weekend; it felt special. It felt like some speck of proof that I was doing the right thing. That things could actually go well in my life again. That if I kept going, I might actually get somewhere that I wanted to be. That maybe I really could make The Mixtape Project happen, if I just kept at it here.

And then I found out that in the fall, Ngozi would be the SEQA mentor.

Unfortunately by the time I had all the details about how to apply, the quarter had started and there were only a couple of weeks before it was due, and the only pages I had even anywhere close to being portfolio ready were either my research comic or a few older Check Please fan comics, none of which I would even have considered putting in that portfolio (I’m not 100% certain it would actually have come across as sucking up but it sure felt like it would have). And despite my best efforts, it just wasn’t possible, with how slow I work and having to keep up with classwork, for me to get a portfolio ready in time.

That hurt for a while. I felt like I had this clear sign of perfect timing. How could I pass up that chance? How could I forgive myself for not doing everything I could to earn that experience? How was I not letting Emma down if I ruined this opportunity?

It took a while to get out of that negative thought spiral. But I did, and it’s still a bummer, but it’s okay.

And something that really helped?

In October, Ngozi still came to campus to give a lecture. And that would have been good enough; just sitting in on that helped me feel excited, encouraged again. But then, after the lecture (with my amazing roommate waiting patiently behind with me, to make sure I didn’t actually have a panic attack on the way home) I got to talk to her.

We all hope to one day get to talk to the people who inspired us, whose work we love, to tell them how much they mean to us. And yes, I was a little version of starstruck.

But that wasn’t why I was shaking. That wasn’t why I told her I was going to do my best to get this out without crying (and I did, I’m proud to say).

It was because I had the opportunity, while at the school that had given me a chance to start my life again, to thank the woman who was in all likelihood, one of the main reasons I was even still alive. If it had not been for Check Please I wouldn’t have had that good thing to keep sharing with Emma. I wouldn’t have found sequential art, at least not for a while longer probably. I wouldn’t have been able to finally picture a future I wanted to get to.

And I’ll be honest, I don’t remember 90% of what I actually said that night to Ngozi.

But I told her my story. I told her about Emma. About how Check Please was the last thing we got to share. I thanked her. And she was wonderful and kind and emotional and hugged me a couple of times, and even though I don’t remember a lot of what I actually said; it was something that will be one of the most important, affirming moments of my life.

I didn’t have a panic attack on the way home. I somehow managed to not cry until we were back to our dorm. But I was stunned.

Not even because of the amazing moment I had been able to have with Ngozi.

But because it hit me.

I was doing it. I was there. I had actually made it this far.

Somewhere that just over a year ago I never would have believed was possible.

A time when, two years before, I hadn’t even been sure I could make it to alive.

That weekend was my 24th birthday. And it was the first birthday since I left UNCA at 19, that I didn’t just hate the fact that I was getting older. That I was moving away from the happiest parts of my life so far.

Yes it still hurt getting further from Emma, putting another tick on the years that I got that she didn’t.

But I was actually finally excited at the idea of even having a future, let alone having an idea of what it could be.

February was a difficult month for me. I have another (entirely way too long) post about why everything that happened with RWBY and Fairgame was so difficult for me, but to put it simply; my hope for the future was shaken.

I was back in the toxic negative thought spirals I had fought for years to train myself out of.

I was seeing Emma, or her brother, or her mom, in crowds; something I hadn’t experienced since the first few months after the crash. I was in one of the biggest crisis moments I’d had since Emma’s death.

But I was more experienced than when I was 20.

It wasn’t fun, a lot of it probably wasn’t the ideal way to cope, but I did it. And I kept up with my work. I isolated more, but not completely. I made myself vent on snapchat or tumblr, and not worry about oversharing or annoying people, because it was either get it out or let it fester in my head. And I couldn’t afford to let that happen.

In mid March, I made a pitch packet for my comic scripting final.

It was for The Mixtape Project. It was hard, and nerve-wracking, and there’s still mountains of work to be done.

But after my initial synopsis (first of like seven versions, cause trying to put this thing in a good synopsis format is a nightmare) my professor told me that he thought my story had potential.

That he could see it being published. He suggested, knowing that I was planning on taking his advanced scripting course this quarter (hey remember how mid march was only a few weeks ago?? Huh?? wild), that I keep working on it, and see about taking it to Editor’s day (SEQA students’ opportunity to basically pitch themselves and their ideas to publishers).

Now, my professor is by no means an overly harsh critic, and is plenty supportive in general.

But I also knew that that was not just something he said to students all the time. That he meant it.

Editor’s Day (now online) is in mid May. The week of the 4th anniversary of Emma’s death, to be exact.

Everything is a mess right now, and I’m stressed and tired and scared and heartbroken (this will be the first time since I was 9 that I have not had Merlefest; the highlight of my year, and since Emma’s death; the last big happy thing before I plunge into the nightmare that is May).

Tuesday will come. Check Please will end. I will continue to support Ngozi and her work after Bitty’s story ends.

But it will be sad. It won’t be easy.

This thing that has been my tether to the most important person in my life, will still be there, but it will be over.

It will have a concrete end. It will no longer be part of the future I am pushing towards.

But I am a different person than the shattered kid who wrote this post four years ago.

I’m not who I was before Emma died. I never will be. I’d never try to be. I want Emma back more than anything. But that won’t happen. And as long as this is all real, I never want to pretend this didn’t happen.

That I didn’t shatter in a way that will never heal like people expect.

I’m still all those shattered pieces that wrote this post. Maybe a few have had the edges dulled, maybe I’ve lost a few, glued a few together perfectly, maybe picked up a few stray pieces that didn’t come from the me from before.

But I will be those shattered pieces for the rest of my life.

They won’t magically fuse back together. I work every day to hold them, to keep myself in some shape that resembles a functioning person.

Some days I fail. Some days, I am too tired to even try. Some days, I am so angry, I’d rather hurl the pieces at whatever power or fate or god or chaos decided that I got to live and she didn’t.

But those days pass.

And I learn how to hold the pieces better, how to avoid the sharpest edges, how to take care of the wounds when I inevitably cut myself on one, how to allow other people to help me hold them, how to accept that some pieces may feel safe and smooth and comforting but they are traps, illusions that are the easy way to do things, but not the healthy way, not the way that will help me achieve my goals.

That person, made of all those unholdable pieces, four years ago, was staying alive for everyone else but themself.

And some days I still am.

For my parents. For Emma. For all the other queer, mentally ill, grieving kids and young adults and just people, who are looking for the same representation I was, who feel as alone as I still do so often.

But some days.

On those really good days.

I’m alive, carrying all those pieces, just because I want to be. For me.

I want to spin around in the morning, singing along to my bluegrass spotify. I want to get excited over finally figuring out how to write that line that was giving me so much trouble, or finish that sketch that I never thought I could manage. I want to hope that despite how awful everything seems, there’s still a good future out there. It’s still possible to be happy some days.

I want to cry because I get to see Jack and Bitty get the happy ending that me and Emma didn’t.

And now, unlike that version of me from four years ago, when it ends, I will have things still.

Things that I have worked everyday to reach, to deserve, to hold out to people and say

“Hey, sometimes everything hurts and you know that things will never be what they were, and parts of you will always miss that. But there are still things you can find that hurt less, that ease the hurt, that teach you how to better hold the hurt, to stop trying to say it doesn’t exist or trying to get rid of it completely and hating yourself when you can’t. You can still be hurt, be irreparably broken in so many places, and still find the happy things. You are still worthy of love, no matter how broken you are. Your worth is not tied to how much you are able to heal. You are worthy of so much love, just because you are still here, no matter how many tiny pieces you are in.”

The thing is, I will still always have a future that includes Emma. Because I couldn’t tell you exactly which of my pieces are from her, but so many of them are.

There is no version of me, from here on to the day I die, that does not have her influence embedded in every piece.

These days I try to be a little kinder to myself. It doesn’t always work, but I try.

Because, to Emma, I was Bitty. I radiated that “thing”.

Whether or not I saw it in myself, doesn’t matter, because she did.

But to me she was the one who radiated.

And she is a part of me. She can’t radiate that “thing” herself anymore.

But I can, at least I can try.

Because If this person I loved and trusted so immensely, saw something worth loving in me? There must be something there worth loving, right?

And if she is a part of me for the rest of my life, how can I hate myself? How can I do anything but keep going so that, even if just in my head, a part of her gets to keep going too.

My family and friends joke that every friend group I’ve ever had calls me something different. And really it’s not a joke. In middle school I was CB #4 (that’s a long, terribly embarrassing, story). In high school I was Pond (and many variations there of: Pondala, Pondy, Raindrop, Puddle, you get the picture). At UNCA, when I came out as nonbinary, I started going by Auden. When I went home it was back to Meagan; Meagan always felt right with my parents.

With Emma I was always Meagan. We were Meagan and Emma. Megma. Meagan and Emma have online adventures!

After she was gone, Meagan didn’t really feel like me anymore. I loved Meagan, I missed Meagan, I wished I could still really fully be Meagan, and I’m okay still being Meagan sometimes.

But that real Meagan. The Meagan that was Emma’s Meagan. Doesn’t exist anymore. I lost that Meagan somewhere in that first night of screaming and trying to break my hand against the wall, so I could just feel something other than the agony of Emma being gone.

When I joined a Check Please chat group, a few months after the crash, we gave each other hockey nicknames. I was Farley.

My second quarter at SCAD, I started going by Farley. It stuck.

That’s who this version of me is. This new artist, still figuring things out, but still going.

I may not always stay Farley (other than ya’know artist ‘branding’. We’ll see) but that’s okay. Farley is who I need to be right now.

Farley is who will finish The Mixtape Project.

(because of two people mishearing both my nickname and last name I will, at least once in my career, use the pseudonym Fartley McFarmland and no one will stop me).

I can’t imagine what, who, will come after Farley, if anything.

But Check Please will always be a part of making Farley, and every future version of me, exist.

I could go on and on about how beautiful this story and these characters are, how inspiring Ngozi is, how genius her storytelling is, how powerful and important her work is. I could go on for days about all of that. But this is already so long, and I know that so many of you can go on about that probably way better than I could currently.

But, as many of my professors tell us over and over, only I can tell this story. My story. Emma’s story. Our story. And it’s one I plan on telling for the rest of my life.

And Check Please, Ngozi, will forever be the thing that made that possible.

So thank you. Those two words that are way too small to say it all.

Thank you.

Every fic writer

Every artist

Every rper

Every chat friend

Every shitposter

Every theorist or meta poster

Every fan

Thank you.

B. “Shitty” Knight.

Larissa “Lardo” Duan

Adam “Holster” Birkholtz

Justin “Ransom” Oluransi

John Johnson

Ollie O'Meara

Pacer Wicks

Jenny and Mandy

Nicholas and Jean-Claude

Coach Hall

Coach Murray

Suzanne Bittle

Richard “Coach” Bittle

William “Dex” Poindexter

Derek “Nursey” Nurse

Chris “Chowder” Chow

Kent Parson

Alicia Zimmermann

“Bad” Bob Zimmermann

Tony “Tango” Tangredi

Connor “Whiskey” Whisk

Denice “Foxtrot” Ford

Fry Guy

Georgia “Georgie” Martin

Alexei “Tater” Mashkov

Sebastian “Marty” St. Martin

Dustin “Snowy” Snow

Poots

Randall “Thirdy” Robinson

Jonathan “Hops” Hopper

River “Bully” Bullard

Lukas “Louis” Landmann

(I’m almost certain I had to have missed someone)

Thank you.

Jack “Zimmboni” Laurent Zimmermann

Thank you.

Eric “Bitty” Richard Bittle

Thank you.

Ngozi Ukazu

Thank you. For everything.

For having my back. I’ll always have yours.

Always yours,

Farley M.

#Check Please #omgcp #my person #my writing #meagan and emma have online adventures #-slaps me- you can fit so many confused emotions in this thing

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fwipination · 5 years

Photo

Atkins wants to sing all you artists out there a ballad of inspiration for your inktobers! Stay strong out there my friends!

#inktober #inktober2019 #dnd #dungeons and dragons #character #oc #copics #sketchbook #ink #bard #music #song #singing

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ronaxenamu · 6 years

Video

Song: Treat me well by Heart To everybody experiencing the onset of seasonal/cyclical/chronic depression, stay strong guys, we gna get through this ✌. . . . . . #inkingvideo #inktober #inktober #whynoctober #whynoctober2018 #inktober2018 #mabsdrawloween #drawloween #inking #ink #arte #sketch #art #artista #artist #lineart #blackandwhite #love #black #white #monster #creepy #outline https://www.instagram.com/p/BpSFzeVFDZs/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=lhz6oo4fbosk

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trailsofink · 6 years

Text

Inktober Days 5-7: Multiple Prompts

I got a little behind here, so I decided to write a three part story since it was a good way to catch back up. So here’s a continuing story in three parts:

Day Five: Deuteronomy 2:10 - a song about deep, unassailable loneliness after loss

Day Six: Orange Ball of Love - a mix of love and distrust

Day Seven: Harlem Roulette - another song about loneliness, though this one is more related to feeling ineffectual and hopeless

I promise I make these softer than they appear. It’s me, it’s what I do.

Here’s 3,824 words of me catching up

Deuteronomy 2:10

Rain could taste the fear on the wind like roses gone to rot. She tried to convince herself that this was a positive step. A change in the world could go either way when the coin hit the pavement. But she knew better and her intuition would not let her find hope in the false shadows those thoughts cast.

Once the city’s winds tasted like joy, though a capricious aftertaste had run beneath them. She found it difficult to put a name to the emotion for the longest time. She had thought perhaps it could be envy, but that wasn’t it. Perhaps it was more distrust? It was only after months of idle deliberation that she found an answer. It should have been obvious from the start. Detachment or, as she eventually came to call it, Independence.

Her city, Blackness of the Ocean, had been a powerhouse, the planetary capital of influencers. There had been great priests whose follower counts were unlike anyone else’s. There had been media enough to cover the clock a thousand times per day and at least two percent of it was worth watching. And all the while all the tools of integration and networking somehow only insulated people. Followers were not people, they were a number and the higher the number went, the deeper the commodification of the self. Every window became a mirror and every skyline a canvas for promotion.

At first, Rain had been glad to see things start to collapse. She had spoken to her two friends about how beneficial this could be. The mirrors were shattered, literally and figuratively, and she thought that it would finally lead to self-reflection. And it did. The problem was, none of the people who saw a need to change decided to stay, including her friends. And all of the people who were won over to her way of thinking at long last, all of the people who realized that Vanity had reigned over Humanity and might become her allies were gone.

She had thought to leave, she really did. It would be easy, really; there were plenty of rides out of town and she was even offered one by half of her friends. But she declined the second she scented the air, the second the rosy joy turned to rotten fear, decomposing the very cityscape like a field gone fallow.

“Why?” Trust had asked her from the driver’s seat of their car. “Why do you insist on staying here?” Confusion swirled along the wind.

“Because they’re afraid.” Rain had said. She had raised her chin high, defiant, ready to argue the point.

“Yeah, that’s a perfect reason to leave.”

“That must be where we differ.” Rain had replied. It was an unhappy revelation at best, though she put a smile on her face. “I’m sorry, Trust. I really can’t.” Trust tried to hide their displeasure, though they could never hide it from Rain. Not that they knew it. Rain had never said what she was.

“Well good luck.” Trust sighed at last and resignation flooded Rain’s senses, smelling of poppy. Red or white she couldn’t tell, it was a small distinction. “If you change your mind, give me a call.”

“You would come back for me?” Rain asked, genuine surprise on her face. Trust scowled at her expression or at her surprise. A yellow carnation beneath her nose. Disdain or was it disappointment?

“Rain, I know you never really believed I was your friend. Maybe that’s my fault, maybe it’s not. But you have to believe in someone. Priv and I are leaving and just. Promise me you’re going to look after yourself.”

“Of course.”

“By finding someone. You need people.”

“I don’t-” Rain began and the scent of geranium rose so thickly in the air that she stopped even before Trust hardened their expression in a way that signaled digging their heels in and dying on that hill if they must. Rain bowed her head. Trust may have been many things, but when determination was their primary emotion there was no winning. “Okay. Maybe you’re right.” She wasn’t sure if she believed it, but she couldn’t handle the drawn out discussion, she couldn’t deal with more of these strong emotions, her sinuses were killing her.

“Promise?”

“I promise.” Rain said. Whether she agreed with Trust or not, she wouldn’t deny them their last request. Trust nodded. That settled, they simply drove off, leaving Rain all but alone in the city.

And now she walked with the scent of fear in the air, thick as smog. She did nothing but surf the emotions, walking through the city square and trying desperately to find something different, trying to find someone with hope or with joy.

It seemed impossible. At least until she found the first broadcast.

Orange Ball of Love

There were hundreds of broadcasts where there used to be thousands, their content ranging far and wide. Some people still held to the old ways, streaming their breakfasts, their daily routine, a trip to work filled with all their thoughts about how electrofolk would be affected by the fall of the city. Rain knew the latter to be precisely the kinds of broadcasts they claimed to be. It was the strange, earnest ones that turned out to be liars in the end. They seemed to care so much and, though she couldn’t scent emotion through broadcasts, she knew people well enough to know their tones, know all the ways in which they lied for the camera. It made little sense after the decrease in viewership, but people clung to their old rituals, their old religions.

All of that was to say, she thought she knew the scope of the world. Even in the apocalyptic exodus of streams, she knew the score. Which is exactly why she burned her eggs when she found something new. She had been aimlessly flipping through channels while she cooked her breakfast, more interested in getting a sense of who was broadcasting rather than what. But then a soundless broadcast came up and she had to check to make sure that there wasn’t a problem with her Veil interface. The picture was coming through fine, the shoreline at some isolated portion of the beach. She waved her fingers to mute, the screen hanging in the air showing a small speaker with a red line through it and then the red line disappearing as she unmuted. Nothing.

“Hmm.” She said, dismissing the window and then tapping the air in front of her again. A black ripple ran through, as if she had tapped the surface of quite a bit of ink and as the ripple widened, it slowed down and became the screen once more. Still no sound. There were people who did this, though typically it was over something like a painting they were making or an amateur doing an interstitial point in their broadcast in a particularly artsy way. This looked like an earnest video, which made her squint her eyes waiting for the hook.

And then the sound came in.

It was slight at first, the camera walking along the beach to the tune of seagulls and waves. But soon she heard a gap and realized that the sound was looping for some reason, even though the picture was not. She reached out and enlarged the screen with another ripple effect, staring and trying to discern what was happening. Some avant garde filmmaker trying to make a statement? That wasn’t the way of Blackness of the Ocean, not without the artist in the frame. She was still considering this when the sound began to form into a pattern, the loops overlayed onto each other along with new sounds, a rock thudding into another, the sound of stepping on sand amplified. The world was slowly forming a song. She smiled. The eggs burned. No, that was a lie; the eggs positively scorched.

“Fuck.” She swore, hurriedly fixing her mistake as smoke started to rise from the pan. She had to scrape them off and then she held a dehydrated mess of blackened egg powder in what she hoped wasn’t a ruined pan. Well, she couldn’t eat those, could she? She pulled up another screen with another ripple and her refrigerator display told her she was out of eggs. She only had it tracking eggs, otherwise it would’ve read: “and everything else.” She took a deep breath before switching to her account. Enough for eggs. That would work. Finally, she went to get ready, about to dismiss the window of the broadcast before thinking better of it, bringing it with her as she got ready, letting it lock to its position relative to her as she put on shoes and threw on a hoodie before making her way outside, switching the window to private and shrinking it so she wouldn’t accidentally walk into traffic or start up a conversation.

The city was a blur. She made the walk mostly on rote, instead watching as the broadcaster found various creatures along the seashore and fed them various things. The turtle received some greens and the birds received birdseed, presumably for this purpose all the while the music went on. It was only when she had her eggs in hand that she realized she’d gone through the entire trip on memory and ambient information. The thought terrified her, but the fact that she hadn’t scented the fear on the air was incredible.

Another thought occurred to her: whoever was broadcasting? They were from this city.

A final thought occurred to her: the beach looked an awful lot like hers.

She had a choice to make. She could make a dumb decision or she could take her eggs home and actually eat something. They weren’t technically mutually exclusive actions, but by the time she cemented herself back into her routine, the call of foolishness would leave her and she would be back in her life. Perhaps she would’ve done that on a different day. If the world had continued on, if Trust hadn’t made her promise to look after herself and find people. But here she was, a half dozen eggs in one hand, the beach not so far away and the video of the beach showing someone feeding some crustacean a piece of lettuce.

She turned away from her house and down the street that took her to the beach. And when the foolishness of it began to set in, she walked faster. By the time she made it to the beach, she was jogging, eggs in hand as she quickly scanned the horizon, her heart racing. Her mind tried to ask her why she was doing this, what she hoped to gain and she ignored it with the frantic pursuit of this weird streamer and their weird stream whose music was a noted absence from her world the second she muted. She unmuted and lowered the volume instead as she tried to find a landmark in the video. At last she did, a craggy cliffside with an outjutting that looked- yes! She found a silhouette exactly where it should be and realized belatedly that it could have just been someone streaming a recording. She was glad it wasn’t.

Even as she bridged the distance, sand finding its way into her shoes. Even as she realized she had no idea how to start this conversation. Because beneath the spray of the sea she could scent roses, not the cut bouquets the city used to resemble, but a field of wild ones. And the closer she got, the stronger it got until she was at last a few meters out from the person.

“Hey!” She called. The figure didn’t turn, but she heard her voice fall into the recording and then start to get remixed in along with the other sounds. She frowned, muting the stream. Confusion scented the air and, if she could sense her own emotions, she might have confused it for hers. As it stood, she watched as the figure stopped walking and turned to scan the horizon, finding her at last. She waved, a small smile on her face. They began to sign back, their hands casting slow words into the air and she rapidly switched her video feed to a translation one, the words hanging in the air in front of her.

“Can I help you with something?” They asked and there was no sense of concern, either on their face or on the wind, just a genuine question? For a moment, Rain was stumped and then she switched on a translate function and started to speak.

“I…was… watching…” She said and signed the words that came up as best she could. Other words appeared on screen and she glanced at the streamer to realize they were speaking before reading the words.

“I can read your lips.” They signed.

“Oh.” She said, clearing her throat. “Well, uh.” She dismissed the signing instructions, though made a mental note to start learning them if she was going to talk to this person. “I was watching your stream and…” How to phrase it? She watched their face and they waited patiently, the start of a smile on their lips. Their curly hair fell over their brown eyes, matching prettily with their dark skin. “I wanted to say I’m a big fan.”

“Thank you.” They signed back and they were grinning. Warmth spread across Rain’s cheeks and she swallowed, unable to keep herself from smiling. Their genuine pleasure scented the moonflower touching the air. They didn’t mention that she could’ve just texted or started a window. They began to sign again and she looked to the words as they appeared. “Did you bring me eggs?” Confusion, though laced with amusement.

“Oh, I was just on the way home from the store…” She paused, realizing this far into suburbia, the closest store really was the one she had left from. Meaning…

“A long way.” The words read and she laughed.

“I wanted to do something foolish.”

“What’s your name?” They asked through a quick sign.

“Rai-…” She paused. She had grown accustomed to giving only the part of her name she had everyone call her by for so long, but this was a formal introduction in some strange way, wasn’t it? “All the Rainbow’s Heavy Tones in a Joyous Chord.” She said and then smiled. “Rain for short.”

“I like it.” They signed with a smile. “A very happy name. I am A Connection Made in Broken Stone.” They shrugged and continued signing, though at a rapid pace now that they knew her to be using the translator. “It doesn’t abbreviate well, I go by Conn.” They spelled the letters out one at a time and the translator put a dash between each one.

“Conn is a nice name,” She said, winking as she bridged the distance. “A little criminal.”

“I love crime.” They said and she laughed. “I was going to have lunch, bring your eggs and we can have egg lunch.”

“What’s egg lunch?” She asked, grinning already. This was easy. She realized to some extent that their easy happiness was infecting her but she was long past the point of being troubled by that sort of thing. For the longest time, the independence had affected her and made her less likely to make connections, maybe it still did, but she learned how to interpret what was hers and what wasn’t and take what she wanted from the stream of scents.

“Toast and eggs?” They signed with a shrug and she smiled, nodding. The two of them walked down the shoreline.

“How often do you stream this?” She asked, making sure her face was turned towards them so they could see.

“Every so often. It keeps me sane.” Came the reply and she frowned. There wasn’t an extra emotion on the air but the wild rose ebbed slightly.

“What does that mean?”

“Work is…” They frowned and mint rose into her nose, suspicion? No, not in this context. Worry, maybe? “I am a reporter.”

“Oh,” She said. Somehow she hadn’t expected that.

“Business and economics.” They replied and she winced. They smiled, though the scent of roses didn’t get any stronger. “Exactly, not the kind of thing that gets you friends you like.”

“Why do you do it?” She asked, frowning. “If you don’t like it…” A series of rapid signs came and she read along quickly as a paragraph formed.

“Because someone has to do it. Everyone else is on their payroll and at the end of the day, I can say that I gave my editor the facts and that I did my part no matter what the rest of them say.” They looked to her, frowning and signing. “Did that sound convincing?”

“I thought so.” She said as the scent of mint rose higher. “Did you not believe it?”

“I’m trying to.” They signed. “It just feels like I’m not getting anything done. Especially with the way everything has gone in the city, I just feel so-”

“Powerless.” She said and they nodded, dropping their hands before signing the word. “I’m going to tell you something.” She said and they stopped along the beach, turning to her and giving her their attention. The scent of sunflower rose and she smiled at it, loyalty was it? To her? “I’ve never told anyone this.”

“Why me?” They signed, more confusion spilling out.

“Because I don’t have anyone left in this city.” She said. “Because it’s killing me that I don’t. Because my friend Trust was right? Because I wish I had told them and I didn’t and I just.” She took a deep breath. “You might not believe me, but not believing me is at least a start.”

“Go on,” They signed when she hit a long pause.

“I can sense emotions. I have been able to for the longest time and I…” She wrapped her arms around herself. “I keep feeling all the fear on the wind from this city and you’re the first person who has felt like anything but fear. You feel like hope and happiness in a way I’ve never really understood so.” She took a shuddering breath, realizing how close she was to crying and stopping herself before she could. “That’s it, that’s what I have to say and God I just realized I told a reporter all of that.” Her world was awash in the scent of Geranium, the determination equal to what Truth had smelled like when she made Rain promise to do exactly this. Well, not exactly, maybe.

“I believe you.” They signed in the air, making slower, more dramatic signs. “Why would you come to a stranger and lie? Besides.” They shrugged. “I know when someone is lying.”

“Because you’re a reporter?”

“Because I watch carefully.” They signed and she smiled, her nerves still alight even as she tried to process what had just happened. “Would you like a hug?” They asked and she nodded. “Watch the eggs.” They signed and she laughed, holding the eggs away from her body as the stranger stepped in for a hug, holding her tight. She didn’t know when she started crying, but they held her until she stopped and when she finally stepped away they signed and she had to readjust her translation window from having moved when they hugged before she read, “Ready for that lunch?”

“God, yes I’m starving.” She said as they continued their walk along the beach.

Harlem Roulette

Weeks passed. For awhile it looked as if the city would collapse beneath the weight of the exodus, but that didn’t last for long. Companies came in and found plenty of uses for the heavy consumption streams of Blackness of the Ocean. Soon everything was revitalized and Rain and Conn could only watch in dawning horror as the world they thought they escaped rebuilt itself in a more horrible visage.

“We could just leave.” Rain signed as the two of them sat on the couch, the Veil window before them holding streams of a dozen ads.

“We could.” Agreed Conn in a series of rapid signs that Rain barely had to think about. “But you wouldn’t be happy.”

“How do you figure?” Rain replied before taking a sip of her whiskey, setting it down again so she was ready to reply when Conn was done.

“You didn’t leave the first time.”

“I was dumber then.”

“Or smarter.”

“Fine,” She sighed. “I won’t be happy if I leave, but…” She gestured at the four rows and three columns of windows. “This can’t stay like this. These ads are terrible, they’re all for things like untested medications that are either snake oil or sponges sold as weight loss. There’s all these political attack ads and I only know the politicians from the attack ads? This whole city is thriving in a way worse than it ever has before and…” She flexed her fingers and rolled her wrists.

“You could still let me lip read.”

“No.” She signed back and continued. “I just. Someone has to do something.”

“Another exodus?”

“No.” She signed. “An exodus makes a power vacuum. What we need is someone to take the offensive. There’s a way to break this down. There’s a way to use attack ads to our benefit. I…” She paused. “I can tell which ads are effective and which aren’t. I’ve got a knack for this.”

“Because of your power?” They asked and she nodded. “Could you change minds by…”

“No.” She signed. “Or rather I could, but I refuse to. I’m not changing anyone’s emotions without their consent, you know that.”

“I do.” They signed. “Sorry. But Rain, making ads won’t be enough. We need to do more than that if we’re going to act at all.”

“What more can we do?” She asked.

“Expose.” Conn replied with a quick sign. “You know I can broadcast anything. I’m a reporter with a strong channel.”

“Wait…” Rain frowned. “Are you saying…” She drank the rest of her whiskey and poured herself another.

“Look, you’re right.” They signed. “We can’t leave, we can’t stay here like this, so let’s do something.”

“You’re dreaming.” Rain replied. “This is an awful dream.”

“Even awful dreams are good dreams so long as you’re dreaming.” They signed back and she laughed. “What do you say? Let’s do some damage.”

“Sure.” She signed at once. “I’m in. But I’m not nearly drunk enough to deal with it.” She said as she worked on her second whiskey. It was going to be a long night and whatever happened next would be even longer, but. Finally.

Finally there was something on the horizon worth looking towards. She didn’t know if this was what Truth wanted for her. Actually, it was more like she was absolutely sure it wasn’t. However, here she was and she was going to do the best with what she had.

#inktober #tmginktober #my writing

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michaelbuntyn · 4 years

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INKTOBER 2020 // 31 // CRAWL Art by Michael Buntyn . . . I didn't drop the ball. I stayed consistent and executed to the best 👌 of my ability. I finished strong. I enjoyed every minute ☺. The energy I am feeling right now is amazing. . . #michaelbuntyn #jakeparker #inktober #inktober2020 #inktoberday31 #ink #inkwork #blackwork #blackworknow #illustration #drawing #sketch #art #artist #inktober52 #inktobercrawl #inktober2020crawl #inktoberallyearlong #drawing #draweveryday #creative #illustration #blackandwhite #comicbookartist #comicbooklife https://www.instagram.com/p/CHB241-Ap5T/?igshid=1ov5by3pddxqx

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somestoriessomewhereelse · 4 years

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Inktober 2020

1 – Fish

Sleep is just like water. Most of the times you feel good around it, light, peaceful - until the moment you suffocate and simply can't breathe in anymore. Then, you stay at the surface, awake, and dry.

2 – Wisp

I had this dream, again. I wander in a dark forest, following some flickering lights I can see floating in the air. I'm not scared, I'm just wondering where I will end. Then I notice I'm walking in my own footprints, and there is no end, no exit, always the same path.

Do I have the strength to change?

3 – Bulky

Anxiety, fears, regrets, disappointments, most of the time I can handle them. I feel them, however I don't let them overshadow all the lights of my life. But when one my nightmares come true, they take all the space, and just left me powerless in the dark.

4 – Radio

Wavelengths to hear and see anything. Colors, music, bones, heat, anything. So I wonder: do we also have a wavelength? a color? a frequency? And what are mines?

5 – Blade

I'm a fighter. I have weapons. I have my words. I'm able to stand in the arena with them, to attack, protect, react. I just have to remember to be careful with them: sometimes, I use them wrong, like a sword whose blade is turned inwards.

6 – Rodent

I'm a rat. I'm small, snitchy, unworthy of trust. They give me side eyes, they don't want me to belong. But I'm gonna prove them wrong. As one said: "Not everyone can become a great artist, but a great artist can come from anywhere".

7 – Fancy

It's one of these days, when everything is fine. I'm in a good mood, peaceful with the world, and peaceful with myself. I go outside, hang out with nice people, drink and eat quality. I laugh all night long. I live the dolce vita, at least for one night.

8 – Teeth

I used to have a sweet tooth; candies, chocolate, juices: snacks time was my favorite of the day. Now I'm older, bitter, and my mouth has another favorite dessert: human flesh

9 – Throw

Why would I risk all I have for something else? Why can't I be satisfied with my current situation? Why is there always this burning desire to chase for more, to go beyond, to reput everything at stake? I have to find the peace to settle down.

10 – Hope

No matter how much I will be prepared, and how hard I try to make everything right, all I can do is just hope for the best and keep faith.

11 – Disgusting

Discriminations. Narcissism. Orange pants. Disappointments. Food wasting. Hair loss. The police. Sprouts. Failing. Myself.

But I can try to focus on what I like.

Solidarity. Glitters. Candies. Queerness. Pink sweaters. My friends. Sex positivism. Persisting. Discoveries. Hopes. Myself.

12 – Slippery

That night I felt I was on my sexy side: confident, hot, an object of desire -or maybe it was just the steamy hammam. My throat was welcoming, embracing dicks and dicks sliding countlessly. I could finally stop thinking, and be in the moment. I'm such a good slope.

13 – Dune

Beaches. The feeling of infinity, in space (what is being the horizon?), in time (how old is the sand in my hands?). The energy of the Earth, the Water, the Wind, the Sun, surrounding you, eroding you, reshaping you. Face to these strengths, you surrender. Nature is your mistress, you vow to protect her until you die.

14 – Armor

I know I have a shell, multiple walls and coping mechanisms built between my anxieties and the rest of the world. I know that what's inside of me, sometimes is only perceptions, not reality; that I shouldn't project my fears on what could happen or not. I know all of that, yet behind this colorful mask of pride and self-confidence, I'm still insecure and needy to be reassured.

15 – Outpost

The outpost position, sometimes known as "the first line". Their mission is to inspect enemy forces, and surprise them with a trap. But they're also the most vulnerable, and often used as human shield or simply sacrifice. Who cares about them? about their health? about their life? Decisions are made for them, regardless of their hopes and desires, as if they had no control of their own life. And who thinks that's fair?

16 – Rocket

The decisions I regret the most are the ones I took too fast, mostly with my dick. When I speed up and let my horniness speaks before my reason, these are the times I miss my target, and honey I never end up in the stars.

17 – Storm

When the pressure accumulates too much, the tempest can't be avoided: there is a need for some release. Spiky lightning striking the trees, thunderbolts bumping the ears through the heart, rain wetting and flooding the lands. Storms may seem destructive, but the sun always shines after them, and can enlighten what survived and what is ready to be rebuilt stronger than ever.

18 – Trap

Trap. Y'all know what I'm gonna write today. Y'all know I feel trapped by a lot of things: the curfew, capitalism, feelings, doubts, expectations, the desire of perfection and optimization, blah blah blah. And I know I feel like that mostly because of my brain. But I also feel that this situation is like quick sands: the more I fight, the quicker I go down; sometimes, in order to find inner peace, I just have to let it go.

19 – Dizzy

Alcohol, ecstazy, cannabis, cocaine, ketamine, LSD, poppers, GHB, speed, hilarious gas: anything to make me feel less myself. I love feeling my body getting lighter, my thoughts evaporating, and overall weighting less, to be only joy, electricity, light, desire, present and eternity.

20 – Coral

Once upon a time a beautiful mermaid, who lived peacefully in the oceans. She dreams about going up, see the human world, and she prays to meet them one day. And one day, her wish is granted: humans come undersea, to expand their world from their boats. The anchors destroy rocks and corals, the nets capture her fish friends, and the released oil covers the surface in black, like if there was clouds forever. Not quite her dream come true.

21 – Sleep

Is it because I'm a night person that I sleep so bad, or is it because I've always slept so bad that I became such a night person?

22 – Chef

I love food. I love eating. If there is one thing about living in France, it is this: we can find any king of food anywhere. French cuisine is great, and now it is mixed with a lot of other world influences. I love it. And I'm hungry to try new flavors.

23 – Rip

I don't know death yet, but I've felt multiple times the grief of an ended relationship. Whether it was because I had to leave for studies, or because my actions lead them to break up, most of the times I feel it's my fault. Then I get caught up in wondering what its: what if I stayed? what if I acted better? And here comes the sorrow.

24 – Dig

Underneath the social mask, underneath the short-term anxiety, underneath the hopes and the illusions, underneath my core memories and my life plans, what most part of myself will I find?

25 – Buddy

To these few amazing people who stand by le no matter what, who see me at my worst before any rising glory, who are with me regardless of the distance between us, who love me and whom I love them back: I thank all of you, for everything.

26 – Hide

Being outside the norms implies hiding: it's a basic survival instinct. We hide not to be discriminated, rejected, hunted, killed. Because we live in the world that doesn't understand us, and doesn't want to. Well fuck them. I'm tired of hiding. I'm tired of see my pears hiding. We are strong, powerful, resilient. Let's break the norms. Let's take the place we deserve. Let's become visible.

27 – Music

Through my voice, she spreads and produce love. I live for her and I have nothing else. How many people will I meet, who like me wrote on their face "I live for her"? I live for her, on the ground or against a wall. I live for her, even in a complicated future.

28 – Float

I had the feeling I was getting okay, finally reaching the surface, finally breathing a fresh air. Apparently I was wrong: I'm drawing again. This air was not that fresh, it brought insecurities I didn't think they was still there. However, it ain't my first time, and I've become a good swimmer; I'll reach the surface again, and again, and again. But sometimes my eyes get tired, burnt by the salt, and I just can't see the lands anymore.

29 – Shoes

These boots are made for walking, these shoes are made for running, and these heels are made for being a star. I have no more powerful moment than when I’m on stage: for five minutes, I feel like I belong, like I matter, like my performance have importance. The stage is the place I can express myself, show my feeling (my ass), and connect with people. And it all started with my first pair of heels.

30 – Ominous

I have a bad presentiment. Ok, to be honest, I always have. But when I think about the following weeks, I feel like... I don't know. Is it gonna be better this time, since I should be more prepared? or is it gonna be worse because I have way more issues to deal with at this same time? Staying weeks in my bed wasn't that difficult, I got used to it. But dealing between social work, lockdown, interpersonal issues and personal goals... well, let's just say I have a bad presentiment.

31 – Crawl

I will never crawl. Not for you, not for the government, not for anyone. I'm no one's bitch, never in the sheets, never in the streets. Lock me down but I will still stand up. Once again, it's not the time to surrender, but to rise, together, united. And no I won't be your houseslut for the month.

#Twitter #vie #moi #Sens

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sunshine-soprano · 7 years

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this took ages and the camera quality is terrible i’m really sorry

Inktober day 13: High school AU (or college AU if your character(s) already go to high school)

I was going to do a Hamilton high school AU but I changed my mind bc that’s been done to death

Also I was originally going to do the fab four but i thought all the elders (plus naba of course) needed some love. So i spent a v long time playing “let’s turn these ensemble characters into actual three-dimensional characters with decent quirks and personalities”

EDIT: the headcanons are quite hard to read (thanks, terrible smartphone camera) so I’ve also put them under the cut :^)

KEVIN PRICE

- straight A student

- that’s the only thing straight about him

- perfect hair

- has a thing about personal space

- has anxiety

- probably about 90% coffee

ARNOLD CUNNINGHAM

- sweetheart

- isn’t that good in school but has the best imagination

- is great at creative writing

- ADHD/ADD

- is a super good friend

- gives the best hugs

- has an endless supply of fandom t-shirts

NABA HATIMBI

- moved from Uganda with her father

- super clever and in lots of honours classes

- loves drama and bonds with Connor over theatre

- has a higher GPA than Kevin and Kevin’s lowkey jealous

- is extremely in love with Arnold

- wants to be a journalist and raise awareness of all the problems in Africa

CONNOR MCKINLEY

- v gay

- also v closeted (except with Naba who sees right through him)

- preppy

- does lots of dance

- can and will beat you at Just Dance

- drinks so much tea

- really likes Kevin

CHRIS “POPTARTS” THOMAS

- touch his poptarts and die

- small but feisty

- good at baking

- is v close with Connor and knows everything about him

- is a super good and supportive friend

- a secret boss at MarioKart and isn’t afraid to play dirty

JAMES CHURCH

- artist

- is really good

- only Poptarts and Davis are allowed to see his art though

- stays with Poptarts and Davis a lot when his dad gets drunk and violent

- shy

- loves Poptarts v a lot

- reads a lot and has a book club with Neeley

DAVIS (do the rest even have fan-given first names?? idk)

- loud

- prankster

- sleeps a lot

- doesn’t try but still gets good grades

- eats a lot but never gains weight

- but still can’t cook

- bad pun squad

SCHRADER

- music nerd

- makes a lot of bad music theory puns that only he and Neeley understand

- no one knows how many instruments he can play

- he and Connor are musical nerd buddies

- has a really nice voice

- secretly has stage fright

- bad pun squad

NEELEY

- neat freak

- literature nerd

- book club with James

- has v strong opinions about most things

- likes philosophy and everyone hates him for it

- bad pun squad

- likes being super pretentious

- is actually a massive feminist

- so many Twitter rants

MICHAELS

- great cook

- Davis gets him to cook for him all the time

- aces home ec

- gets super passive aggressive and sarcastic when mad

- although he never swears

- don’t get on the wrong side of him he will s l a y you

- loves trashy reality tv

ZELDER

- complete and utter nerd

- plays so many video games

- he and Poptarts fight to be the best at MarioKart

- nerd buddies with Arnold

- Trekkie

- fluent in Klingon

- writes fanfiction

- has written smut

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reapercruxie · 7 years

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I've been gone for awhile here on tumblr. there's a lot going on my mind and some stress building up, but, I'm staying strong. I don't want to start a drama here but here's my inktober day 1 - 10. I'll post the other soon? (i guess) if I ever have time. but I'll definitely post it! If you want to check it out its on my instagram/twitter/fb page. Those are always active, sometimes ( a lot of times actually lol) I go on semi hiatus because of personal stuff. I'm also leveling up my skills cause I'm way behind, my drawings are uggghhhh... Have a nice day as always! Don't mind me talking here hahahaha! I'm just an artist with a level 1 skill (╥﹏╥) Thank you for following me tho and liking my arts. I REALLY APPRECIATE it! (｡’▽’｡)♡ until next time! - Cruxie

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mrunaalgawhande · 7 years

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@inktober | That Girl | Day 2 - Divided - “I am divided; Pain inside me is eating me; So, I finally asked it: "Stay and make me strong or just leave." ©mrunaalgawhande @mrunaalgawhande #divided #art #illustration #drawing #draw #socialenvy #picture #artist #sketch #sketchbook #paper #pen #pencil #artsy #instaart #beautiful #instagood #gallery #masterpiece #creative #photooftheday #instaartist #graphic #graphics #artoftheday #beautiful #abstracto #stayabstract #instaabstract

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plasticoveredfurniture · 5 years

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inktober d12: dragon

pairing: yoongi centric, platonic ot7

words: 1513

tags: tattoo artist au, everyone is lgbt, trans characters

It started on his shoulder with a tail that looked like it was about to wrap around his throat and it developed all across his back. A huge dragon in bold colour that looked ferocious and thirsty for blood. That had been Yoongi’s first big piece. A bit cliche, but he never regretted it. He got it as soon as he moved to New York. He wanted that piece to merge between his culture and the one that his craft had him basically marrying into. So he settled for a dragon, a benevolent symbol in his culture, and made it look angry and evil, like western cultures portrayed it and felt to young foreigners like Yoongi.

He decided to move in order to turn his dream of becoming a tattooist into a reality, but the reality was that the industry was not friendly at all, especially towards young, asian, gay men.

Many people had lived the struggle before him, he was aware of that, what he wasn't aware of was that there was a place exactly for him. In Greenwich Village there was a parlour created in the mid nineties for people exactly like him. Daniel Lee, known in the industry as Tablo, had decided that once he'd built a name for himself he wanted to open his own shop and make it somewhere where artists were picked based off of talent and not any other form or bias. The only requirements for people to be eligible for a spot at Eternal Sunshine tattoos were being a person of colour and/or part of the lgbt community.

When Yoongi found out about Tablo and his one-of-a-kind parlour, he'd already been in NYC for about a year. He'd worked in passing in about 20 shops and he'd only been able to tattoo a handful of people. The frustration was starting to get the best of him and he was contemplating catching a flight back home and just giving up. Until he saw it.

He'd moved to a small one room apartment in Greenwich Village and one fateful morning, as he was wandering around the streets of the neighborhood, he stumbled upon Eternal Sunshine tattoos.

The name intrigued him, but what got him to walk into the shop was the pride flag hanging outside.

"Good morning and welcome to Eternal Sunshine tattoos. I'm Joon, how can I help you?"

Yoongi was greeted by a grey haired man with dimples so deep that Yoongi thought he could fit a whole finger in there.

"Oh, hi. I was just walking by and I noticed the flag." said the artist sheepishly while rubbing the back of his neck.

"Yeah, it's pretty neat, isn't it? Are you familiar with Eternal Sunshine?"

"Actually, no"

Joon smiled.

"I have a story to tell you then"

They sat down and Joon told him the whole story while sipping on a cup of tea that had gone cold by the time they were done.

"That's" Yoongi paused, looking for the right words "so fucking cool" he breathed out, very eloquently.

"I am actually looking for a place to practice, but for the past year every parlour has rejected me after a month max because I'm gay and Korean."

"Do you have a portfolio?"

"Yeah, I have one at home"

"Then bring it here by the end of the day and tomorrow you might have a job"

Yoongi had never run that fast in his life, but it was so worth it when not even four hours later he got a callback saying he now has a home at Eternal Sunshine.

The following day he got to meet all of the resident artists there, some of which became his own chosen family in the two months after.

He found that he was one of seven Koreans working at the parlour. One of them being Joon, who lived their life free of all sorts of labels except for a cute little pin they always wore to specify that their pronouns were they/them. (After seeing the pin on Joon, everyone started wearing personalised pronoun pins because they didn't want those who specified their pronouns for not being cis to feel hyper conscious)

Then there was Hope, the most outgoing and hyper ball of sunshine Yoongi had ever met. They specified in bold and colourful new school and, to be honest, Yoongi wasn't surprised.

Out of the Seven, capitalised because Tablo was all about advertising Korean excellence especially since the tattoo scene in Korea itself is a very difficult one, only three also worked as piercers.

The first one, Tae, was the second friendliest person Yoongi had ever come across. Second because no one could ever beat Hope. Tae loved wearing skirts and makeup, but never really cared much about gender so he didn't feel uncomfortable being referred to with female pronouns, nor gender neutral ones. His pin though, said he/him.

The second one, was Jungkook. He was the youngest so everyone teased him for it and never missed a chance to call him bunny instead of his actual name. At first glance, Yoongi was a little intimidated by the younger because of his tall and broad body paired with long hair and numerous piercings and art adorning his body, but he was quick to realise that the boy was just a soft little twink at heart, just like him.

The last of the three piercers was Jin. She was the most beautiful woman Yoongi had ever laid eyes upon and, for a solid second, he felt bad he wasn't into women. Jin had moved to the States in order to transition, but discovered Eternal Sunshine in the meanwhile and decided to apply for a visa. There was nothing left for her in Korea anyway. She soon became Yoongi's closest friend out of the seven. Yoongi appreciated her honesty and horrible sense of humour. Plus, no one can stop a gay and a lesbian after they join forces.

The last of the seven was Jimin. He, too, had moved from Korea in order to transition and decided to stay after getting tattooed by Jin.

Being surrounded by so many amazing artists with such inspiring stories became Yoongi's biggest inspiration. His job wasn't just about his art and craft anymore, but also about the amazing family he had found, to the point that it no longer felt like a job.

And, being the sentimental little shit that everyone knew him to be, he decides to ask them for a rather simple gift for his 30th birthday.

He asked each of them to design something for him so that he could dedicate a whole sleeve to them. He had been planning it for a while, but no one ever thought to ask why nearly every inch of his body except for an entire arm was covered by ink.

They worked together to make it as cohesive as six different tattoos in six different styles could be. Yoongi wanted it to be messy and almost patchwork-like, but that didn't stop them from trying.

Kookie did a black and white forest landscape that wrapped all around his lower forearm; Joon added a whale that looked like it was made of flowers on the back of his arm, just above his elbow; Hope did a new school moth on his hand in black and white with a few hints of yellow; Jimin added a crescent moon wrapped in flowers above Joon's whale; Tae designed a geometric astrology design in which he added the Pisces constellation; Jin added to the side of his upper arm a sword with a vine wrapped around it to keep the plant theme going and as a reminder to Yoongi of the conversation they'd once had.

("You're all warriors, noona. I am not half as strong as the rest of you are. I don't understand why I feel like I fit in so much, I don't deserve to."

"Yoongi-chi, we're all warriors. Never forget that."

"But-"

"You're not a white cishet man, Yoongi-chi. You're a warrior.")

Then, just for shits and giggles, they added a few dumb doodles to fill in the empty spaces.

They added "warrior" in pretty script above the inside of his elbow, they added a half-peeled banana that was actually a penis underneath, they put a bunny in there, the wlw symbol, and many more stupid little things that reminded them of one another.

Yoongi couldn't have been happier with the finished product. He had never been a crier and he ways took pride in how well he could conceal his emotions, but this time they got the best of him.

He was happy. A kind of happy that he never thought he could achieve when he was a small gay boy from Daegu who had just moved to New York. Bu there he was. Older than he ever thought he'd be, as a successful and renowned tattoo artists from Eternal Sunshine, with a whole family of wonderful people that had his back no matter what. Life wasn't so bad after all.

#btsboulangerie

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