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studioboner · 1 year

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Hi! I actually am wondering about trying watercolors for the first time but feel a little anxious haha.. how you go about drawing on the paper with confidence? Like, watercolor paper isn’t exactly cheap. I think I got the cheapest one avaible from Canson but still the anxiety is real… do you pick very light pencils like 2B so you can sketch veryyy lightly, or before sketching on the paper itself you do a planning sketch in another paper?

Im asking this cos I really love your art and it’s so cool that it’s mostly traditional! And the way you draw Tails is too adorable and consistent while being in your style, it always feels like you have confidence when you draw him.

oh i think this is gonna be a long one

all in all?i have the same anxiety as you. but i've confidense that i can make something good sometimes, but not that i will get it right every time. So i keep trying, but heres some stuff that helped

a warning though, i keep going on and on in this reply and can get pretty negative at times

my watercolor paper i use costs 2 dollars and has 20 sheets so that's 10 cents per sheet. which i feel helps with my anxiety... it's the canson multimedia block too, 140 msg .....

watercolor sketchbooks i'd find online were around 80 or more BRL, and then 20 BRL shipping.... that's 20 USD in total...

but a block of this plus getting it binded costs me 4 USD.....so i think that one [price] helps alot lol.....

as for the confidence.....

i've had enough time to do quite a bit of trad art, specifically ink and watercolors so im USED to the material and now quite as scared to "mess up" as when i first started it.... [hint, i still am] this is one example of a sketch page, they vary in size, and how "done" they are... i dont really worry too much about maintaining a rule of "everything in this sketchbook must be fully rendered " bc it ended up stunting my creativity

i did try the "sketch it onto a sketchbook and then pass it to watercolor paper" approach and tbh...? not really my thing... i've found that to me the first sketch always end up being looser than when i pass it on... i'm always more focused on getting the flow, composition and pose there than i am getting the right details or right lines or colors etc....

like this one, im more happy with the sketch, it's mroe dynamic, mroe fun

i DO sketch stuff on cheaper paper first when it's for trad art commissions though, just bc there i HAVE to make sure the client is getting what they asked

and i do use 2b pencils AND a "soft lead" mechanical pencil, btu tbh it's mroe bc of the feeling of it on paper than for the look of it...

here for example you can see the circle i used to have a basis on where tails would be.. i didnt erase it as i continued painting bc tbh it was just the sketch. i ended up liking it tho

i actually got quite MAD and angry at myself recently bc i noticed how much my sketches were looser in the sketchbooks when i did try the passing onto watercolors thing and i had a full on discussion with a fellow artist about daring myself to be bolder in the future, it has been working well

I sadly have to say though, that figuring out how to build confidense is more of a personal journey, and i cant claim that what worked for me [trusting my first sketch] would work for you.....

It's time, practice, trial and error....

OH, one thing though that DID help me. is:

-There's no art wasted, even if it doesnt turn out how you wanted it, you still learned something.

-Makins these personal art/fanarts isn't some school paper you have to hand it to be graded and then not get it back. You can re-do a piece as many times as you want until you get it right! I have quite a queue of pieces i plan on re-doing in the future bc i didnt like the first ones i did. im not perfect on confidence and i get scared of fully committing to drawings alot, many of them are pale not for choice bc bc i got scared of making my art too saturated and overworking it

i am about to get negative now so stop reading if you dont want to see that.

HERE NOW i's a alot of pieces i made that im unsatisfied with and plan on re-doing one day: too dull, simply way too watered

which led me to make THIS piece and do better colors

i hATE the way i did the lineart here. it's boring, the anatomies are wonky. it's a good concept but i didnt excecuted it as well as i wanted. but this piece has made me just go and try inking MORE so i could make up for it

which lead to this piece here eventually

This one here.... the colors look so muddy it just makes me SAD, bc i had been so scared to use high saturation that i went with the muddier colors by choice, if i had allowed myself to experiment i wonder how happier i'd be about it

which led me to make THIS piece with softer in value and more saturated colors

The colors and blending of this one are too soft and not bold enough for what i had envisioned it, i made it as fanart of a friends fic and it made me feel like i failed my friend and insulted her fic when i finished this. I dont think the piece looks bAD, mind you. i know it looks cute. and good even. But i had such high hopes for it.

which led me to make this one

THIS ONE OH MY GOD HOW I HATE IT. sonics expression is SO creepy hes like a horror movie weirdo , honestly not my best work when it comes to anatomy

so i've been doodlin sonic now and then as practice so that i could make this one eventually

The perspective on knuckles could be better and the characters look out of place on this scene, the background is ok

but in this piece here i was able to get a better harmony between colors, background and whatever sparse linework i threw in

Theres so many more haha but i'll stop for now....

Dont get me wrong i dont ACTUALLY think those pieces are HORRIBLE horrible,,,, i see the flaws in them yes, but theres always something i like too, and i know people like them, and that people wont throw away a whole piece over one small detail that in the end doesnt even affect the overall thing....

i've just been getting into the headspace of "ok. at least this one is done, onto the next"

plus the whole thing i told you of realising my first sketches are looser....

sorry im not too good at talking about this and my points arent very clear, i dont think this is going to be quite the help you expected it to be because the truth is that the struggle with your art is soemthign that doesnt go away no matter what skill you have...

at times to me it feels more like a mentality practice than skill, reasurring myself that it's ok to get it wrong and try again, etc etc....

i used to go to therapy and one of the things we talked about was my perfectionism, how i used to be so scared to mess up a piece. that i wouldnt even start, and wouldnt draw for months. this has been going for years now and hey i've gotten better.

but..... yeah im in the same boat as you.... except mine is no longer just about the paper quality!

Sorry this got so personal now, i hope that this hasnt killed your hopes on getting better at the anxiety. it does get way better haha... trying to force your brain to not judge yourself so harshly is half the battle in my opinion, the practice of drawing is the other half....

good luck i hope you have fun painting, i know i do, i love the process even when i dont like the result, good night and thank you for the question

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arcadechan · 2 years

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Hello, I'm absolutely in love with your work, and most especially your use of color!

Apologizing in advance if you've answered this sort of question already, but do you have any particular methods of choosing/applying color to your pieces? I've struggled with choosing interesting colors/palettes alot personally and would love to know if you have any tips or anything about it!

Hello, thank you so much for the question!

I've been sent a similar ask before, but I also don't mind talking about art so your ask is more than welcome. Plus you touch on an interesting point! The way you apply color can be just as effective as the color itself. FUN.

The ask I linked above talks about how I choose color palettes, so check that out if you're interested~. I'll expand a little bit more down below since you got me thinking about stuff

(One note though: I primarily work digitally, and I might on purpose or accidentally frame my tips around that mindset.)

It's time for a list because I love lists so much:

If something breaks the rules of reality but looks COOLER or fits your style or theme or you just LIKE it more....maybe do it anyway. Why not? At least see what it would look like! (Make a new layer if you're working digitally, sketch it out on some scratch paper if you're going traditional) (this is especially good with color. I KNOW not many shadows are that shade of teal but it just looks good jerry, sorry!) (Light sources are good for this too)

You are not locked into anything, ESPECIALLY if you're working digitally. If you don't like how something looks, try first to figure out what WOULD make it look better and then give it a shot (I say to think about it a little bit first to try and prevent the sketch-delete-sketch-delete cycle, but....sometimes you NEED that cycle too. Even deleted art still lives in the memory of your hands and experience. It’s just trouble to get stuck there.)

When struggling with colors, look to simplify. Maybe do more pieces with JUST flat colors, see if that doesn’t help your palettes. You will find your renders more appealing if you start with a base you like, and even if you don’t like your renders…you’ll have a base you like, and that’s good enough! Flat color art is COOL. Knowing when NOT to add detail is just as masterful as knowing when and where to

When it comes to something you're struggling with, look to other artists. That's part of why I'm very happy to answer asks like this - it's good to remember you don't have to come up with every answer yourself. Even if you can't ask directly, there's a lot to learn just from...looking at art. What inspires you? What looks cool, or appealing? What solves a problem you've been struggling with?

For example, going back to color, you learn early in digital art that a purple/blue layer on multiply (or you know, other colors, but it's an example) can be a quick and easy way to do some shadows. and it is! I use it even today! But I never really liked it. So I started struggling with shadows. So I started looking to other art for inspiration. I've just always liked vibrant colors and watercolor as a medium, so...I started trying some things with that as my inspiration point.

I began applying shadows with watercolor brushes and wash brushes, I started using teal and aqua for shadows on top of a thicker magenta base. I started doing rim-lighting (boy oh boy rim-lighting). I started pushing and pulling colors, adding layers like with colored pencils. I started using more glow dodge layers, a separate layer for more opaque hard light and less opaque blooms; making pieces brighter instead of darker. I STARTED. Doing things I just LIKED more, and found out that hey…..some of it works. Some of it sticks.

There’s a lot of advice out there on how to overcome artblock; and while I know that isn’t the exact nature of this question, from my own experience I’ve usually found I hit an artblock when there is a specific THING I am struggling with (for a long time it was feet. Right now it’s shoulders, necks, and noses. For you, perhaps it’s color). Whenever I hit this point there are a few easy things I try and lately it’s been working out.

I start by stopping drawing. I go out and get inspired again. Reading, watching animation, going out and seeing nice scenery in some good lighting, looking at other artists’ work…I take my mind of my own stuff and refill it with Good Juice for Creatives

I wait. I wait until my hands itch and I just gotta draw again. I wait until I have at least ONE thing I know I want to draw or try (like a new brush or challenge or IDEA)

When I start drawing again, I take it easy. Sketching in the sketchbook, drawing fanart or oc’s, not trying to come up with too much from scratch. The break we took earlier at least gives me enough energy and want-to-draw to power through the struggle of any remaining artblock

When you’re learning…there can be a frustrating SLOWNESS to it. And with art, well. It’s tricky. You’re training your eyes, hands, and mind on something…almost completely subjective. That’s why I keep coming back to studying things you like! Not only does that make for a more enjoyable experience…well. When I was in college, my art teacher told us to “trust your gesture”.

When you are actively doing or studying art, you’re building a mental catalog. When you’re LIVING you’re doing this too! That’s where trust your gesture comes into play. You know colors you like when you see them. Trust the colors you like to be some of the colors you can use. Trust some of the things you like to be things you can learn from. A lot of art will come more naturally when you say “I know I can do it this way…but I WANT to do it this way”.

And that’s why so much of my art is Like That.

#chan says #replied #oh goodness it's long and i had too much cheesecake and also it's a monday and i'm alive so #i #rambled #sorry!! i hope this helps in....ANY way.#frankly you just asking questions like this is a good part of due diligence! to you and your art!! well done!!

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jacob-romero · 1 year

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design diary 003

awfully late i know, won't happen again.

midterm season was approaching, fast. for us design students we don't really have midterms, at least not traditionally. instead we have a big final project for each class.

so what did we decide to do? throw a party.

my first "college party" was a potluck with all my friends

a delicious potluck, jesus.

the food was so good, filipino food to indian food, there was so much good food that night.

however, after the party it was back to reality. for 3D form studio we were tasked with a group project to build a garden nome. the catch? it was made out of concrete, and was divided into three modular parts.

from carving it out from red foam to preparing the molds, it was a long, long process that took a few weeks to do. ours was a cat in a ufo who was stuck to a claw in a claw machine.

it was a particularly messy process making the molds, but it was fun since the whole class was doing it together.

when it came to the concrete pours... it took a couple tries. it took a few tries figuring out how to tap it on the sides, how to shake it, and pour it so it would come out as smooth as possible. in the end Manny helped us figure out how to smooth it out with water and sandpaper.

we had thanksgiving break, right before the school of design's final week. for me it was no break, i had two days of work back to back plus a family trip to indiana. i was so tired but i finished a portion of my gnome project half asleep on my aunts sofa in indiana.

while all of that was happening, for design drawing i was drawing this dreaded mouse... why did i choose this mouse...

we had about a month,

we were tasked to draw the mouse, not once, not twice, but fifteen different times. three perspectives, an exploded view, different iterations and then once again another three perspectives. this project lead me to do things i didn't think i would do. i spent most of the month preparing the sketches that would be used as my templates, i had a system for this class. i drew the drawings all on one page and kept them at home, then i would work on them by tracing them onto new sheets and working on them at school, incase i messed up, i had the masters at home to trace. (i learned this from loosing my second project on the train two days before it was due, i was saved by a few masters i had at home which helped me finish on time)

a week before it was due, i was on track, halfway through the coloring process, however, i realized i was doing too much. this realization came to me on thursday during break…4 days before it was due.

i was rendering the mouse with more detailed than asked. however a big part of the grade was consistency, so i had to push forward. from spending 40$ on one set of prismacolors i then again spent another 40$ on another set. (thankfully to my understanding drawing will be digital in later classes so i won't have to spend more than this) and then.... those markers began to die. so what did i do? i bought insulin syringes!

i sent this photo to my mom, she asked what was it for, and i said drugs.

in reality though, they were to try to revive the markers with a liquid i forget the name. ill link the article if anyone is interested. i found it hilarious.

specifically this,

"fifth, replace the cap on both ends of the marker and shake it like you've never shaken anything before in your life. you are the san andreas fault and that marker is california. knock san francisco right into the ocean. shake!" - katiecandraw (2009)

this did in fact barley help. the markers were kind of revived but i did not get the results katiecandraw got. i should have realized sooner that a post from 2009 was not gonna help me as much.

after this i was in panic mode. i pulled my first all-nighter ever.

it was a very chaotic night. and i wasn't alone the whole class was up till 4, 5 in the morning working on this project.

but we pulled through! i gave a decent presentation for the critique, although i did ramble about my disdain for computer mice design and my love for the apple design....

i was running on two hours of sleep.

after the class ended, we all fell asleep on the beds that the architecture students had built for a project exploring public sleeping. truly a blessing.

this day we also finished our gnomes for 3D form studio. thankfully the gnome wasn't due for a few more days and we got to work on it without worry.

i won't lie i was a bit manic that day, i think we all were. we were all running on little to no sleep. but we all pulled through. here’s the final project:

i passed the semester with all a's !!!

so we lit.

finishing writing this at ML Kitchen on taylor street with friends at 2:32pm on january 17th

#design #concrete #designer #industrial design #art #designschool #academia #college #collegestudent #university #designdrawing #rendering

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midzelink · 3 years

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So, as some of you might know, one of my GIFs was recently featured on the Tumblr Radar - which is pretty cool! I was fairly happy with how that one turned out, especially considering that I made it rather last-minute on a whim to acknowledge Valentine’s Day. It understandably received a lot of attention as a result of this, and I’ve loved reading through all the comments and tags (especially all the ones about how people want to eat the heart containers from TP); however, I wanted to clear up a bit of a misunderstanding surrounding the creation of that GIF, as there were additionally a lot of tags along the lines of #3d art or #artists on tumblr in that influx of reblogs. I don’t want to take credit for something I didn’t do, even accidentally, and so allow me to be perfectly clear: the heart container GIF is not something I modeled and rendered myself! It is the original in-game model, recorded in-game using the Dolphin GCN/Wii emulator, with very little done in the way of post-processing in Photoshop. If that sounds impossible or confusing (which is perfectly understandable, for those of you unaware of what Dolphin is capable of), I’d like to take this opportunity to give you guys a bit of a “peek behind the curtain,” as it were, to show you guys exactly how I made that particular GIF, as well as similar ones I’ve made (such as those in my #items tag).

I didn’t take screenshots of my initial process (nor did I save the edited textures I used), so I’ll be recreating it from the ground up for the sake of demonstration, but that shouldn’t be a problem.

First thing’s first: finding a heart container! For this particular GIF, I wound up using the one that spawns after the Morpheel fight at the end of Lakebed Temple. I’m sure many others would work just as well (I think, at the time, this one just happened to be the most accessible to me), but let’s use the same one for the sake of it.

Morpheel: defeated. And I didn’t even need Zora Armor! (Seriously, we do that in the speedrun. But I’m getting off-topic.) Of course, we’re going to need clean, close-up footage of the heart container rotating in order to do what we want to do, so let’s shift into first-person mode and and get a bit closer to the thing.

Now, because the only UI-element in this shot is Link’s health (and it’s in the corner and relatively non-obtrusive), removing it isn’t strictly necessary - but I’ve already made a texture pack that removes UI elements as part of my Text Free TP project from a while back, so let’s load it anyway, for the sake of being thorough. This shot is also still a bit too far away, so next we’ll be utilizing Dolphin’s free cam feature (which can be accessed by going to Graphics > Advanced > Free Look and checking “Enable” in Dolphin) in order to get the heart container in a more central position. Now we’re left with this:

And we’re already looking well on our way to making a nice, solid color background GIF. But how do we get the solid color? Well, that’s where more texture editing comes into play - and here I have to give credit where credit is due, as this is a trick I picked up from 186px, after wondering how they were able to make this GIFset of Link fighting Ganondorf in The Wind Waker in a great, black void. (Seriously, shoutouts to them, their stuff was and still is amazing.)

But, very basically, we’ll be using Dolphin’s texture dump feature in order to find the textures that need to be edited so we can replace them with pure black ones. Texture dumping can be enabled by going to Graphics > Advanced > Utility and checking “Dump Textures,” and the file path for these dumped textures by default is Documents > Dolphin Emulator > Dump > Textures > [Game ID]. (In the case of Twilight Princess, the Game ID is GZ2E01). After dumping the textures in the Morpheel arena, my GZ2E01 folder looks like this:

When editing textures, sometimes you’ll have to endure a bit of trial and error until you find the correct ones. Luckily, in this scene, the textures making up the sand floor and the stone walls are rather large, so let’s isolate the ones we’re pretty sure are responsible (plus a few others that are obviously environmental, just to be safe).

Now, when loading custom textures, it’s important that the file name you’re trying to load matches up exactly with the original texture that you’re trying to replace. I have a plain, black, square PNG that I keep on my desktop specifically for this purpose; I copy the file names of the textures I’ve isolated, then rename and drag and drop the black PNG into the folder where custom textures are loaded (Documents > Dolphin Emulator > Load > Textures > [Game ID]). Like so:

And now, to refresh our custom textures by disabling and reenabling them in Dolphin’s graphics settings:

And voilà! We have something that very nearly resembles the GIF I made (well, a still of it, at least). I skipped over a few details, such as the fact that TP has a pretty significant amount of bloom surrounding just about everything, which I’m fairly certain I disabled using cheat codes when I made the original GIF in order to give it an overall cleaner look. It’s hard to tell from this still, but TP’s heart containers also sparkle considerably in a way that’s random and not loopable; I found the texture responsible for this sparkle and replaced it with a transparent 1x1 PNG, in order to remove it entirely (as well as the texture behind the “glow” of the thing). After that, it was as simple as recording the game with OBS, dumping the MP4 into Photoshop, cropping and cutting it to make it loop, and adding some adjustment layers for contrast and color. So...yeah!

I hope this has served to clear up any confusion about some of the things that I’ve made in the past. I’m not a 3D artist - just a person with an emulator and way too much free time on their hands. This stuff is really, super simple, and also lots of fun, so I would highly encourage anyone with the means to mess around with emulation on their own some time to see what they can do! (Even if you don’t have Photoshop and can’t make GIFs, there are always edits, such as this one I made of Midna.) For Twilight Princess in particular, I also highly recommend checking out TPGZ; it’s a patch you can apply to a clean ISO of the original game, designed with the purposes of helping folks learn and practice the speedruns (yes, I had to bring up speedrunning one last time, kill me), but it’s got nifty features like built-in savestates, cheat codes, and HUD removal, as well as the ability to freeze actors while maintaining the ability to move the camera freely, among other things (all things that are very useful as far as making unique graphics go). Sorry this post got as long as it did, but I at the very least hope that some of you found it educational and/or interesting. Cheers!

#uhhhhh i don't even know how to tag this #not like it will show up in the tags anyway because i've linked five billion things #twilight princess #long post #tutorials #i guess????#resources #myposts*#i didn't intend for this to be a tutorial i just wanted to explain that i'm not a 3d artist lmfao #OTL

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breakyeol · 3 years

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— SQUIRM, BABY.

You don’t like Doh Kyungsoo. Especially not when he’s got his fingers buried knuckle deep inside of you and your seeing stars —goddamn stars!— but can’t make a sound unless you want the entire library to know exactly what he’s doing to you under the table.

┗ Pairing: Tutor!Kyungsoo x Reader

Genre: college au, tutor au, enemies w benefits au, smut

Words: 4.7k

Rating: 18+

Warnings: strong language, sexual acts in a public setting, fingering

A/N; tomorrow is going to be my 1 year anniversary as an EXO-L!! oh my goodness that feels so crazy, time really flies. so here is a little present from me to you, enjoy lovelies!!

“These are all wrong,” Kyungsoo mutters blankly, “start over.”

A loud groan is ripped from your throat, the sound earning you more than a few sideways glares from the surrounding tables but you can’t really bring yourself to care. You’ve been here for two hours, studying one of the most intolerable subjects in the world: Calculus. The mere mention of its name made you shiver in disgust.

To be blunt, you’d always been shit at math. Numbers and equations were never your strong suit, not in high school and definitely not now with the added complexities of derivatives and differential equations (neither of which made even the slightest bit of sense to you). You much preferred the gentleness of literature and history to the strict logic and rules of mathematics and science. Unfortunately for you, the latter subjects were just as vital a part of your education, and opting out of them was not an option.

“Can’t we take a break?” You almost whine the question, pressing your fingers into your throbbing temples. “My brain feels like it’s going to explode.”

“No.”

You scowl at the bluntness of his rejection. “I’m paying you.” You point out, stabbing a finger into his bicep for emphasis. “Shouldn’t I have a say in when we take a break?”

He rolls his eyes, swatting your hand away and shoving the paper back in your direction. “I’m giving you your money’s worth. Do it again.”

You let out a noisy huff of air, slouching over dramatically in the stiff plastic chair until your chin is pressed against the cold table. “I hope you know I am deeply regretting some of my life decisions right about now.” You grumble, shooting him an icy glare that you hope conveys the absolute loathing you feel for both him and the set of problems laid before you.

“I thought that was a daily thing for you.”

Scoffing, you bury your mouth in the thick sleeve of your hoodie. “Your face is a daily thing for me.”

He doesn’t even bother to look at you, though you could almost feel the intensity of his deadpan. “I think that was the shittiest comeback I’ve ever heard.”

“Your face is the shittiest comeback I’ve ever heard.”

“You do realize that that makes absolutely no sense.”

“Your fa—”

“Shut up and do your work.”

He either doesn’t hear or consciously chooses to ignore the colorful array of curses you grumble spitefully in his direction, though simultaneously resigning yourself to the fact that you won’t be able to put off your work inevitably. Kyungsoo was a stickler for proper time management. If he had an agenda set in place for your tutoring session (which he always did), then you better believe he’d be checking off each item within its designated time frame. And if you don’t cooperate— well then, your best bet is to pray that there isn’t a mechanical pencil within his reach.

He might not always be able to reach the top shelf, but Kyungsoo had ways of getting what he wanted. Usually, that chilling glare was enough to get those around him to bend to his will. He could be a scary little shit when he wanted to be. You’ll admit, even you had been the tiniest bit intimidated when you first met him. He was quiet, reserved, strict in manner, but also the dangerous unpredictable type, you gathered that much quickly enough. Maybe that’s why the two of you didn’t get on too well.

Where he was cool and standoffish, “a man of few words” some might say, you were more vocal about your opinions, social by nature, always eager to meet new people and make new connections. You had a tendency to speak loudly when excited and talk with your hands when passionate about a subject. That was something most people learned about you very quickly. Unfortunately, upon your first official meeting at a party in your freshman year with your mutual friends, Kyungsoo had no idea just how emphatic you could be until you’d knocked his drink clean out of his hand and spilled it down the front of his brand new shirt.

It was an accident, of course. You’d apologized profusely and he’d accepted it (albeit somewhat begrudgingly), but that was probably the first of many missteps in your... unique relationship.

With such conflicting personalities, it was understandable that you got into frequent arguments about one thing or another. Petty disagreements would often grow into something larger than they really needed to be. Mostly because despite having such contrasting personalities, you shared the trait of innate stubbornness, neither of you willing to admit when you were wrong. It was easy to argue with him, and you liked when you proved him wrong. You liked the way his brows furrowed and his cheeks flushed. You liked the way he glared, the way his lips pouted. You like the challenge he presented you with every time he opened his mouth. Above, you loved to win. Especially when it was against him.

So you pushed, and he pushed right back. And before you knew it, you found yourself a proper ‘frenemy’, though you aren’t sure that that’s quite the right word to describe whatever it was you two were.

But that’s just how the two of you are, how you’d always been. If you were being honest, riling him, seeing that usually so stoic, so controlled expression crack when you pushed just the right buttons— it was fun. You thoroughly enjoyed fucking with him, discovering new and creative ways to get under his skin. And you knew he got just as much satisfaction from doing the same to you, rendering you speechless with witty comebacks, flustering you with his sharp tongue and impressive rebukes.

So really, was it such a terrible thing?

Not to mention, a number of not-so-terrible things occurred as a result of one of your many arguments, such as hiring him as your calculus tutor. One that started out with you claiming he would probably be the shittiest teacher to ever exist (which seemed a valid argument at the time considering how short tempered and impatient he could be *cough* with you *cough*) to which he rebutted with the claim that he could “teach a goldfish advanced calculus” if he set his mind to it, and considering that you “had an IQ equivalent to one”, he could without a doubt teach you. His words, obviously.

It just so happened that you had a calculus exam coming up that next week, so to prove his point, he tutored you for the three days preceding said test. Even though you loathe being proven wrong, you ended up getting one of the highest scores you’d ever gotten on a math test in your entire academic career.

Putting your pride aside, you made the suggestion that he continue to tutor you. He only agreed when you offered him green in exchange for his troubles and admitted that he was right (it took a few extra hours to convince yourself that your grades should be held above your ego before you could bring yourself to verbally admit defeat).

And now here you are, not flunking out of calculus. You’d consider that worthy of the bruise to your pride, even if only by a small margin.

“Kyungsoo, why’d you mark this one wrong?” You frown at the large red X marking problem two as incorrect. You’d been glaring at your scribbled work for almost two minutes, running over the problem in your head, but you couldn’t seem to figure out where he thought you’d gone wrong. It looks right enough to you.

Kyungsoo shifts over to get a better look, his arms pressing against yours in the process and you are briefly stunned by the sudden, unexpected closeness, wholly unable to stop yourself from noticing the faint, woody scent of his aftershave that caresses your senses. Fuck. You can’t tell if you hate or love the fact that he smelled so good. Partly love it because good hygiene is always something to admire in a man (even if that man was Doh Kyungsoo), partly hate it because dammit it’s Doh Kyungsoo and you loathe finding anything that has to do with him attractive. Plus, it’s distracting. You’re here trying to learn and he has the audacity to go around smelling like pine trees and fresh moss after a rainfall. Unfair.

“Right here.”

The scowl you don’t realize you’re wearing immediately drops away as the low baritone of his voice thrums through the cavity of your ribcage and you lean forward to see exactly what he’s pointing at.

“You multiplied straight through instead of distributing.” He explains further upon seeing the uncertainty on your face. A few seconds of further inspection and you finally see what he’s talking about.

“Fuck,” you hiss, “I’m so stupid.”

“It’s an easy mistake to make.” He reassures.

“Yeah, but I should know that by now, I should’ve—” you turn your head, only to nearly choke on air as you discover that any space that once existed between the two of you has virtually disappeared, “... seen it.”

He’s close, so close that you can feel the cool rush of his breath against your skin as he exhales, goosebumps bristling across your arms in response. He’s close. Too close. You can’t think straight, can’t even breathe. The moment that surrounds you feels fragile, like even the slightest disruption would rupture it completely.

Frozen, you can only swallow around the sudden dryness of your mouth as your treacherous eyes drop to trace the plush line of his lips. Who even has lips like that? They’re just so big and so pink, that dark, kissable kind of pink that every girl just wishes her lips could be. You, included. They look soft, and you can’t help but to wonder if they’d still taste like the strawberry bubblegum he’d been chewing on at the beginning of your tutoring session.

“Careful, ___.” The sound of Kyungsoo’s voice, raspier than you recall it being before and laced in a faintly taunting pitch, is enough to break you from your trance and, once freed, you whip your head around fast enough to give yourself whiplash.

“Fuck off.” You cough, jaw clenching as you attempt to drag your mind out from the gutter and back onto the calculus problems you have yet to correct. But for whatever reason your brain refuses to cooperate, instead filling your head with images of his pretty mouth and everything it could be doing instead of rambling on about something as uninteresting as calculus. Damnit.

No doubt seeing the distress written clearly across your face, Kyungsoo chuckles, the sound low and smooth where it drips from his lips, and a familiar heat blossoms in the pit of your stomach.

You can feel his eyes on you now, every cell of your being suddenly hyperaware of his presence beside you. The pressure of his knee where it nudges against yours, the teasing curl of his lips as he watches you struggle to focus, the warmth of his palm caressing up your thigh, the— wait what?

Your gaze whips down, breath hitching at the sight of Kyungsoo’s hand gently gripping the lagging clad flesh just above your knee. It’s another few seconds before you’re able to find your voice again.

“W– What’re you—?”

“Focus.” He cuts you off smoothly, fingers soothing over the inside of your leg, squeezing gently. When you don’t look away from him, he smirks, jerking his chin forward in a manner you can only interpret as challenging. There’s a familiar glint in his eye, a dangerous glint that doesn’t fail to provoke your competitive side. You know that look well. He’s challenging you.

And you don’t back down from a challenge.

Especially not from Doh Kyungsoo.

Determination flairs up inside of you, your jaw clenching as you strike him with a single, heated glare that read plain and simple ‘you. are. on.’ before honing all your attention onto the worksheet in front of you. It’s not too difficult to focus at first, to disregard the tingles that erupt across your skin where his hot touch sears into it. You manage to find and correct your error in one of the problems (impressive for you even if Kyungsoo wasn’t feeling your leg up under the table).

But whatever pride you find in doing so is quickly quelled when his hand suddenly shifts higher, and you feel the faintest pressure against your heat. It’s a sensation that robs you of your ability to breathe entirely for a handful of seconds, and you can’t stop the shiver that ripples down your spine.

This, you see, is one of the more recent developments in your oh-so complicated relationship with Doh Kyungsoo. Yet another that began with a disagreement at a party, over something you can’t even remember anymore thanks to the haze of alcohol that clouded both your minds at the time, that spiraled way out of proportion. You remember yelling at him, insulting him, stabbing your finger into his chest, feeling the sting of his lethal glare. God, he’d looked so pissed off, and you just fed off of it, fed off the rage and the frustration that festered like lava in those dark brown eyes. The angrier he got, the harder you pushed, until he finally snapped.

You’re still not sure what you expected to happen. What you expected him to do. But you sure as hell hadn’t anticipated him grabbing you by the throat and pulling you into one of the hottest, most mind numbing kisses you’d ever experienced.

Next thing you remember is being in a bed. Whose bed it was, isn’t important. What is important, however, is the fact that that night you had the best sex of your entire life with the man you thought you couldn’t stand.

Hate sex with Doh Kyungsoo opened your eyes to a whole new world of mind boggling pleasure that you’d never experienced before. Pleasure that no other person had ever been able to give you. God, the things he did to you. No one had ever touched you like that before. It was like he knew all the places on your body that made you unravel. He honestly ruined all other men for you that night because none have even come close to comparing. Which was beyond frustrating especially considering that, at the time, you thought it was a one time thing.

The morning after you both pretended that nothing happened. In the two weeks following as well, neither one of you mentioned it. You tried to erase the memory from your brain, tried to go back to normal, but it was hard considering every time you needed some sexual release (which was more often than you care to admit), it was his hands, his mouth, his cock that you imagined while you touched yourself. You replayed his moans in your head, his deep, rasping voice growling your name, and fuck, you never came harder.

But it was still nothing compared to the real thing.

As time passed you only grew more and more frustrated. Worst of all, you could tell he was feeling it too. It was obvious in the way he looked at you, with fire burning in eyes, in the way he spoke to you, with a pitch of something hot and wanting in his voice, in the way he lost his cool far quicker and far more often than he had in the past, your arguments fiercer and more frequent than they’d ever been. The tension between the two of you was palpable, thick enough to be cut with a knife. It got to the point where even your most oblivious of friends started noticing it as well, though they knew better than to voice their curiosity.

The second time it happened, you were both sober and, somehow, it was even better than you remembered. The pleasure was more intense, more overwhelming, a feeling you can’t even put into words. Then it kept happening. Late at night when he’d show up unannounced at your door. Early in the morning when you had an important exam later in the day and you needed some pre-test de-stressing. Between classes in the back seat of his car just because you could. At parties when your friends were too shit faced to notice the two of you slipping into an unoccupied bedroom.

Just sex. That’s what you both agreed to when it became blatantly obvious that your little ‘arrangement’ wouldn’t be coming to an end any time soon. No strings. Just sex. Just really, really good sex.

And that was perfectly fine by you.

Exhaling shakily through your nose, you try to block out the feeling of his thumb as it begins to caress gently up and down your clothed core, suddenly very grateful for the layers of fabric that separate you from his intoxicating touch. But it’s a gratitude that’s short lived. Just as you manage to adjust and scribble down a correction, he cups his hand over your mound and squeezes. A gasp escapes you, and you try to cover up the sound with a series of short coughs, the sting embarrassment intertwining with the warmth of pleasure as a few eyes briefly glance in your direction.

“You’re such an asshole.” You hiss under your breath, thighs tightening around his hand, locking it in place.

He throws you a lopsided grin, brows lifting and you don’t miss the glimmer of amusement in his eyes. “I’ve been called worse.” What he means is you’ve called him worse.

Your lips part, but any intelligible words die on the tip of your tongue as he grinds the heel of his palm down, directly against your clit. Your head drops, eyes squeezing shut, teeth locking down firmly on your lower lip in order to silence the soft moan that threatens to break free.

“F- fuck.”

You hear him coo tauntingly beside you at your slip, the tips of his skilled fingers easily locating your entrance and prodding experimentally. At this point, you don’t doubt he can feel the fabric of your leggings growing hot and wet with your arousal.

Despite being used to the quick effect he had on your body, you can help but to feel the slightest twinge of shame at how he was able to rile you up this much with little more than a few well-placed strokes of his fingers. But fuck, it felt so good. You’d already been feeling somewhat deprived since you’d both been so busy this past week with exams and projects and what not. This is the first time you’re spending time with him since almost a week ago.

And you are in need of a fix.

“You look like you’re having a bit of trouble on that problem. Do you need my help?” Kyungsoo leans into you, his face right up next to yours, and you have to resist the sudden urge to kiss him right then in there in front of everyone in the stupid library.

Instead, you grit out an unconvincing, “I’m fine,” and force yourself to stay focused on the dizzying mess of numbers and letters on the worksheet in front of you and not on the delicious warmth of his hand where it is applying just the right amount of pressure to keep you teetering between pleasure and the insatiable need for more.

“You sure?” There’s a certain lightness to his voice that tells you he is thoroughly enjoying watching you struggle. Sadistic bastard.

“Positive.”

And just like that, he’s gone. You almost gasp as a rush of cold air fills the places he had been, and you can’t help the frown that tugs at the corners of your lips, disappointment and irritation coloring your features before you can reel them in. From the corner of your eye, you chance a glance in his direction. The smug, knowing little smirk staining his lips sends a wave of heat pulsing into your cheeks, and you grit your teeth in frustration.

“So what, you’re just going to stop?” You whisper sharply, not making any attempt whatsoever to hide your annoyance.

A look of feigned innocence overcomes his features. “You said you didn’t need my help.”

You grit your teeth, glaring at him as hard as you can manage with how incredibly turned on you are. But he remains unfazed.

“If you want my help,” he continues, voice dropping an entire octave, “you’re going to have to ask for it... nicely.”

Nice wasn’t a word in your vocabulary when Kyungsoo was involved.

Seeing the resistance you are still putting up, he feathers his fingers over your thigh, tracing slow designs across the thin, black fabric. You swallow, unable to look away as they trail dangerously higher, teasing closer to where you both knew you wanted them most.

“You do want it, don’t you?”

Fuck, you want it so bad.

You know that he knows you want it. It’s just the getting yourself to actually say it out loud part that proves to be a challenge. But that’s exactly what he wants you to do, he wants to hear you say it, wants to see you cast aside your stubborn pride and beg for it. Beg for him.

Lifting your eyes, you glance unsurely around the library. It isn’t overly crowded anymore since most of the other students have begun to trickle out as late afternoon approaches. Plus, the table you were seated at was tucked into the far back corner of the room, secluded and out of the way. But still, your nerves buzzed at the thought of someone seeing. Though maybe — just maybe — there was a buzz of something else as well. Excitement, perhaps?

Grip tightening around your pencil, you chewed on the corner of your lip, refusing to meet Kyungsoo’s penetrating gaze as you let out a soft murmur. “...ease.”

He leans closer, mirth shimmering in his eyes. “What was that? I couldn’t quite hear you.”

Groaning, you shoot him a scowl, shoulders slumping in defeat. “Please help me, asshole.”

Laughter bubbles at his lips, the genuine kind that makes his cheeks lift and his nose wrinkle. You like it when he laughs like that. Makes him look a lot less like a serial killer.

Sinking his teeth into the pillowy flesh of his lower lip to stifle his laughter, he shoots you a lazy grin, “that’s all you had to say.”

Next thing you know, his hand is slipping beneath the elastic of your leggings and into the soft cotton confines of your underwear. Your mouth fell open, a sharp inhale filling your lungs with cold air as his fingers slid through your slick folds.

“I knew you were wet but shit.” He hisses, thick brows furrowing at the feeling of your heavy arousal coating the length of his digits. “I must say, I’m flattered.”

“Don’t be,” you breathe, eyes fluttering, “even Chanyeol can get me this— ngh!”

Without warning, he plunges his middle finger inside of you, and the remainder of your sentence pitches into a strangled moan. One look at his face, jaw clenched, nostrils flared, lips down turned, tells you he isn’t all too pleased at the mention of another man’s name, especially when he’s the one buried knuckle deep in your greedy cunt.

A hazy smirk curls onto your lips and you let out a low hum of pleasure, walls squeezing around him. “You’re sexy when you’re mad.”

“Is that why you enjoy pissing me off so much?” He questions, tone biting and low, and you shutter involuntarily as he rolls the pad of his thumb harshly over your aching clit.

“Partly.” You admit, somewhat breathless. “But you’re also just a really fun person to piss off.”

He chuckles dryly in response, though the sound lacks any genuine amusement. “You are such a brat, you know that?” He emphasizes the word by stretching you around a second finger, and you have to drop your pencil in favor of clasping your hand over your mouth, unable to swallow down the soft whimpers that tremble up your throat.

“You love it.” You manage to get out before you’re forced to bite into the tender flesh of your palm to muffle a desperate cry when the slow thrusts of his digits suddenly picks up speed. Your thighs squeeze around his hand, hips jerking up to grind your throbbing clit against the heel of his palm. Electricity ricochets through your veins, and you feel that distinctive tightening in the pit of your stomach. Kyungsoo also feels the way you throb and clench around him, and makes sure to grind down hard against your swollen clit.

Heat immediately spreads through your core, the intensity of the pleasure becoming more than you can handle. “Oh god, Kyungsoo.” Your voice comes out louder than you intended, and you quickly duck your head, doing your best to make it seem like you’re focusing on your work and not the fingers drilling relentlessly into your g-spot, praying to god that no one had seen the blissed out expression on your face. Still, you can’t help the quiet whine that escapes you when his ministrations slow.

“Are you trying to get us caught?” He asks in less than a whisper, breath hot against the shell of your ear. “Ever hear of subtlety?”

“Ever hear of suck my dick?” You snap back without missing a beat, only to jolt as his fingers curl inside of you, pressing directly against that sensitive bundle of nerves. Every muscle in your body tenses, and fuck you’re so close you can almost taste it. Frantically, you thrust your hips, desperately trying to fuck yourself down on his digits.

“Sit still.” He growls, and you quiver when he sinks his teeth into the lobe of your ear, obeying only because you really don’t want to get banned from the campus library if someone happened to catch on.

“Soo— fuck,” the force with which you bite into your lip is nearly about to break the skin, but you can’t be bothered by the pain, not with how quickly your orgasm was approaching. Sensing as much, Kyungsoo goes the extra mile of drawing hard, fast figure eights over your clit with his thumb while simultaneously thrusting his fingers into you so fast that you swear you can almost hear it.

All at once fire roars through your veins, euphoria consuming you as your high crashes over you. Your walls spasm around his digits, painting them with your release.

He doesn’t withdraw from you until you go slack, thighs spreading, body slumping back in your chair, eyes fluttering as a hazy, blissed out smile touches your lips. You can only watch through hooded lids as he brings his glistening fingers to his mouth, sighing in amazement as he sucks them clean. There’s a twinge of arousal in your core as he moans softly at the taste of you on his tongue, a downright lethal sound that somehow manages to rouse your positively spent pussy.

This man is going to be the absolute death of you one of these days.

“Fuck.” You chuckle airily, heady gaze flickered over him lazily, only to do a double take when you notice something standing upright beneath the zipper of his jeans. The corners of your lips twirled into a mirthful grin, eyebrows raising slowly.

“Need some help with that?”

“Yes.” He answers shamelessly and without hesitation, grunting softly as he adjusts himself in the tight confines of his jeans to make the raging hard-on he’s sporting somewhat less obvious. “But not here.”

“I figured. So... your car or mine?”

“Didn’t you just get a new one with reclining seats?” He questions, running the tip of his tongue over the seam of his lip at the mere implication.

You strike him with a wicked grin, already beginning to shove your things into your bag. “I did indeed.”

“Then what are we— wait.”

“What?”

“You didn’t finish correcting the worksheet yet.” He points out, drumming his fingers across the paper that had completely slipped your mind.

You pull a face, pausing in the act of gathering your belongings long enough to cross your arms pointedly over your chest. “No offense, Kyungsoo, sweetheart, but I’d much rather suck your dick than do one more of those stupid fucking calc problems.”

His brows leap to his hairline, and he offers a single nod of acceptance, in no position to argue with such a valid point.

“Noted.”

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the-iron-orchid · 3 years

Text

A Grand Tour of the Julian 3D Model, Part 2: Fuzzy Bits

(Back to Part 1)

The next step in turning our smooth potato man into a suitably fuzzy Julian is something called strand-based hair. It used to be that all hair was made up of a bunch of polygon ‘cards’ (see: video game hair). But now, we can essentially give the rendering engine a set of instructions to generate the individual strands of hair at render time.

Behold, a moderately-fuzzy Julian: (click here for big)

Each of those body hair strands has its own geometry, and in fact they are all the same color! But they react to light differently at different angles, just like real hair.

(Warning: near the end of the post I talk about his pubes and there is a hilariously-censored wireframe n00d, with links to ‘full’ versions of the image.)

See how his upper lashes look red, but his lower lashes look almost black? (Also check out those wee hairs on the first joints of his fingers, I’m especially happy with those lol). His eyebrows are the same color, a shade darker than his head hair, but they are catching the light and look more red.

Here you can see that his eyelashes are made up of small ‘cards’ with opacity/alpha maps, and his eyebrows are fibermesh - a similar procedure to strand-based hair, but the generated hair geometry is then exported and brought back in as static geometry. It can then be further altered for thickness, expression, etc. But they all react similarly to light.

See how the glancing light on the edge of his forearm brings out the red, but it looks much darker everywhere else? (You can also see where I need to improve the falloff of the hair density map on his arm, lol, it ends too abruptly!)

Strand-based hair is controlled in several ways, and it’s a huge subject by itself. But basically, you paint out an area that says where the hair is to appear and how dense it should be:

Then you adjust the length and direction to your taste - you can even ‘comb’ it in the direction you want!

Finally, you can add texture and randomize the length:

Repeat this process for every single individual patch of body hair, because you’ll need the ability to turn them off and on so they don’t poke through clothing, etc. Plus, this allows you to individually adjust each patch of hair on the fly. This is important because you might want to temporarily make the hairs thicker so they show up better in a distance render, or thin them out for a render that is very close up.

Plus, you may want to stack multiple hair instances for a more realistic effect, as I did with his pubes: scrotal hair lmao

Because the ‘twig and berries’ models are grafted on, he also needs a sort of invisible patch that sits on top of it all for the pubes to ‘grow’ from, otherwise some of it would be covered up when the extra geometry is attached. That’s what the conformer is for!

Here you can see his leg hair and pubes in wireframe mode...

By rights the pubes should actually go down into the inner thigh area, but it causes some weird issues when posing the legs, so I usually just adjust this in post work.

🔞 Links to the full versions of this image, and a fully-rendered version, may be found below. 18+ only!

Wireframe / Rendered (peen warnings in full effect!)

Fun Fact: the Julian model has two sets of junk, one that is ‘relaxed’ and one that is ‘active’. The ‘relaxed’ version is not really suitable for anything but artistic n00ds, it doesn’t quite look right if you try to pose it upright. Because of this, he also has his ‘hero junk’ - the third-party gens he has on here. For the most part, they use the same textures.

BUT... this third-party model is uncircumcised by default, and because of his Jewish-coding, I hc that Julian is circumcised. This meant that I had to go into Zbrush and smooth away the foreskin geometry *cough* by hand (the extra geometry loops you see near the tip in the ‘full’ version of the wireframe).

Next time: The actual process of making a render with this guy! I plan to take you all from dressing, to posing, to lighting, to rendering and postwork. The final result will be a lovely soft-Julian render in period clothing. There’s a lot left to do!

(Onward to Part 3)

#my art #julian devorak #a tour of the julian 3D model

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magnusmysteries · 3 years

Text

Part 4: The Sixteenth Fear

The Magnus Archives was a horror podcast. It is now completed. Many of the show’s mysteries were never explained on the show. I intend to explain them. Spoilers for the show, but also spoilers if you wanna solve these mysteries yourself.

In part 3 I said every fear has an opposite. But the Flesh didn’t exist before the industrial revolution. So there would have been 13 fears then, an uneven number, and not every fear could balance against an opposite. So how could that be?

The answer is, there were only 12 fears before the Flesh. The Corruption and the Desolation used to be the same fear.

Diego Molina of the Lightless Flame cult worships Asag. A Sumerian god of disease that could make fish boil. So Asag seems to be of both the Corruption and the Desolation.

In Infectious Doubts Arthur Nolan complains about it: “Not like I can vent to the others about what a prat Diego is. Got a lot of funny ideas. Still calls the Lightless Flame Asag, like he was when he was first researching it. I just really wanna tell him to get over it; I mean Asag was traditionally a force of destruction, sure, but as a church we very much settled on burning in terms of the – face we worship, and some fish-boiling Sumerian demon doesn’t really match up, does it? Plus there’s a lot of disease imagery with Asag that I’ll reckon is way too close to Filth for my taste, but no, he read it in some ancient tome, so that’s that –“

Ancient is the key word. The tome predates the industrial revolution and the Flesh. Asag probably isn’t a thing anymore and Diego is indeed a prat for worshipping it.

In The Architecture of Fear Smirke writes “I know you say the Flesh was perhaps always there, shriveled and nascent until its recent growth, but to grant the existence of such a lesser power would throw everything into confusion. Would you have me separate the Corruption into insects, dirt, and disease? To divide the fungal bloom from the maggot?”

It is not random that Smirke uses the Corruption as an example here. The Corruption is the opposite of the Flesh, so the Corruption is the fear that Smirke believed had no opposite for hundreds or thousands of years.

In part 3 I said vampires where Corruption/Desolation/Hunt. This is a little far-fetched, but I wonder if the vampire’s we’ve seen have been old ones that predate the Flesh. And that’s why they are part Corruption, since Corruption and Hunt used to be next to each other. Maybe there are more modern vampires without the long sucking tongue. Maybe instead of sucking blood, when they bite you begin to burn or boil. Since the Hunt is now next to the Desolation instead of the Corruption-Desolation combo.

In Vampire Killer Trevor says “I have killed five people that I know for sure as vampires, and there are two more that may or may not have been.” There is a missing middle part of Trevor’s statement. Maybe there he talks about killing two vampires that are modern and therefore different so he’s not sure if they’re actually vampires.

Speaking of fears splitting up, why is the Darkness the opposite fear of the Slaughter? In Last Words we hear of the first fear “A fear of blood and pounding feet, a fear of that sudden burst of pain and then nothing.”

And of the second fear “The fear of their own end, of the things that lived in the darkness, became a fear of the darkness itself.”

I think the first was a general fear of violence. It includes what became the Hunt “Blood and pounding Feet...” and the Slaughter “...Sudden burst of pain and then nothing”, and the End “The fear of their own end…” And the second fear was the Darkness. They were the opposite by default, simply for being the two first fears.

When the Buried became a fear, the Hunt split up from the Violence to oppose it. When the Vast became a fear, the End split up from the Violence to oppose it. All that was left of the Violence was Slaughter, still opposing the Dark. When humans began warfare, fear of war fit nicely with the Slaughter.

The Eye might have been part of the Dark at first. Still from Last Words: “...because they knew the dark held flashing talons and shining eyes…”

When the Lonely became a fear, the Eye split up from the Dark to oppose it.

So what about the Extinction? Does it have an opposite? Yes! There is a sixteenth fear. And what can be the opposite of the fear of the end of the world? The fear that the world isn’t real. That we’re all just living in a computer simulation. If you think the world isn’t even real, you’re not gonna be so worried about it ending. I’ll call it the Simulation.

Here is how the fears are arranged on the wheel, with the two latest fears added:

Description of image: A circle with 16 spots similar to a clock. On each spot is a number and the name of a power: 1. Corruption. 2 Extinction. 3. Desolation. 4. Hunt. 5. Slaughter. 6. End. 7. Lonely. 8. Stranger. 9. Flesh. 10. Simulation 11. Spiral. 12. Buried. 13. Dark. 14. Vast. 15. Eye. 16. Web.

The Extinction is next to the Corruption. Disease and garbage are both gross. Possessive is an Extinction episode, even if not acknowledged as such by any of the characters. It’s about garbage. And Maggie is creating people out of garbage. She is making the inheritors mentioned in Time of Revelation. There are also creatures made of garbage in Concrete Jungle. And Maggie was full of moving insect legs, showing Corruption influence.

Quote from Adelard Dekker from Rotten Core: “I’ve spoken before about how keenly I’ve watched news of possible pandemics, which is where I suspect the Extinction may pull away from the Corruption during its emergence.” Adelard knows the Extinction is next to Corruption.

The Extinction is next to Desolation. That fits, nuclear weapons cause fire. Quote from Times of Revelation, describing corpses: “They were stiff, and desiccated, mummified by some process Bernadette could not begin to guess at, but that rendered their flesh like tightly packed ash” Ash as if they were burned.

The Simulation is next to the Flesh. The Flesh makes you think humans aren’t people, they are just meat. The Simulation makes you think humans aren’t people, they are just NPCs.

The Simulation is the next to the Spiral. Both make you question what is real. The Spiral makes you doubt your mind, the Simulation makes you doubt your world.

There are four episodes about the Simulation: Binary, Zombie, Cul-de-sac and Reflection.

In Binary Sergey Ushanka uploads his mind into a computer. He becomes a simulation and it hurts. There is influence by the Spiral, the statement giver isn’t sure if she’s going crazy. And there is influence by the Flesh. Ushanka uploads himself into a computer and then he eats the computer. So that’s cannibalism.

In Zombie the statement giver thinks other people aren’t real, they’re philosophical zombies, In other words they like simulations or NPCs. The man that follows her repeats the phrase “Just fine, thank you for asking” and says nothing else. Just like some NPCs in video games will say the same phrase over and over. The man is identical the three times they meet, except for his t-shirt changes color. Sometimes in video games some NPCs will be identical, except for some colors are changed. (Because it’s less work to recollar a character than to draw one from scratch.)

John thinks Cul-De-Sac is about the Lonely. And yes, the statement giver was lonely. But the people affected by the Lonely choose to be lonely, and the statement giver didn’t. His boyfriend broke up with him because of cheating and then he lost his friends because they sided with his boyfriend.

I think the theme of the statement is unreality, not loneliness. In the Magnus Archives, when someone gets marked by a power it is because they made some wrong choice. The choice the statement giver makes is to return to the place he found dead and soulless. He drives back to his ex-boyfriend to deliver the moose, rather than send it by mail. He specifically wants to meet his ex. Not an act of loneliness, quite the opposite. Also he is returning a moose that is angular and creepy, in other words it is unreal.

When the statement escapes from the nightmare it’s because he got a phone call from his ex. And he says “I love you.” and that fits neatly with the Lonely. But it also fits with escape from the unreal. He escapes because he communicates with a real person.

The road signs says “Road” and “Street”. Generic and unreal. All the houses look the same. Like in a computer game. The statement giver wonders if they are the same house. Like in a computer game where one might reuse the code for a house many times.

The house he enters has stock photos. Unreal.

The people on TV have something wrong with their eyes, similar to the eyes of the zombies in Zombie. And it's a fake cooking show, and a fake infomercial.

The dead woman upstairs was someone who had social media profiles, and that nobody notices had died. Meaning she lived her life online. That sounds like she was lonely. But living online also makes her a good victim for the Simulation. Everyone she talked to was on a computer, she couldn’t know for sure if they were real.

The woman had killed herself with a mirror. I think what happened was she had looked into the mirror and seen that her eyes were wrong, like the eyes of the people on TV. And she had thought she was just a simulation, like everything around her. And therefore she killed herself. Or perhaps she wasn’t reflected in the mirror at all? Like in…

Reflection. Adelard speculated that this statement was about the Extinction, but I don’t think so. The protagonist was in a world that seemed unreal. A fun fair is artificial so that fits the theme. The people were playing games, which fits the theme via computer games maybe.

Adelard says “I can’t quite get past the detail that there was no reflection at all in the mirror he used to return.” It is almost at the end of Adelard’s letter, it’s clearly meant to be significant. The no reflection might be symbolic for the statement giver starting to think he isn’t real, which might be what happened to him after he gave the statement.

Reflection has influence by the Spiral, with the maze of mirrors. There is influence by the Flesh, with the cannibalism.

#the magnus archives #tma #magnuspod #robert smirke #adelard dekker

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thiswasinevitableid · 3 years

Note

for mermay, 24 indruck nsfw?

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

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

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

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

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

Duck: Will do. Duck out.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Such a lovely little mate.”

“Do my best.”

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

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

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

“Uh-”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Yeah, sugar, I do.”

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

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jackalgirl · 3 years

Text

Telling vs. Showing

I had posted an excerpt from the Turkey City Lexicon a while back, about "Telling Not Showing", which is one of those things that writers are recommended not to do.

Violates the cardinal rule of good writing. The reader should be allowed to react, not be instructed in how to react. Carefully observed details render authorial value judgments unnecessary. For instance, instead of telling us "she had a bad childhood, an unhappy childhood," specific incidents--involving, say, a locked closet and two jars of honey--should be shown.

I was thinking about this the other night -- and I stress that it came to me by itself, please please don't anyone think I'm calling you out on this, because I am not -- and thought it might be fun* to provide an example. Stick around (under the cut) if you're interested.

* I lie. Aethel and Felix told me to write this, and woke me up early to do so. Fine. I'm done, you two, may I please go get some more coffee? Thank you.

Telling

Felix found Aethel in the galley, reading one of Max’s books. He made a face, wondering why she was reading it. When he’d first met her, it probably would have never occurred to him to ask her why — she’s weird and more than a little scary — but he had come to understand that she put all that weirdness and scariness to service in the way she cared for people, and he knew she cared for him, so he sat down and asked anyway. She looked, he thought, a little relieved to be interrupted, which did not really surprise him. She was very much willing to tell him about it, and in fact confirmed his suspicion that she found the text…how did she put it? Tedious. But she was reading it to better understand the way the people in the Order think, so she was determined to read it anyway. Good luck with that, he thought, and got himself something to eat out of the fridge.

versus Showing

Felix found Aethel in the galley, a book open before her on the common table and a line between her eyebrows. It must be one of Max’s books, he thought. He sat down and she looked up. Perhaps he was imagining it, but it appeared to him that she had a look of relief on her face. “Watcha readin’, Aethel?” He asked her. When he’d first met her, it probably would have never occurred to him to ask her a question like this — she’s weird and more than a little scary — but he had come to understand that she put all that weirdness and scariness to service in the way she cared for people, and he knew she cared for him, so in this particular moment, he hadn’t hesitated. “One of the vicar’s books on Scientism,” she said, confirming his guess. He made a face. “Ugh. Why? You’re always arguing with him about it.” And driving him nuts. Another point in her favor, actually. “It’s important to him,” she said. “And what’s more, it’s important to this colony. It would be foolish for me to dismiss it. I want to understand it better.” Felix gestured at the book. “Is that helping?” Aethel let out a sigh. “Alas, no. It is tedious.” “That’s why I like serial books,” Felix grinned. He tilted his head. “Why is it, ah, tedious, though?” “The author uses words like a collector,” she said. “But not like an artist.” Felix tilted his head and his expression must have told her he didn’t get it — I don’t get it — because she leaned back and looked thoughtful for a moment. “Do you remember the Sprat Fancy party in Byzantium?” She asked. Felix felt his face screw up again. “It was awful.” At first, Byzantium had impressed him. It was so clean! But eventually he realized it was as full of trash as the rest of the Colony — just higher-class trash, is all. Plus, the people there were always looking down on him — worse than the crew of the Groundbreaker, if that was possible. Or worse than the crew had been, before I helped Aethel fix the heat. Now they liked him well enough. But in Byzantium, nothing the crew had done had changed the Byzantines’ attitudes towards them. Their disdain is baked in, Aethel had said at the time. And speaking of baking, Aethel said, “do you remember the food?” “Ugh. Do I ever. The prettiest food you ever saw. Tasted like shit, though.” “What would those people have thought of a Boarst Pocket?” Aethel asked. “Ha!” Felix drummed the table with his hands in amusement. “They’d hold up their noses, for sure. Something that plain and simple?” “And yet, it is delicious?” “Yes,” Felix spoke with the conviction of a dedicated cultist. Aethel nodded. She tapped the pages in front of her. “This book is like the food in Byzantium. It is concerned about its appearance, and about all the different colors it can show you — it is very pretty. But it tastes like shit.” “So why are you eating it?” Felix asked, then remembered she’d answered him earlier. “Because you want to understand the system,” he said. She nodded. “I think of it as reconnaissance,” she said. “At some point, I’m going to have to deal with Order people who are higher ranked than Max. I need to understand what they think — or at least, what they’re telling people they think, which may not be the same.” “I wouldn’t be surprised at all if they all turned out to be a pack of hypocrites,” Felix said. “I’ll bet it’s all a show for power.” “Perhaps it’s not all a show for power,” Aethel suggested. But then she relented. “But yes, I tend to think that in the end, that’s the Order’s primary goal.” All that talk about Boarst Pockets made him want one, so he got up and got one out of the fridge. “Would you like one, boss?” He said, waggling the packet, knowing her answer in advance: “No thank you, Felix,” she said politely. He chuckled to himself. I don’t get how she can like spratwurst and not like boarst. Some things just defied understanding. I hope she has better luck with that book.

I liked writing this, because it gave me a little epiphany for another scene (the "Sprat Fancy" party) and an opportunity to put Sprat Fancy magazine into the actual fic, as opposed to it remaining as something of a joke.

[ Image description: cover of "Sprat Fancy", showing an adorable pink-splotched, white sprat from above, looking up at the camera with her gorgeous black eyes. Text reads: "Sprat Fancy Magazine - your guide to Halcyon's Fancy Sprats" and "Volume 22, Issue 8, 2 bits" with article leads: "Sacred Beasts: The Role of Sprats in the Faith", "Refuge: Keeping your precious sprat safe from marauders (and hungry neighbors)", "Ooo La La! Jolicoeur Haberdashery releases an all new line of fancy sprat fashion! Get a sneak peak of the latest on the Byzantine spratwalk!", "Place Your Bets: Your comprehensive guide to this season's All-Colony Fancy Spratstravanaza - who's in? Who's out? You may just be surprised by this year's contenders!" and a corner flag: "Ask Doctor Sprat". The cover image is captioned: "'Bakonu' by Captain Pearl Jenkins. With this large beauty take 'Best in Show' from Lord Reginald Kim III?" End ID. ]

Sometimes, having to write stuff out like this (especially between major scenes) is really daunting, because it generally doesn't come to me all at once like the major scenes do. I know, right from the get-go, that this is going to be a time-consuming process (I call it "sausage making"), and it's scary when I don't immediately see a clear way forward or understand how it will turn out. But I find that once I get going, the characters are happy to cooperate. And it's always worthwhile, because most of the time, I get some kind of revelation or epiphany (as above) that makes the story better, or maybe it's just neat and makes me giggle. But that's reason enough.

This is part of the pros of showing versus telling, in addition to giving the reader more to discover, understand, and react to on their own (rather than simply telling them how to react, which is what you want to avoid). The obvious con is that it takes so much longer. I would think that telling would be useful in contexts where you just don't have the column space, or are limited in the number of words you can provide. And I think it could also be useful -- used judiciously -- if you're deliberately trying to hide something from the reader.

But if you've been telling instead of showing because the amount of work you can see in front of you daunts you (or you just can't envision how it's going to go), I can only say: give it a try. You'll be surprised at what the characters are just waiting to tell you, if you only give them the chance.

#writing #the outer worlds #the journeyman #fanfic #telling not showing #showing not telling #also bathos #turkey city lexicon

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mariahschoices · 4 years

Text

Beloved

Pairing: Katsuki Bakugo x Reader/OC

Word Count: 3902

Theme: Fluff/Smut

This is part 2 of this story: https://mariahschoices.tumblr.com/post/189983728802/unloveable

You couldn’t help the shock to your system, as Bakugo admitted that you had been right all of those years ago. Surely there was some misunderstanding.

“I may be a top hero, but being on top isn’t everything. It took me a long time to realize that, actually. I think...” he paused, seeming to realize how out of character he was acting by admitting his unhappiness to someone who he barely knew.

You gave him a soft smile. You didn’t really feel sorry for him, after all he had all of the ingredients he needed to make a great life. You figured he was just too much of a stubborn ass to seek out what he really needed to find true happiness in life.

“It’s actually my birthday today,” he continued, changing the subject to more optimistic topics.

“Oh, sh- shoot! I’m sorry. I’m sure you have better things to be doing today than sitting here with me. Thank you again for meeting up with me. I’m sorry for taking time away from your birthday plans-”

“Actually, meeting you for coffee today was my only birthday plan,” he interrupted with a grunt, peeling the drink label off from his coffee cup as a distraction.

You couldn’t believe what you were hearing, but you supposed it made sense considering the somber mood than emanated from the man.

“Well, if you want, I mean I’m sure you’d rather do something with your friends, but...” you bit your lip slightly, feeling compelled to ask to hothead to hang out, even though you felt it was probably against your better judgement.

“We can do something together. Hang out. Whatever you want. I’m still on leave from work since I’m in recovery, and I haven’t done anything fun for a while,” you admitted, a slight blush smattering across your cheeks at your confession.

Bakugo seemed to mull over your words for too long. As you were about to take back your offer in an effort to save face, Bakugo mumbled his response.

“Okay.”

Okay? You could work with “okay.” Hell, it was more than you had expected from him.

“Okay,” you repeated at him, sealing your decision with a small smile.

________________________________________

Bakugo was an avid rock climber, and even though you were terrified of heights, you agreed to let him pick the activity for the two of you. It was his birthday, after all. He had his personal fair share of ropes, carabiners, and other various equipment, choosing to forego a climbing gym in favor of the open air. Upon arriving cliffside, he finally seemed to notice the nervous buzz that continued to grow around you with each passing moment.

“Everything okay?” he eyed you, gauging the terrified look in your eyes with mostly amusement, sprinkled with a mild dash of concern.

“Yea, I think so. I’ve never done this before. I’m actually terrified of heights.”

You avoided all eye contact with him at your admission, choosing to stare at his shoes instead. They were black with an orange “X” across the top, matching his hero costume. He must have had them custom made.

“Tch. Shitty woman! Why would agree to do this then?!” he started packing up his climbing materials, conceding that this excursion probably wasn’t going to happen anymore.

Without thinking, you reached out, grasping his muscled forearm to halt his actions. You hadn’t thought he would take your feelings into consideration. It had surprised you, and you decided that you wanted to do this for him.

“No, no. Please. I want to do this with you,” you pleaded, looking into the endless red pools that were his eyes.

“Fine, we’ll do the short side of the cliff, then.”

Without another word, he gathered his things and headed down the dirt path to your new destination.

Once you arrived at the designated area, he paused to strap you into a harness, snap on your helmet, and make sure that everything was thoroughly secured before getting himself ready. His quick and efficient movements warmed your belly and caused a stinging pink blush to overtake your cheeks. You had to pinch your inner arm to get yourself under control. He probably just didn’t want to have to deal with the likely outcome of having to scrape your mangled body off the ground later if he risked letting a novice like yourself get geared up on your own.

Bakugo coached you through the entire experience, a soft look of pride on his face as you reached the top of cliffside. The wooded area you were in was well known for its breathtaking views of the river valley, and hiking was something you were much more comfortable with. Bakugo stashed your gear in his backpack as you agreed to hike further up to get a better view of your surroundings.

By the time the two of you reached the top, the sun was starting to set, and the beauty of the landscape that surrounded you nearly took your breath away. The moment seemed to bring a sense of peace and hopefulness that you hadn’t really felt since your husband passed away. You regretfully had isolated yourself from your work, your family, and your friends to mourn your loss alone until you had finally decided to seek help.

Bakugo interrupted your silent reverie. “So, twelve steps, huh? Not that it’s really any of my business, but is there anyone else you need to apologize to?” Bakugo asked curiously, unable to keep the question inside of him any longer.

“Actually, just one,” you blushed, wondering if you should admit the truth to him. “I didn’t really get into much trouble in school, and I got married so young that there wasn’t too much that occurred for me to have any need to apologize. I guess I’m pretty boring,” you admitted, almost ashamed as you compared yourself to such an accomplished man as Bakugo.

“So, who then?” he continued, unknowingly prying into a memory that was directly related to the man himself.

“Monoma,” you chuckled, preparing yourself for Bakugo’s reaction to your admittance. “I punched him actually, back at U.A. Gave him a fat lip.”

“Holy shit, you’re serious? What did that idiot do to you?” Bakugo couldn’t contain his shock that such a sweet, er, boring extra had done such a thing, though it had probably been deserved, considering who it was.

“Erm,” you bit your lip slightly in hesitation, “well, it was about you. He said that he was better than you and that you’d never achieve anything with your head so far up your-” you stopped before you could embarass yourself any further, risking a glance at Bakugo.

The soft colors of the sunset reflected in his eyes as they stared down into your own, a soft smile overtaking his face at your confession. You really were something else. Though his birthday hadn’t gone anything like he’d planned, he was grateful for how it’d turned out.

________________________________________

By the time the two of you approached the base of your climb, the moon and stars were already out. You were both covered in a sheen of cooling sweat, and your stomach rumbled with hollow rebellion, so loud that Bakugo himself could hear it. A genuine chuckle erupted from his chest, surprising you.

“If you’re hungry, I can feed you. A reward for facing your fear.”

Bakugo was eternally grateful that it was already too dark outside for you to see the tips of his ears turn red. He couldn’t believe that he was inviting you back to his apartment, even for the innocent enough reason as to fill your stomachs.

“Uh, sure, if you don’t mind? I mean I could pick something up on the way home if you’d rather-”

“I hope you like it spicy,” he interrupted your protest, thereby deciding your plans for the evening.

________________________________________

After the two of you reconnected, you found yourself spending more and more time with Bakugo. He surprised you with how considerate and caring he could be. it was a side that you had never known before, even though you had grown up alongside each other. His good mood from spending time with you began to bleed out into his work life as well, causing him to blow up less during interviews, and public opinion polls were even starting to place the hero above his long-time rival, Deku.

Bakugo supported your sobriety, and you found each other to be a pillar of strength whenever days were particularly hard, whether that be with work or your personal lives. He helped you get to point where you were ready to go back to work, and he even began inviting you to hero events where plus ones were encouraged. Being in your company made the otherwise unbearable evenings seem almost fun.

On one such evening, Bakugo watched from afar as you loaded up your plate with bite-sized appetizers. You looked breathtaking in your elegant dress, your soft face framed with tendrils of hair that completed your stylish updo. Kirishima interrupted Bakugo’s ogling as he followed his line of sight, giving a knowing shove to his shoulder.

“You’ve got to tell her, man.”

“Tell who what, Shitty Hair?” Bakugo grunted, distracting himself by rendering his attention to the band that played on stage.

“You know who, and you know what. And you can drum better than these dudes after a double shift patrolling, so don’t try to act like you’re interested.” Kirishima continued, effectively serving to shut him up. ‘

“You two spend all of your free time together. We haven’t even had a guys night in months. It’s time, man.”

“I don’t want to fuck this up, man. She was married, after all. She’s.... different. I feel different when I’m around her.”

Kirishima’s eyes darted across the room, finding his wife standing beside you, engaged in gossip and weighing in on what dishes were your favorites. “I know exactly what you mean, man. I found someone who made me feel different too. And you know what I did? I married her.”

________________________________________

Bakugo was no pussy. He knew Kirishima was right, and he knew that he had to confess to you. You were an amazing woman, and if he didn’t at least try, he knew someone else would. He tried to ignore the fear and anxiety that rattled his insides. He knew that you cared for him, but he didn’t know to what extent. And he had never wanted more with a woman. He never wanted to walk beside of someone - to belong to someone, and have them belong to him - the way that he wanted with you. The new feelings threatened to overwhelm him.

You had agreed before that night’s event to stay with Bakugo at his apartment after the evening commenced. The event wouldn’t be over until late, and since both of you planned on having a few drinks, he didn’t want to risk you trying to make it back to your place on your own. The overwhelming need to protect and care you had convinced him to make the offer, even before he’d decided to admit his feelings to you. He just hoped he wasn’t about to ruin things.

You sat at his kitchen island, watching as he poured a drink for the both of you. His own would be a dose of liquid courage, and you simply wanted to enjoy yourself now that you were in the safety of his apartment.

You always felt safe around Bakugo. Safe and happy. You felt feelings around him that you hadn’t felt in a long time. You watched as he made his way around to the other side of the kitchen island. His suit jacket had been removed, and the top two buttons of his white button-down had been undone. You couldn’t help the feeling of warmth that spread within you from the center of your body, making its way outward and making you feel too hot, still in your formal dress.

“Bak-”

“I have to tell-” he interrupted, stopping you from probably saying something that you shouldn’t. You couldn’t help the way that being around him like this, being beside of him all night like you were his, was making you feel.

“Go ahead, sorry,” you encouraged him to continue.

“I hope I don’t make you uncomfortable by saying this, and you don’t have to say anything back, but... I have feelings for you,” he admitted, getting it all out without even taking a breath, as if taking a pause would deter him from admitting it. Seeing that you didn’t look upset, he decided to continue.

“These last months, spending time with you, have been the happiest times of my life. I feel like I can be myself with you. A better version of myself. You... make me better,” he finally finished, a blush overtaking his face as he paused to take a long swallow of his drink. There. At least now his feelings were out in the open for you to do with as you pleased.

“Bakugo-” you started, not really knowing what to say as his feelings took you by surprise. You could have never in your wildest dreams imagined that he felt the same way that you did. The hard, unyielding, “doesn’t need anyone” hero, Mr. Ground Zero, wanted her? Maybe even loved her?

“You don’t have to say anything. Please. We’ve both been drinking. I can take the couch, you can have my bed, or if that makes you uncomfortable....”

“Bakugo-” you interrupted. He seemed like he might be spiraling. You’d never seen him like this. It was absolutely adorable, and you decided to put the poor man out of his misery.

“Bakugo,” he stopped, letting you finish what you had to say. “I feel the same way. I’ve loved spending time with you and getting to know you better. I want you,” you smiled, your eyes twinkling as you gauged his flustered reaction with adoration.

He made his way to your side of the island, taking your face between his hands, softly holding onto you as if you might break or disappear at any moment. He leaned in to taste your lips, causing you to softly gasp against him. He seized the opportunity to slip his tongue between your open mouth, causing it to slide against your own in a battle for dominance.

Your own hands acted without thinking, reaching out to touch his chest, his broad shoulders forming a solid wall in front of you. Your fingers slipped to touch his bare skin where his shirt was unbuttoned, and he let out a deep groan from within. You could feel his heart battering under your right hand like a drum, and you knew that your own heart matched his, in a combination of nerves and excitement that this was finally happening.

He drew back to look into your eyes, and was met with a look of pure lust as he took in your slightly opened mouth, panting and gasping for air. His hand moved around to the back of your head, tangling in the soft strands of your hair and pulling it undone with a gentle tug.

“I want you. Can I take you to bed?” he urged, his voice taking on a husky tone that caused heat to pool into your underwear.

Quickly nodding in response to his request, he picked you up off of the stool you sat on, his strong arms holding onto you as if you were light as a pillow. Your legs wrapped around his body as your hands continued their journey, making your way down his arms and feeling him up, causing a cocky smirk to grace his handsome face.

He leaned in as he made his way into the bedroom, pressing his lips to your neck to gently suckle the skin there, causing a gasp to tumble from your lips.

“You are so fucking beautiful,” he whispered to you, causing you to redden even more than the actions that the two of you were performing.

He released your body, causing you to land softly on his bed. You were overwhelmed with the smell of him. Knowing that you were in the safe space where he laid every night, and thinking about what you were about to do in said bed, caused a sinful warmth to overtake you body, filling you with need for the man in front of you.

Bakugo crawled on top of you, a knee between your legs and the other resting outside of them, causing a delicious pressure to graze against your heat. He continued to kiss down your neck and across your exposed collarbone.

You untucked his dress shirt from his pants, pushing your fingers up and under to graze his chiseled abs. Fuck. You wanted this man and he was entirely too clothed right now. You pushed his chest, and having not expected it, he fell onto his back with a soft thump against the mattress. You straddled him, making quick work of the buttons on his shirt, revealing his naked torso to you. You leaned down to mimic his earlier actions, leaving a trail of kisses down his neck and chest. You could feel him grow harder underneath you, the thin material of your dress leaving very little in a way of a barrier.

Your body started to act out on its own, softly grinding against him as his erection pressed into your thigh. His hands slid under the bottom of your dress, grazing your entire body with his fingertips as he pulled to soft material over your head, leaving you in nothing but your lingerie.

His eyes drank you in, and the look he gave you caused your core to throb. You unzipped his trousers, palming him through his underwear before you shuffled down the bed to pull his pants from his legs. The massive tent in his underwear caused a thrill of excitement to rush through you, a fresh wave of wetness joining your already damp underwear.

You crawled back up his body and you started to kneel, intending to remove the last barrier between you and his naked body, until his hand moved up, grazing against your inner thigh to softly cup your wet panties. He gently rubbed against you, causing a needy moan to escape your lips as he leaned in to whisper in your ear. “I’ve let you take control for long enough, baby.”

He shoved his knee back between your thighs, flipping you over with ease as he leaned down to kiss your breasts, covered in the thin lace of your bra. Your nipples pushed against the fabric, and his lips gently bit down on them, locating them with ease, causing you to let out a long moan. His fingertips teased their way into the side of your panties, finally touching your bare sex and momentarily grazing where you wanted him the most.

He lifted his fingers back up to his lips, tasting your sweetness as he closed his eyes to savor the flavor. As he reopened his eyes again to look at you, he looked almost as if he were a man possessed. Driven by love and lust, he ripped your bra and panties off as if they were made of paper.

He made his way between your thighs, nipping and biting the soft skin along the way, before taking a long slow lick across your entire slit. He kissed the skin there as if he were kissing your mouth, making love to your pussy and letting you know just how long he had wanted to do this to you. He slid his tongue in and out of you, drinking down your essence as it spilled from your body. He moved his mouth up to gently suckle your clit, swirling circles around it and flicking back and forth with gentle pressure.

He leaned up to insert a finger into you, feeling as your body clamped around the digit. He massaged you from inside, adding another finger to prime your needy body for his cock.

He leaned over you again, coming face to face with you as his fingers continued their actions, kissing your lips as his hard member grazed against your lower belly. You threw your head back as your climax suddenly took over your body, causing a fresh wave of wetness to coat his fingers. You couldn’t wait to feel him inside of you.

He looked into your eyes again, asking for final permission, which you answered by grasping your hand around his firmness. You pumped him a few times, lining him up with the center of your body. He leaned down, pushing into you as you leaned your head back with a long moan. He groaned as he pushed himself all the way into you, feeling as your body clenched around him, still recovering from your recent orgasm. He nuzzled against the side of your face, kissing your lips and neck as he began began to move.

It was like his body was made for you. You were so deliciously filled, and as he began to pick up the pace, he held his hands under your hips to grip your ass, your body meeting his thrust for thrust. Your whole body was shaking in pleasure, and he felt himself rabidly losing control. He released one side of your body to reach the front of your body, massaging your clit as he continued to thrust into you, causing another orgasm to crash over you, your body squeezing him as he groaned out in pleasure.

“I’m gonna cum,” he grunted out, his movements getting sloppier as he chased his own release.

“Cum, Katsuki. Cum in me.”

His name leaving your lips with such sweet, sinful desire pushed him over the edge. He pushed one final thrust into you before he emptied himself inside you.

He leaned over the side of your body, remaining inside you as you each caught your breath. He rolled over onto his back, wrapping his arms around you to carry you with him, your head laying on his chest. You couldn’t contain the emotions that you felt for this man.

“I love you, Katsuki,” you whispered, thinking back to that day in the lunch room, and about just how wrong you were. “You’re not unloveable, you are my beloved, and you mean so much to me.”

He couldn’t help the tears in his eyes at your words as he leaned up to kiss the top of your head to utter his response. “I love you, too.”

________________________________________

After the two of you had had a chance to catch your breath, you took a shower together, taking turns under the stream of water to wash each others backs and sneak little touches here and there, gradually getting each other worked up all over again. You stepped out of the shower, drying off with a towel and dressing yourself in one of Bakugo’s shirts, which was more like a dress on you.

You made your way over to the bed, snuggling into his side as he reached around, cheekily grabbing a handful of flesh. You looked up at him from under your eyelashes, softly touching his cheek as you engaged your quirk, slowing down time as the two of you consumed each other.

“No need to rush, Katsuki. We only have forever.”

#bnha #my hero academia #bakugou katsuki x reader #Katsuki bakugo x reader #bakugo smut #soft bakugo #bnha imagines #bakugou scenarios #bnha writing #Katsuki x reader #bakugo x reader #my fic #bakugou x reader

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twisted-nox-sidus · 4 years

Note

Hello there, I’ve just read your headcannon of Strix trolling the Octavinelle trio. LOL. Thank you for the laughs. Since April fool’s day is coming. If you have the time, can you do a scenario where Strix trolls the other dorms with the help of her dream eaters. If you can include Malleus, it’s okay. If not, I understand. Thank you and stay safe.

Anon continued: Hi there, during my previous post, I was asking whether or not Malleus would join Strix’s trolling in trolling the other dorms since April Fools is coming. Oh! I almost forgot, can Grim and Lilia join with Strix in trolling. Thank you and have a good day or night.

Oof, doing six other dorms is a lot in one post, so I’ll keep things condensed, hence the headcanon format (sorry if you really wanted a scenario version!). I see Malleus and Lilia as types to watch for entertainment than directly take part in it. Strix left Grim out of her plans since he himself is chaotic already. It was time for her to assume the lead and let it out, at least for the day.

It’s come to my attention that I like doing headcanons of Strix and her dream eaters, so I plan on doing more headcanons/scenarios involving the pesky but cute spirits. They don’t stop here so look forward to it! Happy April Fool’s~

Heartslabyul

Heartslabyul could handle strange things more so than any other dorms. Just not anything against the crimson tyrant’s 810 rules.

“WHO PAINTED THE ROSE MAZE BLUE?!!!”

Riddle’s face fumes as red as his hair. Not a single trace of red is found! There was only blue as far as the eye can see.

Deuce, Trey, and Cater were rendered speechless by the sight. Just...wow. They’re not even dreading the culprit’s fate at Riddle’s mercy; instead they’re impressed with the feat. Such commitment!

Meanwhile Ace was resisting from bursting in a fit of laughter. That madwoman actually did it! She even casually remarked about doing such a feat but no one had paid her words seriously. Bravo! Bra-freaking-vo!

Ah, speaking of...

“You have a lot of nerve showing your face, Strix! You must be begging for your head to roll! This is defying the Queen of Hearts herself! Repaint every single rose -by yourself- until all is red!”

“Sheesh, let’s not get a rage stroke. You’re still so young...” Strix nonchalantly yawns. “I wanted to surprise you so I spent the whole night painting every rose blue. Of course, I had a helping hand with me.”

She vaguely gestured to the dream spirit hiding behind her leg. Me Me Bunny’s ears act as another pair of hands, and this cutie is quite dextrous; it also knows “bun fu”.

“Oh you surprised me all right. [Surprise] is only an understatement!”

A sigh. “You don’t get it, Riddle. Think of it this way. Blue makes the red stand out. Then the only red rose we’ll see...is you, my queen.”

She leans forward to slip a strand of Riddle’s velvet red locks between her fingers and graze her lips on them. Her half-lidded bright blue eyes gaze into his steel gray pair. Perhaps she was still under the drowsy spell to comprehend what she was doing, though a part of her was knowingly teasing.

Riddle stared wide-eyed. His cheeks flushed in a different meaning this time.

She pulls back to give space and turns the other way.

“Plus, contrary to your words, I think you actually like my surprise. It’s certainly not boring. And it’ll only be for today.”

Strix flashed a lazy grin his way.

“Happy April Fool’s~”

Savanaclaw

Strix’s dream eaters are quirky, adorable, and colorful spirits. Jack often questions their capabilities. What can little prey do to the brawny hotheads of Savanaclaw?

A lot.

One day Strix was on patrol. Jack had been keeping an eye as she works part-time as the “cleaner” of Savanaclaw. Just how much power can she draw from these familiars? It was a test for Strix to see if she can meet the standards of a respectable magician in this academy.

Meanwhile Ruggie anticipates something interesting will happen. Strix’s dream eaters are an enigmatic force to reckon with. He himself certainly doesn’t plan on confronting them since that’s not what he signed up for as vice dorm leader.

The hyena snickered his trademark laugh. What mayhem will the prefect student do?

Strix had to break up a fight for the nth time this week. Things happened, and one of the students said something that forced Strix to deal her hand.

Instead of commanding her eagle and hawk to attack, she summoned a single chubby cat/dog hybrid with stubby legs. It doesn’t look like a clever beast.

Aww, look at it roll around and paw at air for affection while its pink tongue stuck out. They’re going to die of cuteness.

Strix blankly stared ahead. “Meow Wow... Balloon.”

Said spirit stood on all four legs and stopped wagging. Every onlooker watched as it inflated in size. It continued to grow and grow until no one could see the light of day. It was then everyone thought it’d be wise to run from immediate vicinity.

However it was too late when Meow Wow deflated in puffy smoke and sparkles, drowning its victims along with the plume of clouds.

Jack and Ruggie watched from a platform above where they could see the area in action.

“Magic familiar tamers have unique strengths...” Was what Jack concluded. A hawk and eagle’s cries pierce the sky.

Ruggie rubbed the back of his head. “Let’s be real; in this world, birds are a real hassle. As long as you don’t make an enemy of them...”

Strix was already gone by the time Meow Wow inflated. Her eagle dream spirit now willingly massive in size acted as her glider and transporter. Strix’s body dangled as she clung tightly to her Eaglider’s talons until it settled her on the balcony of a dorm room. Eaglider flew to patrol elsewhere alongside Halbird, the hawk dream eater.

Sitting on a chair was Leona playing with a chess piece in his hand. A chessboard was already set up on the table, the black side facing him.

“Enjoying your job, aren’t you.”

Strix allowed a sheepish smirk. She’s not exactly proud to engage in cleaning up people’s messes, but there’s the thrill she finds in it. “To be honest, yeah. I think I might be a sadist at this point...” She mumbled under her breath and continued, “Sorry for the wait. Let’s start.”

Scarabia

“Jamil, a rainbow fish is swimming through the skies!”

“Nonsense. There are no aquatic animals in Scarabia. You probably just saw a magic carpet.”

“Then how come no one told me magic carpets can shoot lasers??”

Before Jamil can decipher whatever the hell Kalim meant by that, the sapphire blue skies turned murky. No, that wasn’t the work of clouds.

To everyone’s bewilderment, they bared witness to a school of colorful fish roaming freely through the air and above the whole dormitory aimlessly.

Lasers shoot from their mouths and make contact with the other to cause sparks to erupt in colorful fireworks. So that’s the laser part...

Kalim’s eyes sparkled. “It’s like the aquariums at Octavinelle, but airborne! *gasp* I just got a great idea for the next party!”

“For the nth time Kalim no more parties this month!”

*whistle* “Fin Fatale’s actually enjoying this. Who’d knew?”

The two boys turn to see Strix approaching them causally.

Strix grinned. “Bet you don’t see this in Scarabia often.”

Pomefiore

Pomefiore students have a tendency to look into a mirror at almost any given opportunity. They recognize every detail of their their highly bestowed beauty, lest they would fail to maintain perfection.

Imagine their surprise when a carbon copy of themselves suddenly replaces their reflection, except in a horrendous eye-burning color palette that screams “clown”

Turns out the copy really is a clown creature with a large tongue. Jestabocky simply loves to prank people at the expense of their reactions, and it took a liking to Pomefiore students.

Strix giggled in amusement, much to Vil’s chagrin. Standing next to the man was a Vil duplicate, except in that hideous orange carrot and lemon yellow palette that made his eyes want to bleed. Of course no one could ever compare to the original, especially a circus mimic at that.

Rook was examining his blood red and ice blue carbon copy. What a refreshing change of pace! “Your dream eaters never cease to amaze, little owl.” “Don’t hunt them for sport though!”

Epel was staring at his clone awkwardly. Cotton candy hair and yellow eyes are an odd combination. And would it stop grinning uncharacteristically like that? It’s freaky.

Strix looks beside her. Teal green hair, violet eyes, and an orange to yellow uniform color scheme. It’s horrendous, but that’s where the fun lies. Her dream eaters don’t know the meaning of color coordination.

Ignihyde

Strix thinks a surprise here and there in the shut-in dorm leader’s life ought to keep him on his toes. She knows how much Ortho wants him to come out his room, and so she’ll deliver just that.

Idia recieved an alert message as he was browsing the net. A window pops up displaying the security camera footage across the entire Ignihyde dorm.

To his horror, rainbows invaded the cameras everywhere he looked. In each one there was a massive bipedal colorful panda doing something to the students behind the screen. One was lifting a student to the air, another swinging and cradling, and others generally giving bear hugs to any soul -dead or living- that enter their vision.

Though the pandas are harmless and students are unharmed (some seem to enjoy it while others are bewildered in shock), Idia was quaking in his chair. If he walks out the room he’ll be crushed by the pandas’ mercy! (And by rainbows and cuteness!)

He zoomed in one of the footages. A Kooma Panda held a sign directly to the camera.

[YOU’RE NEXT]

This is nightmare fuel! Nightmares, he tells you!

Just as he spun around to hide and cower in the safety of his blankets, he had failed to notice the looming shadow over his flaming head prior to this very moment.

There was the same panda. In his bedroom. Staring right into his soul.

It smiled. (I reread this part and lowkey I realized I was writing a FNaF fanfic for a moment wut)

Idia wheezed. How did it get here?! Was it capable of teleporting?!

The shut-in had never ran for the door to the outside world with such eagerness in his life up to now. He slammed the door open and was about to hit the breeze when suddenly he recognized Strix standing right in front of him.

He practically tackled the poor girl (oof). Just when he dreads the contact with the floor, he felt something bouncy push them off. And then the same bouncing source came from behind. Now he’s squeezed between something.

The world spun in his eyes. Light-hearted laughter snapped him out of his trance. His soul actually came close to leaving him the moment Strix’s face registered in his vision. So close!

Two Kooma Pandas were hugging and nuzzling the two in a human-dream eater sandwich. Awww.

From the sidelines, Ortho watched in awe. That’s one way to bring his big bro out of the room. He eagerly joins in the hug fest with Strix and an all-too drained Idia.

Strix giggled and wrapped her arms around Idia and the panda behind him. She was clearly enjoying this. “Happy April Fools~”

Diasomnia

First things first: Strix can’t fool two all mighty and powerful faeries. Instead, she’ll entertain them like she and her dream eaters have always done. After all, boredom is their kind’s biggest enemy.

One day, Diasomnia students were walking down the halls when they notice a colorful bat creature hanging upside down from the ceiling, innocently watching people pass by.

There was one Komory Bat. The next door over there are two. The door after that door appeared three. In front of the dorm gate there may or may not be a bat perched to greet students in and out.

In the library, students are surprised when they’re greeted by the librarian aid...who was working upside down and levitating with gravity magic.

Strix casually acts as though it was natural. When she had to move away from the counter she continued walking upside down on the ceiling. If the ceiling was too high she’d float over just above people’s heads, and address when needed.

Strix likes to mess with Sebek by doing a “handstand” on his broad shoulders while talking to Silver. Sebek would shoo her off and when he does, Strix still pesters him by floating with a mocking haughtiness behind the way she rocks back and forth while grinning mischievously. The sight is hilarious, much to Sebek’s chagrin.

She can see why Lilia likes doing this. By the end of the day though, that’s enough walking on ceilings for the year.

Strix greets Malleus at eye level. “How’d you like it? Not boring, right?”

The horned fae chuckled. The glimmer of accomplishment in her stunning blue eyes amuses him the most. Like a child who proudly boasts their little achievements to appeal to their parents. It was adorable. “Certainly.”

#twisted wonderland #my post #strix noctowl #anon #headcanon asks #diasomnia #heartslabyul #savanaclaw #ignihyde #pomefiore #scarabia #dream eater spirits

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mynightingalecomplex · 4 years

Text

Don’t Get Too Comfortable Pt. 2

Ok, so here’s a (not so little) fic I’ve been toying with. It’s long, so I’m going to break it into parts. I default to Pre-Disney+ Mandalorians, so the helmets are not an issue.

Synopsis: Just off a successful hunt, Jesse Libarra finds herself traveling in company with another Mandalorian, Aden Nasreyc. The two Mandalorians are looking forward to a few days of rest on a backwater planet but, unknown to them, the Black Sun have followed Aden and are intent on exacting their revenge on the man who killed their leader.

Tags: previous injury, broken ribs, exhaustion, field medicine

Link to glossary

Link to illustrations:

Part One

Jesse led the way down the dimly lit line of doors, boots leaving muddy prints in the dingy carpet. “I usually stay here when I’m in the neighborhood. The owner is an Arcona who served in the Sisti Strike Force during the last rebellion. Let’s just say he’s familiar with the standard modus operandi of his clientele.” She glanced at the number on her card and turned the corner. “Two ways out of every room, and the walls and doors are blaster proof.”

She opened their door and flicked on the lights. A single bed, two chairs, and a table greeted them, startlingly green against glaring red carpet. An ancient holoplayer ogled them in the light of the single lamp. Their reflections looked bleakly back at them from above the open sink. “Well,” Jesse said. “It's, uh, not much.”

“But?”

“No, no but. It's just not much.”

Aden looked like he agreed with her, but he didn't complain. His face was gray and drawn down into harsh lines of fatigue. Jesse took his rifle off his shoulder. He blinked but didn't resist. “You get the fresher first.” She forced herself to sound cheerful. “I'll unpack.”

“Right.”

While Aden showered, Jesse removed and cleaned her armor, stacking each piece in a neat pile as she finished with it. She cleaned and calibrated her rifle, dug the mud out of her boots, and sharpened the blades on her gauntlets. She looked up with a toothbrush in her mouth as Aden reentered the room. He was glowing with the warmth of the shower, his brown hair bristling in wet spikes all over his head, his face still damp and pink from shaving.

He tossed his heap of clothes and armor onto the bed, sorting it back into his rucksack as Jesse unbraided her hair. “Go ahead and get comfortable.” She said, heading for the shower. “I'll take a look at you when I'm out.”

Already half asleep, Aden raised his head. “Wait, are we sharing?”

“Tonight we are. I wouldn't trust you to tie your shoes by yourself.”

“Nah. No laces.” His voice was muffled by pillows. “They buckle.”

“See? Even worse.”

“What?”

“Shut up.” She laughed, throwing a towel over her shoulder. “Give me ten minutes.”

“Prima Donna.” Ten minutes was extravagant. Showers in most militaries were limited to three.

��“You spend three months in a jungle with hair like this.” She tossed her head. “See how you like it.”

She showered unhurriedly, luxuriating in the warmth, allowing the grunge of months to drain away, letting the water pound the knots out of her muscles and pull the snarls out of her hair. The water was hard and made her skin sticky. The soap was extraordinarily pungent. The shampoo made her hair cling to her hands and snarl around her fingers. With her elbows knocking on the wall with every movement and the soapy steam suffocating the tiny fresher, it was certainly the complete cheap hotel experience, but the months on Taris had been so long it felt like a Naboo health spa.

When she emerged in a cloud of steam, dressed in the loose red fatigues of the Grand Army of the Republic, towel turbaned elaborately around her head, Aden was soundly asleep on the single bed, twisted awkwardly around a lump of pillows. Jesse tossed her medic bag onto the bed, but he didn't even twitch when it bounced down beside him. She crawled up next to him, shaking his shoulder until he surfaced.

He cracked an eye. “Oh no. There’s a strange woman in my room. What would my momma say?”

Jesse smirked under her towel turban. “I don’t know what your momma would say, but I say sit up and take off your shirt.”

“Not a chance.” Aden mumbled into the pillow. “I’m not that kind of man.”

“Well, I’m that kind of girl.” Jesse waggled dark eyebrows in a ludicrous caricature of flirtation. “Where’s the fun in spending the night with a strange woman if you’re going to be old fashioned? Shirt off.”

Grudgingly, muttering darkly about mothers’ warnings and women picked up off the street, Aden struggled to a sitting position. “Are you sure you want the shirt off?” He asked. A bright red glow was spreading up his neck, lighting the tips of his ears on fire. “I wouldn't want you to feel intimidated by my impressive physique or anything.”

“Take it off.” Jesse waved a hand in his direction, her head buried in her bag. “Doctor’s orders.”

He struggled out of his shirt, the blush advancing toward his hairline as she studied him. He was more slender than he looked in armor, lean instead of heavily muscled. Points of bone showed through his shoulders. His ribs were a washboard under olive-colored skin. Muscle rippled with his movement, but it was the muscle built of sweat, privation and hard living, not of nutri-supplements and concentrated training in air-conditioned gyms.

Bruises mottled his body, blue, black, and yellow. His right arm and flank were ribboned with long claw marks, recently dressed with sticky topical stitches, the souvenirs, she suspected, of his close encounter with the Barabel on Vurus. One shoulder showed signs of a newly healed blaster wound. She crawled around to sit beside him. More bruises spread their tendrils across his chest, tinting scars and tattoos a hideous yellow. “Vod. You are a mess.”

“Thank you. That’s what every man wants to hear.”

Sliding down to kneel on the floor in front of him, Jesse activated her medscanner. “No internal bleeding. No punctured organs.” She began to explore his ribs with her fingers. One. Two. Three. Four. Five. He swallowed a scream and doubled over. “Well, that's broken.”

“No kidding.” Sweat glistened on his forehead.

She found three more broken ribs under a web of yellow bruises but no other major damage in the front. “Ok, vod.” She patted his shoulder, rousing him from his half doze. “Lay back down for me.”

“Thought you’d never ask.” He muttered with bad grace, working himself around until he could stretch full-length on the bed. Gingerly, joint by joint, he eased himself down onto the mattress, hissing with pain as rusty muscles unclenched.

“All the way.” Jesse nudged him with her medscanner. “Come on.”

He worked his knee down from where it had propped his back into a protective arch. Jesse shook her hair down from its towel and prodded Aden’s knotted shoulders. “Flatten these out, huh? Much as you can.”

Grunting, he inched his elbows out away from his shoulders until the knotted muscles eased slightly. “That's it.” His words were muffled by the pillows, but the strain in his voice was evident.

She raised her eyebrow. “Right. Let’s see what we’ve got.” Jesse touched the mediscanner to his back. Aden jumped. “Did I hurt you?” She pulled her hand back.

“S’cold.” Aden mumbled through the pillow.

Rolling her eyes, Jesse replaced the scanner and ran it thoughtfully down each side of Aden’s spine. It beeped to itself, displaying on its little screen a pixelated rendering of bone and tissue. It wasn’t a pretty picture. Jesse whistled under her breath. “How did you do that?”

“What?”

“You've got two ruptured discs and one that's disintegrating, plus a dislocated rib here, here, and here. Oh, and here.” She walked her fingers up his back. “What happened?”

“Dunno. What’ll cause it?”

She shrugged. “Long-term stress, improper lifting, acrobatics, sudden trauma. You didn't get hit by a speeder did you?”

He seemed to be thinking. “I did fall out of a four story window.”

She looked at his back and saw shrapnel scars and the pink remnants of road rash. “That’d do it.”

Jesse put her medscanner aside. “I'm gonna set those ribs for you, then we'll work on your shoulders.”

Jesse carefully set the offending ribs with her thumbs, careful not to flinch as they crunched back into place. Aden squirmed under her hand but didn't make a sound. Gently, Jesse went about his back with her fingers, looking for knots and points of strain. She started at the shoulders, probing with her fingers at the taut muscles, rock-hard under fatless flesh. She had been good at this when she was younger and now the skill came back to her from the purple parlors of long ago, dripping with perfumed memories. It hadn't been a dignified job, but it had paid the bills.

Aden moaned into the pillow, a little sound between pain and pleasure as his shoulders finally relaxed under her persistent pressure. Grimly satisfied, Jesse worked down the rest of his back until the muscles were no longer rigid, but warm and pliable in her fingers. Finally, she sat back and shook out her arms. “How's that? Better?” No answer. “Aden?” She smiled to herself. He was asleep.

#star wars #mandalorian #mando #jesse libarra #wounded #injured #cared for #field medicine #caretaker #treated #broken ribs

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mrsbhandari · 4 years

Text

Artsy As Fuck - Ballpoint Pen

Author’s note: HIIIII i decided to post pretty much all of my writing on here, just to make it more accessible!! I hope you like it!!

Word count: 1906

Warnings: language, sexual description but no actual sex

Summary: Colt takes reluctant Roze on a date.

Masterlist

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Roze turned to him with wide eyes a look that silently asked “what the fuck are you doing?!” Colt ignored her in favor of staring down Ingrid, whose eyebrows were furrowed as her gaze switched between him and Roze.

“No you’re not,” she accused. “You and Roze? Hell no.” Colt squinted but this time, Roze beat him to the punch.

“Why do you say that?” The entire class was silent now, watching the argument with varying levels of amusement and worry. Roze had turned to Ingrid and was glaring daggers, daring her to say what she meant.

“Hm, you’re frumpy, annoying, kind of a bitch--”

“And mine,” Colt jumped in, feeling oddly protective of Roze despite agreeing with two-thirds of Ingrid’s statement.Their eyes met again and Colt silently begged Roze to go along with his rescue. She seemed to get the message and stayed quiet, letting him take over. “Now can we get back to the class?”

The professor jumped in at this point, settling the class down and putting them back on track. The rest of the class was silent for the remaining time to complete their artwork, and Colt continued to watch Roze as he posed. She didn’t look shaken or thrown off at all by Ingrid, and he hid an impressed look at how truly unbothered she was. Unfazed, she painted and completed her work before half of the class. She used the rest of the time to touch up her art. He was restless, aching to see how it turned out. After minutes that seemed like hours, she signed her art and packed her things, desperate to escape her hellhole of a class. Ingrid wasn’t feeling merciful as she grabbed Roze’s arm in the lobby of the building. Colt packed his own stuff up and raced to follow them, not wanting a fight to break out for fear of his job. He entered the lobby to see Ingrid with a death grip on her forearm, sure to leave bruises.

“What the fuck, Ingrid?!” Roze exclaimed, wrenching her arm out of the other’s grasp. She took a step back and collided with Colt, who put a protective arm around her shoulders and gave a glare to Ingrid, who scoffed at the sight of the couple.

“You can’t fool me, Roze. I bet you’re paying Colt to pretend so that you seem cool! You would do that, slut,” she scoffed, crossing her arms and rolling her eyes. His arm tensed with the effort to hold Roze back, as she seemed to lose her mind at the insult.

“I’m deescalating this. Roze, go wait by my bike,” Colt instructed, giving a pleading look to his new girlfriend when she sent a glare his way. She understood and walked out, checking Ingrid with her shoulder on her way.

“I’m not talking to you unless you’re offering to let me blow you,” Ingrid snarled.

“I’m most definitely not offering.”

“Hm. Your loss. See you.” With a flourish, she turned on her heel and left, going in the opposite direction of where his bike was parked. Walking back to the studio, he spotted the professor looking at the paintings of Colt.

“Sir, I’m so sorry about that, I really like this job and I want to continue it--”

“Colt! Deep breaths! Your little job here isn’t endangered because of a spat between students. Honestly, I should be the one apologizing to you.”

“Oh, there’s no need for that, sir.” Colt let out a breath he didn’t realize he was holding and looked at the painting he was standing in front of, which just so happened to be Roze’s. She had successfully been able to finish his collarbone, and he almost choked on his spit the longer he looked at it. The hand wrapped around his throat was perfectly rendered, giving the entire work a sense of eroticism he hadn’t realized she would depict. His face was twisted into a small smirk at something off to the right and his hair was messy, but the lines were so perfect that Colt had a hard time believing that she had painted it despite sitting in front of her while she did it. Remembering he told her to wait outside, he yelled out a thank you to the professor before rushing to see if she waited for him.

A figure was leaning against his bike, creating a stark contrast with her dark jeans against the white body work. The light seemed to hit her just right, making her skin glow in the rays of the sun as she looked down at her phone.

“Hey, you waited,” Colt said, boots making for loud steps on the concrete as he walked towards her.

“What the fuck are you doing?” He stopped at his bike, grabbing the helmets off the handlebars and tossing one to her. She caught it with ease.

“Taking you on a date, girlfriend.”

After a five minute speech convincing her that he wasn’t going to kill her, she got on the bike. After a ten minute ride, they both arrived at his destination: a small local diner. Roze climbed off the bike first, prompting Colt to slightly miss her warmth behind him and around his waist. The thought disappeared as she stomped her way inside.

Whatever.

Sliding across from her in the booth she occupied, he ordered a black coffee and some waffles, raising his eyebrows when she scoffed at his order. “Something you wanna say?”

“No,” Roze snapped, oblivious to the nervous glances of the waitress between them. “I’ll have a burger and a Coke.” The waitress walked to the kitchen with their orders, leaving an angry Roze and an uncaring Colt at the table.

“Why’d you scoff?”

“Why’d you bring me here?”

“I asked you first.”

“Immature child.”

“Uptight shrew.”

“Asshole.”

“Vulgar.”

“You deserve it.”

“For saving your ass?”

“Waffles and a burger?” Their spat was interrupted by the anxious waitress setting the plates down in front of them, the steam from the food only adding to the heat between them. Colt gave her a smile and quickly dug into his meal, drowning the plate with syrup before shoveling it into his mouth. Roze was never one to deny a meal paid for by someone else, so a silence settled over the table as they both ate. Once he finished his meal, Colt was the first to speak.

“Ingrid’s annoying and I figured the best way to get her off both of our asses was to make me unavailable and prove to her that you can get a guy as hot as me,” Colt explained, rolling his eyes when she snorted and almost choked on a piece of lettuce. “Two birds with one stone.” She continued coughing, so he handed the water glass that came with his coffee to her. “Don’t die, or I’ll be a primary suspect.”

“You could’ve...poisoned...the water,” she said between gasps of breath.

“Too obvious and easily traceable.”

“Fine.” She drank the water, finally getting proper lung usage back. “Well it’s already been proven. Why not ‘break up’ so we don’t have to pretend?”

“Did you hear the thing about me being unavailable? As soon as there’s even a hint at me not having a partner, she’ll pounce. Plus she’ll probably make fun of you for not being able to keep such a hot boyfriend. Lose-lose situation.” Colt leaned back in the booth and watched Roze think about it. He was pleased to note that her tongue breached her lips no matter what she was thinking about, not just when she was drawing. After minutes of her cartoonish deliberation, she nodded.

“Fine, I’ll go along with it.” Colt gave a smug smile.

“Ha ha.”

“Fuck off. If this is going to work, we’ll need rules.”

“Ugh, lame!” Colt exclaimed, catching the attention of some other patrons in the diner. Roze took a bite of her burger, leaving Colt to wonder just how she could fit so much in her mouth. He internally raised his eyebrows.

Definitely don’t let that thought go too far.

“You can’t kiss me--”

“Vetoed,” Colt cut her off, ignoring the anger flashing in her glare. “It won’t be believable if I don’t kiss you.”

“We can say we’re private people!”

“Your class has seen me naked, Roze.”

At that, she stammered, face flushing and eyes widening. Thinking about that class did something to her, something that she wasn’t sure she liked since it was about a haughty, nosy, frustratingly attractive dick who acted like he could get away with murder. But hearing her name on his lips only added to it, making her choke yet again. Colt smiled but offered his glass of water again.

“Will you stop that?!” he commanded, brushing off the disapproving looks from the other customers again. Apparently, yelling at your girlfriend in public when she’s choking isn’t socially accepted. Duly noted. She glared as she composed herself, face finally returning to its natural tan color.

“Sorry, but you’re not kissing me.”

“Can I hug you at least?”

“For a limited time.”

“Your loss.” Roze rolled her eyes. “We should arrive together, though.”

“Why?”

“To save the planet, Kahlo.”

“Whatever. And don’t call me that. I could never be as good as her.”

Colt wanted to tell her that she was already truly incredible and that her art was most likely going to be studied in classrooms in a few years, but after looking at the insecured face of the troubled artist sitting across from him, he knew it wouldn’t be helpful. “How far away are you from the shop?”

“A two minute walk.”

“Great, when I model for another one of your classes, we can go on my bike.”

“Seriously?” Roze’s eyebrows raised as she tapped her nails on the table, drumming out a small beat. Colt found the sound both melodic and threatening. Her siren song continued through his response.

“It’ll only be on days where I model. You can deal with it.”

“What do you have against cars?”

“C’mon, you didn’t like the ride over here?”

Roze shifted in her seat, the leather squeaking quietly beneath her. She noticed how he deflected the question, but if she was being honest, she had loved the feeling of the wind whipping her hair as the streets blurred past her, the muscles of the driver flexing under her touch with a warmth pressed to her chest, his rich scent wafting over her as she hugged him tighter to keep from falling.

Was she going to admit it?

No.

She refused to give him the satisfaction.

He didn’t deserve it.

Instead, she reached into her purse and pulled out a gum wrapper and a ballpoint pen. He watched silently with his head cocked as she pressed the tip of the pen to her tongue, eyes trained on the string of saliva that formed between her lips and the utensil. This time, he refused to stop the flood of images coming to mind of just what she would look like with her lips wrapped around his dick, drool dripping onto his skin. He decided she would be more attractive that way because anything she said would be felt, not heard.

“Here’s my number. We can talk later since I have to go home. Take me back to the studio?” He was snapped from his explicit thoughts by her pressing the gum wrapper into his hand, complete with a quick self-portrait of Roze next to the sequence of numbers.

“Yeah, sure. Thanks.”

#colt kaneko #colt x mc #colt choices #choices #choices rod #playchoices #fanfic #fanfiction #fic #fiction #artsy as fuck

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