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crystalstar8 · 3 years

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Knights of the Night (ch 9)

Chapter 9

Ch 1, ch 2, ch 3, ch 4, ch 5, ch 6, ch 7, ch 8, ch 9

https://archiveofourown.org/works/29139240/chapters/71536491

pairing: Jungkook x oc

genre: vampire au, college au, twilight, romance

word count: 2,620

warnings: blood (obviously), kidnapping, child kidnapping, needles, France

notes: vampires, vampire au, college, college au, so many twilight references, blood, needles, kidnapping, children, homelessness, dance, ballet, flashbacks, romance, slow burn, probably no smut, idk yet tho, France, French things, attempted genocide, inaccurate French history, bisexual main character, @strawberriewithchocolate-blog @mozy-j @daechwitad-2 @zobadak

summary: Catalina starts college in a small town all the way across the country. She doesn’t know anyone and isn’t exactly looking for friends. She just wants to focus on dance. But when she meets fellow dance major, Jimin, and adventurous, fellow freshman, Jungkook, Catalina ends up discovering a whole new side to the small college town; one that is dangerous but oh so enticing…

The warm weather was fleeting; Catalina spent her days studying, working, and every chance she got, hanging out with her friends. The “baseball encounter”, as she’s been calling it, has been living in the back of her mind ever since, even though it seemed her friends had forgotten about it. She never brought it up, just focusing on her college life. Namjoon took her out to fancy bookstores and coffee shops, Jungkook tried and failed to teach her how to skateboard, and Jin tried and failed to help them in French. She was kept busy and she was having fun.

All was peaceful, until a college student was reported missing in St. Briggs. Jimin cornered Catalina in dance class about it one chilly, early winter day.

They were practicing their dance to “Body”, by Megan Thee Stallion.

“One, two, three, turn, five, six, step and hit,” the teacher called out. “One, two, ba, ba, jump, Steve! What song are you dancing to, ‘cause it’s not this! Find the goddamn beat! Alright, everyone except Steve, take five.”

Catalina’s final move in the dance was on the ground, so instead of getting up, she crawled over to her dance bag and pulled out her water bottle, collapsing against the wall. Jimin joined her and said, “Have you heard the news?”

Catalina shook her head between sips.

“A student went missing,” he said. “In St. Briggs. From our college.”

“Aren’t they the second person to go missing here?” Catalina asked. “I don’t like the sound of that.”

“Yeah, me neither,” said Jimin. “The first person was a little kid. My parents are freaking out about me walking to campus now.”

“And the police have no idea who the guy is?” asked Catalina. “I mean, they don’t know anything?”

“Not really,” said Jimin. “It’s like these people disappeared without a trace.”

“Hm,” Catalina thought about the disappearances and the mysterious “baseball encounter”. She wondered if they were connected. “You wanna do some investigating?”

“What are you-no, we’re not visiting those vampires,” said Jimin. “That’s a really bad idea. Namjoon told us to stay out of it and he definitely knows more about this stuff than we do.”

Catalina knew she wouldn’t get anywhere with Jimin. She would just have to wait until she saw Jungkook to bring it up again. She knew he’d have no qualms about going on a potentially life-threatening mission.

Her chance came that weekend when she and Jungkook worked their shift together at the souvenir shop. Business was starting to pick up since the first snow was expected to arrive any day now.

Tourists started stopping by more and more and Catalina got to see what Jungkook meant by “hot tourists”. The men and the women were beautiful, and her and Jungkook both had fun checking them out from behind the counter. But today was slow, so Catalina figured she’d take the opportunity to tell him about her plan.

“Jungkook, what do you think about stealing that business card and sneaking around a potential lair?” asked Catalina.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about, but yes. I’m in,” he said. The two of them were straightening the ceramic bear and eagle figurines, killing time between customers.

“Remember those three vampires on baseball day?”

“Uh-huh.”

“The guy gave Namjoon a business card,” said Catalina.

“Oh right! Yeah, I remember,” said Jungkook.

“I was thinking maybe we could steal it and do our own investigating. I mean, what if those guys have something to do with the missing people?” Catalina said. Jungkook looked up at her with wide eyes.

“Oh shit! Ya know, you’re probably right!” he said. “They just moved here, and then all of a sudden, a kid goes missing in this town. It makes sense.”

“Exactly,” said Catalina.

“But how will we get the business card?” asked Jungkook. “Do we sneak into his room or his office or whatever?”

“That’s what I was thinking. One of us distracts him, while the other sneaks in and finds it,” said Catalina.

“I feel like you should distract him. A classic honey pot mission,” said Jungkook.

“Do you know what that means?” Catalina asked, snickering.

“Don’t you seduce someone to complete a mission?” asked Jungkook.

“You usually have to fuck someone in a honey pot mission,” said Catalina.

“Oh, well, how bad can it be? I mean, he’s hot as fuck,” he said with a wave of his hand. Catalina’s face turned bright red.

“I’m not- we’re…” she sighed. “Jungkook, casual sex isn’t really my thing and I don’t like him that way. I don’t think he likes me that way either.”

“Are you kidding? What about all those bookstores and coffee shops? Those weren’t dates?” asked Jungkook. “What were you guys doing?”

“Looking at books!” said Catalina. “He just really likes literature, and I really like coffee.”

“Did he pay for your coffee every time?”

“Yes.”

“Then that’s a date,” said Jungkook.

“We spot each other all the time. So, are you telling me it’s a date when you pay for my McDonalds or when I pay for your movie ticket?” asked Catalina.

“That’s different,” said Jungkook. Catalina threw her hands up.

“Okay, we’re getting off topic,” she said. “You distract him, I’ll get the card.”

“Casual sex also isn’t my thing though,” said Jungkook.

Catalina threw her head back laughing. “You don’t have to fuck him! Just keep him downstairs talking or something.”

“I can do that. Are we doing it tonight?” asked Jungkook.

“Sure.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~

That evening, Catalina and Jungkook went to the mansion. Jungkook brought his French homework. Luckily, Namjoon was the one to answer the door.

“Oh, hey guys! Come on in,” he said. He led them to the lounge and Jungkook immediately got his homework out.

“I was wondering if you could help me with this,” said Jungkook.

“Sure, let’s see,” said Namjoon. Catalina wandered off. The upstairs was thankfully not as big as the main floor, but there were many halls and many rooms. Catalina went to Hoseok’s room, starting her search from there. The next door in the hallway was open. Catalina looked inside, flicking on the light switch. It looked like a basic, model bedroom. It didn’t look like it belonged to anyone, probably a guest room. The next room was enormous and absolutely trashed. The giant bed in the middle of the room had a mountain of blankets and clothes on it. Clothes, loose papers, and books littered the floor. Beat up, crooked antique paintings decorated the walls, along with torn calligraphy banners. The Asian style furniture looked ancient, worn and battered, but luxuriously wealthy.

Catalina moved on to the next room. This one was a bit more modern and, curiously, vaguely nautical themed. A huge window against the back wall let light shine in on the white painted wood of the furniture, the mess of easels and canvases in the corner, and the mix of paintings on the seashell wallpapered walls: realism, abstract, cubism, a few charcoal sketches of Hoseok, Yoongi, and Namjoon, and a single painting of a lighthouse looking out at a stormy sea. Catalina went to the next room.

This one was the most modern, with dark walls and mahogany furniture. It was sleek and rustic, with a twisted wood bed frame, alpaca rugs on the ground, smooth couches in the corner with a driftwood coffee table in the center, and along every free wall, bookshelves. The entire room was spotless. This must be Namjoon’s room. At least, Catalina hoped it was. She stepped inside and went to the desk tucked into one of the bookshelves. She rifled through the drawers until she found one filled with business cards.

“Shit,” she whispered. There were quite a few cards, but she got to work sorting through them. Most of them looked old and yellowed with age. She automatically set those ones aside. She couldn’t remember that vampire’s name, but she knew she’d remember it if she saw it. After sorting through what felt like hundreds of cards, she finally found one with the familiar name on it.

It was a new card, simple, with just a name, an address, and a phone number on it. The name on it was Makai La’ei. That sounded right. Catalina rearranged the rest of the cards back to how she found them and shoved this one in her pocket. She was definitely running out of time, Jungkook only had so much homework.

When she got downstairs, she went right to the lounge, but it was empty. Jungkook’s French textbook was laying open on the coffee table. Her heart skipped a beat. Namjoon wouldn’t hurt him, would he? She thought. She backed out of the lounge and looked up and down the hallway. Her heart was pounding, but before her thoughts could fully run away on her, she heard Jungkook’s voice approaching, saying, “And that’s how I went to senior prom with Dr. Dre’s daughter, Truly.”

Namjoon and Jungkook rounded the corner, both holding McDonalds bags and hot coffees in their hands.

“You guys went out?” Catalina asked.

“Yeah, we got hash browns,” said Namjoon, handing one of the bags to her.

“Isn’t this yours?” asked Catalina.

“Grease gives me a stomachache,” he said.

“I was just craving hash browns. I figured you’d want a few too,” said Jungkook. Catalina’s heart skipped a beat, but this time not out of fear.

“I love these,” she whispered, opening the greasy paper bag to see three hash browns inside. Something nudged her hand. She looked up to see Jungkook handing her his coffee as well. Namjoon wandered off, sipping at his own coffee. “What are you doing?”

“I don’t like coffee,” he said. “Take it.”

“Thank you,” she said. “Did you already finish your homework?”

“Yeah, turns out Namjoon is fluent in French,” said Jungkook. “And Korean, and Chinese, and Japanese, and German. And…what was that other one?”

“Swahili,” Namjoon said from inside the lounge.

“Why?” asked Catalina.

“I was bored,” he said with a shrug. Jungkook looked at Catalina with questioning eyes. Catalina nodded.

“Well, thank you for helping me with this,” said Jungkook, gathering his textbook and notes. “I hate this class, so any help is much appreciated. Anyway, we have to get going. We have some errands to run.”

“Sure, no problem,” said Namjoon as he walked them to the door. “We’re all fluent in French here, expect for Hoseok, so feel free to ask any of us any time.”

“Thank you,” Catalina said as she pulled her shoes on.

~~~~~~~~~~

“That was too easy,” said Jungkook as they were getting into his car.

“Not really!” said Catalina. “He had a whole drawer full of business cards. I had to sort through all of them.”

“I was talking about the homework,” said Jungkook. He pulled out of the driveway and began the drive down the mountain. “He gave me all the answers. But that explains why you were gone for so long.”

“Yeah, and I saw the other rooms,” said Catalina. “I think Tae’s room is nautical themed.”

“Why?” Jungkook asked. Catalina shrugged. “Well, whatever. Does that card have an address on it?”

“Yeah,” Catalina pulled the card out of her pocket and typed the address into her maps app. It gave her a route to a location in the middle of the town. She let Siri lead them as she plugged in her phone and looked up spy music on iTunes. She found a playlist and put it on shuffle, letting the groovy guitar of “Secret Agent Man” blast through the car.

By the time they arrived, they were well into “Hawaii Five-O”. The GPS had led them to what looked like an abandoned hospital. Jungkook drove a block past it so they could walk the rest of the way. As they walked, they reviewed the plan.

“So, we can’t get caught, obviously,” said Jungkook. “We’re just sneaking in, taking a quick look, maybe some pictures, then getting out.”

“Right,” said Catalina. “Quick and fast.”

They snuck in and found a basement stairwell, which they took. The rest of the hospital was empty. They could hear voices coming from the basement, so as quietly as they could, they snuck down the stairs, which led them to a cement tunnel with a metal grated floor. The tunnel gave Catalina a sense of Déjà vu, but she couldn’t figure out why. Faint voices echoed from the end of the tunnel. They reached the end and peaked around the corner. What they saw made their jaws drop. A huge, cavernous cement room with some furniture in the middle. Doors lined the walls, some open, some closed. Catalina could see from where she was that there were people in the rooms with open doors. People sitting or laying on the ground, tubes attached to their arms connecting to IV stands, blood bags hanging from the hooks.

Jungkook was snapping rapid fire pictures of as much of the room as they could see.

The voices, which were coming from a part of the room they couldn’t see, stopped talking.

“Bernard, go check the tunnel and stairs. I thought I heard something.”

Before Bernard even had a chance to move, Catalina and Jungkook booked it back down the tunnel and up the stairs. Jungkook led the way, and he was fast, so Catalina struggled to keep up with him. Once they were at the top of the stairs, they looked around for an open room. A bit down the hall, there was an open doorframe with a missing door. They darted for it, Jungkook pulling her inside and crowding her against the wall, hidden in the shadows.

Catalina was scared they’d be caught, but now she freaking out about something entirely different, namely, Jungkook’s chest and arms caging her against the wall. He was so close that Catalina could feel the heat coming off him. Her blush made its way down her neck into her chest, her breath quickening.

“He’s coming,” Jungkook whispered, his wide eyes glued to the doorway. Sure enough, Catalina could hear heavy boots crunching through the debris in the hallway, getting closer to where they were. “Do you trust me?”

“What?” Catalina asked.

“Do you trust me?” Jungkook asked again. “I saw this in a TV show. It works every time.”

Before Catalina could ask for clarification, several things happened at once: the man, presumably Bernard, began entering the room, Jungkook pressed even closer, a hand on her waist, the other finding its way to her hair, and his lips crashed against hers. She let out a squeak of surprise but quickly caught on, gripping his shirt and leaning into the kiss.

“Oh, for crying out loud,” a man’s voice said from the doorway. They broke apart and looked at him. “This is private property, guys. Get lost.”

“Sorry,” Jungkook said, flashing a sheepish smile. Bernard stepped aside to let them past, waving them in the direction of the exit. Even though her heart was still pounding out of her chest and her head was still spinning, Catalina made a point to check Bernard’s eyes. They were red.

On their way out, they heard the crackle of a walkie talkie and Bernard saying, “It was just some kids making out upstairs. This happens way too often, boss. We gotta start putting signs up or something.”

On their way to the car, Jungkook said, “That was a close one.”

“Was that just an excuse to kiss me?” Catalina joked, not sure she wanted to know the answer.

“It worked, didn’t it?” Jungkook said with a wink. Catalina blushed and shoved him.

“Shut up,” she said.

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caffernnn · 3 years

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Ok, but I would love to hear more about this makoharu paint and sip date 👀👀!

They deserve a fun craft night together!! And I have ideas!! 🎨🍹

- They prep by getting cheap canvases of different shapes and paints to play around with. Haru has some of his own brushes and stuff already but splurging on some extras for craft night is fine! (also Nagisa heard about the date night idea and insisted they all do a paint and sip night together whenever they’re in Tokyo next — the supplies will be inevitably ruined)

- Haru and Makoto approach art... quite differently. Haru sees a blank canvas as an opportunity and loves having the freedom to experiment; Makoto sees a blank canvas and will freeze for several minutes because being able to do anything with an endless amount of choices means endless opportunities to “mess up” somehow. Haru takes this into consideration when planning the whole thing (this is Haru’s big date to plan which is FUN)

- There’s a ✨system✨ to this whole painting thing that Haru thinks is fool-proof (or will help them narrow down what’s fun if/when they ever do this again). Some of the canvases are tiny enough for them to do a few paintings each without it necessarily taking forever or being overwhelming. 1) Haru enjoys the Bob Ross series on Netflix and wants to try replicating one of those with Makoto, 2) he’s seen videos of “pour paint” and “string art” they could try (low-pressure and abstract), and 3) they can surprise each other as a gift for the last one.

- I don’t have drink recommendations, but they do have some ~special~ beverages along with the snacks Haru’s bought/prepared (it’ll be a long night; might as well have fun with some snacks). It’s probably fruity and gets Makoto slap-happy halfway through the night

- Makoto is so impressed with how much effort and planning Haru put into the date and smiles at every turn. He tries to let loose and not hold himself to any high standards for the night; this is for fun!! They start out trying to follow a Bob Ross tutorial (easier to try that one out before they get too tipsy) and it goes as well as you think it would. Their paintings only vaguely resemble the example at the end — Makoto couldn’t help watching Haru work most of the time (so he missed some steps) and Haru wasn’t invested in following the rules in the first place. Onto the next one!!

- Pour painting is fun. Haru insists they try sharing a canvas for this one and it is remarkable just how quickly Makoto can make a mess, especially with a slight buzz. They pick out most of the colors together (blues, greens, black and white) and it gets really interesting when Makoto decides they need to put their handprints somewhere on the piece. Makoto becomes a convicted fingerpainter on the loose and ddeeeefinitely got some paint on Haru’s forehead when trying to kindly move his bangs out of the way.

- Haru is about ready to tap out and just spend the rest of the night cuddling or talking but Makoto almost cries at the thought of not getting to make Haru something (big baby too tipsy 🥴) so they continue on. Haru does a simple depiction of stone steps with a bunch of shrine cats but spends most of the time watching Makoto work because his tongue is sticking out a little bit and he just looks so determined to do a good job at whatever he’s up to. By the time they reveal their art to each other, neither of them can really figure out what Makoto was going for, but Haru loves it all the same.

- They now have a tiny gallery wall of their paint night pieces and it will surely grow in time <3

#I’d love to see how a Tokyo Boys paint night would play out #but MH paint night is wonderful all on it’s own #messy artsy boys doing their darnedest #thanks for asking!!#makoharu #makoharu headcanons #ask games #anonymous #fic ideas

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winterscaptain · 4 years

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how do our favourite ajf couples handle The Talk? and also, how do they start talking about lgbtq+ things? we love communication and education in this house ✨ - 💙

alRIGHT we are going OFF under the cut about good parenting (and also aaron’s the best dad on the planet change my mind)

this is litcherally almost 1.5k words because not only are we inclusive and educational in this house, we are comprehensive and honest with our kids!

they start with consent and boundaries really early. its always “can you ask you sister if its okay to use her tablet” or “honey you're standing a little close to me and i need some space right now. can you step back?” or “i don't really want to do that right now, can we do something else?”

its easier to understand boundaries with the addition of isaac in their home environment. he needs and has very clear boundaries for his siblings and his parents, so its very clear cut from the get-go what is and isn’t okay without permission. mom and aaron are good about knocking on doors and waiting for their kids to invite them into their space, and they’re awesome about privacy and open conversations.

auntie emily has a girlfriend or two and spencer has a boyfriend, a non-binary partner, and a girlfriend over the course of the kids’ lives, which is a really neat segue into the lgbtq+ conversation. very simple -

“when you’re older, you might start feeling things for people, or you might not. there are different words for people who are attracted to different people, and those are called sexualities. for example, your aunt emily is a lesbian because she likes girls, and your uncle spencer has dated people of different genders, so he’s called bisexual.

“there are also different words for people who don’t really fit in to the ‘boy’ or ‘girl’ category. some people are a lot of one or the other, some people are a little bit of both, and others aren’t any at all.

“it’s really important to use these words respectfully, and only use them for someone if you have heard someone use them for themselves. this is a really private thing for most people, so we have to be respectful of people’s boundaries when we talk about the feelings we have for other people.

“if you ever want to talk to mom or me about feelings you’re having, we will be here for you to love you and accept you no matter what.”

(these kids are either gen z or whatever the fuck comes after them, so they’ll probably all be a little queer in one way or another, or at least explored a bit, lets be real)

they are very age-appropriate, as well. so there’s a conversation about how our bodies change when the kids are about nine or ten, and they have a lot of books for the kids to read in private, so they’re not so put on the spot.

mom and aaron do their best to tag team, but there are some things that are better to hear from your dad than your mom and vice versa.

this is also around the time the kids get the conversation about what is and isn't appropriate touching, peer pressure, and social norms (”sometimes, people will say that they’ve done something that you hadn’t thought of before or aren’t ready to do, and it might feel like everyone else has done it, too. however, you are you and you are not them. you are the only person who gets to tell you what to do, and never feel like you have to do anything for any reason.”)

jack, of course, is first, and is having these first conversations with aaron right around the time isaac is born.

when he gets further into middle school, he and aaron go for a walk and talk more specifically about consent and new feelings that might come up. idk about yall, but i knew way more than i should have in middle school and the internet has only gotten worse since then, so i’m sure jack has a vague idea of the mechanics. jack and mom also talk about values, like respect and compassion and empathy, and how those values link together with those feelings.

when they're older (late middle school, early high school), they get the conversation about stds and safety and risks and that stuff. (that’s another easy conversation with real-life examples because isaac, while very wanted, was somewhat unexpected, and so was their cousin henry.) everyone is really clear about all the ways to engage in these activities that won’t get anyone hurt, pregnant, infected, or all of the above. (all of course, with the understanding that “this is for your knowledge, not for you to just know how to go off and sow your wild oats. you’ll have plenty of time for that later, i promise.”)

the segue for isaac’s first on-topic talk comes due to a question about how jack has a different mom than the rest of them. there was a comment at school that made isaac feel a little weird (”well jack’s not your real brother. he doesn't count because he's your half-brother” - that kind of thing) so he asked mom and dad about it. he already knew that jack has a different mom, but he doesn't really know what that means.

aaron’s like “well, jack is made of different stuff because he didn’t come out of mom.”

“what kind of different stuff?”

(and of course mom thinks its hilarious and later says “you walked right into that one, honey.”)

so because isaac is isaac and loves to learn, aaron goes and grabs one of the books he got for jack, and he and mom walk through all the “stuff” that makes up a person and how it gets there. they’re a little more detailed with him than the other kids, because he really likes to know the science and mechanics of it (”dad, people are kind of like machines!” “yeah, bud, a little bit!”)

hes fascinated, of course, and he’s the easiest of the five. he also does really well with more abstract ideas of consent and boundaries as well.

when it’s the girls’ turn, they not only get the mechanics conversation (for both sex and owning a uterus) but the safety conversation. because consent was so drilled into all of them, the boys are like “aight got it, don’t be an asshole and always ask about everything all the time. cool.” but the girls are dealing with some different stuff on multiple fronts.

mom tells them about periods before they get them, so they’re not thinking they’re dying when their first period arrives. they actually help their friends a lot when they freak out, which is super sweet.

aaron reiterates this one to every kid, every time:

“there will be times where people, usually men, do not listen to you and do not respect your boundaries. i am giving you my permission to do whatever you have to do to get out of that situation. you can lie to that person, you can trick that person, and you can hurt that person if that’s the only way to get out of that situation. you can always call us and it doesn’t matter what time it is. we will never ever be mad at you. we love you unconditionally and we just want you to be safe.”

“sex, for some people, is about fun and getting some exercise in, or just another way to spend time with people. that’s okay, but just make sure you’re taking care of yourself and being safe. for other people, its a physical way to express your love to someone you really care about.”

(“oh, so that’s why there’s so many of us.” “soph don’t be rude.” “it’s true isnt it?”)

so its less of like The Talk and more of Yeah, We Can Talk About This Anytime, because mom and aaron do their best to normalize talking about this stuff so the kids won’t be embarrassed to come to them with stuff in the future.

jack usually goes to mom with more...specific questions. caro ends up going to dad more often than not, and soph and elliot split the parents pretty evenly. isaac usually goes to mom, too.

aaron’s favorite Jack Asks About Sex moment (relayed to him that night, in bed with mom) is as follows:

mom and jack are out on a walk, and jack’s like, 15ish. he just looks at her and is like “mom. hey, uh. what’s a blowjob?”

she tries not to laugh and succeeds, for the most part. in the spirit of honesty, and with the understanding of “you aren’t to do this until you are comfortable and ready and nobody else can tell you when that is,” she kind of loosely outlines oral sex and how to conduct it safely and responsibly.

“is it like...good? fun? like ugh, god, how do i put this...do you and dad...do people...nevermind.”

with a laugh - “jack. you really don’t want me to answer that. i will scar you for life if you push.”

“ugh. yikes. alright.”

aaron thought it was HYSTERICAL.

at the end of the day, they just want their kids to feel safe and loved. all five of them know that they were built and made with love, and know (within reason) that their parents love and enjoy each other.

whew. thanks for coming to my ted talk, and you can thank my parents for some of these gems lmao

#💙 anon #ajf aaron #ajf jack #ajf isaac #ajf caro #ajf soph #ajf elliot #a joyful future #tali talks cm #anon reply #tali answers stuff

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houseofvans · 5 years

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ART SCHOOL | IN SESSION WITH ROB SATO

From vibrant rainbows to familiar yet alien landscapes occupied by strange beings, LA based artist Rob Sato’s works are filled with creative energy in a loose minimalistic style. From watercolor, digital medium to acrylics and oil, Rob’s artworks and illustrations have been shown in various galleries from Giant Robot 2 to the Oakland Asian Cultural Center, where recently his original paintings for a comic called 442 were exhibited. We’re excited to chat with Rob about his work, his various collaborations and what he’s got coming up for the rest of the year. Take the Leap!

Photographs courtesy of the artist.

Introduce yourself Hello, my name is Rob Sato. I’m an artist, illustrator, and writer. Something people might not know about me is that I was a kid I was so fanatical about the Oakland A’s that when they lost in the World Series I threw a tantrum so big that I destroyed my bedroom and after that I felt so stupid I quit following baseball. Also, I’m told I have maybe one of the great poop stories of the world. It can only be related in person, so ask me about it sometime if we ever meet.

How would you describe your work and style? Eclectic? Kaleidoscopic? I’ve never had a concise answer to this question. I tend not to pin myself down because I think if I did, I’d stop making things.

Art is my outlet for the cryptic and obscure as well as the gushing spillover of foolish idealism and wild fantasy. It’s the only place I’ve ever found where you can healthily play with unhealthy thoughts, where you can explore undefined emotions, things that lurk out in the corners of consciousness that may be embarrassing or uncontrollable.

I love to make entertainment and decorative work, things that tend to be obvious, that communicate very clearly and reveal all their cards, but I also love to make work that hides things, that actively resists easy understanding or recognition and risks being super personal or unrelatable and strange. This can make things difficult, especially in the ongoing deterioration of attention spans, but I can’t help but pursue things outside of a pop sensibility and logical thought. I have to be, much of the time, in mental wildernesses. It’s hard to get there, hard to be there, and hard to come back, but it keeps me going.

Tell us about how you really started getting into art, and how that turned into what you do now? Was it something you always intended to pursue? I’ve drawn every single day for as long as I can remember. I never really thought about it. It just seems to be what I do. It’s how I have fun, how I solve problems, how I think. I’ve wanted to pursue other things like make movies or write books, but I always find myself drawing. Before I know it, it’s time for bed again.

When you are working on a new piece or upcoming exhibition or show? What’s your process like? What themes do you find yourself taking on? I explode. I used to plan things in a very directed way, but lately I’ve just let my brains spill out everywhere. I make a ton of drawings and paintings, and try my best to be fearless and open. Most of it produces failure after failure, but it shows me what might be worth building on, plus many exciting surprises reveal themselves in the process. As a show nears I start seeing what things fit together, what needs to be edited out, and how it all might form a cohesive exhibition. Sometimes the subject matter is the glue that makes everything stick, other times it’s the aesthetics. Alongside the explosion I usually have 2 or 3 pieces going at any given time that I’ve had long term plans for. These pieces can take take months or even years.

Thematically I’m all over the place. War and peace, realism and surrealism, grim realities and escapism, sober observations and dumb jokes.

What are some of your go-to art making materials? Are there mediums you want to explore that you’ve yet to get your hands on? I feel pretty comfortable with anything you can use to make a mark on a piece of paper. I’ve mainly used watercolor and various drawing tools for the past several years. I’m been having fun with acrylics and oils again, and I’ve started to play around with photography a little. I’ve had ideas for sculpture and film for years that I’d really like to finally get to. What I really want to get my hands on is more time.

Where do you find inspiration? What kind of things or people inspire what you make? Watching someone pick their nose listening to headphones and singing softly to themselves in line at the grocery store. Just watching my cat live her weird life. Even though the final artwork may not really show it, these places are usually where my ideas originate. Art has also been a place where I can put memories that have some abstract need to be recorded.

I made this series of drawings called “Bad Hands”, which started out with me laughing at these dumb hands I was drawing with academically incorrect anatomy. Abandoning correctness felt so good. In the process it triggered a memory from High School. I had been forbidden from drawing in one of my classes, so I was contorting my hands into different shapes at my desk to amuse myself. There was a hysteria over gang activity in the school at the time and the teacher freaked out thinking I was throwing gang signs and I ended up getting sent to detention.

At detention I was talking with a friend and made fun of the teacher for her mistake. A kid who was in a gang overheard and then HE misunderstood and thought I was making fun of gangs or something. On my way home from school he and a couple dudes punched and kicked me for a bit while I tried and failed to explain. I think it’s funny.

So embedded in that piece is this tumbling series of misunderstandings, these multiple layers of hands being perceived as bad, speaking in an absurd language that communicates different things to different people. I know people aren’t going to see all those layers in the final piece, but that’s where it comes from and I hope it at least sparks some thoughts about talking with our hands, and where else can you follow this kind of train of thought except in art?

I get inspired by artists who seem to approach art as an intuitive discovery process rather than a pursuit of mastery, that play is one of the more important aspects of making things. My wife, Ako, has been a huge influence on me in this respect. She’s continuously playing with various materials around her at any given time and finding out what she can do with them. Everywhere she goes she abandons a nest made of fresh creations she’s manifested out of mud, string, packaging, plants, uneaten rice, her used drinking straw, lint and whatever else was within her reach

You’ve done a lot of collaborations with companies, museums and art galleries. Do you have a favorite collaboration, and what about the collaboration do you enjoy the most? I’ve recently been collaborating with Tiny Splendor, an indie publisher and printer who have studios in LA and Oakland. It’s been really great working with them, Cynthia Navarro in LA on risographs, and with Max Stadnik, who runs the print shop in Oakland.

Max has been returning to lithography, my favorite traditional printing medium, and he printed a piece of mine inspired by mushrooms called “Growerings". It’s a full 5 color print, which means it took five separate plates and each print had to go through the press 5 times. It turned out more beautifully than I could have hoped for. Litho is a super difficult but also very fun process and the results are so rich.

I think I particularly love this collaboration because the image fits the medium so well, and the combination of the two elevates the final piece of work, When it works, the artwork and the print become more than just an image on a piece of paper. It’s more alive in some undefinable way.

Since we’re called Art School, we always ask the artists to give us their favorite art tip? Never force the thing you think you want, you’ll probably miss out on the really interesting thing that’s happening. Also, don’t drink too much coffee. I have trouble taking both of these pieces of my own advice every day.

What do you enjoy doing when you’re not making stuff? How do you chill out? I read and run. I love coffee and I love gossip and talking nonsense with friends. Also, I cannot stop watching Terrace House.

What is the last art show that you went to? What artists should folks keep an eye out for? I recently went to the Velveteria in LA’s Chinatown, which is one man’s collection of paintings on velvet. A very entertaining and very fucked up experience. I went to a life drawing session at Subliminal Projects and got to draw surrounded by Chad Kouri’s fun abstracts. I’m actually typing this interview inside an art show right now.

I’m here at my wife, Ako Castuera’s, show “Soil” at the Weingart Gallery at Occidental College. We’re here feeding worms. She sculpted this beautiful ceramic vermiculture composter for the show. It’s a grand temple for worms. The show is an act of gratitude for the exchange we have with the soil which provides the clay for ceramics, and for the worms who turn decay into healthy earth to grow new life in.

She sculpted a menagerie of creatures out of the worm poop that also populate the show. Super fun. Speaking of Ako and Subliminal, her show there with Hellen Jo and Kris Chau this past December was one of those once-in-a-lifetime powerhouse gathering of forces. That may have been the best show I’ve ever seen.

What advice would you give someone thinking about following in your footsteps? What’s something you learned that you want to pass along to art making newbies. Don’t listen to advice if it is extremely quotable. Pay no attention to it especially if it accompanies a photo of a famous artist and fits perfectly into an instagram post. If it’s easy to remember then it’s probably empty, crap inspiration. Those things are entertainments and not words to live by.

If you’re interested in making art you’ll keep making it. It takes day in, day out patience and exploration and mutation to discover how you really work, not some idea of how an artist works.

Sometimes it will be very hard, sometimes it will be so breathtakingly easy you think that your problems have been solved forever. Neither situation ever lasts, but cultivate and nurture your curiosity and what you love, and you’ll find ways to make it through the rough times and keep on making things one way or another.

Who are some of your favorite artists to follow and/or see in a show? Lately I’ve been really enjoying the work of Nathaniel Russell whose work makes this great space where funny, grounded matter-of-factness and sweet nothingness sit comfortably together. His drawing also reminds me of Ben Shahn, my all-time favorite drawer.

I really like Amy Bennet’s oils, these intimate studies of isolation in suburbia where mundanity overlaps with quiet drama and melancholy. Her work obliquely reminds me of Edwin Ushiro’s work, though his stuff is the opposite of melancholic. He captures almost incidental but haunted moments from growing up in Hawaii and infuses them with warmth, and it’s in a style influenced in a super personal way by animation. It reminds me of Satoshi Kon’s movies in its well observed, slice-of-life elements. Edwin’s sketchbooks are a treasure too. Esther Pearl Watson’s recent autobiographical paintings, Hellen Jo’s latest badass watercolors, Amber Wellman’s funny, playful oil paintings, and Matthew Palladino’s watercolors are also favorites.

Megan Whitmarsh’s work is some of my favorite to see in person. Her installation with Jade Gordon at the Hammer’s “Made In LA “ show was maybe the funnest work I’ve ever seen and interacted with. I went to see the Ai Wei Wei show at the Marciano Foundation, which I thought was impressive in scale and execution but still somehow lame, but I stumbled on a Mike Kelley installation/ video piece I’d never seen before in the upstairs collection and loved it so much, but I can’t remember the name of it at the moment.

It’s 2 videos shown side by side of the same guy wearing a cape singing almost the same song simultaneously, but each version has different words at different points. It’s a love song but one version is more bitter and mean and one is sickly sweet. Anyway, highly recommended!

What do you have coming up the rest of the year that you can share with us? For just a few more days there’s a show up at the Oakland Asian Cultural Center with a bunch of my original paintings for a comic I illustrated about the 442, the Japanese American Army unit of World War II. Plus it has some personal work about Japanese American Incarceration and images from my family’s experience in the concentration camps. My grandfather was incarcerated in the Arkansas camps, and he was a soldier in the 442.

Next up, I’m in a slew of group shows all happening within a few weeks of each other this month. Poor scheduling on my part as usual, but it’s nice to be invited to so many. I just sent off my piece to the “Seeing Red” show curated by Jeff Hamada of the BOOOOOOOM art and culture blog. That show will be at Thinkspace in LA. Giant Robot has been kind enough to host another solo show for me in September.

I’ve been busy experimenting with some more 3d stuff that pushes the more narrative side of my work which I hope to show there. We’ll see how the experiments turn out. I’ve also been working on a ton of prints and ideas for books. This year I want to focus on working in print, making zines and comics, and writing a lot more.

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kmelanin · 5 years

Text

jeonggukxreaderxtaehyung

Something I had in my drafts.... a story about some stoners

NOT EDITED AT ALLLLLLLL You didn't mind being alone. In fact you chose it. You hated wasting your time and energy on petty friends, when you could be having much more fun alone with a couple of blunts. You would be lying if you said you didn't want a friend though. Someone close to you that will never leave. But that's just wishful thinking.

You lived alone. You and your black cat. She had a white tail and her name was Jane. She was your best friend. Her and MaryJane.

You recently moved to a new town, looking for new and fresh opportunities. You wanted a change and that's what you're getting. You were currently in your room. Everything now where it needs to be. Well the little stuff you had. You stood in front of your door mirror making sure you looked decent enough to go outside. You had on a white halter crop top and and long black skirt that had a slit all the way up your thigh. You had some fishnets on as well, with some black combat boots. The skirt was loose enough to move around in. You grabbed a big black jacket to wear outside. It was cloudy and you weren't sure if it was going to rain or not. You grabbed you bag and put a couple of pre rolled blunts and a lighter in it, along with your wallet and some other things you will need.

You heard about a park that was practically a campground. It had a huge forest on one side and the campground on the other. There was a entrance where town's people can hike and walk the trails. You wanted to find a spot to smoke. A little hideout.

Once you got there, you started heading up, you wanted a nice view. You put your earpods in to avoid anyone. You passed some people here and there. Once you almost reached the top, there was a smaller path leading into a bush, but you couldn't help it and walked down it anyways. There was a little opening off to the side and you find a perfect clearing behind the bush. It was surrounded but big and little trees. Except for the clift, where you could see the water and some cabins. You thought it was secluded enough to smoke.

You took your earphones out incase anyone were to sneak up on you. You then smoke and think. You sat on a rock and also played some soft music. It was around six pm and the sun was starting to go down. It felt way too good to be true when you looked up from your phone and seen the sun setting on the other side of the city, passed the camp site. You could practically see everything. You didn't know if it was because you were a blunt in a half, but it was just so beautiful. It gave you hope for this new city.

The lighting was really pretty, so you pulled snapchat out and started to play around with it and you smoke the rest of your second blunt. You took some selfies and post them. You even took some videos. When the lighting was really golden, you took a big hit while recording. As you were blowing out a guy popped out behind you in your video, and it scared the fuck out of you. You quickly stand up, dropping your phone in the process.

“Fuck” You look down and grab your phone. You wanted to cry when you seen that it was shattered, there was no way you were going to be able to get another one right now. You were living off of your savings right now, until you got a job.

“Shit, is it okay?” His voice was deep, making you look back at him. His hair was longer, covering his eyes a bit. But it was messy so his eyes poked through a bit. They were wide and you realized that he didn't even know you were there. You sighed and turned your phone to him.

“What do you think?” You sounded irritated and he noticed right away. He felt so bad. It was all his fault, he thought.

“I'm sorry, no one really knows about this spot, so you kind of startled me.” He looks down nervously. That gave you a second to look at him more. He had on a large button down and it was tucked it. It looked really smooth, soft, and silky. His pants were black, tight around his waist, but were extremely loose all the way down. You were confused to how he looked so good but in such loose clothing.

“I'm sorry for intruding on your area. I was getting ready to go anyways.” You put your phone in your bag and walked towards the entrance. But he quickly steps in front of it and pulls out a plastic baggy with two rellos and some nugs of weed.

“Let me smoke you down.” He smiles a bit. The vibe he gave you wasn't a dangerous one, but he still made you nervous.

“What kind of rellos?” You ask, raising your brow.

“Swishers.”

“Ew.” You cringe and you walk around him, walking down the hill.

You were almost to the entrance when a guy walks passed you, his red hair catching your eye.

“Hey, were you at the top? Have you seen a guy with longer hair, kind of baggy clothes?” He asks. His hair was parted and styled back a bit, he was in black cargo pants and an oversized black shirt.

“Um yeah. If we are thinking about the same person yeah.” You nod and turn to walk away. But his voice stops you again. “Wait, i've never seen you here before. Town isn't that big…”

“I just moved here.” You say nodding once again.

“Oh!, well I'm Jeongguk. Guessing by your eyes, you're into something I am. Match sometime?” He asks smiling at you. His eyes were so bright and hopeful.

“If you ever see me again, sure.” You turn around and walk home.

The rest of the night, you finished unpacking your clothes and ordered food, since you didn't have any food in your home yet.

You wondered if everyone in this town looked like the two guys you've seen today. If you, you needed to move ASAP because you can't handle it. You're a fool for even thinking that they were made for you. But you were highly upset that you didn't take his offer. He seemed nice, they both did. But your stubborn attitude pushed them away. You could’ve had friends.

Over the next week, you've put in over thirty job applications, just needing options. You've also managed to get your home put together. You bought a new tv and couch. But everything else you had. You just finished putting up one of your last paintings. One that you did. It was abstract. Something you did when you were really high. It was the rasta colors with black and grays added.

It was almost midnight, and you decided to go back to the spot and smoke a blunt. You hoped that since it was so late that there will be no one there.

You used the flashlight on your broken phone to make your way up. You did it quickly wanting to get there. You wanted to scream when you heard laughing. You peeked through seeing two figures there. There was a small fire and the tip of the clift, away from trees. The was soft music playing and it smelled like straight weed.

It was them.

“Are you guys always here?” You ask coming around the bush and into the secluded place. They jumped a bit and looked back at you.

“Not really in the mornings. We tend to sleep in.” Jeongguk said smiling. He stood up and walked towards you.

“Noted, I’ll come in the morning from now on.” You back away a little annoyed that you had to walk home.

“No wait! Did you already forget what you told me?” Jeongguk grabs your wrist, he pulls you gently toward the other. You didn't answer, unsure of what to say to him. “Mhmm, you said the next time I see you we can match. You look down at the other guy, with the long hair. Then back at Jeongguk.

“Right now?” You ask.

“Why not?” He shrugs. He sits on the ground, on top of a jacket he had, and he pointed at the other big rock, wanting you to sit there. You slowly sit down, unsure of this situation.

“No, fuck…” The guy on the other rock mumbles. “ I scared the fuck out of her and shattered her phone. I told her that I would smoke her down.”

“Oh damn, okay that's fine.” He grabs his backpack and pulls out supplies to roll a big Raw cone.

“It's fine. It was an accident. I brought a blunt.” You say pulling out your small clear makeup bag that contained it.

“No. Taehyung here broke your phone. The least he can do it smoke you down.” Jeongguk says passing your he joint. You sighed taking it, you gave them a soft smile. You were happy you knew both of their names now and that you didn't have to smoke your own weed. But also kind of felt nervous because they were hard on the eye, in a great fucking way. And because this weed won't be able to fix your phone. You light it and started to puff on it.

“So Yn here is new, where from?” Jeongguk asks. You frown at his words. Not wanting to discuss anything about your old town and your past there. You just keep smoking.

“Okay, well what do you like to do?” Taehyung asks. You pass the joint to Jeongguk but he waves his hand.

“All you.” He smiles.

“I like to smoke weed, and listen to music. I don't know really, it's usually just me, myself and I. But I do like shopping, I just hate going alone.” You shrug. God you sound like a loner.

“Oh same. Honestly, other than a few other things.” Taehyung nods. You felt really insecure. You hated when everyone's attention was on you. Why did they want to get to know you? You pass the joint to Jeongguk again and he actually takes it. You thank him for letting you lungs have a small break.

“So where do you live?”

“Why are you gonna stalk me?” You ask half serious. But they both laugh.

“No silly. We live together. Maybe if you live close, we can hang out” Taehyung laughs and hits the joint next.

“Well I live down the street in the first apartm-”

“ME FUCKING TOO!” Jeongguk gets up and smiles at the new found information.

“Great.”

Over the next couple of weeks. They were everywhere you were. They insisted on showing you everything in the town. You've tried their favorite food and you've seen all of the secret hideout. Either they were in your home or you were in theirs.

It was weird at first, since you never really hang out with people. But they made sure that you were comfortable.

Then it was like you knew them like the back of your hand. Taehyung was the big softy even though it seemed like he was quiet and edgy from the outside. Jeongguk was the serious one, he made sure to look you in the eyes all of the time, especially when he wants you to know he’s telling you the truth. It was so hard to think of them as only friends.

They took care of you, they gave you food and weed all of the time. Sadly no jobs have hired you yet.

They were too good to be true. They loved being around you, they loved your cat Jane. Words from their mouth. You always felt unsure.

One thing you hated was how touchy they were. How were you supposed to stop your heart from beating so fast when they hugged you and held you so often. How were you supposed to stop your heart from beating so fast when they helped you through some of your sad moments.

Taehyung got you a new phone and Jeongguk made some paintings for you home.

Ugh, you just feel like everything is moving so fast.

You are currently changing into pajamas, in the living room was Jeongguk waiting for you on the couch for movie night. Taehyung wasn't feeling to well. You both earlier took him some soup and books to read.

You were nervous, like always. You grabbed your soft blanket and you went into the living room. You looked over at them and smiles softly. Jeongguk sat on one side of the couch, his hair freshly dyed a berry red and his pajamas consisted of a black t-shirt and black plaid pants.

He looked over to you and smiled. He then patted the couch next to him, wanting you to sit next to him. You sighed wishing that you bought the chair that you seen at the store the other day. You walked over and sat on the other side of the couch. You propped your legs up so that he couldn't scooch any closer. He looked at you confused.

“Why don't you wanna sit next to me?”

“We are watching a movie. It's not like the view it better when i'm next to you.” You laugh it off grabbing the remote and pressing play.

“Well it is for me.” He pouts, but he grabs one of the blunts that he rolled while you were changing.

You then turned off the only light that was on other than the tv. With the lamp behind you off now, it was quiet dark You couldn't see Jeongguk that well except the tv light casting on his face. He lights the blunt and starts to smoke it.

You both watch the movie and smoke two blunts along with it. It was a comedy.

It was a time like this where you could climb onto his lap and start to kiss his soft lips. But then this is the time to also hide away and cry your pain away. You knew damn well that you weren't his type. You wish you could just get over these feelings.

Towards the end of the movie, you felt his fingers grab your foot. But you snatch it back and gave him a questioning look.

“Umm.”

“I was going to massage your feet.” he looks at you with a ‘duh’ expression. But that just makes you laugh.

“Are you serious.” Your laugh dies out. “And just the other day Taehyung tried to give me a back massage.” You smile. “ You guys are hilarious. You should save those hands for a future girlfriend.”

“Right.” He tries to grab your feet again, but you tuck them away from him.

“Ha ha ha.” You roll your eyes. That made you realize that you just smoked two blunts and that you were indeed high as fuck. “Stop playing with me. I don't think my heart can handle it.” You were serious but made it sound like a joke. He didn't say anything back.

When the credits were rolling, you turned the lamp back on.

“So are you spending the night or going home?”

“I don't want to stay with Taehyung or I’ll be sneezing out of my ass.” He shakes his head. You shook your head at his words and gave him a little laugh.

“Whatever Gguk. Goodnight.” You say standing up. But he stops you. In fact, in a blink of an eye he was on one side of the couch to the other. His body was stuck to yours and his arms around you.

“Ill stay with you instead.” he says. You tried to stand up, and you thought he might actually let you. But instead he just pulls you back down onto his lap. He moves your body so that you were facing him.

“Jeongguk, i'm tired.”You whine, trying to get out of his hold.

“You know, I'm really happy that I met you.” He mumbles against your head.

“You both always tell me.” You sigh. You might have sounded mean, but they literally tell you this all of the time.

“I'm serious, you make me so happy.” His arms tighten around you, giving you a firm back hug.

“Why are you all sappy tonight? We watched a comedy last time I checked, not a romance.” You turn and look at him. His eyes raised and looked into yours. The whites of his eyes were slightly red, and they were lower. His hair was messy and loose since there wasn't any products in it.

He breathing got heavy, and he didn't say anything. You were stuck wondering what he was thinking. He grabbed one of your hands and brought it up to his chest. You felt his heart beating faster than normal.

“Are you too high or something?” You mumble. He sticks his tongue into his cheek.

“Wanna go out to eat tomorrow night?” He asks you softly, confusing you because he changed the subject.

“I promised Taehyung a movie night tomorrow.” You pout a bit, wanting the food.

“No, it's okay. Don't pout.” He murmurs. He grabs your face with one of his hands. With the other he leans both of you down and he buries his face into your neck.

Your eyes would've gave away your uneasiness, but thankfully his eyes were closed. One hand around your waist, holding you close and the other hand against your chest, holding your face close to his.

“G-gguk.” You whisper trying to look at him, but he just sticks his head further into your neck, hiding his face away.

“Shh, I just want to sleep with you next to me.” His words brushed against his your skin, your skin gaining shivers. This is the closest he has ever been to you.

Sure he's given lingering hugs, or his hands would hold your arm or wrist, so that you would stay close. You’d never give him your hand, you would be crossing the friendship line.

This, right now is crossing the line. But you can't just push him off and go to your room, he was in a weird mood and you didn't want to hurt his feelings. As his friend you can stay here and comfort him.

“Ill stay, but i'm not comfortable like this.” You words breaking the little silence episode that was happening. Jeongguk opened his eyes and let you go. You got up and turned off the lamp. He moved a bit so you could have more room to get comfortable. But you shake your head and hold your hand up.

“My bed is much more comfortable than this. Plus you're in Jane’s favorite sleeping area.” You say looking down at your cat sleeping soundly on the floor. Since it was dark you couldn't see what his face looked like, but he got up and grabbed your hand. You freaked and pulled him towards your room. You tried to remove your hand from his, but he quickly realized and laced his fingers with yours. Your heart was beating extremely fast as you both walked down the hall.

Once you reach your room, you've managed to let him go, you get into bed and pat the other side for him. The moonlight coming from the window shined on his face. He looked down at you with this intense gaze.

He wasn't sure if this was safe for him. Should he lay in the same bed as you? He wanted to scream at Taehyung for getting sick. He was suppose to be here tonight, to take everything to the next step. But it wasn't like he got sick on purpose. In fact he was so upset that he refused to even come to movie night, because he didn't want to get you sick.

Taehyung is the calm and soothing one, not him. He knew he could make things intense. But shit, he didn't want to scare you.

His eyes bore into yours as he grabs his shirt and pulls it over his head. He walks to the other side and climbs in. You lay down, not wanting to take up his personal space. But two hands under the cover pulls you. One of his legs go over yours and his arms hold you in. You sighed, knowing that you won't be going anywhere for the rest of the night. You calmed down and fell asleep.

The next morning, you woke up to patterns being traced up your arm, around your neck and over your face. You knew it was Jeongguk, and when his finger got to around your eyes, you opened them.

“Good morning.” His voice was rough, like he had just woken up. His leaned over you, laying on his side and his arm holding his head up. One of his legs were still over yours, partially caging you in.

“Good morning Jeongguk. You smile. He was acting the same. Still so close. Usually, if they spend the night. They sleep on the couch, or on the floor. Sometimes one of them would end up in your bed, but they wouldn't be so close. As soon as they wake up, they would be asking what you wanted for breakfast, or what type of coffee.

But now, he won't stop staring at you. Making you question how you look, after just waking up. His eyes roam over your face, landing below on your lips everyone now and then. You ask him if he wants to wake and bake, but he doesn't say anything. You ask him if he’s hungry. He just frowns and licks his lips.

Every possible reason going through your head, you wanted an answer. Why was he acting like this? You've dismissed every possible answer if it involved anything more than friends...but what if? He was still tracing patterns on your skin, looking everywhere but your eyes.

“Jeongguk…” You say his name, his head leans up towards you, his eyes catching onto yours. You lick your lips, unsure of what to say. But his eyes snap to your lips, watching you. Now your heart was beating fast.

“Do you want to kiss me?” You heart stopped then, everything was too much. You literally just said that out loud. You were getting overwhelmed. But no one would be able to tell on the outside. So you knew that you were getting yourself riled up for no reason. But this was a reason right?

Your words made his eyes pop back to yours. He opens his mouth to speak, but nothing comes out. But he nods. Then it was like he let out his breath that he was holding. He nods faster, and pulls you closer, whining a bit. He leans down a bit, almost connecting your lips. But he stops.

“I can't.” his words stopped everything. Your face instantly fell into a frown. And Jeongguk knew he was fucked no matter what happens now. He can’t kiss you because he agree with Tae to wait until you all were together. He knows how easy it was to piss you off. How easy it was for you to shut everyone out.

“Get off of me then.” You voice was cold, unlike the nervous one before.

“Yn, wait.” He tries to stop you, but you pushed him off of you and you left the room. You didn’t want to be near him anymore. Not after he just embarrassed, and played with you like that. You go into the bathroom and locked the door behind you. You thankfully grabbed your phone before and you hooked it up to the stereo system in your bathroom. Really like a $10 speaker. You turned it up full blast with your most hypest music and got into the shower. You didn’t want to hear him. And thankfully you couldn’t hear him banging on the door to let him in.

When you got out of the shower, and he nowhere to be found. You took a deep breath, unable to get what happened out of your mind. Now how were you supposed to be around him?

You finished getting ready for the day in a sweat suit. You had to run a few errands before going to see Taehyung. When you were out, you got some popcorn and picked up the movie he wanted. On the way home. You stopped at the Gas Station needing some gas. And some candy. Going there was a last minute thought. And you really wished you didn’t, because as soon as you got out of the car you seen Jeongguk. He was walking out of the store and his eyes went right to you. You quickly opened the door, you heard something drop and you looked back. You seen him drop the drink he had in his hand and was running towards you.

Full panic sets into you and you quickly step back around your door. Since your vehicle was taller, you had to step up. You lift your foot up and step up, and you’re spun around in place. You look at Jeongguk, and was just below your eye level since you were up.

“Jeongguk what are you doing? People are around, and you’re practically manhandling me.” you nod towards his hands on your wrists. He doesn’t say anything for a second.

“Let go of me.” You sit down in your seat. His figure not letting your legs go in.

“You don’t understand.” He mumbles. But you just scoff.

“No, I understand. You like to play with people's feelings. I should’ve known that the first time I seen you.” You push his arms off of your and you get into your car all the way.

“Yn” You slam your door in his face and left, forgetting about the gas.

Jeongguk pulls out his phone and rings Taehyung.

“Whats up Gukkie?” Taehyung still sounded a bit stuffed, but better than before.

“I fucked up.” His voice sounded painful, putting Tae on alert.

“What? What happened?” Jeongguk went on about what happened. He knew he was going to be yelled at, so he started walking down the street. Sure enough, Tae did.

Taehyung was the type to plan, he liked things done smoothly. Unlike Jeongguk, his liked to dive right in, and take what he wants. Jeongguk realized a while ago that he had to take it slow, but last night he couldn't control himself.

“Fuck, she just messaged me saying that she doenst feel good. She isn’t coming over.” Taehyung's voice saddened as his words went on. Jeongguk felt disappointed in himself.

“I'm sorry.”

“It was probably to soon anyways.”

At first you planned on avoiding them for a couple of days. But then you got a call from a grocery store from down the street. They were calling about the application you had put in, they wanted a loyal employee, because they were sick of teenagers applying and quitting. You agreed right away.

Those couple of days turned into weeks. Three to be exact. You didn't completely avoid them. They would ask to hang out, over text or facetime, but you would tell them you had to work. You wouldn't tell them where though, when they ask, you would completely change the subject. Or tell them you had to go.

You just had to box up these stupid feelings like everything else and you should be fine. Just a couple more weeks.

But, when you see a couple of hands place down cookies and chips with some waters down on the table to check out. You looked up and seen an extremely stoned Jeongguk and Taehyung. You were afraid that this was going to happen.

Taehyung's hair was a bit shorter, his eyes were red from smoking, it looks like he had red makeup around his eyes. He had a button down dress shirt, it was a bit big.

Jeongguk with a headband under his hair, a blue oversized shirt with black cargo pants. His eyes matching Taehyung's, his eyes as red as his hair.

You quickly grab their snacks and ring them up.

“Did you guys find everything okay?” You ask putting the snacks in a paper bag. They don't reply. Jeongguk hands you a fifty dollar bill before you could even say the amount. You put their bag on the counter and he grabs it along with his change.

“H-have a nice day.” You give them a small smile and quickly look down at your cash drawer and close it. When you looked back up they were already walking away. You watched them leave, you watched as Taehyung grabbed Jeongguks hand pulling him faster.

They must not of known you worked here. They really wanted to get away. You sighed, and smiled as a lady came up to check out.

Towards the end of your shift. You waited for the next cashier to come and take over. Your feet were killing you and you just wanted to get home. Since you lived down the street, you walked everyday, needing the exercise. When she comes, you give her the key to the drawer and you grab your belongings and leave. You walked out of the front sliding door and walked towards your street.

You were just about to cross the street when a familiar Jeep pulls up in front of you. You were shocked to say the least. Did they really wait until you were done with your shift? You tried to walk around but they just scooted forward. You knew you wouldn't be able to go anywhere. You sighed and got in the back seat. There was a small rolling tray with a fat blunt sitting there.

“Smoke.” Taehyung says from the driver's seat, he then turns the music up and drives. The music was too loud to even try and talk to them. So you take a lighter out of your pocket and sparked up.

You watched the scenery out of the window as Taehyung drove around. They played some of your favorite music and joined you with their own blunts. No words spoken to one another.

By the time you were down to the glass tip, he was driving down your street, your heart started beating faster and faster. Your hands getting clammy. But you just take a deep breath in, hoping to calm your nerves.

Once they pulled in, you got out and walked towards the door, avoiding them a bit longer. You didn't say anything as they followed you. You buzzed in and walked up the stairs. Once you got to your door to unlock it, their bodies didn't stop until they were up against yours. Your hand was shaking a bit, missing the keyhole a bit.

Once you got in. Taehyung shuts and locks the door, something he always bugs you about because you seem to forget to lock it a lot.

“I'm gonna go shower.” You say and quickly go to the bathroom. Thankfully they didn't follow. You quickly showered and put some shorts and an oversized shirt. You stood in your room, in your mirror, talking to yourself. Preparing yourself, for either losing them as friends, or something else entirely. You aren't sure what you're scared of more. Whatever happened, you can't be a wimp.

You took a deep breath and walked into your living room. You expected them to be sitting there talking, not standing there, in almost the same position. Except their shoes and jackets were off.

Taehyung grabs your hand and pulls you towards the couch. You both sit down, and Jeongguk follows behind. Now you were sandwiched between them.

You weren't sure if you should speak first, or wait. You knew you were mean for what you did, everybody hates being avoided. But it just happens. Now with them so close, you almost forgot how good it felt to be near them.

You gave in and leaned into Taehyung, you snuggled yourself into him, and he happily welcomed you in. He wrapped his arms around you and kissed the top of your head.

“Jeongguk told me what happened. He didn't mean to hurt your feelings, that wasn't his intentions. You have to know that.” Taehyung's voice was soft, but it still annoyed you. Did they not see what they do to you? You leaned up a bit to look at Taehyung in the face.

“So, if I leaned up…” Which you did. Your lips were moments away when you stopped. “Wanting to kiss you, but then don't because I ‘can't’” You but more diction on can't. Showing how annoyed you were. Taehyung's face didn't help. His stoned eyes looking dead into yours, he licks his lips and he started to lean forward a bit but you back away.

Now Taehyung understands what Jeongguk meant. Being that close, is almost impossible to keep himself in control.

“I don't know what's with you guys. But I think you need to get laid or something.” You can't assume that they like you. What if they didn't like you back? You would look dumb. You look dumb for even wanting both.

Apparently your little joke didn't settle with them. You didn't notice, but Taehyung looks over at Jeongguk and nods.

“I'll see you tomorrow, you and Jeongguk need some time together.” Taehyung grabs you face softly with his hand and he kissed you softly. Before you could react he grabs his jacket and shoes and leaves.

You still sat there, stunned, frozen, unable to move. You slowly turn your head to Jeongguk who was staring back and had a little smirk on his face.

“Did you just see what he did?” You ask, your voice barely coming out above a whisper. He laughs softly and he nods. Jeongguk was so happy. Not only did Taehyung give him the chance to redo his mistake, but he kissed her first. Which is what he wanted. So now Jeongguk was free to do whatever, with your consent of course.

“I know I assume things quickly, so talk before I freak myself out.” You cheeks were on fire at the moment. You wanted to know what he was thinking, before you start thinking for him. He leans forward, facing you more.

“You know I'm not good with my words.” His sighs, he looks everywhere but you. He had a slight frown; his thinking face.

“Well you can't show me apparently.” You roll your eyes. You started counting in your head, needing to calm down. You always get so defensive. Taehyung definitely kissed you sober.

“Now-now I can.”

You eyes met his, and they were big and glowing. He made sure to keep eye contact, so you knew he was serious. If something doesn't happen soon, he was going to explode. He never felt such a weird connection. Everytime he is around you, his body lights up and his mind can't stop running.

When he first seen you, walking down the hill. He did a double take, times two. He knew a quick way to get you to be comfortable with him, is to help you out and hang out with you as much as possible. If not, he would just be in bed thinking about you. You were such a closed off person, but once he got in… he was definitely a goner. Then he realized that Taehyung felt the same way. Jeongguk and Taehyung agreed that they didn't want to be in relationship with each other, just with you. They both have been friends for so long, that they understood each other so well. Sharing would be no problem. It was all up to you.

So when you avoided not just him but the both of them, he felt like he lost someone. He hated being so dramatic.

“Why did you avoid me for so long?” He asks you changing the subject. He wanted to catch you off guard. So he can show you his separate feelings for you.Not just kiss you because Taehyung did.

“Work” You quickly say. You look away wanting him to see your bluff. But he did anyways.

“That’s not that only reason.” He grabs your hand, pulling it into his lap and holding it firmly.

“I left my old town because of an ex. I don’t deserve anyone, and the fact that you and Taehyung just fell into my life. I knew it was a bad idea from the beginning.” You looked up at him. “I avoided you for so long because I needed to get rid of this want to be near you all of the time. Get rid of this stupid ass butterflies.” When his eyes widen at your words, you looked down embarrassed. “At some point you are going to leave me and I need to be ready. I hate getting attached so fast.” Your heart felt so heavy.

A hand comes in front of your face and to the other side of your face. It pushes your face towards Jeongguk’s. He meets you halfway. Everything was so fast, but it seemed to slow down when his lips got closer and closer. His eyes were squeezed shut. When his lips were connected to yours. You panicked a little on the inside because the butterflies were back. When you started to kiss him back, that’s when he let go. With both of his hands, he grabbed you and pulled you as close as he could to himself. He kissed you so hard and fast, as if you were going to disappear. He started to slow down and he pulled away. His lips were red and starting to swell. His breathing was uneven. He leaned his forehead on yours and look you in the eyes.

“As long as you want me to be here, I’ll be here. Taehyung too, we aren't going anywhere.” His voice touched your skin. Your whole body was on fire, and you couldn't even think straight. You would probably look down, but his hands held you in place.

“Gguk-” You raised your hands up to his. Needing him not to be so close right now. You don't know what to do. But what you did know is that you really, really wanted to kiss him again. His lips stopped you from talking any further. He knew what you were going to say, that you needed to think about it, but it's only to avoid him even further.

“Stop overthinking everything.” He sighs and leans back. He knew he wasn't going to get anywhere. Taehyung still had to do his magic, and use his words. He knew that you would understand and realize that what you feel is okay, you were so oblivious.

“I haven't even told you why I randomly moved to this town. Yet-”

“That doesn't mean anything. You telling me that won't change the way I feel about you, nor Taehyung.”

He was practically telling you that they both liked you, not the way he wanted to confess but it gets the job done.

At this point, anything can happen and you wouldn't be surprised. You looked up at him, feeling your cheeks burn. His hair was all crazy and his face was almost as red as his hair. His eyes were on you, waiting.

You needed to really confirm this. Confirm these feelings, then you could move on to whatever was next. You sit up, you tuck your legs underneath you and face him.

“Come here.” You say. He frowns a bit, confused. But he gets up, in the same position as you. He looked down at you, waiting. “Kiss me.”

#stonerau #taehyung #jeongguk #jungkook #jeon jeongguk #jeon jungkook #kim taehyung #tae #kpop #au #ambw #friendtolover #angst #fluff

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boogiewrites · 5 years

Text

Mae Flowers 4

Characters: Alfie Solomons x Mae LeBlanc (OFC)

Word Count: 4900

Summary: A modern, magical Alfie Solomons AU.

Warnings/Tags: Language.Magic/Supernatural. Soul mates. Racism, microaggressions. Some domestic fluff, getting to know you stage. Talk of past neglect, depression, anxiety.

Click on my screenname then go to Mobile Masterlist in my bio for my other works and chapters. (Had to do this since Tumblr killed links, sorry.)

Mae wakes up for the second morning in a row well rested. She'd gone to bed with a full stomach, having eaten their weight in seafood and grits the night before. She felt more at ease today with the fact that there was a man living with her now. He'd stood up for her, helped her cook and put Ruth and Nance's minds at ease for. She felt a warm feeling when she thought of him. It could be the magic, she thought.

Her inner light was growing stronger, it was being fed with another power like it's own, the darkness stirring up her previously unstable energies, making it build and heal itself from all the years alone and unsure. Alfie gave her a strange sense of fullness, stability of sorts she hadn't expected. Normally having another person in her life would make her feel anxious, second-guessing everything she did at the expense of her own peace of mind to keep the other person comfortable. But that wasn't happening with him.

She throws on her robe, scratching her head and yawning big, the smell of coffee hitting her nose as soon as her slippers start bopping across the old hardwood floor towards the kitchen. Alfie stood leaned against the counter in pajama pants and a soft, sleep rumpled t-shirt. His hair was a mess, one side flat and the other sticking up, his eyes lazy with smacking lips as he scratched his stomach waiting on the coffee pot to deliver.

"Mornin' love." he says with a slow nod, his voice deep and sleepy.

"Mornin'." she grumbles, taking a seat at the table in a sunbeam. Percy lets out a little 'mrrrrowl' of greeting, bumping his head to hers as she runs her fingers along his spine. "Hey Perce." she mutters, his tail swishing in her face and making her nose twitch. She's slowly waking up, Percy laid out in front of her on his back, trying to be cute and keep her attention.

"Hazlenut or French Vanilla?" Alfie asks, standing with the fridge door open, staring into the dull glow.

"Thought you could read my mind." she smirks, her head slowly turning to him.

"I can but you don't know which ya want." he retorts with a snarky smile.

"Hazlenut." she answers with a nod, watching him bring the two mugs over to the table as he plops down next to her, landing in the chair with a loud scoot of its legs across the floor.

So what's on the 'ol agenda today?" he asks, sitting up straight and cracking his spine.

"Uh... not much. We got ahead yesterday." she nods and closes her eyes, taking a sip of the hot liquid and letting it warm her from the inside out. "Thanks for that by the way." she says, eyes blinking open now, looking more alert.

"Don't mention it. I'm here to help." he nods and watches her over the steam rising from his mug.

"If you need to like, do stuff here today you can." she offers. "Just basic stuff for me today to do at the shop. No orders or anything. All caught up for the week." she states with a lazy smile of thanks. "If you wanna unpack and get used to the place... bond with Percy." she nods over the lazy white cat soaking up a sunbeam.

"I do have stuff I can do today with ya out. Get me things all situated. What do ya say Percy?" he asks the cat with a smirk on his face.

Percy raises his head and looks at him, blinking slowly. A weak meow escapes him before he lays back down totally uninterested.

"He doesn't care." Alfie chuckles.

"Alright." she nods, taking a bigger sip. "I'm gonna take this." she holds the mug in both hands and stands. "Gonna get a shower and get ready and be on my way. Make whatever you want, Friday's are my day I get a smoothie on the way to work." she says and he feels her excitement about the future purchase.

"Will do. I'll keep it simple. Lots of liftin' 'n that to do today." he groans and stretches, as she waddles back into her bedroom. ---- The calm she'd felt at home felt farther and farther away the further she got from home. The usual heaviness, that quivering ball of nerves that told her something was wrong, that she was wrong started to grow back into its usual place in her stomach. Mae sips her berry smoothie and leans over the front counter, her jeans feeling a little tight today, her toes curling and uncurling in the ballet flats that matched her green t-shirt that she'd had made for her company. Her loose spiral curls dancing around her shoulders, the various shades of almost black brown catching the light that came through the high windows of the crowded and humid building. This would be the only moment of peace that she got for the day, as the downpour of things that made her want to crawl up and disappear seemed to hit all at once, leaving her dazed and confused.

First, Jessica shows up. She struts in the door tits first with her large Starbucks cup in tow, overlined lips sucking away at the straw. She doesn't even look at Mae until she's right in front of the counter.

"What do ya need today Jessica?" Mae asks with a perfectly polite attitude, setting her drink down to the side.

"Where's that big leprechaun you've got in here now?" she asks with a smirk as she looks into the back of the shop.

"Leprechaun?" Mae's nose wrinkles up in question.

"What was his name. The big guy with the accent in here yesterday." she replies obviously, jutting a hip out in her annoyance.

"Oh. Alfie." Mae answers flatly.

"Yeah that big boy." she grins.

"He's not working today." she answers, trying to remain indifferent.

"Oh." she slumps and pushes her lips together into a tight line.

"He's also not a leprechaun." she clarifies. "He's English. Not Irish. And don't call Irish people leprechauns, that's just... some weird kind've racist."

"They're white and ginger, who cares?" she says without a thought and rolls her eyes. "Not like I'm calling you the n-word or something." she retorts like it means anything and Mae takes a deep breath.

"I'm not black, I'm Hispanic." she clarifies with a more forceful voice.

"Well, it's not like I'm calling you a... what's a racist word for a Mexican?"

"I'm Spanish not..."

"Tacos? Burritos? IS that something? Beans! Wait, no... Mexican jumping beans, yeah. Wait... that's not it."

"I know what you're thinking and there's no reason to say it. What do you want?" she answers more curtly.

"To see Alfie. He won't be in today?"

"No." another flat response.

"What's he doing today? Where's he at? What's his deal?" her inquisition begins, waving her cup in the air as she speaks.

Mae sighs and goes back to her smoothie. "He's at home. I don't know what he's doing. That's his business and you should respect his space. He was clearly not interested when you talked to him yesterday."

"He's just playing hard to get. You know guys, they act like assholes and you just have to get them to like you by doing stuff for them and letting them make fun of you sometimes. It's all part of it. Not like you would know. Not like anyone's trying to get with you." she snaps back.

"No, but that's..." Mae lets out a heavy sigh. "Whatever." she gives up and takes a noisy sip of her drink.

"So he lives with you?" Jessica says with a tilt of her head. "You said at home. If not where does he live, you probably have that on file for his employee records or something, right?" she asks , leaning over the counter.

"He does live with me." she decides to not address the clear violation giving an employees persona information would be as she figures it's pointless.

"Wait... so are you guys like a thing?" she says with a clearly disgusted look on her face.

"No. He's a friend of a friend, he's new in town and needed a place to stay and I had a spare room."

"I have a whole guest house if he wants to stay with me. Got a pool and a hot tub." she grins. "So let him know I've got a real house for him to stay at if he wants."

"Are you saying my house is abstract?" Mae chuckles to herself.

"What?" she says with a twist of her neck.

"Nothin'." Mae rolls her eyes. "If you don't need anything I've got stuff to do... so..." she says, looking over at the tall blonde under her lashes.

"You were just standing here so SORRY... thought you had free time." she retorts.

"I just opened. I have to let the systems boot up." she explains with a deadpan delivery.

"Is he workin' tomorrow?" she asks, one hand on the counter.

"No, we're closed tomorrow."

"Then Monday then?"

"Maybe." Mae shrugs.

"He's your employee, why don't you know?" she bites back.

"Because he's new here and he might need off to run errands to get everything settled." she says offers up. "Not that it's any of your business." she mutters.

"You just let your employee take off like that? Not knowing if he'll work and he can just drive around town all day?" she asks seriously.

Mae sighs again and takes another drink, not answering as a pain grew between her eyes.

"I wanna work for you then, dang." she laughs, her mood shifting fast. "Oh my God, ARE you hiring? I'd be willing to get my hands dirty for that little... whatever he is."

"He's English." Mae rolls her eyes and lets out an exasperated sigh.

"Little... what do English people do? Drink?" she asks seriously.

"Jessica I'm not hiring and just... please go, I have things to do." Maw says with a clear tone of exasperation.

"Fine. But I'll be back on Monday to see Alfie." she sass's taking a long drink from her straw as she walks backward, keeping an eye on Mae who watches her bump into a shelf as she tries to look cool making her exit.

"Bye Jessica." Mae says shaking her head.

"Tell Alfie I said Hiiiiii." she says before leaving.

"What an idiot." Mae says rubbing her forehead.

With a thoroughly racist and rude conversation to start the day, the day only picks up speed from there. A phone call comes in, an irate customer claiming she'd sabotaged her party. An order that was entered incorrectly by the customer, a miscommunication of what sort of flowers they wanted in their arrangements. Mae didn't know how this woman had written down Black-eyed Susan's instead of sunflowers on her order sheet, or picking a Transvaal daisy over a shasta daisy, but she was certain this woman was overreacting at how the arrangements ruined her church's barbeque. Mae had pictures of flowers next to the names of them in her big folder that sat on the top of the shop counter specifically for this reason. She gave the book to customers coming in to make orders and it wasn't her fault she filled out the order how it was written and what the woman wrote wasn't right. She couldn't read her mind. But still, she was blamed, getting dog cussed for all she was worth, the woman even bringing the Lord into it and telling her she'd had to refund her in full. Which was in no way happening. After you sign off on the delivery sheet, everything is final. No refunds. There was a chance to say they were wrong before she signed, that's why Mae set it up that way. But the woman wouldn't listen and Mae ends up just saying 'I'm Sorry.' to everything she says, taking the abuse.

The woman gives up eventually after a few people are waiting for her attention for the lunch rush. She works as fast as she can, but the line grows as a little old lady requires her undivided attention, asking about every flower, telling her stories about the flowers her husband used to bring her when he was alive. On a slow day Mae would've indulged her fully but with customers waiting behind her the stress was sky high.

She apologizes and leaves the lady to talk to herself, ringing out people as fast as she can while they give her dirty looks. She had great pride in being a good business owner and people thinking she was bad at her job made her a mess. A child that was with a negligent parent that had been waiting, knocks over a shelf of succulents, her biggest sellers, destroying the handmade pots she'd made for them. In all, the day was a total shit show.

She shuts the shop up and cries as she finally gets around to cleaning up the broken pieces of pottery, nestling her little friends into one big pot for the weekend to deal with on Monday. She apologizes to them and she feels they understand, her tears falling into the new soil as she sniffles and packs them in. She hesitantly throws away the shattered pieces of pottery, thinking off all the time she spent painting and glazing each, how much time and money lost on them. How she'd have to ask for half the price until she could make more holders for the plants. A personal and a professional loss all in one.

She doesn't even skate home as she usually would. She throws her skates in her oversized work bag and walks, her feet feeling as heavy as her heart. Everything about the day had drained her. Her body was tired, her chest hurt from a racing heart all day from embarrassment and anxiety. Her pride took a hit from the disappointed looks from the customers. She takes a heavy breath, hand on the doorknob, hoping that Alfie wasn't about to add to the bad day she'd had.

As soon as she opens the door, the feeling she'd left the house with hits her again. She wipes her tear stained cheeks, setting her bag down by the end of the couch, seeing everything clean and tidy with candles lit and the smell of food coming from the kitchen. The house smelled amazing, it somehow felt amazing, like getting into a hot bath after the end of a long day. The build of depression holds strong as she sees everything he's done for her while she'd been out.

"Hello Mae!" he calls out cheerfully. "Ya need help with anyfing?" he says, moving pots around the stove top. "Give me just a second love and I'll be right in to help ya." he calls out over his shoulder.

She comes around the corner, her face was sunken and clearly upset, taking in the sight before her. A kitchen filled with a home cooked meal for them both. She sees bread in the oven, lasagna sitting on the table as he switches off burners and pushes the rest of a chopped head of lettuce into a large salad bowl. A tin of muffin batter sits on a tea towel at the end of the counter. She gets a swirling feeling in her stomach. It builds quickly and she starts to sob, putting her head in her hands.

He turns, wiping his hands on a towel as his eyes grow large at the sight before him. Her glow was dull, her curls falling into her face as her hands with their yellow chipped polish covered her crying face.

"No, no love now that won't do." he says, moving quickly over towards her. He takes her into his arms without a moments hesitation. "Come here, little Mae." he coos out, holding her to him. As much as he may have wanted, he didn't have much healing magic to pass around, he wasn't really a healer so much as a destroyer of things. "Shhh, there, there, love." he pats his hand on her thick hair, the smell of her shampoo rising up as he leans his face in close. She feels the warmth around her, the soft-spoken kind words from this man who had swept in and taken care of her without expecting anything in return. She felt her chest thump, her stomach building again and more sobs are pushed out as she lets herself wrap her hands into his t-shirt and press her forehead against his chest.

He wears a deep-set frown, not knowing what was wrong, her thoughts a roller coasting of emotions, totally unstable and making his dizzy when he tried to read them. Her magic and mind were working hard and fast and he knew something must've set off the sensitive little thing she was. "Now lovely, we can talk 'bout what's got ya upset, or we don't have to say nuffin'." he gives a nod, putting his hands to her shoulders to pull her away, taking a handkerchief that was older than her out of his pocket and giving it to her.

She wipes her eyes and blows her nose with a little toot of a sound that makes him smile as she sniffles, nose twitching like a little rabbit. "I just wanna eat and sleep." she answers, staring into his chest, not looking up at him. Her voice was small but she felt smaller. She fought the urge to tell him she didn't deserve all this special treatment, she didn't understand why someone would be doing all these nice things for her. No one else ever had. Her last caregivers, the ones who left her the house had been good people, but they never coddled her. They never cleaned for her, held her while she cried, stood up for her when others would try to bring her down. They'd always left her to her own devices. She'd never had anyone to treat her like something worth going the extra mile for. It was all a bit too much on her weak shoulders after the day she'd had.

"Well lemme finish up dinner and you go get comfy and cozy on the couch and I'll come get ya and we'll take care of that 'eatin' bit, eh?" he suggests, rubbing her upper arms as he spoke to her with a voice that she could feel warming her from the inside out. Her light tried to fight past the years of neglect to make her bloom and be able to draw from that endless well of love she had so she could give it to her herself and not just those around her. But she was still weak, and there was time to grow. So it settles, feeling it's mate so close and humming in wait with a baseline of contentment.

She takes one of the fuzzy throws on the couch and wraps it around her, grabbing one of her decorative pillows and wrapping her arms around it to try to get comfy for a moment. She falls asleep while the bread is baking, her body giving over to a much-needed recharge after the stress that the day put her through.

Alfie pulls the muffins out and lets them cool, wiping his hands and giving a nod to the first big meal he'd cooked in decades. Being alone there wasn't much of a reason to cook big and when the last group of people he ran with being musicians in the 90's, he'd never had a reason to cook for a group of people. But now he had plenty of reasons to dust off the old domestic skills that his mother and sisters had helped him learn. The baking was more familiar, as per his old cover for his criminal days, but the meals were what took the most focus. With Mae's plethora of fresh herbs to use, and come harvest time a garden full of fresh produce, he was sure cooking would be something he used to help both of them learn some new skills.

He ponders what he should cover with her the next day as he watches her sleep on the arm on the couch. A headful of curls on top of a fuzzy blanket, her lips smushed out against the pillow she clutched in her arms.

"Mae." he says gently, leaning in close, a hand to her arm to rub her awake. She grunts and puffs out air between her pink and pouted lips but doesn't wake. The softness of her makes him smile, he enjoys it a moment without having to worry about making her uncomfortable. The long dark lashes spread out over freckled cheeks, her full brows set in a scowl. All curled up under the blanket she looked so small, and he supposes compared to him she is. Standing just a bit over five feet tall he supposes, her shorter frame gives her a stocky and soft appearance. With round hips that only slightly narrowed into thick thighs, he sees her small feet sticking out from the covers. Yellow nail polish to match that on her fingers on her toes. It wasn't only her body, her hair or her sweet face with it's round, button nose that was soft but her heart was as well. He could feel her power humming quietly, even it was still timid. His darkness wants it to burst, to flow out of her as it can do within him. It wants to soak up that innocence, that sweet softness that she's made of. His closes his eyes, his darkness rumbling, soaking up her delicate heat into its cold center, Alfie feels his limbs tingle, a prickling warmness that only she could give to him.

He exhales slowly, a hand soft to her hair, pushing it back. "Mae." he says, moving to give her nose a gentle tap.

"Mmph." she grunts, nose twitching as he eyes flutter open and meet his before she sits up to straighten her back, rubbing her eyes.

"Dinner's ready, love." he says, standing back up straight.

"'Kay." she mumbles, sitting in a daze as she wakes.

He beams at her, a smile she doesn't see. "Come on to the table when ya ready." he suggests, moving to go set their places.

She plops into a chair, the sleep slowly leaving her body as she watches him move around the kitchen, a towel over his shoulder as he cuts and plates her food.

"Now 'is I learned from an Italian, yeah? Found a wonderful little market when I when shoppin' today 'n got fresh cheese." he says proudly. "I went 'n did some of your shoppin' as well while I's out. Got more cleanin' supplies since I used most of 'em today. Got the bathroom and the kitchen. Dusted and vacuumed." he nods casually while trying to recall everything he did, wanting to let her know what he'd been up to, letting her know he was useful to her. "Already watered and fed all the babies." he chuckles. "Although I think a few in the greenhouse could use a personal touch. Wasn't about to try it meself. I'd just mess up all your hard work. So I figured we could start wif those tomorrow hmmm? Start simple with somefin ya like." He moves his eyes to hers and finds a puzzling look on her face. Her eyes give true meaning to the term puppy dog eyes. Her mouth is slack, partially open and her big hazel eyes are glimmering at him. Not tears yet, but the look in her eyes says lots of things. He feels that loneliness that resides in her throbbing stronger. He decides to switch the conversation. "I made the bread, eh? That flour you use is top notch, love." he tries giving her compliments but it doesn't seem to help. "Used some cherry tomatoes out of the greenhouse for the salad, hope ya don't mind. The muffins are ready as well, made 'em with blueberries I found at the grocery. Hope ya like those." he continues plating her food. He doesn't look at her face, not wanting to seem nosey as she was clearly going through something. But he sees big fat tears fall onto the table top and he can't stop himself. As soon as he makes eye contact, he sees her face much like a baby's, a trembling bottom lip, wet rosy cheeks rounded before her face contorted and she hid it in her hands. "Oh come now, little one." he says dropping the utensils and kneeling next to her. "What is it love?" he rubs her back gently in a circle, his palm tingled as he felt the chaos inside her. Mending her was going to be a very messy job.

"Why are you so nice to me?" she chokes out between sobs.

His chest aches, his face falling out of it's friendly and polite expression he'd held in place for her sake. "Oh Mae," he whispers, pulling her to his chest. "There, there." he shushes her. "Why would I not be nice to you? You've been nothing but nice to me." he explains. "You're my mate. Your well bein' is me own, I would only be hurtin' myself to not try to take care of you." He invades her privacy, shutting his eyes and trying to see what was causing all the trouble.

He feels the day she'd had. He sees a lifetime of abandonment and neglect. All the bullies growing up, all the hardships she was given to overcome from a young age. An absent father, a childhood spent in the system and an adult life of loneliness and rejection. Putting herself out there time and time again to be met by men who didn't care or understand. He didn't see the loneliness, he felt it. He felt her bed only ever being empty and cold, he feels her heart struggling to maintain it's one-sided giving when no one would replenish it. Her power touches him as he's washed in all this hurt she knows. The light shines within her. With his eyes shut he can see it, glowing like the sun on an overcast day, trying to break through the barrier of gloom that spread across it. He can feel it's tired, that it's just as lost as her. But he most importantly feels that it knows he's there, whether Mae knows or understands it herself. Her power knew better things were ahead for them and Alfie felt more certain he would protect and help this beautiful soul as long as he could.

"I just... No one's ever... I'm not used to it. It feels..."

"Like you don't deserve it." he finishes her thought, hearing it ring true in his own head for so long.

"Yeah," she says with a whimper, looking back up at him. "How did you?" she trails off, wiping her nose.

"Because I know it too." he nods, using his handkerchief to wipe at her face. "But it's not true. Don't listen to that voice. It's a liar." he says sternly. "You deserve the world, Mae. You are bright and full of love and good and the world needs that so very desperately. You deserve every bit of kindness that comes your way. Don't you dare think differently."

Her doe eyes blink up at him, never having heard something like that said to her before in all her almost thirty years. "I..." she begins, not knowing where to finish her thought.

"You just sit and think about that, yeah?" he gives her a nod. "Let's eat on the couch." he suggests. "We'll stop this cryin'. We'll go get cozy and we'll eat until we can't breathe and that'll make ya feel better. Watch somethin' ya like?"

She nods and swallows noisily.

"Good girl." he gives her back a pat before pulling away. "Now go get ya blankets and I'll grab the plates." he says with a self-assured tone.

She lowers her head, eyes on the ground as she gets them each a blanket. He gets everything else in order and they flip through Netflix together, large plates of food sitting on pillows in their laps.

"What do ya like, eh? Nature documentaries I bet." he suggests and she gives a small but enthusiastic nod as she sticks her fork into her lasagna.

They sit together, side by side, eating the towering plates of homemade food. Alfie talks over the narrators, sharing things he knew, but mostly making up his own narration in an attempt to make her smile. "Now 'is one ain't lookin' for a mate, he's lookin' for trouble. He thinks 'is one's been talkin' shit, yeah. By the looks of 'em I'd say he's right. Look at those little shifty beady eyes, ya can't get that look past me." he wags his finger at the TV and looks down to see her smiling after a tiny huff of a laugh escapes her. "There she is." he says proudly, giving her a nudge with his elbow. She looks up at him bashfully for a shared glance, before turning her face back to the tv with a tiny smile that told him she'd be just fine.

@jaegeeeeer @negansdirtygirl22 @brianaisasongbird @hardygal69 @emerald-bijou @captstefanbrandt @coolgh0st @tinastarkandco @stylishmileage

#Alfie Solomons #Peaky Blinders #alfie solomons imagine #alfie solomons fanfic #alfie solomons angst #alfie solomons imagines #alfie solomons fan fiction #alfie solomons x reader #alfie solomons x ofc #alfie solomons fluff #alfie solomons fanfiction #peaky blinders f #peaky blinders fic #alfie solomons au #alfie solomons magical au #tom hardy #modern alfie solomons au #alfie solomons modern au

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entrailsandkaijudrifting · 5 years

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((Vintage fic from The Old Blog!))

He wasn’t surprised Newton showed up. He’d been expecting it, bracing himself for it. What did surprise him was how quiet his colleague was being. Usually when Newt was upset or nervous, he had a tendency to ramble. Today, he’d followed Hermann out to the train platform without a word.

Hermann shifted a bit uncomfortably under the weight of his second bag. “Here, dude, let me take that,” said Newton.

“No, Newton, it’s…”

“Let me take it. Your knee’s going to get stiff as it is from sitting for…” Newton took the bag off Hermann’s shoulder without so much as a by-your-leave. “…however the fuck long it takes to get to London.”

Newton’s hands brushed against Hermann’s shoulder as he took the bag. Hermann tried not to wince away from the touch. He wasn’t sure he succeeded. Don’t. You’ve made your choice, Gottlieb, time to stay the course…

“You’ll be fine,” said Newton abruptly. “I’m surprised schools aren’t falling over themselves for you already.”

“Hmm.” Honestly, the potential jobs waiting for him in London had been the last thing Hermann was worried about. “A few universities have made me some promising offers.”

“See? There you go.” Newton wasn’t looking at Hermann. He had his gaze fixed on the train tracks. “Tell me who hires you, I’ll let you know if their math nerds have some kind of rivalry with our math nerds.”

“MIT is definitely taking you back, then?”

“Well, there’s nothing official, I mean…I haven’t, I haven’t actually asked yet?” Newt shifted from one foot to another. “But they said I could have my job back when this thing is over, and, well, it’s over.”

Over. No movement from the Breach’s previous location, all the loose ends tied. There was no more space in the world for people like Newton Geiszler and Hermann Gottlieb. So back to academia they went, though perhaps with a bit more clout behind their names than before. And with some other things changed, added that irritating voice in the back of his head that always sounded a bit like Newton. The most infuriating part was that it wasn't wrong. The job offers hadn’t concerned him, nor had his lack of a definite, permanent place to live in London. What was concerning him was…

“Everything goes back to the way it was, huh?”

Hermann stared at Newton. The man was still looking out onto the train tracks. The purposefully blank look on his face was shockingly painful to witness. “I…”

A train pulled up the other track with a deafening clatter. Newton finally looked at Hermann. What?Even if Hermann couldn’t hear him, he could read Newton’s lips.

Hermann shook his head, but waited until the train had stopped to speak. “It was nothing. I was just thinking out loud.”

Newton didn’t look away. They just stared at each other for what was only a few moments, but felt like much longer. Newton had that look, the I want to say something but I know if I do you’ll start yelling look. Hermann almost asked him for an explanation. Newton, it’s all right, you can tell me…

The clattering of the departing train threw off Hermann’s train of thought and broke the moment. Newton was the first to look away. That bothered Hermann more than it should have. “Were you going to say something?”

“Nah.”

Now it was Hermann’s turn to look at the train tracks.

What was concerning was that he’d been living alone for a week, not speaking much to anyone in the PPDC, but instead focusing on finalizing the London move and finishing up his reports on the Breach. And it was only here and now, with Newt standing quietly next to him, that he had stopped feeling so wound up. Everything felt normal,blessedly normal. That was concerning.

Everything was going back to normal? “Perhaps not,” Hermann said quietly.

“Huh?”

“I said, ‘what’s it like at MIT?’”

Newton clearly didn’t buy the excuse, but he humored Hermann. “Pretty awesome. Boston’s a great place, little crowded, but you know, you get used to it. I love it.”

“I’m sure.” Hermann glanced Newt’s way again. “I submitted a proposal for a dissertation on abstract mathematics to MIT before K-Day.”

“Seriously?” The confession was enough to get Newton to finally look at him again. “Did they accept it?”

“They did. I probably would have gone if it hadn’t been for the attacks.”

Newton smiled. Hermann was startled by how relieved the gesture made him. “Weird…maybe I would have seen you around…”

“It’s possible. Do you think we would have liked each other a bit better if we’d met that way?” Hermann added with a wry tone.

Newt snorted. “I dunno, man…I mean, I was just starting to feel functional that year, you would have just missed all that adjustment to meds and the crying.”

“Well, thank God for that.”

Newton’s smile only lasted for a few seconds more before he looked away. Why did that frustrate him so much? Hermann fought the urge to grab Newton’s shoulders, shake them, tell him to just look at him, damn it. “Maybe I should try again,” Hermann said.

“To get another phD? Yeah, I mean…that works, too.”

“Do you think they’d accept my proposal again?”

“Who, MIT?” Newton glanced at him briefly, almost hopefully. “Sure, definitely, I’m just…”

There was that silence. There was that blank look. “You just…gotta do what you want, man. Whatever makes you happy.”

There it was.

“The phD might.”

“Sure, but that depends on how you feel about cities.”

“Boston wouldn’t be the first city I’ve lived in.”

“Sure, but…then you’d have to put up with me being in the area.”

“Newton…”

“You deserve a break, dude, it’s been like how long?”

“What if that didn't matter, Newton?”

“Wh-” Another glance, another lengthy pause. “Of course it does.”

Hermann could slap him right now. He seriously considered it. In the end, he decided against it, but he did step directly in front of Newton. Look at me, look at me. “Do you really think things can go back to normal?” Hermann asked, perhaps a bit more earnestly than he would have normally, but it was Newton. The only way to get this through his head was to say it directly. “That some things wouldn’t be different?”

“It’s…” Newt stepped back. “Hyperbole, dude…what’s up with you?”

What was up with him was that he hadn’t looked at apartments, not due to lack of time, but lack of motivation, that his job offer letters had been sitting at the bottom of a stack of papers for weeks so he didn’t have to look at them, that even buying the damn train ticket had felt wrong…

“You don’t like that I’m leaving.”

Newt’s eyes widened. Hermann could see the denial forming, and he killed it with a withering glare. “No, I don’t, I don’t…” Newt swallowed hard. “I don’t. Fine. But what am I supposed to do, say, 'Hey, Hermann, want to come with me to Boston, it’ll be fun’, that would be fucking nuts…”

“Did you think about asking me that?”

“Wuh…well, yeah, but I didn’t. knew you’d say no…”

“Newton.”

“What? You would, because, because I’m a pain in the ass and you have bigger things ahead of you, stuff that’ll actually make you really happy, and you…” Another train pulled up, but Newt just shouted over him. “You deserve something good after all this shit, something you actually want…”

“How do you know this is what I want?” Hermann shouted back.

“You’re going, aren’t you?!”

Hermann didn’t answer. Newt’s eyes widened slightly. “Now you decide to become perceptive,” Hermann grumbled irately. Judging from the look on Newton’s face, he hadn’t heard. “How do you know I would say no?” he added aloud. “You. Didn’t. Try.” He emphasized that last word with a sharp prod to Newton’s shins with his cane. “You didn’t try.”

“I…” Newt swallowed his words and glanced at the train. “This one is yours.”

Damn you, Newton Geislzer. “Newton, do you want me to stay?”

“What?!”

“Do you want me to stay?”

“Yes!”

There. It had been said. Newton was looking at him now, green eyes wide and afraid. Hermann barely noticed the look. That one word had been enough to throw off the balance of pros and cons he’d been working on for weeks now. His mind was re-evaluating things, then and there beside the train tracks. It was completely ridiculous. Completely.

But then, when hadn’t his life been ridiculous lately.

As the last boarding call went out, Hermann realized he had made his decision. Stay the course, Doctor Gottlieb.

When the train pulled away, Hermann was still standing on the platform.

Newton stared at Hermann, then at the retreating train. “That was…”

“I know.” And Hermann found that he felt slightly liberated at the sight. Then annoyed. All that planning he’d put into this trip…

You didn’t want to take it anyway, said that Newtonian part of him.

Oh, be quiet, he told it.

But, again, it was right.

“You’re covering the cost of that ticket,” he said aloud. The sentence came out in a heavy, irritated sigh, but he was sure the look on his face made it half-hearted ire at best. The slowly-forming, completely ecstatic grin on Newt’s face didn’t help in that regard. “Well, come on, then. Let’s go.”

Hermann left the station and Newton followed, with the bag still slung over his shoulder.

#but you have heard of me (fics)

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sargenthouse · 5 years

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Earth Premiere "The Mandrake's Hymn" & Interview / Guitar.com

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via guitar.com

Earth’s trajectory is not so much of an orbit as it is a deviation. For the past three decades, the only constant for the band headed by Dylan Carlson has been change – which is ironic for a group whose music relies heavily upon repetition.

Earth started out with ground-shaking seismic drone metal on 1993’s Earth 2, then took a left turn in 2005 into the arid West with the Morricone-inspired Hex; Or Printing In The Infernal Method. Almost a decade later, they ventured into meditative rock with Primitive And Deadly.

Now, the band have purged themselves of any embellishments, stripping instrumentation down to Carlson on guitar and bass and Adrienne Davies on drums and percussion. The upcoming record, Full Upon Her Burning Lips, is a lesson in austerity, and spotlights the duo’s sonic symbiosis.

Ahead of the release, we speak with Carlson about the record, his fascination with Telecaster pickups and his favourite collaborations thus far.

Dylan Carlson (left) and Adrienne Davies of Earth

The new album sees Earth stripped down to the core duo of you and Adrienne Davies. Can you shed more light on this decision?

Well, I’ve been playing with Adrienne for almost 20 years now, and on previous albums, I’ve been fortunate enough to play with a lot of amazing players, but I really wanted this album to focus on the two main members at this point. Just because we really haven’t done that since, probably, Hex; Or Printing In The Infernal Method.

I also felt like live drums have always been a big part of what Earth does, but that has never come across as fully on record. You know, because when you’re recording a bunch of different instruments, you need to leave room for stuff, and I always felt like the drums didn’t show the full potential that Adrienne’s capable of.

And then also, I’ve always sort of been the guy that holds everything down with my guitar and let a lot of other instruments carry the melodic work – whether it’s cello or keys or stuff like that. So I sort of wanted it to just be the two of us showing off the best of our abilities.

The previous records, they’ve all been very lush sounding and I wanted this one to be very present and dry, and upfront. Using the 70s style, you know, where I was running two amps for the basics and hard panning guitars left and right – the kind of stuff that you just don’t really hear any more on record.

Can you tell us a little more about the title Full Upon Her Burning Lips?

I’m always trying to find titles that I feel are numinous and open to multiple interpretations. Many of them, I don’t necessarily see and people tell me about them later. Like someone recently asked if [the title] was about the moon because of the “full upon” bit – which I hadn’t thought of.

I feel like music is a sensual and sensuous experience, so I wanted a title that could evoke that. Originally, the cover idea I had for Primitive And Deadly was going to be much sexier than it turned out. I was sort of on a Scorpions jag at the time [laughs]. I think a lot of music now is missing that element. There’s so much music that’s hyper-male. To me, Metallica is a perfect example – nothing in their music or lyrics reflect the idea that there’s a feminine principle to the universe. So, I guess that’s where it came from.

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You mentioned in a statement that you like the “limiting of materials to force oneself to employ even more creatively”. How did that reflect in terms of guitar tone for this album?

For this one I basically used a limited number of effects. I used my live rig, which was like a compressor, an overdrive, a Uni-Vibe and a delay. I mean I used one other overdrive for some cleaner textures and an auto wah on one track, but I pretty much tried to limit it to just the pedals that I use live.

I tried to get the most out of them. For example, I’ve used the Uni-Vibe for a long time, but I’ve always just used the vibrato setting. I never thought the chorus was very useful, and then on this album, I figured out a bunch of really cool sounds with that setting. So that was fun to use in a different way than I normally do.

Image: Sean Stout

A lot of artists tend to compose instrumental music around tension and release. Is that an approach that you take as well?

I guess so, but I don’t know if it’s a conscious one. I feel like all songs should have some kind of arc – I call it a “narrative arc”. Although [with instrumental music] it’s very loose, as there’s obviously not any lyrics telling you what the story is. I sort of – in this very abstract sense – feel like songs and albums should still have a narrative arc. And I hope we convey that in the way that I put stuff together.

Again, it’s a sort of an abstract notion of a narrative, but you know, a song should start somewhere and then go somewhere, in some sort of rudimentary sense. I think that’s why, with instrumental music, the song titles become important. It’s the only way of conveying some kind of narrative with language.

I feel like music is a language in and of itself, and [communicates] in a different way. Music is simultaneously more immediate and more abstract in its meaning. With instrumental music, the audience is also participating in the creation of the meaning or the narrative or the imagery.

It’s not like songs with lyrics where it’s like “Oh my baby left me” or whatever. With instrumental music, it’s more challenging.

This album has a lot of minimalism and repetition. How do you make repetitions sound like progression to the listener?

With repetitive music especially, be it like the riff or the melody or whatever, it should be something that you want to hear again. So I think crafting really memorable riffs is key. They should be something that you want to hear again, and the riffs themselves should have some kind of arc to them as well – so that you’re getting mini arcs that build up to a bigger arc.

That’s one thing I’m constantly trying to do. When I come up with a riff it’s like “Oh, is this something like worth repeating?” There’s that thing that great riffs have where they make you want to hear them again. Whether they’re catchy or whatever, I feel like they should be strong enough – and interesting enough – that they bear repetition.

Image: Holly Carlson

Folklore is a major theme of this album, as it is with much of your work. What draws you to it?

To me, with the music I make, I want it to be timeless and feel like it’s always been there. Folklore has stories and knowledge that have been around forever, transcending cultures. I also feel like, especially with rock music – for lack of a better term – and American music, are all originally from folk sources. You know, blues, jazz, country, rock ’n’ roll – the music is not “high culture”. It’s not like classical music in that it wasn’t created by rich people for other rich people.

It’s popular music from the people, embedded in the salt of the earth, and it’s the same with folklore. It’s interesting and it’s numinous. It’s got a quality of timelessness, like something that’s always been there and that goes along with what I try to do hopefully musically.

Has your gear changed much over the years?

Yeah, I would say so. When I first came back to guitar playing, I hadn’t had a guitar for at least four years. So when I came back to guitar in 2001 or 2002, I was really into gear and was always buying petals. I guess you could call it GAS. But along the way, I realised that it didn’t really matter what I played, it was going to be me like regardless. And so I got a lot less gear-obsessed.

I like gear obviously – I mean, I love guitar – and I’ve found things that allow me to translate what’s in my head better, but I don’t feel like they’re necessary. I’m going to sound like me regardless of what I’m given. I think a lot of people are always looking for that “magic box” or this amp or that amp. At the end of the day, it’s you, you know?

The gear I do get now, I get it because I like how it sounds – which is the most important thing – and then whether it’s functional and helps me with touring. Number one is the sound and number two is functionality and whether it makes my life easier. Those are sort of two of my guiding principles.

Right now I play my live rig which I’m very happy with because I discovered these Trace Elliot Elfs, 200-watt heads that weigh like a pound – I’ve got two of those. And then one has a 1×12 Dietz cab, which I love. The Jesus Lizard guys use them, and Buzz [Osborne] has one. I didn’t know about them before, I was just in Austin and I needed a cab. Yeah, it weighs a shit-tonne, but that’s the only downside to it. It’s got wheels, but it’s a little monster. Then for the other one, I have a 1×12 Mesa cab that’s semi-open.

And then I recorded the album with and did my solo tour with a Burman – it’s a British amp from the early 70s. They were a company out of Newcastle and they basically built these 100-watt power amps called the “Slaves” which ran for either KT66s or EL34s – mine’s got EL34s – and then they did various preamp modules. So they were kind of ahead of the curve, in a certain way.

Image: Sean Stout

You’ve obviously played a lot of guitars over the years. Do you have any favourites?

Yeah, my favourite guitar is the one my wife Holly bought. It has an alder Strat body, and then we had our friend, this artist Jason Borders, carve and stain it. It has no finish. It’s got a Fender neck, the classic player one, with a 12-inch radius pau ferro fretboard, and then I’ve got a brass tremolo. I love brass, I’ve had brass on pretty much all of my guitars that I can. This guitar’s also got a brass bridge and a brass nut.

And then I’ve been running a DiMarzio Fast Track Tele bridge pickup, DiMarzio Cruiser in the middle position, and a DiMarzio Air Classic in the neck. I’m a big DiMarzio fanboy, as you can tell [laughs].

Oh, and this guitar has a little thing called the StratoBlaster which was made by Alembic. It’s a little boost switch – I have mine set for about plus 7- or 8dB, but you can go all the way to 14dB. That’s nice if you want a little bit of oomph.

I have a Tele, it was one of the Roadworn ones which I guess came out in the mid-2000s. That’s got a DiMarzio Tone Zone Tele bridge and a Seymour Duncan Little ‘59 in the neck.

In Europe, I have two guitars that live in a warehouse. I have an Epiphone SG. That one’s got a DiMarzio Tone Zone Tele bridge pickup and a Super Distortion in the neck. I was in a big Jerry Garcia phase then so I got a OBEL (or On-Board Effects Loop) on it, although I very rarely used it [laughs]. And the other’s an Epiphone Explorer that has a DiMarzio Super Distortion Tele bridge pickup. I basically put Tele Bridge pickups in all my guitars.

Some of my guitars have names. Like my favourite one – the Strat or Hollycaster – I call “The Fox”. Tele is “The Cat” and the SG is “The Goddess” because it has a big sticker of Tara Guanyin on it.

Image: Sean Stout

Do you achieve noise through the amps?

I use a lot of gain. Well, maybe not a lot of gain but I push the amps with the compressor and overdrive. With the 200-watt headroom, you’re not going to make it break up, so the tone is really a combination of pickups, overdrive and my hands. It’s not the amp. Same with the Burman – it’s a 100-watt – so the headroom’s massive.

If I’m playing a smaller tube amp, like when I had a 50-watt Plexi for a while, I didn’t use overdrive. I just hit the front end hard with the compressor. That was still like, loud as fuck. Over the years, I’ve come to understand headroom and the fact that no one really needs anything more than 50 watts. Even that is overkill, really, for most venues. Back in Earth 2 days, when I didn’t know any better, and I was young and could lug a shit-tonne of gear, it was like, “Oh yeah, let’s have, all this ridiculous amount of equipment!”. Back then most soundmen didn’t even bother mic-ing us, you know? Now I understand to let the PA do the heavy lifting.

I understand we all grew up on the cool pictures of [Jimi] Hendrix in front of a wall of Marshalls. But there were no PAs and they were playing outdoors half the time. Of course, you need like 25 Marshalls or whatever! It was a different time, with a 100-watt head now you’re never going to get to that sweet spot at a volume that’s not going to kill people.

Let’s talk about collaborations for just a second. What would you say has been your best experience so far?

Well, I love working with Kevin [Martin, aka The Bug]. It’s a whole different world than the one I am used to inhabiting. So it’s very fun for me in that way because I just get to be the guitar player and be creative.

I also love Emma [Ruth Rundle]. I think she’s an amazing musician and a wonderful human being, so that was enjoyable. And with Maddy Prior, that was super because obviously I was really into English folk. Yeah, so getting to meet an OG [laughs] and she was a lovely, lovely woman and really easy to work with. She had written a song and asked me to play guitar on it and I got to just come in and do it.

They’re all incredibly talented and really lovely people, so they’ve all been a real pleasure to work with.

What was recording Concrete Desert like? Would you do something like that again?

Yeah, I’ve been talking to Kevin about it! [Concrete Desert] was our very first collaboration, and he basically sent me the tracks and I played guitar and sent them back. So we actually hadn’t even met in person at that point. I actually just ran into him in on the street in Krakow because we were both playing the same festival.

Then Ninja Tune wanted us to play this anniversary party in LA together, and he had this material and was like, “Hey, why don’t we do this again?” and we were actually in the studio together for a couple days. I mean, he’d already generated much of the material but then after I put my guitar on, he went back and changed it a bunch. He told me he got new ideas from the guitar parts and kinda tweaked it.

But yeah, hopefully the next time we work together we can do it with both of us in the studio, building stuff from the ground up. I don’t know when that’ll happen, but we definitely want to do something together again.

Are there any other guitarists you feel are pushing the instrument to the bleeding edge?

I think Oren Ambarchi is pretty amazing. There’s probably some guys I’m not aware of, but I know Oren and think he’s a pretty good dude. I’m a rock dude and like the fact that he still manages to inject rock into [his music] in some weird way, like with that album he did with the Ace Frehley cover, for example. I think he’s got a lot of swagger to it that others don’t have.

The Rig

Main Guitar: The Fox aka Hollycaster (see above for details)

Amp: Live – 2 x Trace Elliot ‘Elf’ heads (200w solid state) each with 1×12 cab (a Dietz and a Mesa). Recording – Early 70s Burman (100w power amp w/ EL-34s) and a pre-amp module and a DV Mark Micro 50 (50w solid state)

Effects: MXR Custom Comp, MXR Shin-juku Drive, Dunlop Uni-Vibe chorus/vibrato, Dunlop Echoplex Delay, Korg Pitchblack tuner (1st version)

Strings/Accessories: Dunlop Performance Plus Nickel .09-.42, Dunlop Primetone 3mm picks and various other Dunlop picks all around 2mm

Full Upon Her Burning Lips is out 24 May. More information at thronesanddominions.com.

#Earth #The Mandrake's Hymn #Full Upon Her Burning Lips

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darkdevasofdestruction · 6 years

Text

Chisaki’s fem!S/O being kidnapped

Someone please stop me from writing for the villains. I think I have an obsession or something-

Okay so, first of all, he most likely had an arranged marriage with his S/O as a way to make a contract with her father who was an amazing underground Quirk researcher, so of course, Chisaki wanted to make sure the man only helps HIM and nobody else, so what better way?

The girl, he later found out, was much of a genius in many ways, like hacking, seducing, information gathering, science and so on, which she self-taught, having been locked up in her house for so long by her father who only ever wanted to use her as a deal-breaker.

It all started when she saw Mimic, the first person she got along with really well from the very beginning, struggling while trying to hack into an important database, so she offered her help and easily hacked into the program and explained everything in detail so her could understand the more abstract ways of coding, and since then, Chisaki let those two go out of the hideout together so the girl could see and enjoy the freedom that she deserves but never got the chance to have.

It took a long time for the both of them to become truly attached to one another, but it was the cute, subtle ways in which they showed their love that was truly attractive. It was the caring looks they gave each other, the protective hand-holding and the warm hugs they shared that made a strong bond between their once cold as ice, frozen hearts that knew nothing of the warm feeling of love.

On one lovely day of Spring she went out to the Starbucks in the town center with her childhood friend, a girl with whom she hasn’t been in contact with for a long time, but they got along really well back in the days and decided to catch up and gossip all day long.

As she was drinking her beverage, she spilled a bit of cake on herself, so laughing, she excused herself from the table and went to the bathroom to clean herself up. There, she looked at her phone to check for any missed calls or messages, which she saw were flooding, from both Chisaki and Mimic. Curious, she called Mimic back since he seemed the most frantic to get a hold of her, for some reason.

Y/N: Yes, Raffa? Mimic: GOODNESS GRACIOUS, WOMAN, WHY DO YOU HAVE A PHONE IF YOU DON’T USE IT?! Y/N: Uhh Sorry, it was on silent mode. I forgot to change that this morning. Mimic: Arrghhh nevermind!! Are you okay?! Y/N: Yes, of course, why wouldn’t I be? Mimic: There’s a killer on the loose, dammit!! Y/N: Like...You and Chisaki? Mimic: I’M NOT JOKING, Y/N-

But he was cut off by Chisaki calling and the girl accepted the call, making that a group-call.

Chisaki: Where are you? Y/N: The local Starbucks. Wait, I’ll share my location with you- Chisaki: Keep the GPS on at all costs and make sure to hide your phone and have it at you at all times. Y/N: Yes, okay, but guys, can you tell me what’s going on?! Mimic: There’s this serial killer chick that is targeting some super boss yakuza leaders and one of them is- Chisaki: Me. Y/N: And what does it have to do with me? Mimic: We...We think that she knows of your connection to us and especially Chisaki. Y/N: How could she? We’ve never been out in the public or anything of the sort. Besides, I’ve always been extra careful when posting stuff on my social media. Mimic: I know, I was there to check them with you, but we don’t know why or how, but she might be targeting you. Y/N: Do you have a picture with her or something so I can be on the lookout? Or please make it fast, my friend might suspect something. Chisaki: Friend...? You are not alone? Y/N: Goodness, no, it’d have been boring to go out alone. An old friend contacted me again and asked to meet up. Mimic: Uh...Does this picture look famili- Y/N: *gasps* Th-That’s...That’s...M-My... Chisaki: That is your friend, isn’t she? Y/N: Y-Yeah...B-But...Do you know if she’s affiliated with anyone? Mimic: She might be affiliated with some underground people. Y/N: Only my father knew of our arrangements...My father...My father wants me dead. Just great! Freaking fantastic! Chisaki: Keep calm, Y/N. If she finds out that you know about her plan, she’s going to proceed with her plan much faster. Y/N: Yeah...Just great. Now I’m scared to think that she might have poisoned my drink. Chisaki: She wouldn’t. She needs you alive if she wants to blackmail me and use you as a bait. Y/N: That’s far more reassuring. Chisaki: Can you jump out of the window? Y/N: No...It’s much too tiny. Chisaki: Then go back to her and act as if nothing happened. We are on our way there. Y/N: Yeah, sure, no problem. Totally not freaking out. Mimic: Y/N you taught me how to be a better gangster and refine my skills, okay? You are far better than me at this, so use your skills of deceiving people and act as natural as possible so she won’t pick up on anything. Y/N: *sighs* Okay, fine. The GPS is on. I’ll hide my phone and keep this group convo on going so you can hear what we’re saying, but I’ll be putting it on mute so no sounds from your end will be heard around here and make it suspicious, okay? I’ll tell her I let my phone at home to charge. Chisaki: That’s my smart girl. Stay strong, we’re going to be there soon. Y/N: *nods* Roger that.

Sighing and running a hand through her hair, she closed her phone’s screen and hid it in her bra, thanking whatever possessed her to wear a nice and large sweater so the phone won’t be visible no matter what.

She put on her vixen face and acted as natural as she could and went to ramble about how annoying it is to get the stains off such a nice cardigan, but what surprised her was when her friend asked her if she could use her phone to call someone. She blinked in confusion and smiled at her apologetically, saying how she forgot to charge it the previous night and that she left without it, letting it plugged for the day.

What was a bit shocking, however, was how her friend’s face twisted in rage for a split second before she gripped the girl’s wrist weirdly tight and forcefully dragged her out of Starbucks, saying how they need to leave for the day. The girl only gulped and tried to struggle, saying how she doesn’t understand her friend’s unexpected behaviour, but the friend only got angrier and slapped her friend before putting a chloroform napkin on her face, making her faint since she couldn’t hold her breath for too long.

Of course, by the time she woke up she was in a dark cell, only a lamp above her lighting up the sombre place. She got up quickly and rushed to the bar door, trying to see if it was locked or if she could somehow unlock it with a hair pin... No chance.

Chisaki, Mimic and Chrono found themselves in front of the enemy hideout and strode inside nonchalantly, pissed off beyond belief, as Chisaki looked as stoic as ever, only unleashing his rage by using his Quirk on everyone who dared stay in his path.

As he got in front of the cage, he easily destroyed the bars, only to see his semi-conscious S/O, several cuts on her face, who knows how many other bruises on her body, being held by her hair, on her knees, by the person she once called a friend, a knife at her throat.

“Now, now, look who decided to show up! How did you find us, young Yakuza leader~?” asked the enemy with a sly grin on her face. “Her phone GPS, of course.” Chrono replied in a low, threatening voice as if it was as clear as the day light. “Phone...? What phone?! She has no phone at her! I checked her bag and pockets!” she yelled, enraged. “My bra, you idiot...Why do you think I kept...Crossing my arms to my chest...? If you somehow hit the phone with you...Stupid boots then it was bye-bye for me...” the victim tried so say in a weak voice, occasionally stopping to cough some blood. “You...! YOU LITTLE BITCH! YOU LIED TO ME!!” the kidnapper shouted at her, putting a hand on her throat and squeezing it, making the poor girl gasp for air. “S-So did...You...” she managed to choke out. “It’s over now. Give up and return her to me.” Chisaki said, his eyes holding a burning fire, barely able to keep himself composed. “You think I got through all this trouble to just peacefully return her? How stupid can you be?! I think I’d like to have a little more fun with dear Y/N here-” she said, but was quickly interrupted when she tried to move but realised her movements were extremely lethargic and it confused her to no end.

At the same time, her knife suddenly jumped out of her grasp and went next to Chisaki, making it obvious that Chrono’s and Mimic’s jobs were done there. “Wh-What did you do to me?! Freaks!” the enemy asked, her hand still around the girl’s throat, but no longer posing as a danger. “As I said, it’s over. You were so busy letting anger take over you that you lost focus of your surroundings. Chrono touched you with his hair and Mimic’s mind went inside the knife. Now...It’s my turn.” with that, he went to the two girls and grabbed a fistful of the enemy’s hair, dragging her away from her beloved and kicked her in the face with his combat book as hard as he could, slamming her in the wall in the process.

“Chrono, Mimic, bring this unclean filth to the base. If I use my Quirk on her it’d be meaningless. Also...Arrange a meeting with Y/N’s father. I think a discussion between a husband and his father-in-law would be very important now.” “It shall be done” said Chrono, as he dragged the unconscious one away.

Chisaki grabbed a napkin from his pocket and kneeled in front of his wife, one hand on her face and the other trying to wipe away the dirt and blood from it, tenderly.

“Thanks for saving me, Chisaki. I’d be dead without you.” she whispered, a small smile on her face. “You got involved because of me. It shouldn’t have happened.” he said, closing his eyes. “Sorry for the trouble. I’ll try to be more careful.” she said, leaning in his touch. “I’ll make sure that never happens again. Let’s go home for now.” with that, he picked her up bridal style, making her smile softly and snuggling to him all the way back to their own hideout, where he made sure to make her as comfortable as possible as she healed herself, thanks to her amazing Healing-Water Quirk.

When night came and the girl was in her nightgown, messing around on social media on her phone, Chisaki went in their room, putting his mask carefully on the table and changing in his sleeping wear before getting in bed next to her, thing that never happened before since he was always too busy and preferred to stay alone with his work.

He said nothing as he watched her looking at him, surprised to see him there and putting her phone on the nightstand.

“Chisaki? Are you okay?” she asked, worry dripping from her sweet, angelic voice. “You seem to have completely healed. Your Quirk is something useful in this world.” he muttered, examining every inch of her body to see if he could spot any little bruise. “It is,I suppose. But if I were in your place, I wouldn’t have been able to save you.” she said with a half-grin. “Come here.” he mumbled, his eyes boring deep into her soul.

She complied, scuttering over to him, but to her surprise, he got her into a very tight embrace, stroking her hair, his heartbeat visibly calming down. She then realised that he was worried sick and this was his way of being 100% certain that what was happening was real and that she was really safe and sound, in his arms, a pulse still beating. She could only grin and cuddle to him, putting the blanket over them and kissing him lightly on the lips, saying soothing, reassuring words to him.

For the first time since they got married they slept in the same room, together, two heartbeats forming into one as he continued stroking her hair, not being able to sleep that night in fear that something might happen and she will be snatched away from his grasp once again.

He won’t ever let that happen again. His angel will never ever be stolen away from him. He made a mistake that almost endangered her, but no more. He knew what was to be done and made sure either Chrono or Mimic were with her at all times when she was to go out of the hideout, no matter what.

He will protect his beloved wife, Y/N, at all costs. Y/N is his.

Forever.

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mysticsparklewings · 5 years

Photo

Mon Cher

Oh look, more painting stuff! :D After resisting the urge to break into them for over a week because I had other projects to work on, I finally broke into the 60 set of Arteza watercolors that I'd ordered, and after swatching and a little testing, this was where I went with them. But I'm not going to focus on a review/first impressions of the paints here, as I want the focus to be more on the piece itself since I'm really happy with how it turned out. (If you're more interested in my thoughts on those paints, I'll link to the piece I have coming up that I made more specifically to talk about those as soon as it's up.) This piece was also inspired largely by Leonidafremov, one of my favorite artists here on deviantArt who passed away recently, which is a large part of which I ventured further outside my comfort zone to make it. I may make another piece inspired by/dedicated to him at a later date now that I'm dipping my toes into acrylics, but I'm not sure yet. As for the here and now; I went with the Effiel Tower as my main subject of choice partly because of the reason above, and also partly because I have dreams of visiting Paris someday and thus it has become a sort of default artistic subject for me. After browsing through Pinterest for a bit for some extra inspiration, I couldn't decide between doing a more dreamy, sakura-tree surrounded tower, or a more "realistic" cityscape surrounding, and in the end I more or less combined the two with the trees poking in on the left and the city poking in on the right. Once I had a plan, I did a little practicing sketching and painting to think about how I wanted to paint and shade the tower as well as how much thought/sketching needed to go into this before I brought the paint to the paper. Thanks to that, I did end up doing some light sketching for the tower, the tree branches, and the outlines of the city buildings, but I tried not to be too fussy about it--no rulers allowed!--since I didn't want to spend super long on the sketch and really wanted to be a little looser in my watercolor technique overall. My main concern was that I didn't want the tower to look like it was drunk and/or you were looking at it through a kaleidoscope, and I think I managed to accomplish that, even if it is a little off in some places. I was also working with a limited color palette because I fell in love with the six colors I used when I saw them all lined up in my swatches, and I did have white and black on my palette just in case, but I didn't touch the black at all and I was pretty sparing with the white. (Which is a highly unusual thing for me to say.) I had a really pastel yellow, a peachy pink, a muted lavender, a darker true blue, a dull teal-ish blue, and a very pale pastel blue. Since I'm very often a stickler for color matching or using a more realistic palette, it was fun to experiment with something more centered around a particular palette that gives a much different look for more realistic/natural color choices. I started by going in with the yellow on the tower, as I'd decided in my planning I wanted to go with a light-to-dark side shading on the tower, starting with the yellow and transitioning across the colors into the blue, using the pink to make a prettier transition. Using the dark blue was the trickiest part since I didn't want it to spread too far and start making green with the yellow, but I did want it to be noticeably present and not blended out to a pastel blue and/or purple. Especially since I had plans to bring the blue up in the background later. I also tried to keep the shading simple but still sensical, meaning I tried to shade the little ledges and stuff properly, but again I tried not to be too fussy about it. While the tower was drying, I moved on to the trees. I start by dabbing on the pink that I had unaltered and without much water so that the paint would be more opaque, then I added some water to pale it out and let the petals "bloom" and float a little, and then I started adding on layers in the same way with a lighter pink I made by mixing in the white, some white the yellow, and some with the purple and a little bit with the blue that ended up getting mostly covered by the branches later. My goal was to add a little more depth & dimension but still keep it pretty abstract. Then while that was drying, I moved on to using varying amounts of water to create the buildings on the right, and I did mix in a little purple and pink just to "blend" the buildings into the rest of the painting a little better. This was a bit of an exercise in patience and experimentation as far as that goes because I have had minor struggles with that in the past, but I think it worked out as well as I needed it to here. And I did end up adding a couple of extra buildings beneath the tower that I hadn't sketched in because I felt like the colors were a little off balance and I wanted to try and remedy that. With the buildings filled in to my satisfaction, I went back to the now-dry trees and took the teal-ish blue I hadn't used yet and started lining the branches. And again, I tried my best not to be too fussy or particular about them, especially since once I added the petals most of my sketched-in lines disappeared because they were hiding behind the paint. By that point, the buildings were dry enough that I was able to go in and do the lines of the tower (as you can see some of the buildings are basically touching parts of the tower), and at first I wasn't sure if I was just going to do the more noticeable/necessary outlines and leave the bulk of the tower with just the sketch lines, but as I went it became kind of a no-brainer to me that, as trying of my patience as it would be, I needed to go over pretty much all of the lines to "complete" the tower look. And I do like the emphasis the outlines place on the colors/shading of the tower, especially since it's lighter than the darkest blue, so in person, you almost expect there to be some sort of shimmer when you move the paper. It's a pretty interesting effect if you ask me. After all of that, I waited what felt like ages for everything to be dry so I could go in and add a light wash of color for the background. (Which admittedly in hindsight I should have done first before I did anything else with the paint, but I didn't think about it until it was too late.) And I did try to get a transition from just a hint of the yellow to a hint of the pink to a hint of the purple, while still blending the edges of the colors against the trees, tower, and buildings as best I could without disturbing the paint that was already there. I had to do a couple of layers to try and build up the color I wanted, and on the scan, it still looks too pale (though in person it is paler than I was going for, it's just enough that it works to my eyeballs), and unfortunately despite my best efforts I did end up with a few pretty obvious water lines/spots from that. Though on the scanned version they're less noticeable. I think. Then while my faux-background was drying, I went back to the buildings and layered on some spots to indicate windows and on the slanted one, what I imagine to be a kind of giant glass-terrace for very fancy upper-class soirées. And admittedly my windows aren't terribly nice in share and aren't as opaque as maybe they should be, but since I was going for loose, I'm not going to count that too hard against myself. Finally, that upper right corner felt very empty compared to the rest of the drawing, and though I debated on it at first, I ended up adding a moon and very few small stars just to give it a little something and round out the painting a little. And of course I had to add my signature, but I'm trying not to look at/think about it because that pink gel pen came out way more pinky than I expected it to. Overall, I know there are a lot of mistakes and learning hiccups here, but I really am happy with how it turned out in the end and I really had a lot of fun getting lost in the artistic process with this one. At one point, I looked and the time was 2 am, and then I looked up again at it was 4 am! Two hours had passed in what felt like maybe thirty minutes. And despite its flaws, this is one of those pieces that has boosted my confidence in working with the medium used to create it, and so I say the experience was very much worth it, and thus I am looking forward to trying more larger watercolor pieces like this going forward. (I am especially eager to try a larger one on canvas, between this and my experiment with watercolors on canvas I did a while ago, so maybe look forward to that in the future?) ____ Artwork © me, MysticSparkleWings ____ Where to find me & my artwork: My Website | Commission Info + Prices | Ko-Fi | dA Print Shop | RedBubble | Twitter | Tumblr | Instagram

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melodyofmuses · 5 years

Text

@awreckageofstarss

Astrid bit her lip, body shifting from side to side as she stood outside Hiccup’s door. It was silly, she shouldn’t be nervous about paying her friend a visit, and yet she was. There was something she’d been thinking about, something that she wanted, and he was the only one who could give it to her. Steeling herself, she finally raised a hand and knocked on his door.

“It’s open.” Came Hiccup’s voice, inviting her inside. Slipping into his hut Astrid followed the source of his voice up to his bedroom. The ground floor was for cooking and minor forge work, while upstairs was his bed and the desk where he pondered and drew. Climbing the stairs the blonde’s nerves came flooding back, halting her in her steps as she stared at his lean back hunched over his latest design. Biting her lip she waited until Hiccup turned to face her, the inventor wondering why his guest was so quiet. “A-Astrid! W-what can I do for you?”

Shifting her weight to her other foot Astrid tried not to talk herself out of it. She was here now, if she left Hiccup would think something was wrong, and then there’s be a big conversation and he’d probably think it was his fault she was having trouble talking to him. Taking a deep breath she finally opened her mouth. “It’s silly, really.” She told him, blue eyes suddenly finding the floor far more interesting than his face, despite how much she adored his face. “I just, I saw a couple of guys with them, and I thought it looked really cool and…I want a marking on my body like them.”

Whatever Hiccup had thought she’d come to talk to him about, that was not on the list. In fact it hadn’t even come close to the list. “Okay.” Hiccup replied, processing what she’d told him with the information he knew. “W-well we can talk to some traders and see if they know who to speak to about getting one.” If Astrid wanted one of these inked markings on her body then he’d help her get one.

“W-well I was hoping you would do it.” Astrid replied softly, eyes finally lifting to meet his. Noticing Hiccup about to open his mouth Astrid pressed on. “I mean, you’re a great artist and…you’re the only one I’d trust to do it.”

One look at her trusting blue eyes and there was no way Hiccup could say no. Nodding to the chair beside him, he invited her to sit down. “Okay, so I’m guessing you want a Nadder or an axe or something?” Astrid was a girl with few interests, weaponry and dragons being at the top of that list.

Pausing for a moment the girl thought about that. Initially that had been her instinct but somehow it didn’t feel quite right. “I uh…I actually don’t know what I want.” The blonde admitted softly, it felt strange to say she had no idea what design she wanted on her body.

With a pensive face, Hiccup grabbed one of his sketch books, sliding it over to Astrid. “Uh, maybe this will give you an idea?” His mind was already racing, thinking about what he’d need to mark her body. He had a few bottles of squid ink tucked away, and he certainly had needles to set the ink into her skin. Cloth and water were easy enough to grab, he had those waiting downstairs, and there were plenty of candles if he needed more light.

Astrid flipped through the pages, keen eyes raking over each design so carefully sketched by his hand. Most were sketches of Toothless, but there were a few more abstract pieces in there. Turning the page she felt her breath catch in her throat, the image of a valkyrie staring back at her. The face was soft, a small smile on her lips while the wind whipped at the strands plucked loose from her braid. Was that how Hiccup saw her? Blue eyes flicked up to his face wondering, not for the first time, if he felt the same way about her and she did for him.

Averting her gaze back to the book before he could grow suspicious she gasped, fingers lightly tracing the paper just beside the charcoal drawing. “This one. This is the one.” Placing the open book down on the desk she let Hiccup see the design that had her so enamoured.

Hiccup faultered at the picture she’d chosen, it was one of Toothless but not quite. It was a stylised design based on the Night Fury with slightly more angular features. He’d drawn it to look like it was defending something, just seconds away from attacking if needed, and he had to admit that seemed like Astrid. She was so graceful and fluid, but she could easily switch into an attack without a moment’s notice if she needed to. “Okay, uh, where did you want it and when should we do this?”

“Now.” Astrid replied, her voice quavering slightly. “Right now, before anything stops this happening.” If she left his hut she wasn’t sure she’d have the courage to come back. “And on my back, please.” Apprehensive blue eyes gazed up at him, she’d just asked him to see and touch her bare back while he placed a design on her skin, something that really should only happen between betrothed vikings.

Hiccup drew in a shuddering breath, sweet Thor, how could she ask him to mark her back and know she’d most likely end up a shield maiden or married off to a viking like his cousin? No, he couldn’t think like that. Astrid asked him for a favour and he was going to help her. “Okay, let me just grab some stuff. I’ll uh…” Standing up he grabbed the blanket off his bed, passing it to her. “…s-so you can cover up. I’ll uh…give you some privacy. Come on bud.” Grumbling about leaving his warm stone, Toothless followed Hiccup downstairs to grab what they needed while Astrid removed her top.

Staring at the blanket Astrid froze, was she really doing this? Suddenly realizing Hiccup could come back at any moment, Astrid took her armour off, setting them down on the desk, her shirt and bindings were next. Hearing his metal foot clanking downstairs she quickly wrapped the blanket around her chest. “Okay, you can come back now.”

Hiccup stalked back up the stairs, Toothless close behind him. Setting out the cloth and water basin, the dragon rider began to set up candles to give himself more light. “Okay, face the desk and I’ll take a look.” Setting his stool down directly behind her, he waited until she was settled before peeling back the edges of the blanket to stare at her naked back. Oh Thor, what had he gotten himself into?

Astrid held her breath as he reached for his charcoal, eyes closed as she waited for his touch. Careful hands shifted her braid to rest over her shoulder before gently touching her skin. His breath ghosted over her skin, fingers dancing over her back as he slowly began to map out the design over her body.

Once he began drawing it was easy to lose himself in the work. Using charcoal he began to replicate the design, cleaning away flubbed lines and re-sketching them until he was satisfied. This was for Astrid, and only the best would do. Slowly but surely he lovingly recreated his design over her back. Setting the charcoal down he let out a sigh. “Okay, now this part’s going to hurt. I-I won’t think less of you if you need to bite down on something.”

Astrid glanced at him over her shoulder, throwing him a gentle smile. “Hey, it’s not fun without a little pain, right?” Setting her elbows on the desk, her chin resting on her folded arms she got comfortable. “I’m ready when you are. I trust you.” Turning back to face the desk she waited for the first sting.

Nodding to the blonde valkyrie he poured a small measure of ink into a dish, sterilizing a needle before taking up position once more. Ink on the needle his hand hovered over her back. He had his design set but now that it was time to actually mark her skin, he was terrified of messing it up. Taking a deep breath he pressed the needle into her skin, hating himself when he heard her sudden intake of breath. “We can stop if you like. We don’t have to do it.”

Squaring her shoulders Astrid shook her head. A little pain wasn’t going to stop her, not when she’d set her mind to it. “Keep going.” Gritting her teeth she was tempted to take him up on the offer of something to bite but her pride refused. Instead she clenched her teeth while trying to relax her muscles.

Hiccup couldn’t even begin to describe how nervous he was. He was in his room with the girl of his dreams topless before him, expecting him to inflict pain on her while permanently marking her with one of his designs. And if that wasn’t enough to make him sweat, one wrong move and he’d ruin the whole design for her, especially when she was trusting him to do it for her. Mopping the beads of sweat from his brow Hiccup dipped the needle in the ink once more and pressed the sharp tip into her skin.

Slowly but surely, Hiccup found his confidence, each prick of the needle surer than the last. It helped that Astrid had become accustomed to the constant piercing of her skin and had relaxed into it. In fact he was fairly certain she was on the verge of falling asleep. A few more pricks of the needle and the outline was complete. “What d’you think Bud? Look alright to you?” The young inventor was actually quite pleased with how the outline had turned out. He’d have to go back and shade it in but at least the bones were there for him to work with.

Toothless warbled a pleased noise from his spot on the stone slab, green eyes glancing over at the humans before settling back down for a nap. It was clear this was going to take a while so any chance of a flight was out so the dragon may as well take a nap. Wings unfurling to stretch before folding back against his body, the black dragon settled himself before closing his eyes.

“Okay, time for a break.” Hiccup muttered, standing up so he could stretch his back and legs. “There’s a mirror over there if you want to take a look so far.” He pointed to a large sheet of polished metal over in one corner, he normally used it to reflect more light onto his projects.

Astrid stood carefully, clutching the blanket to her chest as she moved over to the mirror. Turning around she peered over her shoulder at the reflection of the dragon taking shape on her back. “Hiccup, it’s beautiful.” Blue eyes remained fixed on the reflection, missing the way he stared at her.

“Yes, you are. I-I mean, yeah, I think this might be some of my best work.” Hiccup stumbled over his words, hoping she hadn’t heard the slip of his tongue. He’d always though Astrid was gorgeous but seeing her under the golden glow of the candles, the way it seemed to illuminate her skin, he thought she was stunning. Thor, why did he have to fall for the prettiest, most intelligent and capable viking of their age? He knew why, it was because she was so intelligent and quick on her feet. Astrid was grace and fury in one delectable body, a divine beauty if ever he saw one.

Astrid was too busy staring at the ink on her back to hear what he said completely. “Yeah, I agree. This is incredible Hiccup.” Walking back over to the stool she settled herself back in place for more ink. “Ready when you are Dragon Boy.” The blonde waited with baited breath for his hands to reach for her once more, eyes fluttering closed as his fingers brushed against the slightly tender skin. The pain had become a memory but even if it hadn’t she would’ve wanted it to continue for as long as possible just so she could feel his fingers on her spine, his gentle breath blowing at her skin after he pricked it to sooth the nerves beneath. It was a silly fantasy, she knew, but she wished they were more than just friends.

Hiccup had finished the head and wings when he noticed the blonde had actually fallen asleep. Smiling fondly at the girl he paused to stretch before settling back in to work on the tail. “Sometimes I wish you knew just how much I adore you.” Hiccup muttered to the slumbering blonde, taking solace in the knowledge she would never know he spoke these words to her. “Every night I dream of you by my side creating a future of our own design. Those dreams are so wonderful I never want to wake up, but then Toothless demands his morning flight and it’s back to reality.” Gingerly he leaned forward, placing the lightest of kisses to the knape of her neck, jerking backwards as he felt her shift, before shaking his head and turning back to his work once he was sure she wouldn’t wake up. “Thor, I wish I was less of a Hiccup just so I’d be worthy of someone like you, Milady.”

The brush of lips against her neck had Astrid’s eyes snap open before she promptly shut them, hoping he didn’t notice. Did Hiccup just…kiss her? It wasn’t the sloppy, slobbery messes Snotlout tried to place on her, nor was it like the few quick pecks she’s placed on Hiccup throughout the years. This kiss was slow, gentle and somehow far more intimate than she’d expected from Hiccup, and she wished he’d do it again. His next words broke her heart, how could he think he wasn’t good enough? Hiccup was the only viking to view the world differently and find the truth between the blood-feud that had plagued humans and dragons for generations. Hiccup was better than all of them, it was Astrid who’d been doubting if he actually held any affection for her.

“You never kissed me back.” Astrid replied softly, one of them had to be brave enough to say something and it seemed clear now that Hiccup needed this as much as she did. “All those times I kissed you, you never kissed me back, and I thought it was because you just didn’t want to hurt my feelings, or you just weren’t interested.” Blue eyes fluttered open but she kept her gaze on her arms pillowing her head, not quite brave enough to face the man she’d fallen in love with.

“W-what? No, that’s insane!” Hiccup exclaimed, eyes wide as he stared at the blonde who was supposed to be asleep. “How could I not want to? I mean, you’re you! You’re Astrid!” The needle hovered over her back, his focus locked on the blonde’s face rather than his work for the moment. “But you surprised me a-and then the moment was gone and I didn’t know how to get it back.”

Setting the needle down he spun her around to face him, careful to keep the blanket pressed to her chest. “Astrid, I’ve been in love with you since before I even knew what love was.” A trembling hand reached out to brush his thumb against her cheek, a small smile reaching his lips as she leaned into the contact. “You’re brave, and smart, and Thor, have you seen you? How could I not want you?”

One hand pinning the blanket to her chest, Astrid reached her other hand out to grasp his. “I know I was hard on you when we were in Dragon Training, but then you opened my eyes and made me see the man you truly were, and Hiccup, he’s incredible.” Finally free to express how much she adored him, Astrid’s eyes gleamed with all the passion she held for him. “You might not see a big, brave viking, but I do. Hiccup, you’re thoughtful, and inventive, and sensitive, and you’re not afraid to show how much people mean to you, and that’s pretty brave if you ask me. Braver than me, anyway.” Gazing up at him she began to lean a little closer. “So if I were to kiss you now…?”

Green eyes dropped from her eyes to her lips, fleeting memories of her quick pecks still colouring his dreams. “Oh Thor.” He whispered before closing the gap and kissing her as he’d wanted to for so many years. His lips molded against hers, parting the moment he felt her tongue requesting entrance, his own returning the favour. Panting slightly he pulled back, eyes alight with desire as he stared at her. Claiming a couple more kisses Hiccup finally retreated. “As much as I’d love to keep doing that, I kind of want to finish your marking.”

Nodding silently Astrid turned back around. Hiccup was right, they should finish the dragon on her back, and the sooner he did, the sooner she could go back to kissing him. Biting her lip, a devious glint in her eyes, she let the blanket go, the woolen fabric pooling in her lap before dropping to the floor.

“A-a-astrid!” Hiccup’s slightly panicked voice sounded behind her, his eyes staring at what the blanket had obscured. From his place behind her, he could see the gentle curves of the sides of her breasts, especially when she leaned forward to fold her arms over the desk to brace herself.

The blonde permitted a small, pleased smile to cross her face before replying. “Yeah, yeah, only a woman’s intended husband should see her in such a state of undress.” Rolling her eyes she turned her head to gaze at him over her shoulder. “I kissed you, you’re mine Dragon Boy.”

Hiccup’s mouth dropped, of all the things he expected to come out of Astrid’s mouth, her declaration of wanting to be his wife one day was not one of them. “Oh you, Milady, are going to be trouble.” He chuckled, picking up the needle and continuing his work, his voice letting her know he was completely content with her brand of trouble in his life. Leaning in he brought his lips close to her ear. “Pretty sure I kissed you first.” He whispered, ducking his head to place a kiss to her shoulder before lightly nipping the spot. The inventor chuckled at her soft whine when he pulled back to complete his artwork on her back.

Soft cloth pressed against her skin, removing any excess ink before sitting back to look at his work. She was stunning, sitting in the candlelight, her skin covered in a golden glow while a Night Fury covered her back. That tricky little Nadder, she’d just made him place his own mark all over her back. If that wasn’t a declaration of who held her heart, he didn’t know what was. “What’d you think Bud? Does it look like you?”

Toothless grudgingly stood up, wandering over to take a look at the design on Astrid’s back. Giving them both a soft warble of approval, he tilted his head as Hiccup encouraged the dragon to lick her back. Rolling his eyes the dragon dragged his tongue over the tender flesh, dragon saliva was fairly useful for killing off infection and assisting the healing process.

Astrid scrunched her nose up as she felt Toothless’ drool cover her back but she had to admit, her back felt less tender afterwards. “Thanks, both of you.” Reaching behind her she petted the dragon’s snout, using touch alone to locate the spot under his chin that always got him purring.

“What? No chin-scratches for me?” Hiccup teased, hurrying to cover his and Toothless’ eyes when the blonde stood and made her way over to the mirror. “Sweet baby Thor in a thunderstorm, are you trying to give me a heart attack?”

Astrid shook her head at him before admiring his handiwork in the mirror. “It’s perfect Hiccup. I love it.” Stalking back over to the man she loved she bent down, placing her hands on his knees so she was eye-level with him. “And no you don’t get chin-scratches.” Warm, supple lips pressed against his, smiling at the hand still firmly planted over his eyes. “But I’d like it if you held me tonight. I mean, I don’t think I can put my shirt back on at the moment, and I don’t want to try to get to my hut without it, but mostly I just really want to be close to you for tonight.”

The brightest smile she’d ever seen lit up Hiccup’s face. “Do I get to kiss you again?” Holding Astrid was more than he could possibly want, but the idea of kissing her again, of feeling her lips against his, Thor, that was his idea of Valhalla. “Anytime I want?”

Astrid was hard pressed to bite back the laugh bubbling up her throat. Most guys would try to push for so much more knowing a half-naked woman would be in their bed, but all Hiccup wanted was more kisses. “Of course, I mean, kisses are a requirement.”

Darting forward Hiccup pressed his lips to hers once more, grinning like a fool for having permission to do that as many times as he wished. Nodding his head towards the bed, he stayed seated with his hand over his eyes until he knew she was on the bed and settled. Dropping his hand he walked over to the bed, placing a hand in her hair and caressing the golden strands. “I’ll go grab us some dinner and feed the dragons. Be back soon, Milady.” Dropping a kiss to her shoulder he slipped out of the hut, Toothless remaining to guard Astrid.

It didn’t take him long to grab what he needed and slip back to the Valkyrie waiting for him in his hut. With Stormfly fed, and a basket of fish downstairs to occupy Toothless for a while, Hiccup climbed the stairs to share a meal with Astrid, blanket pressed to her chest once more. It wasn’t until their plates were clean and placed aside that Hiccup began to feel a little awkward. “So uh, h-how should we do this?”

“Take your shirt off.” Astrid told him, watching as he hesitantly removed the crimson fabric, as well as his boot. “Prosthetic too.” The last command earned her a wary look before he dutifully removed the metal leg and set it against the side of his bed. “Now lay down.”

Hiccup shuffled down until he was lying on his back, wondering what Astrid had planned for them. He watched as she fussed with the blanket until it was covering both of them, before rolling over and laying so she was half-on top of him, her head resting on his chest. Smiling down at her his gaze lingered on her back and the Night Fury emblazoned on her skin. Slipping his arm beneath her he had thought to rest his hand on her back but suddenly realised how terrible that would be. “Would uh, would it be okay if my hand was on your-uh…backside, Milady?”

Astrid chuckled at how sweet he was for requesting permission once more. “Very much okay, Babe.” The blonde replied, shifting closer to share his warmth as his hand very carefully shifted to rest on the very base of her spine on the swell of her backside. “And Hiccup? I love you too.”

Reaching down, Hiccup tilted her head so he could kiss her one last time. “I can’t wait to wake up to this.” He muttered reverently, the idea of one day being able to do this on a regular basis was everything he’d ever dreamed of, plus dragons. One by one the candles blew out, Toothless no doubt snuffing the flames out before settling down on his stone slab, the fire downstairs built high enough to keep the hut warm all night. Closing his eyes the young dragon rider finally drifted off, a smile still plastered on his face.

#awreckageofstars #enjoy!

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alexbrockart · 7 years

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Gargoyle Process

This painting started from a sketch in 2015 that I didn't touch for a bout a year, then came back to after ruminating on it on and off over that lapse. It's loosely centered around this legend of the walled city of Agartha, and the guarding demons and djinn that would keep the unworthy from entering.

Here I sketched out the environment surrounding the figure and arranged the composition a bit. I wanted the environment to have a sort of Mediterranean feel to it, almost classical ancient Greek/Roman with a little hint of tropical. I ended up changing the perspective quite a bit because I wanted to paint in a lot of texture in the landscape of the background, and also wanted to drive home a feeling of the figure standing on a really high wall far above the ground below. So I raised the horizon line almost to the top of the canvas and redid a lot of the figure to fit in with a more top down perspective.

Here you can see the new perspective and wings, and my attempt at dumping colors all over the place that I felt gave off the feeling I wanted for the piece, which was a sort of bright and sunny warm day in the afternoon, soon approaching the golden hour.

Here's some images that I felt captured the mood and lighting I wanted to portray

Let the render fest begin! As I was painting the torso my power supply for my computer started crapping out and it was pretty terrifying to paint for fear of losing work. I had finished just about the entire torso and arms when it crashed when I tried to save it, and had to do it over, about 5 hours of work. The second version definitely came out better though. I threw in a crazy weird mandala-lever-table-mechanism I thought would be interesting but ended up chucking it for the sake of time and it threw off the composition a bit. It's inspired by this talk I listened to about the physicist Wolfgang Pauli and his therapy sessions with C. G. Jung. From what I remember, through deep trance or in a dream, Pauli saw this mandala that represented perfect rationality and other dimensions or concepts like increments of time integrated into each other. The idea was to sort of have the Gargoyle in control of one of the levers, hinting that your perception of reality may be manipulated or something along those lines. I mostly wanted an excuse to make a shiny 3D object and render it so that I could have perfect shiny reflection in the painting. I got my jollies in that regard with the mace that I replaced this mandala with.

Here's the talk and a picture of the mandala:

Here's some of the references for the skin and torso. In the old master painting with the man pointing toward the sky I really liked the way their skin looked really pale in some parts and very tan or oily/dirty in others and tried to replicate that effect on the figure with a sort of red-grayish green and a more yellow green. I imagine there being less callous spots that would be lighter and more "juicy" like when the skin is stretched it'll lighten up in those areas, kind of like when some plastic bends it gets lighter in those spots that are really stretched out. It's sort of an effect or look that produces a sensation that I wanted to portray and think looks cool and not much more.

Here's about where I had gotten before I lost my file to the dark lords of psd corruption. Lots of rendering and minute fiddling, pulling and pushing forms and moving around muscles underneath the skin. Reference is a lifesaver when it comes to anatomy, or anything really, but especially anatomy because of how complex it is and how easy it is for people (who all have bodies) to recognize when something is off. I remember this is where I really felt like I was going somewhere with the painting and it had some potential.

Got the rest of the human parts nailed down. I almost went fully Egyptian with his undergarments but decided against it. I found out the name for this type of clothing though, "shendyt" if you ever need to know that. Lots of challenging but enjoyable intricacies worked out here. If I could give a tip on picking color it would be to learn how to really feel it out. If you try to do this with only your intellect and calculate every aspect of surface color and lighting and reflection you mostly end up getting in your own way (not that this isn't important). If you can grab a color that feels ok and run with it you're better off than being indecisive and worrying that the color isn't perfectly accurate. Make a choice and observe the result. What happens when you lay that color next to the others, how does it feel deep down in your gut and heart. What does it need more of? It's like tasting pudding, when you put it on your tongue and smack it around in your mouth how does it taste? What would make it taste more like the most perfect pudding you can imagine? You also have to have good taste to make things that taste good.

Focused heavily on the wings and tree here. I took a big leap with the dappled lighting and just went for it. I knew it would be really hard to make it look realistic and it kind of became abstracted, but I learned a lot. After having finished it I've seen multiple images that would have been much better reference for the dappled lighting than what I used, but such is life. In place of accurate lighting effects I had fun making cool shapes and swirlies. I tried to create an effect similar to some sort of vectoring of light blobs where their outer edge sort of merges with the nearby blobs, similar to when you squint your eyes and look at lights out of focus. On the upper/outer edges of the wings I tried to pull of the effect of something being in shadow on a sunny day and heavily reflecting the blue of the sky. Since that surface isn't being blown out by sunlight you can really see other ambient light sources reflecting on it.

I darkened the shindyt loin cloth by plopping a multiply layer over it and touching it up a bit. I though the lightness of the previous color was attracting a little too much attention and contrast. But when I look at it now I almost like it better.

I also tried to get down some of the awesome patterning on eucalyptus trees that I see here around town. They're some of the coolest looking trees in my opinion and really wanted to capture that dramatic contrast of values and colors they have on them along with the smooth swirly lumps. This tree was extremely difficult and I redid it at least once. I still don't think I pulled off the look I was going for with it but I like it in it's own right.

Here's the bottom before and after the redo. I really wanted to pull off a section of surface that's lit evenly but has two different values/surface materials and have it look cohesive. This was a pain but I'm starting to come around to the idea of doing stuff over even if it's really close to what you want or it feels like too much work. It almost always comes out better.

I also had a friend help out and do a paintover to try and tie up the values which explains the darkened corner on the ground. Much more moody and dramatic. He also taught me this technique to strategically adjust the levels with brush strokes using a mask.

Create a levels adjustment layer. Depending on how you want to adjust the levels (lights, darks or midtones) move the sliders around to a spot you like, and this is the awesome part is it doesn't have to affect the whole image, so you can pick an area you want to change the levels of, adjust accordingly, and target that spot. To do this click on the blank white square (red X) and paint bucket it fully black, then go back to the levels adjustments (click on the layer name or graph square) and start painting or lassoing in white in the spot that you wanted changed. This helps a TON.

More progress! I started experiment with texture in the background by making some brushes and messing with them. I was really inspired by the way Craig Mullins can pull off seemingly intricate detail with abstract shapes and textures and wanted to try something similar. Maybe next time lol. I was also inspired by Dean Cornwell and looking at his work for the texture on the ground, trying to make nice big juicy blobs of paint that almost look like clumps of mud or stones. I also really had fun with trying to make a compelling pattern that was still in perspective. For the background I was looking at the Walter Everett painting above a lot, trying to get a beautiful harmony of really light values and colors, having forms be defined with only hue and not much value change at all. It's really hard to pull off.

I went nuts on the background. I replaced the original idea of a golden glittering canyon with a more earthy and gradient filled landscape. I also tweaked the values much brighter, which I think I darkened back down later. I was heavily inspired by Whit Brachna and had at least one of his paintings open the entire time I was working on the background.

These are some of my all time favorite paintings. Just look at them, gotdang.

3D mace! Mostly inspired by spiky black metal aesthetic. I made a very rough (but that's really all I needed) model of the mace in Cinema 4D. The most tedious part was obviously all the spikes. There's probably a way you could pull them out of the sphere in 2 seconds but I'm not versed enough to avoid tediously scooting each individual spike one at a time. I then took it into ZBrush and just scrubbed it over with a cool texture brush that gave it a bunch of amazing details that you can't even see in the painting. I tried to set up a scenario in C4D that was as close to the painting as I could muster to get the lighting right. I copied a bunch of disc tubes to try and replicate leaves and branches. Since the figures hand, and most of his upper body was cast in shadow I tried to strategically place some "leaves" over the top half of the mace.

I messed with a bunch of different surface materials and render settings and ended up going with the shiniest one, heh.

Here it is before and after being painted on, very minute adjustments.

I'd say the rest is pretty straightforward and can't really think of any extraordinary advice except maybe doing more quick studies of your weak spots. I'm realizing I could get a lot of benefit from doing a higher quantity of less elaborate stuff to really improve more.

I really hoped this helped and if there's anything you'd like me to elaborate on or that you felt was left out please don't hesitate to ask!

Here's some meaty juice for you. I made a 2000px tall resolution gif of all the process images which is included in the .zip, containing over 30 of the aforementioned 2000px res process pics, some full resolution (8000px) crops of the final image, and a few other random in progress shots. And finally here's the full resolution (8000px) final .jpg, the final .psd file (2000px), and my brush presets. Enjoy!

I'm not sure how to export your presets as new brushes and you may already need the .abr file for the presets to work, so if you have any tips on that let me know. Most of the brushes I use are straight from other sets or slightly tweaked and saved as a preset.

Anyway, I think this will conclude this massive post. I truly hope it's helpful, or at the very least mildly interesting. Thanks for reading!

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gigsoupmusic · 5 years

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Jason & The Rex Goes In-Depth about New Video "Bullets Are Flying" - Exclusive Interview

Recently debuting with an activist video on gun violence, Jason & The Rex is stepping onto the scene with "Bullets Are Flying". A mixture of hip-hop, future-funk, and dream-pop combine to create a dense soundscape of vibrant horns, a melancholy piano lead, and strange-sounding synths. Jason's pensive, sometimes manic, flow washes over creating a dialogue on the gun violence issue in the US. Jason was kind enough to sit down and give GIGSoup the exclusive inside scoop on the creation and inspiration behind "Bullets Are Flying". https://youtu.be/g5DTa6cvfcs Tell us about writing the song "Bullets Are Flying"…. what emotions were you feeling at the time? Chaotic. Disoriented. There’s a scene in Dario Argento’s Suspiria where one of the characters falls into a pit of barbed wire. The more she tries to escape, the more she bleeds. It’s a mangled inner conflict. That’s kind of how I felt when I was writing “Bullets Are Flying.” I felt more and more entangled in a barbed wire mess of thoughts and emotions and political jabs and daily, present concerns. When the Parkland incident happened, I was already feeling very professionally and creatively stalled. I’m an actor by vocation. At the time, I was going for a lot of Chinatown thug types -- violent, gun-wielding, angry Asian dudes. I was getting rejected over and over again for projects that I didn’t really even believe in. I felt inauthentic as an artist. Music was supposed to be my outlet, but everything I created was stale and uninspired. And the worst part, I felt like I was failing as a citizen. I was -- and still am -- a reasonably privileged adult who has skills and a higher education. The gun crisis stripped teenagers of their adolescence, and those teenagers responded by standing up to the gun lobby and the politicians they controlled. What was I doing? Beating myself up because, after several attempts, I still couldn’t land a part as a stereotype on Iron Fist? Something snapped after Parkland. All the “thoughts and prayers” and familiar rallying cries came to a fever pitch, and I just started writing down…stuff. I was trying to express grief, to articulate my panic and anger, while also trying to provide commentary. I wanted to find an explanation. And someone to blame. A way out. Or a way forward. I wanted to crack the code on gun violence. I was also coming to terms with my guilt. My social posturing. My vanity in all of this. In trying to create this piece, was I turning the attention to myself? It wasn’t joyous or inspiring. It was a regurgitation of all the thoughts and feelings -- all the stuff -- I hadn’t processed.

The refrain of the song actually came to me much earlier, quite randomly. I like to think it’s because it’s more of a passive observation. Bullets are flying. Where? And why? While they fly, people are mourning. These are constants. Whereas, the two verses -- they’re snapshots of that gloomy winter morning when I was pacing back and forth on my bed trying to make sense of Parkland. It’s like I was trying to extricate myself from the gun culture and the epidemic it has created. But every thought would just pull me back into the mess. Barbed wire. Can’t help thinking about it. Gun violence. Mass shootings. I dream of ways to reshape gun culture. But, uh oh, gun culture has shaped giant parts of who I am. And I contribute back into gun culture. Not only do I love a bloody action thriller. I routinely express my love for John Wayne movies. I think the Punisher is a pretty cool anti-hero. In debating and discussing issues related to gun violence, we shout into our echo chambers while attacking opposing views. We display our alliances. We present ourselves on a side. Scoring our solidarity points is just as essential to gun culture as shooting the guns themselves. In writing this song, I was incredibly self-conscious. Was I just filling my notebook with solidarity points and quips from self-reflection? I offered my perspective on gun violence, while simultaneously reflecting and taking apart that perspective. I felt angry and powerful. But I also felt guilty and insignificant. Is saying something mostly an empty gesture? Probably. But not saying something is equally, if not more, disconcerting. Maybe this song is entirely descriptive of this emotional purgatory I create after a mass shooting like Parkland, where processing anything is just squirming in my barbed wire, while bullets are flying. What is your favorite lyric in the song? "I’m an actor, so I know how to weep. "

There are lots of hidden layers and meaning in the video… can you tell us what some of those are and why you chose to include them? I’m pretty fluid with my interpretation of the video. But most days, it goes something like this: Setting - The characters are in a place of purgatory. It’s that place I create when I’m trying to process gun violence. They may or may not know each other. Screens - On the screens, the characters stare at scenes involving their physical selves. Characters - I play the boy, and we designed the look to reflect someone in a prestigious position. On the TV’s, he’s probably a politician of some sort. I don’t think that’s who the boy is in real life, especially if the boy is me. But in this particular place of purgatory (maybe there are multiple rooms in purgatory), I’m presenting the politically active parts of myself. The dancer might be a whole separate character. She’s someone directly impacted by political leaders and their decisions. So in this place, we have a civic leader and someone he impacts. Seen this way, let’s say the boy is fried in the beginning. He’s lost his will. Been in purgatory too long. The dancer enters. Maybe she sees a party she’s currently attending in the real world. She pulls the boy out of his funk. They are actual human beings who can connect. When we hear about gun violence, our screens create abstracts of the event and the victims. But here in purgatory, the two have to make actual, physical contact. Their actions directly impact each other. Movement - There is a loose choreography. But, mainly, Ashley (the dancer) and I created a structure and improvised within it. Basically, there’s a struggle in the beginning. Japanese Butoh definitely informs the early interactions in the video, as the style can create a sense of shared grief. The movement becomes more playful and celebratory, which I think reflects another convoluted part of processing gun violence. After Parkland, I sunk into a pit of melancholy for probably no more than half a day and then I was out with my friends. We’d talk about mass shootings, but then we’d goof off, and the topic eventually recedes, until we’ve tuned it out completely (though temporarily). In the video, the TV screens are upfront and center in the beginning, but then the movement draws our attention to the characters themselves. There’s an ominous outro, where we intercut to the party-goers on the screens lying facedown on a roof. Lives lost to gun violence? In the purgatory place, we only have close-ups of the characters, many of which focus on the hands in spell-like gestures. The issue of gun violence does seem to have this elusive, enigmatic quality. So maybe whatever happens between these two in this purgatory has some ineffable effect in the world.

What do you hope fans gain as a result from watching/listening to your art? Mostly, I hope this keeps the conversation going. Like I said about the video, the topic always recedes, often because the screens start showing other things to us. As artists, I think we can keep things front and center. It’s funny. When I finished the video, I came across grandson’s “Thoughts and Prayers” single. For a whiff, I felt like my project would be redundant. But, of course, until it’s a non-issue, I say the more content we produce, the better. On a more practical note, I’m pledging all the royalties from this project towards organizations like March For Our Lives. So when people listen or watch, they are indirectly or directly (starting to really question my understanding of this concept) benefiting the cause. I think it allows listeners a little extra way to participate in reform measures. You had a hand in creating all of the aspects of the single… writing, producing, creating the video….. tell us about that process as an artist. How does it influence your work? It slows down the process by too much. No, but really, it allows complete ownership over the process, at least of the track itself. I’m entirely responsible for every aspect of it. Holding the work so precious does create a lot of room for self-doubt, but the fears of commitment also pushes for more experimentation. When I create tracks, it’s like I’m recording and re-mixing an exploration. Or maybe it’s like I’m a one-man jam band in my room. It certainly allows me to include weird ideas like recording the words “thoughts and prayers” and using that sample to create different drum sounds. You can’t really tell when you hear it, but I think it’s a fun little Easter Egg. As for the video, I came up with a structure, but this is where I wanted to open up the perspective. I’m kind of enjoying the thought that creating the track itself was like the boy in the video struck in purgatory alone. Then with the video, I’ve invited other perspectives, just as there’s now another person with the boy in purgatory. I’m a nerd, I know. But, yes, I think because I gave myself a clear foundation after working on the track, we were able to do a lot of exploring with the concept of the video, which then allows for its fluid interpretation. Fun fact: the video was originally supposed to involve a dancer and an agent of death battling over a remote that controls one single TV screen displaying a party. You've spoken about how you want your music to be a platform for activism….. what are some other issues you are passionate about? There are a lot. But I’m just going to list one here to emphasize how important it is. THE ENVIRONMENT. Tell us about your upcoming album….. what can fans expect to hear? It’s tentatively called Synthesizer or Variations of: An Endemic Cycle. The EP will have about 6or 7 songs that expand upon the narrative in “Bullets Are Flying.” Just as “Bullets Are Flying” is set in emotional purgatory, the other songs will be placed in their own settings. All the songs will fit into a narrative that has a circular structure. I’m designing musical themes that provide a through-line in the tracks. If you play the album and replay it, the narrative from the last track continues right into the first. You can start the album from any track, and the narrative will continue and circle back. I’m also creating visuals for each track. So if you were to edit them together in a specific and play it on loop, it might feel like one single never-ending movie no matter where you begin. Gun violence is so cyclical. You can enter into it at any point -- initial grief, debate, ennui, etc. --and it’ll eventually loop right back to where you started. How would you describe your musical sound? Musical genres are so bewildering to me. I guess I’ll say this: I’m sort of finding a hip-hop voice in other genres I love. They’re mainly psychedelic dream-pop, future funk, new wave, or even cinematic anime soundtracks. If my process were a scene, I’d like to imagine Childish Gambino getting really high and watching the news with Tame Impala, and maybe Jon Bellion barges in and blasts his new album. I don’t know that these are the sounds that come to mind if you were to listen to my work. But they’re certainly the sounds I’m after, sounds that provide a framework when I produce my music. Read the full article

#Jason&TheRex #newmusic

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garden-ghoul · 7 years

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Here’s a loose transcript of the Aria/Jacqui scene from Animal Out Of Context. I’m using it as reference for the fic Lane told me to write but I figured some other people might want to read some canon gay shit without having to hunt around for it. It’s 1500 words long.

Aria is trying to clean the ship, because it was left in a horrible mess, when she’s nervous that’s what she does. There’s paperwork everywhere, and the furniture got tossed around, and the fuel canisters are not where they are supposed to be. Aria is moving through the main corridor, which is bordered by the crew quarters, when she hears the faint sound of music coming from behind your door.

Spread out across the floor are a bunch of old posters of Aria Joie, and one of her first pop songs is playing. And Jacqui Green just has the fucking most wild look on her face. “You’re—you’re the pop star. You’re Aria Joie.”

“Yeah, did you… you didn’t know that?”

“I thought it was a… like, a disguise.”

“Nope, that’s me. In the flesh!”

“Then… wh… shouldn’t you be on Joy Park?”

Aria laughs. “No, no, I…”

Jacqui leans in and looks a little more closely, like, “Are you really Aria Joie?”

“Of course I am! It’s Aria and the Brilliance, you’ve seen me.”

“All right, then who’s Varyne Roth?”

“…No-one.”

She’s digging through stuff she’s already dug through while Aria was busy cleaning the ship. “It says here, this says Varyne Roth.”

Aria takes a little breath. “Yeah, and?”

Jacqui does a little incredulous laugh. “Well, if you’re really Aria Joie, then, this wouldn’t say that.” She says this like “checkmate.”

Aria sighs deeply.

“I think—I think you’re just another big fan. And maybe you’re a little… twisted. Which is fine, I don’t mind, twisted’s fun sometimes. But I just need to be clear who I’m on the ship with.”

Aria, like she’s keeping her patience under tight control. “When Earth Home hired me, I became Aria Joie. And that’s who I am now.”

“So you just, like, let them change your name?”

“Yeah.” Aria shrugs. “I wanted a job and Earth Home was my dream, and I was hired to be Aria Joie, and that’s who I am. The… the, Aria and her Brilliance and the… the inspiration and all that, that’s who I am.”

“But you’re not, like you’re not the one on that stage, so why do you still use the name?”

“I—it’s… mine.”

“I thought Earth Home made it up. Aren’t you just like a cartoon?”

Aria does a little laugh but it sounds kind of pained. “This is who I’ve been for ten years,” she says slowly. “And it’s a part of me. A—and, yeah, I, I dunno, they can make other movies and other songs, I guess, but I’m Aria Joie.”

“I don’t know, it’s just, you know,” says Jacqui, convincingly airy. “They gave me a name too, the people who, you know. And I didn’t have another name before that. I think if I had one I would just, want that one again.”

Aria forces out a breath. “What, you don’t like Jacqui Green? I think it’s kinda cute.”

“I, it’s, it’s fine.” She absentmindedly runs a hand through her hair, and it’s a weird thing because right now her hair is purple. But Aria can see her roots are green. “Anyway, yeah, if you’re really Aria Joie, then you should be making music. I don’t wanna listen to a fake Aria Joie song, I grew up listening to real Aria Joie songs.” A little petulant, insistent.

“I didn’t realize you were a fan, this is so exciting!” Aria laughs. “Um, I…”

“Do you have a computer somewhere filled with songs that were never released?”

“Yeah! Yeah, I’ve been releasing stuff, but with Joy Park making its own music it’s been kind of weird—”

“No, fuck them! We’re gonna release a new song! Play me something.”

“What?”

“Play me something.”

Aria laughs incredulously. “Oh, this is so much. Uh, sure! Sure. You came all the way here, right? I owe you that much.”

Jacqui sits on Aria’s bed cross-legged. And she’s big, she has big muscley legs. And she has really good posture.

Aria looks at her and is wondering if she’s just joking or not, but she’s clearly not and is excited to hear this. So Aria walks over to her computer console and starts clicking around. “I don’t know, what do you want the mood to be?” says Aria (flirtatious).

“I dunno, the best Aria Joie songs are like, um, they’re, they’re, exciting and they’re hopeful. There’s something about them. She’s such a—”

“I’m such a.”

“…Right. Right. It’s strange. The best Aria Joie songs make me forget how bad things are. That’s all.”

Aria smiles, and she nods really slowly. She looks through some more files, starts playing a backtrack without vocals on it yet. She lets it play for a little bit, then looks at Jacqui and tries to figure out what she’s thinking.

Jacqui Green is actually incredibly uncomfortable. She is in over her head, and is desperate to hang on to something, because suddenly not only is she not part of her tag-team hitwoman duo, not only is she no longer part of the squad she was in command of from Horizon Tactical, now she’s on a ship, nowhere near Counterweight where she works, and she’s in the bedroom of a pop star that she’s been listening to for the better part of a decade. And she’s trying very hard not to show it. Her posture is too good.

The best thing that Aria could do to create a connection between her and Jacqui would be to let her into the creative process or to share something that at least Aria says no-one else has heard before. And the best way Aria could get in is to go forward on that, and if she uploaded something to Soundcloud right now, with her in the room, that would be like the dopest thing in her life, and would calm her the fuck down, because it would distract her. The way she reveals she wants to be involved is that when Aria puts on that backbeat, immediately, like way too quickly she’s like “This is good! Why haven’t you put this out?” Like the hook hasn’t even played yet. There’s nothing yet.

Aria smiles. “I’ve been busy, it’s fine.”

“You’ve been busy shooting at people.”

“I—I…”

“Aria Joie is a killer.”

“I never shot at you once!”

“That’s not true.”

Aria laughs, nervous, unsuppressable and caught out. “I shot at your feet like twice, but that’s not, I really didn’t want to hurt you.”

“I like my feet.”

“I…. yeah, they’re fine.”

Jacqui scoffs.

The obvious potential complication is that Jacqui just lost the person who’s closest to her. There’s more, which is like, Jacqui is a person and they’re cohabitating. And it is very hard to meet the people you’ve admired for a long time and realize that they are people first and idols second. There’s something else—for a long time Aria Joie has had very clear but abstract ideals. It is very easy to believe in fixing the world and then to do nothing because you have no material connection to the world that needs to be fixed. But the second that you have someone that can be impacted by that world, either your ideals bend so they will not be hurt, or they push you to do something so you can make it better for them. There’s a shot of Aria recognizing that caring about Jacqui actually makes her incredibly vulnerable. It’s one of those looks that goes from ‘oh she’s so cute!’ to ‘oh no.’ Aria took her in space on this fucking weirdo adventure and she is now responsible.

Aria lets the beat play for a little bit, and then opens up the Soundcloud login screen or whatever to be like “The last song I put out was this one, but it came out right after that new song Earth Home just put out, so it’s been, kind of controversial. But whatever, we don’t have to talk about that. What do you…” Suddenly gaining the flirty tone again. “What do you want to sing about?”

“I dunno, I just. I… what do I like? I like dancing, I like explosions a lot.” She grins bashfully, and Aria laughs. “Um, I like… I like June. That’s a good month.” June on Kalliope means lots of open air concerts and markets in the streets, and there’s a big fashion show. Space LA at its most aggressively high-art high-fashion punk.

Aria hops up so she’s sitting on her desk, and gestures for Jacqui to come closer to her. Jacqui does. Aria presses a little thing on her bracelet and a microphone comes out. She looks Jacqui in the eye and says, smiling, “You’re going to have to explain why you were going through all of my stuff, but this is a really good idea. Explosions. Of course you like explosions.”

“Big fan,” says Jacqui, grinning broadly.

The song begins.

#counterblog

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muthur9000 · 7 years

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PROMETHEUS: DAVID SHELDON-HICKS – CREATIVE DIRECTOR & CO-FOUNDER – TERRITORY STUDIO

VINCENT FREI | 19 July, 2012

Prior to founding Territory Studio in 2012 with Lee Fasciani and Nick Glover, David Sheldon-Hicks worked on projects like CASINO ROYALE or THE DARK KNIGHT but also on CALL OF DUTY: WORLD AT WAR and MODERN WARFARE 2.

What is your background? Territory set up in 2010 with myself, Lee Fasciani and Nick Glover as partners. We’ve quickly grown working on Formula 1 spots for McLaren and cinematic work for KILLZONE 3. We see ourselves as a creative agency that work across branding, digital and motion, priding ourselves on the craft of the work, with a strong foundation in traditional graphic design. My focus is leading the motion side of things but we quite often find ourselves working on projects that span all 3 disciplines.

How did Territory Studio got involved on this show? I have a freelance history before setting up Territory that spans film screens on CASINO ROYALE and THE DARK KNIGHT and also cut-scene work for games such as MODERN WARFARE 2. A friend of a friend had mentioned my name to George Simons the computer screens supervisor, who ultimately ended up commissioning Territory.

What have you done on this project? We collaborated with George Simons and Shaun Yue on the overall look for screens on the bridge of Prometheus. We were also responsible for the design and animation of screens in the medical area, social area, escape pods, some of the Rover vehicle screens. We also solely completed post screens for Cryo Pod, DNA tablets and screens, Helmet Cam HUDs and load of other stuff. Around 250 designs and animations to go on-set. We then handed over these animations to the very clever people at Compuhire, headed up by Mark Jordan, who’s engineers and technicians made sure it was all physically run through to the set and worked with the rest of the art departments designs.

How was the collaboration with director Ridley Scott? He’s incredibly inspiring and encouraging to work with. He’s creative briefs were very loose, but he was always demanding in final execution and pushing us to think outside of the normal screen design look. He continually questioned our thinking and was always asking us for originality. I believe the entire Territory team found the process creatively rewarding. Plus we knew our work was going to be shot beautifully against other stunning visual produced by the rest of the art department and VFX.

What was his approach about the screen graphics? He wanted a more high tech look to the screens in this film from the original ALIEN film. This ship was meant to feel much more advanced as it represented an expensive research facility. Designs for screens in the medical areas and to some degree the bridge used node tree’s like you’d see in Nuke or Flame UI’s. This came from Ridleys reference of under water coral reefs and complex organic natural forms.

The social areas Ridley proposed abstract fine artists such as Paul Klee. We created abstract animations, that were meant to stimulate the crews mood and emotions. We’d take nutritional data of the food the crew were eating, and abstract the data so much it became much more suggestive and emotive layered textures.

In the more functional areas such as lifts and corridors we took reference from Ron Cobbs original functional designs in ALIEN. Bright yellow dials, data and warning info was displayed in bold, isometric frameworks to convey a more utilitarian and functional aesthetic.

Which references and indications did he give to you? It was really varied as mentioned. Ridley would talk at length about ideas that were being used throughout the art department, maybe a texture or form being used in part of the engineers head, or a pottery design to go in the eating area as a springboard for our computer interface concepts. Sonja Klaus would also be a great part of the process suggesting materials going into the surrounding consoles, tables chairs and other furnishings that could inspire our own views.

How did you approach this project? With a very hard work ethic! We always start with research. Based on that visual exploration we start to version out many, many designs. Once we’ve explored these designs as best we can we get to work on all the 2d and 3d animation. At all points through this process we’re thinking about how we can best convey relevant narrative purely through quite technical data visualisations and 3d imagery. Its this pride and focus on the content that we take very seriously.

Did you take some stuffs and references from ALIEN for the screen design? We couldn’t help but be aware of the original ALIEN film in working on PROMETHEUS. Everyone in our team trained as graphic designers so knew of the original title sequence and designs of Ron Cobb which are both timeless and beautiful. We sneaked in little elements here and there such as bold crosshairs in the corners of screens, and simple iconography design throughout.

The various screens features a lot of informations. Can you tell us more about the screen content concepts and their creation such as the cryo-pod? We created the HUD display for the cryo-pod late in production as a post shot. We were given the background plate and told to make something cool that would feature the name of the person asleep in the cryo-pod. Briefs for the UI work were always fairly loose, letting the script dictate key plot points for the content.

The rushes we were sent to add our UI graphics to had the character David wearing a funky yellow visor helmet, doing something with the interface on the surface of the glass window, monitoring Shaw’s dreams. Quite a fun one this as it’s not your typical computer readout on a science research space ship! We sketched out a bunch of different ideas. Maybe we could see the dreams as fragments of images or represent the dreams with a series of abstract shapes and patterns. We talked through the ideas and realised we wanted the system to look as though it’s purely monitoring the person inside, as it’s David’s Visor that ultimately gives the view into the dream. We wanted the interface to come from the same graphic language we’d already put in place for the medical area. We used floating control points for David to interact with, and there movements influenced tendrils that connected back to the main interface. We had sensors float over the person, taking measurements, again connected by tendril/node cables. Small amounts of data would flow around the screen, creating a route and logic to the system and processing of information. In the end we were really pleased with how this UI turned out. It’s a great example of the organic style we developed and used throughout every screen and HUD in his film.

How did you help the actors to interacts with the screen contents on-set? Most of our screens weren’t post so they could see and interact with them for real. We got a really good reaction from the actors because of this. We didn’t get the issue of the actors looking at the wrong point on a glass screen projection, because the Compuhire guys did it for real on-set. It looked great.

Which softwares did you used to create your screen graphics shots? Photoshop and Illustrator for designs. Then into Cinema 4D and After Effects for animation. We also created our own in-house tools for some of the animation node systems.

Have you created procedural tools to help your artists? Yes, the scripts for After Effects by Carl Fairweather mentioned below.

How did you collaborates with Production VFX Supervisor Richard Stammers? Lots of emails and ftp file sharing.

The movie features various screen design done by different vendors. How did you work with them to have the best continuity? Because we were the on-set guys we started designing very early on before all the VFX post houses. We had most of the bridge screens and medical screens animated and provided renders on a big hard drive that got sent out. It was then up to Richards team to ask for additional designs and animations be be provided to the various VFX houses. We tend to put focus on the look and movement of the UI, screens and HUDS which then gets passed onto places like MPC and Fuel VFX to integrate into there shots.

Ridley Scott’s return to SF is highly anticipated. What was your feeling to be part of it? Do a bloody good job.

What was the biggest challenge on this project and how did you achieve it? The biggest challenge was technically achieving the node based operating system we had devised. We wanted the computer graphics to use lots of connected lines, almost like cables or tentacles. The movements and shapes of these node lines would be affected by the steady undulating rhythm of tabs, windows and widgets. To create these nodes strands in the way we wanted in After Effects proved to be a little tricky. In-fact, at the time, we couldn’t find a plugin or work-around that would make it work. We had the option of going into 3d which would have worked, but based on our timelines wasn’t practical. In the end a good friend, Carl Fairweather, built us a plugin that gave us the solution. We had lots of Bezier handle controls that we could parent and weight to other objects movements. All our motion designers loved it and he developed it further as we started asking for more features.

Was there a shot or a sequence that prevented you from sleep? Most of them. Seeing your work on a large cinema screen knowing lots of people are viewing it, and its for a film by Ridley from a classic film franchise. Doesn’t get much bigger and pressured than that. We didn’t tend to have much time for sleep anyway!

What do you keep from this experience? Creatively we learnt a lot. We had to be very responsive and think on our feet. That rapid turn around could be seen as a problem but we tried to use it to our advantage and be much looser and expressive with our design layouts.

Also, its worth having someone on the team that can script tools. Having the ability to ask for new tools in after effects or Cinema 4D was invaluable and I’ll try to have that on many more projects.

How long have you worked on this film? In total about a year.

How many shots have you done? Post shots there were around 25 I think, but the on-set delivery was around 250 screens that featured throughout the film. Haven’t counted how many shots, but a lot.

What was the size of your team? At Territory there was around 5 people involved. Myself, Carl Fairweather, Luke Hale, Ryan Close and Lee Fasciani, plus many others that helped at various points along the way.

What is your next project? We’re currently working with Kathryn Bigelow on her new feature, games cinematic for a new Sony game and animations for Virgin Atlantic.

What are the four movies that gave you the passion for cinema? Wow. Hmmm. I think BLADE RUNNER is a front runner for me, which in turn inspired GHOST IN THE SHELL, which in turn lead to THE MATRIX. Those 3 certainly challenged my perception of what could be done cinematically. For the fourth I’m gonna go safe with SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION, no wait, change that to SE7EN, no , no I can’t decide. This is not a fair question.

A big thanks for your time.

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