#I need to sketch a version of his eyes just being white instead of black | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

emerxshiu · 3 months

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FORGOTTEN LAND'S SECOND ANNIVERSARY :3

I AM SOOOO BACK

I started this drawing yesterday around afternoon and finished it just a few minutes earlier.

I went with a messier type of drawing instead of more clean like the elfilin one from yesterday, i find it fun doing it like this, mostly cause i dont have to worry about making it perfectly so i dont get as frustrated as normal. Id place this one as my second best digital drawing. im pretty sure i havent posted what i consider my best digital drawing here, tho i do have it in instagram, i might post it here one day, tho these two are way too tied up, i love how this came out, its not exactly like how i imagined it but its really close to it, and also itd say that since i dont tend to play around lighting that much, this was such a joy to draw and i cant help but stare at it a lot, at least until i start hating it because i made quite a lot of errors. i also changed my elfilis gijinka just a tad bit from last time, but its not that big of a difference, mostly.

ofc i had to draw elfilis for forgotten land's anniversary, i tend to deny it in my head but yeah they're my fave of the kirby characters even tho i hate them a bit. I wanted to draw some more doodles, like, elfilis eating cake, kirby car, a bunch of other stuff (not elfilin cuz i already drew him yesterday) but when i tried i couldnt draw anything more, guess this drawing burned me out a lot, huh?

you can definitly tell i spent all the efforts on him cuz if you look a bit closer to the bottom part you'll see its almost barely detailed, but i mean, they're the focus so make sense i guess for me not add that much detail there. um also, maybe because i dunno i had OVER 130 LAYERS jeez no wonder firealpaca was slowing down so much, i need to manage my layers better next time, tho i did do something i keep forgetting, wich is naming them (most of them at least) that was a real life saver

Also, antares (fecto elfilis' spear/cadaceus), as always, was a pain to draw, but this time its probably been draw the most accurate out of every other drawing ive made with it in it, i didnt notice it was like, a little curved when it reached the blade

some close ups since his face is a bit hard to see

silly :3

fun fact! actually, this is technically a redraw, somewhere around between february and march i started a fecto elfilis drawing for the first anniversary, but i couldnt finish it in time, and i never finished it

thats...quite the improvement! (i remember being so proud of it)

also his wings are like that cuz i did not want to draw the pattern, its way too hard, i literally copy pasted it, wait, i was talking about the 2024 version but i looked at the 2023 one and i just noticed it also has the pattern copy pasted, i guess some stuff never changes since i still abuse the ctrl+c ctrl+v to this day

Also i ended up making a huge error there, i was planing to add the phantom spears from orbital pulsar (the attack he does first when you battle them at lab discovera) but theres an innacuracy, when they do the attack, they always close their eyes, i had actually sketched him (well i mean both these drawings are basically the first sketch (2023) or second sketch(2024) with some color, shadows and lighting. i didnt do lineart in the 2024 one cuz i wanted to be a bit like the og i made (too bad i sketched that one with black since the og was sketched with white due to me drawing the bg first)) with his eyes closed but them decided to make them open for a reason i cant remember, maybe i thought itd look nicer? idk

ive had the idea of redrawing this for quite some month now so it was kinda already planned

background cuz i think it came out really pretty

doesnt have the little stars since without elfilis and the structures it looks fucked up. the actual sky in game is more blue, but the clouds have some orange, in the 2023 ver. i made the sky orange, and in the 2024 ver i wanted it more accurate, but i didnt wanna loose the orange sky, so i did a gradient. pretty...

also here's a screenshot i took when i was like halfway trough it, its barely noticeable but i changed his mouth in the final drawing

I really love katfl, like a buncha whole lot, its basically almost my first mainline kirby game. 100% the demo, finished the game in almost one day, i literally play it monthly, like, every month i put the card in my switch, start it up, get morpho sword, and go shred elfilis in lab discovera. i would probably not even be here on tumblr and the kirby fandom if it werent for it. and i love it so much i genuinly cannot express how much i like it and treasure it with words or anything

Thank you for reading my unnecesarily long rambles lol

I hope i'll post tomorrow and dont forget like usual

Jambuhbye!

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angelofthepage · 9 months

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Ink Demon - Evolution shown in Reverse? (Bendy DCTL Speculation and Character Design Theory)

Today we got a surprise drop of the cover for the Dreams Come to Life Graphic Novel, and there’s one thing all of us are thinking about: why is the BATDR ink demon design on the cover? When Dreams Come to Life originally came out, this design either didn’t exist period or wasn’t public yet, and its inclusion here instead of the BATIM ink demon leaves me with a lot of questions about the timeline of this universe and how the ink demon functions. So today I’m gonna crack open DCTL and see if I can puzzle this one out. Join me, won’t you?

First, let’s look at what the book actually says in describing the monster’s appearance. Let’s jump over to the part where Buddy digs through Sammy’s sheet music and finds his doodles. This is how Buddy describes a drawing that, we presume, is the ink demon.

DCTL Page 162, Physical Copy

“The ink glistened like the ink on the cover, but it was similarly dry. That’s not what chilled me to the bone though. Taking up the full right-hand page was what I could only describe as a drawing of a deformed Bendy. But it had very little in common with the cute cartoon character. Its limbs were long, almost praying mantis-like, with hands that had claws on them, not cute white gloves. Worse still was his face, half obscured with-what was it? Was it blood? The drawing was in black and white; it was hard to tell what everything was. All I could see was how much longer his devil’s horns now were, how his smile was filled with sharp teeth. His eyes completely hidden behind a dripping black ooze.”

On page 204, while Buddy and Dot are exploring in the dark with a flashlight, they turn the flashlight above them and see this. “Something wet. Black. Dripping. A figure. With something sharp that glinted in the light. Like teeth.

And then the flashlight died in the shadows.”

Pages 274 and 275, we get this description.

“Standing there was the creature from Sammy’s notebook. It wasn’t just some made-up doodle, it was real. And it was…

Bendy.

At least, some strange version of the cartoon character. The head was the most like him. Shaped in the same way, round with two points for horns. He had that same smile too. Big and white, with lines separating each tooth, only these teeth were real. They glistened with saliva. The rest? Well, the rest of his face was covered in ink, ink dripping from his head over where his eyes should be. Did that mean he was blind? I didn’t think there needed to be logic with such a creature.

His body was long and lean, and he too was dripping ink. No, not just lean, but almost like a dripping skeleton. I could see the indentation beneath his rib cage. But he was still partly cartoon character, which was probably the most terrifying part about him.He still had that white bow tie and one white glove like the ones all the characters had.

He stood there. A growl deep inside him like a revving engine.”

And then skipping ahead a bit, after ripping Dave’s arm off, he transforms-

“The beast now seemed to be growing in size. His arms and legs lengthening, his head spreading, his teeth getting sharper.”

I went back to page 147, the first encounter Buddy has with the monster in the infirmary, but it doesn’t give us any physical description of the monster. It talks about shadows on the walls and the lights dimming that sound like the ink demon’s aura, and the handprint he gets on the back of his shirt doesn’t have a description other than being black. There is an interesting thing with there being a yellow coloring to the room/light for the infirmary on page 143 that I need to look back at later, but that’s not gonna help me with this matter (that’s for another theory another day).

When looking at these descriptions of the monster, it sounds like most of them line up with what we knew about the BATIM ink demon in his regular and beast form, save for one. Sammy’s notebook sketch is described with limbs that are long and “praying mantis like”, and Buddy also takes note that the creature has claws. Now, the BATIM ink demon does not have claws, he has one human-ish hand and one gloved cartoon hand, and while he does have some length to him, I’d argue this description fits better with our BATDR ink demon. I mean if you look at the way his limbs bend, they are kind of mantis-like. Granted, I could say similar things about Beast Bendy in that regard, but he’s not quite so gangly. The sharp teeth throw me off, as again, that’s a Beast Bendy trait, BATDR ink demon has very flat teeth by comparison, deadly, but not sharp.

I think you could absolutely make the argument that Sammy’s drawing from when he was succumbing to the ink could be of the BATDR ink demon, though it feels a bit flimsy, I don’t have anything super concrete here. But then again, this is Buddy’s interpretation of Sammy’s art, which isn’t 100% reliable given, Buddy is not a reliable narrator for a lot of the book. You could easily brush off inconsistencies as Buddy having a warped memory from how long he’s been trapped as a Boris. I’m not sure how I feel about that, I suppose it’s a strength and a weakness of these books, depending on how you look at it.

Having the BATDR ink demon on the cover art could easily mean some retconning, but like, I don’t think that’s what’s happening here. I think the lore has changed as to how the ink demon works, and I don’t think they had everything mapped out from the beginning. But I also feel like you can work the BATDR ink demon design into an earlier point in the timeline given what one of our big twists is in BATDR.

We hear from Wilson and the Keepers that they’ve been running experiments to trap the ink demon in a smaller, more vulnerable form. And this plotpoint has always bothered me since, how the hell did Wilson figure it out before Joey did? We know that Wilson was digging through Joey’s old stuff thanks to the BATDS teaser of his voice and his other audiologs, but what did Joey have that could have clued him in that this was a possibility? Records of Gent experiments perhaps? How can a man who doesn’t truly understand how the ink works build off of Joey and Gent’s work to get their desired result? Before Wilson was in the picture, the story felt like Joey had a monster locked up and then on the loose after the ink demon didn’t turn out to be his perfect Bendy. Given the room Buddy finds the ink demon in is filled with medical tools, I’ve often thought maybe they were using him for experiments, and it begs the question, what were those experiments? Were they trying to make him into a perfect Bendy? Were they testing the limits of the ink? It feels like it could be those things.

Here’s what I suspect is going on: ink demon didn’t come out as a perfect Bendy, so they’re trying to make him fit that mold in post. Thing is, Joey and Gent? They’re not treating him very well, and he’s giving them trouble, so they’re running other experiments in the background and using data from what they learned from him before applying that knowledge to him. Hence why we get Buddy Boris, Susie as Twisted Alice, etc, but no perfect Bendy yet. My thought process is, if the ink demon came out of the machine looking like Beast Bendy or his BATDR incarnation, then the ink demon we see in BATIM could be what happens after some experimenting. The BATIM ink demon is closer to how Bendy looks than any other version of the monster, it makes sense for him to be an in-between form in the evolution of this monster, we could’ve just been wrong about the order it goes in.

The thing is, this means Joey, Tom, and Gent made significant progress in a short amount of time, if we got from the big scary sharp toothed monster to the one with a skeleton shape and one good glove over the course of one book. Sammy drinking the ink and falling under its influence seems to be contained over the course of this book.

Page 259

“”What happened to me? You know what happened to me! You were there! You saw it”...”That day the ink found me. It wanted me. He wanted me. At first I was scared. At first I could feel it inside, the drops I’d swallowed by accident. By luck. I could feel them moving around inside me. I shouldn’t have been scared. I was foolish.””

This seems to be in reference to the pipes bursting in the supply closet and dowsing Sammy with ink, which was the start of his cravings. Buddy was there as a direct witness to this event. If Sammy drew this monster while under the influence of the ink, he’s changed forms within this book. I know the paragraph describing the monster Buddy actually saw starts off with a note about being like the drawing, but when you compare the descriptions, the monsters are different, especially with the way they describe teeth. It could easily be that the reason Buddy calls this out as the monster from Sammy’s drawing is because he sees it transform a little while later, even though it’s not an exact match in the moment of this encounter.

So the ink demon’s form changing is possibly a recent development for him and his abilities within this book, and the fact that he goes back to being a more threatening monster not too far into the scene where Buddy and Dot have a boss fight with him makes me think that maybe the BATIM ink demon form didn’t stick as well as it could have at first. Like they could achieve it, but it took a long time to make him stay that way. It would also add to why he’s so hostile and why our little Bendy is scared of the Gent buildings. It may not just be trauma over what Wilson and the Keepers did, it may be tied to what happened to him with Joey, Tom, and Gent too.

Whatever the case may be, I have a lot of questions and curiosities about the upcoming graphic novel, and I look forward to seeing what comes next. Remember, whatever they decide to do, whatever happens, you’re still allowed to have your headcanons and noncanon things you play with. The world of Bendy getting expanded does not mean you’re not allowed to have fun with old or new ideas, nor does it give you clearance to be nasty to other fans if they choose to incorporate or ignore this entry when building their fan works. Normally I don’t feel the need to say that, most of us are pretty chill here in the fandom, but some recent interactions have made me feel like this is worth reiterating. Be kind to each other, we’re all fandom nerds bonding over a love of a fictional realm of demons and monsters, that’s really what matters most here.

Here’s sending you all the good vibes! Tell me what you’d think, I’d love to hear your thoughts.

#bendy spoilers #bendy theories #bendy dctl #bendy dreams come to life #bendy dreams come to life graphic novel #bendy dctl graphic novel #bendy dctl spoilers #bendy speculation #ink demon #ink demon design

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nymphsupremacy · 2 years

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if you could change anything about the character designs in LO which would you do? i personally would have made persephone green with the more leaf like hair and have hades be black/white with maybe jewel/skeleton motifs on him. i would love to hear your input though!!

Aw man, I would change alot if things the designs in LO are bland af and the only good character designs appear for 2 panels(Ouranos and Gaia).

First off, personally I don't mind Hades and Persephone being blue and pink. Back in the earlier eps they had more muted colors and they looked nice however I do agree with you. I would change Persephone with an earthy green and rosy red hair. I think Thanatos' colors would be a good choice for Hades with his ghostly white skin, blue eyes and a black suit and I totally agree with the jewel and skeleton motifs on him as well, give him diamond earings and a skeleton brooche. Persephone's clothing choices most of the doesn't feel like something her character would wear (the ultra high heels to school while wearing a small dress and jacket, I don't think she would be a heel person who wears them on the regular) I see her as wearing comfy clothing like overalls, generally baggy clothing and flats but can be relatively stylish and refined too when needed.

Or something like these(these are from rachel instagram, they were concept sketches) I kinda have a soft spot for this color palette for persephone though

I don't like Eros' design but I love pilot Eros here please bring him back. I think his colors can stay the same or maybe giving him a pink hue instead

Aphrodite is probably my most hated design given that she's the goddess of beauty but she just looks like a Hera recolor. I think she should be a bit more extra with her clothing, be hot pink and have either blonde or teal hair. Apollo should be a warm yellow and have long hair(if possible make him more skinny), Artemis can be a muted dark blue/purple with silver hair(make her buffer) I'm fine with Zeus and Hera being purple(just choose a more muted purple and make his hair darker and give him light blue eyes) and yellow (maybe make her hair slightly orange?) but I just want their iconographies like lightning and peacock motifs and I also want them to dress more regal as the king and queen of the gods. Demeter should share the same earthy green as Persephone and blonde hair. Lastly, I just want Poseidon to be a darker bluish green and orange/blue eyes and perhaps give him some ocean themes accessories like shells and other fancy stuff.

These are relatively minor changes, if I were design my version of the gods it would be WAY different.

#asks #anti lo art

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s-horne · 4 years

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BASICALLY its about tony showing his love through food sorry that was really long

okay so i had this idea, and im really swamped with work so im passing it over to you: tony associates caring and love with food. when he was really young, he would sit on his mamma's hip, one of her arms around his tiny waist as she stirred with the other, and as he grew older and howard started demanding more of her attention (for this charity or that benefit); the only time tony and his mom spent together was in the kitchen together. 1/2)

years later, tony equates food to love. he cooks for the people he cares about. and then i lost the thread of the idea but it involves steve and tony and peter and tony cooking for steve and teaching peter recipes that he can later teach his kid (2/2)

Please enjoy 3k words of Tony in the kitchen; preparing meals for his husband and their friends, his&Steve’s adoption process, and then Tony’s legacy

*******

Spaghetti Bolognese

It was an affront to the meal. His Mama would kill him if she knew how he was preparing it.

It was the only meal she’d actually known how to cook and they had a weekly Thursday night dinner date in the kitchen when Howard worked late at the office. She’d carry him round on her hip when he was too small to see what she was preparing on the countertops and, when he’d grown a little taller, sit him in pride of place to sound out every word of the passed-down recipe written in her mother’s cursive handwriting.

Of course, Maria knew exactly what the recipe called for – which was a good job when Tony tripped over some of the measurements or skipped down a couple of lines by accident – but she let him play along until he was old enough to help her cook the actual meal itself.

It was definitely the thought that counted, Tony tried to tell himself as he stared down at the meagre ingredients in front of him. He had to work with what he had and what he had wasn’t much. The only tomatoes he’d had in his cupboards were the tinned kind, so the sauce wouldn’t be as good as his Mama’s when she used the fresh tomatoes from the farmer’s market they had to drive out of town for.

He’d only wanted to make something a little special for Steve. Their anniversary had been interrupted by a battle and they’d gone from a romantic meal at a five-star restaurant to suited up and locked in a fight with an alien invader. Given that they were meant to eat out, their kitchen wasn’t exactly stocked for cooking.

“Need a hand?”

Tony lifted his gaze from the two jars of dried herbs he’d been choosing between. Neither were particularly appealing so he was glad of a distraction. “I thought you were sleeping.”

“Woke up,” Steve said, stifling a yawn behind his hand as he wandered over to Tony. “Obviously.”

“Obviously,” Tony agreed with a roll of his eyes, a fond smile tugging at his lips. He turned back to the dried ingredients in front of him as he waved to the other side of the kitchen, eyes drawn to the way his ring caught the light. “You can chop whichever onion hasn’t gone off over there. I think there’s actually a part of the serum that means you won’t cry whilst you chop it.”

Steve huffed a laugh, trailing his hand over Tony’s hip as he passed him. “Pretty sure that’s not a thing.”

“Well, there’s only one way to find out. Dice it finely, please.”

Vegetable Soup

Vegetable soup was easy. Most soups were easy, really. Tony could make most of them with one hand. Chopping the vegetables was sometimes a little tricky with his arm in a sling, but he could stir the vat of broth easily.

After a battle, it was all that anyone needed. A few loaves of bread in the centre of the table and a mountain of pain relievers handed round with the crockery and they were set.

“Can I help?”

Tony looked up from the pot and over to Peter, hovering in the doorway with his arms wrapped round himself. He looked young, so much younger than he was. “You’re meant to be resting.”

“Couldn’t sleep. The pills hurt my head.”

“But they heal everything else.” Tony beckoned Peter over before he turned back to the stovetop. “How do you feel?”

“Like someone dropped a bus on me.”

“Been there. Grab a tomato and stop chopping.”

Peter did so wordlessly, shooting Tony a soft smile as he slid into a chair by the table. “What else do you want me to do?”

“A few peppers, if you’d like.”

“How thick?”

“Whatever you want.” Tony watched Peter out of the corner of his eye, the way that he winced when he reached for a fresh vegetable in the middle of the table and how he moved gingerly with his eyes narrowed into slits. “How bad is it?”

Peter sighed. He worked on carefully dicing his whole pepper before he spoke again. “Bad. I can’t go home. No one can see these injuries. They’re already questioning me and this will push them over the edge of kicking me out.”

“You’re already home,” Tony said lightly, concentrating on adding a few spices to his soup instead of looking back at Peter. He could feel eyes on the side of his face and fought the urge to turn with everything he had. “After we’ve eaten, I’ll show you the papers.”

The pot bubbled, loud in the otherwise silent room. Tony smiled down at it as he stirred in large circles, scraping the side of the vat where the sauce threatened to burn.

“I’d like that.” Peter sniffed a little and let out a muffled curse. “Well. I’m done with these. Can I help you make the bread?”

Rosemary Focaccia

Tony loved making his own bread. When he was a child, their cook would only let him in the kitchen if he promised to be calm and quiet and she’d quickly realised that one way to keep him like that was to prop him in front of an oven to stare at the bread as it rose.

The smell of yeast and the uncooked dough turned Tony’s stomach as he’d gotten older, but there was nothing better than the scent the bread produced when it started to bake. Fresh rosemary only added to that, or maybe even a few cloves of garlic mixed in with the dough.

Focaccia took a long time to knead and for the rising process to get done perfectly, but spending that long watching over it in the kitchen meant that Peter could sit at the breakfast bar to finish his homework and not be alone.

Peter hated being alone. They’d discovered that pretty quickly after he’d moved into the tower with the rest of the team and had all started going almost out of their way to ensure that Peter didn’t have to suffer by himself. It wasn’t exactly a hardship for Steve to sketch in the communal living room instead of his bedroom, or for Sam and Bucky to train on the mats in the middle of the gym whilst Peter ran laps around the edge to get out of his own head.

And if definitely wasn’t a problem for Tony to dig out the recipe books that had been sent to him after their cook had passed away and flick through them to find an old Italian favourite that would take him a good couple of hours to perfect.

Cookies were a staple in Tony’s recipe book. There were many different varieties, so many tweaks that could be made to each batch to make a different cookie type for any occasion.

“–so that’s why Ned isn’t allowed into the theatre practice room anymore,” Peter said in-between bites of a pecan and chocolate chip cookie. “So we can’t go in to see Madison when she’s in there. We have to meet in the math rooms.”

Tony nodded along as though he’d understood any word Peter had been babbling on about. “Right.” He wasn’t sure what exactly he’d asked to prompt Peter’s longwinded explanation, but he didn’t mind the company.

“Oi, Spider-kid.”

Peter jumped comically at the voice from behind them and Tony shot an arm out to catch him before he fell off the breakfast bar he’d perched himself on. “Jeez, what – oh. Black Widow. Ma’am, I didn’t, I’m sorry, I–”

“Gym,” Natasha said, throwing a thumb over her shoulder to show where she wanted Peter to go. “Spar session. You’re ten minutes late.”

Peter’s eyes went wide and he scrambled for his phone, paling when he realised that he was, in fact, late. Tony couldn’t hide his amusement and snorted loudly, earning himself a dirty look from Peter and an unamused eyebrow raise from Natasha.

“And don’t think you’re getting out of it, either,” Natasha said to him. “Steve is already down there with Thor. They could do with a third. A mediator of sorts.”

“Oh, no.” Tony shot a faux-upset look towards Peter before grinning at Tash, “sorry, but these cookies just aren’t going to bake themselves, now, are they? Pete’s good for the job, though. Practical experience and all that.”

Peter’s glare was about as powerful as a newborn kitten’s, but it tugged at Tony’s heart nonetheless. Giving him a smile, Tony reached for the batch of raspberry cookies he had just pulled from the oven and counted out ten.

“A special treat,” he said, urging Peter off the breakfast bar and herding him in Natasha’s direction. Setting the cookies on a plate at his side, Tony winked at the kid. “For when you’re finished. You’ll need to get your sugar levels back up.”

Rigatoni Pasta Bake

The only difference between Tony’s preferred version of a pasta bake and the classic that Ana had taught him as a child was that his was a bit more adventurous. It served to make things just a little bit more exiting. Everything he did was done with a flair of the dramatics, so it made sense for cooking to follow the same lines.

Making his pasta bake was an excuse to throw everything in his cupboards into the mixture. A hundred different varieties of cheese for the topping, ground beef and sausages for the filling and whatever vegetables he found in the back of the fridge to make the meal just a tiny bit healthy. Tony loved to make it, loved to spend an entire afternoon shaping each piece of pasta if he really wanted to get out of his head. Experimenting with different sauces was his favourite – a tomato sauce for a rainy Sunday afternoon, a cheese sauce for an evening in front of the television, a mushroom and white wine sauce for a romantic evening in.

His pasta bake was the first meal he’d made when they’d finally adopted Peter, legally and truly. Maybe a small part of him had been wanting to show off, but Tony had really cared about making sure Peter had a real square meal. Something to help him recover from the small scrapes he’d gotten in his night-time brawls, to repair some of the damage of malnourishment from his previous home.

It was something so simple, but made with so much care.

Apple Pie

As stereotypical as it may have been, Steve loved apple pie. It had been something of a staple in his household when he’d been growing up and his mom had made it whenever they managed to get the fresh ingredients needed. Steve spoke so fondly of her hours in the kitchen, telling how he was often too ill and weak to do much more than sit at her side and watch, that sometimes Tony felt as though he’d been there too.

Sweet pastry wasn’t Tony’s favourite thing to make, so he chose to keep it for really special occasions. The sort of days where he wanted to spoil Steve a little, wanted to make him feel important and loved and all the things that Steve made Tony feel every day.

Tossing out the apple cores and scraps he’d collected on the side of his chopping board, Tony settled in to decorate his pie. He preferred the open-top approach, liking to cover his filling with thin slices of apple and a sprinkling of cinnamon and sugar instead of more pastry. Lost in thought, Tony startled when Steve wrapped his arms around Tony’s waist and pressed a kiss to his neck.

“Happy birthday,” Tony murmured as he fell back against Steve’s chest. “Wasn’t expecting you up just yet. Thought I tired you out last night.”

“Hm. You did a pretty good job, but the bed was empty. I don’t like it when the bed’s empty.”

“Sorry, darling. Wanted to make this for your birthday breakfast.”

Steve nosed at Tony’s shoulder, dropping kisses to the bare skin there. The first thing Tony had found on their bedroom floor when he’d woken at the crack of dawn was a workout shirt of Steve’s. Given its size, the material hung off Tony’s frame. It wasn’t practical, but it was cozy.

Sexy, as well, apparently, if the hardness pressing against his ass was anything to go by.

“Pie for breakfast?” Steve asked, hooking his chin over Tony’s shoulder as his hand shot out to snaffle a piece of apple floating in the bowl of warm water at Tony’s elbow. “How lucky am I?”

“Of course it’s pie for breakfast,” Tony said, hands working quickly to place the apple slices on the top of the very-nearly finished pie. He kicked at Steve’s ankle for punishment of the theft, but couldn’t find it in him to be too mean. “It’s not every day you turn four hundred and seventy-three.”

Standing as close as they were, Tony felt Steve’s laugh vibrate through him.

“Demon.”

“That’s me,” Tony replied happily, laughing with Steve and tilting his head to one side when Steve bit at his neck in retaliation. “Now, get off me, you brute. Let me stick this back in to brown.”

Moving back a fraction, Steve’s hands danced over Tony’s stomach. “How long do we have?”

Tony sighed happily when the pie was in, his eyes falling closed when Steve swapped from biting to sucking a deep bruise just above his pulse point. “Long enough.”

Indian Potato Pie

“Here, try this.”

Whatever Steve had been about to say was cut off by Tony shoving a forkful of potato-filled pastry in his mouth.

“Well? What do you think?”

Steve fanned his mouth. “I think it’s hot,” he said through the mouthful of crust. “Did you cook this with lava?”

“But what about the texture? The filling – do you think it needs more of a kick? I only put in a small amount of chilli flakes this time and a lot less ginger than I did before. I think I liked it better last time.”

“Tony,” Steve reached out and caught Tony’s hand, taking the fork from him before twisting their fingers together, “this pie is perfect. You’ve been making it since you were a child. You’ve perfected it so much you could make it in your sleep.”

“No,” Tony said dismissively, turning back to the counter and peering at the unbaked pie on the side. “I think it needs more salt. You can taste it in the crust. Let me just redo the pastry.”

Steve used his grip on Tony’s hand to pull Tony into his chest, wrapping his free arm around Tony’s waist to hold them close together. Tony gave up without a fight, his shoulders slumping as he rested his hand on Steve’s chest.

“Please stop worrying,” Steve whispered. “Replace the bit you shoved in my face and pop it in the oven. It’s going to be fine.”

“You don’t know that.”

“Yes, I do.” Steve ducked his head and caught Tony’s lips in a sweet kiss. “I know you and I know our son. He wouldn’t be bringing someone home unless they were special to him. There’s no way we can scare them off. Not with a pie, at least.”

Tony Stark-Rogers’ Recipe Book

The book had taken him years to complete. Tony had started it as a young boy when Jarvis had bought him an empty journal for his fourth birthday. For the first few years of its existence, Tony had hidden it under his bed just in case Howard ever entered his room and caught sight of it.

Every page had been handwritten, carefully crafted letters spelling out the words of each recipe (and most of them had even been spelt right because Jarvis had helped him).

There were sections of his Mama’s recipes, the ones she’d passed down to him from her Mama and even her Mama’s Mama. Though Tony had never gotten to meet either of them them, he’d known even as a child that that was pretty important.

Ana Jarvis had a section as well, one with special Hungarian recipes that Tony had needed a lot of help to spell. He’d shown Ana one day, down in the kitchens. He’d pointed out all the best bits that he’d coloured in the colours of Hungary’s flag and Ana had started crying. Tony had been horrified and started tearing up himself before she promised him that he was a lovely little boy and she was crying because she was so very proud of him. Even as an adult, Tony remembered that he’d gotten a huge hug that night before bed and an extra special plate of lemon squares brought up to his room – made just for him!

As he’d gotten older and his book had gotten fuller, Tony had carefully moved it from journal to journal, cutting out pages and sticking them back into the next edition with slight amendments or scribbled changes to quantities. It was his pride and joy.

“You’re going to take care of this, aren’t you?”

The child stared at him with wide eyes, so big they were nearly popping out of their head. They didn’t speak a word, but their head just about wobbled off with the velocity of their nodding.

“You’re going to listen to Nonno when he tells you what to do in the kitchen?”

Another round of silent nodding and Tony laughed, bending down to his grandchild’s level. Holding out his arms, he let his precious recipe book rest in the palm of his hands, ready for the taking.

“Go on then, bambino. It’s yours.”

Tiny fingers curled over the edges of the stained and battered book, complete concentration etched all over the child’s face. The love Tony felt threatened to beat right out of his chest and he reached out to flick his grandchild’s nose.

“What shall we bake for your first try? I’m pretty sure there’s a good recipe for mini cupcakes in there, somewhere, and I need an assistant chef.”

Tony had no qualms about handing his book down to the next wave of Starks. His children had grown up in the kitchen working tirelessly next to him to feed their teammates and friends, their siblings and their partners. It was time.

The kitchen was the heart of the home, after all.

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randowolfwriter · 3 years

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Been working on this forever, but here’s my take on the Older Warners au, mostly with Wakko and his family. Basically, this relates back to the rockstar!au I thought up for Wakko a while back where he joins a band a few years after the original Animaniacs ended, only now he also starts a family along the way. Currently, Wakko is a single dad raising fraternal twins named Jojo and Smakko and teaches them both how to be zany toons like him. Eventually, he moves his family back to the Warner Bros lot during the production of the Animaniacs reboot, where Yakko and Dot also help out with raising the twins.

More details about the story and the twins for anyone’s that curious, because I’ve been thinking about this au for a pretty long time.

Given that they’re toons, the Warners shouldn’t be able to age, and yet if they did then it would be completely unexplained. One day they woke up and realized that they were aging just like humans. Of course this haunts each of them, including Yakko, who does all that he can to reassure his siblings that eventually this will pass and they’ll go back to being kids again. However, that wasn’t the case, and the three learn to accept that growing up was just a part of life. Even so, age wasn’t going to stop the Warners from serving justice to the unjust and wrecking havoc on adults with massive egos, which would go on until their late teens.

During these years Wakko’s love for music also grows, and eventually he ends up forming a band with a few other toons around the studio. At first, their performances consisted of causing chaos around the lot and crashing production shoots-- infuriating Plotz to no end as the current CEO at the time-- yet when they noticed they were receiving positive attention from curious onlookers and angsty teens that liked their approach in fighting against the system, the band decided to become official. With this, Wakko is the first to leave the Warner Bros. lot and pursue his dreams of becoming a rockstar just like his idols. At first, he played as the band’s chaotic drummer, but as the years went on and he grew more confident, he also had the chance to man the front and sing a few solos for their band that would be named Toonz.

A few years later, Dot is the next to leave as she goes on to become a successful business woman and leave her child actor days behind. Yakko is the only one who ends up staying on the lot and continues to call the water tower home. At first, he started out as a comedian who did shows regularly, but as time went on and he became a little tone deaf with his audience, he started doing small acting bits around the studio. Yakko’s biggest achievement yet was creating a small web series where he posted educational songs to teach children certain topics, including a video that was an updated version of his iconic “countries of the world” song.

Meanwhile, Toonz takes the nation by storm. The attention they get is astounding, so much so, that they’re nearly invited everywhere in Hollywood, or if not then they’d crash it anyway. One party they crash in particular is where Wakko ends up meeting the twin’s mother. The party was held by a popular British singer named Jojo who was living in the states at the time and the twin’s mother so happened to be one of her stage managers. Jojo is unamused by the party crashers antics, yet tries to make the most of her night by introducing the twin’s mother to Wakko. One thing led to another and strangely the two began hitting it off, that is, until Wakko drunkenly sings “Wakko’s America” and crashes through a glass table.

Thank to Jojo and Toonz doing tons of collabs between each other, Wakko and the twins’ mother saw each other constantly. Eventually their random encounters turned into dating, and already two years had gone by. She was different than the other women he dated, and by that, really one of the only people who could put up with his cartoony antics. Not to mention, she also had a long-time hobby in drawing and sketching, which Wakko always loved posing as her muse. Eventually, Wakko decided to take their relationship to the next step and the two got married in Vegas.

One night, after Wakko and his wife returned from a long night of drinking and partying, the twins’ mother found herself drawing two twins that looked like Wakko from the original Animaniacs series. She didn’t now what possessed her to come up with them, but for some reason, she really felt like drawing them. As usual, Wakko being made of ink provided color for the sketch and gave them their black fur and red noses. All was going well until the twin’s mother accidentally got a paper cut and bled onto the page. After this, the two decided to call it a night and went to bed, unaware of what was happening to the page as they were sleeping.

Later that night, the two heard a loud crash coming from the kitchen. Afraid that it was a couple of robbers, Wakko goes to investigate, claiming that he wanted to greet his new “special” friends. What Wakko ends up finding instead are two little toon babies with puppy dog ears, cat-like tails, black furred with white faces, and tiny little pink noses that looked exactly like him. Upon further investigation, they soon discovered that the page they drew the twins on earlier was blank, which meant that for some reason, the twins came to life exactly the same way Wakko did (except they came out as babies.) Thus, Jojo and Smakko Warner were brought into the world and Wakko and his wife were now parents.

For the next decade, Wakko continued playing in the band while his wife stayed home to take care of the kids. Whether it’d be at practice or having yearly tours, Wakko unfortunately couldn’t be with his kids as much as he wanted to, yet, when he was able to spend some quality time with them, he gave it his all. He got to see what an adorable and excitable girl Jojo was, what a mischievous nature she held in courtesy of the Warner name, and what a big heart she had for those around her. As for Smakko, though he was timid and shy he was also very inquisitive, and with inheriting his Daddoo’s toon abilities the boy was practically the spitting image of him.

For years, it seemed as if nothing could tear the family apart. Sure, the twins had their moments, as well as most kids did; if anything they were more well behaved than the father they came from. Not only that, but barely were there any arguments or secrets kept between parents and children. Yet, nothing could have prepared Wakko for the day his wife died in a tragic accident, leaving him alone as a single father. Knowing that the twins had no one else to care for them, Wakko retired from the band to commit himself full-time in raising Jojo and Smakko.

A year later, Wakko buys an RV and decides to take his kids on the road. He wanted to teach them everything he knew when they were his age, get the chance to see the world, and help them get in touch with their toon heritage. Though Jojo was more than excited to spend time with her Daddoo as much as possible, Smakko on the other other hand was less than thrilled. All the boy wanted was for things to return back to normal; when their mother was always around and their Daddoo seemed more concerned with his band.

Months into this family entourage, and Wakko gets a call from Yakko: Animaniacs was returning, and they wanted all three of the Warner siblings to come back. With this, Wakko moves the twins to the Warner Bros. lot and gives them the chance to see where he grew up. They move into the water tower with Yakko, who is more than happy as he’s been rather lonesome for the last two decades. Dot however is a little less than compliant to return to her roots, but eventually she warms up to the idea that the reboot would be willing to work with a more mature version of herself. Now that the three Warner siblings were reunited plus two, the family works together to bring back the joy and laughter that the original series gave to many. Though they’re a lot older, the three siblings are convinced they still have it in them. Eventually once the reboot runs its course, Wakko intends to get him and the kids back on the road, but for now, they’re content where they’re at.

Now, about the twins!

Jojo Warner:

Birthday: June 8th, 2009 (11 years old)

Fraternal twin sister to Smakko.

Since the parents were brought together by the singer, Jojo, she had the honor of being the girl’s godparent. With this, she named the baby after herself in defense of saying that “Jojo” wasn’t her real name, but that didn’t mean it couldn’t be their daughter’s.

Her ears are bigger than any of the other Warners, which is why they usually need to be tied back. Not like they cover her eyes or anything, but when she was little she used to chew on them constantly, causing concern for the new parents.

The heart hair tie she wears is from her mother and she treasures it dearly.

Out of both her parents, she has a stronger relationship with her Daddoo due to their mischievous and childlike personalities.

Just like Wakko, she has a ravenous appetite that only got bigger with age. As a toddler, if she didn’t get to eat right away, she would run around the house and throw a giant tantrum until she got her way. Sometimes, she still has a tendency to do this if her heart is set on something.

The only Disney movie she’s ever seen is Frozen, which proved her Daddoo’s point about them being mindless garbage when she wouldn’t stop singing Let It Go for months. Because of this, the kids were banned from seeing anymore Disney films.

When she was five, she ripped off Wakko’s tail while rough housing with it. Though it wasn’t that big of a deal thanks to Wakko being part salamander, that didn’t stop him from tricking Jojo into thinking she tore it off for good. Of course, the prank went too far when Jojo broke down in tears and begged over and over about how sorry she was, so Wakko finally decided to show his kids their amazing regenerating abilities and grew his tail back. Smakko immediately threw up after this. (I swear, that tail scene in the reboot was hella nasty)

One of her favorite hobbies is collecting weird things she finds on her adventures, whether it be a strangely shaped rock, a piece of trash, and yes, she even still has her Daddoo’s tail.

Another one of her favorite hobbies is playing with the small guitar her Daddoo gave her. On warm summer nights, Wakko and Jojo will sit on the roof of the RV or the water tower and sing into the night. Some of their favorites include songs by the Beatles, or songs by various rock groups. While her Daddoo strums on an electric guitar, she comes in with her acoustic to create a beautiful yet strange harmony. She hopes to be the lead singer of her own band one day.

Despite living up to the Warner name, Jojo didn’t inherit any of their cartoon abilities, which bugs her to this day. The only way she can keep up with her family’s antics is by engaging in witty banter and annoying the heck out of her victims. Sort of a mixture of Yakko and Dot’s form of humor.

She gets along well with her Uncle Yakko since both of them can’t keep their mouths shut. During the Warners’ escapades, she looks to Yakko on how to strengthen her form of humor.

As for her Aunt Dot, the two are slowly forming a relationship. Due to Jojo’s tomboyish nature, Dot has a harder time getting on her level of understanding-- though that doesn’t mean the two don’t confide in each other if they ever need to rant about the boys of the family.

She’s considered the leader of the twins due to being more confident and does most of the talking during their escapades.

She’s also very social, which leads her wanting to engage in more activities with kids her age such as going to school or trying to find her own niche of friends. Luckily, she ends up finding her own group when she befriends some of the child stars at the Warner Bros. studio.

Since her mother’s death, she believes that her mother looks down on them from the brightest star in the sky and grants them wishes. Every night, Jojo makes the same exact wish, not for herself but for her family: She wishes for Wakko to have all the happiness in the world while she wishes for Smakko to be more confident in himself.

Smakko Warner:

Birthday: June 8th, 2009 (11 years old)

Basically my take on the forgotten character, Smakky from the original drafts of the Warners but like, less angry and more anxious.

He was a fussy baby. Most nights, he refused to be left alone in his crib and cried for hours into the night until his parents surrendered and consoled him. Usually this was an inconvenience for both Wakko and his wife, as well as the neighbors when they used to live in an apartment. One night, Wakko nearly got in a fight with a neighbor after they complained about the child’s insistent crying.

Out of both parents, he favors his mother the most. Her soft voice and reassuring words were always his form of comfort throughout his childhood. Due to Wakko always practicing with the band or going on tours, Smakko didn’t gain that much of a connection with him. Most of the time, Smakko found his Daddoo to be a little scary due to his brash cartoon nature.

Out of both twins he’s the shyest and will usually cling onto his family members whenever he meets someone new. He also has a tendency to get nervous real easily. Opponents are to be wary when they back him into a corner, lest they want to face his fearful wrath.

Unlike his sister, his toon abilities appeared the minute he was born. Upon naming him, he summoned a baby rattle and smacked his uncle on the head with it until he was given back to his mother. Hence, the boy was given the name “Smakko.”

Nowadays, the boy is able to summon mallets to his whim, cream pies to his choosing, and is able to teleport from place to place— however, this only happens whenever he’s frightened or really stressed. If anyone gets him extremely anxious, they either get pounded with a mallet or blown up with dynamite. In a way, his cartoon abilities act as a defensive reflex.

Another conundrum the parents faced during Smakko’s first years was being able to keep track of him. Most of the time, the boy would hide constantly either because he felt uncomfortable or something scared him. Sometimes, he’d end up in the most bizarre places such as in the freezer, in a load of laundry, or even in the ceiling. The only reason his parents knew where to find him was if they heard crying.

While his sister’s form of comedy is vocal, his is more physical like his Daddoo’s.

He also has a really small appetite compared to his Daddoo and sister. Most days, he can last with just a bowl of cereal up until dinner. He’s just not as passionate about eating like the rest of his family. Adding onto that, he’s a vegetarian. He gets sick at the thought of eating meat or harming animals to get his meal.

He’s very fond of animals, mostly smaller animals that he can pick up. He’s considered many times getting a pet, but due to the Warners active lifestyle, it’s something that’ll have to wait. As for now, he’ll help move bugs from getting crushed or summon food for hungry strays. (Rita and Runt go to him constantly for free food.)

He likes his Aunt Dot more than his Uncle Yakko. His uncle talks too much which overwhelms him. Meanwhile, Dot has that toned down personality that sort of resembles his mother’s, that is, until her brothers get her riled up.

Though Smakko loves his family, sometimes their crazy antics can get a little much. He misses his mother dearly considering that she was the only form of normalcy in his life. Now that she’s gone, he feels rather lost and doesn’t know how to open up to his Daddoo. Wakko on the other hand tries all that he can to calm himself around Smakko and assures him that his Dadoo will always be there for him. However, the boy’s anxiety is one that Wakko will have to learn to work with.

#animaniacs #yakko warner #yakko #wakko warner #wakko #dot warner #dot #jojo warner #smakko warner #older warners au #Rocking that Solo #older yakko #older wakko #older dot #this has legit been in my drafts forever #omg here we go!!#also an older warner au wow how original op #blood tw #not a whole lot but incase people feel uncomfy about papercuts

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aion-rsa · 3 years

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The Star Trek: The Original Series Episodes That Best Define the Franchise

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By the time my generation got to watch Star Trek: The Original Series, the episodes often were being presented in top-ten marathons. When I was ten-years-old, for the 25th Anniversary of Star Trek, I tape-recorded a marathon of ten episodes that had all been voted by fans as the best-ever installments of The Original Series. Later, I got lucky and found Trek stickers at the grocery store and was able to label my VHS tapes correctly. But do I think all the episodes that were in that marathon back in 1991 were really the best episodes of all of the classic Star Trek? The short answer: no. Although I love nearly every episode of the first 79 installments of Star Trek, I do think that certain lists have been created by what we think should be on the list rather than what episodes really best represent the classic show.

This is a long-winded way of saying, no, I didn’t include “Amok Time” or “The Menagerie” on this list because, as great as they are, I don’t think they really represent the greatest hits of the series. Also, if you’ve never watched TOS, I think those two episodes will throw you off cause you’ll assume Spock is always losing his mind or trying to steal the ship. If you’ve never watched TOS, or you feel like rewatching it with fresh eyes, I feel pretty strong that these 10 episodes are not only wonderful, but that they best represent what the entire series is really about. Given this metric, my choice for the best episode of TOS may surprise you…

10. “The Man Trap”

The first Star Trek ever episode aired should not be the first episode you watch. And yet, you should watch it at some point. The goofy premise concerns an alien with shaggy dog fur, suckers on its hand, and a face like a terrifying deep-sea fish. This alien is also a salt vampire that uses telepathy that effectively also makes it a shapeshifter. It’s all so specifically bonkers that trying to rip-off this trope would be nuts. Written by science fiction legend George Clayton Johnson (one half of Logan’s Run authorship) “The Man Trap” still slaps, and not because Spock (Leonard Nimoy) tries to slap the alien. Back in the early Season 1 episodes of Star Trek, the “supporting” players like Uhura and Sulu are actually doing stuff in the episode. We all talk about Kirk crying out in pain when the M-113 creature puts those suckers on his face, but the real scene to watch is when Uhura starts speaking Swahili. The casual way Uhura and Sulu are just their lovable selves in this episode is part of why we just can’t quit the classic Star Trek to this day. Plus, the fact that the story is technically centered on Bones gives the episode some gravitas and oomph. You will believe an old country doctor thinks that salt vampire is Nancy! (Spoiler alert: It’s not Nancy.)

9. “Let that Be Your Last Battlefield”

There are two episodes everyone always likes to bring up when discussing the ways in which Star Trek changed the game for the better in pop culture’s discourse on racism: “Plato’s Stepchildren” and this episode, “Let that Be Your Last Battlefield.” The former episode is famous because Kirk and Uhura kiss, which is sometimes considered the first interracial kiss on an American TV show. (British TV shows had a few of those before Star Trek, though.) But “Plato’s Stepchildren” is not a great episode, and Kirk and Uhura were also manipulated to kiss by telepaths. So, no, I’m not crazy about “Plato’s Stepchildren.” Uhura being forced to kiss a white dude isn’t great.

But “Let that Be Your Last Battlefield,” oddly holds up. Yep. This is the one about space racism where the Riddler from the ‘60s Batman (Frank Gorshin) looks like a black-and-white cookie. Is this episode cheesy? Is it hard to take most of it seriously? Is it weird that Bele (Frank Gorshin) didn’t have a spaceship because the budget was so low at that time? Yes. Is the entire episode dated, and sometimes borderline offensive even though its heart is in the right place? Yes. Does the ending of the episode still work? You bet it does. If you’re going to watch OG Star Trek and skip this episode, you’re kind of missing out on just how charmingly heavy-handed the series could get. “Let that Be Your Last Battlefield” is like a ‘60s after-school special about racism, but they were high while they were writing it.

8. “Arena”

You’re gonna try to list the best episodes of Star Trek: The Original Series and not list the episode where Kirk fights a lizard wearing gold dress-tunic? The most amazing thing about “Arena” is that it’s a Season 1 episode of The Original Series and somehow everyone involved in making TOS had enough restraint not to ever try to use this Gorn costume again. They didn’t throw it away either! This famous rubber lizard was built by Wah Chang and is currently owned by none other than Ben Stiller.

So, here’s the thing about “Arena” that makes it a great episode of Star Trek, or any TV series with a lizard person. Kirk refuses to kill the Gorn even though he could have, and Star Trek refused to put a lizard costume in a bunch of episodes later, even though they totally could have. Gold stars all around.

7. “Balance of Terror”

The fact that Star Trek managed to introduce a race of aliens that looked exactly like Spock, and not confuse its viewership is amazing. On top of that, the fact that this detail isn’t exactly the entire focus of the episode is equally impressive. The notion that the Romulans look like Vulcans is a great twist in The Original Series, and decades upon decades of seeing Romulans has probably dulled the novelty ever so slightly. But, the idea that there was a brutally cold and efficient version of the Vulcans flying around in invisible ships blowing shit up is not only cool, but smart.

“Balance of Terror” made the Romulans the best villains of Star Trek because their villainy felt personal. Most Romulan stories in TNG, DS9, and Picard are pretty damn good and they all start right here.

6. “Space Seed”

Khaaaan!!!! Although The Wrath of Khan is infinitely more famous than the episode from which it came, “Space Seed” is one of the best episodes of The Original Series even if it hadn’t been the progenitor of that famous film. In this episode, the worst human villain the Enterprise can encounter doesn’t come from the present, but instead, the past. Even though “Space Seed” isn’t considered a very thoughtful episode and Khan is a straight-up gaslighter, the larger point here is that Khan’s evilness is connected to the fact that he lived on a version of Earth closer to our own.

The episode’s coda is also amazing and speaks of just how interesting Captain Kirk really is. After Khan beat the shit out of him and tried to suffocate the entire Enterprise crew, Kirk’s like “Yeah, this guy just needs a long camping trip.”

5. “A Piece of the Action”

A few years back, Saturday Night Live did a Star Trek sketch in which it was revealed that Spock had a relative named “Spocko.” This sketch was tragically unfunny because TOS had already made the “Spocko” joke a million times better in “A Piece of the Action.” When you describe the premise of this episode to someone who has never seen it or even heard of it, it sounds like you’re making it up. Kirk, Spock, and Bones are tasked with cleaning-up a planet full of old-timey mobsters who use phrases like “put the bag on you.” Not only is the episode hilarious, but it also demonstrates the range of what Star Trek can do as an emerging type of pop-art. In “A Piece of the Action,” Star Trek begins asking questions about genres that nobody ever dreamed of before. Such as, “what if we did an old-timey gangster movie, but there’s a spaceship involved?”

4. “Devil in the Dark”

When I was a kid, my sister and I called this episode, “the one with giant pizza.” Today, it’s one of those episodes of Star Trek that people tell you defines the entire franchise. They’re not wrong, particularly because we’re just talking about The Original Series. The legacy of this episode is beyond brilliant and set-up a wonderful tradition within the rest of the franchise; a monster story is almost never a monster story

The ending of this episode is so good, and Leonard Nimoy and Shatner play the final scenes so well that I’m actually not sure it’s cool to reveal what the big twist is. If you somehow don’t know, I’ll just say this. You can’t imagine Chris Pratt’s friendly Velicrapotrs, or Ripper on Discovery without the Horta getting their first.

3. “The Corbomite Maneuver”

If there’s one episode on this list that truly represents what Star Trek is usually all about on a plot level, it’s this one. After the first two pilot episodes —“Where No Man Has Gone Before” and “The Cage”—this was the first regular episode filmed. It’s the first episode with Uhura and, in almost every single way, a great way to actually explain who all these characters are and what the hell they’re doing. The episode begins with Spock saying something is “fascinating” and then, after the opening credits, calling Kirk, who is down in sickbay with his shirt off. Bones gives Kirk shit about not having done his physical in a while, and Kirk wanders through the halls of the episode without his shirt, just kind of holding his boots.

That’s just the first like 5 minutes. It just gets better and better from there. Like a good bottle of tranya, this episode only improves with time. And if you think it’s cheesy and the big reveal bizarre, then I’m going to say, you’re not going to like the rest of Star Trek.

2. “The City on the Edge of Forever”

No more blah blah blah! Sorry, wrong episode. Still, you’ve heard about “The City on the Edge of Forever.” You’ve heard it’s a great time travel episode. You’ve heard Harlan Ellison was pissed about how the script turned out. You heard that Ron Moore really wanted to bring back Edith Keeler for Star Trek Generations. (Okay, maybe you haven’t heard that, but he did.)

Everything you’ve heard about this episode is correct. There’s some stuff that will make any sensible person roll their eyes today, but the overall feeling of this episode is unparalleled. Time travel stories are always popular, but Star Trek has never really done a time travel story this good ever again. The edge of forever will always be just out of reach.

1. “A Taste of Armageddon”

Plot twist! This excellent episode of TOS almost never makes it on top ten lists. Until now! If you blink, “A Taste of Armageddon” could resemble at least a dozen other episodes of TOS. Kirk and Spock are trapped without their communicators. The crew has to overpower some guards to get to some central computer hub and blow it up. Scotty is in command with Kirk on the surface and is just kind of scowling the whole time. Kirk is giving big speeches about how humanity is great because it’s so deeply flawed.

What makes this episode fantastic is that all of these elements come together thanks to a simplistic science fiction premise: What if a society eliminated violence but retained murder? What if hatred was still encouraged, but war was automated? Star Trek’s best moments were often direct allegories about things that were actually happening, but what makes “A Taste of Armageddon” so great is that this metaphor reached for something that could happen. Kirk’s solution to this problem is a non-solution, which makes the episode even better. At its best classic Star Trek wasn’t just presenting a social problem and then telling us how to fix it. Sometimes it was saying something more interesting — what if the problem gets even harder? What do we do then?

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The humor and bombast of “A Taste of Armageddon” is part of the answer to that unspoken question, but there’s also a clever lesson about making smaller philosophical decisions. In Star Wars, people are always trying to rid themselves of the dark side of the Force. In Star Trek, Kirk just teaches us to say, “Hey I won’t be a terrible person, today” and then just see how many days we can go in a row being like that.

What do you think are the most franchise-defining episodes of Star Trek: The Original Series? Let us know in the comments below.

The post The Star Trek: The Original Series Episodes That Best Define the Franchise appeared first on Den of Geek.

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mhdiaries · 4 years

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Freaky Fusions Neighthan Rot Diary

6/14

I must be the clumsiest zombicorn in the entire monster world. Granted I’m the only one, at least the only I know of, as far as I can tell. My dad said if he would have had any idea I was going to be so clumsy, he would have named me “Trip”. Lucky for me, I have a built-in first aid kit in the form of my horn. It works great when it comes to healing physical bumps, bruises and scrapes, but no so much for emotional ones. I think that’s why I want to be a psychologist so that I can help monsters feel better from the inside out. Definitely have enough experience seeing how hard it is for a monster when they don’t have someone they trust that’ll listen to what they’re going through. I know it’s a lot more complicated than that, but it’s easy to feel alone when you don’t think you’re being heard.

6/17

I filled out my application for Monster High today and was surprised to find a section that asked me to talk about my family scaritage. I was hesitant at first, but when I talked to Mom and Dad, they told me “just tell the story.” Of course, they each have their own version of the story. Dad said to make sure I used his vision, which made Mom roll her eyes. Dad was an art major in college, and one of his class assignments required him to sketch illustrations of wild unlife. He says he was so stealthy that he was able to sneak up on any creature in the forest and draw for hours without ever being noticed. Mom says she always knew Dad was coming, because she could hear him tripping over, under and through every vine, branch and twig in the woods. She said that the only reason Dad was able to sketch “unnoticed” was because she told the woodland creatures that she sensed Dad’s heart was pure and kind, so they just ignored him. Dad said he always felt “watched” when he was there, so he started having “conversations” with his watcher. They were all one-sided, but Mom said Dad talked about his unlife, his hopes and screams, and he was funny. Mom started looking forward to Dad’s visits and debated about coming out of hiding, so he could see her, but always talked herself out of it. Then one day, when he sat down to draw, he said, “My class is ending, and I won’t be coming back. Thanks for keeping me company all this time, and I drew something for you.” The sketch that Dad held up was of a unicorn. Over time, and without realizing it, Mom’s shyness had been overcome by Dad’s kindness and good humor; so much so, that each time he visited, she hid less and less. Dad never let on that he could see her though because he was afraid she would run away and never come back. So Mom, who can transform into a two-legged creature at will, walked out and sat next to Dad. They have been at each other’s side ever since.

6/21

I got a text today from Sirena, asking if I would meet her at the Coffin Bean to talk about something. I think she purposely kept it vague, because she has many “somethings” floating around in her head, and she’s never sure which one it is she wants to discuss until she’s literally hovering in front of you. Not that it bothers me, it’s just who she is. Also, if she gets distracted, which happens, you’re not left on the hook worrying about a specific problem she might be having. While I was waiting for her, a group of high school ghouls came through the door. They were laughing and being silly, which caused me to look up from the book I was reading just in time to catch the eye of the most beautiful ghoul I have ever seen. She had black and white streaked hair pulled up in a pony tail – I love that look – pale mint green skin, and matching neck bolts. It was her eyes that I got caught in though, one blue, one green, and both totally electric. I think we both realized we were caught in each other’s sightline at the same time, and we quickly looked away. She was with a mummy and werewolf ghoul, but I don’t remember much about either one of them. It was like a music video, where everything slows down and fades into the background except the star. I couldn’t decide whether to introduce myself or run and hide. I though that I would wait until they sat down, but they grabbed their order to go. I had this moment of panic that made me feel like if I didn’t follow her out and get her name and number, I would never see her again. Only I didn’t follow her, I just sat there like a gargoyle on a wall and watched her leave. But as she was leaving, she turned and looked back like she had forgotten something, our eyes met briefly again, it may have been just my imagination or a trick of the light, but it looked like a little spark leapt off her neck bolts. Then she was gone, and I missed my chance. I don’t even know if she lives around here. Maybe, she was visiting or from another country, or if she does live here, I’m sure she must be dating some manster that’s the captain of the football team or something. How could a ghoul like that not be? I don’t know the answer to any of these questions, and now I probably never will but if I ever do see her again, I promise I will, find out. As for Sirena, she did show up, but whatever that “something” was she wanted to discuss I don’t remember a word of it.

7/10

I went to the movies with Avea and Bonita last night. Sirena was supposed to join us, but didn’t show until we got to the Die-ner after the show. I wasn’t that excited about the film, but I was hoping maybe I’d see the ghoul from the Coffin Bean at the theater, but I didn’t. I was thinking about going home after the movie instead of to the Die-ner, but the ghouls wanted to talk about MH. They don’t think we’re going to get in, but for some reason I do. Maybe, I’m just being naïve, or maybe I think we deserve something clawsome to happen to us.

7/12

I called Monster High today to see if I could meet with Headless Headmistress Bloodgood. I had a speech all memorized to try and talk my way past her secretary and onto her calendar. My speech was completely thrown off though, when the headmistress was the monster that actually answered the phone. I kind of panicked and said, “My name is Neighthan Chance and I would like a Rot to talk to you about… ummm…” There was silence on the other end of the line, and I thought I either heard a cough or a laugh, and she said, “Mr. Rot, my calendar is open for this afternoon, so why don’t you come in and see me at three.” I got there at two and paced back and forth in front of the school for about twenty minutes, when I heard someone calling my name, “Mr. Rot, do come in before you wear a moat into the front lawn.” I looked up to see Headless Headmistress Bloodgood standing at the top of the school steps. I went up the steps two at a time, and naturally, I tripped, landed hard and skinned my arm from wrist to elbow. HHB offered to take me to the nurse’s office, but I just used my horn and healed the scrape. If she was the least bit surprised, she didn’t show it. We sat in her office, and I talked while she mostly listened. First off, I told her that I was there of my own accord and that the ghouls didn’t know about it; that I just wanted to ask her to give Sirena, Bonita and Avea’s applications special consideration. I told her about their backgrounds and their friendship and their parents and that even though Sirena, Bonita and Avea had been to a bunch of different schools, it didn’t mean that they were troublemakers. I said they’d never gotten the chance to go to a school where the inner monster was more important than the outer one, and that I believed things could be different here. HHB took her head off and put it on the desk. “I’m curious to know why you think that,” she asked. I thought for a moment and finally said, “Because that’s the foundation of Monster High is built upon, isn’t it? That it doesn’t matter who your parents are, or what kind of monster you happen to be, and you don’t just say it. You unlive it.” HHB put her head back on and leaned back in her chair. She then said, “What about yourself then, Mr. Rot? Do you not wish to be a student at Monster High?” I told her that I did, but that I didn’t want to take a spot that could go to one of my friends. After I finished my plea, the headmistress furrowed her brow and leaned forward, “That’s very noble of you, Mr. Rot, but why do you assume that you’d be accepted, either?” I must have looked totally shocked at the thought of that possibility, then her eyes lit up and she smiled. “Relax, Mr. Rot, I was only teasing. You are a very earnest young manster with what appears to be a genuinely compassionate heart. That aside, you need not concern yourself with sacrificing your spot for one of your friends – at Monster High, space will be made when space is required.” I sat back in my chair and breathed a little sigh of relief. We talked a little while longer, and then, as she walked me out, I saw a picture on the wall of the MH Fear Squad. They were doing a pyramid, and at the top was the ghoul I saw at the Coffin Bean. My heart almost jumped out of my chest, and I asked, “Who is that?” HHB told me her name was Frankie Stein. “You two should meet someday,” she said. “I think you’d find you have much in common.” It was a nice thing for her to say, but how could I have anything in common with perfection?

7/30

I got my letter from Monster High today. By the time mine was delivered, Bonita, Sirena and Avea had all gotten theirs and called to give me the good news. I opened mine and stopped reading after “We are delighted to inform you…” I’m in. We’re all in. We made it… we made it.

#monster high #monster high diary #freaky fusion #neighthan rot

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simply-yelly2 · 3 years

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Here we have yet another doomed child, and gosh darn why do I make them so adorable? that just makes it very bittersweet.

@opal-tea (because her full outfit might have been inspired by your one doodle of little Hai from a Sketch Dump *whistles innocently*) and @justawfulxmenart for your brilliant picture of the Cobriana family as a whole, because I did some thinking while finding the colors for her. I kind of want to try designing my version of Sisal at some point because gosh darn do I love her, even if we never see her in person. I like to think that Sisal had planned to name her daughter Hai and shared this with her family and Anjay happened to mention it to Darien. Then when both Sisal, the baby, and Anjay are killed, Darien honors them by naming her daughter Hai.

Okay, canon-verse aside. Let's get into Kala's Rewrite AU.

This is Hatia (lose, to lose, lost, loser, losing in ha'Dasi), the daughter of Anjay Cobriana and Darien. She is basically my replacement for Hai since I had revamped Hai as the daughter of Oliza and Nicias. Unlike her canon counterpart, Hatia is not going to have a lucky break and that makes her quite tragic.

I really must question why Cjarsa took such an interest in Hai, given that her conception was against the rules and then Darien tried to commit treason of the highest form (attempted murder of Araceli, the Heir to the White Lady). Maya herself confirms the fate of most children born from forbidden circumstances, though now I wonder if they would stoop so low as to kill unwanted children...I feel like falcons would approach this from the same standpoint that you use when breeding animals with lethal genes. The ka'jaes (falcons without magic) are worthless in a place where the inhabitants breathe power, but yet purebred falcons struggle to reproduce because the magic that gives them power beyond all imagination, is also poisonous to new life. So while the ka'jaes are seen as lower-class citizens, they are critical to ensure the continued survival of the falcon race. Because while it may be hard to kill a falcon, I kind of imagine that living for a thousand years can get tiresome...maybe instead of death, some falcons fall to Ecl in an almost death. Heck, they probably gather their friends and loved ones and have some kind of party before they go, and then they are taken to the shm'Ecl and left under the care of Servos. Their family and friends can come to visit them whenever they want and...yeah, you need to replace them somehow. I feel the rule instead is that a ka'jaes is not allowed to have a child with a fellow ka'jaes. Because they are needed to create proper magical falcon babies, not ones without magic. Maya probably had her child sired by a ka'jaes man and thus her baby was born pure ka'jaes. The baby was taken away and its parents were both tortured by the Mercy as punishment for breaking the law. I kind of imagine that Araceli did not kill this baby, though Maya thinks she did and maybe that is the idea. The child was given to "proper" parents who would hopefully raise it to better understand and obey the Empress's laws. An even more bittersweet idea I have now is that Maya was forced to admit that her partner had raped her (even if it was done with consent from both parties) and that is what saved her life...but it cost the man his life.

Okay, I got really off-topic here. But you get the idea of what I am trying to say I hope.

Scanning through Wyvernhail, it seems like getting Hai on the throne was Cjarsa's plan all along. And the Empress seems miffed that Hai is not grateful for what she has done. I am not sure what Cjarsa planned to gain from this unless her plan was to ensure that Keyi would be born and Wyvern's Court would fall to destruction and chaos and then the world would be saved once again, thanks to the Falcons.

On second thought, that is just it. I do believe the falcons felt threatened by the ending of the Avian-Serpiente War (because Anhamirak's magic could be combined and that is very, very, very bad) and sought to destroy the peace in any way they could. Why else would Syfka use her magic to convince an innocent Avian woman to attack Danica in such a way that she would be unable to have any more children aside from Oliza? And reading that part of Snakecharm, I really do believe the would-be assassin was in fact innocent, she is so full of remorse for what had happened that her Avian Reserve broke and she was crying with tears running down her face. So the bad guys in the Kiesha'ra series are the falcons, though they believe themselves to be the good guys, and this makes Hai being able to get them to leave her people alone quite amazing?

But enough about other stuff, we really must get back to discussing this poor little chick.

Hatia is born to Darien a few months after Anjay's death. Despite her feelings towards Araceli, Darien is immediately in love with her little girl and plans to raise her with Kel (Darien and Kel were on-again, off-again girlfriends, and a recent falling out was what led Darien to seek attention from another source). But sadly, this would not come to be.

Araceli, with two of her Mercy members, came to Darien's room. The two guards restrained Darien while the Heir took the crying baby away. Due to the bond between mother and child, Darien knew the moment when Hatia took her last break and the Mercy can feel her torment.

Deciding that Araceli has gone too far, Darien plots to avenge Anjay and Hatia and tries to kill Araceli when she is vulnerable. It fails, and Darien escapes to Ecl while Kel flees the island because she is unable to execute her best friend and lover. (Spoiler): Lilian is the one who falls to Ecl while her brother Mer survives that day with a scar.

A ka'jaes child could be excused as they are useful to the falcon population in other ways. But a quemak like Hatia and canon Hai? I do not see it. Hatia would have had magic, but it is unpredictable and the stigma of her mixed blood can't easily be ignored. The hair and eyes and her feathers being black with red gyrfalcon markings.

RIP little baby wyvern girl.

#kiesha'ra

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maybeimwierd · 4 years

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Mastermind!Danganronpa edits 2 explained!

This is the explanation for design choices in my 2nd batch of mastermind edits you can find right over here so I hope you all enjoy

7. Kokichi Ouma

Fun fact I actually started on this edit in the middle of Father’s Day which is kokichis birthday and I finished it early morning the next day, also I did the sketch in a car because I was coming home from a family members house right after I started it. Of course I like red buttons hehe so I have them to him, his outfit is mostly white so I changed his sleeves to be black and I made his pants to be red with those weird straps black. I love that I gave him face paint but it’s kinda hard to see the white part, I was going to color half his face black instead of white but I realized it could be taken as racist which I am not (ok when I say it like that I sound like I’m in denial but I swear I’m not) but of course red monokuma eye around the characters left eye hehe

8. Tenko Chabashira

Hers was actually the first edit that I actually redrew the whole sprite rather than putting stuff over it so you can tell my skill gets better after this one! I actually had originally thought up the headband first and I wanted to make the base red so I made the monokuma eye be pink which honestly is cuter and I made her hair ties be pink to match! I made her weird green hair thingys be black and white because monokuma also they are fun to color then I made her choker black. I decided to replace her cropped uniform shirt with a sports bra which is something women usually wear when they workout at the gym also hehe hoohoo it’s red with a nice black and white trim! I think adding a third layer to her skirt makes it looks puffier and cuter so I’m glad I did that hehe!

9. Kazuichi Soda

There is actually a cancelled draft of Kazuichi! The way I do these edits is by asking my buds over on Crackganronpa (a Dr discord server) who they want to see as a mastermind next, the owner requested Kazuichi but I didn’t want to do the method I did with Tenko because I felt it took way too long so I tried to do my color over method but it was too complicated due to his hair and I had spent around 2 hours just trying to color his hair white so I cancelled him and told them “I’m willing to continue on Kazuichi but if I do then I’m starting over” and they really wanted to see him so I redrew his sprite also so now you all have this Kazuichi! I liked the idea of him dying his hair again if he was a mastermind (because he canonically dyes his hair pink) and I liked coloring his hat black because it matched the white. I decided to color his jumpsuit red and give it pink accents but I colored his shirt last minute and if I was thinking I would have made it black, I had fun replacing the logo on his jumpsuit and making those buttons! I have 2 fun facts about that hammer he has there, it’s actually a large recolored version of the hammer I gave to Mastermind!Angie, the second fun fact is that I actually was listening to Sonias voice lines while doing the hammer. Adding onto that last fun fact when doing the lines for the face I was listening to Ibuki’s voice lines and was listening to Celeste’s voice lines while coloring the suit.

10. Chihiro Fujisaki

This one is truly where I have peaked in design (well for now, don’t know when I’ll strike genius again) so I’m very proud of this Chihiro and my Angie! I’ll start with saying that CHIHIRO IS NOT A TRANS GIRL THAT IS A FACT THEY LITTERALLY WERE BULLIED INTO BEING A GIRL so I gave him some super cool pants and it was fun drawing that belt! I took away his overcoat so you can see his dress shirt and I replaced the coat with a super cool cape!!!! It was fun to come up how the cape is layered the left side going over the right side with a part on top. This was a idea I loved so much and wanted to put on a edit (right under using that cape idea) which is the big Ol fairy flower hat! His design was lowkey based off fantasy things! I felt the design needed one more thing so I lightly airbrushed his face to give him a sickly and sort of pale look. This was also the edit that I started adding the fabric overlay on

11. Korekiyo Shinguji

Now this one! This is a doozy! Lots of little details here and there but first things first, if Korekiyo was a mastermind he would definitely have trinkets here and there from the dead students (also in these mastermind universes the person who is the mastermind in the game they are from dies instead of them) so feel free to guess what thing belongs to who! I believe Korekiyo would want to dress liek the original mastermind and it was fun to give him big pigtails like her, he is wearing a ripped sleeve from one of the dead students (won’t specify but it was hard to get it from under where it was from) and the tie is from another student instead like the one the original dr1 mastermind wore and the little buttons are from other students, the gloved hand is ripped as a little detail and I think that Korekiyo could definitely rocks a skirt! This is truly my husband heehee

12. Yasuhiro Hagakure

This edit came into my home and pissed on my clothes then shit in my sink I am not proud of this one at all just like Kaito (if the 18th mastermind sucks I think that makes it a pattern) so here’s why. I was going to do this like the others but I didn’t want to spend hours tracing the lines for his hair so I just added some bear ears and a monokuma eye over his left one. I changed the yellow from his shirt and pants string to be a nice red and I made the inside of his jacket use the pattern I originally made for Kaito! Yay recycling. Fun fact I was listening to a He///va B//s BLM charity stream (I censored I don’t want fans of the series to come across this in the tag due to how tumblr works and they might get spoiled) also the sprite I used actually was sweaty faced so I removed it to make him look smug. I also removed his stubble because if he was betraying his friends he definitely would wanna look nice for it. The pattern used for Kaito and Yasuhiro is downloadable in the previous explanation post for use!

#danganronpa #drthh #sdr2 #drv3 #kokichi ouma #tenko chabashira #kazuichi soda #chihiro fujisaki #korekiyo shinuji #yasuhiro hagakura

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nattikay · 5 years

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Sooooo I’m not sure if anyone would be interested in actually reading something like this, but I was looking through some of my older Miraculous art and seeing how the designs of my future AU characters have subtly evolved over time, so I wanted to make a post about designing these characters and how/why I made the decisions that I did!

So first off, the birth order! I was originally intending to have the kids born in the order that they’re listed in the Stormy Weather episode:

...unfortunately, instead of actually looking at the episode to be sure, I just went off memory; I remembered Emma being the second but accidentally mixed up Hugo and Louis. By the time I realized this, the characters were already too cemented in my head to switch them back. ^^” Oh well.

In addition to the above, in my ~10 years of experience with next gen fics/art/OCs (I know, I have a problem), I’ve noticed that a pretty large fraction of the time folks opt for their OTP’s firstborn to be a daughter over a son. Nothing wrong with this, of course (heck, I’m a firstborn daughter myself haha), it’s just so disproportionately common that I thought making Hugo the firstborn instead of Emma might make my version stand out a bit more. ^^

Now with the siblings’ order decided, on to the designs! Starting with our oldest,

Hugo!

Black hair and green eyes seems to be the most popular design for an Adrienette kid, and for good reason! It’s an appealing combo on its own in addition to using traits from both parents for the most notable genetic features in characters: hair and eyes.

I also wanted to give Hugo some of his own flair though. I think the best next gen characters are recognizable as their parents’ offspring BUT can still stand on their own as unique individuals. One way to help do this is, when available, to draw on extended family rather than only their parents.

Hugo’s strongest example of this (at least as a kid) is his slicked-back hairstyle, which was somewhat inspired by Gabriel’s. The slicked-back style seemed to fit his nerdy personality, but because he is a child and not nearly as uptight as his grandfather, Hugo’s hair is much messier than Gabriel’s, and he often has pieces falling out in the front.

Admittedly I’m not super great at conveying the slicked idea from the front view, but you can see it a bit better in profile:

Hugo more than either of his siblings also takes after the Dupain side of the family, which isn’t super noticeable as a kid but becomes much more so as he grows up and develops the broad shoulders and strong upper body of Tom and Rolland. He’s not quite as enormous as Tom but is easily the strongest sibling (Louis, meanwhile, is a lanky little noodle like Adrien and Gabriel).

Going along with that, Hugo’s personality has loosened up a bit over time. While I do still draw him in his tucked-in button-up, I’ve also started drawing him in looser styles a bit more, because after all, he is just a goofy kid! This has included anything from using shorts instead of long pants to sometimes wearing just regular ol’ t-shirts instead of his nice button up (on which I rarely actually draw the plaid pattern I initially designed him with because wow it takes forever).

Funnily enough, this is a bit of the opposite of what happened to Adrien. My first sketches of adult!Adrien from this AU all have his shirt untucked, even whilst teaching, but now I almost always draw it neatly tucked in:

...interesting, interesting.

Anyways, while Hugo is still very much a little nerd who does quite well in school and LOVES learning about space and astronomy, he’s also a little more goofy and active than he was when I first created him. He’s probably the most athletic of his siblings (though really none of them are exactly jocks) and while he’s not particularly interested in organized competitive sports, he loves a good game of catch or tag. :)

While people in real life obvious wear any color they want, with my OCs I tend to pick a general palette and stick to it though all (or at least most) outfits, for consistency and easy recognizability. Hugo’s palette is mostly greens (for Chat Noir of course! ;) ), dark blues, and warm browns.

Now, onwards to

Emma!

I decided to make my version of Emma blonde for two reasons: one, it appears to be so in the screencap shown at the beginning of the post, and while Marinette’s imaginations do not necessarily have to dictate how you design your versions of the kiddos, I liked having the consistency.

...plus then some years later Frozer rolled around and showed a blonde (imaginary) Emma again, so like

...validation ;)

(by complete coincidence they’re even accurate to the color schemes I use kashdfgjsddsafjdf)

And the second is just that, again, most (not all, of course, but a lot) of the other Emmas I’ve seen in the fandom have been dark-haired, so again I thought it’d help mine stand out a bit.

So now with hair color established, it’s time for eye color. Most of the blond-haired Adrienette kids you see have blue eyes, for the same reason that a lot of dark-haired ones have green. Which, as said with Hugo, makes sense, since it’s the hair color of one parent and the eye color of the other. So why didn’t I make Emma’s eyes blue, then?

Well, it’s a bit of a silly reason tbh, but the blond-hair-blue-eyes combo reminded me a little too much of Chloe. ^^” Not that it would cause any parentage concerns, of course, since obviously Marinette is the one who gave birth to her, but the visual similarities still made me go like...eh ^^”

So green eyes it was! Which, of course, made her look a heck of a whole lot like her father.

But of course, it’s fine to favor one side of the family, but she’s gotta have SOMETHING from Marinette, right? So what other visual could she inherit to show at least some of her mother’s genes?

✧・ﾟ:* F R E C K L E S ! *:・ﾟ✧

And since Marinette’s freckles are so subtle, I decided to make Emma’s a bit more prominent and easily visible.

Actually her freckles have multiplied quite a bit over the years. She’s always had more than Marinette but it used to be confined to just a few on her cheeks and shoulders. Now drawing her is more like DOTS! DOTS EVERYWHERE! with freckles all over her face, down her neck and arms, and even a few on her legs! It is very much her Thing at this point haha

Freckles everywhere!

As for her hairstyle, the default is a simple headband, but she also sometimes wears it just plain down with no accessories at all (usually when in PJs), or up in pigtails like Marinette’s!

Those are just the main ones though...really she can do pretty much whatever ^^

Emma’s outfit palette took a bit more consideration than her brothers’, since I needed it to match the yellow hair (whereas black, as a neutral, can go with just about anything. So I took a minute looking at her established colors--bright green eyes and golden-blonde hair--trying to think of what theme I could used.

The grassy green and sunshine yellow ended up reminding me of warm weather, like a spring or summer morning. The easiest color for that would’ve been green, but I was already using greens for Hugo and didn’t want their schemes to look too similar. Ultimately I decided on pinks, because the pink outfit with the yellow hair reminded me of some nice fresh lemonade! Some bright whites and warm creams/off-whites then added to the cheery, springy theme. ^^

Her original outfit design included some small dots on her collar and pant cuffs, not unlike the inside of Marinette’s jacket, but I don’t really include that detail much anymore for the same reason I rarely draw Hugo in his original plaid.

Lastly but not leastly, onwards to

Louis!

Thus far we’ve had Hugo, who’s a pretty good visual mix of his parents, and Emma, who takes more after her dad. As such, I figured that it’d only be fair if the third and final kid took more after his mom!

So in many ways Louis looks a lot like a mini male Marinette, right down to the subtle freckles. If Hugo has the most Dupain genes and Emma has the most Agreste genes, Louis probably has the most Cheng genes and has the easiest time convincing people that yes, he is actually 1/4 Chinese (absolutely no one believes Emma when she says this lol...she has to show pictures of her family haha).

We can’t completely ignore the Agreste side of the family though, and in Louis’s case is manifests mostly in his hairstyle which is very similar to Adrien’s, as well as his lean and lanky body type as an adult, very similar to Adrien’s and Gabriel’s (unlike Hugo who, again, is stockier like a less-extreme Tom).

His outfit color scheme is light blues and grays with splashes of red. The blues and grays work well for his shyer, more reserved demeanor, while the splashes of red like the t-shirt hidden under his sweater are like his big imagination! (Like his mother and grandfather, Louis is very much into art and design, though his interest tends to be geared more towards characters and stories than fashion).

Not as much to say about him tbh...he’s “evolved” the least from his original concept and is mostly just the cute baby brother ^^”

So yeah, there you have it! That was roughly my thought process for creating/designing my little kiddos ^^

Hopefully some of you found this interesting; I enjoy talking about my ideas and stuff so if you ever want to know more or about something else that I do/make, feel free to ask! ^^

#miraculous #future au #agreste family #hugo thomas agreste #emma adele agreste #louis felix agreste #my art #back in college I knew this one girl like Emma who was 1/4 asian but didn't look it a t a l l #and was lowkey salty about it #(salty about not *looking* part asian I mean)#people would never believe her and she'd have to pull up pictures like #''LOOK here is me with my 100% JAPANESE GRANDMA who literally LIVES in JAPAN and speaks mostly JAPANESE''#and I feel like Emma most definitely has the same conversations haha #anyways #yeah here's this post #that wound up being very long sorry ^^''#....yeah

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kyberphilosopher · 4 years

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Chapter Fourteen

.✫*ﾟ･ﾟ｡.★.*｡･ﾟ✫*.

His hair is a deep chestnut shade of brown. It looks fluffy, soft. His light skin looks smooth, even from my distance. His jaw is sharp, his cheeks strong. A playful smile lies on his pink lips. Everything about his features- no, about him- is soft. That’s the best word I can think of to describe him.

But I can feel the strength falling off of him. It peels off of his robes. They’re like a normal Jedi’s, but tighter at the sleeves, covered by a poncho, and darker in color. He feels different from all the Jedi I previously killed. He’s strong. Soft, but strong.

Tiredly, I shift my feet to show where my attention lies, eyes narrowing to begin my assessment of this visitor. Male, stocky build. Taller than me by a lot, but average for a man. My age. Slightly older? Slightly relaxed form. He watches me just as closely as I watch him. So he’s observant.

His eyes scan over the lightsabers at my sides, eyes lingering longer on the one with the red blade.

“Nowhere,” I say, almost hoarsely. My right hand is starting to go numb again, and I can feel a big, thick drop of blood fall from my half a finger. “Don’t worry, I won’t go too far,” I tell the stranger, even though I’m really not in the mood for a sarcasm contest right now.

“Oh, that’s good,” the stranger bends his knees and angles his violet light defensively. “I would so hate it if you missed this dance.”

Oh, man. He’s kind of quip-y. Killing him won’t be as satisfying as it would’ve been if he was all serious. “We can be honest with each other, right?” He shrugs. “Can we please reschedule this for tomorrow?”

He smiles. It makes his eyes squint and twinkle. It looks nice on him. “Tired from killing the other two, are we?”

Has someone been watching me? Following me, even? No, I would’ve known. I would’ve sensed it. Perhaps he witnessed the fight between Aegus and Yutaro- it was possible I didn’t notice because my focus was elsewhere. Who is this guy?

“What would your mother say?”

I don’t know what it was about his statement that set me off. I just know that it did.

I throw my hand out, letting my hate and exhaustion fuel the lightning that falls out. It wipes the smile right off his face as it cages him, throwing him backwards and out of my vision for an instant.

Then, I remove the red saber off my belt. I twist it between my palm to get a feel of it again, and run forward. It’s not as fast as it could be, but I am tired. My finger needs medical attention.

I thrust the red lightsaber into the boy’s shoulder. It nicks him, but he offers little more than a wince in response. He blocks my next strike. I put more pressure on it, forcing our lightsabers closer to his face. He doesn’t back down, however. He is determined to show me that my rageful exhaustion is no match for his physical strength. We’ll see about that.

Right as I’m about to kill him, something grabs my attention to the left. Not the sun-but a light! No, two of them! Two bright, beautiful balls of crystal clear light.

A shot blows me back. My lightsaber comes to a close as I tumble in the dirt for about the third time today. The cold mud and twigs make the cuts on my hands and temple sting even more- not a good sign. My right ear hears a long, drawn out scratching noise like a saw. Then it fades off like a hum and is replaced with a high-pitched ringing, followed by complete silence. My left ear continues to throb lowly with the beat of my heart, which changes between too fast and too slow. When my body finally stops rolling and stills itself, I can feel a droplet of either sweat or blood run down the right side of my neck. My eyes burn from the dirt that’s undoubtedly in them.

I lie still for a moment, wiped out and exhausted. I’m not dying, the galaxy would never be so kind. What happens next is just like falling asleep. Slowly becoming darker and darker, my vision goes black, and I feel warm.

When I was thirteen, I made an attempt to draw my father from memory. I had only drawn a few times prior to this, mostly out of sheer boredom. I want to say that they came out well, but I don’t have anything to compare my works to. Being on the run your whole life doesn’t lend much time for art museums.

I had no memories of my father whatsoever. I looked into a glass shard from a mirror and attempted to make my own features look more masculine. I don’t know how long it took me to sketch him, but finally I was finished.

In my version of my father, he has dark hair. He looks young, with eyes slanted upwards. I imagine they have hazel flecks, lined with gold and just the slightest hint of deep green. His eyes are framed by thick, dark eyebrows- straight and clean. Under his orbs are dark circles like smudged makeup, similar to my own. His nose is narrower than mine, but splashed with tope freckles all the same. We have the same olive skin and similar chins. His jaw is sharper than mine. His lips are chapped, but curled up at the ends like a smirk. Still, he frowns. I can not make him smile.

My father was very handsome. His name is Kaito Vagor, which in another galaxy translates to “the flight over the sea” and “I wander”, which I think is beautiful. In my mind, he is quiet. He thinks things through, just like me. He knows how to take initiative, believes in facts over feelings but never ignores his gut. Although I’d never met him, I loved the picture of my father, which ended up being completely accurate. I loved him so much, I begged him to be dead. I begged him to be dead so I’d feel like there was a reason I’d grown up without him. But cruelly, no matter how much I prayed and wished, Kaito was alive. I wouldn’t know it in my lifetime, but he was alive.

I couldn’t bring myself to draw my mother. I was too busy trying not to wail at the loss of my father, who I loved dearly despite the rage I’d obtained over the years. After that day, I had no idea where the drawing went. I might’ve destroyed it in my sleep, or lost it on purpose without even realizing.

Now, as I sleep, I think of the image of my father again. I think of nothing else. I see him smiling down at me calmly- on birthdays, cooking me meals in a small hut, training me how to better use a spear. In that life, I am happy. I am content with just Kaito, and I know how to trust people. There is no Clone with the yellow stripe. No Haxion Brood. No Imperial Inquisitors. And, most importantly, there are ten fingers.

I bolt upright at this realization.

I’m alive. My breathing feels thin, but not impossible. My chest is not nearly as sore as I expected, so I decide to count it as a good thing. Still, it rises and falls rapidly as I struggle not to cough on my own breath. My head thrums will a slow, dull pain that makes me wish I had just stayed still. Once I regain my sense of thought, I look around, eyes wide as my heart hammers.

The floor below me is the same stark white color, matching the bed and the walls. It looks like the inside of a ship, I think. I don’t sense danger, but I wouldn’t be surprised if my entire sense of survival were thrown off. I’m atop a cushioned bench, with a firm, small pillow where my head was. The only pop of color in the room is a slim bunch of yellow flowers, sitting in a pale gray vase.

Breathe, Keres. Softly.

My boots are missing from my feet. Instead, light colored gauze wraps around my ankles and stops before it reaches my toes. I wiggle them playfully, watching each duck and weave up and down on my command. It makes me feel childish, but secure that I at least have one part of my body still working for me. Unlike my fingers, there are ten of them. My hands and forearms are wrapped in a matching gauze, contrasting the normal gray gauze that works as my undergarments for my dark, sleek, armor. Replacing said armor is a beige kind of altered Jedi’s robes like the one with the purple lightsaber wore. The normal weight from a lightsaber doesn’t hang on my hips, and when I move my hand to the area I find nothing but air. I’m too tired and groggy to feel frustrated about it.

Brushing hair out of my face, I notice my hair is still in it’s braid, however messy it may be. The palm of my hands are flecked with pink scars, and a few bright red cuts from all my forest fumbles. Some are better healed than others, but none of them sting like they did. My right hand is just as I’d left it, confirming my worst fear. The fear that it was all real.

My right ring finger is gone. There is nothing from my knuckle up, and instead it is only a stump with more gauze wrapped tight around it. I stare at it. My eyes water quickly. I bite my lip to keep it from trembling, but this it to no avail.

I deserved it. I deserved to lose my finger.

I push myself off the bed angrily. My feet feel cold on the floor, but I don’t register it. When I stand up completely, something in my rib pops. This makes me stop for a second before carrying on in haste.

Clothes. I need my clothes. Where the kriff are my clothes?

Somewhere to the right of me, the familiar hiss of a door opening rings out. I snap my head up.

A Togruta with wet looking red skin appears in front of me. White diamonds surround her eyes, and smaller diamond markings appears across her cheekbones. Her lips are full but not too full, and her pale green eyes are framed by long, soft eyelashes. Her horns aren’t stubby, but neither tall nor sky high. It gives away her age- teens, possibly nearing twenties. She is dressed in a loose brown tunic, covered by a white, stained medical smock. Everything about her appearance is regal, elegant, and objectively beautiful.

“Oh!” she squeaks, one hand covering her chest as she gathers her breath. “You’re up!”

I remain quiet as I meet her eyes. The Togruta shifts a clipboard in her arms and puts it on a shelf behind her. “I’ll be right back with some medicine. Stay right here!” She hurries off and out the door again.

I immediately disobey what she’s asked of me. Fuck her. I take a single step forward and stumble for a moment. My feet adjust to the freezing floor after a second, and in short, quick steps I make my way out of the room. The next area I stumble into is circular, and bustling with at least ten people- I can’t count them all. My eyes squint to adjust to the new light, but my right ear remains unadapting and silent. A few feet ahead of me, I can see the back of what I believe to be the Jedi.

He overlooks a round holo-table displaying a blue hologram I can’t completely make out. Two other people in helmets observe the table with him, nodding and occasionally opening their mouths. After a simultaneous nod from them, they head off to their right, down a hallway. The Jedi meets my eyes from across the way. Then he stands still.

I hate him. This is his fault. It’s always the Jedi’s fault.

A few people in the room pause to glance at me, creating a look of disgust on my face I don’t even try to hide. I am angry at them. I want them to know how angry I am. No one dares to chuckle before conversations start again. The Jedi crosses his arms and looks at me as if he’s bested me at something, or proved himself. Jokes on him though, because he’s vastly overestimated how much I care or am willing to care.

“Oh, you’re… up again!” The Togruta appears with her arms full of cloth. Is that my boot? On top of them are several small bottles and a single syringe. “I just went to bring you your clothes and some medicine. I didn’t think you would be ready to walk so soon.”

I eye the scene suspiciously. I’m definitely on a ship of some sort, most likely no longer on Endor. There are a lot of people on this ship, but for what purpose? And why is a Jedi involved? Don’t speak, Keres. The way he’s looking at me, he’ll just pull a ‘Keres’ and ironically evade whatever you ask him.

I hold out my hands for my clothes, to which the Togruta pours them into my arms while trying to maintain a polite smile.

There is silence between the two of us as I pretend to be very interested in my black and gray outfit and boots. “So,” the Togruta sighs with another smile. “What should we call you?”

I quickly bend over slightly to slip one of my boots on. These people don’t get to know my name.

“I’m Aheka. Aheka Shyn. And you’ve already met Adamus…”

I crane my head up to look at the Jedi. His hair is just as brown and soft looking as before, though his jaw is flexing and tightening as he peers at me from across the room. I can feel eyes continue to watch me as I stuff my other foot into the other shoe. He sure knows how to spark my annoyance, I’ll give him that. He’s sparked it so much, I can feel myself tensing up in a new and intense way.

“He’s not so bad,” Aheka continues. “I know you guys didn’t really get off on the right foot, but-”

“Adamus is responsible for the kriffing ringing in my ear then,” I snap. “So he is that bad.”

Aheka swallows, eyes widening. “I-I’m sorry… I didn’t mean to offend…”

“Aheka. That’s enough,” another voice commands. I drop my gaze back to my boots, chewing on my bottom lip as I hear footsteps come closer. “I’ll take care of this,” the male voice says.

I watch Aheka’s shoes step away briskly and disappear behind another door and hallway. The ship must be awfully large to have so many of them. The only thing I have to think about then is which of those hallways will take me to escape pods.

“A bit rude, wouldn’t you say?” he starts. “Exploding over such a valid question?”

I dare not speak for fear the poison that comes from it will make a hole in the floor.

“Did you hear what she asked?”

“I heard it,” I hiss, attempting to keep my cool. “I just choose not to answer it.”

Adamus looks me up and down. Not in a flirtatious way, but a way that gives him a good observation. Is he analyzing me? He must be, somewhat. I don’t like it. He might find some flaw in my stance or my balance. I stand up straight, forcing myself to meet his eyes in a way that signifies a challenge.

“So, why Endor?”

Well, that’s a funny story. See, you know the Haxion Brood criminal syndicate? Oh, you don’t? Don’t worry- they’re just some of the most hardened and cutthroat criminals in the galaxy! Well, they captured me outside of Kijime. After straight up murdering people of your kind, they were so frightened of me they just chose a distant planet to drop me off at! Funny story, right?

“The will of the Force,” I quip. A satisfying snap runs through my stomach as I watch his left eye twitch. It’s perfect. I want to shatter his expression like that again.

I watch a yellow Twi’lek shake hands with one of the soldiers in a helmet. I’m reminded of Talik for a moment, and I miss her- but I push her from my mind. Mur, Kip, Talik- they’re a part of my past now. Talik can’t chase me anymore.

“Somewhere you need to go?” Adamus continues.

“Nowhere you can take me,” I promise him quickly.

Adamus curls his pink lips into a sly smile. His eyes twinkle immediately with a spark of charisma. “Listen, no offense, but you don’t look like someone who has somewhere they need to be.”

“Makes sense to me, because you don’t seem like the type of person who would know what that looks like.”

Adamus narrows his pale eyes. I wait for his smile to twitch again, but it doesn’t happen. He almost looks like he wants to laugh. Like I’ve just told him something clever. Instead, he crosses his arms over his chest and begins sauntering backwards. “It was nice talking to you, stranger.”

I take that as him dismissing me. “Fuck you,” I whisper at him as I watch him turn around. The I start back to the room I was unconscious in. With minimal pain on my part, I begin to swap out my clothes with my dark colored outfit that highlights my agility. A small mirror on one of the walls allows me to look at my face.

My eyes are a little red, and there’s a scarlet gash on my forehead, above my right eyebrow. I still look like myself, at least. Same hazel-green eyes, same chapped lips, same brown hair. I’m me. Just roughed up, I guess.

I see and hear Aheka wisp around being me, on the left side. I don’t turn to see her, but I can imagine her pretty face, clear as day. There’s a certain layer of guilt that sweeps around the pit of my stomach. I shouldn’t have been so rude to her earlier. She hasn’t do anything to me. In fact, she’s probably the one who healed me up best she could. She saved my worthless life.

“Hey, Aheka,” I mumble so quietly I expect her not to hear.

“Hm?” She hums sweetly in response.

My mouth suddenly feels dry. I can’t bring myself to turn around and look at her as I say the words, and I realize I’m just as big of a coward as Aegus. “Thank you,” I whisper hoarsely.

It’s quiet for a few seconds, and I start to wonder if she even heard me. “I said-”

“I heard you,” Aheka replies. I can hear her soft smile through her tone. “I’m just doing my job.”

“Are you the medic?”

“It’s just me and another so far. We’re trying to train more, but it’s difficult with our numbers.”

I swallow. “Did you patch me up?”

“Yes.” Aheka says bashfully, as if embarrassed by her work.

“I’m not going to kill you,” I tell her as I turn around to finally face her. I had meant to put her at ease, but I only feel her tense up further at my phrasing. “Can you tell me about my injuries?”

The beautiful Togruta walks to the other side of the room to grab the clipboard she placed there earlier. “A broken rib on your left side, two on your right. Several cuts on your back, calves, and hands. A single cut to your forehead. Your right ankle was dislocated. The right finger on your right hand was already like that when we found you. I’m sorry, but we couldn’t find it.”

“What about my ear?”

“Your ear?” she sets down the clipboard again and begins to walk over to me with a concerned expression. “Is something the matter with it?”

“Yes, my right one.” Her red hand reaches out to touch me, and I flinch away before stilling myself enough for her to hold my jaw gently. “I can’t hear anything out of it.”

“Since when?”

“Since back on Endor. A ship- this one, I think- fired at me and Adamus.”

"They fired at you?!” Aheka furrows her eyebrows in anger. “So that’s why Adamus looked so peeved at Circe. I’m sorry they did that. We’re not usually like that, I promise.”

The tips of her fingers are cold, then warm as they edge closer to my ear. “I knew I noticed you bleeding when I took you in. I should’ve examined you more closely.” Then she snuffs out some hot air. “Perhaps you should start hurting yourself on your left side too, to balance yourself out.”

A weak attempt at humor. I have heard better. Still, I try not to look like I’m so uncomfortable and grimacing to give her the benefit of the doubt.

I clear my throat. “So, who exactly is ‘we’?”

“Oh… Adamus didn’t tell you?” I shake my head no. “I’d tell you we’re nobodies, but that’s not really true,” she whispers, as if we were speaking in a forbidden language. “We’re part of the Rebellion. New, and not really valid, but we’re a part of it. Too small to be the whole thing but well… all rebellions have to start somewhere.”

Oh man. The Rebellion? This is exactly the type of thing I was trying to stay away from. I might’ve well have just ended up in the hands of some Sith activist group. I don’t want to be allied with anyone’s side but my own. I don’t want the Light path or the Dark path- I want my own path.

“And what’s the deal with Adamus?” I venture to ask.

Aheka removes her fingers from my skin gently. She crosses to the other side of the room, and pulls out a long, thick stick with a little puff at the end. “That’s a story I would just butcher telling you. Here, tilt your head this way…”

I tilt my head to the side as she places the stick in my ear. With minimal discomfort, she pulls it out after a moment. The puffy side is stained red and slightly gold. She lifts her hand to my ear and snaps, but I hear nothing. “You didn’t hear that? I see…Well, the good news is I know what to do. I don’t have the materials for it right now, but I’m sure I can find something somewhere.” Aheka gives me a soft smile. “But until then, maybe you should get some rest. I-I know you’ve had nothing but that for the past day and a half, but…”

Is she… looking out for me? No, nobody is that good. She’s being nice for a reason. She wants something from me. I watch her for a minute before walking past her silently. “Wait- ah, where are you going?”

I don’t answer her. It’s not like telling her would make a difference anyway. I pass the room with the holo-table, not seeing my target anywhere. Adamus.

I let my instincts lead the way. I walk through one of the hallways on the right side, then take a left. A few soldiers walking past give me weird looks, but I pay no mind. They’re lucky I didn’t just kill them right then and there.

The Force leads me to another door. Yes- this is where I’ll find him. I can practically smell Adamus’s disgusting stench from here. It opens without me pressing a button.

“Our first assault should’ve been on Endor. We could’ve taken it if it weren’t for Oden’s ridiculous vote.”

“No, don’t be foolish! We should focus on a defense more than anything. We…”

Adamus notices me and turns to face me. His arms unfold themselves as he starts over to me silently, careful not to disturb the others with the movement of his stocky body. The other men in the room, all sharing a similar uniform, continue discussing what I assume to be their rebellious little plans that I intend to be no part of. Adamus reaches out to hold my left arm as if I were a child that needed to be held still.

“Lovely to see you,” he begins. I see that he has to crane his neck to meet my eyeline, and I imagine punching him square in the jaw. “What can I do for you?”

He’s closer than he’s been before. He doesn’t smell as bad as I previously said, actually. It’s not nearly as… stench-y. It reminds me of something I can’t really place. Some type of wood, maybe? I can see a scar across his lips that pauses before his jaw, then resumes on his neck and under his robes. There’s another one right under his right eye. His eyelashes look so soft and dark brown. Something in my stomach pulls me to look in his eyes.

“Am I interrupting your sausage party?” I say, watching his lips twitch in annoyance for the third time today.

“That’s disgusting,” he counters calmly, struggling to keep his cool.

“But… accurate.”

Adamus squints his eyes in a brief wave of annoyance. “What did you come here for?”

My eyes flicker around the room with paranoia, making sure no one is watching our conversation. Luckily, all the men in uniform seem be clenching their fists as one of them makes some big, dramatic speech while waving his arms around. “Where can you take me?”

Adamus stiffens his body, and I watch the charismatic twinkle return to his irises as my stomach drops. “Ilum, perhaps?”

Ilum would be perfect. It would be… it would be home. “Why would I want to go there?”

“You were talking about it in your sleep.”

Fuck. Adamus.

His grip on my arm intensifies slightly. “I can take you there if you tell me your name.”

I stare up into his piercing orbs. A small shrug graces my shoulders. “Why am I so important to you?” I hiss. “First you stalk me, then you shoot at me, and now you’re demanding my identity. How do I know you’re no better than the Empire?”

Adamus narrows his pale eyes at me. “We’re the rebellion,” he says as if it were obvious.

“What does that have to do with anything?” I counter sharply. “Because you’re not part of the oppressive government, you can’t be oppressive yourselves? Fuck off.”

I hold his stare then. I am not one to back down from challenging authority, or messing with anyone who thinks they’re in control of something. That always tends to include men.

Adamus keeps squaring his jaw in frustration, much to my delight. Then he returns to the table, and a hush falls over the uniformed men. “I have a proposal,” he speaks.

“Does it include her?” One of the men with gray hair and frown stapled to his lips jabs a finger at me.

“It does,” Adamus replies. “I propose we set a course to Ilum. The planet is sacred to the Jedi and could prove useful to me and the uh… new associate here.”

“Didn’t she attack you on sight?” one of the men counters- a Chiss with blue skin and deep red eyes.

“She had every reason to attack. But now she’s going to help us. Right, my new associate?”

Oh no. No, Adamus! Please don’t put the spotlight on me. Before I can respond, Adamus answers for me, probably sensing my discomfort. “Right. Everyone in favor of heading to Ilum, raise your hands.”

Adamus raises both his hands as if surrendering. Nervously, five men follow suit. Adamus turns to me, eyebrows raised. Immediately, I throw up my left hand as a vote.

“Oh, yay! A unanimous vote. That sure makes things easy. Well, off to Ilum then!”

“Ah- General Adamus!”

“Can’t hear you Rass I’m already out the door!” He grabs my arm again as he leaves the room and shuts the door behind us. Separating me from the pit of political vipers he calls his council.

#star wars #star wars fanfiction #star wars fandom #star wars story #jedi #purplelightsaber #greenlightsaber #therebellion #grayjedi #gray jedi #red lightsaber #Endor

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The Dark Knight: How Heath Ledger's Joker Was Born

2020.7

On the occasion of The Dark Knight’s 10th anniversary, we spoke with make-up artist John Caglione, Jr., who was nominated for an Academy Award for his work on The Dark Knight along with Conor O'Sullivan. Caglione had previously won an Oscar for his makeup on Dick Tracy back in 1991, so he came into The Dark Knight with some very relevant experience in the realm of creating grotesqueries. But when it came to birthing a new version of the Joker, the makeup artist quickly realized that he would be crossing into some new and uncomfortable terrain.

“So I read the script for The Dark Knight, and having seen the first one of Chris Nolan’s trilogy, I got the feeling it was going to be more of kind of an organic-looking thing,” Caglione explains. “It was going to be kind of real, not so comic book-y. Going in, and then talking to Chris, meeting him, it became a more realistic approach to the makeup. … What would it be if this guy slept in this makeup? You know, this psychopath. If he didn’t spruce up his makeup for two or three weeks. And, you know, he never changes his clothes in the film. … It was those kinds of organic details that really helps.” When Caglione joined the production, Ledger was already signed on to play the iconic villain. The makeup designer’s earliest meetings were with the actor, director, and costume designer Lindy Hemming, followed by Caglione creating five or six color sketches as overlays of headshots of Ledger complete with green hair, different kinds of clown makeup, scars, and so on. This was followed with some makeup tests with Ledger in London, but as the process continued, it became clear that Caglione had to abandon his artist’s instinct to get everything just right. “You know, you go into it, and you’re trying, as a makeup artist, I’m always trained to do every little detail,” he says. “And you think of a clown makeup, and for the most part they’re pretty detailed with sharp lines, but this had to be the opposite of that. It had to look very broken down, very… very lived in. So, yeah, my first few times were too perfect, so I had to kind of let my hand go. And it was hard, it was really hard to do that. And I remember the first week, the first few days on set, I would look at the makeup, and you don’t know the context of the film and the overall vision, and you’re looking at it as a makeup artist. And I’m saying, this is the worst makeup in the world here! You know? And, it was like, oh, am I doing the right thing?

“And you’re looking at all the great makeups in history,” he continues. “Not just the Joker, but Clarabell and so many other greats -- you know, Emmett Kelly. And they’re always just very accurate, very precise makeups, and then here comes this. Ahhh! But, thank God it all worked out, right?” It’s easy to forget now, but before The Dark Knight was released, the standard bearer of Joker makeups was the Jack Nicholson version from Tim Burton’s 1989 Batman. But Caglione says that as far as he can recall, that design was never really discussed when creating the Ledger Joker. In fact, even the idea of the Joker’s white face being the result of an accident -- which is clearly the case in the Burton film -- just didn’t fit in the Nolan world of Batman. “The first Batman was amazing,” says Caglione. “I love Nicholson’s makeup. And I love the whole approach that Tim Burton [took] … the comic book style of the film, it worked. Everything about that film was great. So, in the back of my mind, maybe subconsciously it was there, but no, it never came up in meetings or discussions. It was, let’s roll up our sleeves and make this thing look like a real person could have done this to themselves. … I think it was always discussed, that this was a possible -- you know, just a psychopath. A real person that just gets into this whole thing. It’s almost like a split personality. And so, yeah, it’s a madman in makeup. It’s that concept.”

Part of the “doing this to themselves” aspect of the character includes the question of those scars on either side of this Joker’s face. Of course, the film itself leaves the question of where the scars came from open to interpretation, as unknowable as the Joker’s ever-changing origin. “I always got the impression that it was self-inflicted,” says Caglione. “But it’s up to you to decide. Was he punished, was it abuse? Was it an abusive situation? It could have been [and] that just tipped him over the edge. Mutilation, self-mutilation. We never really know for sure.” Not surprisingly, Ledger himself was very involved in creating the makeup with Nolan and Caglione. Indeed, he was essential to getting the worn and cracked look of his Joker just right. “It was great with Heath, it was just a great experience,” says Caglione. “He was a great person to work with every day. It was like a dance, because certain parts of the makeup, to get those cracks and all the drippy stuff, you really need the cooperation of the actor’s facial gestures when laying down the makeup and the paint. So we had a lot of fun together on that movie.”

Achieving the desired effect essentially involved Ledger acting in the makeup chair. “He would contort his face or raise his eyebrows,” recalls Caglione. “Or I would even take one hand and kind of scrunch the corner of his eyes to create crows’ feet, you know, draw those wrinkles, and brush grays and white colors over it, and he would relax and you would get all these expressive lines and details that just come naturally. Listen, it’s an old theater trick. They were doing it in the turn of the century, the 1920s in theater. Actors would put white makeup on and scrunch their face and let it go, and then paint little brown lines. So it’s nothing that we really invented. It was a throwback to old makeup techniques.” Another throwback in the design process came in the famous interrogation scene, where things get real rough between the Caped Crusader and the Clown Prince of Crime. “So, Heath and I would always be like, gee, what could we do a little different toward the end of the sequence?” recalls Caglione. “And I remember one time we’re talking about the scene where he gets beat up by Batman. He’s in the jail cell. And at the end of the scene, he wanted to have a different look, Heath. And I was thinking about what we can do with the eyes, the black and stuff. And I went, you know, there was this great villain in the Chaplin films, he was played -- the actor was Eric Campbell, and he always played the big heavy in all the Chaplin movies. And he always had these big, black eyes that kind of had these black eyebrows. And Heath was like, well, let me see a picture. So I pulled it up, and we kind of went for that kind of look. It was a throwback to an old Chaplin villain from the silent screen days.”

According to Caglione, Christopher Nolan wasn’t the kind of director who said “I want you to do exactly this.” Instead, he would offer inspiration and guidance. Take, for example, the paintings of Francis Bacon that he brought to Ledger and Caglione early in the design process. “I think it was his way of saying, let’s blur this, let’s loosen this up,” says Caglione. “Here’s a book, look at it, and maybe you’ll find some inspiration. And it really helped, you know, we turned a corner. He didn’t have to say much, but that was the way it kind of went. And then Heath helped me to relax. The great actors help you relax so you can really bring it, and you can just try different things and feel free to do it. But that Francis Bacon painting, that day that Chris came in and plopped that down and we went through some pages… He said, yeah, maybe look at this picture, look at that picture. I think he actually had some of the pictures tagged with Post-its that he likes. Just for inspiration.” Funny enough, it was a Francis Bacon painting in the 1989 Batman that the Jack Nicholson Joker spared during his gang’s rampage in the Gotham City museum. Coincidence? Who can say? Of course, sadly Heath Ledger passed away before The Dark Knight was released. He went on to receive a posthumous Oscar for the role, but had he not died, the actor could’ve returned as the Joker. Caglione recalls Ledger talking about his ideas for the character beyond The Dark Knight.

“Yes, he did, he actually did talk to me about it,” he says. “He wanted to… start at the Arkham Asylum. And his idea -- I don’t know if he ever talked to Chris. This is just private moments in the chair with Heath, and conversations like, wouldn’t it be great to go back and see what really happened to this guy, how he became what he became? And why he just, you know, flipped out and became maniacal? And he always thought it would be great to go back to the asylum, or even before that. So it was just chit-chat in the chair. … Because I’m sure as an actor, he needs to know the origins of the character; it’s really important to him. “He was excited about the idea of going back in time, and seeing how he became the Joker. You know, the evolution of the character,” says Caglione. “It would have been cool. It would have been cool.”

Indeed, it would’ve been cool. But at least we’ll always have Heath Ledger’s amazing performance from The Dark Knight, and the unforgettable look of the character created by Christopher Nolan, John Caglione, Jr., Conor O'Sullivan, Lindy Hemming and, of course, Ledger himself.

[YouTube]

#John Caglione Jr.#The Dark Knight #Heath Ledger #2020

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a-collection-of-villainous-aus · 5 years

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Pirate Au pt6

Omg I’m sorry I took so long, but I added sketches at least >>

What was he supposed to say?

'Oh I've just been informed you were the pet of my ass of a brother!'

This was ridiculous, it should not be so difficult to enter his own private chambers, it was his room and yet somehow he felt he was invading Acylius's personal space!

Was Flug mad at him because he appeared or acted like his sibling, after all he knew him to not exactly be that of a decent nature...neither was he but at least he had standards.

Pacing in front of his door, looking up only to glare at crew members who dared to even look funny at him, Mew Mew Loaf still in her water bubble was gently biting the end of her tail before letting go and doing it all over again.

Thinking back to that night when Flug had been desperately pulling his mask back on, how it'd caught on one ear fin made of black spines and beautiful iridescent peacock coloured membrane.

He'd even been so fortunate as to catch a glimpse on one corner of his lips, scarred, something had been done to them, though Black Hat had at least had the sense to realize that Acylius wanted to keep his face hidden, so instead of ripping the mask off he helped him to carefully pull it back down.

That tender moment where Flug had leaned into his palm only to immediately move after catching Demencia's scent... It made sense, his merman...whom he hoped he could belong to one day...but would that happen or would he believed he was always being deceived thanks to Thaddeus's (White hat) behaviour.

Now understanding Acylius's situation he realised the full extent of why the merman recoiled from him, what reason did Flug have to believe they were different, apart from how they lived, one on the sea and one below.

Then there was the given fact, he himself was the most feared being from this universe to the next...

Acylius had learned remaining quiet and out of the way to certain beings, unless he was being pulled about and paraded like some show animal or trophy.

A small mew broke through his endless trail of thoughts, looking down at Mew Mew loaf, she stared back with big black dare he think it, adorable eyes, her gaze soon shifting to the door and then him again...oh she wanted to see her companion.

Black Hat knew he should really go in, talk to him, let Acylius know he would not let Thaddeus take him, he was safe here...but what did safe even mean to a merman like him, it would all be honeyed words to someone who had spent who knows how long with White Hat...there were only two people that creature cared for, himself and Slug.

He and Thaddeus might be brothers in species and of the Earth they crawled out from but gladly they would throw the other into a volcano if it would actually cause them to die.

"Having merman troubles?"

A crew member drunkenly forgot their place and while it had not been meant maliciously, Hat as I have mentioned will only let so very few people talk to him so informally, eye turning black and red a snarl leaving his fanged maw, making the rest of the crew back away and carry on work harder than before lest they end up carrying the same fate of the man whose blood now painted the deck.

Tongue snaking out its way out, licking his lips clean of any blood that had splashed over him, he eyed the corpse, considering if he should make a meal out of it until he was reminded that he was still holding Flug's pet...oh no...she'd seen that.

He'd probably just given Acylius more reason to...wait was she staring at the body with the same hunger, crouching down he lifted the hand and pushed it into Mew Mew loafs water bubble, rows of little sharp teeth were exposed and within moments there was no hand just a bloody stump.

Well that was unexpected and interesting.

"I presume he knows you are like this?"

Hat inquired, peering into her bubble, she swirled in her water ball again and nodded before pointing with chubby paw fin at the body and then the door, mewing enthusiastically.

Black Hat was staring, something was trying to click, match up and as she pointed to the door where Acylius was and the corpse once more he blinked, it dawned on him he'd never asked if the merman had wanted to eat and thus did not know what his favourite food was...until now.

Well that might be a way to win his affections, beloved pet in one hand, and favourite meal in the other.

While the thought of Acylius draped over him and turning him into putty certainly seemed delightful he would try to keep a clear mind, there were other things that needed to be done, to be talked about and he wanted to give proof somehow, that he saw the merman as more than just some doll to be played with.

Fingers curling around the deceased man's collar he watched his crew, door opening by itself a bloody trail followed as Black Hat easily took the body with him, top lip rippling in a growl

"This mess had better be gone before I come back out!"

With that he slammed the door, appearances where everything after all with these shallow humans, it was indeed a rare thing to find someone who had more depth than a piddling rock pool.

He laughed quietly to himself as he

heard them scrabbling to clean up the red stain, heh heh that wasn't coming out but their fear and desperate attempts to scrub it out would be fun for a while.

Looking over at the tank, his smile grew; face more fangs that flesh, oh my, so now Flug was paying him attention or more like the meal in his hand and pet in the other.

"So you are finally acknowledging my existence?"

He leered, chest puffed out and preening, if he'd been covered in feathers they'd have been fluffed up, though he was giving off an air of being smug Black Hat came to a stop as he heard Acylius giggling.

"What has you so tickled?"

His mood fell slightly and then looked to where Flug was pointing, it was at Mew Mew Loaf.

"She likes you, clearly you did something right."

The Pirate King stalled, repeating the words slowly

"Done something... right?"

Mew Mew was resting on what part of Black Hat's palm she could, purring away as her fish tail swayed in the water bubble, it was dawning on him...slowly mind you that Flug actually seemed to have relaxed a little...

He realised now just how important this moment was, if he'd come in showing any aggression to this little creature, Acylius would have thrown up a defensive wall so thick he may never have gotten through to him.

"Black Hat, you will not let any harm befall her will you?"

The demon was quiet as he turned his attention to Mew Mew Loaf who was nuzzling his palm and even gave it a small lick, she was clearly happy as you could even hear her purring through the water.

Now imagine a chibi version of Hat, the way animes do when they make a serious character look adorable.

He was staring at her...well shit and blast it all, he'd already intended no harm in the first place but now she was a tiny ball that if anything happened to her he would kill everyone in the world and then himself am I referencing that quote you're damn right I am, who said I had to be serious.

"No, though after recent revelations, I understand if you do not trust me now or if ever."

Black Hat answered softly, coming up as close to him as he could with glass parting them, levitating the bubble it then sank down into Flug's tank, watching as Mew Mew Loaf instantly swam up to Acylius and nuzzled him.

The sheer joy in her little cries had him smiling a little; honestly he'd not even been aware he was doing so until he noticed Acylius now watched him in return.

Mew Mew Loaf mrrped and went off swimming around the tank that was her new home.

Swallowing he, he found himself unable to move as the merman moved closer to the glass, to him…seeing finely scaled hands press against the surface the old Pirate King wondered what Flug was going to do, there was only the sound of water and the creaking ship as moments passed.

Hat finally breathed (despite not actually needing to) after Acylius broke the silence

“So…you know who once owned me?”

“Yes.”

Their voices were quiet and when Hat had answered he could barely keep eye contact.

How could he when he’d given Thaddeus the world under water while he ruled the land…it was his fault this being had suffered at the hands of White Hat, there was no knowing what other fate might have befallen Acylius if he had not, would he even still be alive, would they have met there were so many what ifs the demon was more lost than anything…he knew it was selfish to be glad fate brought Acylius to him and yet a sting of guilt…because it was he who’d practically put the merman in Thaddeus’s hands.

Clearing his throat he then stripped the body of clothing with is powers as well as making sure it was stripped of filth or whatnot he was not about to feed the creature a dirty meal before also placing the body in the water.

Black Hat could sense the merman’s want to reach out to him, but he did not feel deserving of Acylius’s touch let alone attention, it took an iron will to move away and sit at his desk, despite it being pristine he kept adjusting objects on it, still avoiding eye contact, he knew it was shame he was feeling and he hated it, he’d never felt shame…he’d witnessed it and knew now why people looked like that when they experienced this emotion.

Mew Mew Loaf watched them both for a few moments before going to nibble on the other hand; she loved fingers, good for scratching, good for nibbling.

Acylius let out a soft whine; it was pained as he curled in on himself and sank to the bottom of the tank…so now that the Pirate King knew he was the spoils of Thaddeus…he didn’t want him?

Heart aching and colours growing dull as if someone had drained his scales of life, gills flaring with each breath, a small mew was heard as his little pet came and nuzzled at him and another Mew, this one louder than the last making Amadeus (Black Hat) look up eye wide as he found Flugs tank was now was black, the water was darker than night itself, pieces of skeleton started pelting out, ricocheting around the room, embedding into the wood and one piece even hit the demon square between the eyes as the water bubbled and started spilling over the sides.

As soon as he made a move towards the tank something started rising up, the form was so large in height it had to bend over and all he could do was look up in awe as he realised it was Acylius towering over him a hand on the glass edge as his other wrapped around his currently in comparison tooth pick of a body.

A thick inky substance streaked the merman’s face, falling in thick strings, ear fins flaring as his eyes were such a pale blue they were near white, making his pupils appear no more than pin pricks, rows and rows of needle teeth exposed as Flugs scream was anything far from what Earthly beast could make, it was raging and full of pain.

Amadeus was not frightened of course, but there are many reasons to be scared…fear of never being forgiven, now that was something that frightened him, even if he felt it was undeserved.

Acylius’s grip was far from gentle, but it barely registered as pain, as he spoke though the Captain made sure not to turn away from him this time and listened as smoke left the merman’s maw

“So now that I am no more than waste to you, you who have pined and whined over me, who continued to show signs of envy when I showed my affections for Demencia now reject me…are you so out of touch with reality to recall merfolk customs or have you only ever cared for what you want!”

Hat wanted to face palm into a black hole….of course their kind was commonly known to be in trios, Acylius hadn’t been favouring her over him, he was learning about them both, now though after this if Flug still liked him that would be one hell of a miracle and he dare not ask at this moment, looking down as glass cracked he saw as the front of the tank collapsed, water flooding the room, something that was easily fixable but that mattered little to Amadeus at this moment.

Heart racing and twisting inside he realised his mistake, by not allowing Flug to reach out after he himself had been clearly wanting to all this time…rejecting the contact after finding out his history…had made the merman feel like he was disgusting, spoiled by Thaddeus…this wasn’t just anger it was masking the despair, the pain in him.

Freeing a hand with ease he reached out into the heart of the ink and muck and placed it on him, showing with this simple action he was not repelled by him, looking up at those white eyes the blue deepened, their colour never seemed to settle on one hue, always swaying in tone like the Ocean, water and glass drawing back to their place

“It is not because of something you have done Acylius…I turned from you because it is I who allowed Thaddeus to rule the waters simply because I did not want to, while I consider myself deserving of most things, I see now I am not deserving of you.”

Demencia was standing at the door, it was of course closed behind her cause she wasn’t about to let any prying eyes see this and if anyone had tried to look she’d have stabbed them out, the water had been up her shins and now as she watched it drawing back to where it came from, found everything to be dry as if it had never been.

Wow Black Hat never apologised for anything like…ever.

She stayed quiet as Acylius’s form shrank, melting away and letting go of Black Hat who landed on his ass on his desk just narrowly missing sharp pointed object on its surface, even he noticed everything was dry and back in order.

“This is clearly not my magic…what are you?”

Waters clearing and mask no longer in place, glaring at him with arms folded.

Black Hat was momentarily speechless...he’d perhaps expected a pretty face under that mask but this was breath taking, short ebony hair just long enough to sway in the water, face of white when caught in sunlight shimmered, lips scarred …no doubt the work of his brother and the way he was looking at him…any other circumstance and he’d be like take me I’m yours…well he was going to have to hold up his end of the bet later and confess he’d forgotten to feed him because he was too busy trying to impress him.

“What am I, I think the question you should be asking is who was I? I was next in line to be king, once deep sea merfolk were not despised, we as a race worked in unity, there was peace until Thaddeus , through years of manipulation whittled down the numbers of my kind to the hundreds…we are not even that anymore…”

Mew Mew loaf could hear the cracking in her friends voice and softly mewed coming up to him and nuzzling against him, he cuddled her kissing her tiny forehead gently as he sat on the tanks bottom once more, continuing

“Now that we are rare, we are considered prizes and things to be used as status symbols, some are now stuck in their racial beliefs and some would seek to claim us for gain.”

Black Hat wanted to curl in on himself and never look at him again, usually he didn’t care, he wouldn’t have cared…he never thought something he’d done would ever come back to bite him and so deeply

“I have never cared for the consequences for my actions…because they usually would not be any but-“

“Do not pretend to care now then, your false apologies would only insult me further, did you think just because I have dealt with your brother I would snivel before you?”

Oh god…even as he was tearing him down to the bone with words he found himself loving him all the more, he deserved this and knew it but to see him so forthright unafraid to tell him , call him out on his bullshit…he would bow to no one in his life but this king before him.

Mew Mew Loaf was loafing on Flugs ‘lap’ as best she could you know considering Flug didn’t exactly have a lap and she had a fish tail herself and rested listening to them quietly.

“No, I did not think you would snivel before me…you are far too stubborn for that…but you are afraid.”

It really was all coming together now, the more this went on, noticing how Acylius flinched, the slight recoiling at first before posturing, afraid yes, cowardly no, Black Hat realised Acylius had done the only thing he could have done and before Black Hat could say it, Demencia spoke up as she gently asked him

“Acylius, how long have you been running?”

End of pt six

#pirate au #paperhat #it'll get there I promise #now I can work on blind au #everyone will be out of character forever! XD #Demencia #black hat #Acylius flug #pirate hat #merflug #my art

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jinmukangwrites · 5 years

Text

From the Ashes (2/???)

Summary: In a modern version of Hyrule, a young man finds himself in a world filled with nothing but white walls, studying faces, and tests after tests. Something is different about him, and the world seems very interested is seeing what makes him tick. (A modern, BOTW/LOZ “Labrat” AU)

Chapter 1, Chapter 3 (to be released for all Partron's today, July 11th for Tumblr)

Warnings: Death, torture, blood, description on injury, experimentation, dark themes, emotional abuse, abuse.

Make sure you read the warnings, be safe.

-o-o-o-o-

Today there's autopsy, he died during it, but there's still an autopsy. They give him the numbing agent like always before they secure him down, but there's nothing that can stop the pain of a scalpel cutting down your chest, nothing like the skin being torn apart in different directions, nothing like ribs being pried apart so they can get a better look at your still beating heart.

They're careful at first, making sure he lives long enough for them to get their samples of tissues and muscles and fluid until they do what they always do instead of stitching him back together; they kill him. It's effective. Whatever brings him back to life whenever he dies heals everything and leaves nothing but a scar on his skin. He wakes up moments later completely healed and ready for whatever they want to do to him next.

It seems today they also want to test his endurance, because right as he wakes up from his autopsy, the mask that always kills him is strapped on and soon death takes him again.

The black lasts longer this time, the warmth comes a little later and just a bit duller, but he wakes up again, fine, breathing, good. Then the mask kills him again, it takes longer, again, it's colder. He wakes up. He dies. Again.

Longer. Colder. Alive. Dead. Again. Again.

Six times he dies until the machines scream at them to stop when he can't. He's dizzy, the phantom pains of knives literally in his chest burn and his lungs are begging for fresh air. He can't feel his body as they undo the straps and place him in a wheelchair for transport. Soon, he's wheeled into his home, the only place he can call his, and left there to blankly stare at the white walls until he can find the strength to move.

It takes a few hours, but he finally manages to wobbly stand up from the wheelchair. It's a practice he's mastered, this is nothing new. He doesn't bother to look back at the observation room connected to his with a panel of glass. He knows that the main scientist is there, observing him while he nibbles on the end of his pen. He's the same man who killed him for the first time in his one and only true memory. He hasn't seen that nice woman since, he wonders where she is.

Anyway, he ignores the observation room. They usually go away and turn on the cameras once he's collapsed in his small, threadbare bed. There's not much to observe when all he has energy to do is clutch at his thin pillow and breathe until sleep takes him. Why waste time watching him sleep when they could be preparing for the next experiment, the next sample, the next death.

The moment he collapses into his bed, on top of his blanket and pillow not even properly placed under his head, the bright lights in his cell turn off and multiple blinking green dots appear in the dark corners of his cell near the ceiling. His eyes unwillingly slip closed, he wishes he could keep them open, yet he knows fighting sleep is useless.

At least, when he's asleep, he has a name and family. When he's awake, he's got terror. When he's dead, he's got nothing.

Though, nothing is starting to sound very nice, and if only it would last forever.

-o-o-o-o-

There are sometimes days where they do nothing to him. He cherishes those days. He has time to do whatever he wants (within limited restrictions and boundaries of course) just as long as he does their mandatory workouts and therapy sessions.

The workouts are easy. He's brought to a large gym where there are treadmills and tracks and weights; there's an instructor and two guards and he does what he's told for about an hour to two depending on what the instructor determines what his body needs. The foods they feed him are filled with vitamins and minerals, so it's not like he's bone skinny, but he's not muscular either. Despite the things they do to him, they want his body to be healthy, that way results are not tainted by starvation, exhaustion, and a poor immune system.

He likes climbing. Out of everything they have him do during workouts, it's climbing nets and walls that he loves most. Running is fine, stretching and yoga is sort of okay, lifting weights is boring and he doesn't like that, they had him try swimming a couple times but both times he almost drowned so they got rid of that, but climbing is something he would willingly do.

There's something freeing about lifting himself higher and higher with nothing but his own strength. He likes to pretend he's climbing a mountain, a very tall mountain. One where if he ever reaches the top, he will be free from labs and experiments, he will be able to swing his arms out and lift his face to the stars and never have to go back.

The worst part about climbing is having to come back down.

Today he ran, he didn't get to climb, but there's always a next time.

Therapy sessions are a bit harder because it's a full two hours where he's expected to communicate, and he doesn't very much like the therapist. He can't speak, no matter how hard he tries to make sounds or how long they grill him in basic vocal practices it just doesn't happen. He somehow knows a bit of sign, but just the simple ones, limited to mostly letters. Most of the therapy sessions involve him trying to spell out how he's feeling with his hands and the therapist getting impatient with how long it takes for him to sign S-C-A-R-E-D or H-A-P-P-Y or H-U-R-T when he theoretically could just say the words and move on. He gets yelled at a lot, which he doesn't think getting yelled at is a part of therapy but he has to remind himself that he doesn't know what therapy is outside of the labs, so for all he knows getting yelled at for things he can't control is what therapy is all about.

Thankfully, today the therapist looks happy. When they're happy, they talk a lot about themselves instead of him. Apparently their brother got married and they got to go back home to the Zora's Domain to visit. He only knows a couple Zora, the therapist being one of them, the others being various scientists and nurses. There's a Goron on the security team, but the rest are all Hylian. He hears stories of the Gerudo sometimes, but he's never seen one. They sound beautiful, especially since none of them come here to the labs to hurt him.

After a whole long story about how the therapist got to go cliff driving with their siblings (oh cliff driving sounds wondrous even though he can't swim well) the therapist sighs and clicks a pen against the clipboard in their hands.

"Okay," they grumble, "let's get this over with. How are you feeling today?"

It's a question that should be genuine, but the therapist says it like they'd rather be sleeping.

Today, he doesn't hurt, today's a free day. He got to work out, but he didn't get to climb. He came to therapy and hasn't been yelled at yet. He's okay. A little tired from working out, a little hungry, but he's okay.

O-K. T-I-R-E-D. W-O-R-K-O-U-T

"Yesterday Doctor Marras tested your endurance, how did that go?"

He lifts his hand up to his chest, his fist shaped in the sign for "A". He moves his fist down like a scalpel would. His sign for "Autopsy".

D-I-E.

He makes the shape for "D" now and puts it over his nose, the sign for the mask used to kill him.

Six. No / R-I-S-K / seven.

"How did you feel?"

He brings his hands out in front and touches the fingertips of his pointer fingers a couple times. Hurt. He then opens his palms across his chest and drags them outward while slowly closing his fists. Afraid.

The therapist sighs and he puts his hands down to his lap. This conversation sounds old, feels repetitive.

It doesn't matter. He knows it's just a way to make sure he's still capable of thinking and living. Losing his mind would be almost as bad as letting his body wither away. Almost. They'd rather his body is peak physical condition than his brain fully functional, which is probably why his work out trainor is actually very good while his therapist doesn't help that much at all.

Whatever the case, he's asked a couple more required questions and he's not yelled at at all before he's escorted back to his cell where a small number of activities await him. By his cot is a small pile of books, a sketch pad, and some pencils. On the small plastic table next to the bed is a black tablet with apps for learning basic math and science are downloaded on, along with an app used to help him learn more words in sign. There's a paper cup of water placed next to it, right beside a protein bar which is certainly a rare sight. He's usually fed the same gray, tasteless goop every breakfast, lunch, and dinner. If he's given actual substance, he must have done something good. Or they're all just in a good mood.

Not one to pass up the opportunity of actual food, he grabs the bar and gently tears it out of it's wrapping. He sighs in content as the flavor hits his tongue, it's bitter, but he can still taste chocolate. Content, he plops down on his cot and opens the sketch book. He flips through the pages he's already sketched on and lands on a blank page. Tapping the pencil against the paper in thought, he glances up quickly at the observation room. Today the glass has been changed into a mirror, which sends a wave of uneasiness through him. Whatever is going on behind that mirror, they don't want him to see today.

He sucks in a breath and turns back down to his sketchbook.

#jin writes #fan fiction #legend of zelda #botw #loz botw #breath of the wild #link #au

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cutesuki--bakugou · 5 years

Text

Cuties and Chips

Pairing: Bakugou x Koge (OC) Pre-Relationship Rating: Teen | Cursing Words: 3025

Main art blog: @hvalrossart

“Good morning, Mitsuki.”

“Koge! Welcome, my dear, please come in.” Mitsuki gave a welcoming smile to the young teenager that stood in her doorway, moving aside to allow her in. “You’re here early today! Katsuki is expecting you, I assume?”

“Yes,” Koge gave a small nod, her white hair falling over her shoulders as she worked to remove her shoes to leave them in the entryway. “He didn’t answer my text when I said I was on my way, so I’m not sure if he’s still asleep?”

Mitsuki gave an amused scoff, closing the door. “That boy has been up since before sunrise! I don’t even know if he’s sleeping, he’s been totally obsessing over studying and everything he needs to get into UA.”

Slipping her now bare feet into slippers that the family had designated for her, Koge turned her attention to look back up at the woman beside her. “That’s why I’m here, he wanted my input. I think. Or he just wanted someone to complain to.”

Mitsuki smiled, leading the way further into the house with Koge following behind her. “He sure does trust you, he won’t even ask for our input, and we’re his parents! I’ve been trying to get him to let us see his costume design, but he’s not having it, little punk. We’re fashion designers, we know what looks good!”

Koge gave a small shake of her head, stopping at the base of the stairs. “I think he’s either embarrassed or just hasn’t come up with something he’s really happy with. I’m sure he’ll ask once he decides.”

Mitsuki sighed, placing her hands on her hips as she shrugged. “He can do what he wants with that, I suppose. Well, I’m glad you’re here! I’m going to start cooking breakfast here soon, I hope you’ll join us!”

“I will. Thank you.” With that, Koge began her trek up the stairs. The further up she got, she became aware of the blaringly loud heavy metal music pouring from Bakugou’s room, where the door was shut. That’s his thinking music, he must really be into it right now. Approaching the door, she didn’t bother to knock since she knew he wouldn’t hear it. Instead, she quietly opened it, peeking inside. Sure enough, he was sitting at his desk, scribbling away on some paper. He was intensely focused, from what Koge could tell, with one hand holding up his head and his fingers dug into his hair. She hoped he wasn’t too frustrated, and if he was, maybe her presence would calm him down a bit.

Shutting the door behind her, Koge approached him, stopping right behind his chair. Before she could say anything, she felt heat rush to her cheeks, squeezing her throat as she grew embarrassed. They had been friends forever, and now that they were getting older, Koge couldn’t stop herself from growing quite an intense crush on him. It didn’t help that he had been getting more fit in preparation for his entry into UA, and his shoulders looked so good in that black tank he wore that she almost couldn’t resist touching him. Still, she held back, swallowing down the lump that had grown in her throat.

“Katsu--”

How violently Bakugou jumped in fright made Koge jump as well, quickly taking a step back to avoid having her toes crushed by the chair wheels. Whipping around, Bakugou first glanced around before his crimson glare landed on her, right hand at the ready like he was about to blow her away with his quirk. “Holy fucking shit Utsuro, what the hell are you doing?!”

“I was just--” Koge glanced over at his music speakers, finding that she couldn’t even hear herself over the music. So, she spoke louder and stepped closer to make sure he could hear her as well. “You told me to be here at nine. I texted you to say I was-” The music suddenly cut off, making her choke on her words and quickly bring her voice back down. “-coming.”

Eyes now on his phone as he paused the music, Bakugou glowered at the unread text, grumbling a bit in annoyance. “I didn’t hear it.”

“Well your music was so loud, of course you wouldn’t.” Koge sat her bag down on the floor, which was filled with things she had turned in to UA for his reference, as well as a bunch of snacks. “You were really focused.”

“Damn right I was! I have to get this costume design done.”

“You still have two months until it’s due--”

“That’s not a long time! I’m not like you, Utsuro, taking inspiration from that kook of a hero Eguchi.” Bakugou turned his back to her to look at his paper, not seeing Koge’s face flush. With a huff, Koge leaned over him, snatching what he was working on right from under his nose, ignoring his curses of annoyance and demands to return his work.

“Gimme this,” she hopped away from him and out of his reach. “If you’re gonna judge me for taking inspiration from my favorite hero and mentor, then I’m gonna judge you!” The sketchy version of his hero costume was unfinished, so there really wasn’t much for her to look at just yet. “What is that coming out of your head? Explosions--” A squeak escaped her lips as it was snatched from her fingers, her pale blue gaze looking up at the flushed face of her friend curiously.

“It’s supposed to be a mask with… flashy things on it! I haven’t drawn the mask yet, I just started on this one!” He sat back down in his chair, holding his paper protectively away from her grabby fingers. “It’s my fifteenth draft, don’t fuck it up.”

“Fifteenth? Katsuki, you do know that they are going to do a lot of the designing for you. They just want a basic idea and you write out the rest.” Squatting down by her bag, Koge dug through it a bit until she found a folder. Opening it up, she found the draft she had drawn for her costume, handing it to him. “See? Mine didn’t look hardly anything like I drew out besides the basic form and colors I wanted. I think maybe you’re stressing about it a little too much.”

Bakugou was silent as he looked over her drawing, though he did give her an annoyed glance. After a moment, he handed it back to her, turning to face his desk again. “You suck at drawing, Utsuro.”

“That’s not the point.” Koge put the paper back in the folder, leaving it with her bag before standing. Coming to stand beside him, she let an arm rest over his shoulders leaning forward a bit to observe the rest of the scattered papers on his desk. She caught his embarrassed glance for just a moment, though she kept her focus on the subject at hand. “I see here you’ve written down everything that you want already. But you can’t really... express that in a drawing or something?”

“No,” Bakugou picked up his pencil, tapping it on the desk. “Just… what I draw doesn’t look like what I imagine. I want it to be perfect.”

“Well, I like this so far.” Koge tapped her finger against the paper he was currently working on. “If you wanted flashy, that will definitely do the trick. Keep going, I’ll just hang out until you want my input.” Standing up straight, she gave his shoulder a firm pat, though she was stopped as he reached up and grabbed her hand to stop her.

“No, wait,” Bakugou kept his glare down on the paper, the red color in the tips of his ears giving away his embarrassment. “I want you to watch. We can sit on the floor…” He shot her a quick glance before he stood, gathering all his important papers. Koge stood back to give him room, watching as he plopped down to sit on the wooden floor of his bedroom. Unable to resist the small smile on her lips, Koge sat down beside him, pulling her bag closer to her. The fact that he wanted her to stay so close made her stomach bubble with excited butterflies, and there was no way she was going to give up on the chance.

“Your mom said that she’s making breakfast, but I figured I’d be here most of the day, so I brought a bunch of snacks.”

“My spicy chips?”

“Three bags of them.”

Bakugou smirked, giving a nod of approval. “You’re good, Utsuro.”

“I know.” Koge’s smile grew, watching him as he began to sketch again, leaning over his paper. “Aw, but you can’t eat them while you do this, you’ll get the dust all over your paper.”

“Ah fuck, that’s true. Just feed them to me.”

“What?!” Koge’s cheeks flushed, though she still reached inside her bag to get the chips. “Seriously?”

“Would I have said it if I wasn’t fucking serious?” There wasn’t a single hint of embarrassment or reluctance in his voice, so Koge knew that he was very much serious. So, she opened up the bag and grabbed a chip.

“You want one now?”

He only responded by opening his mouth, not removing his focus from his drawing. Unable to help a soft giggle, Koge put the chip to his lips, allowing him to grab it and much away. “Katsuki, you can be really cute sometimes, you know that?”

“Don’t call me cute, Utsuro, I’ve already told you that.” His reaction was typical, except for the violent outburst that usually came with it. Koge wondered for a moment what had him so calm. Perhaps it was his focus on his project, or he had just woken up in a good mood. She liked to imagine, however, that it was her presence that was keeping him so calm, that he just enjoyed being alone with her like this. It was obvious that he did enjoy it in some way, or else he wouldn’t want to be friends with her. How deep his affection for her was something that she could never guess, so all she could do was try and hide her own. Until he gave her some hints, at least.

“But I’m only saying the truth,” Koge fed him another chip, which he ate contently. “Would you rather me lie and call you ugly?”

“I just don’t want you to call me cute. It sounds fucking lame. Oh shit, I messed up--” He leaned forward a bit more to get a better angle to erase his mistake. Curious, Koge looked closer.

“Are those giant grenades on your hands? What are they for?”

“They’re gauntlets. I want them to make it to where it absorbs my sweat and builds it up, then I can make a huge explosion!” As he explained it, he drew the gauntlets over to the side on the same paper, including some zigzag lines to indicate an explosion.

Koge’s smile returned at how excited he seemed about it. “That’s really fancy. And awesome! With your quirk, that will give you probably the most powerful attack in the class. It should help you with the backlash on your arms, too.”

Bakugou scoffed, writing something next to the gauntlet in his messy handwriting. “Tch, don’t get all technical, Utsuro. Even without these, I’m still going to be the strongest in the class, just fucking watch!”

“I don’t doubt it, Katsuki. You’ve been training so hard. But I do have a suggestion if you want to make friends--”

“I dont give a fuck about making friends.”

“-- Don’t shit on people too much, they’ll just hate you. There are a lot of strong students there, it would be good to build positive relationships.”

“Shut up. I don’t need friends. I’m going there to become the strongest hero and that’s all I give a shit about. Chip.”

Koge obliged at the demand of another chip. “I don’t have any friends yet, either. But I’ll be there, we can walk home together and stuff. Have lunch. That’s a plus right?”

“I suppose. But I’m still going to kick your ass any chance I get! What rank are you in your class right now?”

“I have the fourth highest grades. There’s this one kid in my class that is like a freaking genius and his quirk is incredible. He hit on me, too--” Koge was cut off as Bakugou suddenly snapped the led of his pencil clean off by pushing down too hard, a small gasp leaving her lips. “Wah, Katsuki be careful, you’ll mess up your drawing. What’s wrong?”

Bakugou grabbed his pencil sharpener, working the pencil inside it while glaring icy daggers at it the entire time. His ears were flushed again, but Koge still couldn’t tell what was wrong.

“I don’t give a shit about how intelligent your classmates are, Utsuro. I’ll destroy all of them. Chip!” This time, Koge feared a bit for her fingers, but she was able to avoid damage as he chomped it down. For a moment, she eyed him curiously, having never seen a reaction quite like this one before. When it finally dawned on her, heat returned to her cheeks and spread through her body, making her shift in her spot a bit.

“Uhm, Katsuki… Did you get mad because I was praising someone in my class… Or because I said he hit on me?”

The red in Bakugou’s ears spread over to his cheeks, the slight annoyed pout on his lips and glare only making her more embarrassed, as she knew that meant she had caught him.

“None of those people are good enough for you, Utsuro.”

“But… you don’t know them.”

“I don’t need to.” His glare moved to her, though it only made her more embarrassed with how soft he looked. “Just focus on school and training. You don’t need to deal with that shit.”

Koge tightened her grip on the bag of chips in her hands, wishing she had at least a little control over the burning blush in her cheeks. She knew it was obvious against her pale skin, but there was nothing she could do. All she felt was an overwhelming adoration for the boy beside her, who cared more deeply than he would ever admit. Or, more than he would ever admit right now.

“You’re right, Katsuki.” She smiled, wishing more than ever that she could latch onto him and hug him. “You know I take your input seriously. But you know, I do have a lot of boys hit on me.”

“Tch, fuck them,” Bakugou went back to his drawing, currently working on the legs. “I bet none of them even know you.”

“Nope, not really. I didn’t even know some of their names.”

“No wonder they’re hitting on you, they don’t know how much of an airhead you are.”

“Hey!” Koge gave him a smack on the shoulder, glaring at him as he snickered. “I am not an airhead! Oops, I got powder on you, sorry…” Effectively ruining her own argument, Koge wiped the red chip powder off his skin, which he allowed with only an annoyed grumble. Though, her eyes were pulled down to his paper as he began to write something again, and she instantly began to laugh.

“Oh my god! Katsuki, ‘kill with my knees’?! How cute!”

“I said don’t call me cute, it’s not funny!! I want to be able to break people’s faces on my knees dammit!”

“But you don’t fight with your legs!”

“I don’t care!”

Covering her mouth to try and stifel her giggles, Koge leaned against his shoulder, able to feel how hot his skin was with his embarrassment. “So vicious and yet adorable at the same time. Your costume is going to be amazing.”

With a huff, Bakugou shoved her off, though it wasn’t hard enough to push her over. “Get off me, loser. Don’t embarrass me and then immediately try to praise me, it’s annoying.”

“I mean it, though.” Koge handed him another chip, which he ate. “I can’t wait to see it.”

“You really think this is a good idea?”

The fact that he seriously questioned himself and requested her input made her stomach flutter, smile growing soft. Making sure her hand was clean first, she gave his upper arm a gentle rub and a pat. “I like it a lot, Katsuki. It means a lot to me that you’d want my input.”

Bakugou only gave a soft grunt, keeping his focus on his drawing. Though, the red in his ears didn’t fade, nor did he smack her hand off of him. Getting to just sit like this with him was something that Koge loved, even if they didn’t talk or say anything. It was a comfortable silence, their friendship one which didn’t require constant conversation to enjoy each others company. She wouldn’t trade it for anything in the world, and though she knew her true affections may never be returned, waiting for him would never be something she would regret.

Eventually, Bakugou put his pencil down, giving a sigh as he sat up. His back gave a string of pops as he rolled his shoulders, as did his neck, but it was something Koge had grown used to hearing. “What do you think, Utsuro?”

“Hmm,” Koge leaned over a bit more to see it all clearly, comparing it to what all he had written down. Besides some other details like what he wanted on his belt on the drawing, it matched very well. “It’s great! I think they’ll be able to understand what you want. It’ll look really badass.”

“Damn right it will. Fuck I’m hungry--”

“Katsuki!!” His mother called up the stairs, making them both jump. “Koge!! Breakfast is ready!!”

Koge sighed as she stood, wiping the rest of the chip powder off her hands. “Well, that was right on time. How about after we eat, I help you look over your entry papers?”

“We eat? Who said you get food?”

“Uh, your mom?”

“Not if I eat it all first!” “Ah-- wait, Katsuki, don’t run away! Save me some!”

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