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prettyboykatsuki · 3 years

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♡ bakugou headcanons that feel like a warm hug ♡

➳wc ;; 1.2k (oh my god. what is wrong w me.)

➳ a/n ;; or my bakugou brain-rot that never goes away. thanks for being my comfort character, you fucking gremlin. forgive the silly title.

♡ always makes little adjustments to the environment for you. he’s observant to a fault so if there’s something even a little off and it happens to bother you, he’s trying to work around it.

♡ good at playing guitar but not good at reading music. he can throw something together if you give him a chance but he’s not good at trying to recreate someone elses memory. he’s not like.. musically gifted either but he likes how guitar sounds

♡ thinks about getting a lot of piercings in his ear because he thinks they’d look cool but is kind of too nervous? the idea of a needle going through his skin is a ick. when you start dating, he drags you to his appointments lol - won’t admit it but he thinks he looks so hot when he gets them. takes a bunch of selfies <3

♡ needs to be moving constantly. can’t sit completely still to save his life. when he listens to music, he moves his head. sometimes he just runs his thumb over his fingers.

♡ really, really bad at talking. not in the sense he can’t communicate (that too) but he just likes listening in conversation. rarely adds his own thing. but when he does - always accidentally says something super meaningful

♡ enjoys subtle physical touch because it is literally intimate he melts inside. a hand on his forearm or shoulder. your legs over his lap. small things that show how comfortable you are.

♡ likes being held cause he’s a big ass baby lmfao

♡ wont admit it but enjoy when you choose pretty or colorful bandages for his cuts he won’t himself but it’s like keeping you in his pocket wherever he goes.

♡ really needs you to find him attractive dslksjk it’s not that he ever thinks he’s particularly ugly. but he didn’t really assign importance to his appearance at any point in his life, yet now he puts in a scary amount of effort. readjusts his hair so much more, makes sure his clothes fit good. fixes his fuckin’ face lol

♡ likes chewing gum a lot and always has a pack on him. really proud of how big he can blow bubbles and will be a little sad if you’re unimpressed.

♡ is overly sentimental about things you’ve made him - especially if it’s something super dumb. you drew him a silly little sketch of him in a frog hat? it’s in his wallet behind his id. freaks out when he thinks he’s lost his wallet

♡ LOVES phone calls. yes he still hates talking. but the way his face looks when he listens to your voice. eyes half-lidded, shamelessly smiling - it’s so tender and so lovesick.

♡ terrible first grader hand-writing. he tries to write them for you in the beginning of your relationship (to be romantic or some shit) but they’re so incomprehensible pls. if he focuses on it - it can be legible but most of the time ... yea no.

♡ doesn’t favor tea or coffee but prefers tea if he has to drink one.

♡ crazy good at eyeballing measurement. even in baking. once made a perfectly good bread without weighing anything and doesn’t get why that’s so wild.

♡ has the phone on his text set to be bigger even though his eyes are fine.

♡ lets you do the layout thing on his iphone and decorate as you please. says he doesn’t care but when he sees you made it hero themed/fit with his aesthetic - he got so red it was so cute.

♡ hates shopping in store. will still always go with you because the one time you went alone a store clerk hit on you.

♡ so practical. he started couponing when he was in his early twenties like an old man. checks the news and weather the night before, every night. never misses doctors appointments.

♡ shit at any form of visual art. drawing, painting etc - cannot do it to save his life. but he tries. his hands shake when he tries to draw hearts for you

♡ blows the eyelashes off your cheek super gently whenever he notices. he’ll like.. take your face in his hands and blow so softly like he’s gonna hurt you.

♡ used to agree to make pinky promises with you as a joke. now though? automatically holds his pink out for you to take it. straight up pouts if you don’t.

♡ you two have a song and when it comes on, he’ll sing it back to you. any other time? any other song? he wont. but he always sings your song even without realizing, just mouths it.

♡ enjoys when you put your hands under his shirt and just leave them there and hug him like that. skin to skin contact is elite but only from you.

♡ hamsters adore this man. they just do.

♡ draws frowny faces on your eggs with hot-sauce

♡ soul leaves his body when you play with his hair and scratch his scalp. the tension in his neck literally disappears and he just sighs that shit relaxes him like crazy

♡ the first time he says i love you, you’re tying his tie for his first hero event. you’re telling him to that the color looks good on him and you’re smiling. it honestly it just slips. he went on to win an award that night.

♡ his favorite memory of the two of you was when you were trying to leave the grocery store one afternoon. it was raining heavy as shit. you pulled him in under your clear umbrella and just stood there. he doesn’t know why but that means a lot to him.

♡ cares a lot about his dads approval on his work specifically. him and his dad have a really specifc bond and he actually admires him quite a bit.

♡ nothing makes him cry like “im proud of you”. especially when it’s for something small. it’s just something he didn’t hear enough in a sincere way.

♡ likes fruit flavored sweets over chocolate (generally needs something to do w his mouth cause it helps him think. bad oral fixation) so he keeps little candies on him

♡ shit at video games. terrible at them with the exception of mario kart? for some reason.

♡ always loses his keys

♡ stutters every!single!time! he tries to compliment you. it’s been YEARS.

♡ takes a melatonin gummy before bed and always drinks a glass of water

♡ buys you flowers and keeps them too. like does the upkeep on it and replaces them if the wilt. suggests pressing them to keep them for longer.

♡ lowkey cries really easily. he just gets overwhelmed w his feelings some times and it makes him cry even if he doesn’t want too. you and the bakusquad are sworn to secrecy over it though

♡ wears his ring around his neck on a chain bc it’s easier to show off.

♡ naturally good at doing hair!

♡ likes sneakers but wears dr. scholl's because he walks a lot and is on his feet for most of the day w his job. just being careful.

♡ loves u a lot <3

#bakugou x reader #bnha x reader #bakugou x y/n #bakugou x you #bnha x you #bnha x y/n #bnha imagines #bakugou imagines #bakugo x reader #bakugo x you #bakugo x y/n #im genuinely so obsessed with his man #he lives in my head rent free #like its not funny anymore #i literally am just so in love with him #no thoughts head empty only katsuki

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crimefightingspiderguy · 5 years

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ruin the friendship

Summary: Can you do a Steve Rogers imagine x a female Avenger reader where everyone knows they are in love, but they are best friends so they don't admit it. To try to get them together they are sent on a mission where they have to act like a couple and Tony gets them a room with one bed. Please lots of fluff and please feature Tony, Bucky, Sam, Nat, and pretty much everyone else :). Maybe some Bucky x Nat. (REQUESTED BY ANONYMOUS)

Warnings: maybe swearing?

Pairing: Steve Rogers x Reader

Word count: 3,019

A/N: I was really tired while writing this, so hopefully it makes sense lol, enjoy and let me know what you think!

“The meeting is in 10 minutes (Y/N)” Friday called to you. You groaned, rolling over in bed and putting a pillow over your head. You had spent last night on a mission and you got back late. Not only were you exhausted, but you were extremely sore and you just wanted to stay in bed forever. You hadn’t even realized you’d fallen back asleep until you jolted awake from the banging on your door. “Go away!” You yell, throwing a nearby shoe at the door. “(Y/N), we have a meeting. You can’t miss this one. You can go back to bed right after, I promise.” Nat’s voice came, muffled, from the other side of the door. You grudgingly got up and opened the door. “Hey, beautiful.” Nat smiled, trying smoothing down your bed-head, but you shooed her hand away. “You’ll get me as I come, and you’ll be grateful I’m even going in the first place.” You huffed as you walked past her, heading to the meeting room. She caught up to you, chuckling, “Steve’ll be there”. She gave you a quick wink and held the door open for you. “Will a bed and blanket be there? If not, I’m not interested” You said, mimicking her cheeky tone, to which she rolled her eyes.

You took your usual seat next to Steve, which earned you a smirk from Nat, which you pretended not to see. “(Y/N), you’re late,” Tony said. “Tony, you’re good at pointing out the obvious.” You teased him, to which he sighed and rolled his eyes, trying to hide his smile. “Mission report. How’d it go last night?” He asked. “Good. Bucky and I were able to get the file you asked for… which I hope he brought because I most definitely did not.” You said, turning your chair to look at Bucky who was holding up the file and sliding it down the table to Tony. “Fantastic. Anything else happens? Are either of you injured at all?” Tony went on. “I’m not,” Bucky said. Bucky was usually silent at meetings and let his partner on the mission do the mission report, which was the last thing you wanted to do with how tired you were. “Let me think…” You said humming, and going through the events of last night, “I might have been recognized, so they might know who has the file now… but if they try something funny like breaking in to steal it back… well, let’s just say they did some things to me last night that I’d love to return the favor for.” This made Bucky chuckle, knowing exactly what you were referring to. “What happened?” Steve chimed in, a look of concern. “You know the typical scum-bag move. Got way too handsy way too fast. But don’t worry, if I see them again when I don’t have a cover that I could blow, I’m known for being a little too aggressive… I’ll make them regret it.” You shot a wink Steve’s way, which made him chuckle. It’s true, you were the most aggressive on the team. You didn’t put up with shit, and they knew that that’s why you got sent on almost every mission. They knew you’d get the job done, no matter what. That’s why Steve admired you so much, and why you became friends so easily.

“Any injuries to report?” Tony asked, bringing you back on track. You looked over your body, trying to remember anything significant. “Oh, yeah, I have a massive gash on my thigh. I bandaged it up the best I could before I passed out, but I’m not sure if it’ll need stitches.” “How’d that happen?” Bucky asked, not remembering you mentioning any wounds. “I might have done it to myself… I was trying to put my knife away and I guess I did it too quickly because I totally missed.” You laughed at your mistake but blushed to show that it was embarrassing to you. “Very well, we’ll check it out after this if you don’t think it’s an emergency,” Tony said, trying to cover up Nat’s snicker. You shook your head no. “Alright, well we have another mission for tomorrow. It’s a stake-out, I need two people to go to a hotel where our perps are staying for the weekend.” Tony said, pulling up the file showing pictures of who you were after on the screen behind him. “I’m out if it’s this weekend, I have some plans.” Sam said, “And Bucky’s coming with me, so he’s out too.” “I’m also out, I’ve got a meeting with Fury this weekend to update him on (Y/N) and Bucky’s case,” Nat said. “Well, that leaves Steve and (Y/N), unless you don’t think you can with your injury,” Tony said, smirking a little. You rolled your eyes, “Shut up you git, I can do it. What do we have to do at this hotel?” “Well, I need you to spy on these guys, find out where they’re going, what they’re doing, bring back anything significant. Easy-peasy.” Tony said, averting his eyes from your’s and Steve’s. “What else? There’s something you’re not telling us.” Steve said “Well, Furry and I think it would be least conspicuous if you two… well, act as a married couple on their honeymoon. It would be a good cover for why you’re both at a hotel all weekend.” Tony finished. Both you and Steve blushed, not looking at each other. You caught a look at everyone else and they were all smirking. “Wait for a second, you all knew! You planned to be busy this weekend!” You accused everyone at the table, pointing your finger at them and giving them a nasty look. “We would never do such a thing,” Nat said, bashing her eyelashes innocently at you. “Tony, what are you doing this weekend? Why aren’t you pretending to be Steve’s beloved? Why me?” You challenged. They’d been trying to get you and Steve together since the beginning of your friendship with him, and you knew this was part of their plan. “Well as great of couple as we would make…” Tony said, clearing his throat, “I also have plans. Pepper needs my help this weekend, doing some paperwork.” You rolled your eyes and crossed your arms, “Fine. Just tell me when and where.” “Tomorrow at noon you’ll leave. We’re sending you to the Bahamas. We think they’re meeting someone there to make an illegal weapons trade. It’s your guy’s job to watch for anything suspicious and report it back to us.” Tony said. “What if we catch them in the act?” Steve asked, “You are not to engage. We need to build enough of a case on them to arrest them, and this will be the icing on the cake. Here’s a pair of sunglasses for both of you. They have tiny little cameras in them and they will record everything you see. I want you to be wearing them at all times.” Tony grabbed the glasses from beside him and handed them to the two of you, “Now, go pack and get your rest, you’ve got a busy weekend ahead of you.”.

The plane ride out to the Bahamas was so much fun. You and Steve were as thick as thieves and so you knew you’d have a lot of fun this weekend (maybe more fun than you should on a work trip, but who has to know right?). You knew that the team planned for you and Steve to go on this mission together because you were to act as a married couple, and since day one, they’ve assumed you and Steve to be in love with each other. If you were being honest with yourself, you saw where they were coming from. If you were having a nightmare, you’d immediately head to his room, feeling the safest with him. If you were having trouble with a fighting move, you’d go to him and ask for advice on how to do it. If you were in the mood to sit around, do nothing but watch movies, and maybe cuddle with someone, he’d be the first you’d ask to join. And this wasn’t one-sided either, he did exactly the same stuff to you. You were always there for each other, no matter what, so you understood where the team was coming from, it just wasn’t what you saw.

“Hello, welcome to the Hampton Hotel, what can I do for you today?” The kind woman at the front desk asked the two of you when you arrived. “We have a reservation, under the name (Y/L/N)”, Tony felt it safer for only your last name to be used since it was less recognizable than Steve’s. “Alright… The honeymoon suite sound right?” She said looking at your reservation on the computer. Your eyes widened and you shot a look at Steve. It wasn’t very conspicuous to be in the most extravagant room in the hotel. Steve nodded his head, quickly trying to cover up your surprised look he pulled you under his arm and kissed your temple, “Surprise honey!” You composed yourself and gave him a smile. The women smiled at the two of you, “Congratulations. It looks like the room is all paid for, so I’ll just go grab your key.” “I’m going to kill Tony.” You said through a smile to Steve, who chuckled. He knew how you felt about the team’s persistence about you and him dating, and he told you he agreed. “It’s only for the weekend, I think we’ll be okay.” “Yeah, but it’s not easy to hide when you’re in the most obnoxious room in the entire…” You were cut off by the deskie returning and handing you the key. “You don’t mind if I ask to see the ring, do you? I love engagement rings!” You said, beaming at you. “Oh…” You quickly looked down, realizing you had forgotten to put on the fake ring that Tony had given you. “I left it in my carry on, didn’t want to lose it in the airport or something. I’ll stop by later when I find it to show you.” You said quickly, as her smile faltered a little, you knew she was trying to be friendly so you felt bad. “I’d love to see it!” She said, smile returning, “Well, enjoy your stay!”

“This is way too much!” You said as you opened the door to look into the room. “Wait!” Steve said pulling you back into the hallway, “I feel it only necessary as part of our act that I do this,” he smirked as he picked you up bridal style and escorted you into the room. You chuckled and playfully slapped him on the chest. He carried you into the room and threw you gently on the bed, then left to grab the bags from the hallway. You looked around, and quickly ran up to the giant window, “As much as I hate to say anything good about this, the view is amazing.” “Why would you hate to say anything good about this?” Steve asked, “Well, I just mean that I feel bad using Tony’s money like this.” “(Y/N), he’s a billionaire, and he chose this room, I don’t think he really cares.” “Faire point.” You shrugged and continued to look around. Stopping when you noticed something was missing. “Where’s the second bed?” You said, looking in every side room. “(Y/N)… it’s a honeymoon suite, did you really think Tony would order us another bed? How suspicious would that be if two newly-weds want another bed to sleep in? I can sleep on the couch.” Steve said, “They’re totally trying to get us to hook up this weekend! I bet this isn’t even that big of a mission.” You rolled your eyes, knowing Steve was probably right. “Wait a second…” You turned off all the lights and shut the shades to the window. There was a tiny little camera light that was blinking in the shade rod above the window. You grabbed it and crushed it under your foot. You continued to look around, but you saw no other. “I don’t know who put that there, but let’s hope it’s not who we’re here to spy on and they didn’t just hear us confirming that we’re here on a mission.”

“Are you hungry, because I’m starving. And since Tony gave us his credit card for food purposes with no limit, I say we go somewhere fancy. It is our honeymoon, after all.” You say, pulling Tony’s card out of your wallet and smirking at Steve. Steve smirked back and told you to get ready to go out, you grinned at him, grabbed your bag and went into the bathroom. You hadn’t packed all of your bags, only essential things like your toothbrush, hairbrush, and deodorant. Nat said that she was asked to pack your outfits for you since your everyday clothes might not blend in. You hoped that she had packed some comfortable things at least, but looking through your bag, you were sorely disappointed. You pulled out one of the many fancy dresses she had packed. A silky red piece that was loose fitting, with thin straps. It was so cute but so over-the-top. You put it on, threw on some mascara, put your hair up into a top-knot and walked out to Steve. “You ready?” You asked, going to the couch where your bags were to grab your purse and a pair of flats. When Steve didn’t say anything, you looked up at him, he was already looking at you. In fact, he’d never looked at you that way before (at least not that you noticed). “Steve, you good?” You asked, snapping your fingers in front of his face, trying to grab his attention. He shook his head a little, blinking and clearing his throat. “Ummm… yeah, sorry, got distracted.” He put his arm out for you to take, and he guided you out of the room.

Dinner was nice, you ate at the restaurant that was next to the hotel, and it was crowded enough that you got to talk about your mission. “I wonder when we’ll see this guy, we’ve gotta run into him sometime before his scheduled meeting time for his trade.” You rambled on, but Steve was not listening in the slightest. He was watching how your eyes crinkled differently when you chuckled at your own joke rather than someone else’s. He was watching how your mouth would pick up slightly at the corner when you got cocky. He was watching how your eyes were twinkling in the light of the candle on the table. He was watching how your hands seemed to be everywhere but resting on the table as you went on about catching this guy. He was watching how your hair was slowly falling out of the top-knot in places where your hair was too short to stay pulled back. He was watching you, he was seeing you as if for the first time. But it wasn’t the first time, he’d seen you like this before, he just never let himself enjoy it. “Oh shoot! I almost forgot something!” You said this brought Steve’s attention back to your words. “What’s that?” He asked, watching you dig through your purse. You pulled out the rather large engagement ring that Tony had given to you to wear as a part of your disguise. “Will you do me the honor?” You said, smirking to Steve as you handed him the ring to put on your hand. He took it and your hand. With shaky hands, he slowly slid the ring on your finger. “Will you look at that, it’s a perfect fit.” You say, smiling at him. This image of you wearing a wedding ring that he had put on you, it was enough to make his head swim. He began thinking about what would happen if it had been real. If he had really proposed to you, would you say yes? Would you grow old together and have kids? Would you retire from the Avengers to settle down and start a normal life together? The ideas made him grin, “What? Have I got something on my face?” You asked, feeling around your cheeks. “No, you… you’re perfect.” Steve said, still having a puppy-dog love expression on, making you blush.

Getting back from the dinner, the two of you were exhausted. You had a long plane ride earlier that day, and you wanted nothing more than to pass out so you’d be ready and alert for a stake-out tomorrow. When you got back to your room, you quickly changed into pajamas and collapsed on the bed. Steve changed as well and started moving the bags off the couch. “What are you doing?” You asked, watching him from the bed. “Well, I’m clearing off the couch to sleep on,” Steve said as if it was obvious. “Why? We’ve spent the night together before, this is no different. Get over here, I’m not going to make you sleep on the couch. Besides you’re like twice the size of that thing.” You said, patting the empty spot next to you. He did as you said, and crawled under the covers next to you. “Good-night,” You said, clicking off the light switch next to you. “Good-night,” Steve said. The two of you laid there in silent darkness for about 30 minutes before you slowly scooted closer to Steve. You laid your head into the crook of his neck, placed one hand on his chest, and the other intertwined with his. You felt his pulse increase, and you smiled. You moved your head slightly so you could kiss his cheek, “Good-night.” “Good-night,” Steve said, a smile evident in his voice. They might have been the same words you said to each other 30 minutes ago, but they had a different meaning behind them, an unspoken ‘I love you’.

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canaryatlaw · 6 years

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OKAY. so my entire day post is going to be put under a cut because the entire thing is WAY TMI, but there’s way too much shit that happened that I need to process and I already gave the sanitized language version of it on twitter but I can’t fully process it without getting into details. you have been warned- WAY TMI.

okay, so. backstory, I woke up on Tuesday with stomach pain and ended up spending most of the day on the toilet. By the time I finished (like 7 hours later- yeah it was BAD) I noticed there was something weird going on down there, but I wasn’t really paying attention. Wednesday morning I was having a lot of pain and it occurred to me that maybe because of Tuesday I had a hemorrhoid (it only gets worse from here, so if that makes you squirm you should bail out now), but like, idk because I’ve never had one before and idk what they look like, so I googled it and shit and did their home remedy stuff, sitting on a ice pack helped, I did a “sitz bath” (which is basically sitting in four inches lukewarm water for 15 minutes), aloe vera, and really nothing helped. Woke up this morning and it was still bad. I showered because the warm water did help a bit, but I was getting suspicious at this point that something else was going on here, so I asked my mom to look at it and she was like WOW OKAY WE’RE GOING TO THE DOCTOR. And here lies the problem of trying to diagnose and treat your injuries off google, because I wouldn’t have known that other than my suspicions that hey there’s this giant bulge in my ass crack and it probably shouldn’t be there. my primary care couldn’t fit me in today but they recommended we go to the walk in clinic, so we do that and the doctor takes one look at that and is like “yeah this looks like a rectal prolapse and a hemorrhoid and you need to go to the ER right away” OH JOY. so if you’re not up on your scientific vocabulary, a rectal prolapse is basically when part of your digestive tract comes outside of your body and usually requires surgery to fix. wonder-fucking-ful. Thankfully we’re close to the local hospital that’s like, the number one trauma center on LI (it’s like two miles from my house so that’s always been convenient) so we go there and the urgent care people gave us a letter to give the triage people, but we still ended up waiting in the hallway for like an hour and a half, during which I was in pure misery, but the male nurse who drew my blood was sweet though and slightly flirty but in a nice and not a creepy way so there’s that at least. he left the needle in my arm because it sounded like I’d be needing it at some point. So eventually we get called, and taken into a section called the clinical decisions unit, where I guess is where they figure out if you need surgery or not. So I get in there and someone comes to look and is like OH YEAH LEMME GO GET THE DOCTOR because everyone seemed to agree this was high key bad, so they got doctors, and more doctors, they even took pictures and sent them to the head guy of the department, but the consensus was oh yeah, this needs surgery to fix. and at this point I’m just like fine, just get it done. they did give me some pain medication around 3 or so, which ended up by 5 mg of morphine, which took pretty much all my pain away and I only felt slightly woozy lol but that perked me up significantly and I was actually like talking and stuff instead of lying there looking like death. there was a bit of a wait for the OR so we had to chill for a while, then eventually I get brought in there and the surgeon comes and like, I had been thinking all day about watching The Resident and just how ridiculously easy it is for them to just straight up kill patients in routine surgeries and they have the one chief of surgery who’s got a hand tremor and is just like slicing organs open, and then in comes this guy who’s like the #1 in the department and has gray hair and I’m just like FUCK MY LIFE I hope I survive this lol (I know the show isn’t very realistic when it comes to that subject). So we’re getting ready, their general idea is that they’re just gonna cut the damn thing off because it looked infected and shit, so they go to check and the doctor is like “oh, uh, it’s gone” and I was like......”really? are you sure????” cuz apparently it slipped back in because that’s a thing that can happen, but they were like well we should still probably go ahead with the surgery because the hemorrhoid is still there and could pop back out, so we go for it, they decided to not do general anesthesia but do sedation, whatever the difference between those two is, so I was out anyway and I woke up after and they were like “yeah so turns out it wasn’t a hemorrhoid and he didn’t have to do any cutting or stitching” and I was like “....so then what did he do?” haha and I’m still not 100% sure about that one really, but they were more than happy to send me home which I was very thankful for because I did not want to spend part of my spring break in the hospital. so they got me out of there pretty quickly with a giant bandage on my butt that I’m not sure is serving any purpose at all really, but they told me to leave it on there until I shit again so I guess that’s what I’ll do. We got home, my mom went to pick up the percocet they called into the pharmacy for me but they were closed, a little while after my dad and my brother got home, my dad was speaking at this big thing tonight that he’s trying to launch at churches across the island about understanding the opioid epidemic and how to prevent it, and he said not quite as many people showed up as he would’ve liked but it was still good so that was good to hear. As far as how all this craziness started, I’ve in the past had episodes of like scathing stomach pain that make me feel like I have to go to the bathroom, but I usually end up cowering in pain on the toilet with nothing coming, until eventually something will give and it’ll all just pour out as liquid (again, I told you this is TMI) and like, it used to happen a lot more frequently when I wasn’t eating much and my regularity was thrown way off schedule (like once a week) but I don’t do that anymore and I take a fiber supplement every day because I’m on a high dose iron supplement thanks to me being super anemic, so it’s usually not an issue, it happened the night of my sister’s sweet 16 at the end of October but I think it’s only happened maybe once in the four months between then and now? And I did bring it up at my last gastroenterologist appointment but he didn't seem to think much of it and said it was probably just another muscle spasm (because he had just said my chest pain issues were probably caused by a muscle spasm). The doctor from the hospital tonight apparently recommended I get a colonoscopy done at some point to make sure everything is alright and in place, but idk if I’m gonna do that because I have a pretty good idea of just how this happened, plus I have a lot of like, traumatic memories about that stuff from when I was little and they thought I had Crohn’s disease (when it was actually just nightly cramps for an entire year before my period showed up) and being subjected to a bunch of really invasive stuff that I was not at all comfortable with so that’s not exactly gonna be on the top of my to do list. Other than that they said not to strain when going to the bathroom and eat a lot of fibre, so I’m gonna try harder to eat actual fiber and not just the shit in caplets, and try to make that work out better. and yeah, that is about it, after all that I chatted with friends for a bit then started getting ready for bed with this absurdly large bandage on my butt 😂 We’re supposed to go out to dinner to this super schmancy place (because my parents have a gift card to it) tomorrow to celebrate my brother and I’s birthdays (his was today but because of all the crazy we’re gonna celebrate this weekend) so hopefully that will work out. And oh yeah, since I turn 26 in 11 days, if this happened 11 days from now I would’ve totally FUCKED because I would’ve had no health insurance thanks to getting kicked off my parents plan at 26!!! Lovely *sigh*. And as much as it does suck to get sick on vacation, I am at least glad I was with my family and not in Chicago where I had nobody except like, Jess (and no offense to her in the slightest, because I’m sure she would’ve been great, but with this kind of thing a mom is just better suited for it), and that sounds kinda miserable. Okay, that’s the end for real now, I took my pills a while ago and now my eyes really want to shut and I’m going to listen to them. If you made it all the way through, thank you for suffering through all that TMI to find out how I’m actually doing, though I kinda doubt many of you will actually reach this far, lol, but I cannot blame you for that. Goodnight my dear friends. I hope your Thursday was a hell of a lot better than mine.

#daily journal #March 2018

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maiji · 6 years

Photo

Process and wip images for A House That Holds Long Limbs

You can read the pages for part 1 here (full complete version will be linked from YYH North Bound master post whenever it’s done.)

Every so often I get questions about how I work, and I also enjoy reading about how other creators make things, so perhaps this might be interesting and useful to somebody out there too. I’ve talked about my process before but never really documented and shared it WHILE working on a project, so here you can see some of my thinking and decision-making (and poor habits lol) a bit more immediately, alongside screenshots, photos and scans.

Very long, everything is below the cut, and apologies to people on mobile and anywhere else this goofs up.

One question I get a lot is “do you start with words or pictures when creating a comic?” I jump between both a lot. That said, I tend to lean more heavily on words when documenting ideas in the early stages of a project. This is because, for me:

Words pack a lot of punch in conveying detail quickly. They work better when I need to quickly communicate something extremely specific to future me. I’m a sloppy drawer, so my sketches tend to make future me squint and go, “What the hell was this supposed to be?!”

A great deal of my thinking and planning is done during crowded commutes. It’s more convenient to jot notes on my phone than to whip out my sketchbook and a pen.

(For a while I thought it’d be awesome to have some sort of app where I can type notes AND have an accompanying thumbnail sketch, and be able to drag them around or break them out into more or fewer pages. At one point years ago I thought about creating a custom app... but ultimately too lazy/busy and my current process works well enough. If anyone wants to take this idea and run with it, please feel free to do so and just let me know about it so I can try it haha.)

I usually start with a few lines summarizing the gist of the idea, enough that’s recognizable and I don’t forget the important things to build off from. From there, I start point-form outlining the stuff that needs to happen, structuring them into key scenes/parts. These scenes are not always fleshed out in order - I just add to them whenever I have ideas for that part.

Long Limbs, for example, had a progression like this:

Overall story idea: “horror story with rokurokubi, key plot point(s) happens, the end.” (There was a bit more detail than this, obviously, but we’re avoiding spoilers here.)

Initial description for Part 1 of the story: “Hokushin lured to go to somewhere. Separated from Raizen. HOW??????”

After letting it simmer for while, a solution: “Hokushin annoyed at Raizen. Opportunity for him to get away and go do his own thing.”

Gradually more detail: “Stranger invites him to go to this place to look into something/maybe has a paid job that needs to be done and Raizen is busy goofing off or whatever.”

Problem. I couldn’t resolve this chain of thought to my satisfaction. What kind of task/job can someone convince Hokushin to do on his own when he doesn’t know this person/it seems questionable? And how long will the conversation need to run to establish this as believable?

This was starting to get convoluted and I was getting annoyed because it was turning into a burden in being able to continue the story AND IT WASN’T EVEN THAT IMPORTANT. I decided to abandon this path of thinking, and left the entire story for a while.

Much later (like months?), I had an idea: “Mysterious person drops something, piques Hokushin’s curiosity.” Aha! Hokushin’s own initiative. Simple and plausible enough. HOORAY NO MORE THINKING. LET’S DRAW.

Then I realized, oh shoot, I need to figure out who this mysterious person is and what they dropped. More time passes. And so on… in between I’m always working on other things, so there’s no real creator’s block - at some point I start thinking about this comic again, and ideas work themselves out to some decent level of satisfaction and link together. Thanks subconscious!

Eventually, enough key scenes are fleshed out that I feel confident enough to turn this into a real thing. At present, for example, not all scenes in Long Limbs are totally worked out, but I’ve got enough that I ran ahead with Part 1.

Screenshot of the Google Docs notes/script for Part 1:

This is a close-to-final version. The === on top is just to separate this from notes on other stories or ideas. This is the beginning of the document, but this document actually includes many other notes and stories for North Bound. I delete them as I finish and post the pages. Every so often I wonder if I should bother keeping them, but they’ve been refined throughout the process and usually don’t bear much resemblance to the original jotted notes anymore. Long Limbs was originally planned to be a later story in North Bound, but I got especially excited about it and fleshed it out further than the others. When I reviewed the earlier stories, I didn’t think there’d be a big continuity or reader experience issue if this was finished and posted first. So I moved the messy notes for this story to the top of the document.

The page breakdown for the script is done by me generally picturing in my head how I might want the scene to go and how much action I might be able to fit on the page for good effect. I’ll sometimes start paginating without thumbnails, and sometimes will do both side by side (thumbnail and update pagination in tandem).

As you might imagine, pagination frequently changes. For example, you’ll see the script above is 9 pages instead of 10.

The original script for this section was broken up into maybe 4-6 pages, with 5-7 being more condensed.

When I started thumbnailing, I found it felt too cluttered and moved too fast.

So I stretched out the part of Hokushin and the mystery girl exchanging glances, and added pages to be able to create a (hopefully) more cinematic feel and really focus on the reason they catch each other’s eye - the bandages on their necks.

I then went back to the Google Doc and updated the script to line it up better.

I was also tweaking the dialogue at the same time and didn’t want to forget any key phrasing I liked. Dialogue is another thing I get really hung up over, often changing words up to the last second. (Sometimes this is because I messed up the size of the speech bubble, if I’m lettering on the computer...)

Thumbnails:

Pretty close to the final in this case - mainly because the sequence is pretty simple and straightforward and not many people are involved. I keep my thumbnails very crappy and rough so that I don’t get upset later when I can’t redraw something as good as the thumbnail. Bottom right was a quick attempt at designing the mystery girl.

Once I think the thumbnails are good enough - translation: I get impatient and just want to start drawing - I proceed to pencils for the actual page.

Throughout all this, I’m repeatedly reviewing script and thumbnail and playing sequences out in my head and then trying to figure out how to better direct the “camera” and the action. I may go back to the script and the thumbnails even as I’m finetuning the actual page if I encounter issues. You can see in both the script and the thumbnails that there are still deviations in the dialogue and the art from the final. Here are a few examples:

Page 3: The panels were originally 1) the setting, 2) Hokushin with his arms folded, 3) Raizen laughing, 4) we see that Hokushin is watching Raizen. After reviewing the thumbnail, I felt it’d be a better setup to flow into the scene if I switched panels 2 and 3. That’s closer to how you’d experience it in real life, or how it might be directed in a shot sequence: you enter an area/place, you hear the sound of some guy’s loud laughter filling the air, then the camera zooms up to the annoyed expression of this one particular dude and you see he’s staring at the laughing guy. Moving from bigger ambience to smaller details around the room.

Page 7: The girl was originally turning in the other direction (hard to tell because I redrew it right on top of the original sketch lol). However, this meant all the directional action would be pointing to the right - Hokushin is facing the right, and when he leaves the bar he’s angling towards the right side of the page. Facing the direction that readers will read in gives a sense of driving the action forward, while facing the opposite direction provides a bit of a mental stop. (This is something from Scott McCloud that always stuck with me.) So, I flipped the girl around.

Page 8: Script has Hokushin going “What’s this?”. When thumbnailing, I thought, “obviously it’s self-evident he’s wondering what this is when he picks it up”. It added nothing to the panel, and the speech or thought bubble would have interrupted the smooth action of him picking up the paper. So, axed.

The damn friggin’ bar and gambling: You’ll see the script mention this, and at one point I actually had the guy standing across from Raizen saying “Is this guy drunk?” I’m actually not sure if they’re in a bar or if Raizen is drinking, but neither were important to the actual story because I just needed Raizen and Hokushin to be in a place where Raizen could hang out with humans and be stupid. So I dropped these details. This is mainly because I ran into historical research problems about bars and alcohol during the Kamakura period (more on that near the end of this post), and this was the only way to stop myself from getting hung up on trying to make it “perfect” and “correct” and just get it done.

Drawing the actual pages. This part is fun!

Inking the actual pages. THIS PART IS NOT FUN :(

I don’t have very steady hands and I get very anxious about messing things up, so inking always takes me the longest. (I also get distracted easily, e.g., ink two lines and then surf tumblr for ten minutes lol). I’ve improved a lot since I started drawing comics much more frequently a couple years ago, and my choice of tools and style has helped a lot (I lean to variable lines and sketchy style, which is more forgiving than, say, a very precise art style with fixed-width pens) but I still get nervous at this stage.

I’m very lazy so I usually stick with one tool for inking. For Long Limbs I tried to effort more and actually used three. Right to left: Sailor fude de mannen for panel borders and text, Muji pen for artwork (0.4 because that was the only size available at the store when I went to get my refill), Pentel pocket brush for filling in blacks. I refill the fude de mannen and the pocket brush with fountain pen inks.

I usually ink panel borders first, then speech bubbles, then everything else. I hop all over the place and pages are generally in varying stages of completion. I also sometimes add in some more text lines because it seems like a good idea at the time - Hokushin’s complaint on page 3 about how he should have left Raizen when he got into a fight with a fish-seller in a previous story, for example. Sometimes these work, sometimes I regret it later and edit it on the computer.

Cover thumbnails and pencil sketch:

The one in the page thumbnails was the original idea, but then I thought, “seems kinda cliched. Can I get a more interesting angle where he’s not looking straight at the viewer?” (OK, his eyes are covered, but you know what I mean.) I quickly tried a few other angles and compositions, didn’t like them and ended up going with pretty much the original idea, but more zoomed in.

In the thumbnails, you can see all my little x’s indicating “ehhhh I don’t like this”. I wanted something with a particular mood/atmosphere especially with all the hands and arms, and I was conflicted between zooming out (for more environment and more arms, and the focus on the “long limbs” part of the title) or having a tighter, more close up shot. Ultimately I think the latter works better as it conveys a sense of claustrophobia, and it’s more intimate which supports the idea of psychological horror. ALSO IT’S SEXY (maybe???). The end.

Other random thoughts:

I took a lot of heart/inspiration/motivation from Togashi’s last few volumes of Yu Yu Hakusho to keep the backgrounds as lazy - I mean sparse - as possible and also speech bubbles over plain backgrounds lmao. I think it takes a lot of confidence (or maybe laziness) to be so minimalist and restrained, and it’s an impressive and economical way of working. I was always impressed that when reading those pages of his for the first time, the lack of detail never really bothered me - you had everything you needed for your brain to comfortably fill in the gaps and complete the sense of narrative and story progression, and there are still visual flourishes when the situation calls for it. So I’m trying to bring a bit of that tighter philosophy in.

Research. I struggle a LOT with not getting bogged down by details, especially when it’s something “just” for fun or “just” a fancomic. I have very lovely and helpful friends and family who every so often patiently allow me to whine and bounce things off of them, help me look things up, and/or tell me when I’m getting myopic about stuff. For all the North Bound comics, finding quick and useful historical references for the time period has been a challenge. There’s a ton about aristocracy and warriors but very little about the ordinary/common people, not surprisingly. I frequently question my instincts about what makes sense because I tend to automatically draw on similar/equivalent Chinese culture (there was certainly lots of cross-over, but not always appropriate/relevant) or Edo period references (wrong time frame! Too far in the future). I often end up losing a ton of time trying to find something with roundabout searches, and then give up and look at other comics I have close enough to the time period. And then referencing those and compounding whatever historical errors they have in them. (e.g., “Well if it was good enough for Osamu Tezuka’s Phoenix it’s good enough for this rando fancomic!”) I just would like historical/subject matter experts to know I did try...

#yu yu hakusho #comics #hokushin #raizen #fanart #process #wip #art by Maiji/Mary Huang #sketches #art supplies #yyh north bound

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