#art block do be hitting hard but work has been taking so much of my time | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

archandshri · 3 months

Text

9th feb '24 - [arch] characters, interactions and emotion - making a mini webcomic

Gahhhh Shri this has been an absolutely crazy couple of weeks!!!! Hope you are doing well :)) First of all, WOW! You have a lot of goals, and I’m sure you’ll get them done! I’ve worked a lot on my graphic design during the process of making Winter Wellbeing. If you wanna see a blog post dedicated just to that, I can do so! It would be cool to compare notes on the approaches we take for graphic layouts. If you wanna share your knowledge of camera skills when you build that up that would be awesome 😭😭

It’s been a tough few weeks, art wise. I have been reflecting on my process, motivations to create, the ego and all the baggage that’s lumped into the creative process for me. It turns out there’s a lot. I took some space from my illustration practise (literally for a weekend!) and began to realise how dysfunctional it is. I’ve been writing a lot about that so there may be a larger piece of writing coming about that at some point (no promises!!)

But for now, let's talk about little successes!

I’ve been playing with some characters for a while but I’d hit a bit of a block with the plot. I realised the expectation of having a finished project of high quality soon is unrealistic, and an unhealthy expectation to put on myself. I rarely give myself time to play with concepts for a long time and let the characters, plot and interactions evolve naturally. Maybe this in part came from sticking to the short university module turnaround. I noticed that that short turnaround was causing a lot of block, so I have decided to bench it as a comic for now and focus on using it as a playground - falling in love with the characters, creating stories and drawing them for fun. Maybe years down the line I’ll make them into a comic - we shall see!

I *tried* to do hourly comics day this year and it didn’t quite work for me. I think I made 3 comics? And then got distracted with a bigger project that ended up taking a week or so to complete. Let’s have a look at it, shall we?

[you can find the full version here]

First of all, it’s based on an unfinished fanfiction I started a couple of months ago, which was mostly bad, but there was one nice scene that I liked and wanted to expand on. I started by having a look at the script I wrote and thumbnailing on the iPad. I’m away from home at the mo and usually would prefer to do most of my artwork traditionally, but because I don’t have access to a scanner, the whole process was digital this time. A lot of the pages got scrapped because the dialogue wasn’t necessary, and I’m not drawing pages that aren’t necessary.

some more development screenshots

I thought a lot about posing during the process, acting the scenes out in my mind and sometimes physically, really understanding the emotions of the characters, why they’re saying what they’re saying, their tone and how to convey that though their body language and expression (i find grian really annoying normally [affectionate] but I want this grian to step on me).

Pearl was hard with this because she’s quite erratic and unpredictable in this series, so I wanted her to switch from raw explodey anger to playful jabs at Grian. I’m hoping this comes across as somewhat insane, rather than tonally off and inconsistent. I did super enjoy drawing her and her explosive nature though, especially in comparison to Grian’s coldness.

I played with levels and monotone colour too - I’m not working with multiple colours much at the moment so I’m able to focus on things like values composition, characters and backgrounds. My skills limit the kind of stories I can tell currently, so I’m working to improve those foundations. Maybe when I’m back in the riso studio I can play with colours a little more.

Colours - despite the simple pallete it gets a bit nerdy here.I stuck to specific flat percentages for most of it - Pearl’s hair and Grians jumper are 60%, Grian’s hair and Pearl’s cloak are 20%. Then I added a 14% layer for shadows, using a ahrd blend eraser tool for highlights, making the images quite dark. I fill a layer with texture from Forystr’s riso brush for procreate, and turn it into a 40% opacity colour dodge layer. This gives it some much needed texture and makes the lighting feel low and nighttimecore. It also pushes the values to look really nice - I tend to be too scared to push them by myself.

I tried a few different colour layers to get a *vibe* but settled on a low percentage riso blue in a colour layer. All layers besides the riso blue are in a riso black, colour picked from a riso colour pallete. I learnt these tools - using percentages to get good values - from working with risograph. I really recommend having a look at these techniques and doing some monotone work. It's really improved by character designs, page layouts and compositions.

That's all from me today, though I have had MANY other thoughts over the past two weeks about creating, but perhaps we'll dive into them another time. If you (or anyone else) has any questions, hit me up with a reblog or an ask and I will get right to it. Lovely to hear from you! Hope your art is going great too :)) Arch :)

24 notes · View notes

stagefoureddiediaz · 11 months

Text

Costume meta 6x18

Wow I can’t believe I actually managed to write one of these (with all the additional mini metas) for every episode this season!!! if you’ve read, liked or reblogged and any all of my metas throughout this series then I just want to take a moment to say a massive thank you - it really means so much to me that you do take the time to read the epics I post, that you interact with them and that you ask me questions and seem to learn from what I say - sorry to everyone who now sees check pattern clothing out in the wild and gets worried 😬 it happens to me too - its good to have your company!

I’m so sorry that this has taken me far longer to get out that I had intended - my internet died on Thursday night and still hasn’t come back up (it has not been fun - who knew how internet dependant I’d become11!0 so I’ve had to find a cafe on my day of to actually get this posted (I live in a 4g dead spot too just to add to the fun!) Not going to lie - I am in need of a little break because these posts are a lot of work (you don’t want to know some of the side quests some of these posts have taken me on!!), but I love writing them so I plan to continue in season 7. I do have some fun stuff planned for the extended hiatus so while I might not post as much, I will still be around - making art and providing some costume related (and non costume related) things for you to enjoy - I have breakdowns for each character which includes spreadsheets and graphs (don’t get too excited - but they are actually interesting I promise!) in the pipeline as well as sorting out my pinned post as I’ve hit the link limit!!!.

Back to the costumes for this episode - it sure was an interesting one (when are they not tbh) with plenty going on for me to talk about! Apologies for the photos - it was really hard to get decent stills this week - everyone and the camera constantly moving!! As always the rest is below the cut to save your dash!

Athena

Athena has just the one costume this week - heading off on the cruise! I very much enjoyed her being in yellow and saying that she might not tell anyone about them actually being on said cruise! There are a couple of reasons why - firstly its yellow - the colour of communication - which means that her character is telling us something which is important. So Athena suggesting that they don’t tell anyone they are off on this cruise is the key point we need to take away from this scene - what that could mean - well its a throw back to when they attempted to go on the cruise the first time - they were communicating their departure then by being on the phone with Beatrice as they were leaving the Grant-Nash house so by not communicating they’ve gone on their cruise they are preventing another interruption from occurring. The other thing its communicating is that the lack of communication between Bobby and Athena and their family and friends could actually be a bad thing - its a bit of preempting costume design - if the show does indeed choose to go with some form of cruise ship disaster to open season 7 (less likely now that they have delayed the show until midseason, but it depends on how they choose to play the time jump!) then this line comes back into play - the 118 being sent to help with the disaster not knowing Bobby and Athena are on board would make for some very interesting storytelling and potentially parallel with the tsunami very nicely!

The other thing about this costume is the fact that we have bold block colour wearing Athena in a pattern - and a floral pattern at that. Athena doesn’t wear patterns - we saw her in a patterned shirt in 6x10 - when she was undercover and therefore it doesn’t count as actually being something Athena would wear

Bobby

Again the only costume we see Bobby wearing outside of uniform is when he is leaving for the cruise, this is the same costume he was wearing when they made the first attempt at their honeymoon cruise . From a personal perspective this was done to provide continuity between the two scenes as Bobby shirt is the loudest and most obvious thing to carry that thread through for a general audience.

Denny

Denny continues to wear muted tones post reconnecting with his biological father and we also have check on this outfit. The fact that the check is only worn down the sides could indicate either approaching trouble or trouble passing, for me it’s more likely that it is a sense of foreshadowing and will be connected to the Wilsons season 7 storyline revolving around the new baby that they will be bringing home as Denny will become a full blown big brother rather than the role he currently fills with the foster kids – that hovers somewhere between brother and friend. This costume is a bit blink and you’ll miss it and so it’s hard to get more of a read on it than the very basics.

Karen

Karen is wearing her typical large print florals for both her costumes this week and we have the contrast of red - a colour of anger, passion and love with t he yellow of communication, happiness and optimism. the use of the two colours to bookend the episode perfectly play into Karens mini arc for this episode - from the love tinged with disappointment and anger (broken hearted rather than fury) over fostering - the constantly having to hand children back, to the happiness and optimism surrounding the baby girl they may very likely get to adopt. the colours rather than the prints are the things conveying messages for Karen in this episode. they also contrast her very well with Hen in her black and white and then orange.

Hen

It’s really interesting that we have hen in this black-and-white check cardigan which is a parallel to the one she wore in 6×10 that one was red with larger neutral face emoji is and foreshadowed her anger over Denny contacting his biological father. This new one is more confused and the smaller design with the variety of boxes lines and neutral face emoji is creates a sense of confusion and also feels like it is chaotic in an organised manner it plays into both check theory and striped theory to a certain extent/theory foreshadowing the news of the baby they may potentially get to adopt and the cheque foreshadowing the upcoming disaster we see in the episode. the black and white also plays into the idea of Hen being settled into the black and white nature of fostering children - accepting the reality and highlighting the difference between now and when they had Nia - this is deliberate as it shows emotional progress, but it is also about emphasising the joy they experience later in the episode when told they will be getting a baby girl - its more impactful because we’ve seen Hens acceptance of their situation.

Hen’s other costume for the episode is this orangey red shirt which both contrasts and matches Karen’s yellow floral print shirt it also fits nicely with the oranges and lemons we see on the kitchen countertop next to her. Orange is an optimistic and energetic colour, it provides emotional strength and joy in its positive outlooks however is -ones are connected with superficiality in patients and domination. I think in this scene we can take the positive traits of the colour as opposed to the negative as we get to see Hen and Karen achieve something they’d given up on – the possible permanent expansion of their family – and brings them both full-circle after their disappointment surrounding Nia.

Chimney

Chimney is wearing a brown shirt with a black check pattern, brown is a colour of stability and reliability, it’s a grounding colour and chimney wearing it here indicates that where he is in his life is grounded in stable, his relationship and impending nuptials with Maddie are built on solid ground and overall this colour bodes well for their marriage. We do need to consider the cheque pattern as being foreshadowing for the potential exploration of Chimney storyline next season, whether that involves Madney actually making it down the aisle without problems arising, or if the show will explore some of chimney’s trauma in more detail remains to be seen however it does appear season 7 May begin a little bumpy for Chimney.

Kameron

Kameron wearing both the light and Navy blues that we’ve seen Buck wearing throughout this season whilst struggling to open a jar of pickles was a direct reference to Bucks struggles with who he is and who he wants to be. The props and costume work together to hint at Buck getting himself in a pickle and struggling to successfully deal with his issues, the fact that Kameron needed someone else to open the jar is a reference to Buck needing somebody else to help him with his struggles whilst the pickles in both this episode and the previous episode are a reference to Buck dealing with one issue but not his others. The use of blue costume in this scenario tells us the viewer should associate that struggle with buck specifically as the show has taken great pains to show us buck in a huge amount of blue costuming this season. The blue costuming also refers to water and water finding its level this has dual meaning in that it is foreshadowing Kameron’s water breaking later in the episode as well as continuing water theme surrounding buck story arc. The costume (and props) parallel Kameron and Buck and tell us to relate their stories to one another - Kameron being in a pickle with her life - her relationship with Connor - paralleled with Bucks own romantic storyline - both of them looking for support in the wrong place - from the wrong person, instead of with their respective partners - Kameron seeking help from Buck instead of Connor and and Buck seeking answers to being seen from Natalia instead of Eddie.

Cameron second costume one she’s wearing when she goes into labour continues the blue theme but also plays into the grey black-and-white theme increase seen in the scenes that appear to be re-shoots. The choice of daisies as appropriate for this dress as they symbolise innocence new beginnings and purity, they are also the symbol of fertility and childbirth.

Maddie

Ok so unusually I am going to talk about Maddie in connection with both Marisol and Natalia because their costumes are all connected by stars!

Maddie is wearing black with a lot of stars in white, while Marisol and Natalia have sparkly stars in fewer numbers on their costumes. the difference is the sparkly nature of said stars whilst the stars make perfect sense on all three of them for their respective scenes, they have different meanings attached to them - both Marisol and Natalia’s stars are a play on the concept of fantasy and dreaming and reaching for the unattainable, there are fewer stars and the glitteriness is a play on the idea of all that glitters is not gold - that the seemingly attractive external appearance is not a reliable indication of its true nature - that it is superficial. That meaning does not work for Maddie, her stars are not glittery or sparkly, they are matt and there are lots of them - there is more substance to her and Chimneys relationship and it is a direct and deliberate contradiction to the relationships of Eddie and Marisol and Buck and Natalia - we are meant to see the contrast - the building of something which has had to be fought for versus the untested and insubstantial nature of both of the other relationships - it all comes back to what bobby told Eddie - Maddie and Chim have sat with each other, taken a moment and stepped into the mess - they are fully aware of the reality where as Marisol and Natalia are both untested and fit much more into the fantasy concept the show has explored this season and the fantasy rarely holds up when exposed to reality.

Natalia

Aside from the stars that I’ve spoken about above, it was an interesting choice to remove nearly all colour from Natalia’s costume for scenes where she is present when life is brought into the world. When not in her ‘work’ role, we’ve seen her wearing a fair amount of colour, even if black is nearly always present - lots or red and oranges and whites and greens, however she was all in black for the living funeral and here again we have her in predominately black, with a little bit of navy thrown into the mix the choice to use very dark colours is intentional and these dark colours play into her role as harbinger of death - she is representing death as life is brought into the world. I wrote a post about that scene and her presence in it and how it plays into the fact that death has haunted Buck since he was brought into the world. Natalia’s presence was necessary precisely because of what she represents and because death is still hovering in Bucks life - the fact that Natalia and Buck get together while she is still dressed in this way is very telling about her position in Bucks world - he is still focused on death and its being a part of who he is rather than seeing/ focusing on other things. It all plays back into the ‘she really sees me’ of it all - Buck wants to be seen beyond his death/ beyond the death that has shadowed his life, but he is still falling back into the safety of being seen for death rather than the life he is living. Natalia is a representation of Buck falling back on these safe behaviours and thoughts because he is fundamentally scared of being seen for who he really is and Natalia’s transition from the orange of their ‘first’ date to increasing levels of black in her subsequent outfits shows that representation in Bucks life perfectly.

Interestingly though we get a direct contrast to all that black in the ‘morning after’ scene with Natalia in white shirt which is meant to be one of Bucks. Honestly - fascinated by this choice! Putting her in a shirt that is meant to be one of Bucks makes total sense, but they could’ve chosen any colour they wanted - Buck wears a lot of colour, but they chose a white shirt. A. White. Shirt. a white shirt that is supposed to be one of Bucks. We all know how things go for Buck when it comes to white shirts - it doesn’t end well - it leads to bad things! Natalia isn’t going to end well for Buck - the white shirt has spoken!.

The other thing with the white shirt is its contrast to Buck being in blue/grey because it puts her in opposition to Eddie who wore black when on the balcony. The balcony is a place that puts her on the outside of things, she isn’t inside with the mess (the couch) and the colour white is considered both a colour of innocence and purity, whilst at the same tie being seen as cold, uncaring and bland. When placed in contrast to Eddies black- a colour of power, strength security and protection, things don’t look great for Natalia’s future, or her ability to understand and support Buck.

We have to have a quick talk about Jo and Mallory for the simple reason that they are dressed in Buck and Eddies colours, despite essentially being representations of Christopher and Buck, the implication being that Christopher would retain a lot of the traits etc he has gained from Eddie, even if Eddie were no longer a physical presence in his life, and that Buck would’ve nurtured those aspects of who he is.

Chris

Christopher in grey as a neutral tone is an interesting choice. The green, specifically khaki green hidden underneath is a nod towards Eddie and, the fact it’s hidden under the grey to me is a reference to Christopher accepting things because he thinks they’re what his father does. But also towards Eddie once again, doing things that he thinks is right for Christopher.

Eddie

We can’t not talk about the St. Christopher being brought out at this moment! We haven’t seen this necklace since 4x14 when Eddie got home and its use here is so very intentional in a camper van that is essentially a microcosm of the will arc - all of the elements of Buck, Eddie and Christopher’s relationship is shown here in the camper - the will, the fridge, the couch, the coffee , the risk of explosion, and the earth mover van crashing into it, we even get similar camera angles and injuries. the entire thing is supposed to direct us to what that St. Christopher means, what it already represents and it is setting up next season - there is no other reason to include it otherwise.

Eddie in blue and in check – blue being connected to Eddie and his family suggests that the check is foreshadowing rocky times for that family dynamic and hints that this new relationship will end poorly whether that’s by fizzling out or in some other way remains to be seen. The other thing about this blue plaid check shirt is that it also ties in with a couple of other things - Eddie rarely wears plaid check - only 4 times before now and generally these are tied with when he’s been having family issues - we see it in the flashback scene in Eddie begins that show family conflict, conversely he doesn’t wear check in flashback scenes where is mind and intention is clear (such as when he argues with his parents and stands up for himself before going outside and asking Chris if he wants to move to LA.) The only other times we see him wearing check and not in a flashback is very much connected with his struggles with Christopher - and being able to support him - feeling like a failure as a father (which he isn’t) such as when he is at Bucks taking about Christopher’s skateboard accident and wanting his kid to feel normal. The only other time we see him in plaid is when he helps Buck move Maddie’s sofa into her new apartment - this is the only scene we have Eddie in non uniform before he goes to visit Durrand and is told he’ll need to get back in touch with Shannon - its kind of foreshadowing the conflict of the school visit when they couldn’t very easily put him in plaid.

I therefore really intrigued by this choice to have him in plaid for this scene when we don’t see any family conflict - so its either foreshadowing upcoming family conflict, or its playing on the idea that he’s internally conflicted - doing what his family wants (dating a woman) rathe than what he actually wants, or if the conflict is going to arise from him including Chris in this new venture into dating (we all saw how well that went last time!)

The other thing this plaid shirt is comparable with is Eddies Poker suit. Which has me all kinds of intrigued because it really does actually imply that the poker game was in fact going to be played as a ‘date’ (which would’ve likely played into the family conflict theme and thus been in keeping with all the other times Eddie has worn plaid) before they changed tack due to getting renewal and therefore didn’t follow through on whatever direction they had intended to take the Buck and Eddie storyline they had planned when they thought this might be the final season of the show.

Buck

Buck in brown with a vertical stripe, the brown suggests solid ground or in a stable place - so Buck is being presented as having made peace with the sperm donation, as well as being a stable place from which to try and help Connor and Kameron sort out their problems. The vertical stripes also play into the theme of vertical stripes we’ve see non him this season. Interestingly, we haven’t seen Buck wearing these vertical stripes around Natalia, which I would expect to see if their relationship was meant to last as the vertical stripes are very much connected with Bucks search for himself, in particular, connected to couch theory (this is the second time we’ve seen vertical stripes in connection with couches/ armchairs) - Bucks version of couch theory, not the second couch theory that he as a character isn’t aware of.

We have this grey marl tee, which is green tinted - perfect choice for Buck delivering the baby he helped create in a scene that heavily played into Bucks own birth. The grey and green tones have been associated with Bucks arcs this season - either in relation to the sperm donation (the green tones) or the family he has been searching for and is on his way to finding/ fully comprehending (why he wears grey around Bobby and Christopher in their one on one scenes - its the father son relationships being more deeply established). so for him to have both on when he gets to be the one who delivers the child he helped to create is a great choice and plays into both themes - especially when he tells Connor to love that child at the hospital.

The addition of the check shirt is solely about Buck starting a relationship with Natalia, and them getting together in a moment not that dissimilar to how Buck and Taylor got together - at a moment of Buck reckoning with something important - the trauma of nearly loosing Eddie with Taylor and now with Natalia his reckoning with the sperm donation and having delivered the baby he helped to create. This is a deliberate choice by the show to parallel the two moments, but the use of check is highlighting it further and telling me that this relationship with Natalia isn’t going to be as ling and drawn out as his relationship with Taylor was. Buck doesn’t actually wear check patterns all that often considering the amount of danger and trouble he gets himself into and we’ve seen him wear it in most cases in relation to mental health struggles (the Equestrian centre is a prime example - Buck trying to raise the shooting with Eddie and being unsuccessful because Eddie wasn’t ready - and its parrallel with the grave scene from this season when Buck isn’t ready in return) so for him to be wearing it a second time is short succession and both connected with Natalia (and thinking he’s finally being seen) doesn’t bode well for anything related to their new relationship.

Buck wearing his watch for the balcony scene is very telling because the scene is meant to imply buck and Natalia spent the night together and this is the following morning when they address down and comfortable and she is wearing one of his shirts, however him wearing his watch suggests that there is already a countdown/ that there is a time limit on their relationship.

Buck grey blue tee parallel with hoodie from the Eddie balcony scene - buck not understanding or seeing things clearly. The new one is darker and less blue, which not only plays into the previously stated concept of not understanding, but also suggests that Buck is currently in a less receptive state than during his previous times wearing the blue/grey colourway. The other thing to bear in mind is that Buck wearing a dark grey plays back into his costuming around Taylor in last season - he wore a lot of grey, but there was a distinct difference between the lighter shades we saw him wearing around Eddie and Christopher (which was the building blocks his grey wearing this season was built off of) and the darker greys we saw him wear around Taylor.

And there we have it - one very late but finished costume meta! I’m off to pray to the internet gods that my home internet will be fixed very soon (current date I’m being given is the 5 June) as I can’t survive much longer without being able to do the things I need and want to! if you want to send up a prayer for me then please feel free to help a girl out 😁

Thank you to all of you that have read one, several or all of my metas for this season. I hope this one was worth the read and I look forward to getting to write metas for whatever they throw at us in seasonn 7!!

As always and for the final time this season, tag list below! 💜💜💜

@mistmarauder @theladyyavilee @leothil @girldadbuddie @kitkatpancakestack @buckscurls @lemotmo @trashendence @elishareads @clipboardsandstethoscopes @comfortbuddie @fiona-fififi @callanee @calyssmarviss @pbandjeremiah @batgrldes @spotsandsocks @livingwherethesidewalkends @idontshitpostbuttheolympicpark @diazboysbuckley @sweettsubaki @shortsighted-owl @sherlocking-out-loud @wh0rebehavi0r @favouritealias @hearteyesdiaz @ktinastrikesback @princesschez75 @bucksbuddie @oneawkwardcookie @leatherati @moniquekatie @wanderingwomanwondering @asharadaine @ajunerose @talespinner230 @pop-kam @swiftiebuckleys @xxfiction-is-my-realityxx @butchjerry @mandzuking17 @yelenasbuddie @copyninjabuckley @name-code-black-widow @rogerzsteven @bi-moonlight @usercowboy @inthecarwithaboy @inandoutoffocus-blog @toboldlynerd @shammers86

#kym costume meta #911 costume meta #911 costumes #911 on fox #911 fox #911 abc #costume meta #evan buck buckley #evan buckley #Eddie diaz #athena grant #bobby nash #maddie buckley #chimney han #hen wilson #karen wilson #denny wilson #christopher diaz #natalia dollenmeyer

122 notes · View notes

widowbitessting · 11 months

Note

Heyyy I’m so glad you are back to writing but it’s good to took a break cause breaks are good too!!

Anyway I had a question would the trio do something to celebrate baby finishing finals and the semester?

Hey my love! I remember seeing this and wanting to reply almost immediately then...writer's block hit...and life soooo...hi😅 I am so sorry for the literal, 7 month wait to get back to you *insert face plant gif here* (although I swear I replied to this...cos what I've just written is eerily similar but I can't find that reply anywhere...meh oh well!

All the love (I still can't get over you read my stuff!)

They would for sure spoil you rotten. Like, they've had everything planned for literal months. And kept it all quiet - for months! They wait for you to get back to their apartment, exhausted from your last day, and sit in literal darkness - Wanda literally having to be gagged by Carol to keep her excited giggles quiet - and when you manage to turn the lights on, you all but head butt the ceiling when you see and hear your girlfriends in the living room; Wanda finally being able to let out the excited noises she had been made to keep in. You swear your heart almost jumps out of your throat as you let out a very high pitched scream, arms and legs stuck in a desperate tango of fight or flight.

When you finally, finally, regain enough composure (and your ability to see again), your girlfriends are now standing. Wanda holding up a self made sign that the Trio! had individually put their signatures on - and you can safely say, through tight lips as you try to hold a laugh in, that Art is not any of their strong suits. Natasha and Carol are both holding balloons filled with helium in their hands, and their mouths are still open from their shouts of : "Congratulations!"

It takes you a second or two, to come round; heart pounding loudly in your ears as one hand clutches your chest with vice like fingers. When you finally overcome the panic and register the sweet act before you; you let out a small laugh and cover your mouth.

The living room has been switched to an indoor picnic; blanket lay out on floor with cushions adorned with fluffy blankets and a couple of your favourite stuffed toys. On the couch, an assortment of your favourite foods and snacks, as well as sugary drinks - Natasha reminds you it’s a one time treat to drink them so late in the evening, especially considering you hadn’t drank your total amount of water that day - and you can’t help but zero in on the small bundle of presents that sit beside the food.

You tackle them each for individual hugs and kisses, burrowing into them tightly and thanking them over and over.

“It’s just a small thing,” Natasha says as she squishes you tightly against her, “for all the hard word you’ve put in to your school work.”

“You deserve it and more baby.” Carol adds, kissing you cheek.

“I wanted to take you to Italy but these two said it was too much.” Wanda winks, slapping your ass.

You’re whisked away by Wanda to get changed into brand new pyjamas chosen by Carol - satin ones with matching shorts in your favourite colour - “For easy access.” Wanda adds.

You’re then led downstairs and given the option or eating first or opening presents; and let’s just say, the wrapping paper lasts all but five seconds when they allow you to get to them.

Your gifts are perfect.

A giant teddy bear holding a single rose; and around the stem, the diamond necklace that had caught your eye weeks ago.

A box of your favourite chocolates.

A brand new journal and pen.

The last box has your face turning crimson. Underneath delicate tissue lies a lingerie set that leaves little to the imagination.

“A-are these for any particular event…?” You hold up the bra, eyes near bulging from your head when Natasha holds the matching knickers.

“These are more for…personal use, baby. Just for us to enjoy.”

Yeah, there was no way you were going to wear knickers with a slit in the middle out in public.

The rest of the evening is spent enjoying each other and eating all the rubbish food your tummy can muster.

And when you doze off on the floor around 1am, curled around Carol; Wanda and Natasha cover you in a blanket and snuggle down alongside you.

Everything is perfect.

#natasha romanoff #wanda maximoff #carol danvers #reader insert #sugar mommies #sugar mommies!asks #natasha x wanda x carol x reader #spiderbites #smu

63 notes · View notes

koboldfactory · 1 year

Note

Hello! I hope you're well ^^ um.. May I ask as a brand new starting artist, could you give any insight or tips that helped you learn to draw?

Ok I've been drawing for basically my entire life so it's kinda hard to come up with specific advice to help people who are starting out later in life, but here's some that I think will help any artist, new or not. It's a long list so hit the keep reading tab if you're interested in my art advice ramblings.

Draw what you like, and when it doesn't look as good as you want, keep drawing it until you're able to mentally break it down into its basic shapes and improve the form of the drawing.

If you need even more basic skills maybe focus on drawing just the basic shapes first until you can get them consistent! Cubes, Cylinders, Circles/Spheres are all the building blocks of most art (especially character art) so it's important to be able to draw those 3D shapes at different angles and perspectives accurately if you want to be able to do the same with characters and their proportions.

Use references to learn. Look directly at the things you want to draw when learning to draw them. Even trace stuff, so long as you credit what you traced from if you're posting it online. It can open your eyes to stuff you wouldn't think of just by drawing from memory.

Don't get discouraged if your art doesn't look "good enough" after drawing for a few months or even years. Everyone learns at different rates and it takes a very large amount of effort to get "good" at art (even though that shouldn't necessarily be your final goal)

Draw for FUN. The "draw every day" advice only works until you burn out, which will happen much quicker if you're drawing every day. Take it from me, a person who has drawn almost every day when physically possible since they were able to pick up a pencil. Don't get caught up in engagement or social media popularity either. It will just make drawing feel like a slog trying to chase a very very fleeting goal that is more often than not, almost completely unrelated to your skill level and more so luck. I didn't start posting my art online until I had already been drawing for like 14 years (not saying you have to wait that long, just that the internet is cruel and often unhelpful for new artists' mental states)

Just remember you have to start off bad at art in order to get good at it. And it takes time. A lot of time. It's *never* a lost cause at any point. So many people give up before they've even given themselves the chance to improve.

Hope that was helpful and I wish all new artists the best of luck!

#koboldasks

103 notes · View notes

comicaurora · 1 year

Note

Sorry if this is a weird question but how long did it take for you to start making art you felt was good enough, at least at the time? I have a lot of ideas for projects I want to make but I'm slowed down by not quite being at a level I'm happy with for professional endeavours. Wondering if I should quit while I'm ahead and just hire an artist I like.

Hoo. Good question.

It's hard to keep track of, honestly. I think every artist is going to feel a degree of "this could be better" about anything they make, and if that's all you're keeping track of it can feel like no progress is being made - but in hindsight, I think "this could be better" means a lot of different things, and what it means for my work has changed over time.

One of my earliest art-related memories is having a very clear image in my head of a pencil sketch I wanted to make (a family portrait of some wizards, a mom and dad flanking a young daughter) and then being immensely frustrated that what I produced was a pale, inexpert shadow of that image. The starting point I was at was "this doesn't look right and I don't know why," and I stayed there for a long time, even as I got overall better.

The first time I remember trying and failing to emulate a specific cartoon style, it was the manga Steam Detectives - I'd mostly been exposed to newspaper comics and scientific illustration, so I had never seen that sharp-angled straight-lined manga style before. There was a liveliness to it I couldn't capture, and that frustrated me. At this point I could see what was wrong, but couldn't yet correct it - my unconfident pencil sketching wasn't going to produce the same kind of three-dimensionality and flow as the brush strokes used in the, in the same way that a traced figure can look strangely odd and off-balance because it's only mimicking the outlines. At this point I'd hit "this doesn't look right and I know why, but I'm not sure how to fix it."

At that point, practice was kind of the only solution - unconfident linework can only be improved by honing the muscle memory and confidence of the artist, which I didn't know at the time or do on purpose but ended up happening anyway, especially once I got going on the channel and was regularly doing dozens to hundreds of drawings per project.

I do remember the first time I thought "oh, that's actually better than I expected" - I had broken my clavicle and my right arm was in a sling, and my art teacher encouraged me to try drawing something with my left instead. I am very much not ambidextrous and my lines were spidery and shaky, but when I stepped back at the end, the thing I'd tried to sketch - a portrait of a regal-looking elf man - actually wasn't too bad. The muscle memory in my right hand was completely absent from my left, but apparently my basic understanding of shapes and shadows had come through and made something that got across the gist of what I wanted. That was the first time I felt "this doesn't look right, but I already knew that, and what it does do is actually pretty solid."

At some point in the process of cranking out channel illustrations, and later chibi character commissions, without even noticing I hit a baseline level of confidence in what I was doing. Certain things got easier because I was doing them a lot more. I stopped thinking about whether a facial expression was communicating exactly what I wanted it to, stopped spending long stretches of time trying to refine poses - because in those specific areas I was no longer experiencing "this doesn't look right and I don't know why." I'd draw a face, realize it could look angrier, redraw the eyes and brows to be angrier, then move on. I'd block out a pose, decide the leg didn't look right, redraw it, line it and move on. It wasn't that I was nailing everything first try, it's that I'd had enough time and practice to quickly diagnose what wasn't working and quickly try something else to correct it.

Instead, I was thinking "this doesn't look right and I don't know why" about other things. Trees, buildings, figure shading, fire, water, metal textures. I still didn't feel ready to do the comic in earnest, but I'd started doing digital illustrations of the characters and mock-up pages/covers, and I kept finding problems in the composition. It didn't look right and I didn't know why. If I didn't know why, I couldn't fix it. A lot of that process boiled down to redrawing stuff until it managed to look right, then trying to reverse-engineer what had worked about that. I'd accidentally draw the most perfect torso and try to figure out what magic combination of lines had made that work. And again, it was a slow process, almost unnoticeable from my perspective, because I just gradually stopped worrying so much about unsolvable artistic problems because the solutions had just arisen with practice and experience. The background looks wack - it's probably under-shaded, darken some corners to make it match the foreground. This texture looks off - probably needs some particle effects to help give it detail. Etc etc.

At present, I very rarely think "this doesn't look right and I don't know why." I still have moments of "this doesn't look right" - almost constantly, probably - but they aren't noteworthy because I've had enough practice improvising solutions that it turns into a brief experimental phase before I fix whatever was bugging me and move on. It doesn't mean it's perfect, it just means whatever problems or places it could be improved are either subjective choices that are fine either way, or small mistakes I don't notice at the time. The process of error-correction and bug-fixing becomes quick and painless enough that I hardly think about how I used to spend ages agonizing over something that was wrong that I couldn't make look right.

The point I eventually got to could probably be best described as "I could make this better if I wanted - do I want to do that?"

Making a comic like this, it's very important for me to consider the value of pouring too much into any one page. If I vastly overdesign anything, I'm going to need to keep up that level of design every time it shows up. If I drew every forest shot by hand-drawing every single tree I'd never get anything done. If something looks off and I know the solution would be more detailing and more texturing, sometimes I'll do that - filigree and particles and all that good sauce - but sometimes I'll just try a few things until I find a shortcut that makes it look fine to my eyes. Art can always be more polished, so that's not really a metric for completeness or ready-ness - I really do think the most helpful metric is whether you're regularly struggling because you can see something is wrong but you can't figure out what. If you consistently know what's wrong - or, more accurately and less judgmentally, what could be polished if you wanted to polish it - you're probably in a pretty good spot.

#asks #aurora #art stuff

169 notes · View notes

ohmful · 9 months

Text

taehoon hc + his mother

okay so like, within the viral hit story as well as the c r u m b s we get from ptjs other work. we don’t know much about taehoon’s childhood aside from that one special episode which include “every little things about taehun”.

and the moment I laid my eyes on these very words..

so imagine this; (if hypothetically his mother was more present in his life or at least we, as readers get more insight on her)

little taehun practicing volleyball with his mum, wouldn’t that be cute? and and omg omg since he’s a sucker for taekwondo he probably uses his feet and legs a lot. A LOT. which sometimes ends very poorly because it would probably not go over the net or make the ball accelerate to the unknown

little taehun learning how to properly receive using his hands rather than his feet (it’s totally legal to do that in volleyball which is why Taehun would use it as a reason to throw kicks)

just imagine hansu and sohyeon having small debates on what taehun should do that day or practice with who and why

“taekwondo is an art in which Taehun should indefinitely practice”

“but volleyball helps so much with body work, flexibility and etc”

in the end taehun is bias so taekwondo he choose LOL

i honestly headcanon taehun to be very knowledge able or at least know more than the average person on volleyball because of his mother, probably tune in or watches volleyball matches for funsies

“ no that’s not how u receive” > probably directed at someone in his class > he gets too marks in pe

“nahh what was that fucking set bro”

“cmon that ball was tight, try setting a bit higher”

he probably got hit in the head multiple times if he were ever to be near his mother when she trains her spikes.

since it was stated that sohyeon gave taehun most of her height or where he got it from. i assume she would either play outside or be a middle blocker since those position are great for those with heights

she could’ve been taller than hansu tbh…

probably accidentally spiked a really hard ball toward taehun by accident LMAO

little taehun would probably be really salty if he ever gets an injury from volleyball

just imagine the little guy pouting and throwing hissy fits because he jarred his fingers while trying to practice with mom

(inaudible crying in background as taehun dramatically falls to the ground even though his pinky is jarred)

sohyeon is probably a sweetheart and let him skip a week of school cause of it

I have a feeling he wears his taekwondo uniform if he ever does take on volleyball, sohyeon would look at him with a questionable gaze but let it slide because at least he’s doing volleyball !!

sohyeon has her uniform back in her days in the national team hung in the house

I feel like if taehuns mom did acquire fame, I reckon his time during early grade school/elementary were filled with “omg you look like…that one volleyball player!!”

and then they would either try to spell the name or ask the teacher to show Taehoon a photo

if he were a volleyball player instead, taehoon would play a great outside just like his mother

and even a middle blocker cuz of how intimidating he can be

his fangirls would go wild if he effortlessly block a quick or just spike through a block

anyways, that’s it for my first tumblr post!!

#how to fight #seong taehoon #taehun #volleyball #viral hit #webtoon #manhwa #headcanon #childhood #how to fight taehoon #taehun seong #sohyeon lee #hansu seong

45 notes · View notes

t1meslayer · 20 days

Text

Busy with important family events over the next couple of days, and so I thought it would be good to get a day-and-date release for this Debrief on the latest entry in my Sapphic Valley series, "How You Get The Girl." Be sure to read the story before jumping in!

Did you do it? Did you read the story?

Alright, I'm trusting you. Go ahead and hit that 'Keep Reading' button you scamp.

It only seems appropriate to start this Debrief off by addressing the elephant in the room. I haven't posted anything in over a month, and "By Moonlight" came about a month after its predecessor, the conclusion to "Stone-Cold Lovers."

Work, naturally, has been a major factor.

You can see me talk about that almost two weeks ago in this Tumblr post I made about writing in a coffee shop, which came weeks after I actually started writing during a trip to a friend's house.

===

Side note:

Just wanted to take a moment and acknowledge my beautiful Haley and Emily keychains. My friend who's responsible for the affairs of one ghostly farmer named Jizzabelle (Gisabelle to the laymen) got them for me! Only appropriate after I commissioned some art of her and Abigail.

Emily was my first Stardew wife, and Haley currently holds the biggest place in my heart. They make a lovely duo!

And I'll avoid any sister-wife jokes

===

While I've had some other projects like Zine writing to take care of, work and life can't explain the full absence.

The best way I can think to explain things is that:

I had the general writer's block, and

Despite the best intentions and advice of my irl friends and online pals like @alchemicallymoon and @duelbraids, I couldn't force myself to "break" that block by just... Writing something else.

This is entirely the result of my own psychosis. I have a tendency to carefully plot things out and impose a timetable that really doesn't need to exist. When I feel the cause is righteous enough, it's hard to get around that. In this case, I knew I needed to get my poll-winning idea out after dawdling for holidays like Valentine's Day, and then I knew I only wanted to post one more story before jumping on a very special event for my upcoming 30th AO3 post.

Thus, here we are: arbitrarily forcing myself into a spiral of writer's block misery because of a silly promise on Tumblr and my own sense of ordered chaos.

At the very least, this meant it's coming out not long after my AO3 pal InsertACatchyPennameHere also emerged from the woodwork to tell me they're working on something INSPIRED by my four-person friend group farm adaptations.

Much love to them, wherever they may be.

I'll probably start writing more eclectically now that my shoulders are unweighed, but don't expect my next publication to hit until I'm finished working on teasing the big event. All you Pokemon fans better get hype!

And oh how sweet this publication feels. Between my great set of recent ceramics, the figure drawing class I've been attending, and creative writing, I've felt more fulfilled than ever.

You're here to talk about Stardew, though. So let us talk.

This idea began less with any one event as it did a desire to advance the Alexis/Haley relationship, and Haley's characterization in particular. It was always going to end with watercolor painting reference, but 2 Willow Lane was what I really wanted to dig into.

As I see it, a lot of what keeps people invested in Stardew when its comfy vibes becoming routine is the air of mystery in Eric Barone's worldbuilding. Haley and Emily's parents being some world-traveling duo who left their home in the siblings' care for who knows how long (and who knows how many times over their lifetime) really piqued my interest. So much so that the new writing challenge I set for myself in "How You Get The Girl" was crafting a particularly long set of descriptions that emphasize how overwhelming the parents' influence feels — without creating an impenetrable wall of text.

Hopefully I succeeded in that. Let me know!

I tried to include some vaguely real world-adjacent references into that description of the house, as happens with the magical-realism world of Stardew Valley. For example:

The computer sitting next to their bonsai tree is an iMac G3, the kind of old 'futuristic' tech that my dad loves!

A Speedwell refrigerator is based on even more vintage tech, the Mayflower fridge, but named after a different ship ridden by Pilgrims coming to America.

That city that the family visited in an old photograph with a "monument of arching, interlocking steel" is, of course, Paris — with the statue bookends referencing any number of statues in the Louvre.

Haley's FAD magazine could be referencing any number of publications, but Vogue is probably the closest analogue to what I imagine her reading.

Furthermore, I took some notes on describing the home's layout off of my sister's apartment building, and I asked my bestie @trybard for input on what kind of hanging plant should be used in the transitional hallway. Hanging pothos, philodendron, and spider plants were the three options provided, and my response was appropriate:

They know so much about plants.

Go bug them about it.

I drew on other friends' knowledge to help decorate the house. Specifically, I asked one of my witchiest friends what kinds of protective wards someone like Emily would leave around doorways and windows. She had... A lot of reference material.

I picked Hazel given it purportedly "protects against evil; encourages abundance and inspiration." I also picked Amethyst as one of Emily's loved gifts, one that purportedly "absorbs negative energy, promotes harmony."

My witchy friend is the same one who provided the TikTok that I referenced in my advertisement post:

Perhaps the most important thing about 2 Willow Lane was the recurring motif of Barbie's Dream House.

As a surface-level reference, I think the groundwork is clear. Blondie's love of fashion and general queen bee demeanor fits comparisons to Barbie well, and she lives in a big ol' house full of stuff. We all saw Greta Gerwig's Barbie movie last year. It's still in the cultural zeitgeist.

I'm hip with the kids.

Yet, early on I also tried to make it clear that if this is a "dream" house, it's neither Haley's nor Emily's dream. Haley is a Barbie in that stereotypical sense, but also there's much to be mined from the analogy of a sort of powerless doll in an immutable house, constrained by social obligation to her family rather than literal plastic and stickers.

The cold open of Jodi and Sam was meant to stand alone, but in execution I also think drawing Kent's absence into the conversation makes for a more thematically rich comparison to these sisters who appear to have themselves more put together.

My beta reader said this wound up being one of my stronger stories because of how all of that intertwined, which I appreciated given how down on myself I was following the whole writer's block thing.

But also.

Also.

Alexis gets to be horny. She's hitting on lonely MILFs and watching girls shake their asses to the tune of bad reality TV.

We love a buff dommy mommy farm girl in this house.

Haley is probably horny too, she just doesn't realize it yet. For now I think it's fun enough to play into her being coy about building excuses for Alexis to come over, and then getting incensed when Emily barges in on their private time meant to learn more about this farm girl she just can't get out of her head.

===

Fun fact:

Every story in this series is named after a Taylor Swift song, but I know next-to nothing about her discography. All of them are suggestions by my friend whose house I was at when starting this story — the same one who controls Gardenia on the farm.

While I went with "How You Get The Girl," her alternative suggestion was "The Man."

===

All that w|w talk aside, I also want to give Sam the loveable idiot a shoutout. Had to do a fair bit of research into how skateboards are constructed for his failed ollie, and I slipped in a reference to shitty old technology that's exclusively for my beta reader to enjoy.

I also tried doing some agricultural research to figure out how the folks at Kevin Farm could have grown cucumbers so there'd be a jar of legitimate pickles... But that was getting too in the weeds.

Insert laugh track here

Decided to just go with pickled artichoke hearts to save everyone a lot of trouble.

And where does "Kevin Farm" come from, you may be asking yourself. Or the fabulous "Kevin's Special" with its definitely not innuendo tagline.

That story will have to wait for another day, my friends.

8 notes · View notes

thegodthief · 2 months

Text

An Occasional Lurker™ asked...

Which hobby would you give a try if money, materials and space were handled?

I have to pick ONE?? And does it have to be a hobby I haven't yet stuck a finger in? If we're discussing something I haven't yet tried: Blacksmithing. Which sounds more like a job than a hobby, but in the (lack of) constraints that you have given, all the blocks that keep me from even being a helper to an established blacksmith is out of the way.

Blacksmithing would tick off a lot of personally satisfying activities in one category, while also giving the option of never being overly repetitive. How can a hobby that is mostly comprised of swinging a hammer on a hot piece of metal repeatedly not repetitive? I know enough about blacksmithing to know that the art of swinging that hammer is NOT just swinging the hammer.

Where to strike. How hard to strike. How to set up a particular strike three hits back. Even if it's a set of identical knives, no one knife is going to be hammered out identical to any other.

There's the pure physical aspect of it, but there's also the art of it. There's the satisfaction of taking something useless (scraps and/or raw ingots) and making something useful out of it, even if that useful thing is only good for looking at.

But if it's a hobby that I have given a try to before, then weaving. Though any loom the size of a room is more likely to eat me instead and I will never be heard from again. Bystanders will look at me with despair, saying that I have been enchanted by the loom and forced to weave until I waste away.

Nothing of the sort. I have always held threads in my hands, and I will admit that not having the time to get back to it has been detrimental to my health.

What food or snack would you prefer on a lazy afternoon?

Ooo... Trick Question™! (First I need to remember what lazy afternoons feel like.) Can't go wrong with a bowl of baby carrots. With hot sauce. And cottage cheese dusted with season salt.

Popcorn is always a favorite, but only if I'm doing something that can exist around butter. So I won't be eating popcorn if I'm going through some books.

You know what's good? A sandwich with sliced roast beef or turkey breast, colby jack cheese, a right thick layer of spinach leaves, on wheat bread that has just enough mayo to keep the seasoning in place.

But ya know... some thin sliced ham and provolone cheese rollups are good as well. If I have to choose between prosciutto and thin ham, I'll take whichever is less salty. Besides, I'm too busy putting the prosciutto on the roast beef sandwich.

I'm hungry, now, dammit.

Reader's choice, what topic could you happily talk about at length?

Keri.exe is taking too long to respond. Close or wait?

Uh...

WHICH ONE?!

My head is a Trivial Pursuit wheel of chance. I know a little about a lot of things, and I know enough to pretend I can connect the dots, and if the topic is a work of fiction, I will spin fanon tales on the spot about certain characters and how they interact in AUs.

One thing I have learned the hard way, is that there is a big difference between typing a few dozen thousand words and having a sit with a friend and talking their ears off even if the recipient of both actions is the same person.

When I go on a rant in DMs, my first message is "Wall of Words in progress, please come back later.", because I know I am going to plow so many words that Merriam-Webster should give me a commission for selling a dictionary to the recipient. But not every topic that is suited for DMs is suited for public posting nor is suited for a phone call nor is suited for a chat at a café.

What topic that I could happily talk about at length is completely dependent on who is the audience and how much time am I expected to fill (or meet).

I'm treating this question in bad faith, and I apologize, but as the answer is public I find myself wary of my phrasing. There is a terrible tendency on the Internet to treat everyone that is posting about anything is an Expert™ in the topic discussed. And many of the topics that I would gladly indulge in private DMs or a public meeting place are topics that I will NOT even comment on in a public post.

And that's bad.

And that's my problem.

And that's something I need to break myself of.

After all, someone told me recently that there is neither comfort nor safety in cowardice, and yes, I am a coward. I am afraid of being targeted, of being hurt, of saying something that will offend the people I look up to and they abandon me for it.

And funny how little things become the lock-pin that holds larger things in place.

I also think that I don't post like I used to because that same Internet tendency that views anyone with an opinion as an Expert™ also makes it hard to hold conversations about a topic. Posts become hills to die on and fortifications to defend. Having an opinion on the Internet is an act of war.

Or so I perceive the topic of topics on the Internet.

Perhaps my perception is incorrect.

Perhaps I'm typing furiously against clouds.

Or perhaps I'm going on at length about nothing.

Who knows.

#Keri throws a lot of words against the wall.#Some of them might make sense.#Read at your own risk.

8 notes · View notes

bvannn · 4 months

Text

Weekly Update December 22, 2023

Still recovering from the semester, going very slowly. I’m trying to do stuff but mood and body are being volatile. Probably dread and anxiety leading up to the surgery next Tuesday, but I have been updated that most likely I will actually be able to leave on the same day after all because they moved it to 7:30 in the fucking morning. Convenient I guess but also going to be messed up that whole week probably.

I did a good few drawings yesterday. If I’m feeling up tonight I might do more. I’m trying to do more of the soft shading in addition to the hard shading, so the hard shading isn’t as harsh looking. Did it in my new pfp and it looks really good on the ghosts in particular. Has had more mixed results on the others but that’s probably due to my color choices.

Going to try fiddling with comic thumbnails as well, hoping it’ll be a larger project for next year. I’ve been drawing the characters for my secondary story a little more than I probably should so I’m going to hope inspiration hits for the O’Malley kids soon, since art block is kinda cropping up in that regard.

Music: the main song I’ve been working on is done instrumentally for now, soundfonts did in fact fix everything. Specifically the Touhou soundfont, because of course it was that one. I’m hoping if I get more energy tonight I can record pieces for the next song. I’ll still need to fiddle with outlining and lyrics for the first song, but I can’t progress much further on it until I manage to snag a vocaloid or utau (or synthV or cevio I guess, but idk or care much about those). Next couple ones I try to bite at are going to probably be instrumental. I might throw boards together for videos for them but that will be low priority until the songs are done done.

TRGA: so due to circumstance I haven’t really had as much chance to work on it as I thought. I did start cleaning up Tim 1-4, but not too much beyond that. Mostly because the time I set aside for it has been allotted to tending to my mood and body, so hopefully after some rest I can start taking bigger bites at it. If I get messed up on painkillers next week that is the project I will be most likely to work on, so I’ll try to get actual big bites out of it. If I get myself back to doing a schedule, I can probably get shots done faster than I have, which is good because admittedly I have been probably more proscrastinatey than I should be. Tonight I’ll try to continue on it, until I get Tim completely cleaned up, and potentially also get started on his face or hands.

Next week will be unpredictable, due to holiday and surgery. I’m hoping I’ll be able to get that computer I’ve been teased about so I can try to actually unload all my music making stuff, and get a good opportunity to reorganize my CSP brushes. I went a bit crazy on Black Friday this year since music software sites apparently just have 100% off sales on some of their cheaper items, and I got like $300 worth of stuff for free and then some. Haven’t been using it because of storage space. Whatever, bottom line is I can’t really predict next week but I can try to put a schedule together tonight and maybe abide by it as best I can. Whatever.

#weekly update

8 notes · View notes

eternalglitch · 1 year

Note

Hello! I wanted to say that your fic is one of the first that inspired me to try and commit to my own art. I've been actively trying to do more art and writing and it's been fairly enjoyable! Thank you ^-^ I wanted to ask, though: how do you avoid becoming burnt out? There seems to always be so much happening at any point in time that even when I want to create, I can't. /genq -🍏

You are welcome!! I hope you find endless enjoyment in creating things.

Honestly, I think burn out is somewhat inevitable. Everyone will have periods where, no matter what you do, words and art just will not seem to want to flow.

You really just have to learn exactly what the signs of burn out are so you can catch it early on as well as how to manage it for you specifically, because everyone has different patterns. Some of my friends tend to be able to create a TON of art super quickly in huge quantities and then have to take a long break as burn out hits hard and fast. I tend to be a more slow and steady type, and I have to rest in small increments along the way to get rid of burn out as it starts to creep up before it's a big problem for me.

There's pros and cons to both types of people; I do think a lot of neurodivergency can incline people to have that first type with the aid of hyperfocusing, but it's not exclusive to that. You can also try and make yourself a more slow and steady type for a more consistent output by forcing yourself to work a little bit every day regardless on if you are inspired or not, which will help train your brain to work through any kind of blocks (but do note that I am neurotypical so if that's not your case and trying that is frustrating, I would seek advice from other creators! I'm sure they have better tips about that than I would.)

If you try working through burn out, just be careful not to push too far; sometimes burn out is burn out and if you ignore it too much it will get bad enough that it cannot be ignored. You can often tell the difference on if you're just frustrated about the quality of your output or if it genuinely feels soul draining to even try making anything.

Just like breathing, after exhaling you have to inhale. If there's truly nothing to be done when burn out appears, I set creating to the side and go consume art and and read books myself, or explore minecraft with friends. Burn out will eventually pass, so just take it as a sign of a much needed break and enjoy it!

#glitch answers #writing advice #I can only speak to my own brain patterns for things like this ^^#which school made me study under a microscope like a bug to figure out how to pass classes

60 notes · View notes

little-leaf-man · 1 year

Text

Hi. I wrote a lil about Dutch. Please be nice I tried my best.

Warning for uh. Nasty murder. About 1700 words. If you see typos no u don't.

---

He noted down what the fearful woman said to him in the pad he held, illegible scrawls to anyone but himself. Dutch had often been reprimanded for his terrible handwriting when he was younger, something that irritated him. If he can read it, why's it matter if anyone else can't?

"I opened the door and- There was just- Just so much- So much blood..." She was starting to become despondent now, reality seemed to be hitting her. Not going to get more out of her even if he pushed, he thought, flipping the notepad closed.

"Ma'am. I will do my best to make sure this reprehensible deed is avenged. You've been a mighty helpful. Go to your sister in... Shaemoor, did you say?"

The woman looks at the ground, the situation well and truly sinking in. Her friend was gone.

"Yeah... Shaemoor..." The words fall from her mouth before sobs take her, blocking off any coherent words she had left. Grief wracked her body with each ragged intake of breath.

Dutch tries to console the poor woman by patting her apprehensively on the shoulder. He wishes he'd got better at this side of things after all these years, but, he's really.... not good at this side of things.

"Uh, Ma'am... I think it's, uh, best to go to your sister, like you said-"

His blundering sentence is interrupted by the curly-haired woman grabbing onto Dutch with such a surprising force that it topples them both over, his ass landing on the dirt below.

"Uh- I'm sorry you're going through this Ma'am-"

He feels his shirt getting wet with the tears pouring out from her face. Well. As much as he'd like to get on with his job, it'd be bad form to shove the lady off in this state. Best wait it out.

"Please, oh gods, please. Mr. Darbinyan. Please find the bastard who did this to my friend."

He pats her on the back. Gods above, why is comforting someone so hard? C’mon Dutch.

"Please find the monster and kill them."

"I'll do my best Ma'am." A phrase burned into his soul, uttered once again. At this point, it’s all he can do.

---

Dutch stared at the scene before him with a trained eye. Yeah. It's the same guy alright. He could tell by the way the killer had rearranged the body parts, like some kind of grotesque art piece.

Up and coming inventor, bright young lad who had a future. Had an appointment with the Queen next week, allegedly to discuss a job opportunity.

Now a bloody mess of a corpse, laid out on the wooden floor of the house. What a waste of a life, Dutch thought. Not the first time either. There'd been many others like this, victims dotted around Tyria. Dutch was still trying to figure it all out, the only pattern seeming to be the victims were usually young folk, their life ahead of them. Snuffed out just when things were starting to look up.

Well, time to get to work. He pushed a few strands of black hair from his face, rearranging them under his hat. Let's see...

Broken lock on the window facing south. Not smashed. That fits in with witnesses saying they didn't hear anything. Must've got the poor guy in his sleep.

All signs point to the body being sliced up with a knife again. Gods, such precision for such a gorey display. Signs all point to the killer being someone with medical knowledge. A surgeon? Maybe a student? It would have taken a little while to place the body like this. Would have stuck in the house for a couple hours, fixated on their art piece.

He squats down, inspecting the skin of an arm. Well, most of it. The shoulder is on the other side of the room.

Huh. Weird. The skin has the slightest tint of... green? No, not mould, it's way too early in the decomposition process for that. It almost looks like-

//CRASH//

Something breaks the glass of the window, flying centimetres from Dutch's face as he instinctively covers himself with his arms. Shit! What is it now? The guy surely can't still be here? Unless he was waiting-

Dutch shoots backwards as another shot impacts the floor, sizzling slightly once lodged in.

Magic bullets?

He grabs his pistol, back against the wall. Waiting. The shooter is going to have to move from their spot, endangering their position before Dutch even considers shooting back.

The adrenaline filled seconds turn to minutes, and the minutes turn into an eternity. They were most likely warning shots. Still, best staying where is for the time being. No one would be able to get him here unless they had some kind of superpower to see through walls, or opened the front door. Which would, of course, mean they get a face full of metal from yours truly.

He exhales boredom, tired of waiting already. He's spotted as much as he can from his position, truly taken in the scene. Dutch turns to his cold, mangled companion.

"I'll get the guy who did this, buddy. Just waitin' around right now."

The tense silence is finally interrupted by a knocking at the door. Shit. No, why would the killer knock? A gruff woman's voice follows.

"Darbinyan? You in there still? It's Captain Walton. We heard gunshots. We're about to open the door-"

Oh thank the gods. It's just the seraph. He groans as he stands to his feet, holstering his pistol. Dealing with these guys is much less of a headache than a shootout or standoff.

"Nah Lindsey, I'll show myself the door. You don't want too many people in here, anyway. It's a mess"

"Alright, Dutch. Hope you didn't mess with my crime scene. Again. Are you safe?"

He adjusts his hat as he slips through the door, carefully shutting it behind him to limit the amount of the scene behind him on show.

"Could be worse. Didn't get hit by anything, if that's what you mean. I'll be getting out of your hair now. Thanks for your concern, Lind-"

"CAPTAIN Walton, Darbinyan. Don't forget that. And don't think you can slink away again! This is the 4th time you've got to a crime scene before us without any official documents. Dutch, I can't let you keep doing this! It goes against procedure! I got in real hot water last time I let it slide!"

The armoured woman takes a step forward, reaching out to take hold of Dutch's arm as he tries to quietly take steps back to run, as he'd done on previous occasions. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. Fool me a third and fourth time? Well that mildly embarrassing for the both of us somehow. He could be awfully fast, Captain Walton had found, cursing the fact she under-estimated the middle-aged man.

"Dutch, I'm real sorry, but I have to take you in for possibly interfering with a crime scene."

Thankfully, he lets the worried Seraph hold his arm. Instead, he looks her straight in the eyes with an intense stare.

"Walton." He gently pulls her closer, keeping voice low so as not to be heard by the rest of her squad. You can never be too careful. "This guy is some kind of necromancer. Please be careful checking the place out. I don't want to see you getting hurt. Or worse, your guts splayed out on the floor. I'm real sorry about this too, I'm about to be real rude."

The Seraph captain barely had a chance to react before Darbinyan blasted her away with surprising ease, as if her armour was being controlled. A young Seraph made a move to apprehend Darbinyan, incensed that he'd dare attack his captain, only to be treated the same with the flick of the bounty hunters hand. Soon, they were all sprawled out on the grass unable to move, as if their metal armour suddenly became too heavy to bear.

"I am real sorry about this, but I can't go with you. Not when the killer is still out there. I have a job to do, sorry to disrupt all yours in the process. Hope you do find some real good evidence though."

With an apologetic tip of the hat, the bounty hunter leaves the Seraph crew, their armour getting less and less heavy with each step he takes.

"Check on that lady in Shaemoor too, I'll send you the details later!"

Once able to, Captain Walton sits up and lets out a frustrated sigh, slowly getting to her feet. Gods, Dutch mentioned he had a knack for metal tinkering. He didn't mention how that meant he was that good with goddamn Ferrokinesis, that evasive bastard.

"Vote to not mention what just happened?" She says, with an edge of desperation.

An almost unanimous show of hands, bar one. Everyone shoots a look his way immediately. Goddamn George.

"It'll be so much paperwork, George."

His hand shoots up to join the others.

"Great. Alright crew, brush yourselves off and prepare. This isn't going to be easy, going in there."

The crew steel themselves, ready for the horrific scene that awaits them. At least Dutch will send a letter on what he found later, Lindsey Walton thinks to herself.

---

The path was dark and damp as he walked, musing on his findings. A Necromancer. There was no other explanation for the odd green tint in the young man’s skin, and paired with the fact that the killer obviously knew their way around anatomy with such medical precision? It just had to be.

Thank the gods he was shot at, illuminating it so clearly. Even if it wasn’t the killer who fired those… bullets? At Dutch, it sure gave him more areas to search.

The bounty Hunter was so lost in thought as he walked, he didn’t even notice the pale man watching him all the way back. “What a funny little game we’re playing, Mr Darbinyan.” The golden-eyed man said with a smile.

#Dutch Darbinyan #that's the only tag this gets #Learning 2 not throw up when I read my writing. Also trying not to be boring #but alas #that is a learnt skill

11 notes · View notes

rikiblues · 1 year

Text

close your eyes

featuring. nct na jaemin x fem!oc contents. college!au, romance, fluff, banter, literal sleeping together

track. teddy bear, nct dream word count. 2612

note. a submission for a writing event by decelis_acvdemy on wattpad.

"You," Jaemin announces, "work entirely too hard. You skipped movie night for homework!"

Jiwon looks up tiredly at him. "You do realize I'm working on a deadline here," she deadpans. "Tell me how you expect me to sacrifice three hours for a movie."

Jaemin frowns. "Are you feeling okay?" he asks, stepping back a bit, instead of leaning all of his weight on the side of her study desk, so as to give her some space, instead of crowding her. "You haven't really been responding very well tonight."

"I'm distracted," she gestures to the papers strewn across her desk, the scattered pens and pencils, eraser teetering on the corner of the desk—which he scoops up and safely returns to its respective spot beside her pencils—one lone paint palette resting beneath a box of acrylic paints also far too close to edge of it, so Jaemin pushes that farther up the desk, too. No paintbrushes, though he knows those are still at the top of her wardrobe, drying out after her impromptu painting session yesterday.

"Too distracted," he frowns, gently prying the pencil from her reddened-from-pressure fingers. "I get it too, you know, how hard it is to stop when the urge to do something about creativity blocks, hits you. I also want you to know that there's a limit to these things."

She huffs. "I can't help it if my stupid brain won't give me a proper idea," she says, sulking as she utters the words, though she most likely doesn't realize it. Jaemin thinks it's adorable. "I've been trying to get past the stupid art block, but none of my ideas are good enough."

She gestures to the angrily-torn out, balled-up pages of paper in the wastebasket beside her on the floor. Jaemin makes a mental note to take the better ones out of the pile, if only to tease her outwardly with it but actually keeping them for her future reference. As temperamental as Jiwon is, she tends to forget in her frustration at herself that her past supposedly-failed art serves as a good frame of reference for what she can do later down the line.

"That's because your brain is overworked," he scolds. "You've been at this since before I arrived, idiot. It doesn't take a genius to realize you need rest."

Jaemin had come over earlier to her dorm at her request to bring something to eat because she was "far too lazy to drag myself down ten flights of stairs right now," only to find that she was really immersed a tad bit too much to do more than bite into her food in between sketching on her drawing block. Being the caring boyfriend that he is, he hadn't discouraged her, just nagged at her to eat in a very annoying way until she gave in.

It's been almost four hours since then, though. Jaemin has almost finished a drama series by now. It's a lie to say he isn't concerned; of course he is, he loves Jiwon. He loves that she's so passionate about all of her interests, even if they fizzle out after a short period of hyperfixation, but that's one of her quirks.

Except for art. That one is lifelong, at this point. For all of the three years that he has known her, art has been practically the center of her life. Pencil lead smudged on her hands, just like it is now, streaks of an almost-non washable paint in a swirl of rainbow colors on her arms and hands, sometimes her face, too, which more often than not earned her a scolding from her parents and teachers.

But the bigger issue is that she's overworking herself at this point.

"But it's not even that late," she protests, looking at the clock. "It's only barely eight p.m..."

"I know, but you've been working this hard all day, and you're not getting anywhere."

"But if I try a little harder..."

"Jiwon," he says, firmer. Jiwon's stubborn, pleading expression falls into one of dejection. Once upon a time, Jaemin would've worried that he went too far and said something wrong, but now he knows that it's just her being upset at herself for going too far. Even if Jaemin doesn't necessarily agree with it, he's also aware that right now, the most important thing is destressing her cluttered, overloaded brain.

"Okay," she sighs out, standing up. She wobbles for a moment and she grabs at the desk to regain her balance, which immediately has Jaemin taking her arm, holding her up, recognizing it as a dizzy spell, a thing she experiences far too often from how she forgets to eat in the concentrated haze of making art. "Oh. Sorry, sorry, I'll eat something now..."

Jaemin has to smile at her somewhat ditzy expression. She has a weird way of laughing off even a few of the worst things that have happened to her, though he supposes that it's not so concerning when they already know that having her eat something would fix the dizziness very quickly.

"Want me to get you that apple you bought earlier?" he offers as they walk out into the living room of her dorm. She used to share it with someone else, who dropped out halfway through the year. Jaemin has been taking advantage of that to pop in on surprise visits to her during the day, and sometimes he's tempted to stay over for a night, but imagining how badly that could go keeps him from doing it.

"Yes, please," she mutters, throwing herself onto the couch. "I doubt I could handle anything else right now."

While she turns on the TV and flips through Netflix (before remembering that she has yet to finish 86's first season, to date), Jaemin heads to the kitchen to retrieve her apple for her. He often does this kind of thing for his friends and roommates, which earned him the moniker of "mom," but Jiwon is really the only person he truly gets satisfaction out of taking care of. Her, and his younger friends.

She's so absorbed into the screen that she startles when Jaemin sits beside her, handing her the plate of sliced apple. "You didn't have to do that," she notes, eyebrows lifted. Her gaze turns right back to the screen, which Jaemin takes no offense at. He is surprised that she continues talking. "I get that I messed up for myself, but I can eat an apple, you know."

"I don't think you can last the next episode without falling asleep," Jaemin smirks. She scoffs.

"You wanna bet?"

"I already know it. One-hundred-percent assured."

"Oh, you're on, Na Jaemin," she grins. Jaemin isn't quite sure whether it's from watching the young, teenage soldiers on screen interact with their miles-away commander, or his challenge, but either way, it's a cute smile.

"Bring it on, Kang Jiwon."

***

Contrary to expectation, Jiwon lasts until two episodes before the half-season finale, and then she turns to Jaemin and says, "I want to go to bed now. You should head back before it gets too late."

"I'll stay with you," Jaemin says nonchalantly. "My roommates are going to be out until really late."

"And?" she stares at him, eyes wide.

"I don't want to sleep alone," Jaemin answers, standing up. "Come on, Jiwon, it's not a big deal. I'm just going to sleep next to you. It's the weekend, too, so we're not going to have to go anywhere, right?"

"Well..." she hesitates, seeming to weigh between her choices. "I guess..."

"It's not mandatory," Jaemin clarifies, smoothing back the hair that had gotten loose from her ponytail away from her face, rather absently. "No pressure."

"No, I want you to stay," she decides, standing up and tugging him towards her bedroom, much, much more spacious since the roommate's stuff had been taken out of there. Jaemin internally second-guesses himself for a minute, but he talks himself out of it, reminding himself that they're technically not doing anything wrong (even if Renjun will have a neurotic fit when he finds out...well, he just won't).

He stands by the door, watching her arrange her messy bed—twisted, balled-up covers, both of the pale violet pillows she uses at two opposite ends of the bed, a few books scattered across the flower-patterns decorating her bedsheet—before she lets Jaemin near it. It's endearing to see how she frowns at herself for letting her space get so messy. He knows she usually makes a point to order everything and put it all in place before she sets foot outside of the dorm.

"Okay," she turns, exhales. "Come on. I'm beginning to feel dead on my feet."

Jaemin chuckles softly and joins her, watching her climb into her bed only for a second before he does the same, though somewhat awkwardly. It's...strange to be here, right now. Not to mention incredibly awkward. Before he can say something stupid, he says, "your bed is really soft."

Jiwon blinks at him, from where she's adjusting the covers over them. Jaemin doesn't object, since she's got the air-conditioning turned on at twenty-six degrees. "Uh. Yeah, my parents got this for my brother when he moved into the dorms but he disliked the way it's so soft, so we traded mattresses."

"Good call, I guess," Jaemin returns. A silence falls over them as Jiwon lies on her back snuggled under the comforter up to her chest, Jaemin sitting up leaning against the headboard with the comforter only covering his lower half.

Their eyes meet and they stare at each other for a full ten seconds before they burst out laughing.

"Jeez!" Jiwon wheezes, sitting up. "We're ridiculous, acting like a pair of teenagers on their first date!"

"Right," Jaemin snorts, pulling her closer the way he always does. "This is literally no different. We're a bit too nervous for just literally sleeping together, seriously."

Jiwon lets him essentially cuddle her. Jaemin doesn't look like it, but he is actually rather affectionate in many ways, and physical affection is one of his love languages. As such, Jiwon is the subject of quite a lot of hand-holding, random hugs, and just being affectionate in general. Jaemin is aware she doesn't mind at all, so he doesn't feel uneasy about doing things like that.

"I don't think I can fall asleep any time soon now," Jiwon admits softly, her voice just a whisper. With Jaemin's arm thrown loosely over her stomach, her head pillowed on his other arm, they're somehow in a closer position than they have ever been in before, but it's...comforting, to say the least.

"Shall I sing for you, then?" Jaemin purposely whispers in her ear. She shrieks in surprise and hits him.

"Jerk!"

Jaemin giggles, not releasing his grip on her. "Sorry, sorry!"

"Sure," she lightly pinches his arm, freezing a little bit when Jaemin starts running her hand through her short hair, a little bit longer than the absolute minimum required to tie a ponytail. She claimed it was for aesthetic reasons, though the bigger reason, he knows, is because she can't be bothered to take care of such long hair, practically waist-length, all the time. "What do you propose singing?"

"Twinkle, twinkle, little star—"

"God, no."

"Rockabye baby, on the treetop—"

"Na Jaemin!"

In response, Jaemin starts laughing, which sets off Jiwon, too. They devolve into laughing so hard, tears form in Jaemin's eyes. His own ridiculousness and how there's still a thin barrier of awkward tension that they have yet to break.

So, he hugs her closer, and says, "tell me something I didn't know about you."

"Huh?" He can't see her face, but he imagines her frowning in concentration. "There's a lot that you do know about me. As for what you don't know..."

"Anything is fine, really."

"Huh." this time, it's more of a contemplative sound. "Do you remember when your mother said that I would make a good teacher?" Jaemin does not, but he hums in response anyway. "I laughed it off back then, but did I ever tell you that when I was a kid, I really wanted to be a teacher?"

"Really?" Jaemin is surprised. "What kind of teacher?"

"I don't know. Kids don't think too deeply about those things, you know?"

"Why did you? Want to become a teacher, I mean. You've always said you don't have enough patience to handle a class of children."

"There was this teacher when I was in the first and second grades," Jiwon's voice is soft, almost sleepy; a very in-character thing, for her to get sleepy just as they start properly talking. "She was always very nice to me, never stopped me talking when I got going or had an idea. There was an autistic kid in our class, too, and she never treated him differently. In fact, he and I were the favorite kids. When I finished first grade, I actually cried about having to have a different teacher."

"Awh, that's so cute."

"I was seven," Jiwon says with an intentional sulky tone. "So, when my brother started the first grade in the same year I started the second, he got the same teacher. You know about his ADHD, so you know how difficult it can be..."

Jaemin does. When he first met Jiwon's brother, he was quite hyper and excitable, and understood lots of things differently than most of them did. According to her, he was like that but ten times more hyper in his childhood, and it didn't help that most adults in his life treated him like he was a bad kid.

"She was the greatest teacher he ever had," the smile in her voice is evident, blooming like a sunflower in the sun. Jaemin finds it beautiful that her pride in her family and loved ones take precedence over much else, much like how Jaemin puts his mother before everyone else. "He was her best friend by the end of the year, and what do you know, he cried, too. I mean, have you ever known him to cry about saying goodbye to someone?"

"Never," Jaemin finds the idea alien. But he knows her brother has feelings, too. "That was what made you decide?"

"Yeah. Until my mother, ever so practical," there's a teasing hint of fondness there, "convinced me that I would die penniless and stressed out because kids are hard work and teachers don't get paid enough."

"I mean, my mother survived?"

"She had a husband to support her. I was in my 'die a single woman' phase."

"Ah. That explains so much."

"Shut up," she laughs, hitting his arm. "I wasn't upset about it ever, actually. I was cycling through a lot of professions at the time, so it isn't too big of a disappointment that it took a day to get talked out of it without much effort. Even if I do think about it sometimes."

"Imagine me dating a teacher."

"Your mother would approve. Now tell me something about you."

"I never drink because my mother said she doesn't like to drink and would prefer it that I did not drink, either," Jaemin says the first thing that comes to mind. Jiwon snorts, clearly disbelieving. "I'm serious, I really don't like doing it! It tastes weird, too."

"Such a momma's boy," Jiwon teases, but her voice is slurred now, beginning to sound more sleepy and tired than anything.

"That is my pride, Jiwon," he says very seriously. He can't stop the yawn that escapes his mouth after he says it, though. "Now I'm sleepy."

"Then sleep," she mumbles, shifting so that her legs aren't twined together. "Good night."

When it's silent for almost a full minute, Jaemin realizes that she really isn't joking; she's actually fallen asleep. Her soft breathing is the only sound in the room now, aside from his own.

With a fond sigh, Jaemin closes his own heavy eyelids, still hugging Jiwon.

yes, i still hate it. but thanks to all of you who reassured me it's okay haha ilu guys.

#jaemin #na jaemin #nct dream #nct #fluff #alternate universe #fanfic #fanfiction #college au #fluffy #literal sleeping together #falling asleep #loosely based on teddy bear

16 notes · View notes

huffle-dork · 1 year

Note

Greetings! I’m not sure how this works, but I wish you would write about the first time Jackie met Zara please. P.S. I think that your art and writings are amazing. - The Cinnamon Roll Anon

(God like 2 years later way to go me |D but I’m trying to get back into writing so I’m doing older requests! I wish I knew who to tag for this one- I hope they can find it 😭)

Jackie nervously picked at his gi as he studied the others in his class. God- did he pick the right sports bra? Were people staring at him? He had just decided before coming to Uni he was gonna try passing more… he started taking T as soon as he turned 18. Still- it felt like someone would be able to see through him… He felt eyes on him while he tried not to panic.

He really wanted to take this class though! He used to be in a dojo when he was younger. It’d be nice to connect back to the sport he loved- even if parkour had become his bigger love as of late. Still, that means he’d be good at this right?

Jackie snapped out of his thoughts as the class began, his sensei started the class and introduced himself. Jackie looked at the teacher with starry eyes. What a cool dude… could he look like that someday?

After going through warmups, Sensei asked how many of them had been in a martial arts class before. Jackie slowly raised his hand and saw one other hand shoot up. He met eyes with a girl with short cropped hair and violet eyes that smirked at him. Jackie felt his cheeks flush.

Sensei wanted to see what their level was- so while his teaching assistant led the rest of the class through the first lesson, Sensei took the two aside.

“Alright, why don’t you two show me what you can do?” He asked, watching as Jackie and the girl eased into fighting stances.

Jackie felt more nerves creeping up his chest, thick in his throat. He shouldn’t have said anything! He hasn’t been in classes since like primary school! But… men don’t show weakness like that. He had to prove himself… right?

He squared up his chest and smirked at the girl.

“Promise I’ll go easy on you,” He boasted, even though he was screaming at himself for saying that right after.

Especially when the girl’s eyes flash with anger. She takes the first jab, punching near Jackie’s chest. Luckily, Jackie remembers how to block and side steps away with a hushed, “Woah!” escaping his mouth.

Jackie steps back and tries to aim a flat hand strike to her collarbone. But she side steps and grabs his arm and shoulder, yanking him towards her. He’s immediately thrown off balance and cries out. She goes past him and hooks her leg around his and then scoops and pushes down, driving him hard into the ground onto his back with her on top of him, still gripping his sleeve while her fist hits solidly on the mat next to his face.

Jackie has to blink stars out of his eyes as the girl smirks down at him. The lights of the practice room backlit her like an Angel. Jackie could hear his heart beat in his ears as his chest and stomach seemed to fill with butterflies, leaving him even more breathless.

Then she bursts into laughter and Jackie feels his face turn bright red.

“God! The look on your face was priceless!” She giggled.

Sensei’s voice drawled disapprovingly from behind them, “That might have been too much, Zara.”

She glances at their teacher then groans, “c’mon teach! He was begging for a humbling moment!”

“H-Hey!” Jackie squirms, feeling more and more ashamed. Plus… she was very close to his chest…. She couldn’t tell could she?

Sensei raised his eyebrow, “Be that as it may, your humbling moment didn’t give me enough time to see his skill set.”

The girl, Zara it seems, blows hair out of her face and sighs. “Alrightttt-“ She lets go of Jackie and hops to her feet, offering Jackie a hand. Jackie hesitates but then takes the hand as he’s unsteadily pulled to his feet.

The girl takes the opportunity to shake Jackie’s hand and smiles. “Sorry about that… cocky guys get on my nerves here. But… that wasn’t fair of me. I’m actually another student assistant here… cuz I frequent Sensei's dojo. Or- I used to… got caught up the past summer so… Sensei wanted to see if I was still sharp. Wasn’t cool of me to do that to you though… you’re a bit stiff for someone who’s done this before.”

Jackie blushes again, looking away. “I… might have fudged my knowledge… I haven’t really been since I finished primary school…”

He cringes, like he’s expecting to hear the girl’s cruel laughter at him. But instead she beams. “Well hey! You got a pretty great start for being so rusty! Still loads better than the beginners here! I can give you some tips, if you’re okay with trying again?”

Jackie blinks in surprise but Zara does look a bit more apologetic. He grumbles and looks away, wishing his cheeks would stop turning so red. “…as long as you don’t make fun of me…”

“I won’t. Promise! Now… show me your stance again!”

After a while, their session ended as the rest of the class packed up. Sensei said he’d probably give them a few more one on one sessions until they got the rest of class up to speed.

Jackie watched as Zara grabbed her shoes and bag as he carefully went over and coughed slightly, getting her attention.

She blinks and cocks her head at him, “Yes..? Did we forget something?”

“N-No! No I… I just…” Jackie played with the back of his hair as he tried to work up the nerve to say, “…m’sorry… for earlier. I… I didn’t mean to come off like that and I… I just want you to know I… I’m not that kinda guy… you know?” His cheeks flushed red again as he avoided her gaze.

Zara is quiet for a moment before she smiles warmly. “Well, clearly.” She replies bluntly.

“Huh?” Jackie looks at her in surprise.

She laughs, “A cocky guy would never admit he was wrong! They’re all tough and macho and big headed! Total meat heads I tell ya.” She slips on one of her shoes as they talk, “That’s why I stuck with martial arts for so long. Ain’t nothing sweeter than knocking a meat head down a peg for underestimating a girl.”

She straightens and gives Jackie a slight knowing look, briefly glancing down before meeting his eyes. “…you get that- right?”

Jackie doesn’t quite get what she’s hinting at though. But he quickly blurts out, “Y-Yeah totally! That’s why I… I didn’t want you to think of me like that… cuz I’m not- I swear!”

Zara finishes slipping on her other shoe as she giggles and lightly punches Jackie’s shoulder. “Well, you didn’t need to but… thanks… uh-“ Now it’s her turn to blush as she nervously laughs. “God I- I totally forgot to ask your name!”

Jackie laughs, “it’s Jackie… Jackie Mann.”

Zara seems to laugh a bit loud at that and claps a hand over her mouth as Jackie looks at her in confusion. She quickly tries to recover. “S-Sorry! Just… wasn’t expecting that last name.”

“Yeah it’s- kinda weird.” Jackie admits with a laugh.

“Sounds like a superhero name!” Zara chuckles.

“Oh huh… guess it does.” Jackie blushes, feeling his superhero nerd wanting to come out but he eagerly pushes it down. He was trying to make a good impression, not scare her away. “And you’re… Zara, right?”

Zara nods with a smile and holds out her hand, “Zara Caley, aspiring marine biologist and certified ass kicker.”

Jackie feels his chest and stomach flutter again as he takes her hand and shakes it. “…nice to meet you officially then, Zara.”

She grins, “You as well, Mr. Jackie Mann.”

She then grabs her bag and looks down at his still bare feet. “I dunno if you have another class soon but- this room is about to be filled again, I think. And I got a lecture halfway across campus.”

“O-Oh! Right right I… I won’t keep you then.” Jackie stammers quickly, going to grab his shoes and jam them on.

Zara giggles and waves at him. “See you next class, Jackie!” She then hurries out the door.

And Jackie can’t help but stare at her as she leaves, his breath taken away again.

#and what’s this??#trans Jackie?? in swap boys?#HELL YEAH TRANS JACKIE IN SWAP BOYS #I couldn’t not have trans Jackie it’s such a good headcanon!#and him and alt can bond over it later :)#I actually have a Drabble of that but I need to write one other story first for it to make sense hfggb #why do I write like this? just total chaos gfgfg #hufflewriting #SwapBoys #jackie mann #Zara caley #jack1eboi #meet cute #fluff #I wrote fluff y’all!! are you proud??#…it’s totally not cuz the next request I’m gonna work on is whump nooo whattt??#*runs*#readswapboys

9 notes · View notes