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moonbeamgoddess · 3 months

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Stars and Moon, Guide me Tonight

Chapter 3

✨You were everything to me, my stars and moon, now the sky look dark without you✨

AN: Sorry if Ao'nung's name is inconsistent with the spelling of Aonung or Ao'nung. Also, there might be some spelling or grammar mistakes I didn't catch, as my keyboard keeps acting weird.

Word count: 4k+

TW: A smudge of angst, Neteyam feeling like a bad brother, small talks of death, probably some cursing, Lo'ak getting into a lot of trouble which makes him get yelled at, possibly some grammar or spelling errors.

divider by @cafekitsune

Jake had dragged both Lo’ak and Neteyam back to the family marui after the fight between them, Ao’nung, and the other Metkayina boys had been discovered. I was silently following behind with my head held down as I knew we were in big trouble. Neteyam while trying to put pressure on his busted lip to stop the stinging, while Lo’ak held his arm. Jake looked out of the marui for a second before glaring back at the three of us.

“What was the one thing I asked? The one thing!” Jake exclaimed as he kept his focus on Lo’ak. “Stay out of trouble” Lo’ak mumbled “Stay out of trouble, Right” Jake added. Neteyam looked down at the floor and then looked back up. He put his hands up to try and defuse the situation. “It was my fault.” Neteyam tried to take the blame, I sighed knowing it wasn't going to work this time with our father.

“I don't think so. You gotta stop takin’ the heat for this knucklehead.” Jake scolded Neteyam. Neteyam looked away and had a look of “I tried”. As Neteyam stepped back, Lo’ak stepped forward. “Look Dad, Ao’nung was picking on Kiri and y/n. He called Kiri a freak” Lo’ak tried to defend himself for what had happened. I softly stepped behind Neteyam as he seemed a bit agitated, and hugged him from behind.

Jake slightly froze and sighed, grimacing at the situation and looking back outside. Jake then looked back at Lo’ak and sighed again. “Go apologize to Ao’nung,” Jake said with a low voice. Neteyam looked over at Lo’ak as Lo’ak looked at our father with disbelief. “What?” Lo’ak asked. Neteyam looked back at Jake then looked away, licking at his wounded lip and rubbing it, before looking back at me and sighing.

“He is the chief’s son. Do you understand? I don't care how you do it. Just go make peace” Jake firmly said to Lo’ak, tail flicking behind him in irritation. “Just go” Jake added. “I can go with him” I quickly said but was stopped by Jake. “No, he needs to apologize himself” Lo’ak shook his head in disbelief at having to apologize for defending his siblings, but he obliged and started walking out of the marui. I let go of Neteyam when he started also walking out, following behind him before our father called out for Neteyam.

“Hey.” Jake softly called out to Neteyam, which caused both of us to turn back. “So what’d the other guys look like?” I smiled at what Jake said but hid my face behind Neteyam’s shoulder to hide my smile. Neteyam paused for a second before looking back up at Jake. “Worse” Neteyam mumbled, not knowing if he was in trouble or not. “That's good.” Jake nodded his head in approval. That made Neteyam smile slightly and answer with “A lot worse.”

“Get outta here.” Jake dismissed Neteyam, to which he started walking out. “Y/n, hang back for a second” Jake called out before I followed Neteyam, which made me freeze. I turned back to face my father, worried he was holding off a lecture for me till my brothers were out of earshot. “First and foremost, are you okay?” Jake softly asked. I was a bit surprised but quickly nodded my head. “I'm okay, mentally and physically if that's what you're asking.” I give Jake a reassuring smile. “Okay, that's good”

Jake sighed again and put his hands on his hips. “I'm glad you didn't join in on the fighting, it's one thing to have your brothers involved in a fight, it's another to have three of my children in a fight.” Jake rolled his shoulders, walked closer to me, and hugged me. “I don't want you getting hurt, I know you can protect yourself, but I don't ever want you to be in a situation that can hurt you, I love you,” Jake whispered. “But if you did end up fighting, what do I always say?” Jake looked down at me and held my face in his hands.

“Aim for the side of the knee so they fall and make sure they can't get back up” I smiled up at Jake. “Good, now go on” Jake dismissed me. I ran out of the marui and went to go find Neteyam. I found Neteyam sitting on the beach by the water, looking out at the ocean. I giggled as I leaned against his back and over him, my hair blocking his view. “What art thou doing, brother?” I mimicked an old British accent I heard back when Norm was watching TV. “Just decomposing” Neteyam replied with a smile and pushed my hair out of his face.

I sigh and get up from leaning against Neteyam, and just sitting beside him. “Are you okay?” I quietly asked. “Yeah, I'm okay—” Neteyam looked over at me. “No, I mean are you okay,” I asked Neteyam again, more firmly. “I'm asking as your twin, your confidant” I looked at Neteyam and held his hand. “No, I feel tired all the time, and I feel like I'm not doing enough to protect everyone. I can't even keep Lo’ak out of trouble like I promised” Neteyam sighed and leaned his head against my shoulder.

“I sometimes feel like I can't breathe, like I'm being crushed by the overwhelming pressure of everything, I want to just get some sleep but I never seem to be able to because of all the chaos that has transpired. I have to be the immovable older brother. The sibling that doesn't get overwhelmed and handles everything perfectly, the one that takes care of everything and everyone.” Neteyam shifted his head to hide his face in my shoulder, tears falling from his eyes.

“And I feel like a failure when I don't handle the stress with ease, I feel like I'm not worthy because I'm not the perfect son everyone sees” Neteyam continued. I took in a shaky breath as I leaned my head against Neteyam’s, and put my hand on top of his to give him comfort. “I'm sorry that I haven't been there to bear the burden with you. You shouldn't have to keep all these feelings in. Neteyam, you're an amazing person, you may not think you handle everything well, but you are the most resilient person I know.” I smile at Neteyam.

“Share the burden with me, put half of that stress onto me, I can handle it. We're twins after all, and were supposed to share everything, even burdens. I'm here for you and always will be, and I'll always be in your corner, please don't keep your feelings bottled up, it can hurt you in the long run. I'll always be here when you just want to rant.” I kissed Neteyam’s forehead. “There is a saying I tell myself when I feel down in the dumps.”

I looked up at the midday sky and took a deep breath of the sea air. “Stars and Moon, guide me tonight” I whispered out to Neteyam. “I say it to myself under the night sky and close my eyes. Then after a few minutes of silence, I feel better and ready to take on the next day. You should try it” I look back at Neteyam. “Sad to say, but it's midday, not night.” Neteyam chuckled and smiled back at me. “I know, you don't always have to say it when you see the stars, I mean the stars and moon are always out, even when we don't see them” I laughed.

Neteyam looked at the sky, taking in the bright blue view. He then closed his eyes and inhaled. “Stars and Moon, guide me tonight” he whispered to himself. I smiled and leaned my head back against Neteyam.

Neteyam and I parted ways so he could have a chance to figure out his emotions in peace and quiet. I was walking along the beach, starting to wonder where Lo’ak was. I started to look around for him, calling out for his name, it was becoming Eclipse and getting dark. I started to get a bit worried as it's been hours since I last saw him. “Lo’ak!! This isn't funny! Where are you?!” I grew frustrated as I had a bad feeling in my stomach.

I sighed and gave up looking around the beach as it got dark. I decided to check back at home to see if he had returned. Unfortunately, I didn't find him, I was about to ask my father but saw him talking to Kiri. Soon after Neteyam comes storming in with Ao’nung, holding him by his queue and pushing him towards Jake. “Tell him what you told me!” Neteyam snarled in anger. I walked closer as my heart dropped in fear and anticipation at what may have happened to Lo'ak. Ao’nung looked nervous and took in a shaky breath.

As soon as Ao’nung spoke, I felt my heart drop to my stomach and my ears ringing. I sprinted out of the marui and called for Oare. I made the bond and started flying over the ocean, trying to spot Lo’ak. I was scared he was hurt or worse, dead, especially since the reef is a dangerous part of the ocean. “Please don't be dead, please don't be dead!” I cried to myself, terrified that I couldn't protect my brother, my heart felt like it was pounding in my chest and I felt like I couldn't breathe. I heard the horn playing, indicating Lo’ak had been found. I quickly flew back and landed with Oare. I hope they found him alive and not his body. I quickly gave Oare a treat and sprinted toward where the large crowd was. I felt like I was going to throw up from the stress.

I pushed past the crowd, my father, and my mother, and slammed my body into Lo’ak, holding him tightly against me and crying while pressing my face into the side of his head. My ears were still ringing, but I heard that my mother was speaking. “No. My son knows better than to take him outside the reef.” Tonowari looked over at Neytiri and made Ao’nung kneel. “The blame is his”

“What the hell were you thinking?!” I screamed at Ao’nung as I let go of Lo’ak. “You could have gotten him killed you skxawng!! Are you that crazy that you would get the guy who beat you in a fight killed just because your ego was hurt?!” I continued to scream at Ao’nung, as I was furious that he almost got Lo’ak killed. Jake tried to pull me away and calm me down. I snarl at my father in a fit of rage as my emotions were all over the place.

“No. This is not Ao’nung’s fault. This was my idea” Lo’ak spoke up. I looked back at him with confusion as I knew Lo’ak was smart enough to know not to go beyond the reef. “Ao’nung tried to talk me out of it. Really.” Lo’ak continued. I knew Lo’ak was lying, and trying to take the blame off of Ao’nung. “Even if that's true he should have told someone about what you were doing, not leaving you out there for hours to fend for yourself or to die!” I snapped, grabbing Lo’ak’s face as I wiped away some blood from a cut on his face.

Jake urged Lo’ak to move it and started walking away from the crowd. “Dad, you told me to make friends with these kids. That's all I was trying to…” Lo’ak tried to defend himself from Jake, but Jake cut him off with “I don't want to hear it”. Lo’ak sighed “Dad...”. “You brought shame to this family” Jake glared at Lo’ak. “Dad! Don't say that!” I snapped at Jake, hugging Lo’ak closer to me to comfort him. Lo’ak looked defeated and gently pried himself out of my grasp. “Can I go now?” Lo’ak quietly asked. “Any more trouble, I jerk a knot in your tail. You read me?” Jake reprimanded Lo’ak. “Yes sir. Lima Charlie.” Lo’ak replied. Jake softened his gaze and tone. “Go on” he whispered.

I sighed as I watched Lo’ak walk away. “Where were you?” Neytiri asked Neteyam. “What happened to keep an eye on your brother?” Jake turned his focus to Neteyam. “Sorry sir” Neteyam replied and bowed his head. “I should have also been keeping an eye on Lo’ak, I'm also at fault.” I spoke up as I looked back at my family, as Neteyam shouldn't take all the blame as I'm also the older sibling.

“I wish I’d been there” Kiri spoke up with a smile. “The ocean blessed you with a gift, brother.” she continued. Lo’ak, Kiri, Neteyam, Tuk, Tsireya, Rotxo, Ao’nung, and I were all sitting around in a circle, with the sun rising behind us. “The tulkun have not returned yet. And anyway, no tulkun is ever alone.” Ao’nung spoke up. “Well, this one was” Lo’ak replied. “He had a missing fin. Like a stump. On the left side,” Lo’ak looked towards Tsireya. “Poor tulkun.” Tuk softly spoke up, I gave Tuk a hug and rubbed her arm. Tsireya was in thought for a moment because having a worried look on her face. “Payakan” she looked back at Lo’ak.

“What?” Lo’ak quietly asked and looked confused. “It’s Payakan” Tsireya looked back at Rotxo and Ao’nung. Kiri tilted her head in confusion, “Who’s Payakan?” she asked. I looked at Tsireya with a bit of worry as her tone suggested that Payakan wasn't exactly a safe tulkun. Roxto looked at Kiri and then back at the rest of the group. “A young bull who went rouge. He’s outcast. Alone.” Rotxo spoke up. “And he has a missing fin.” he added.

Tsireya looked back at Lo’ak and gently grabbed his arm. “They say he is a killer.” which made Lo’ak shake his head, “No, No” Lo’ak dismissed what she was saying. Ao’nung spoke up and leaned further down to Lo’ak. “He killed Na’vi, and other tulkun. Not here, but far to the south.” Ao’nung slightly shrugged his shoulders. “No, he’s no killer.” Lo’ak shot back. Tsireya softly called out Lo’ak’s name. “You are lucky to be alive.” Tsireya continued.

“I’m telling you guys. He saved my life. He’s my friend.” Lo’ak looked at Tsireya, holding her wrist, then looking back at the rest of us. Neteyam looked down and then stood up. “My baby bro!” Neteyam smirked as he put his hands on Lo’ak’s shoulders. “The Mighty Warrior. Who faced the killer tulkun, and lived to tell about it, huh?” Neteyam continued which led to Lo’ak pushing Neteyam off.

“Neteyam, leave him alone.” I sighed and rolled my eyes at Neteyam trying to tease Lo’ak. Lo’ak then stood up, looking irritated and annoyed. “You guys aren't listening,” Lo’ak grumbled. “Lo’ak, I’m listening,” Tuk called out. “Yeah, we’re listening Lo’ak,” I spoke up and tried to make Lo’ak feel heard. “Lo’ak come back,” Kiri called out as Lo’ak started to walk away from the group. “You skxawngs” I grumbled as I watched Lo’ak walk away.

Kiri, Tuk, Neteyam, Rotxo, Tsireya, and I were all swimming through the ocean on our ilu’s. We all seam up to the surface, gazing in awe at the scenery. “We are here” Tsireya smiled back at us. “This is the cove of the ancestors. Our most sacred place.” Tsireya explained. I smiled in awe as I looked around the cove, mesmerized by its beauty. I lifted my hand to shield my eyes from the setting sun. “Eclipse is the best time of day to be here.” Tsireya told us, as the sun was setting and it was getting dark.

We went more into the cove and came across a glowing underwater tree. “This is it,” Tsireya spoke up. “This is the Spirit Tree” Tsireya motioned her hand forward. I looked over at my siblings and smiled with them as we dove into the water and swam closer to the Spirit Tree. It was such a beautiful sight, the soft glow of the purple mixing with the blue of the water.

I swam next to Neteyam as we connected our queues to the tree and closed our eyes. I was taken back to a memory of when I was a kid. The faint smell of grass and dirt filled my nose, I felt the wind rushing past me, and I felt free. “Y/n wait up!” A younger version of Neteyam called out for me as he followed me through the forest. I was jumping across tree roots and rocks. Spider was also following me, he was a little bit ahead of Neteyam. I could hear his laughter echoing through the forest.

“Hurry up you slow pokes! We’re going to miss it!” I shouted back as I launched myself up onto a low tree branch and kept running as fast as I could. Spider playfully grabbed my tail to pull me back which made me yelp but laugh at his antics. We finally arrived at a clearing in the forest, it had a ton of flowers and enchanting flora. The blue, purple, and pink flowers started to bloom, letting the little fairy-like creatures rise from the flowers and create an alluring and colorful array of patterns as the beings flew around.

Spider lifted himself onto my shoulder to watch the show, and Neteyam kneeled next to me as the color lit up the area. “They look like colorful stars” I softly giggled as I tilted my head in awe. I then grabbed Spider’s and Neteyam’s hands and dragged them to the middle of the area. I started spinning and laughing as I played among the creatures, laughing at the colors filling my vision. Spider cheered as he chased the creatures, laughing as they flew around him. Neteyam smiled and started spinning around with me.

The three of us fell into the flowers and looked up into the sky, the fairy-like beings flying up and spreading out as the left. I felt at peace like nothing could ever hurt me. Then suddenly I was pulled from the happy memory. My eyes opened and the lights of the Spirit Tree were flickering, I saw Kiri seizing and immediately disconnected my queue and quickly swam towards her like everyone was doing.

Tsireya disconnected Kiri’s queue which caused the lights to go out, Neteyam, Tsireya, and I all started to pull Kiri up above the water. Rotxo swam over to help us. I felt my heart racing as I helped Neteyam put her onto his ilu. Tuk called out to Kiri with worry, “What is wrong? What is it?” Tuk calls out as she swims closer. Neteyam sits on his ilu and I help him pull Kiri up to lie across the ilu. “It was a seizure” Neteyam quickly said to Tuk. He then started to perform mouth-to-mouth CPR. “Is she breathing?” Rotxi kept asking with a worried tone. I grabbed Kiri’s hand and looked at Neteyam with worry, hoping it could help her. “Kiri” I softly mumbled.

Kiri started coughing and gasping. “Get her to the village! Hurry!” Tsireya urged Neteyam. “Let’s go! Let’s move!” Neteyam exclaimed. I called for my ilu and helped Tuk onto mine as I started to follow Neteyam. Tuk wrapped her arms around my waist to hang on as I kept up with Neteyam’s speed. “Will she be okay?” Tuk sadly asked. “Of course, we’re going to patch her right up” I reassured Tuk.

I helped lay Kiri on the mat as my mother and father came rushing in the marui, Jake called Norm and Max to ask them to send over help as Kiri had a seizure. Neteyam followed Jake outside to wait for the Samson helicopter to arrive. I kept a hold of Kiri’s hand as I brushed her hair out of her face. “It's going to be okay, you're going to get patched up.” I whispered to Kiri even though she was unconscious.

Jake and Norm came in with the gear from the helicopter, I moved out of the way so they could set everything up and help Kiri. Neteyam gently pulled on my arm to take me out of the marui so Kiri could be healed. I started crying into his chest as I covered my face with my hands. Neteyam rubbed his hands up and down my back to try and soothe me. “Oh Ewya please let her be okay” I mumbled to myself as I was shaken up from Kiri seizing underwater. "She'll be okay" Neteyam whispered into my ear to try and help calm me down.

I saw Ronal walking over to our marui, with Tsireya behind her, holding the basket of supplies. I decided to leave the boys outside and see if I could help in any way I could. Ronal started performing her treatment, and I handed her whatever she asked me to bring her and she gave Tuk whatever she was done with. Soon Kiri gasped and opened her eyes. “Kiri!” Tuk and I both exclaimed with joy.

Neytiri grabbed Kiri’s hand and cried while pressing her cheek into Kiri’s hand. Kiri started crying and I rubbed my hand on her forehead to try and soothe her. "It's okay, you're safe now, you're safe" I whispered to Kiri.

I was helping Lo’ak roll up the hammocks when my ears perked up at the sound of a conch being blown. I stepped outside and saw the Metkayina cheering and jumping into the water to swim into the open waters. I got onto Neteyam’s ilu as we followed everyone else to the tulkun. Neteyam chuckled with joy as we looked around at the science happening before us.

We swam around the tulkun, smiling at all the excitement that was happening. Neteyam then started to chase Ao’nung around, I held onto Neteyam’s waist to not fall off his ilu as he sped around the tulkun and Na’vi.

Rotxo, Ao’nung, Tsireya, Neteyam, and I all swam behind some plants to watch Lo’ak interact with Payakan. I looked confused about what was going on as Payakan opened their mouth as Lo’ak waded in front of them. Lo’ak then started to swim into Payakan’s mouth, which made me look over at Neteyam and then Tsireya in confusion. Payakan then closed their mouth which made my eyes widen in fear and Neteyam tried to quickly swim over, But Ao’nung put his hand on Neteyam’s shoulder and Tsireya grabbed his wrist and signaled for Neteyam to wait.

I kept my head down as I followed Ronal and Tonowari to their marui, with the rest of the group also following along. “You allowed this. You allowed him to bond with the outcast!” Ronal reprimanded her children, her breath was shaky from her trying to control her anger. Tonowari walked closer to Tsireya. “Tsireya. You disappoint me, daughter” Tonowari scolded her, which made Tsireya slightly flinch. Then Tonowari turned to Lo’ak, right as our parents came up to the marui and stood behind us. “And you, son of a great warrior, who has been taught better.”

“Payakan saved my life, sir. You don’t know him.” Lo’ak retorted. Tsireya tried to tell Lo’ak to stop. “Sit” Tonowari motioned for Lo’ak to sit. Which Lo’ak complied. Then he screamed at all of us to sit down which we quickly did. “Hear my words, boy. In the days of the First Songs, tulkun fought amongst themselves, for territory, and for revenge. But they came to believe that killing, no matter how justified, only brings more killing. So all killing was forbidden. This is the Tulkun Way.” Tonowari then took a deep breath.

“Payakan is a killer, so, he is outcast.” Tonowari continued. “I’m sorry, sir. But you’re wrong.” I grimaced and slapped Lo’ak’s arm. “Lo’ak! You realize you’re speaking to Olo’eyktan, right?!” I scolded Lo’ak as I knew if he continued he could get into big trouble. Lo’ak tried to continue but Jake stopped him. “That’s enough!”

“I know what I know” Lo’ak added, which made Ronal snarl and Jake step closer to him. “That’s enough.” Jake repeated but with a bit more force in his voice. “I’ll deal with this one,” Jake told Tonowari as he roughly grabbed Lo’ak’s arm and dragged him away.

#avatar 2022 #avatar the way of water #avatar way of water #avatar x sully!reader #loak sully #neteyam sully #atwow neteyam #jake sully #jake sully x daughter!reader #lo’ak avatar #neytiri x daughter!reader #kiri x sister!reader #tuk x sister!reader #tuktirey sully #sully!reader #kiri sully #neteyam x sister!reader #neteyam te suli tsyeyk'itan

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neragufetta · 4 months

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Link click S1

This is an incomplete list (apparently I love lists) of details scattered throughout the 1st season (still working on the 2nd, my head needs some rest) which seems to be either: hints to a deeper truth; red herrings; mistakes; meaningless details not to be taken seriously (except, in time traveling story, messing with dates and times would be silly, it shouldn’t happen, right? RIGHT??)

Unfortunately, at the moment I am unable to collect screenshot of the episodes as reference, but if you request them I can produce the timestamp.

Episode 1

Emma’s mother sends her a message at 02:47 of the 15th April 2021. The phone states “Wednesday”. Too bad April 15th 2021 was a Thursday. Why, Why Wednesday. Is that a mistake? Was it meant to say that they live in a different timeline? Is it a hint that shows that Time is already broken?

I had my timeline all done and to simplify it, I was sure that: - 14th at 22:00 – 16apr!CXS dives in Emma - 15th at 10:00 – 17apr!CXS dives back in the present - 16th, before evening – QL states the mission - 16th at 22:00 – CXS dive in 14apr!Emma - 17th at 10:00 – CXS dives back and LG pass the info on the fraud to the client. - 17th, Later that day, the fraud makes into the daily news - 17th evening – Emma goes home, finds spring rolls and blankets, calls her mother, meet Liu Min - 18th at dawn, Emma dies. - 18th evening, LG see the news about her death until I realized that the consensus is that the news about the fraud came out on the 15th already, which would make sense with her not seeing CXS message before coming back home and her parent arriving straight away. But then, How could the news about the fraud reach the public before Shiguang were involved? Another time traveler? A mistake? Which timeline makes more sense? I’m not sure anymore. Is it important? Most probably.

Emma's wristwatch consistently marks times inconsistent with the timeline, which I will just tag as “random watch pics, do not read too much into it” and move on, but I feel I still need to acknowledge them.

Episode 2

Now, I have nothing much to say about this episode, except that it seems to be completely separated from the main plot, every episode is strongly affecting the whole story, why this one does not? They could delete it without affecting the overall plot and it weirds me out, probably because I’m a little bit too paranoid at this point.

Episode 3-4-5

Three major problems with these episodes:

Obviously, the glasses issue: at first I indeed thought it was weird, but then we saw Liu Min walking easily while possessed, so I thought that, somehow, the possessor retains its physical characteristics while diving. But then, episode 12 kindly reminded us of this glasses detail. So what’s going on here? Are physical abilities passed down while diving or not? And in that case, what’s happening, someone put lenses on Chen Xiao? The glasses were not his? Is there someone else possessing him?

Why is Chen Xiao the only one actively asking to change the past? Any other case has always been just about retrieving information.

And why does LG accept? Because I’m definitely not buying that the only crucial node is the actual earthquake. After the dive, Chen Xiao should feel less guilty about that day, and therefore he has no reason to look for the “Fairy” in the first place. Isn’t there a time paradox through and through?

Episode 6-7

Why the date on the Security Camera is 20XX/XX/XX 14:48:12 instead of an actual date? What’s the secret here? Was it meant to hint that time is already broken (again) or was this an easy way to stalling because the authors had yet decided the days of the trip?

IF we agreed that, while diving, past and present time flows at the same speed, the two dives in these episodes overlap in present time:

first dive starts on October 13th at 14:30 in the present and presumably on 20XX/XX/XX at 14:30 in the past, the kidnapping seems to have occurred at 14:55, both in the past and in the past. We can presume that this dive ends way before the 12 hours limit was reached.

second dive begins right before the kidnapping, which again I presume happened on 20XX/XX/XX at about 14:55, then CXS awakes and LG states that the 12 hours period is almost done; the dive ends on October 14th at 02:55, which seems to suggest that the second dive started on October 13th at 14:55 BUT at that time CXS was still inside the first dive.

What’s happening here?? Am I wrong? Is time wrong? My goodness

Episode 8

This one drives me nuts for really no reason, I’m not even sure if I’m correct, BUT on the dial of Dong Yi’s wristwatch watch you can read what appears to be a 15 inside the box where, as far as I know, the day of the month is usually shown. IF this assumption is correct, Dong Yi’s watch marks that it is the 15th, while XSS’s phone marks that is October 21st.

Again, Why? Just why are they messing with our head?

Episode 9

Nothing new on this episode but, if only, this episode proofs that diving doesn’t need to start at the exact time the picture or video was taken, because CXS’s dive occurs somewhere between the 10:00 and the 14:45 of October 21st, while the dive’s time seems to be late evening (from more that 2 hours prior 22.34). Does this solve the issue with episodes 6 and 7? Not sure.

Episode 10

I’ll use this episode to address the elephant in the room: the 10:10 ghost clock!

The photo studio seems to have at least 2 clocks, one on the hall, with a red frame, plus another one in the darkroom.

However, a third ghost clock with a white or blueish frame switches place with the other 2 every now and then. The red clock seems to be working fine, the darkroom clock seems that either it stopped or it is 10 minutes off, the ghost clock always marks 10:10.

WHAT is this clock?! Is this a random clock picture just to fill the scene? Is it a hint that something happened at 10:10?

I, I… I’m lost.

Episode 11

I won't address Lu Guang's thought at the end of this episode but I'll leave them for my season 2 analyses, because they fit there better.

Therefore, nothing much is left to say about this episode, except that the darkroom wall with the clock keeps changing aspect (and even the clock disappears at some point).

But, just for the sake of my mind I will tag this as “do not read too much into this one” and, again, move on with my life.

And this was just season 1, I have no idea how mad it’s going to be during season 2.

#link click #link click timeline #shiguang daili ren #sgdlr #sgdlr timeline #sgdlr is haunting me

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fainthedcherry · 2 months

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ALSO; Here's ANOTHER piece I forgot to post, but was really excited to post. Yeeeah it doesn't get better with my inconsistency and forgetfulness, I know, it's only getting worse haha.

THIS IS A COMMISSION THIS TIME, for my friend Hollowed-Hartlocke on DA and TH!!

Owloette and this outdated, redesigned version of Hoodude belongs to Hollowed-Hartlocke design wise,

Chiri belongs to me (she's in the BG by request of Hart)

Vanilly Hoodude Voodoo belongs to Mattel, and so does Heath Burns (to the right of the drawing.) ((The outfit is not official, I made a random outfit design to fit thematically))

Thank you SO SO much for believing in me, being so patient for me for so many years now!! I am so happy, that you were the first person, to actually pay me in IRL money, what an honour, that my friend is so nice to me man. 🥺💖

Yes, a commission! In this modern day, can you believe it? I've yet to finish 2 more comms, I hope to finish them this year, honest to god. It's so hard to get a grip on some responsibilities, as I gotta figure stuff out appointment-wise with my driver's exams, psychologist-stuff abt my diagnosis still, and ofc, deal with the fact, that I gotta babysit my coworkers (not exaggerating, I keep being bugged on my weekends about my coworkers over some random annoying stuff they didn't wanna do under the normal work-week), and continue to study for tests and finish a presentation until next week.

^As you can tell, it's a bit stressful lately, which is why I had difficulty drawing at home, getting out of bed, to add with cramps post-work, hip- and knee pain in my bones, migraines. it all stacks up, and it doesn't help, that I lately had a spike in my ADHD seemingly acting up again. Been unable to concentrate, been getting overwhelmed, been having some EXTREME time-blindness. It's a bit hard with life lately. :")

It probably makes sense, why I was absent for a good bit. I ache a lot physically, and mentally lately and just. A. LIFE. I DO NOT LIKE IT. BUT MUST SURVIVE IT.

I again, tried something different with the lighting here, being a more direct-light source! I tried to make the lights look harsher, and I think this isn't too bad! Again, in hindsight of 2024, months later, shoulda proooobs made the shading sharper in appearance, still looks too soft, for direct-light hitting this floppy fellow. And also, added a drop-shadow for Heath near the lighting. Dear god, I wish I wouldn't make so many mistakes aaaa.

But oh well, that's what passage of time is, growing up, sucking up mistakes, trying to rid of your perfectionism.

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nobodysdaydreams · 4 months

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Y'ALL I DON'T EVEN KNOW WHERE TO BEGIN. WTF? WTF?

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!

(Or my reaction to Episodes 53-54 of Wolf359).

Welcome back dear readers! Thank you for enjoying my reaction to the Mission Mishap and mini episodes, which were shorter and a lot easier to fit into my busy schedule. I try to make sure I have time to type out good live quality reactions for you guys, so thanks for your patience on this.

Tagging the mutuals who got me invested in this, and if you want to be tagged or untagged from these posts, lmk, or you can follow my blog or simply follow the tag "#bods wolf359 reactions". Anyone who has followed me for a while knows my updates are inconsistent, so I apologize in advance for that and for any spelling/grammar mistakes in my posts.

@sophieswundergarten @oflightningandstars @acollectionofcuriousreblogs @herawell @commsroom @lovelyladylavie

Episode 53: Dirty Work

This episode has gotten a lot of hype from the mutuals. I hope that means Pryce and Cutter are actually gonna bother to show up this time. The two of them did their whole ominous “we’re going to space” thing at the very beginning of this season, well hurry up and go to space then since you care so much! Instead they gave us enough time for Doug to have his radio show arc, which (while it was necessary, and I enjoyed it), just goes to show how much time Pryce and Cutter actually put into this. Which should be evident given that it has taken them at least this long to get to space despite it being their “life’s work” (and for some “higher purpose” they’ll probably monologue about too no doubt 🙄. Hopefully they keep their speech shorter or at least more interesting than Whiskey Boy). Laziest villains of all time sending other people to space the dirty work. Which happens to be the episode title, look at that.

And if I had to guess who is going to be doing Pryce and Cutter’s dirty work, my money’s on Whiskey Boy. Well, actually, my money’s on free-will deprived Hera, but I hope I’m wrong.

Well this is rare. No preview ads to skip through. Huh.

Oh, Minkowski 🥺. We know you didn't want to kill anyone. Don't worry, I will give you justice in fanfic if the show doesn't give it to you here.

HILBERT. Shut up. Even in death, you still don't get it do you? Minkowski has a right to be upset. Even if anyone on this ship makes it back to earth, they are still gonna be extremely traumatized.

Doug, what are you up to now?

And no, Lovelace. Minkowski is not okay. None of you are okay.

"23rd time is the charm!" That's the spirit, Doug! 🥰

Oh right, the reset that Hera has been putting off.

Lol, Hera's "Good Boy". There you go Doug. You see, he can be taught.

"Get him to do what he's told!" Well that would likely be Hera's department.

Not the bottles of beer song. I swear, why are Kepler and Jacobi even still here? What are they contributing? 🍻 "Don't do anything stupid?" a bit late for that.

Um...what is this? Who was that? Wait is that Maxwell's ghost talking to Jacobi?

Do not be a bad guy again Duck Boy. 🦆 That is how your friend got killed, remember? Do you want to be a dead duck?

Well at least we got some music. Nice work, Doug! 🎶

VERIFICATION CODE WHISKEY. a;lsjkfklsdjfk I KNOW Kepler came up with that one. I don't care that it's a legit code, I know it is, but he probably puts Whiskey in every single secret code of his.

Doug. GET BACK INSIDE.

Not demolitions. Jacobi. You fool. You impulsive explosive dumb-dumb. Do not blow up the ship you're on.

"Now I may not be as smart as my late colleague" understatement of the century Jacobi.

Oh great. He's willing to kill them all. Fantastic. Oh and Kepler's coming too. OH. Because Minkowski killed Maxwell and Kepler let her die and had no remorse. Jacobi wants revenge. Oh. Oh no...

"How's your day going?" been better.

Kepler's speech...so was he working with Jacobi this whole time? Convincing plan if he was, but I gotta say Kepler, I don't know if that's gonna work as smoothly for you this time around. Jacobi seemed pretty upset, and there would be no reason for him to reveal that now when he has the upper hand.

SHOOT HIM!

AS:Jlkfjsdlkfjlkds I KNEW IT!!!!!!!

"Pretty please with sugar on top" oh we're going there.

And after hearing about how Kepler bought him explosives...this whole betrayal thing really did go to the next level with them.

"Is this an elaborate prank to teach me a very important lesson?" askjdfkld;jf I love you Doug. 😂 And that would be hilarious.

Poor Doug...that's it Doug! Go into the star! That's what they want! Why do they want this? Who knows. It is weird though. They presumably know that humans die if they do that, and if they wanted them dead there's a million more efficient ways to kill them.

"Blow Kepler's brain's out" "Jacobi...where are you going with this?" Wow, Whiskey Boy really IS slow, isn't he? Maybe it wouldn't have killed him to shed a few fake tears at Maxwell's funeral.

"He was the one who put her in the line of fire, and you should be the one who has to do it."

That does make sense. Because Kepler won't care about shooting Minkowski or anyone else, and while Minkowski certainly wouldn't enjoy dying, she's still tortured with guilt over the fact that she killed Maxwell. But force Minkowski to relive that trauma, intentionally and painfully, and taking everything from Kepler...oh man Duck Boy really did think this through.

"You complete and utter idiot..." YES PUNCH HIM JACOBI! Unconventional grieving process is an understatement.

"I don't want to kill anyone" "Else" ouch.

And yeah... this is Jacobi's "2 birds one bullet solution"

Jacobi is unhinged.

"This is it. Either she shoots you or I kill everyone" yeah it really is over.

Jacobi. You don't need to do this. You really don't.

PHONE CALL?

No. Do not call Pryce and Cutter. Do not call them Jacobi, I don't care if you want to tell them off do not give them information do not call them. Do not call anyone. Maxwell is dead, who does he even have to talk to? Is he gonna call his family? Maxwell's family?

Kepler begging Minkowski for a backup plan...Jacobi really DID beat him...he's nothing now. Though to be fair, he didn't have much to begin with.

"There's no bomb?" Then...what is...oh no. Jacobi what is this game?

"I'm not crazy, that stuff's dangerous!" 😂 Why is Jacobi evil Doug sometimes? I swear if it wasn't for the circumstances they would be friends.

"You've been through plenty, just sit tight. It will all be over soon." I don't know if that's meant to reassure Lovelace or sound ominous Jacobi, but if it was the former, you really gotta work on not sounding like the bad guy.

"Blue, being sucked in, process, killed the original captain Lovelace...the door." There you go Doug! I knew he could figure it out! His science fiction knowledge really comes in handy.

That is a big risk, especially since you don't know what these aliens want, or their history with slimy business man and his evil science girlfriend!

Yep. Leap of faith. Scary stuff, especially when your trust has been broken before.

"Why couldn't it be snakes" Doug, be careful what you wish for.

"How could he? After everything we've been through?" Kepler, be serious. You stalked him, brought him expensive Whiskey and sweet talked a desperate and broken man into joining your murder organization, showed him creepy levels of favoritism at various points in time (especially coming from you of all people), and had zero remorse when you let his best friend get killed. That's what you've been through.

"Will he blow us up" "Yeah." "Can you override his override?" "No. He and Maxwell handled that. I trusted them." Yes, Kepler. And they trusted you. Now one of them is dead. Let's think about this for a moment. I'm sure if we all put our heads together, we can get to the bottom of this mystery of why Jacobi has betrayed you for apparently no reason.

Is Kepler's back up plan shooting Jacobi? OH MY GOSH IT IS...AND YOU WONDER WHY HE BETRAYED YOU? Kepler, you moron, he's probably listening to this entire conversation. He might be deciding which side he wants to back at this very moment. Now is the time to act really really sad about Maxwell and very very broken up about how you treated Jacobi. Not openly admit that you threw Maxwell's life away to get what you wanted, and that you'd throw Jacobi's life away to save your own skin. Otherwise, Jacobi might just end up shooting YOU when he walks through that door.

"Who is putting your station in danger?" You Kepler. You are doing this.

"For once in your life, shut up" About time someone said that Kepler.

"You're hurt, we all are. But you don't have to kill anyone." Oh Minkowski, I know you're trying but Duck Boy is not in a rational space right now. He's literally trolley probleming you right now.

Okay now Minkowski is going insane. Minkowski stop. JACOBI STOP.

If Kepler was a better man he would shoot himself to end this instead of muttering "this is crazy" at the drama that he is directly responsible for. He really does not know when to keep his mouth shut, does he?

"It's not too late to change your mind." YES MINKOWSKI. TEACH THEM GOOD MORALS. It's never too late. Thank you, finally, someone gets it.

"After everything he's done, after everything you've done?" Yes, and after everything you've done too, Jacobi.

Tell him Minkowski. "I know who you're angry at. It's you. Because you could have backed down but you didn't. We both did. We killed two people. And that's eating you up inside."

I love this so much.

"We kill them. Whatever orders, whatever they did, we did it. That's what the riddle teaches you. However you make the choice, you still make the choice. The blood is still on your hands." "You know what doesn't help? MORE BLOOD"

The cycle ends here! YES MINKOWSKI!

"What will?" Jacobi is listening! Come on Duck Boy. You're waddling your way there. You can do it!

"Twenty bucks says I figure it out first" is this really happening???? Is this really happening???? Please tell me Duck Boy doesn't relapse. I need someone to come to reason.

She never had a bullet. You never had a bomb.

YES, Shut Kepler up! FINALLY the team up we deserve.

I'm glad Lovelace and Minkowski are checking in on each other. And you two both deserve command. You need each other. You all need each other.

Oh Hera. She missed the whole thing. 😂

"What did I miss?" Well, Jacobi is a sort of good guy now (or at least an ally), Kepler still sucks, and everyone forgot about Doug.

Wait. DOUG WHAT ARE YOU DOING?

NO DOUG. NO DOUG NO. AT LEAST GO BACK TO THE SHIP AND TALK IT OUT WITH THEM FIRST.

Well that WAS a wild ride. Maybe one of my favorite episodes so far. I can see why y'all were hyping it up.

Episode 54: The Watchtower

Huh. No more pre-episode previews again. And who is this?

Oh Doug. Oh dear. Doug, you poor thing, I'm glad you had a breakthrough but you probably should have talked this through with everyone first.

Doug. Oh Doug. You're the main character and there are a lot of episodes left. You can't just casually throw yourself into the star midway through the season and die like that.

Something is coming out of the star? Reaching out towards, Doug? Oh boy. Well...

...yikes. What is he saying?

Hera is probably listening to this like "oh Doug...Doug what did you do?"

I love how Doug is still talking to Hera. 💕 "Any objections? Good girl." Well that certainly parallels the last chapter...

Wait. Two more stars? Triple star system? That's pretty cool.

Um. What is that? Aliens? ...hopefully nice aliens?

...or not. Oh dear.

...and um. Where is Doug now? Woke up? Woke up from WHAT?

Did the aliens put Doug back in the ship?

Or...is this now clone Doug? I hope not.

Well at least there's breathable air and gravity in this alien hotel.

Mirror? Yeah that is a creepy touch. Considerate, yet creepy.

Self-repairing mirror? Again, cool but creepy. And Doug is prefect for this. They got the movie from YOU MIND Doug. They built this creepy hotel for you, I'm guessing.

And when the alien shows up, I bet it's gonna be one that looks like you or your loved ones given that they used your voice already.

What was that noise?

Are they just keeping him there?

"Let's get our probe on" Doug...they are. What do you think this is?

Yep...alien Doug. Hi alien Doug. :) 👋👽

"Tell me this isn't where I die and you take my place. My dad always said I'd die if I wasn't more careful..." it's alright Doug, I've been told that myself plenty of times.

What?

Words. Speak more words.

Why do they need Doug to speak words?

Ah yes. Mirroring and learning. That's what they want. But why? Why Doug?

Crippled by a language limited by what? Yet achieving interstellar momentum? Uh...what? Symbiological base set of language?

Doug singing the alphabet 😂

DIE????

What is die? The concept is unknown? Oh...oh dear. Explain that it's a bad thing Doug. Explain that it's a very bad scary thing.

"I hate it when Kepler and Jacobi are right" Don't we all Doug, don't we all?

Stops existing!

Incomplete understanding of the universe.

Yes, yes, to dust you shall return, no matter is created or destroyed it simply changes form, but you seem very unnaturally calm about this.

All matter is reused and repurposed. Ceasing from existence is not possible. ...well that's true...but...YOU are something else now. YOU are gone. Something else is in your place now.

Bob. Bob. "Limited time?" "Unsuitable for his biology?" So you DO know what death is. Because you understand that a place unsuitable for his biology = no Doug.

Wait. In the NETWORK? WE? Bob. Are you a hive mind?

"You learned to speak English?" "Correct. It has also lead to debate over whether YOU can speak English." Dang, they really came for him there.

The process? Why are you evaluating Doug?

"Terms you can understand may take some time" Well for super intelligent beings, you should be smart enough to dumb it down.

Don't like that laugh. "A place very very far away from here." Interesting.

"The farthest point away from civilized space"

I see. And what exactly does civilized space look like?

"Discomfort should pass quickly" time is relative, so I hope you're right, Bob.

He gave Doug knowledge? Well, that might be a good way to one up Cutter.

Okay transfer between stars...I'm guessing no, because they didn't use the sun. Huh. I was correct.

Red = no, Blue = go. Well, Bob, sometimes the basics are all you need.

Another species. Rearrange matter? I see. So they are basically aliens with god-like powers that join together to form a superpower.

And they're recruiting humans...but they seem unimpressed so far. Why would they...oh.

They want the music don't they? They've never...they don't have music, but they like it for some reason.

Well then just send them up a band, seems like an easy solution.

Examination, evaluation...surrogates of specimens?

"Unnecessarily dramatic description" "The wolf doesn't even know it's a wolf!" "We arranged atoms" "You brought her back from the dead" "The distinction is irrelevant" Doug, please explain it to them. They really did do Lovelace dirty.

OH MY GOSH THIS IS EXACTLY LIKE WHAT CUTTER DOES TO PEOPLE. Spy on them, and if he likes them, they get to join his special secret club. And if they don't like you...I think we both know what happens Doug. They DO have a concept of death. They just prefer not to call it that.

"Ideally isolation" Well at least they are semi-ethical.

"If they can't be isolated" "redistribution into different atoms" SEE I KNEW IT. They call it redistribution because they can't accept the moral idea of killing people.

"They are given a new purpose." Bob...Bob this is immoral. This is horrifying.

"Terminology is inadequate" his terminology is spot on Bob.

"Our interest in your species is not moral. It is technological" Yeah Bob, I think you made that VERY clear when you said you were willing to kill everyone on Earth if they didn't play nice.

You don't deserve our music Bob. Not one note. Which is...a sentence I never thought I would type as a reaction to this show, but here we are I guess.

They can turn back time, escape death, and traverse space, but they don't have music Doug! Most of their language isn't auditory. They have it, apparently, but not to the extent where they'd develop it.

Commander Zhung...valued the tech more than anything.

Oh. I'd like to have met Commander Zhung (I hope I'm spelling that right). She sounds...she sounds nice if that was her reaction to hearing music for the first time.

"You haven't figured out sound recording?" No, Doug. "The music?" There you go, Doug.

And um...I think the aliens might be more into the oldies and by oldies I mean the classics Doug. The old school classics. Stick to classical music. Not sure they're ready for rock and roll or rap or pop or country.

In time they'll learn more about each other, slowly. Okay...so they have some time. That's good. 14,000 YEARS? Oh no wonder they don't fear death. They live a ridiculously long time. And yeah Kepler is in for a treat.

And then...he woke up.

But um...where has he woke up? Near the star? But where is the ship?

"Everything is completely under control"

Why...why does Minkowski sound like a robot? I mean, she usually sounds pretty strict before she snaps at Doug for risking his life, but the actress sounds distinctly creepy here, I don't like it.

Creepy music? Hera struggling and begging him to run?

Oh no. Oh no no no no no...Cutter and Pryce came didn't they? Oh no...Oh no...

Oh Cutter, you bastard.

And I don't have time to listen to anymore tonight. Or this weekend, or for a while, gosh DANG IT, BUT THAT WAS SO GOOD.

Well, I hope you guys enjoy this. I have a lot of emotions so I'm gonna post this with no edits and scream about it in a discord chat somewhere. Bye!

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fangirlinsweden · 1 year

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Just One Kiss: Part 19

Part 19: Better with You

Pairing: Steve Rogers x Reader

Warning: Kissing, arguments, nothing to major

Count: about 5900 words

Summary: You have been suspended from work and do not know what to do with yourself. Then in just a matter of hours, you find yourself on a plane to Montana to stay with people you have never met before. And as if that is not enough one of the men you are supposed to get to know is handsome enough to make your knees shake.

A/N: I do not know anything about the professions that are detailed in this story. I have googled most things I did not know and therefore there can be some inconsistency.

English is not my first language, so there will be mistakes.

And a big thank you to the amazing @dreamcatchernightsky not only for giving great support and helping me stay motivated but also for the amazing dividers for this story. You are AMAZING!

I also want to give a big thanks to @banditthewriter & @kaunis-sielu & @maw000 for their support! Thank you!

And a big thank you to my incredible Cat for being my beta reader! As well as @dreamcatchernightsky

“We make them fake a relationship.” Peter looked smug. “Why and how?” Nat looked unimpressed. It sounded like a cheesy romance movie. “There will be two brothers on the cattle drive,” Peter smiled. “And I am pretty sure seeing how amazing Y/N is that one or both will flirt with her. Steve will get jealous and not like it. He wants Y/N for himself.” Nat narrowed her eyes. “Your whole plan hinges on those two brothers being interested in Y/N.” Peter rubbed his hands together. “Well, not only that.” Peter tilted his head slightly. “But mostly.” “I don’t think that will work,” Nat crossed her arms. “I think it will,” Peter insisted. “You have not been here and seen how Steve has been acting when the other men around her have shown an interest in Y/N.” Nat lifted an eyebrow again. “You mean Steve has been jealous?” “Jealous, irritated, and kind of on Y/N like a bandage when he can.” Peter chuckled at the last part. “But at the same time, it is as if he has been fighting it, or, well, his feelings. While trying to keep his distance. However, it’s like magnets pulling them together.” Nat still was not convinced. “I really can’t see Steve as jealous.” “Just you wait and see,” Peter promised. Nat decided to go with Peter’s plan, If it did not work, well then she would have the time on the cattle drive to see Steve and Y/N together, and hopefully get to the bottom of it all.

Meanwhile, at the stables, Steve and you were ready to set off. Bucky was looking at you both with a big smirk, but you ignored it. Even if he knew something, you were sure he would keep it quiet. You read him as a man that did not spill secrets around. When you had the ranch at your back and nobody was around, you turned to Steve. “Does Bucky know about us?” Steve looked at you and smiled. “I do not know, but he probably has some notion.” He looked back towards the ranch. “I can’t seem to keep my eyes away from you, and he has commented on me being happier.” That made you blush. Steve saw it but did not comment. All he did was wink at you. You continued to ride in quietly, just enjoying each other’s company, knowing very well that the coming week the two of you would be surrounded by people and would have to keep your hands to yourselves. You could feel Steve’s eyes on you from time to time, and you were sure that he could feel your eyes on him as well. When you looked at each other at the same time, Steve smiled and moved Shadowfax closer to you and Sleipnir, then he was next to you. Steve leaned over to you and kissed you. That was a new experience, being kissed on a horse like that, but you loved it.

Steve stopped at a pole that needed some work and you looked around. You felt secure on Sleipner and decided to lift up your camera. It had been a couple of days since you had taken any photos. First, you took a picture of the mountains in the distance, but then you were distracted by Steve fixing the fence and you just had to take a photo of him. It ended up with you taking more than one as he worked. You lost count of how many you took, as a small smile crept across Steve’s face when he noticed what you were doing. There was something about Steve that just mesmerised you. He turned to you and it gave you the perfect photo of him looking right at you with that smile that made your insides melt. He got up in the saddle in a fast and efficient way that told you he was 100% a born rider. The look he gave you over the shoulder was the next thing you took a photo of. Steve just chuckled and rode away. Sleipnir was getting anxious under you, but you held him still and took a couple of more pictures of Steve and Shadowfax with the beautiful scenery of Montana around the two of them. It was like a painting. Steve, strong and confident on the horse. The bond between the horse and the rider shone through as they got further and further away from you. Sleipnir took a small step forward, so you put the camera back in your bag. “Okay boy, let’s go,” you said, and that was all you needed before Sleipnir raced after Steve and Shadowfax. Racing after Steve made you laugh and feel free. Steve had stopped at another fence post a bit ahead of you when you stopped. Steve came towards you as you swung out of the saddle and onto the ground. You were immediately swept off your feet and into Steve’s arms. He lifted you up and kissed you with a hunger that was intoxicating. You meet his hunger with your own and it felt like you would explode soon. The need for Steve was greater than anything you had ever felt. The two of you broke apart to breathe, and the intensity in Steve’s eyes almost made you lose control of your body. “Not here,” Steve said in a husky voice. “Not like this.” Part of you wanted to say screw it and just jump him right there, but you understood his insistence that the first time should not be rushed. It already made him a better man than any other man you’d ever been with. He lowered his forehead to yours and just held you tight. “I want to,” Steve breathed out. “I just think you deserve so much more.” That. If nothing else, that had probably made you fall for him, or at least help you fall the last part. But a part of you knew that falling in love with him was something you did days ago. Not that you minded, it was just that you were not currently looking for someone - right? then again, it seemed like you didn't need to search anymore anyway. This just showed how life happened when you were busy planning other things. “I think you deserve more as well,” you said and at that, Steve placed a kiss on your nose. “We need to continue,” Steve looked into your eyes, still holding you. “Give me just a few more minutes,” you smiled at him before you captured his lips in a slow kiss. There was still heat, but not as much rush as the first kiss had been.

When you were once again up on the horses and continued to ride, you took a couple more photos and Steve took a couple of you. They turned out better than you thought. Steve may be a novice when it came to photography, but he had an eye for details and scenery. You asked questions about the land as well as the different seasonal changes. Steve seemed to appreciate your different questions and you learned a lot. It was also divine to hear Steve’s voice, since when he spoke it was clearly something he enjoyed talking about. “I have a question for you,” Steve said all of a sudden. “Or maybe more like two questions.” “All right,” You nodded. “The first question: do you think you can help me assign horses to the people who are coming for the cattle drive?” Steve looked over at you. Once again he let you do something that you knew showed how much he trusted you. His horses were something very important to Steve – well, all the animals were important to Steve. It was obvious that he took great care of the things that mattered in his life, not just the farm, but people as well. “Of course,” you smiled at him. “I am honored that you asked me to help you.” “I have seen you handle a lot of horses lately and I know that you are more than capable of helping me with this,” Steve said as if that did not make your heart beat a bit faster. “What is the other question?” you asked, not wanting to get too caught up in what he was asking you. “I was wondering if you could possibly take some pictures of the cattle drive that the guests can get sent to them after they are home if they want.” Steve rubbed his neck. “You know, since we don’t have any souvenirs or anything like that.” “I was planning on taking pictures anyhow, so that is not a problem,” you answered. “You are amazing,” Steve smiled at you and steered Shadowfax closer to you again, and this time when he kissed you it felt as amazing as the other time he did it on horseback. As you kept riding on, the ranch was soon in view again. It meant no more kissing at the moment, and you missed it already. How were you supposed to be able to spend a week with Steve and not be able to touch him?

Back at the ranch after taking care of the horses, you went back to the house while Steve went to his office. Instead of parting with a kiss that you so desperately wanted, Steve’s hand graced yours, and the heat from his hand made a warming sensation go through your body. The look in Steve’s eyes showed you that you were not the only one that would have preferred a kiss. Somehow that made it better, knowing you were not alone in these feelings.

You had expected to find Nat inside, but the house was empty. Not that it bothered you, but this house now felt like home to you and since you knew that both Steve and Peter did not mind you feeling at home, you gladly treated the house as if it were your own. You started with pulling out the bed linen from the bed you slept in while here. You would move in to Nat’s room and a couple would take this room instead. You went to the laundry room with your bed linens and put them in the washing machine and started it. After that, you went back up and cleaned out the bathroom you had been using and packed up your things. You carried it all to Nat’s room and then you noticed that lunchtime was about an hour away and you walked to the kitchen to see what leftovers the fridge held. It was pretty stocked so there was no need to make anything new for lunch. Since Frank was cooking dinner for all the guests, there was nothing to do there. Packing up for the trip seemed to be the best thing to do with the time you had before lunch, but you did not really know what to pack and you did not want to disturb Steve. He had a lot of things to sort out before he left for a week. Even though you knew that he trusted his employees 100% there were still a lot of things to do, especially since the ranch would not just be without him, but Frank and Peter as well. There were more jobs to go around than usual. Adding to that, Billy was not fit for working full days yet, and was banned from lifting heavy items. Which made it all the more worrisome for Steve.

To pass the time before lunch you went up to Nat’s and started your computer to empty your camera and get it ready for the cattle drive. Since you had two batteries, you were not really worried about the camera running out of power before the cattle drive ended, but you wanted to make sure you had enough memory cards with you to take as many pictures as you wanted. You looked through the pictures you had taken of Steve earlier in the day and you realised how many of the pictures looked like they belonged on a book cover. Steve, the handsome and sexy cowboy,the main character of a steamy romance novel. The way he looked made your thoughts turn completely inappropriate to say out loud, but since the two of you were together you were happy to think about them in private. With a big smile on your face you continued emptying your memory cards and making sure that everything was ready for taking the camera on the cattle drive. You put the battery on charge to have it ready. Somehow, you missed hearing Nat come back from wherever she had been. “Hi,” Nat greeted you, standing in the doorway.. It startled you so you jumped high in the air. It almost felt like Nat had heard your thoughts about Steve, since you had a picture of him up on the computer. You were thankful that Nat could not read your mind. “Hi,” you said and smiled at your friend. She came into the room and looked at the picture on your screen. “You really do take amazing pictures,” Nat nodded toward the screen. “That is captivating.” “Thank you,” you smiled and tried to keep a blush from coming up on your face. Since you did not want to be on the spot you changed the picture to one of Bucky that you took as you were riding up to the ranch earlier in the day. He was brushing down his buckskin stud, Cheif and the look of love on the horse’s face was indescribable. You could have sworn you heard a small moan from Nat, but when you looked at her she was looking away from the computer. “I think it’s time to go down and start heating up lunch,” Nat said and left you there in your room. You took that as a sign that she still had feelings for Bucky. Adding the face Bucky had made when Nat arrived you were pretty sure that there was a lot between them both that needed to be resolved.

The talk around the lunch table was mainly on the cattle drive and what was left to do. You mentioned that you had not packed anything yet, and it turned out only Steve had packed. Nat decided that after lunch the two of you should help each other pack. “I think that sounds like a great idea,” Steve agreed. “Nat can help you with what is important to bring.” “I have to admit,” you looked down at the table. “I am a bit nervous about not having enough warm clothes.” “That is my fault,” Nat looked at you. “I thought I had more flannels here, but they must be in New York – not that I know why.” “That is not a problem,” Peter smiled wide. “Y/N can borrow some flannels from Steve.” The man in question almost choked on his glass of water. It was not something any of you had expected. “You don’t mind, do you, Steve?” Nat asked and looked directly at Steve. You had no idea where to look. The thought of wearing Steve's flannels sounded like heaven, but also like it could be distracting as hell. “No, of course, Y/N can borrow some flannels,” Steve said and smiled at you. While Nat and Peter looked at each other, Steve winked at you, which made you blush. They continued to talk about the trip, while you tried to keep your mind on the conversation, but in your mind, you were wearing Steve's flannels and inhaling the smell of him. “What are you thinking about Y/N?” Nat asked which brought you out of your daydreams. “You have this small smile going.” You avoided looking at Steve, because you knew that would make you blush, more than you already were. “I was just thinking that I need to go check on Billy before we leave tomorrow,” You look up and see all eyes on you. Steve's smirk showed you that he did not believe you one bit, but you tried to ignore it. It was his fault for being too damn sexy, you told yourself. The conversation continued and this time you managed to stay present,, and you ignored the looks that Steve was giving you.

After lunch, you and Nat cleaned the dishes and Peter and Steve went out to get things ready for the trip. You helped Nat with the dishes even though she tried to protest. You told her it was a fair trade since she would be helping you with the packing. After that, the two of you went upstairs to pack. Since you had already moved your stuff to Nat’s room earlier in the day the two of you walked directly there. You had insisted that you could sleep on the floor in Nat’s room, but she said that her bed was big enough to share and it was not like it would be the first time either. Nat walked to her closet and took out two saddlebags. Then she handed one to you and took the other one to her bed. You looked down at the saddlebag and then up to Nat. “How are we going to fit all our stuff in this?” you asked. Nat looked over at you with a smile. “Just bring the necessities,” Nat answered and you looked at the saddlebag again. “How about a backpack instead?” You gestured towards her closet hoping this was all a joke. “If you have a backpack on your back every day, long days on a horseback, you will not be as agile on the horse as you might need,” Nat explained, putting a pair of jeans in her saddlebag. “And I bet your back will be screaming after just one day.” It made sense but still. “But what should I pack?” you looked down at the bag again. “You can start with deciding what pair of jeans you want to pack,” Nat nodded toward your pile of jeans. The ones you bought in town. “One pair of pants?” You looked at the packing and back to Nat. “Yes, as well as the ones you will be wearing when we ride out,” Nat said and went back to packing. “But... but...” you got out. “Y/N, that is more jeans than Steve and Peter will bring,” Nat smirked at you. “But what if something happens?” You asked, still not sure how to make it with just one pair of extra jeans. “That’s why you are packing one extra pair,” Nat insisted and you decided to drop it. Nat mentioned a few more things you needed to pack, but then a question that had been nagging you since you came back from your ride with Steve just needed to be answered. “So, what did you do today?” you let it out. Looking over at her to see if she turns toward you. “Oh, I just went into town for a couple of hours and looked around.” Nat did not turn toward you, but her posture stiffened. “That sounds nice,” you smiled and tried to ignore Nat’s reaction. “It was,” Nat said and you could hear the smile in her voice. “That’s good,” you nodded and turned back to the saddlebag in front of you. “Please tell me that I can at least bring underwear and socks for each day,” you looked over at Nat who had now turned toward you. It must be pleading in your voice. “Of course.” She let out a small laugh. “We are not animals.” It made you relax some. And when Nat was not looking you put in two extra pairs of underwear, because you never know.

Nat had told you that you probably would want to change your flannels every other day, as well as that you needed to sleep in flannels to keep warm in the tents. You only had three flannels, since you had given Nat’s flannels back to her, so she would have enough. That meant that she needed to borrow at least three flannels from Steve. She hoped she could borrow more, if she could just get them in the saddlebag. This would be the least amount of things she had ever packed while traveling. But now she had everything other than those flannels packed.

While Y/N was packing in the saddlebag Nat was trying to keep calm. She hated to lie to Y/N. Not that she technically had done that, it was more an omission than a lie. Part of her wanted to turn and confess to Y/N, but she knew what Y/N would say about what Nat had found out in town. Steve was the stand up guy, everyone was saying. Nat had to admit she had been proud of the things that her brother had helped people with, without wanting anything in return. How could she have been so blind to him and all his kindness all these years? Had her grief destroyed her relationship with Steve? It sure had with Bucky. It pained her to see that she had painted both Steve and Bucky as villains, while they were the furthest away from it.Nat had not only heard things about Steve in town, but there had also been a lot of talk about Bucky and the other veterans that Steve had employed on the ranch.

Nat needed to talk to both Steve and Bucky, but before she talked to her brother, she needed to figure out what to say. There was only one person who could help with that. Bucky. She decided then and there that she was going to see him that evening, whether he wanted to or not. “I need to talk to Steve about those flannels,” Y/N said and broke Nat out of her thoughts. “Why don’t you just go into his room and borrow some from his closet?” Nat looked over her shoulder at Y/N. Wait, was Y/N blushing? “That does not feel right,” Y/N looked down at the floor. Nat suppressed a laugh. “I think that Steve and Peter just came back in,” Nat nodded towards the door and Y/N nodded. “Well, I’ll go down and ask him.” Y/N smiled and left the room. Nat looked after her friend and realised that Peter was right about Y/N and Steve. There definitely was something there. Now they just needed to make sure that Steve took the step and showed Y/N what he felt.

You walked down the stairs slowly, not wanting to rush down to Steve. The blush on your face also needed to disappear. In the hallway, you took a few breaths before you went to look for Steve. As you step into the kitchen Peter and Steve were having a heated conversation. “I need my Nintendo with me.” Peter all but stamped his foot on the floor. The face he made almost looked like a toddler having a tantrum, with pouty lips and glazed eyes. “No,” Steve crossed his arms. “You started this cattle drive and you are going to have to put them first.” “That is not fair,” Peter groaned. “Yes, it is,” Steve said calmly. “How are you going to learn your lesson if you don’t have to spend time making sure everyone is having a good time and helping them if they need help?There is no going away somewhere to play some game.” “But-” Peter started, however apparently Steve had enough. “You should be glad that I am not taking away your phone for the week as well,” Steve said, still keeping his temper in check. It made you realise just how great a father figure Steve was. He could handle this. Just as you were about to leave, Nat came up behind you. “What is happening?” she asked, which made Peter and Steve turn toward the two of you. “Steve won’t let me bring my Nintendo,” Peter whined, ignoring the look Steve gave him. “Which is just right,” Nat agreed with Steve, and it was hard to see who of Steve and Peter were most shocked at that statement. “What?” Peter said in utter disbelief. “This is your doing.” Nat crossed her arms. “You need to take responsibility during the cattle drive and you can’t be playing Nintendo.” That made Peter look down at the floor, while Steve smiled gratefully at Nat. It felt like kind of a strange family drama that you should not be a part of, but that was when Peter looked up at you with pleading eyes. “Don’t even start with me.” You held up your hands. “I agree with Steve and Nat.” Peter let out a groan and walked away. Nat chuckled and walked after him, leaving Steve and you looking at each other. “How long did you stand there?” Steve uncrossed his arms and walked toward you. “Long enough to understand how patient you actually are,” you smiled. “Were you looking for me?” Steve stopped just in front of you. “Yes,” you nodded. “I was going to ask if you could pick out a couple of flannels I could borrow?” “Why did you not just go to my closet and pick some out?” Steve tilted his head to the side and looked at you. “I... I did not want to invade your privacy,” you got out. “It felt wrong to go in there without being invited.” Steve took one step closer to you. Now he was as close as he could be, without your bodies being pressed against each other. “You are always welcome into my bedroom,” Steve wet his lips. “Always.” “Oh,” you got out and swallowed. “Come on,” Steve chuckled. “Let’s get you those flannels you need.” Steve turned you around and together you walked up the stairs. You didn’t see either Peter or Nat, and it almost felt like you were going to Steve’s bedroom to do something else.

Together you turned towards Steve’s bedroom door and he opened it, ushering you inside. It did not register with you that he closed the door behind you. The room was not what you thought it would be, it was better. So much better. All walls except one were grey, and the other wall was a dark blue. The bed was big and the frame was some kind of dark wood, with carvings of horses. The bedspread was a dark blue as well, but with stars on it. Like a galaxy. It seemed to fit the room. By the balcony stood a telescope and you could see Steve in your mind standing out there looking at the night sky. By the big window beside the balcony a sturdy desk stood. However it was not workthings on the desk, it was coal, crayons, watercolors and sketchbooks and so on. Steve painted? That would explain who he could compose the pictures so well. It was then you noticed some sketches and paintings on the wall. You took a step forward towards them.

What Y/N did not notice was that Steve was watching Y/N as she was taking in his room. He liked seeing that small smile on her face and he took it in as she approved of his room. Part of him wanted to explain the room and the different pieces in there to Y/N, but decided against it. It was better to see what she would say. He noticed the moment she understood that he had painted the paintings on the walls. She walked towards them with a small sound escaping her lips. Was it a sound of liking or…? Steve decided to ignore it. He walked over to his desk, kind of happy he had put away the drawings he had done of Y/N. She had been plaguing him since she arrived. When she walked towards him in the airport, he knew he needed to paint her. But now he knew it was so much more. He stood there looking at Y/N, trying to read what was going on inside her head.

You were mesmerised by the paintings. All of them had Steve’s signature and you knew that he had put his heart and soul into every one of them. You saw a painting of what you now knew from pictures around the house as his father, Nat’s mother, Peter, Nat, and Steve. He had painted the family portrait together and it had a dominant place in the room. Others were of the ranch, horses, cattle and so on. It was like a map into Steves mind. He was a brilliant artist and you had no idea what to say to him. “Wow,” you breathed out and turned to Steve. He was looking at you with an eyebrow lifted. “Just wow. I have no words.” You took a step towards Steve and then you stopped. “I... I did not know you were an artist.” Steve shook his head. “I am no artist. I just like messing around some.” You walked over to him. “No, you are a really talented artist.” You stood on your toes and pressed a kiss to his mouth. “I am surprised that you don’t have any of these paintings or other in any other room.” Steve shrugged. “It just did not feel right to change anything from how it was.” Steve looked down at you. “And it’s only Bucky, Peter, and now you, that know I do this.” “What?” You let out a small gasp. “Nobody else?” “Well, my father and Melina knew.” Steve looked over at their painting. “They insisted I took some art classes in university, so that I understood that I did not have to be a rancher. That I had options.” “That is incredible of them to do,” you smiled at Steve. “Yeah,” Steve nodded. “I never felt pressured into this. But it was what I wanted.” The look on his face told you that he was honest about that. He was born a rancher and he loved it. “You are incredible,” you said and Steve took that moment to pull you into his arms and kiss you. It was a hot kiss and you did not want it to end, but this was not why the two of you were there. Steve took a step back when the kiss ended. “Flannels,” he said with a husky voice. “Right,” you cleared your voice. “They are in the closet,” Steve said and adjusted his jeans. You looked down and saw an impressive bulge in his pants. You swallowed and turned around. You walked toward the double doors, but walked into a big bathroom instead of a closet. The bathroom was like your dream bathroom, and both the shower and bathtub gave you ideas. So you turned around and walked out of the room. Steve stood where you left him and pointed at another pair of double doors, with a smirk on his face that made you blush. Maybe he had the same ideas as you had about the things the two of you could do in that bathroom. You walked over and opened the doors to the closet, expecting the closet to look like Nat’s closet with shelves, but instead it was a walk-in closet that was more than half empty. You walked in and looked around at all the space. “This was my parents’ and then my father and Melinda’s bedroom,” Steve said behind you. “It took me three years to finally move into this room, and leave my old bedroom behind. I got help making the room, bathroom, and this closet to my own tastes, instead of what it had looked like when they lived here.” You could still hear the grief in Steve’s voice. So you turned around and hugged him close. He hugged you back and you did not want to let go. “Which room used to be yours?” you asked and Steve pressed a kiss to your forehead. “The one you’ve been using since you got here.” That answer. You should have guessed. You took a step back and looked at Steve, the smile on his face and all you wanted was to kiss him and pull him to the bed. But there was a knock on his bedroom door, and Steve left you alone in the walk-in closet. He opened the door to Bucky. “Sorry, boss,” Bucky smirked when he saw you in opening to the closet. “Just wanted to let you know that Nipper got out, but Wanda caught him. Billy is helping her make the enclosure more Nipper-safe.” Bucky smiled at you and turned and walked away. Steve swore under his breath and turned to you after closing the door again. “Let’s pick out some flannels for you.”

You nodded and walked into the closet again. There was a large amount of flannels and they were all in different thicknesses. Steve helped you pick out four and then you took one and tried it on. Something heated came into Steve’s eyes, and he turned around and left the closet. When you walked out into his bedroom you looked almost longingly at the bed and then Steve. He let out a groan and pushed you towards the door. “I better get you out of here, before we both get in trouble.” He said it with a knowing smile and it made your heart beat faster. Steve walked downstairs and you walked to Nat’s room to pack away the flannels.

About an hour later, Steve, Peter, and you were in the kitchen just talking about the trip and the different people’s riding abilities. “Everyone said that they can ride,” Peter insisted, still a bit grumpy from the argument between him and Steve earlier in the day. Steve was a bit reluctant to believe that, saying that a lot of people lied, and not really caring that Peter was still grumpy. You guessed that it came with the territory to deal with a teenager. Together the three of you decided that you were going to look more into these skills as the guests arrived. You looked at the clock and realised that it would be sooner rather than later that the truth would come out. “The bus should be here any moment now,” you said and looked meaningfully at Steve and Peter. “Maybe we should go out and make sure people feel welcomed.” Steve mumbled something under his breath, that you can’t hear, but you were pretty sure it was something as they weren’t really welcome. It made you chuckle. Peter walked over to the counter and picked up the clipboard. Just as Nat walked into the room, her phone started to ring. She looked at the display and then up at you. “I am sorry,” Nat said. “I really need to take this call, it’s work.” With that, she turned around and left you alone with Steve and Peter. “Well, let’s go,” you smiled and together you went out. This would surely turn out to be a disaster since Peter was still upset over the Nintendo. It was one of those things that clearly showed that Peter was still not an adult.

Just One Kiss Tag List:

@marvelettesassemblenow

@et-homephone

@couldabeenamermaid

Everything Tag list:

@buckysmischief

@allaboutthebooz

@dreamcatchernightsky

@leosandbuckysgirl

@stumbleonmywords

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If you want to be added to this series tag list or my everything tag list, please let me know.

I am sorry if I have missed someone on the tag list. Life has been crazy lately and I just gotten back to writing again

#Just One Kiss #Just One Kiss part 19 #Just one Kiss series #Steve Rogers AU #Steve Rogers x Reader #Steve AU #Steve x Reader #Captain America AU #Cowboy!Steve Rogers #Cowboy #FangirlinSweden #Marvel AU #MCU AU

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ghostofsnails · 2 months

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rambling about art "Perfectionism" (+ my experience)

Lately I've been looking for advice about curbing perfectionism but couldn't find anything that worked for me. I feel that so much of the advice out there is just too surface level. It wants to target what I consider the symptoms (perfectionism itself / fear of messing up) and not the real source of the problem, or the "why", which is something that will look a little different for everybody. If you really want to curb perfectionism, the serious answer, in my opinion, is to start by looking inward. If you've done that and found that you're anything like me, with problems that feel like compulsive fixing, uncontrollable hyperfocus, and/or paranoid thoughts that your art career is doomed and everyone is secretly making fun of you because the angle of your oc's mouth is off by 2 degrees, hearing the advice that looks like "Here's a fun little drawing exercise to do every day!" over and over again is probably starting to feel more demoralizing than anything. So instead, here are some tricks/reframing devices that I use in place of some of the really general ones.

The first piece of advice I see everywhere is to "make bad art on purpose" to get over the fear of making mistakes. As a literal exercise, this just doesn't work great for my specific problem. Sure, I can draw some crappy sketch in 5 seconds if I want or waste all my spoons on making something I hate, but it offers no real support in terms of my "compulsive fixing" issue, which is where everything really goes wrong in my process. If it was as easy as saying "I'm just going to Not Have Compulsions!" I wouldn't be here writing this. But I have learned to relieve a small amount of the paranoia and anxiety that my compulsions stem from with the following exercise!

Essentially, I look through some of my favorite artists' work and find some stuff I really enjoy. While I do that, I look for mistakes, confusing choices, and inconsistencies in the work. I then ask myself: Why do I think this art piece still works so well despite all these errors? Does seeing these errors change my feelings about the piece or about the person who made them for the worse? (Spoiler alert, the answer to the second question is always no.)

I will then literally repeat the answers to those questions over and over and over again to myself while I draw. Does this completely or even mostly fix the problem? Definitely not. But if you're like me and at the point of desperation, this is something that's had a small yet significant impact on my workflow and my mindset as I approach making art in general. If my favorite artist can make a weird mistake on something and I love the piece anyways, then maybe it's okay for me to also make and leave in a weird mistake or two. The other good news is that I've noticed the effect of this has increased over time! In the past few months, and for the first couple of times in my life, I've been able to actually ignore a small handful of my compulsions to fix things while drawing. Which is actually so insane and probably my proudest moment of "invisible" progress I've ever made.

It's definitely worth noting, however, that this exercise is not going to work if you don't or can't approach it in good faith. You cannot give up immediately with "I'll never be this good, this artist's work is perfect." Nobody's work is perfect. If you look for ages and genuinely can't see any mistakes, that probably means you're looking at an artist way outside your skill level, and believe me, I've been there, it's super demoralizing. That's why most of the artists I look up to now are those whose work is just a few levels above or next to mine, because being able to spot errors not only makes their work feel more authentic and easily relatable, but functionally speaking, it keeps me inspired without getting locked into self-pity mode.

I'm obviously not going to put any artists I love on the spot here, but I'm going to list a few errors that I myself see very frequently in my specific corner of the art world: Inconsistent or straight up weird limb lengths, floating facial features, broken lines, color spill, and awkward tangents. Often times, the "errors" I notice aren't even true errors, just results of stylization that I get paranoid about in my own work. And this is super important too -- seeing those kinds of "errors" in art that I unabashedly love helps to soothe the paranoia that I'm doing something "wrong" or that everybody secretly hates me because I drew the eye 2 pixels too far to the right.

Other times, what you notice doesn't have to be an "error" at all. Maybe you just see untapped potential or find something that you would have done differently. For example, maybe you think a different light source or perspective could have improved the atmosphere of a piece. I often feel that many of my favorite artists' work suffers from a lack of contrast.

But the point of this entire exercise is that even when I apply a mock version of my compulsive behavior with art that I love and pick it apart as much as I possibly can, I realize that I STILL LOVE the artwork I'm looking at just as much if not more despite all the "mistakes". Rarely do the errors take anything away from the piece that they don't replace with a sense of life and authenticity. And as a bonus, now I'm ten times as excited to go draw and try out some new things!

And for the record -- this isn't the sort of thing I dedicate "15 minutes a day!" to doing, but something that comes pretty naturally to me whenever I come across art I really love. And speaking of TIME, one other piece of advice I see everywhere is to set a timer and give yourself just a few minutes to draw such and such. This is a piece of advice that logically I know SHOULD work, and despite the fact that it DOESN'T for me I would STILL recommend it heartily. My only problem with this piece of advice is that my brain just does not work this way. Time is just way too arbitrary and setting a "fake deadline" doesn't do anything to fix the issues that are making me take forever in the first place. So instead, in order to try and improve my speed in my digital art, I've started to stay more zoomed out of my canvas as I draw. This better mimics the experience of sketching on paper, something that's always been easier for me since fixing mistakes is so much less convenient than it is on a digital program.

Don't get me wrong though, if you're like me and used to drawing while so zoomed in you can count the pixels, this is going to be even harder than it sounds. I avoided this piece of advice for years because it was so viscerally uncomfortable to let go of the feeling of "control" I had over my pen strokes while zoomed in. But I gave in a few weeks ago when I was having such a hard time getting a pose down after days of attempts that I was willing to try anything. And honestly, the results were a MUCH needed morale boost. I saw improved speed, dynamism, and stylization pretty much instantly. I've been pushing myself to do this with all my subsequent art pieces and while I forget to do it every 15 minutes it's still made a surprisingly large and positive impact on my workflow.

Yes, I still feel the compulsion to "fix everything" in the refinement stage. But if I pair this with the advice above, the amount of compulsive fixes I makes goes way, way down. Especially if I remain relatively zoomed out during the refinement stage!

In conclusion, I'm not saying that the og art advice was dumb or bad or never works. This post is extremely specific to my situation. As far as I know I might be the only person in the world who spends extra nightmarish hours on every piece adding and deleting and readding unnoticeable layer effects, color adjustments, and details and "fixing" and unfixing and "fixing" every conceivable possible detail whilst sitting there begging myself to just stop so I can go eat or move on with my life or do literally anything else. And the fact that on top of that I go into hyperfocus every time I so much as LOOK at my Ipad makes any "take a break" solution near impossible if I don't have a seriously involved outside support system to take my mind off of art, which I don't.

Thanks to all of this plus typical life stuff, I've been drawing less and less in the past few years. It's hard to start anything knowing that once I do, I'm pretty much not going to have a life again until it's finished.

And drawing less also means that when I do draw, I'm drawing much slower, which draws out the length of time I have to deal with these problems and therefore makes them unignorable. I used to be able to finish up a full piece in 5-8 hours, basically a school night, and because it was finished I could focus on my responsibilities the next day until I started to draw again. But now I'm spending anywhere from 8-16 hours on simple bust up character drawings. That's crazy! Honestly reading all this back, I guess it's no wonder I'm so burnt out and exhausted all the time!

I'm never going to completely stop drawing. Even if I wanted to, I don't think I physically could. But I would really love to get to a point where art feels fun and freeing again, and where sitting down to sketch on paper for 10 minutes doesn't mean throwing the entire day away.

So if anyone else out there has got advice for me I would absolutely love to hear it. And I'd also love to hear from anyone who can relate to any of this, because as much as I was joking earlier about being the only one in the world, I haven't actually been able to meet anyone else who gets what I'm going through. And wow it is so difficult to put into words, too. I rewrote this post a million times. But that's all for now! Thanks for reading.

#the dead speak!#rambling #vent

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leporellian · 1 year

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i do think that the barber of seville- the opera, or at least rossini's take- does a better version of introducing figaro than the barber of seville (the play) does. and exactly why the opera introduction works while the play introduction doesn't is because of the audience's placement relative to figaro himself.

beaumarchais makes the audience way too comfortable with the character. for one thing, figaro's entrance is casual. he comes in tweaking a song he's been writing- this is a figaro vulnerable enough with the audience to immediately show us something unfinished, which is an immediate breach.

then, once he and the count cross each other's paths (in an almost startlingly mean exchange where the count immediately insults figaro to his face and tells him he's gotten too fat to recognize- beaumarchais's script has a certain meanness that works in some ways and doesn't in others), figaro goes into a VERY long recount of his past adventures, which is too long to screenshot properly so just take my word for it.

this is all entertaining, and some details are interesting, such as figaro's ambition to become a playwright. but it's probably only interesting to those who come back to read it after having seen the figaro operas, because there's no way an audience would be willing to sit through all this exposition. and it also immediately soils any sort of mystique figaro has. figaro is a nuanced character but he is still a trickster, and one of the most captivating parts of tricksters is how enigmatic they actually are.

but the opera has a fantastic solution to all of this. you're no longer figaro's friends whom he is telling everything to; as for all of figaro's insight he is also cynical enough to lack genuine friends. you're his customers.

there's a reason this aria is one of the most famous moments in operatic history. besides the fact that it does slap, it is the most perfect introduction to this character and this world. figaro treats the audience as he does everyone else. he's selling you on himself. there's multiple strokes of genius here- for one thing, figaro tells you all this directly, and there's no way to tell whether or not he's being genuine. the music and libretto even toy with this by purposely shooting for exaggeration. already, his somewhat unscrupulous character is defined without ever even being stated directly- and yet, god damn he's putting up one hell of a sales pitch. at every opportunity he remains curiously distanced from his audience. this figaro would never show the audience an unfinished song lyric, heaven forbid! this figaro is a showman. and in that showmanship another detail is completely overlooked: it is stated in the plays that figaro only takes up the barber job when he realizes he can't make money as a playwright. given there's no mention of anyone else there, figaro is telling all of this to himself. he's ultimately selling himself on himself- perhaps one of his most gaping insecurities of all and it's laid out in a way where the audience doesn't even notice. god damn. it's a work of art.

and that's one of the biggest keys to this character. his weaknesses. must be laid out exactly where the audience can deduce them, but they cannot be directly stated and figaro cannot allow himself to get close enough to the audience for them to clock him immediately. just as a strange detachment marks him from the other characters, it has to mark him from the audience.

there's a common complaint that figaro in the marriage of figaro (mozart's opera) appears less competent than his barber of seville self; but this isn't actually a character inconsistency: the figaro we see in marriage is more intimate with the audience, even if he appears uncomfortable about it. the figaro in marriage allows us to see his mistakes, although he doesn't do so willingly. and remember that while mozart's marriage was written after barber it was still written as a companion piece to an earlier barber of seville opera: by this point, we know figaro, although we still do not entirely understand him. (this effect would have probably been heightened had daponte been allowed to keep more of figaro's original last-act speech from the play instead of being forced by the censors to discard it; for that speech is the exact moment where figaro drops every pretense and finally makes himself palpable to the audience. after that point we do not see figaro expose himself in such a way again until one of his very last lines in the original play, when bartolo tells him that he will surely make friends with his new fortune: "-do you think so?")

this is also another sort of dock point for a lot of the operas masquerading around as the 'third' figaro opera. he's an admittedly tough nut to crack, so either he resumes his position as the vulnerable trickster in marriage without any of the corresponding emotional drive in order to suggest the detachment of his character without going the mile and committing to it, or he's reduced to a prop, or he's actively torn to pieces in what appears to be little more than the composer and librettist having their 'mid-2010s DC superhero movie' moment. marriage basically laying the character as bare as he gets certainly makes it a difficult task but it isn't impossible- or at least as impossible as opera-making teams seem to think it is.

#wahoo some figaro analysis. now back to rigolettoposting.#the barber of seville #the marriage of figaro #figaro #opera tag #rambles

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hopeamarsu · 1 year

Text

See You

Joel Miller x gn!reader (sort of, maybe)

Word count 1,3k

Warnings: Death, life in the QZ, funeral pyre, general gloominess

A/N: I do not know what this is, but I knew I had to get it out. It's also been months since I last touched anything in my writing folder, so I'm a little rusty. So there will be mistakes, and there will probably be inconsistencies but I don't mind.

You see enough death at your job, so you really shouldn’t be here. But you can’t help yourself; the image of the dead girl - no more than ten years of age - sitting tied up in the chair hasn’t left you since the body left the FEDRA reception center.

Execution center, your traitorous mind hisses, but you shake it off quickly. It’s a dog-eat-dog world out there and people do what they can to ensure survival. Life in the QZ zone is harsh and oftentimes brutal, but it’s sometimes necessary to be cruel. It’s done for the people still fighting and alive.

At least that’s what FEDRA tells you and you’d never question it or their harsh, unjust actions out loud. You value your own life more. And in some twisted way, you do understand the theory behind all this, your own need for survival thrumming in your veins.

These are the days though when you hate your job and the nightmares it gives you, even if the extra ration cards you take home will ensure you can at least eat well most nights. It’s almost not worth it, shifting through a dead person’s belongings and making sure they are transported to the burning pits.

Seeing their final moments, smelling their decay and desperation, and having to touch their clammy skin in order to be thorough in the search for any valuables left behind takes a chunk out of your own fractured soul every time it happens.

If you even have any soul left to fracture that is.

The scent and sight of death linger on you, in you even after you leave the premises. You can never get rid of it, no matter how hard you try. You can try to drink it away, but it lingers and wraps around your throat at night.

On the hardest of days, those extra ration cards and the dinners remain unused and uneaten.

It falls to you to strip the dead of their humanity, your final task of placing the bag over their heads to preserve anonymity and it weighs you down. With the FEDRA people hovering nervously around you, ready to attack like rabid dogs at the first sign of the dead not being dead enough, doesn’t allow you much time to grieve or show mercy, but you do what you can.

You close their eyes gently and smooth out any hair tangled on sweaty foreheads and you send a silent wish to the deities still out there to allow for the poor souls some rest before slipping the cloth over their features. It’s what you can do before you are more or less pushed aside for the transport guys to take over. Your work done, a slim stack of ration cards in your pockets, you are dismissed unceremoniously.

You don’t normally walk home this way, but today your feet carry you over to the edge of the pits. Your face is shrouded by a cloth to avoid smoke inhalation but your eyes remain open and alert. You watch the people shovel the dirt and ash around the flames, feeling the heat even from a distance away. This is gruesome work and while you hate your own job, it’s at least somewhat clean and silent. Small mercy that.

The tires of the truck crunch on the gravel and you see two people walk toward it. A screech of metal pierces the air as the back is wrenched open and you feel your knuckles tighten.

This is it, this is her next. The poor little girl born into a world too cruel and lost her life when it should’ve only been at the beginning. You have to fight to keep your eyes open, the tears burning you from the inside, but you cannot let a moment slip by. You’ve come this far, you have to watch it until the bitter end.

The woman next to the man backs away from the truck and you know exactly why she does it. The size of the sneakers is devastating. She disappears somewhere but you don’t follow her movements, too focused on the truck and the body laying in the bed. The man turns and you see him carry the dead girl in his arms. Your knees buckle at the lonely sight of the one-man funeral team.

His face doesn’t change, he doesn’t twitch or show any remorse when he drops the body unceremoniously into the flames. He looks past the fire, resigned to his fate. The vacant look on his face signals he’s done this too many times to count and has lost any hope in humanity. It’s both chilling and sad to witness.

It takes you far longer than it should to recognize the set of shoulders and large frame trimming down to a narrow waist. But then it clicks in your head and his expression makes perfect sense.

Joel Miller.

There are numerous whispers of him, hushed and hurried words spoken in the darkest corners of the QZ. The whispers have fear, awe, and lust in them, depending on the person speaking, but they all hold the same information.

They tell the story that he is more a machine than a man, void of emotions and immune to everything. Nothing phases him, nothing touches him. Every bad deed aimed in his direction rolls off him like water on stone. He can make things appear and disappear in places they shouldn’t. His name is respected and feared at the same time, spoken alone or together with another name that garners the same reaction. But he’s alone now, the woman known only as Tess not with him.

He’s a mystery, an enigma of the highest level, and in some way you itch to unravel the mystery. The aura Joel carries with him calls to you in a way you’ve never felt before and suddenly when his dark eyes lock into your gaze from across the fire, everything stops. All sound falls away and your spine straightens instantly. A gasp is lodged in your throat, unable to escape. He is an apex predator, determining whether you are the same or his prey.

You hold his gaze nervously, watching him in silence and seeing him commit every detail into memory. It should make you itch, knowing someone knows you are here, but for some reason, it doesn’t. His gaze holds you captive and you let it happen willingly. You let him see you, the weight you carry and the sorrow you feel for that girl he just buried by funeral pyre.

It only takes a second or two but feels like a lifetime of being under his thrall before his brown eyes flash again and Joel reaches a conclusion of some kind. He tips his head, clearly now more curious than worried about you.

He moves a little, giving you a tantalizing view of a jawline covered in dark and grey hair and dry lips. You lick your own lips at the sight, glad that the movement is hidden by the smoke and the cloth over your face. He is gorgeous, a beautiful man forged in the living hell on earth, and some of the husky whispers of Joel Miller and his talents make more sense now.

Find me later, the lips in question form the order slowly and you can practically feel the commanding tone rumble from his wide chest to yours. You give a jerky nod, unable to deny him. Joel holds your gaze for a beat longer before you have to close your eyes to rid the burning the smoke has caused.

When you open your eyes again, he’s gone from his spot. There is only fire and smoke and the scent of death around you. But you don’t worry about his disappearance as you slink back into the shadows of the building yourself.

You know deep in your gut that if you don’t find him first, Joel Miller will find you.

#joel miller #joel miller the last of us #the last of us #tlou #hbo tlou #tlou spoilers #joel miller fanfiction #cw: death

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mejomonster · 7 months

Text

I used a grammar checker yesterday and i'm still frustrated. Like the new Microsoft Word, it underlined like 77 words as grammar or spelling errors which weren't. Things like expecting me to remove a period (sentences and paragraphs can't end on empty space... they need periods), correcting words like space to spae (the word space was indeed correctly spelled as space...), just in general having no idea how punctuation works (a good reason to reference punctuation with a guide as a writer... because automated grammar checkers make frequent mistakes checking punctuation and aren't reliable). And while i expected those sucky mistakes from a grammar checker (but i'm still frustrated as like... in 2010 at least if i ran spell check on it's own i'd get 90-99% correct replacements and only occasional incorrect spelling suggestions... now spell check is more like 20% accurate so i am better off proofreading for spelling errors myself the slow way). I was ultimately using it just to check my writing tenses. Because switching from past to present tense sometimes happens in stories with flashbacks, and people thinking back to older moments and thoughts, so I wanted to quickly machine check if I'd been inconsistent with my tenses and used the wrong one somewhere. Not a single tense error was flagged by the grammar checker. Maybe i got lucky and didn't make any. But i think it's more likely the grammar checker was just completely incapable of checking for tense, let alone accurately (since it gave 80% false errors for spelling then i imagine it'd flag a lot of correct tense usage as incorrect anyway if it could). I picked a grammar checker FOR it's inclusion of checking for tenses. And it didn't even do that.

It's just fruatrating because like. When i was a kid and a teen, you could run a grammar check and mostly get some quick useful spelling corrections (unless you wrote a name) and it only flagged grammar it was usually correctly identifying (such as changing a comma to a ; or an uncapitalized first letter of a sentence to a capital letter, or replacing a misused word like too with two). You'd get maybe 10 flagged errors in a 2 page essay, at least 8 were usually real errors in spelling or grammar (with maybe 1 being an incorrect suggestion to switch ; with , or to spell a name differently). It was fairly useful, took 2 minutes or less to go through. Now in 2020s if i run a 2 page piece of writing into a grammar checker, i get 77 errors flagged and only 3 are real errors (a missing letter in spelling for 3 words, and a missing comma in a long sentence). It takes longer to manually check all 77 errors and notice why they're actually suggesting i make my writing worse... compared to just rereading with a critical eye. But the grammar checkers WOULD BE FASTER AND EFFICIENT if they just quickly flagged real spelling errors like they used to! I know i may always need to check grammar errors myself, technology has always been fairly bad at something that complex to identify. But spelling? Really? Why is machine spell checking so fucking bad now? Why is it flagging so many correctly spelled words now? It's brutal.

I edited a 600 page book a year back with modern word. The book was already edited, publish worthy, i just was formatting it for print and running spell check in case i backspaced and messed up a word here or there when editing the format for print. The Word grammar check flagged 800 errors. At least 95% were not real errors. The last 5% were mostly names getting incorrectly (but understandable from a machine) flagged as spelled wrong. And maybe 5 errors in the entire 800 error heap were actual missing periods I had messed up in formatting and needed to add back. It took like 10 hours to go through those 800 flagged errors and manually check. Whereas years ago, if only actual spelling errors got flagged, i could've probably gone through those 5 errors and maybe 50 incorrectly flagged names in 10 minutes.

#rant

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otakween · 1 year

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Digimon Hurricane Touchdown / Transcendent Evolution! The Golden Digimentals (2000)

This was weird...I didn't really like it. It was pretty at least?? Okay pretty might be an understatement, some scenes were aesthetic af. It was just the writing, pacing and inconsistencies in the animation that tanked it for me. I got so bored that I took an hour break 30 minutes in lol. I thought I'd be mad that they cut these movies (OVAs?) up for an American release, but now I'm thinking that might have been the right move...

Digimon introduced: Gummymon, Chocomon, Terriermon, Lopmon, Antylamon, Wendigomon, Gargomon, Kerpymon, Seraphimon, Magnadramon, Rapidmon,

Notes:

-Dang those titles are long! I wonder why Digimon has this weird history of having movies that aren't really movies. I read on some wiki that the Ojamajo Doremi movie was sandwiched in between the two parts which is...a choice (kinda reminds me of the Angela Anaconda thing lol).

-I liked Wallace's design, voice and concept (even though he couldn't pronounce his own name lol), but I didn't really like him being so aggressively flirty with the girls? Felt awkward and forced. Also, Western stereotypes strike again!

-How could Wallace possibly not know about the digital world by now?

-The concept of twin digimon is really cool and Terriermon and Chocomon are adorable. I liked Terriermon's voice a lot. I thought he might be voiced by a young child, but I guess his VA was in her 20s...

-I'm kinda confused about who worked on this. There were times when it seemed like there was an attempt to mimic Mamoru Hosoda's style but then it would switch to a style with really heavy line-art that was like almost the opposite style. Also, they would sometimes freeze frame randomly or use shots from the show which was jarring for a theatrical release.

(Look at this cursed Patamon with lips!)

-Some of the best shots in this were close-ups of things (a digivice, a mouse, an airplane, etc.) Like whoever did the background/object artwork really popped off.

-Mimi's star hair looked so good in this style! It looked awkward in the TV series but here they made the stars kind of holographic and dialed back the colors.

-Literally every new digimon introduced in this was great, but I feel they kinda blew the Seraphimon and Magnadramon introduction. They appeared for like two seconds and didn't do much. If you're going to introduce digivolutions that epic, they should probably take the final blow in my opinion (in other words, they should have just been introduced some other time).

-A Wendigo reference!? In MY Japanese cartoons?? I guess they did their North America research...His design is pretty wild, but I like it.

-Not a whole lot of explaining going on this movie. Chocomon "disappeared one day" and then reappears as Wendigomon and is all confused. Where did he go? Why did they treat all of Chocomon's digivolutions as some kind of disease? Usually when digimon digivolve they call them by their new names, but they never used anything but Chocomon. Were the "bad digivolutions" kind of like Skullgreymon?

-Terriermon's ears are spectacular. I love that they drag on the ground and that they puff up when he flies. A+ mon design.

-I kinda wanted to laugh when Wallace was like "there are digimon in Japan!?" But then I remember "digimon" is a portmanteau of two English words so there's that. Why do his digimon mostly speak in Japanese? For convenience I guess, but it's confusing...

-Seeing Hikari and Takeru ride Amtrak was a hoot. Also, I think this is my first time hearing Denver mentioned in an anime (my friend used to live there lol).

-Why did this billboard look so weird?

(It looks like an animation/editing mistake?)

-The whole "random American movie character" thing reminded me of Melissa from the first My Hero Academia movie. I feel like anime has the tendency to go abroad when they want things to feel special.

-Kinda funny how the dub censors guns but then there are characters like Gargomon who literally has funs for hands. Good luck with that!

-Everyone's baby versions were adorable. I especially liked Daisuke's lack of teeth :)

-Did they break a rule at the end there with Chocomon's digiegg reappearing in the real world? Probably.

Yeah this plot was just...weird. And then there there were a bunch of drawn out scenes with no soundtrack and kinda creepy vibes. It just felt like they didn't know what they wanted to do with this one. Nice to look at, but left me kinda hollow.

#digimon adventure 02 #digimon #movies #film #anime #Digimon Hurricane Touchdown #The Golden Digimentals

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nn1895 · 1 year

Text

Walking Through the Woods at Night

Keep your temper. Especially when they’ve done something they know is wrong. Nothing unnerves them more.

Elita-1 smiled and nodded to the senator.

“Thank you for sharing your thoughts with me, Senator Descaled. I will remember them when I’m making evacuation decisions.” She kept smiling as the Senator finally started to realize his mistake.

“I mean, I’m just a senator, ma’am,” he backpedaled so quickly she could smell the tires burning. “I’m sure you’re better equipped to organize things that like.”

“I’m so happy to hear you say that. How kind.” She let him flounder a moment longer, just to let her point sink home. “As you know, living in the Silver District, with several modern defense systems, you and your family will not be our priority in case of an invasion. However, now that you’ve brought it up, I’ll ask my surveyor to check again. We might have overlooked some holes in the District’s defenses.” She pulled out her personal datapad and pulled up her contacts.

“Oh, I’m sure that –“ His optics were darting towards the door. Good.

“It’s no trouble! Here he is…Cliffjumper. Best surveyor I’ve ever worked with. He really gets down to the tiniest of inconsistencies. Nothing is too big for him to take on. Now, you have a few main defenses I’d like to list here. You have ONLY the public defense force, correct?” She put her stylus to the pad and started to scribble nonsense. She checked the time.

“Well, there might be a few, smaller security forces –“

“And ALL the defense taxes this year have gone to the Global Defense Trust, correct? You didn’t use any of them?”

“Well, we might have updated the –“

“And remind me, how many turret guns do your city walls have?”

“Um, eight, Commander.”

Elita-1 pretended to be surprised, but not too well.

“Eight? I could have sworn the catalog you sent me said two…”

“A…clerical error, I’m sure. They probably weren’t counting the ones I’ve installed privately – purely for the good of the citizens of the Silver District!” he hastened to assure her.

“Of course. Well, once my mech comes back with a new survey, I’ll let you know if my evaluation procedures will change. If you have eight turret guns then maybe we can move you even further down the list.” She smiled brightly at him. “Is that all? It is Wellhop Night, after all. I don’t want to be held up further.”

Senator Descaled shook his helm fervently.

Elita-1 loved her job.

0-0-0

Elita tried to keep pace with the unhurried tumbling wireweeds on the way home. She wasn’t, as a rule, a superstitious bot, but in the Darkling Season, well, even the skeptics opened their windows for the spirits and blackened the plating around their optics in the days between Wellhop and Hallowkin.

After missing the last two Wellhops, she wasn’t taking any chances.

The bots around her had already started changing their paint. Every Iaconian she drove past had the tell-tale blackening and faint silver lines of luck-glyphs.

The Polyhexians glowed like diodeflies as they wove in and out of traffic. Their intricate year-round designs were covered up with bold glyphs painted in brilliant glow-in-the-dark temp paint to bring luck during the season. More and more of them had come to Iacon in recent years, running from the unrest she was working so hard to contain.

Elita turned from the main road to their narrow side street and released the vent she’d been holding. Don’t vent until you reach home or demons will follow your spark heat. A Wellhop superstition passed down from her great-great-grandguardian when bots hadn’t yet understood the difference between spark energy and core heat

To ward off demons, Optimus’s friend from the Crystal City had carefully soldered lights up and down his frame.

In Praxus, they were probably already feeding their crystals with actinium and tritium and radium.

She pulled up to their habsuite – to their habsuite – and transformed. Even without the wind, the chill in the air made her plating tingle and her spark spin faster to heat it. The darkening sky was black and star-speckled and impossibly clear.

It’s the perfect night, she thought. She walked up the – up their – walkway, kicking loose crystals back into the edging. The click-clack as they bounced off the walk echoed cheerfully in the quiet. She paused at the door.

Residents: Commander Elita-1 & Orion Pax

She traced the engraving gently. They’d waited vorns to afford their own place together rather than bunking in with half a dozen roommates (Optimus) or the army barracks (her). It wasn’t big – barely enough for two – but it was theirs in a way nothing else had ever been.

She laid her palm on the scanner beside the door and pinged for entry.

The locks clunked and spun inside the – admittedly over-kill �� blast door and she gave it a shove, slipping in through the narrow gap and letting it slam shut behind her again. Another superstition – don’t let the demons in on Wellhop.

“Hello?” she called, transforming her pedes from treads to soft rubber soles and padding through the dark hallway.

“Here!” his voice rang out and it was Optimus tonight, not Orion. “I’m nearly done, love!”

“Coming!” She emptied her subspace on the hall table – non-emergency keycards, datapads, spare blaster – and followed the sound of clinking pots.

The kitchen was boiling hot – like someone had kept the oven and the stove on all day – and her sparkmate was in the middle of it all, carefully sliding treats into their Wellhop tray.

“It smells amazing in here,” she said, looking around at the piles of pans and dirty trays. It smelled like hot minerals and sweet additives and rich energon.

“Does it? I stopped noticing around lunchtime,” Optimus joked and she could hear Orion peeking out from between the words. “I think I’ve finally got it perfect though, look!”

He held out the pan to show her the fluffy lead flavored mallow crèmes dolloped on baking paper.

“They’re perfect!” she whispered. And they were. She grinned up at him. “You’re amazing.”

This close, she could see his optics – so much more intricate than Orion’s had been, how did people not notice? – narrow as he zoomed in on her. For a split-klik, she became his whole world and it never failed to make her spark flutter. He wasn’t just her sparkmate, for that klik, he was the Prime and he was looking at her. Then it was over and she was standing in her kitchen again, looking at her sparkmate covered in smudges of jellied energon, the light outside fading.

“Ah, well.” Then he averted his optics and shifted on his pedes and it was such an Orion thing to do that it made her spark ache all over again.

“Do you think the decorations are right?” he asked, holding the pan of perfect, crystalized spheres. The gooey centers inside sloshed as he lowered them into a row of divets in their small Wellhop tray.

He’d clearly been working all day on it – the lines were mostly straight – he was an archivist and a scribe after all – and all along the edges were swirls and hexagons and clusters of abstract sparks in clusters of three. Across the bottom of the tray – quickly being covered by the treats - were the glyphs for prosperity and protection.

“They’re beautiful,” she said. They’d formed the sheet metal themselves into the simple tray shape. She’d punched out the little divets since her servos were smaller. Optimus had tried on a scrap piece and crushed the metal thin enough to read through.

They were taking no chances this year and every folktale, rumor, and legend said that a homemade tray warded off evil.

“Even if it’s not,” Optimus continued, gently turning the tray to fill the other side, “they’ll taste good.” He inclined his helm towards one of the – many – pots on the stove.

Elita stepped closer and looked inside. The extra sauce at the bottom of the pan was iridescent and so concentrated it was opaque. She dragged her finger through and tasted it. It was impossibly good – it ought to be, it had almost a month’s pay’s worth of ultra-refined energon in it. S&S Brewery had come out with a Hallowkin and a Wellhop line of energon and it was not cheap.

She winced at the memory of going in to buy it. They had both stood awkwardly at the counter, ignoring the looks they’d gotten when buying such expensive energon just before Wellhop. So what if they were a little desperate? She’d miss the last two and there was a terror nipping at the back of her processor that the next few Darkling seasons wouldn’t be any better.

It had to be this one and they were going to need all the luck they could get.

Luck!

“I forgot the silver paint!” Frag! Fragfragfraggityfrag –

“Here.” Optimus handed her a Wellhop kit – silver paint, stencils, extra-thin tipped paint brushes. “I thought it would be better safe than sorry. Bought it this morning after you left.”

She deflated with relief.

“You think of everything,” she said. “Do you want to hop in the washracks first so I can help you or should I –“

It had to be perfect. They couldn’t mess it up this vorn -

Optimus kissed her, large, warm servo cupping her face gently. She let her spark settle, leaning into him.

“Go,” he whispered, pulling back. “I’ll clean up.”

“You do no such thing!” she scolded. “It’s bad luck to clean before getting back from Wellhop night!”

“You better hurry then.”

She smiled and went, her servo lingering in his only a moment.

She washed with more reverence than usual. This would be her first proper Wellhop as an adult. It would be her first time making the journey into the woods.

She’d been an only creation of three very rich and doting guardians. Every Wellhop, her guardians had paid their respects for their ancestors, warded the house against spirits, and spent the evening tell her stories curled up in their berth.

She stepped out and looked in the mirror. Were they proud of her? Were they watching?

She opened the small window in the washracks and carefully smudged a line of crystal paint across the sill. A ward against evil, an invitation to her family visiting from the Well.

“Ready?” Optimus called from downstairs.

“Coming!” She looked once more to the window.

Please, she thought, I need your guidance tonight.

Then she grabbed the paint thinner and rushed back downstairs.

0-0-0

“No, higher.”

“Here?”

Optimus swiped at his helm and missed the paint smudge again. At least the silver blended in better with his paint than it did with hers.

She could admit that choosing pink as a cadet had been a bit arrogant.

Optimus was the color of the sky and oxidized steel- steady and wistful all in one.

“Oh, come here. Bend down.” He bent obediently and she took the cloth from him.

“You are helpless.”

“Not everyone has Commander Elita-1 as their sparkmate. I am but a humble librarian.”

Except he wasn’t.

Elita was sometimes still struck by how impossible her reality was. She would be doing something normal – buying energon cubes on the way home or trying to fix the stuck window – and then it would all crash down on her.

On Wellhop, in the Darkling season, with the sky black and the wind howling, everything was distant and strangely shaded. She felt like she was standing on shifting metal sheets, all going a different way. Except the shifting was going on inside her processor and she was trying to stay upright and look like it was easy.

Were her servos shaking?

The world knew him as Orion Pax, archivist, friendly librarian, Commander Elita’s sparkmate. Only she knew him as Optimus Prime, Matrix bearer, peace-keeper. Possible Leader of Cybertron.

She asked Primus every night to keep that secret. As long as peace continued on Cybertron, Orion Pax would have a place. Primes would remain the stuff of legend.

She wanted to be the only one touched by war.

“Elita?” She lifted her helm. He was watching her and that look wasn’t Orion’s at all. Orion had been kind and concerned, but that look of knowing…that was new.

“I love you,” she said, the feeling shuddering through her spark like a train running freight.

“And I you.” How he could go from fumbling a dish one minute, to speaking like a Gilded age hero?

“It’s going to be okay,” she reassured him. “Everything will work out.”

“Of course it will.” There was no trace of doubt in his face or spark. She took comfort from that – if the Matrix bearer thought they’d be okay, they would be.

She vented heavily anyways, bleeding excess heat to cool her processor.

The smear taken care of, they were ready.

Elita looked over their silver paint once more, looking for mistakes, misspellings, and smudges.

Optimus carefully wrapped the tray in cloth for the journey, tucking it around the corners and tying it snuggly.

“Are you sure we shouldn’t stop by and store and pick up some professional goodies? There’ll be plenty tonight-”

“Don’t be silly,” she kissed him with a loud smack, “everyone knows homemade is better.”

She laid her helm over his spark to hear the stead movement of its spin.

There had been a time when she’d thought this would be impossible.

Sometimes she still did.

0-0-0

It was the perfect night. There was a chill in the air that stung their plating and made her optics tear up. The trees had dropped most of their leaves, baring the branches. They looked like the delicate wiring of a circuit board – silver and copper lines and swirls.

They stood at one of the gaps in the low wall that served as an unofficial entrance to the forest.

There was a faint scent of goodies on the evening breeze: gooey, sweet mallow cremes dyed and shaped like leaves, crunchy energon drops, gelled energon squares and soft jelly drops with rust flakes. She remembered them from her own sparkling days.

“Ready?” She looked up. Optimus was pretty on a bad day, here and now with the metal around his optics carefully blackened and his plating covered in her own messy stencil work, he was devastatingly handsome. He looked like something out of a Hallowkin storybook.

“Ready,” he whispered back. She looped her arm through his and they stepped into the forest, their pedes stirring up the fallen aluminum leaves as the bare branches closed over them.

Please guide us, grandguardians, she prayed, rubbing her fingers over their names, scrawled over her servos. They were barely into the forest – she could hear the hum of the city noises behind them. Still, she kept her optics open and scanned every wavelength of light she could.

The wind was softer in the forest, buffeted by the thin tree trunks. Thin wisps stroked over her shoulders and down her upper arms. Without the wind, the air was warmer, the crunch of the leaves was louder. Everything felt close and small.

She knew they were walking through one of the largest forests on the planet, a jealously guarded resource, a forest she’d written laws to protect in her younger days with the Environmental Corps. The twists and turns and tiny side roads shrunk the massive forest into matchbox sized pieces, a series of rooms to be searched.

It wasn’t hard to imagine that they were the only ones out in the forest tonight, walking with hope in their sparks, and the names of their ancestors painted across their plating.

She looked at Optimus’s arm, her servo curled around it, the names of his friends in her untidy glyphs. She looked up to see the bare branches, curling over the path like protective servos. She looked at the names on her own frame. She leaned into Optimus. They weren’t alone out here, she reminded herself. Everyone she’d ever loved in the Well would be with her tonight. She hoped they were happy for her.

The sounds of the city faded and the steady hum of the wind got stronger overhelm, even if they were protected on the pathway.

“I remember nights like this as a sparkling,” she said. “My guardians would made spiced energon and make mine extra sweet. We’d open the windows and listen to the storms coming in. Guardian Flicker liked to talk about everything that had happened that year so the spirits could hear her.”

It was one of her oldest memories, sitting on their berth and listening to stories of the grandguardians she’d never met. She looked forward to Wellhop every year. She’d race home after school and spend the afternoons helping Guardian Swivel grind the minerals for energon or sweets. That had stopped slowly, in spurts, as she grew up and homework and friends started to intrude.

“I don’t care, Flicker! I just wanna go with Arcee and Kickstar to the party!”

Later, after the accident, Guardian Towline kept up the tradition so that Flicker and Swivel would know how everyone was doing. Elita had tried to keep it up herself now that Towline was gone as well.

“I remember sitting up in the archives and opening the windows – even though Alpha Trion told me not to,” Optimus said. “I’d hate if I’d left a story unfinished and no one let me in. He only caught me once – on Hallowkin.” Optimus lifted his optics skyward, as if remembering something horrifying. “I can still hear his lecture. He accused me of mistreating the Archives.”

Elita laughed. “Every librarian’s worst nightmare.”

“Of course,” he intoned seriously, optics sparking with mischief, “second only to miss-shelved datapads.”

“Did you ask anyone to open the windows this vorn?”

“I did. Young Smokescreen has promised to do it.” He lifted her gently over a protruding root as if she weighed nothing.

She snorted as he set her down and her pedes sunk back into the soft, crumbling leaves. “You mean you told him and then set up a timer.” She could see the tiny tendrils of the roots sneaking out to reabsorb the leaves and made sure to step around them.

“I like to give him the chance even if he is…less than reliable. I’m sure he will grow into his responsibilities.”

“And until then you’ll be his safety net?” she teased, though it warmed her spark to think about Optimus and his young, eager apprentice.

She paused and he lifted a low hanging branch out of her way.

“He is coming along. Yesterday he asked me about taking on extra field of study. I’m not sure how Hand-to-Hand combat will be useful in the Archives, but he assures me it will. He said something about defending the books from – what’s that sound?”

Off to the side they heard voices, one of the main roads crossing into theirs.

“We should turn here,” Optimus rumbled. “Don’t want to get too close to –“

“Wait – I think that’s – it is! Hey! Flyby! Hey Flyby!” Elita turned and skipped ahead to where the two paths were converging.

“Flyby! Hey!” Elita waved and the pair of jets stopped and turned towards her. “I didn’t know you guys would be out tonight.”

The taller mech smiled at her and ambled over. His sparkmate hung back slightly, holding a tray carefully balanced in his servos.

“What can I say,” Flyby said, as they got closer. “I have a romantic spark.”

Elita-1 laughed. They both knew that was an understatement.

“Is that your new sparkmate?” Flyby asked, looking behind her. Elita turned. Optimus was standing awkwardly, their own tray dwarfed in his enormous servos.

“Yes – Optimus come over here and meet Flyby and Rocket! – it’s a beautiful night, isn’t it?”

“A perfect night,” he agreed. Rocket and Optimus both got closer in the ageless dance of ‘our sparkmates are friends, but I don’t know you from Primus.’

“It’s good to meet you,” Optimus said in his ‘hello patrons’ voice. His smile was lighter and just a touch empty. Customer service smile.

“You too!” Flyby gushed. “Elita is always talking about you.”

Elita punched his shoulder playfully – and gently. Flyby was a scout, not a warrior and his armor was even lighter than a civilian’s.

“Like you have any room to talk – ‘Rocket’s taking me to the movies’ and ‘I’ll ask Rocket if he wants to go with me to the opening of that new restaurant,’” she mimicked.

Rocket laughed and nudged his sparkmate.

“I love you too,” he said, the treats in his servos clinking. Elita looked down and felt her optics widen.

“Oooo, that’s a nice tray,” Elita complimented.

It was too – and not store bought.

Flyby had purchased one of the ceremonial trays from the temple – all ornate metal work and inscribed prayers. Meant to be a keepsake.

Elita felt Optimus quickly subspace their flimsy, home-folded metal tray with clumsily painted swirls and sparks.

It was full of different treats, each with its own flight-frame specific symbolism.

“I don’t recognize any of these,” Elita said, staring.

Rocket perked up a bit.

“The pink drops symbolize the energon spilled by our ancestors,” he said, pointing at the generous pile of tiny crystals. “These,” he pointed to very thin, very flat jet-black wafers, “are supposed to look like the sky. The spirits see them and think they’re flying towards the sky. Once they land, they have to walk with us and bring us luck. The shaped crèmes are specific to the temple we bought the tray from – their symbol in a seeker with blue and purple stripes.”

Their own tray looked a bit plain with just the spheres and the plain white mallow cremes.

“They’re beautiful,” she said pushing down the jot of jealousy.

“Thanks! We went to the same temple that officiated our bonding. Good luck and all that.”

Reminded of why they were out, wandering in the forest, sobered Elita. She tried not to let it show.

“It’s really beautiful, Flyby. I wish you luck tonight.”

He smiled and took her servos briefly.

“Luck to you too, Elita-1.”

They parted, Optimus and Elita taking one of the many smaller paths while Flyby and Rocket continued on the main path.

Elita knew she couldn’t compare herself to others. Orion had wanted her. He’d asked her to bond just as she was, grumpy, weapons obsessed, gun grease on the front carpet and all.

Flyby was much younger than her. Instead of spending his youth pouring over university applications and military propaganda, he’d taken a gap vorn and met Rocket. They’d traversed the planet and done charity work, living cheaply and fulfilling every romantic notion of travel. They had a picture album full of pictures of them, fresh from school, sitting in jungle towns or on the banks of distant oceans.

They had a million stories about being stranded without enough credits to buy energon and having to use their wits and charm to get out of trouble.

Flyby had done everything old bots said you were supposed to do with your life – love recklessly, make mistakes, embrace change.

Flyby had a romantic spark. He binged love stories and talked about the poetry of love when you got him overcharged. He was a brilliant speech writer and a loyal friend.

Elita-1 knew she wasn’t a romantic. Orion had been the one to propose finally, as she’d been stumbling around it for a vorn. They didn’t even have a particularly romantic first meeting story.

She’d seen him from a window, walking around with an advertisement for some start-up or another painted across his back.

There had been a small group of minibots crossing the street on pede and he’d stopped to use his larger frame to halt the traffic. He spoke happily to them and waved as they’d parted.

Elita-1 had tracked down the company and then his name and shown up at the Archives to pretend to research naval combat.

It had rather backfired at first since there wasn’t a lot of information about naval warfare on a planet without a single navy. Or many boats.

Orion Pax had taken it as a personal challenge and had spent hours with her trying to get his contacts across the galaxy to provide her with translated resources.

She’d asked him out after he’d handed her a full datapad with the entire history of an aquatic species on a distant planet that he’d smuggled in on a transport ship.

They spent the next fifty vorns working, dating, and trying to save up enough money for a habsuite. Not exactly something you could put into a photo album.

0-0-0

After they left Flyby and Rocket, the woods grew darker. The trees near the center still clung to their leaves, and the delicate lines of the branches grew thicker and fuller, with jagged edges of subtle movements. The ground was clearer and their pedesteps echoed and clacked as they walked, bouncing off the trees around them.

Elita-1 looked down at the symbol she’d traced into her palm in the washracks.

Unity.

It was a word that described her life – her time in the army, her friends, her large family, her –

Optimus.

Or Orion?

She still wasn’t such which was which. Sometimes they blended together, sometimes it was like a beloved stranger was looking out from his optics.

“They seem happy,” Optimus said, breaking the silence that was steadily moving from intimate to oppressive. She couldn’t read his voice.

“They are,” she said. She lowered her servo and tried to thread her digits between his, but he just shook her loose. “Flyby is a romantic.” She returned her servo his his elbow, but even that seemed like an imposition now.

“Yes.”

They walked. Elita kept her optics downward, watching the previously even path start to deteriorate. Roots had poked up, creating bumps and divets. Branches had fallen and started to decay across the path.

Without the leaves to cushion and hid the imperfections, her optics caught on every one.

They came upon a thick, half rotted trunk across the path. She waited for Optimus to lift her up. As they drew nearer, she looked up, trying to catch his optic, but he was staring straight ahead, looking at something that wasn’t the path or the forest.

Or her.

She released his arm and had to dig her pedes into the soft sides of the trunk to climb up and over it. Optimus just stepped over, his stride lengthening. He didn’t slow down. He didn’t pull their tray out from subspace.

Now they walked separate – she couldn’t keep her balance holding onto Optimus if he wasn’t going to walk with her.

The path got worse and the trees got closer, branches heavier with leaves. The sparse starlight was fading quickly and it was only the faint glow of her own optics that lit her path with visible light. She could see Optimus ahead, helm bent down now, brilliant blue optics illuminating the uneven ground and casting unsettling shadows.

Her pede caught the edge of a root and she stumbled. She had to jump over a thick groove – a tiny dry stream – and slipped as she landed, but Optimus was too far ahead to hear her.

Slag him! She was tired and worried and – and – and sad in a way she didn’t want to think about. Now she was sore and if the roaring of the wind above them was anything to go by, she’d be wet as well in a minute.

She looked down at her servos, clenching and unclenching them as her temper flared.

Unity.

It was still there, lines thick and shining.

This was her bonded, her sparkmate.

Ahead of her, he was still walking. He was not going to leave her behind.

With a flick of her ankle, she deployed her all-terrain spikes. Another flick and the spines slide from the tips of her digits. She vented quickly, pulling cold air through her systems and took off running, using her digits to grip the trunks when she stumbled as her pedes gouged into the ground.

So what if it messed up her paint and her polish? Optimus was leaving her. She was a military bot, through and through. Her first solution would always be action over inaction.

She caught him just as the path opened up into a clearing.

He’d stopped as well, standing there in the starlight, like an ancient statue.

She stepped into the clearing and shook the muck from her digits, disengaging the spines, and wiping them on her thighs. Her polish was scraped and dirty now, the silver paint smudged and covered in grime.

Optimus was shining faintly, the dim starlight glinting off his shoulders and somehow growing brighter. He kept his helm down and his servos fisted at his sides.

She stood and waited.

“Do you – do you love me?” he asked, at last, not looking up.

There wasn’t a trace of Orion in his voice. It was only Optimus Prime.

“I – of course!” She took two automatic, stumbling steps closer and then stopped. “Of course, I do.”

His frame only tensed, fists flexing tighter. His voice was strained, struggling to hold up some weight that she couldn’t see.

“I am not…as I was. I am not Orion Pax anymore. You loved him. Then I…took him away.”

It was the first time she’d heard him talk about not being Orion. They had been gently circling and effacing the subject with careful sentences and unspoken thoughts. Except for those first few hours, when she’d held his helm in her lap, his new frame twitching and burning with new sensors, he’d never spoken of being Optimus Prime either.

“I did,” she said. “I still do. I love Orion Pax. I love Optimus Prime. I love you when you are both. I – I love you. I would fight a war for you. I’m trying to prevent a war for you”

She stepped in front of him and laid a servo on his chestplates. She felt him collapse forwards, curling around her, as if she was holding him up.

“Have you been worrying all this time? I…didn’t realize.”

He turned his face away and his voice, when he spoke, was thin and rough. It wasn’t Orion Pax’s gentleness nor was it Optimus Prime’s strength. It was new. It hurt.

“You’ve been living with a stranger in the home you bought with your sparkmate,” he said. “I came and he left.”

“He didn’t leave, he just changed,” she argued, leaning down to try and catch his gaze. “I see Orion, just as I see the Prime. I see you, Optimus.” He wouldn’t look at her. Idiot mech. She squared her shoulders and spread her pedes as if a better stance would also steady her words.

“Optimus…I’ve seen mechs change. They go away to fight and come back with great gaping places in their spark. They watch terrible things happen and carve out pieces of their memory so they don’t have to see those things in their processor every time they recharge. They lose parts of themselves and come back different people.”

She cupped her free servo under his chin and brought their lips together once, lightly. Anything more would break him.

She was an expert sniper. She directed nearly a third of the planetary army. Her servos had aimed weapons powerful enough to obliterate attacking armadas. Here and now, she was holding the power of the entire planet in her servos and he was fragile and frightened and sparkbroken. It was terrifying.

“The Matrix only added to the mech I love. You are more than you were. I can see Orion Pax and I can see Optimus Prime. I love you and all of you. Look at me please,” she begged.

Don’t leave me.

Slowly he lifted his helm and met her optics.

“I see you Optimus,” she whispered. “I know you and I’m still getting to know you. I am so happy to have you as a sparkmate – archivist or Prime or just you. It doesn’t have to be perfect.” It didn’t have to be what everyone else had. It didn’t have to be romantic to be a love story. “I love you.”

She needed to say it and scream it so that it would shake the ground. She wanted to carve it into the metal beneath them and scribble it in the stars.

His expression was impenetrable. She wondered what he was thinking. Was she shaking?

Slowly, he reached up and laid his servo over hers, pressed them both against his cheek.

“Two hundred vorns in love, ten spark to spark, the wisdom of the Matrix and you still astound me.”

0-0-0

The trees this far in were taller and the leaves were bigger. They crunched under their pedes and shattered into tiny aluminum shards, ready to melt back into the metal of the ground.

They stumbled along the path, servo in servo, worn thin by their conversation. Elita felt like she’d won a race and fallen halfway down a cliff. Again.

Beside her, Optimus was venting heavier and he kept squeezing her servo to make sure she was still there.

It was good – she felt like they’d fixed a gear that had been moving steadily out of alignment for a vorn – but she was exhausted and they hadn’t even found –

The starlight glinted strangely and she tugged Optimus to a stop. He looked down at her with tired confusion.

“Elita?”

Was that…

It glinted again and then it twitched.

“Optimus,” Elita-1 whispered, too afraid to vent. “Look.”

There, beneath the shrub, was a tiny, perfect, servo, just poking out.

Optimus’s frame locked up tighter than a torque wrench. He was squeezing the life out of her servo.

She turned on her heat scanner. Attached to the tiny servo was a curled up bundle of heat that could only be one thing.

“Do you want –“ he whispered, but she was shaking her helm already. No – she couldn’t.

“No, you – you do it,” she whispered back. She took the tray from his servos and offered it up to him.

He studied the treats and selected a perfectly formed crème. It looked tiny, held between his two digits.

Elita watched as he approached the bush and rubbed hard at the unity glyph in her palm. She wanted more unity. She wanted this so badly. Optimus knelt and the tiny servo disappeared into the leaf litter, but the ball of heat didn’t move away.

Pleasepleaseplease. Guardians be with me. Help me.

Optimus reached out slowly, holding out the fluffy mallow crème to the shadows between his thumb and pinky digit.

“Steady,” Elita said, mouth barely moving, frozen.

She wasn’t a superstitious bot, but something in her would break if they didn’t get it right the first time.

The round top of a helm came into view.

“Hello,” Optimus said, quietly. The tiny helm poked out farther. “Yes,” he said gently, “it’s for you.”

For a moment, no one moved. Optimus became a statue of platinum. Elita clenched her servos so hard she knew there would be dents.

Please.

In a flash the sparkling lunged for the treat. Optimus simultaneously released the goodie and neatly caught the sparkling’s thin leg between his middle and index fingers. It tumbled back, prize clutched tightly in servos the size of Elita’s thumb.

The sparkling tried to growl, but it was also trying to shove the soft, sticky energon goodie into its mouth. So instead it let out a gwop gwop sound and scowled.

Optimus kept a firm hold on its leg and gently tugged it closer.

“You are okay,” Optimus said and slid the other servo underneath its back to lift it.

Chirp. Grlp.

“Shhh.”

Then he held a sparkling –their sparkling – up against his spark. It put its servos on his chest and smeared the remains of the goodie over his plating.

It scowled at him and growled again.

“Elita –“

She stepped forwards and held out one of the pink spheres.

Grabby servos snatched it from her and with a loud crunch, bit through the shell. Gooey energon trickled down the thin wrists and onto the red and yellow plating of its abdomen.

She couldn’t stop looking at it – large, bright optics, tiny digits twitching around its treat, miniature fangs. It was perfect.

“Messy little thing,” she whispered, daring a single stroke over its shoulder. It turned its glare on her now and she would swear her spark was about to expand right out of her chestplates.

“Its first taste of energon, I’d imagine it’s an exciting experience.” Optimus used one thumb – which was half a big as the sparkling’s entire helm – to gently brush away some of the gooey treat from its mouth. It snapped at the thumb and turned back to the remains of the sphere – just crunchy shell now.

She held out another treat – another mallow crème – with shaking digits and felt the tips of its claws graze her servo.

“It’s beautiful,” she said. “It’s the most – isn’t it the most beautiful thing you’ve ever seen?”

“Yes,” Optimus agreed. “Can you put the tray down?”

“Yeah, of course,” she set it down on the ground “what do you need me to –“

Optimus leaned in and said, “Your turn, beloved.”

Then, he placed the sparkling in her arms.

It was warm and heavy and real. Very real. It moved – squirming and kicking its pedes to get comfortable – and then those big bright optics looked up at her.

She completely lost it.

“Oh, Primus I’m a fragging cliché!” she sobbed, helm bent over the sparkling, optics screwed shut to try and stop the tears. “Hard-aft general turns to mush when someone puts sp-sp-sparkling in her arms.”

“Love –“

“Primus!”

She gasped in another vent and then another, feeling her processor cool. She opened her optics.

The sparkling was glaring up at her, shoving the remains of the creme in its mouth. It was the most amazing thing she’d ever seen.

Optimus cupped her face and smiled.

“New guardian,” he corrected gently, “turns to mush when she holds her new creation.”

0-0-0

They walked back through the trees, the wind a touch colder, stirring the leaves at their pedes. They took turns carrying the sparkling and feeding it treats.

By the time they were leaving the forest, the little spark was asleep.

“I think,” Optimus finally said, as they stepped through the gap in the wall and onto the proper road, “that it was my energon treats that brought us luck.” He smiled mischievously, the expression lightening the blue of his optics and softening the lines of his jaw.

It startled a laugh out of her.

“Clearly, it was my stencil work,” she argued.

The wind sent the leaves skittering down the street as they walked. The light made their shadows stretch and bend as they walked. No one knew her world had irrevocably shifted.

Her sparkmate – witty, kind, intelligent, capable of holding their most precious and holy relic in his chest and keeping it secret. She looked at him, his frame thick with hidden weapons and danger, processor connected to ancient wisdom, cradling their new, sticky sparkling and cooing. Her sparkmate – clever and strong and hers.

Epilogue

“Does it – do you think it looks alright?” Elita-1 readjusted the medal on her chest. The rank decals were smooth, weren’t they? She’d made Optimus and his steady servos do them for her.

“Yes, Sir,” he answered promptly, smoothing her servos away and polishing away the smudges.

She caught his servos and brought them to her lips.

“You know…we have time before the ceremony…it’s quiet upstairs…” She grinned as she felt the rumble of an engine against her. He leaned forwards -

The wail of a sparkling broke them apart.

“I didn’t do it!”

“Scrap.” She let her helm thunk down against his chest and then turned.

Hot Rod was stumbling down the stairs, new sparklet sister held out in front of him like a bomb.

“Careful!” Optimus fell to his knees and scooped both sparklings up. The femmeling – unnamed – immediately latched onto Optimus and began complaining at him. Beside her, Hot Rod was trying to guiltily wipe the goodie evidence off her face without his guardians noticing.

“I’ll get a towel,” she said and walked to the kitchen.

She pulled open a drawer and got one of their old rags out, wetting it with solvent in the sink.

As she turned, the beautiful square of pearlized metal caught her attention yet again. It was carefully magnetized to the energon cube storage.

She lifted her servo to the engraved invitation:

Admiral Elita-1 & Archivist Orion Pax.

She traced their names. Sometimes she was struck by how miraculous her reality was – her promotion to the highest military rank possible, a stillborn war, and a hidden prophet for her sparkmate.

Hot Rod burst into the room, arms out.

“I wanna come with you!”

Elita-1 laughed and swung her first-found sparkling up into her arms.

Miraculous.

#maccadam #maccadams #transformers fanfiction #optimus x elita

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