Category: Has…

Open Locks (Shard-verse)

CW – mentions of ableism towards amputees, mentions of war and injuries from it, abusive personality (it’s Wild Streak…). Word count: 569, rated G

Andre ruminates on Wild Streak’s one friend.

The boss doesn’t have a lot of friends. It’s his own fault, you know – he’s self-centered, impulsive, and quick-tempered. Me and Charles are the only help he’s been able to keep, and honestly some days I don’t know why we stay. Daisy adores him, of course, but he’ll do anything for her. Everyone else in the community? They respect him, fear him, admire him, but don’t like him.

Except Magpie. I don’t know when they met – she’s about me and Charles’ age, younger than Wild Streak. But she can make her smart-ass remarks to him and he’ll smile. I mean, she’s careful, but not terribly so, not walking on eggshells careful the way people like Gimmick are, or the super-respectful way the way gang leaders are when they hire him. And he looks forward to spending time with her. We don’t need to remind him about their get-togethers, mostly, or gather up his stuff for him. And she trusts him – I’ve talk to other goons and nobody else knows that she lives in a big penthouse or that she’s loaded.

Maybe it’s that the boss doesn’t care. He doesn’t even glance at her swanky place or expensive decor. And she’s nice when she comes over – our place is alright, but it’s got scars from Wild Streak’s tantrums and most of our stuff is second or third hand. Charles and I do our best to keep it nice, but we don’t bother with a bunch of decorations that are just gonna get broke.

He doesn’t care about her legs either. She’s too young to have been in the War, but she’s missing both legs. Missing parts and other problems are common enough, but there’s always the people that tend to still treat disabled people a little different. The boss doesn’t care. And she’s never said anything about his eye or skin. He doesn’t try to scare or creep her out either, doesn’t do his usual power plays.

The only thing Magpie and Wild Streak care about is locks – everything from tiny little padlocks to great big safes. Picking them, hacking them, exploits, work arounds, and, if necessary, breaking them. And they’ll compete with each other – and if you know Wild Streak, you know he hates losing. But with Magpie, he’ll just laugh and have her show her or make another bet or whatever. They trade stories, without the type of oneupmanship you see with big shots. He’s even given her things – he’ll make his own picks or turning tools and it’s one of the few times he’ll sit still and work hard on something. About the only other time is when he’s taking care of his clothes. And if he makes something new, he’ll give her one to try out. She does the same, but she seems to buy a lot more of hers.

They sit and race to get through a pile of locks or one of them will have something that just came out or that is rare or especially hard to get open. The boss can practically whisper at one to get it open some days and other days struggle with it for half an hour, but Magpie is consistent. Fast, with those nimble strong fingers of hers.

I don’t know how they met or if there’s anything to their relationship but locks, but damn I’m glad the boss has a friend.

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WIP Shard-verse art

I’ve changed Wild Rush and Deuce of Heart’s names again. Wild Rush is now Wild Streak and besides the grey skin he’s also got a black scar across his face and one eye that’s completely black. Deuce is now Wild Heart (her real name is still Daisy Hart).

I’m working on getting characters designed in Daz3d so I can do pin-ups on Patreon (starting at just $1 a month!). I have Charles and Andre nearly done (I need to do scars), Swordcat almost done (I have to finish his textures), Magpie almost done (I need to do the designs painted on her prosthetic legs), and Mick almost done (I need to do some fixes in Blender and his tattoos).

So here’s some of that art. If you want to see them more often or with less clothes, subscribe to the patreon!

Two people walking a path in a park looking at each other adoringly. The woman is shorter and fat with strawberry blonde hair and light grey skin. She's wearing dark pink gloves, a pink and black domino mask, black coat with tails, and shiny pink body suit. The man has red hair and slightly darker grey skin with a thick black scar going from his forehead to the opposite cheek over one eye, which is also black. He's wearing grey gloves, a red suit, a pink shirt, and a gold tie.
WIP of Daisy / Wild Heart and Wild Streak (I’ve made his hair darker since then)
Different angle on the couple. Her mask is pink with a black heart over her left eye, the same eye that is scarred on her boyfriend
Different angle so you can see Daisy’s mask better because I spent SO MUCH time on it. (I don’t know Blender very well yet). And her gold eyes.
White woman with two prosthetic legs. The shins of the legs have a floral design. She's pretty buff and looks confidant. She has long dark hair and is wearing black shorts and a loose tank top.
Magpie. I’m not entirely happy with her design but I don’t know what I don’t like. I need to do the art for her shins.
A young man in a denim jumpsuit kneeling next to a green parrot on a perch with her wings spread. They're talking to each other. He's got light brown skin and short afro-textured hair and painted nails.
This is Mick Adler, one of the founders of Future-Tech, the company Delia works at. He’s the reason Future-Tech exists – he invented an amazing battery that replaced gasoline engines in cars, among other things. The parrot is Darla who he spoils rotten. Mick is Latinx with black, white, and indigenous heritage.

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Saudade (Shard-verse)

Note: Swordcat is another sorta-multiple character in the Shard-verse. The body really is Leon Smith’s, but it was transformed when he picked up the sword, which has a personality that lives in his head and sometimes steers the body around, because swords don’t have hands. Stomlin Ward keeps the sword in the freezers because then Leon can be a calm, somewhat dim, cat. (Relevant vignette/post)

I’m incredibly proud that I managed to get this down to a perfect drabble. CN for implied genocide of humanity and of an alien race, freezing, burning, specieism

Saudade (Portuguese): The feeling of longing for something or someone that you love and which is lost.

Leon dreamt of memories not his own.

Leon wasn’t like its lords before (how long ago? how- its thoughts skittered and it shuddered in the ice). Leon was grey compared to the lords’ passion. That didn’t matter. Glory would be restored, shining cities and green forests. It would be carried again by lords with thundering voices and soft wise words and dazzling eyes matching its own. And then no more coldness, no more loneliness, no more wrong-smelling air – flat, oily like enemies of old – no more furless parodies of people.

No more memories of burning and cold, cold, cold.

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Connection (Shard-verse: Alchemy)

CN: mention of hunting / implied animal death. As always if I miss something, please let me know so I can add it.

Word count: 405, Rating: G. Crossposted to the Rainbowfic community on Dreamwidth

Ostanes and Iosis are from the novel that I have some rough draft chapters up for (you can find them in the Story Index). Basically all you need it know is that Ostanes split himself into two people using alchemy so he could do his great work. Basically, they’re multiple and headmates, but in-story they wouldn’t fit the definition. Ostanes can’t use Iosis’ name and tends to refer them as one person most of the time.

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Emerson Safety Bicycle Shoe (scan)

Vintage Advertisement - text below

This is an ad from McClure’s Magazine, from about 1900? I can’t find anything about Emerson bicycle shoes, but the Butler Boys were professional cyclists in 1890-1910. Only Nat has a reasonable sized Wikipedia article (Tom has a stub and Frank has nothing at all). While born in Halifax, Canada, they grew up in Cambridge Massachusetts and raced in America and Europe.

I’m guessing the ‘safety’ part of it meant that the laces weren’t long enough to get caught in the chain. Pratt Fasteners are a way to secure the laces without tying – it looks like they’re kind of like keychain rings? You seem to slide the lace between two metal rings. The best image I can find is at Getty Images (I had to turn off my ad-block to see the image) Pratt Fasteners were apparently popular for a while – a google image search finds a good number of ads mentioning them.

Transcription:

The Butler Boys prefer the Emerson Safety Bicycle Shoe

Elastic Gores.

Pratt Fasteners. No knots to tie or untie – Always Sure.

Fast Color Eyelets and Hooks. Never get brassy.

Best on Earth.

The safest, easiest and best bicycle shoe ever made. Strong, light, best of stock and workmanship. The very flexible shank, elastic gores and Pratt Fasteners are essential elements of ease, comfort and safety.

Sold only in our 27 Emerson Stores ore by mail. Send for “Mail” Catalogue. R.B. Grover & Co., Brockton, Mass.

$3.50 or $3.75 if sent by mail.

Please mention McClure’s when you write to advertisers.

(end of Transcription)

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Recent-ish Stuff

I’m running two communities on Dreamwidth that you should check out.

I was given the Writers Cafe from the previous admin and I made Just Create. Every Friday I post a check-in to share what people have done, seen, made, or read and then Saturday or Sunday they each get a session for making stuff. 

If you’d like a community to encourage you on, come check them out.

We had a roadrunner in the yard. If you haven’t seen them in person, they’re pretty large birds – probably the size of a parrot.

Roadrunner sitting on a fence
Closer view of a roadrunner sitting on a fence

I also finally finished the sampler I started before I went to the Netherlands! (I worked on it very intermittedly). The plan was for every line to be a different stitch, but one of the ones I planned didn’t look good as a straight line so I reused one.

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Papercraft Challenge – Heartbreak

As I said before, I’ve gotten into papercraft models. I also decided that as much as possible, I wanted to do a custom for each model I have (or at least a lot of them) – thus the Papercraft Challenge!

I showed the WIP of ex-tyrannomon before which I only need to build now. (It’s the pink thing to the left up there)

I finished a simpler one first and here it is:

It’s based off the voodoo model from MadeinPaperland.ru (site is in Russian).

I altered the template in Adobe Illustrator and I think it’s adorably creepy. Because the Made in Paperland said for personal use only, I kept they’re label on it and I won’t be sharing the template.

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WIP Preview

I’ve gotten into papercraft models. One thing I want to do though is to customize each model as well as building whatever designs I have (I’ve got more than 200 although I may not do them all)

Here’s the wip of my first custom along with the two I downloaded

Two paper models of velocirapters or tyrannosaurs standing over the printed out modified template

Once I’ve got it finalized I’ll have the template here and on my DeviantArt. Since I’m getting back into Digimon, it’ll be ExTyrannomon the plushie version of my favorite dino-digimon.

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Some more art!

I just scanned all my sketchbooks, so I’ll be posting some of that. Right now, something I just finished:

Head shots of Wild Rush from three angles, plus a rage study

(CW for mentions of child abuse and manipulation)

His instinct from growing up in his abusive family is to hide his emotions. Once he got out and was the biggest baddest villain on the block, he used his emotions to get emotion and to scare people into doing what he wants (…which he may very well have learned from his parents).

He’s usually genuine with Daisy and you can often seeing him glance at her to make sure he’s being alright.

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Shard-verse Art

Just a sketch of Charles being a cutie. I redesigned nem to be a bit more obviously mixed-race in black & white (neir coloring hasn’t changed).
head and shoulders shot of a mixed race enby with a short afro

You can’t see it, obviously, but I also made nem chubbier and less body-builder-esque. Specifically to appeal to a friend of mine. (Also, Shard-verse needs more fat-rep. Right now it has, like, Sevvy. Who is awesome, but not in the main stories. And apparently I never posted the picture here.)

So here’s the picture of Sevvy with Anita:

Very fat somewhat black woman being hugged by a smaller white woman. The black woman is reading a book and is dressed in pants, button-up shirt, and vest, with very tall strappy heels. The white woman has her hair in a braid and is wearing a knee-length skirt, a shirt with ruffled sleeves, and mary-janes. Contessa Seffora de Sant’Anna & Anita Trevino. Sevvy is the awesome woman in front. Anita is Ostanes/Iosis’ mom. Sevvy is basically everyone’s teacher (she’s, if not immortal, really long-lived). (Neither of them show up in the chapters posted, but I think Anita is mentioned).

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