FOOLSCAPPER!

Ashlee. artist | negativity-free | mostly devoted to posting fanart/fanfic | blog may contain 18+ or mature material | My Chemical Romance, KPDH, Spider-Man, Pac Rim, IASIP, musicals, very casual MCU, cartoons and older anime, Supernatural survivor| ko-fi: foolscapper

[foolscapper]

Pinned Masterpost Thing

Hello! This is an obligatory pinned post about me. 

My name is Ashlee and I’m an artist and occasional writer, currently primarily for My Chemical Romance with some other fandoms sprinkled in from time to time! The blog is 90% SFW but no promises. Here are all the things I post most here on this blog, as well as things I’ve done in the past that I dedicated a lot of time to. Enjoy!

If you’re enjoying my work, I do have a ko-fi for tips, but don’t feel obligated to visit! This is all just a free labor of love.

Misc. Fandoms Tags:

My Chemical Romance / KPop Demon Hunters / Pacific Rim / Supernatural / It’s Always Sunny / Spider-Man / Pilgrimage (2016) / Mad Max / Hadestown

Currently Active Projects:

The Black Parade / @theblackparadecomic (fancomic) - An adaptation of MCR’s The Black Parade, using lyrics from all songs on the originally released album. Updates very sporadically! Be patient with me! Currently on the second volume, which may be slow as I complete The Gilded Freefall!

The Gilded Freefall / Ao3 Link / A KPDH fanfiction detailing an alternate universe where Jinu doesn't betray Rumi at the Idol Awards, but things still go pretty terribly. Rumi and Jinu centric, Rujinu, but involves a lot of characters across the board.

Previous / Popular Projects Completed:

Ask Sam Stuff (SPN)

Quarterverse + Discontinued Askblog Entries (SPN)

Where the Wild Things Start (SPN)

A Little Break (All Might MHA Comic)

The Art of Measuring Time  (PACRIM; Newmann Comic)

Exploding Head Syndrome (MCU; Post-IW AU)

Hadestown Animatic | Wait For Me

General Tags / Links:

My Fanart Tag

My Art Tag (includes all, including fanart)

My AO3 Account 

[foolscapper]

CH. 42 OF THE GILDED FREEFALL IS UP!

If you like a certain sobbing water demon, this is the chapter for you. ♥

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“Are you okay, Zoey?”

She startles mid-step through the hallway, then finds herself turning toward Bobby.

He must have been hovering close by after helping with their packs — and heard their squabbling, no doubt. Zoey reads the look on his face like a sheet of lyrics, finding familiar sentiments penned on that loose leaf paper: powerlessness, unease, concern. If she feels the way she does now, how must he feel as a civilian? As someone who had to learn that the girls he’d sworn responsibility over were all demon hunters? Not only that, but that they were planning to plunge into some horrible unknown — a place that only Rumi had learned bits about pieces about from dreams — and now Bobby will have to wait and pray for their safe return.

She smiles, and it’s a touch less forced than usual. “I’m okay. Sorry if we’ve been stressing you out more than usual lately…”

“Me? Stressed? Not at all,” he says, seeming quite stressed. As always, it’s a sign of his character that he doesn’t immediately fall apart afterward. He laughs a pained laugh instead, the kind that punches out of him and leaves Zoey wincing with sympathy. “I just wish there was more I could do for Rumi. For all of you. I’m only just learning about all this madness after it’s mostly over with, you know? If I’d known…”

Like with Mira and Rumi, her hand finds his shoulder, and she squeezes it in gentle solidarity.

“We didn’t want you to know. We wanted you to feel safe. And to keep you safe.” When she realizes Bobby’s eyes are swimming in tears, her body jolts and she starts to dab at the soft plain of his cheek to catch his waterworks before they fall free. Her reply is rushed and just as wobbly as his lower lip. “Bobby! Oh my gosh, please don’t cry. If you cry, I’m going to cry!”

With the shake of his head, he chokes out, “I just wish I could keep you safe too. All I can do is stand back and watch…”

— The Gilded Freefall, Chapter 31

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shenanigans!!

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OH LORD MARINA NO NOT ON THE BEHEADED GERARD ART

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Bobby 🥺🥺🥺🥺

just a wip share

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shenanigans!!

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Next chapter is in progress! But in the meanwhile, here's a wip of Bora and the demons watching the girls at the campfire in Chapter 40. ☺️

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jesus christ this was a horrible mistake

it's too late now WE BALL

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Next chapter is in progress! But in the meanwhile, here's a wip of Bora and the demons watching the girls at the campfire in Chapter 40. ☺️

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THE GILDED FREEFALL, ACT ONE: THE FALL ► ILLUSTRATIONS

"You're the lock, and we're the key. I can't reach you if you don't reach back."

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Below his throat, the king is dressed in his finest garments. A golden dragon swirls in glorious patterns across his red robes, which run like rivulets of blood down his lacquered throne. A nervous swallow convulses in Jinu's pale throat as he takes in the familiar neon flames that make up the king's head. They evolve into a wide and crooked smile. Gwi-Ma's voice rumbles like thunder in the courtyard. "Welcome, my most honored guests, to this beautiful banquet." A line of dining tables have been set up, from the bottom of the steps all the way to the palace gates, and there is no lack of attention to detail. Fresh potted flowers in ornate vases compliment the beautiful porcelain plates and bowls that are heaped with food. The king's guests that lean over the table to admire their meal lick their lips with feverish want. "Let us not waste any time. Enjoy yourselves." As the other musicians begin to play, Jinu's fingers move against his will, plucking the silk strings. No matter how hard to tries to tear his hands away from the bipa, he can only keep pace with the performers around him. They play against ravenous sounds while the noblemen eat like hogs at a trough. The mess escapes the table and falls in large fat dollops on the floor. Servants scoop the leftovers into their own famished mouths. Everyone's eating. Eating and eating and eating —

— The Gilded Freefall, Chapter 29

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Chapter 29 wip -- this is the dream sequence where Jinu sees Gwi-Ma in place of the King Injo. I used a pose from a popular portrait of him, and then also used the famous painting situated behind the throne -- only altered to look more like the demon realm. It's also a bit of a juxtaposition to this more recent illustration:

The faceless king and the bipa player whose own identity had been corrupted by centuries of servitude (and to a lesser degree, the contrast of a faceless father that Jinu loved vs. the faceless king that Jinu hated).

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He leans in and braces himself, just as small hands wrap tightly around his torso from behind.

When a child lets out a shrill scream of delight and presses their face to the bow of his spine, Jinu swallows down an immediate knot in his throat. His sister’s laugh is both a dagger wound and its sutures all at once. Little Sun-sin clops faster on stumpy feet and whinnies, and for a moment Jinu floats in the freedom of it all. Treetops decay and wither behind them, but the destruction that always plagues his dreams can’t keep up, can’t outrun the gallant battle horse as it carries Jinu and one of his many ghosts toward the village.

Jinu presses his hand against his sister’s balled up fists as she clings to him for support; all at once he’s reminded of the days where she looked so small but felt so heavy on his young shoulders. “Are we going home, oppa?!” she calls out against the wind.

Jinu’s not really sure.

They didn’t really have a home at the end of it all, did they?

Now that he’s being caught up in his dreams again, he’s having a hard time remembering what he was doing — who he was waiting for. He’s sure it’ll come back to him soon, once he’s no longer distracted by his sister’s glee or the call of his father’s lute. Eventually, he finds an answer that feels right, if perhaps a little vague: “I can take you somewhere safe, but - I still have a lot to do.”

“Ahh,” she huffs. “You’re gone too much. I miss you…!”

He swallows hard. “I miss you too.”

I'm in tears, this broke me (in the best way). 🥹

I love it so much when fanfic writers not only remember Jinu's mother and sister, but also give them a narrative and a story. ❤

Also, one little thing I noticed: here Jinu's sister calls him 오빠 (oppa), but from what I researched, apparently the more archaic form would be 오라버니 (orabeoni). This, is just a curiosity I wanted to share.😅

I absolutely love fleshing out minor characters and giving them more of a presence and personality! One of the things I'm saddest about when it comes to short movies vs. longer series is missing out on those interactions. ;; But it's been a delight to write it!!

And you're absolutely correct! I had to decide between the movie's usage of oppa and the more period-specific orabeoni, but ultimately I decided to adhere to what canon used. Historian-minded folks can definitely change oppa to orabeoni in their minds, hehe.

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Celine was her mother, too. And yet...

“All this time…” Rumi’s breath shakes. “She knew my father. She was there with him, when my mother was pregnant… when I was born. All the questions I’ve asked her… Things about myself. Things about where I came from, who I came from — she had to have read all this too, hadn’t she? Why would she hide all of this from me? Why couldn’t she just tell me the truth?”

“Those,” Celine says, “are fair questions.”

Celine.

Rumi’s heart lunges into her throat.

Stunned to silence, the three of them turn on their knees toward Celine as she stands in the front doorway. Their mentor is usually skilled in schooling her expressions, but Rumi finds her with a face blanched by unspoken dread. Perhaps the glint of panic in her eyes is at the sight of the box sitting between them, clearly rifled through. For a tense moment nobody moves. Her appearance alone sends them back through the years to when they were young and impressionable and a little terrified of disappointing her.

Only now, there’s something living beside their meekness. Something softly angry, confused, questioning.

— The Gilded Freefall, Chapter 27

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("Don’t look back, Jinu. Not until you look back properly. We deserve that much.") "I won't, Eomma," he whispers, then peers into the dark of the ramshackle shelter. It stretches out further than it should, with walls tarnished by scorch marks that he knows hadn't been there when he was younger. The air is thick enough to choke on and causes sweat to already bead and drip down his temples. This is no home, not with the sinister energy that swallows his own shadow. He walks deeper inside as his converse shoes squeak on ancient wood. While he can hear the sound of his father's bipa being plucked in the belly of the room, he can hardly make out the shape of the man who had once helped to shape him. But he's tired of the pressing, crushing emptiness of the dark, so... he wills it away. Like bugs beneath a lifting rock, the thick black noise in the air skitters away. Though the shadows linger in every corner, he can see the long dusty room clearly — as well as the figure in raggedy clothes sitting at the end of it. The bipa in their grasp plays beautifully despite its timeworn body. One last string is plucked before the hands still, then settle softly on the bipa's curving hip. His father's muddy voice beckons him forward, though he has no mouth to study; where there should be a face, there is only a writhing entanglement of dark paint strokes. It's as if someone had taken a brush and scribbled out his eyes, his nose, his lips, and Jinu quickly realizes that his father's face eludes him yet again. His shoulders sag in disappointment. "I'm not sure," his father begins, his voice flat, "what you expect to find here, Jinu." He looks to the rotting floorboards and admits, "I'm not sure either."

— The Gilded Freefall, Chapter 41

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Chapter 41 illustration concept WIP. 😨

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“I’m a distant memory. One you always seem to hurt yourself with, time and time again.” Her gaze flicks up to meet his, and he feels the urge to shrink. “Should that be something I resent?”

His heart tremors. She’s waiting for an answer, and he struggles to give it, because it’ll be the first time he’s ever put pen to paper for what he’d done. He’s never had to say it aloud because they say it for him. Gwi-Ma says it for him. There had never been a question of what monstrous act he’d done, to be where he is. He’s almost tongue-tied.

“But what I did to you — to both of you. I took a way out. I left you for an easier life. You should be upset with me; you should be furious, and bitter, and you should—”

The tips of her fingers press against his lips, sudden and sharp in their silencing.

The muffled bipa plays on.

“You don’t get to decide. You don’t get to decide what we felt toward you, when you left. Maybe you’ll never know, but it doesn’t give you the right to assume the worst. You know only what you felt.” She drops her hand from his mouth, “And what was it that you felt, that day?”

“… Shock. Guilt, and distress, and...” He closes his eyes as his head hangs heavily on his neck. Shame burns deep in his chest like a wind-fed flame, but he forces out the words. “… relief, when it was suppertime.”

A soft palm collects his face, her thumb fanning across his cheekbone.

Her voice is almost a whisper. “Life can be so incredibly hard, can’t it?”

— The Gilded Freefall, Chapter 39

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Chapter 41 is in progress — I've got an awful little piece from the beginning for you to read, if you'd like. Sorry!

Jinu's sister loves her brother, and she loves her mother, and she wishes she had a chance to love her father. She enjoys making things with her hands. She looks at her reflection sometimes and thinks her ears are too big for her face. She says she would like to find a husband to love her someday, because that is what honest girls should want. And sometimes, she looks at the intricate veils and dresses that pass through the village square and goes green with envy. How nice it would be, to have been born and swaddled in pretty blankets. Maybe the mudang that shepherd the spirits and heal ailments can create a ritual to remake her family with untold riches. Maybe such thoughts are poisonous, because she comes down with a terrible cough. The cough leaps from her to her mother. From her mother to her brother. It's all her fault, she thinks — all her fault that her brother opens his mouth to sing and only doubles over with the air ripped from his lungs. While her meek apologies don't fall on deaf ears, she knows they find her blameless. Her mother is compassionate. Her big brother shoulders everything, even fault. 'You should be eating more,' he says. 'You wouldn't get sick as easily if you had more.' But his ribs are as bumpy as hers when he scrubs his dirty clothes in the river. She thinks if she ran a stick over them, they'd make a funny musical sound, because every part of her brother is music. She misses hearing him sing, but he plays the bipa and promises a proper concert when the illness passes. She loves her family. They try very hard. Someday, she'll marry someone who will see past their heritage and whisk them all away. Her brother leaves to busk. Other children called him a beggar, but she likes the word 'busking' more. It sounds like good fun, to give other people such sweet music. She's a little jealous they get so much of his time, but she's not allowed to watch and she's too breathless and tired to go play with the other children. Instead, she sits and swings her feet and curses the ache in her throat. A little old lady with a very crooked back passes by and slips a piece of yeot candy into her hand; she makes it last a while by tucking smaller pieces of it into rough hemp fabric until the taste fades from her mouth and she can work the flavor back into her tongue again. She thinks she may be bad, because she doesn't offer her mother any, doesn't save any for her brother. He eventually returns with only his bipa and the sun setting at his back, and something is — wrong with him.