Gone are the soft cherubic cheeks of childhood, replaced with angular cheekbones and sweeps of lightly freckled skin. His blond hair, which had been cropped short at their last meeting, now roams free in a tangle of unmanageable curls atop his head. The longest pieces flopping forward towards his eyes. Still Bright Blue. Hauntingly, blue. At least one thing about him has not changed.
"Earl Mellark, may I introduce to you, Miss Katniss Everdeen." Lady Trinket begins, voice dripping with misplaced pride. "The elder of my charges for the season. Her sister Miss Primrose Everdeen is currently on the floor but you will have to meet her as well. Just lovely girls, the both of them."
Thank you to the wonderful @mandrake-mistakes for creating this portrait of Peeta from my Regency!Everlark fic Enchanted to Meet You! It's no surprise he's made an impression on the lovely Miss Katniss Everdeen!
Mandrake is talented, and lovely, and has been so kind and supportive of this little story! Go check out her incredible writing, her beautiful artwork, and support her in all the ways she deserves (Psst...her commissions are currently open btw!)
Lou, can you tell us what Jumping Grounds is? or The Clumsy Star? PLS!!
" Let me go get some stuff and I'll explain gladly!!
First of all, we need to talk about "Clumsy Star". What is it?
"Clumsy Star" is a videogame that I and Syd have been working on since we were kids, more or less! Yes, even when we were away from each other, apparently we still kept working on it!
The protagonist is called Atmy, who is a star fallen on Earth on the night of the 10th of August, the "Night of Falling Stars".
As they fell (yes, they, Atmy doesn't have a gender like any other star), they met a beautiful girl they fell in love with. This girl seems to be in trouble so Atmy immediately helps her! But as they turn the girl has disappeared!
Your real adventure starts now: because you need to find the girl, fighting anyone who tries to catch or stop you so you can declare your love to her!
During the game, you'll make a few friends, like Elisa, the daughter of a scientist who's gonna try and understand why you fell on Earth. Then there's said scientist, Doctor Lawrence, who will also help you with your special abilities. Finally, you'll speak with various animals around the place. Yes, you can talk to animals. One of them is a kangaroo called Wally (the game was made when Wally was still missing, and this was Syd's way of remembering him).
Will you be able to find the beautiful girl and tell her your feelings?
This is basically what the first game was about. People LOVED it. It received a lot of praise, and high scores for the ending no one saw coming.
We were also able to secure funds to give our company, Jumping Grounds, a real, stable office and also hire some of the people who helped us get the game out!
Jumping Grounds is now our company of game development, and we're now busy working on Clumsy Star 2 and a fighting game that is giving us some problems...
As a bonus, I found some old drawings of what Atmy and Etmy (the second player available from the second Clumsy Star game) used to look like:
Yes, their heads used to be actual stars! We somehow got to play "Spike!" on the Vectrex and we loved the idea of stars going around on adventure.
In this incarnation they were star siblings who wanted to visit Earth, so they came down and went around to look at it.
That's it. That was the story. It was more of a comic at that point than a videogame idea, because it's the early 1980s, and the idea of videogames with a full story was madness!
During the years they went through a lot of style changes from Syd, and I tried to keep my mind busy by inventing stories that were more and more complicated for them, until they became good enough for a whole game to be built around it.
This is them right now (spoiler for the second game I guess?):
Even if they are technically genderless, we were pushed to make a playable character look more feminine for the little girls who wanted to play. Etmy is just Atmy with longer hair and a skirt, but it worked well enough.
Thanks for asking! See you with the second game! "
So I did something very cool recently! I commissioned my lovely friend @mandrake-mistakes (who also happens to be one of my beta readers for this fic) to make me some artwork for Enchanted to Meet You! And to no one’s surprise, she fully brought me to tears with her talent! 🪻 🪻 🪻
I will not tell you when this scene takes place (you’ll have to keep reading to find out) but I simply could not wait any longer to share this with the world!
Thank you Mandrake for being just the most wonderful beta reader, artist, and friend!! If you have not checked out the rest of Mandrake’s incredible artwork get over there right now! And if you’d like to purchase some of her work, I know for a fact she has an Etsy shop open!!
Enchanted to Meet You: The Year is 1813, Miss Primrose Everdeen has just turned 18 and is about to make her formal debut into London Society. Her elder sister, the determined Miss Katniss Everdeen will do everything she can to see her sister settled. So when the handsome young Earl next door offers his friendship and connections to the cause, who is Katniss to turn him down. One can always use an ally in the Great Game of the London Marriage Mart, after all!
Chapter 6: Blue Buttons is now posted!
Their clandestine correspondence continued all week. Each morning, Katniss would retrieve a flower, write out her message, wrap it around the stem, and climb up to set it on his windowsill. And every evening he would answer her response with one of his own, always making sure to include a quick drawing of whatever flower she left him earlier.
Thank you to the brilliant @cow-in-the-sunset for beta-ing this chapter in the midst of a very stressful and chaotic few weeks for her! As well as the wonderful @mandrake-mistakes (and Cow again) for helping hone the ideas of this story. Go check out their incredible fanfics and artwork!
Enchanted to Meet You: The Year is 1813, Miss Primrose Everdeen has just turned 18 and is about to make her formal debut into London Society. Her elder sister, the determined Miss Katniss Everdeen will do everything she can to see her sister settled. So when the handsome young Earl next door offers his friendship and connections to the cause, who is Katniss to turn him down. One can always use an ally in the Great Game of the London Marriage Mart, after all!
Chapter 7: Marigolds is now posted!
"That is not what is happening!" Katniss seethes.
"Is it not?" The man says. "Then please explain it to me, Catnip!"
Catnip? Peeta knows it is rude to eavesdrop, but there is something familiar about the man's voice. Something that twists ugly in his gut. He takes a step closer to the greenhouse doors.
Thank you as always to the wonderful @cow-in-the-sunset for beta reading this chapter! You're excitement over this chapter developments took my opinion from "I like this one!" to "Oh this one is one of my favorites!" Also thank you to @mandrake-mistakes for helping to hone some of the ideas and just your continued general excitement over this story!
Enchanted to Meet You: The Year is 1813, Miss Primrose Everdeen has just turned 18 and is about to make her formal debut into London Society. Her elder sister, the determined Miss Katniss Everdeen will do everything she can to see her sister settled. So when the handsome young Earl next door offers his friendship and connections to the cause, who is Katniss to turn him down? One can always use an ally in the Great Game of the London Marriage Mart, after all!
Chapter 4: Petunias is now posted!
"So, I tell you all of this because I have…" he clears his throat. "I have asked you out here today because, well… I hoped you might be open to…or…or agree to an alliance."
"An alliance?" She whirls on him, her voice coming out just a bit louder than she intended.
A special thank you to @cow-in-the-sunset and for freaking out in a doc for me during this holiday week!
Enchanted to Meet You: The Year is 1813, Miss Primrose Everdeen has just turned 18 and is about to make her formal debut into London Society. Her elder sister, the determined Miss Katniss Everdeen will do everything she can to see her sister settled. So when the handsome young Earl next door offers his friendship and connections to the cause, who is Katniss to turn him down? One can always use an ally in the Great Game of the London Marriage Mart, after all!
Chapter 5: Irises is now posted!
Peeta considers himself rather spry but even he struggles to keep up with her, tracking the flutter of soft pink skirts that trail in her wake. Pink. He would not have guessed at the color for her. It seemed too…too girlish, too soft, for this otherwise rather confident woman. Though, it would be a lie for Peeta to claim that it does not suit her. The slightly deeper shade that stained her lips at the Undersee Ball had been a particularly striking color. Not that Peeta had paid much attention to her lips.
Thank you to the brilliant @cow-in-the-sunset for beta-ing and the wonderful @mandrake-mistakes (and Cow again) for helping hone the ideas of this story. Go check out their incredible fanfics and artwork!
