listen. 21 on that prompt list was MADE for newmann
Anonymous said: For the winter writing prompts please do either 21, 36, or 37 whichever one speaks to you. Thanks so much!
21: we’re arguing when the ball drops on new year’s eve, and decide to kiss and shit i don’t think i hate you anymore
winter prompts from here
i think this fic has the honor of being my last newmann fic of 2018....omg...it’s been an honor riding with u all here’s to more gay scientists kissing in the new(t) year
“Seems a bit gauche, doesn’t it?” Hermann says. “A party, in the midst of...”
“Certain worldwide annihilation,” Newton says. “The end of the world as we know it.”
“Yes,” Hermann says. “I suppose.”
Newton tops off Hermann’s red solo cup with the questionable contents of the little flask he stashed in his inside pocket; Hermann glares, but Newton merely shrugs and screws the lid back on. “What else are we gonna do?” he says. “Besides, we’ve got--how many days ‘til the next one?”
Hermann stares at the combination of sickly blue vodka and lemon soda in his cup and recalls the numbers he scrawled across his board hardly four hours earlier. “Five,” he says. “Five days.” (Not even a week. The attacks are getting closer together.)
“Five whole days,” Newton says, considerably more optimistic. “We can afford a break or two.” He knocks his cup against Hermann’s companionably. “‘I feel fine,’” he half-sings. Newton’s wearing a gold-and-silver striped party hat that’s dangling almost entirely off his head, a feather boa with bits of sparkling tinsel woven throughout, large plastic glasses with 2025 written across the top balanced with his eyeglasses. He looks ridiculous. He tried to force a boa and party glasses on Hermann too, which Hermann politely turned down, though he did accept a party hat. He’s not sure where Newton found them.
“Can we?” Hermann says.
Newton reaches over and plucks at the elastic band of his hat, and Hermann winces when it hits his skin. “Lighten up,” Newton says. “New Year’s Eve! It’s supposed to be fun. You should be having fun. Stop killing my vibe.”
“Five days,” Hermann says.
Newton unscrews the lid of his flask again and says nothing. It’s just the two of them, in the lab; they’d been at the party further down the hallway crowded with other Shatterdome personnel (that’s where Newton had covertly snuck out the vodka) up until twenty minutes ago, when Hermann made a break for it to get some more work done and Newton followed. They can have a party with just the two of them, Newton insisted, forget everyone else, and then he dimmed the lights in the lab to their lowest setting and stretched out on the lab couch and ran his mouth off in a way that ensured Hermann would get nothing done whatsoever. “It’s New Year’s Eve,” he repeats, finally. “There might not be another one, you know?”
“Morbid,” Hermann tsks, and Newton snorts.
“You’re the one who called the party,” he lowers his voice in an approximation of Hermann’s accent, “gauche in the first place.” Then he suddenly sits up. “Hey, ten minutes to midnight.” He nods at the clock above his work desk. “I bet I could steal a bottle of champagne for us without Tendo noticing.”
Tendo Choi had been three sheets to the wind when they left; Hermann doubts he’d notice if Newton stole a whole table. Hermann nods, and Newton gets--slightly unsteadily--to his feet and scurries out.
He’s back in a matter of minutes, shutting the lab door behind him to cut them off from the party (which has begun spreading further down the hall) and singing Auld Lang Syne at the top of his lungs. He’s getting half of the words wrong. Including the refrain. “Mission was a success,” he declares, and waves the pilfered bottle dramatically over his head. “What are we supposed to do again? For tradition? Do we smash it?” He adjusts the bottle in his grasp like a baseball bat and swings it, ominously, in the direction of the wall.
“No,” Hermann says, and Newton falls back next to him on the sofa, face planting into the lone, ragged throw pillow they keep there. His eyeglasses and the 2025 glasses make ominous cracking sounds. “That’s boats. For, er, maiden voyages.” Newton looks up and peers at him skeptically. His face is bathed an eerie green in the light of his specimen tank. “We’re only meant to drink it.”
“That’s boring,” Newton says. He worries at the foil of the bottle. “I’m gonna smash it anyway. New traditions.”
“Please don’t,” Hermann sighs, knowing full well he’ll be left to clean up the shards of glass and sticky alcohol residue, but Newton merely grins at him and swings the bottle ‘round some more.
“Right against the wall,” he says, and then startles; his wristwatch beeps with the timer he set for one minute to midnight.
Hermann’s not sure what possesses him to say what he says next. He’s not had nearly enough to drink to excuse it. “I suppose it’s a good thing we’re changing tradition tonight,” he says. “Tradition would also have it that we--”
“That what?” Newton cuts in, with an expression that Hermann can’t quite read.
“Well. People are meant to kiss at midnight, aren’t they?” Hermann says, half-question, half-challenge. (Hermann is not blind. He does not miss Newton’s lingering glances across the lab, nor is he fooled by the string of excuses Newton uses--chalk on his blazer, something on his cheek, don’t worry, Newt will get it--to touch him. Newton touches him constantly.)
Newton licks his lips, taken aback, then grins again. “I don’t know,” he says, “are they? Have you been scoring every New Year’s without me knowing?”
“No,” Hermann huffs. “I only meant--people do it. Normally. I’m aware it’s a tradition.”
“They do,” Newton agrees. He’s got glitter across his cheek, probably shed from his 2025 glasses. He leers. “Hermann, you could just say if you wanted to kiss me.”
“I’m not--”
“I’d understand,” Newton says. “I’m hard to resist.”
“Newton--”
“--you don’t have to make up excuses--”
Newton’s wristwatch beeps again--midnight. There are cheers down the hall. Hermann pulls Newton in by the ends of his cheap boa and kisses him hard.
“You were serious,” Newton says when they part. He looks dazed. He didn’t smash the bottle. Down the hall, people are singing. “You actually--”
Hermann smooths his hands over Newton’s untidy collar. “Very serious, I’m afraid.”
“Wow,” Newton says. “Wow! Okay.” He’s grinning again, and he--to Hermann’s surprise--catches Hermann’s hands and laces their fingers together. “You mean you...?”
Hermann cannot bring himself to smile back. Five days. Not even a month after the last attack. After it, Hermann suspects it won’t even be two weeks. (In another lifetime, he and Newton might’ve had the time; in another lifetime, they wouldn’t even have met. Is it selfish to be grateful for the apocalypse if it gave him Newton?) But Newton--with his flask, and his silly hat, his strong hands and his glances and his thin excuses to touch--is so happy before him, and Hermann cannot bring himself to smile, but he especially cannot bring himself to disappoint the man he loves. He wraps his arm around Newton’s waist and kisses him again. “Yes,” he sighs against his lips. “Yes, Newton, of course I do. I always have.”
Newton plucks the elastic of his party hat again and bumps their noses together. “Lighten up,” he laughs, far too observant (or perhaps Hermann is simply being far too unsubtle). “We have time.”
“Not enough,” Hermann says. “Not--”
“We have time,” Newton says, firmly, then he kisses Hermann just as firmly, and Hermann lets himself believe it, if only for the moment.
the first character i ever fell in love with: Artemiy god damn Burakh.
a character that i used to love/like, but now do not: There isn’t one.
a ship that i used to love/like, but now do not: I barely ship in this game let alone enough to get tired of one.
my ultimate favorite character™: ...Sand plague is a person, right?
prettiest character: Daniil Dankovsky.
my most hated character: gonna stick anna angel in a locker
my OTP: As far as i ship anything Danko and Artemiy is unavoidable.
my NOTP: Eh, I don’t see any ships I dislike.
favorite day: So far, I think it was 6.
saddest death: Me, every five seconds, because of a rat.
character that everyone else in the fandom loves, but i hate: Does anyone love that guy in the theatre? He looks like Gene Wilder but I hate him.
my ‘you’re piece of trash, but you’re still a fave’ fave: Klara. She’s terrible dirt gremlin. Just the worst. Protect her.
my ‘beautiful cinnamon roll who deserves better than this’ fave: The albino is the only one free of sin c’mon now.
my ‘this ship is wrong, nasty, and makes me want to cleanse my soul, but i still love it’ ship: Saw a pretty questionable fic of Stakh and Burakh once and I ain’t against that.
my ‘they’re kind of cute, and i lowkey ship them, but i’m not too invested’ ship: Er. Nah I got nothin’.
NB artist considering a pitch for Heartwood here. is there any particular reason for the "set now-ish" restriction on submitted stories? I find myself grating at the idea that any stories involving us must be present-day, as if we just hadn't existed before now. considering both this and the rich body of past sylvan fiction, it seems like an unnecessary caveat. would you be willing to consider more historical or fantasy settings?
Hi there! The “set now-ish” rule is because folklore regularly features aspects of the culture and time period when the stories were born, and we want this book to be a sort of “founding” of new tales that reflect our times. Setting stories closer to the present-day also creates a sense of “it could happen today, to me!” The stipulation wasn’t made out of any misconception about how long non-binary identities have existed (which we know is forever).
hey! do you play D&D or are you just on the TAZ train? (i'm DMing a campaign now, and two of my players got into the game because of TAZ! i'm very proud to see them go)
I got into the D&D spirit because of TAZ, actually, but I wanted to do it for a long time anyway ! I had tried before with my highschool roommates (I had a dwarf necromancer ahah) but we only played like, literally twice. Now I’m in a group of experienced players and we’re reaching the end of the Curse of Stradh adventure, but I also DM a campaign for my best friends, and it’s a lot of fun !! I’m a newbie of course :p But it’s still nice ! So yeah, thanks TAZ for pushing me to achieve this dumb little dream ahah
character design ahahaha. I love love love making characters.
7. what do you find hardest?
Maybe making pixel art. And illustrating the maps. Settings has never been my strong suit ^^;;; Surprisingly though writing this story has been alarmingly slow-paced. I’m a bit anxious to finalize any dialogue at the moment. Rest-assured though, once I get into a rhythm with this whole thing, it’s all going to go a lot smoother!
8. how's progress so far?
OKAY... if I had to put it at a percentage... 10%??? Maybe that’s being generous hmmm. At this point most of what’s implemented is the game’s mechanics and the first “chapter” in almost its entirety. I have a handful of character and plant sprites and I have the skeletal structure of the main maps done, but there’s a LOT of buildings I want accessible which all need rooms and more people and more plants. There’s a lot that needs to be done! Don’t get me started on dialogue..............
9. do you have any kind of playlist or music you listen to while working?
ACTUALLY I do have a sad plant girl playlist, music all about sad plant girl. Also though, the entirety of Speak For Yourself makes me think of Sad Plant Game so I’ll pull that up a lot. I know there’s also a few outliers out there though, like I’ll Keep Coming definitely makes me think of the game. I’ll need to develop a playlist that works for the game in its entirety sometime
ALSO, the Viridi soundtrack is a HUGE inspiration for what I want area music to be like so hopefully I can achieve something like that!
now that you mention her, i wanna know more about chastity!
Ha! My ploy worked. This is gonna be on the fly, I know quite little about her.
For the record, Chastity Maidenhead is my Bloodborne hunter!
This is for a ‘ten things about my characters’ meme, feel free to send an ask! There’s an incomplete list on oceanofteeth.tumblr.com/list.]
She has a big thing for Eileen. When the hunt is over she intends to take that woman out on a civilised date with less blood and massacre. Unless Eileen’s idea of a date involves blood and massacre, in which case Chastity is past caring and will go for that too.
Chastity is practical to a fault. While not totally devoid of human caring, she has no sympathy for the beasts she slays, no understanding of anyone who might protect them at the expense of what she considers ‘the living’, and will always put her own survival before that of others. Epecially people she hasn’t met before. She’s not a mewling pup.
Partially because of this, people think of her as irritable, even violent. She isn’t, though. Just a little coarse and blunt at most, but the hunt makes beasts of us all, one way or the other. She just happened to take to it with less maudlin navel-gazing than some, which can make her appear callous.
The gore, goo, and slime stopped bothering her - eventually. Not before vomiting a few times into the aqueduct, mind you.
Chastity is very impatient. Her response to the depredations of the Hunt resolves into a kind of constant annoyance, which is HER mind’s way of solving the issue of ‘not going mad’. If it’s aggravating, it’s not horrifying. Right?
She has a strong fondness for the doll, viewing her a little like an estranged niece and treating her with matronly respect. Gehrman, however, she has little time for.
Despite her name she has an average sex life. Yes, she’s heard that joke before.
Chastity is very tall! Most men come up to the brim of her hat.
Don’t let anyone know this, but she’s a little vain. Her fashion may be unconventional, but she pays close attention to it, especially her silky purplish hair. She is determined to age with grace by making allowances for it, rather than pretending she’s still young. In fact, having recently turned 43, she’s only finding more pleasure in attending to her appearance - well, she was.
