My first comment! Oh, you're lovely. Thank you! All right, yes, to answer.
Until I recently moved into a 'no pets' home, I had hamsters so I can entirely understand your boys' desire to keep small rodents captive for the mutual amusements of both sides. The first time I saw one of the NIMH mice in a cage instead of streaking across the floor like an oversized cockroach I too entertained the 'but what if we keep him?' thought. I'm proud to say I was just as sensible about it as you were...
but only just barely.
all right - story time! Here, have a cup of something nice and settle in
So, to recap, this winter I had several mice decide the inside of my place was good winter lodgings. I disagreed. I managed to catch three of them and then my brother in law was kind enough to come over and help me. Mice activity seemed to be centered in the kitchen despite the fact I'd locked all the food up like Fort Knox and so he helped me move the stove and the fridge out of the way. Sure enough, the floor behind the fridge had sunk, probably due to water damage from the last tenant, and the gap it left was big enough for a mouse to saunter through and not even have to remove his feather cap for. My BIL did some magic with spray foam and steel wool. He sealed some holes under the cabinets as well. Then he checked the rest of my place and went on his merry way, secure in a job well done. I cleaned up the layers of mouse pee behind the fridge that told me this wasn't their first Christmas there.
So I think all's well. Things are sealed up. I know my other rooms are secure. I've caught everyone I was aware of already and anyone that shows up tonight will just have to realize the hotel has hung out the No Vacancy sign.
Except.
Because you already knew there was an 'except' coming. Except, that night, while I was at my desk working on the computer I heard a squeak. A squeak from under the cabinets. And it wasn't a small squeak, no. It was the kind of squeak that held all the indignite surprise and mousy curse words something that small could possibly pack into it. The way the cabinets are set up, the 'floor' of the cabinet is actually raised off the floor of the kitchen an inch or so and apparently someone had been napping under them while my BIL had been busy sealing up all the exits. Waking up and ready for a night of mischief (and waving at me as they ran past on the counter) they'd instead found themselves sealed in!
So I've got a mouse trapped underneath my cabinets. No problem. I get the trap out, put some peanut butter in it and pull out the lowest drawer in the cabinets drawers to put the trap there. I know rodents can crawl up the backs of drawers though (because that's how the hamsters would often come to visit me when I was writing at my desk) so I seal it up with my good old standby of duct tape and go back to work. There's a bit of foamy gnawing, a few more squeaky curse words but nobody emerges into the kitchen and I figure it should only take a day or two for the peanut butter to work.
Wrong.
By day four the trap is still safely guarding its peanut butter and I'm starting to worry that the little mouse might be starving in there. Now, its probably a very small mouse and I should probably let it starve despite the smell because its only going to be a small smell for a little while but -
yeah. I can't let him starve. A hoard of previous hamsters rises up inside my heart. I pull up the duct tape and put down a little jelly lid with water in it and some of the birdseed I've been feeding the local chickens.
The next day the food is gone. The cage remains empty.
I clean the peanut butter out of the trap and put the seed in there instead. Two days go by. No mouse. I cave again and put some of the seeds on top of the cage. They're gone the next day.
So yeah. Basically what I'm saying is I provided bed and board to a mouse all winter long.
I tried the trap various times. I tried a different trap. I baited it with everything I thought a mouse could want. No go. Finally I just kind of gave in, bought real mouse food instead of bird seed and just made it a routine to replenish and rewater every other day. The mouse never came out. I never found a single poop or nibble anywhere in the kitchen, though from time to time I would hear little gnawing sounds or the unmistakable sound of a tiny mouse body doing tiny mouse things in one of the now empty, lower cabinets. I did find all the little holes in the cabinet though because the mouse smell did leak out of them and there's now decorative painter's tape in several areas. Everything that had been in the cabinets now found new homes in my bookcase. The Underneath was Mousey Territory now and we both stayed on our sides of that demarcation.
And then, one day, early this spring, I went to change the food and no one had eaten it. I kept an eye on things for almost two weeks but whoever my little surprise house elf friend had been, they didn't need my mouse food anymore. I keep a suspicious and sharp eye out but no mousey poop or chewed bags showed up anywhere else in the house. Maybe he died somewhere under the counter, asleep in a little curled ball in its nest of dandelion down I'd left for it but I never smelled anything whenever I opened the cabinets. I like to think he found a gap between the cabinets and the wall and is now running free, living his best mousey life in the newly planted corn fields with a wild story to tell all his mousey friends.
The cabinets remain empty and will continue to do so for the rest of my time here. If he did find a way out, I see no reason to encourage anyone else to move back in.
Did you ever find out how they were getting into your house? Was it seasonal for you as well?
Whoops, this turned out to be 800 words. I’ll put it under a read more. I had such a good time with this one!
Hiccup and Astrid were completely naked to each other. Well… almost. Hiccup was anxious about taking off his pants, and not for shyness of showing his groin, but for shyness of showing what was left of his leg. He’d never shown his lover the scars there before.
Astrid, on the other hand, had no shyness whatsoever, and Hiccup found her body beautiful despite what people would call imperfections. She had scars from battle. There was a prominent one on her right thigh from when she’d blocked an arrow from hitting Stormfly. Feeling reverent, Hiccup leaned down and kissed it. Astrid made a pleased humming noise, ran her hand through his hair.
“So you like my scars?” Astrid asked.
“Is that weird?”
Astrid let out a laugh. “I don’t think so.” Hiccup came up, ran his hands over her arms. There were some scars there as well, small burns from dragon training gone awry. He took one of her hands in his, had her lift her arm so he could press his lip to a burn scar.
“I like yours too,” Astrid said. She ran a hand over Hiccup’s right shoulder and back. There, he had an etched, jagged design, an electrical burn scar from when he’d tried to prove that the dragons weren’t the ones attracting lightning, but that it was metal instead.
Hiccup didn’t know what to say. That one… well, that one was cool, beautiful, even, if he did say so himself, but she’d never seen his left leg, had never laid eyes on his naked stump and the horrible scarring there. That was not pretty.
So, Hiccup didn’t say anything, just went back to kissing Astrid’s arm.
After a time, Astrid seemed to grow tired of the attention though, wanting to give it to him in return. She stopped him from kissing her, then went in for his shoulder with her own lips. It was Hiccup’s turn to hum and run hands through her hair. She had it loose, and it was beautiful like that, her long locks falling over her shoulders.
After some attention there, Astrid reached for the hem of Hiccup’s pants. “May I?” she asked, looking him endearingly in the eye.
“I-I don’t know.” Hiccup’s anxiety was crawling back in. “No one’s ever… I mean, you haven’t… seen my leg before.”
“Hiccup, it’s okay. I’m not going to hurt you.”
“I know. Like, logically I know.” Hiccup pulled at his hair with one hand. “But I’m kind of frightened.”
Astrid let go of his pants. “Alright,” she said, not seeming disappointed in the least. “If you don’t want to, that’s perfectly okay.”
“But I do want to,” Hiccup realized. “I want to show you.”
Astrid nodded. “Just go at your own pace.”
Hiccup nodded as well. “Okay.” He took a deep breath. “Okay.” He stood off the bed on one leg, his prosthetic having been taken off before this. He could balance well on one leg anyway - he’d had to get used to it.
He began pulling off his pants. Up higher was nothing Astrid hadn’t seen before. She didn’t focus her attention there though, instead, on the leather slowly sliding off his skin. His thigh didn’t have any scarring. It was all below the knee, and eventually, his knee became bare. Hiccup had to make himself take deep breaths to continue. This was just Astrid, his friend, his lover. She wasn’t going to hurt or ridicule him for the way he looked.
His pant leg came off of his stump, and he sat to pull the rest of the garment off. For a moment, he almost covered that part of himself with his hands, but decided against it. He could be brave. Instead, he laid his stump across Astrid’s thighs, letting her take a good look at it. He almost held his breath.
Astrid gently traced fingers over the horrid burn scars there, the raised and warped flesh. It didn’t hurt, but Hiccup gasped anyway. He’d never had someone touch him here like this, and it was so soft, so gentle and loving.
“So, uh, what do you think?” Hiccup asked.
Astrid smiled at him. “Just as beautiful as the rest of you.” Hearing that made Hiccup’s chest burst with brightness. He hadn’t expected that from her, but why not? This was Astrid.
Astrid got down onto her knees on the floor, gently stroking his stump. She pressed her lips to the scarring, a reverent look on her face. She didn’t meet Hiccup’s eyes, just drew all her attention here, and it made Hiccup feel so loved. He’d never felt this way before, this good, this safe and protected. It was wonderful, and he sighed happily, tilting his head back and closing his eyes with a smile.
I'm so happy for you! And I love how you ended this! Each of Lance's teammates supporting him in their own way, getting carried off into the sunset so to speak, getting tucked into bed and then a nice long rest for him---feels like the perfect ending to the comic. All the happy warm fuzzies! Yay!
Ahh thank you so much 🥲 I’m happy too, it’s been a long journey but I’m proud of the results and I’m excited about my newfound freedom to work on other art projects. I’m happy you enjoyed the ending! I do enjoy combining angst with comfort, it’s the best! 😌💕
I had a question after reading the FAQ. On trigger warning tags, it says to just do the trigger word first, not in the format of #tw: (trigger word). It looks like it's saying to instead do: #(trigger word) tw.
I'm only about a year into using Tumblr, but I thought you're supposed to do #tw: (trigger word) format. Am I doing it wrong?
Example:
#tw: blood, vs: #blood tw
Yes. The blacklist algorithm tries to match words and apparently it's not checking the whole expression but only the first word, so if you tag:
"tw: blood" but I blacklist "blood" or "blood tw" or even "cw: blood" it's not going to blacklist your post for me. That means it would require people who want to blacklist something to write down all possible combinations others can come up with: tw trigger, cw trigger, trigger warning trigger, content warning trigger, etc. As well as different ways of describing a trigger.
Therefore, it's easier and more accessible for everyone if you place the triggering word first and add tw/cw last (or leave tw/cw out completely).
I’m curious! How long it takes you, approximately, for each page of SRPA? I feel like I take like 3 hours just to do one still shot of a head and torso with a background to my satisfaction. lol!
LOL yeah i hear you completely
It varies widely, but essentially it takes one entire day from start to finish! there’s lots of factors like how background heavy the page is, how crazy I’m getting with the camera angles, & whether I’m able to sit down and work on it without getting distracted
(which is wHY i have to work with my door cLOSED so my sweet baby cats don’t come in because i straight up will just get up and hang out with them instead)
I’m one of the few people in the world who hasn’t watched ATLA, Voltron, or MLB (shock!). But I’m gonna be a good player. (Also for this game, all characters are adults, obviously)
