I saw that fanfic you made for Miss Gracie and I really like what I am seeing so far. But, how long will it take for Gracie to realize she can control her hair like limbs and realize how strong they are?
Thank you so much for the ask! (Sorry it took me so long to get to it. I didn’t even notice that I got one! LOL my bad)
I’m currently working on chapter 3 (which is day 14 in the story) and this is when Gracie discovers she can feel and move her hair. I really wanted to include a scene of her finding out about it so I def have some ideas for it.
You can expect to see it when the next chapter releases :)
PS: For those that see this post and wanna check out the mentioned fanfic:
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
CHAPTER 2 of my Lily Lovebraids fanfic: “Ms. Gracie’s Wellness and Integration Program (410 days of isolation)” is available to read right now on AO3! :)
Click here to read chapter 2
I forgot to post about the update on tumblr, cuz it’s been out for a little bit now already. Oopsie!
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Here is also a snippet of the chapter, which tackles Ms. Gracie’s backstory:
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It was difficult to know how much time had passed. There was no clock, no windows, and the lights were always on. It was a well-known psychological tactic used to instill anxiety. Well, it was working as intended.
Gracie sat with her knees pulled up and back pressed against the same wall as the television screen. This way she could at least avoid having to look at herself whenever it turned on. The videos didn't play constantly. They were put on an automatic loop, but there was always a quiet interval between them.
That had been her idea.
The noise would be too easy to ignore if it was constant. It worked similarly to how you eventually got used to the sound of a humming refrigerator or a ticking clock. Instead, they aimed to mimic the mental agitation of a leaky faucet: an inconsistent but repeating drip of noise. Those short breaks gave the subject time to think for themselves, creating a false sense of relief only to interrupt it again. That's how she influenced the trajectory of their spiraling minds. Make them question the conflicting realities of their own thoughts and what she was telling them. Over and over again.
It really helped to speed up the process.
The tv lit up once again and Gracie clasped her plastic hands over her ears. It didn't really do much to block out her voice, as the audio was set at a volume that made it difficult to ignore. She just needed to not listen. Think of something else. Anything else.
Just why? Why was this happening to her? How had it come to do this?
She never wanted this.
Her parents wanted her to get married. Find a good husband, settle down, have children... Gracie would rather die.
So on the first chance she saw, she ran off and got herself a master's degree in psychology. To tell the truth, she hadn't chosen this path because it was her passion or anything. Rather, she considered it to be the least horrible option out of the bunch. And the pay was said to be pretty decent. The included student housing is what really sold the deal for her though.
Not long after she started university, Gracie completely cut contact with her family. Her mother's insistent nagging and belittling of her life choices would've driven her clinically insane otherwise. She supposed it was better like this anyway, since they never bothered getting back in contact with her.
Years of struggle and studying later, Gracie officially graduated. It took quite a lot of job-hunting, and some serious budgeting on her part, but she eventually got to work as a licensed therapist a state over.
She wasn't really all that good at her job. If anyone asked—and no one ever did—Gracie would openly admit she considered herself a pretty mediocre therapist. If you weren't depressed yourself, you would become so from having to listen to these people whine and complain all day long. But it paid the bills and Gracie felt satisfied with her life. Though, looking back, she suspected she'd just being telling herself that because she didn't believe it would ever get any better.
She eventually resigned from her job though, after one of her patient's reportedly committed suicide.
Gracie fell behind on paying rent. When she received an eviction notice, she knew she had no choice but to go look for work again.
She knew someone who knew someone that worked at the Playtime Co. factory. She'd heard of the company before through the many annoying jingles and toy commercials she saw passing by on tv, while she was bed-rotting in her apartment. She supposed it was worth a shot.
The minimum connections she had managed to land her an interview at the factory. But when she got there, the recruiter said he was impressed with her cv and offered her a higher position: as an on-site therapist. Gracie wasn't looking forward to getting back into the psychology business. But they offered better pay and on-site housing. The deal was quickly made and she was hired on the spot.
Gracie didn't care much for the job. She was only really there to ''support'' employees that experienced work related traumas. Like that one guy—she didn't even remember his name—that had witnessed a child fall into a vat of acid or something during a guided tour of the factory. There were a lot of worksite incidences like that. Much more than were officially being reported on. Playtime Co. weren't the most thorough when it came to safety regulations.
At least they made sure Gracie was never out of a job.
Or so she thought, until the company started to decline after they'd been hit with one too many lawsuits on the incidents that were known of. Most of the employees she cared for were laid off. Budget cuts, they'd say. Gracie knew it wouldn't take long before she got caught in the crossfire too. Luckily, they offered her a solution: by becoming a specialized child-therapist for the orphanage.
Oh yeah, Playtime Co. wasn't just a toy manufacturer. They also owned an entire in-house orphanage, for some reason. And abandoned children stuck in some underground care home tended to have a few psychological problems.
Gracie didn't like children. They were loud and messy and just an overall nuisance.
This wasn't what she'd signed up for. But what other choice did she have? Despite her distain for the snotnosed brats, Gracie proved formidable at working with them. It was simple, really. All Playtime cared about was that they did as they were told. That was easy enough to instill on impressionable, lonely children that were desperate for any sort of adult validation.
Everything really came to a head though when one of the children told her about his friends being kidnapped within the facility. And that the toys talked to him. Gracie had written it off as childish delusion at first, until she'd brought it up with her manager and his face went pale. That child disappeared not long after and Gracie was once again pushed further along the company's line of departments. Though it was less of a job offer this time around, and more of a forced career shift.
Because Playtime's pursuit to innovate went much, much deeper than just designing new toys for children. And it was too high of a risk to let anyone who'd learned of it go.
Gracie didn't fight it. Didn't argue the implications of the research they conducted down there. Because honestly? What else was she supposed to do? She was in too deep at this point.
She figured, if she couldn't get out of it, she might as well get into it.
So she got herself involved. She put in the work when they required it and even devoted her spare time to doing her own research. Eventually she wrote a report with observations and suggestions on how they could use psychological tactics to improve the Bigger Body Initiative. Her paperwork ended up on the desk of some bigwigs within the science sector and... Well, the rest was history.
Within record time, Gracie got promoted to head counselor of the Wellness & Integration program.
For the first time in her life, Gracie felt good about her work. The scientists were always asking for feedback on how they could improve the unit. They wanted her professional insights and suggestions. They really valued her input. She was actually making a difference for once.
But this?
She'd never asked for this. Any of this. Why would they do this to her?
Wait. They? Who was they?
Someone had to be behind this. But her memory was so fractured, full of holes and blank spaces. It was like her brain was a book with entire pages ripped out. She had no memory of being turned into... into this.
She knew the brain sometimes resorted to amnesia when faced with intense trauma. It was a defense mechanism, a desperate attempt at self-preservation. But she knew little of the procedure that went into converting people to toys. That wasn't her department. She just dealt with the aftermath. None of the experiments seemed to remember what had made them into what they were. Only that they went to sleep one day and awoke as something new. Gracie assumed the children were sedated before they did any operations. If that's what happened to her, she should've been able to recall being put under. But her mind was just blank.
Gracie wished she could remember, so at least she knew who to be angry at.
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Click here to continue to read the full chapter on AO3
Ms. Gracie’s Wellness & Integration Program (410 Days of Isolation)
(By ThePieIsALie)
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Summary:
She knew their goal was to make her go insane. To make her suffer. But she wasn't going to give in that easily.
Using her knowledge and experience regarding the brainwashing procedure, Gracie does everything in her power to resist her cruel fate. But with no hope of escape and her own recorded voice slowly chipping away at her sense of self... She knows it's really only a matter of time.
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A short story describing the slow and maddening decline of Gracie Green's sanity during the many days she spent in isolation. An exploration of her backstory and how she became Lily Lovebraids.
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An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
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Chapter 1 - Isolation Day 1:
The first thing Gracie saw was a blinding white void. It was really uncomfortable to be woken up like this, with such sharp brightness stinging her eyes.
There must be a light fixture hanging somewhere right above her, Gracie reasoned as she was forced to close her eyes again. She just had to blink a few times and adjust to the light. But it was difficult to focus. Her mind was still wrestling its way out of the deep slumber she'd found herself in... Plus it felt really strange to blink. Like her eyelids were too heavy and her body too tired to carry out such a simple action.
Honestly? She felt awful.
It was as if she were waking up from a very long and intense fever dream. Or perhaps something more akin to a drug induced coma. Not that she could recall being sedated... What would she need to be sedated for anyway? What had happened?
She couldn't remember.
With great effort, Gracie fought against the mental haze and raised herself out of bed.
It hurt. Everything hurt. Now that she was slowly coming to, she could sense how much strain her body was under when she moved. Her joints uncomfortably popped and her muscles contorted in ways they shouldn't. The burning sensation under her skin was sickening. She was suddenly overcome by a wave of nausea and had to shut her eyes again.
Gracie pressed the heel of her palm to her forehead, though it did little to relief the pressure building up inside. Maybe she'd tried sitting up too fast? She groaned, noting how her mouth somehow tasted viscid and dry at the same time. She couldn't move much more or else she might actually puke.
Eventually, the dizzying blur subsided and her surroundings came back into view. She recognized this place. Though she'd never been inside this room, she'd observed it through a camera plenty of times. It was adorned with colorful pictures and shapes on the walls. The room itself contained matching sets of child-sized furniture and a few inanimate toys. Now those items were haphazardly strewn about, like someone had mindlessly knocked them over or pushed them out of the way. But the whole setup was still unmistakably part of the Wellness & Integration program. The sector of Playtime Co. that Gracie worked at.
Still, something felt eerily off.
''Why...?'' she mumbled. ''Where—''
A sudden, loud electronic pop startled her. Gracie looked towards the screen that was welded to the wall, opposite of the bed. The built-in speaker system crackled with static before the sound came through properly. Then the screen flickered to life.
''Hey there, all you lovely Lilies. It's a sunny day.''
That... That was her voice... coming from the tv.
This was one of her videos.
Gracie had recorded so many over the years that she couldn't remember ever making this one specifically. The hours she spent at her job tended to blur together like that. Especially in a place like this, where she did the same thing every day. Always tasked with observing the experiments undergoing the Wellness & Integration process.
A horrible realization dawned on her then. Did that mean...? No. No, surely not. Gracie shook her head. It couldn't—
''I feel warm,'' the Gracie on the tv said. ''Don't you feel warm?''
Her body... It didn't feel warm. It didn't feel normal.
Gracie held up her trembling hands to inspect them. To prove to herself that she was fine. But these limbs weren't hers. There was an artificial shine to them, like they were made of polished wax. Or plastic.
That couldn't be right.
But the color... it was so unnaturally uniform all across. In general it was just the wrong shade, different from her usually pale skin. The wrists were made up of two separate pieces connecting the hand and lower arm via a visible ball joint. The hands themselves were made of a softer, more stretchable kind of plastic.
Gracie flexed her fingers, and the foreign limbs moved in response.
''I feel safe,'' her voice said through the speakers. ''You feel safe, don't you?''
Gracie's breath shuddered. She slowly turned her gaze to the wall beside her. It had a large window, the only one in the room. But it wasn't see through. It was made of one-way glass, Gracie knew. And behind it was an observation room. She'd never gone inside one of those. They were reserved for the scientists and the security staff. She only ever saw this place through a camera, during the live performances where she got to interact with the experiments.
But even though she'd never used the observation rooms, she knew that from the right side you were able to see through them. So if that wasn't the case... Then did that mean...?
No. That would mean she was on the inside. That wouldn't make sense. No one was allowed to enter these rooms. Especially not someone like her, lacking the security level to even access these places.
But it looked so similar to the rooms she used to observe. And it wouldn't make sense for any other places in the factory to look like this. She had to be inside of one of the Conditioning Rooms. But if that were true, and this side of the glass was supposed to work like a mirror, then why couldn't she see herself?
All she saw in the reflection was a doll.
A toy.
One with bright purple braids, wrapped up in an oversized bun. It was taller than most regular toys, but shorter still compared to the others from the Bigger Body Initiative that she used to work with.
And those large, lifeless eyes...
No. Not lifeless. The eyes were moving, widened with fear. They could see. And they were staring right back at her.
When Gracie moved a hand to touch her face, so did the reflection.
Her skin felt strange. Plastic. Her facial muscles stiff, as if they were numbed, and cold to the touch. Her hands: rigid and rubbery. And she knew this because she could feel it. She wasn't supposed to. This wasn't her body. That person in the mirror was nothing more than a poor imitation of a human girl. A child. A doll.
It wasn't real.
But it moved when she moved.
And Gracie could feel the plastic shell wrapped around her aching muscles. Those that had been stripped bare and torn bloody, just to be used as stuffing. Organs and tissue thrown in without any care on where they were supposed to go. Her discarded insides unable to find their place in this foreign vessel, yet somehow functioning all the same.
No... This couldn't be real. It WASN'T.
This had to be a dream.
Wake up. Wake up.
Her breath began to quicken, but even that felt strange. No vocal cords were making the raspy sound coming from her throat. Instead it was just a noise caused by the air scarping past metal and tiny little holes. It was as if she was trying to inhale through a straw. The sound it made was grating to the ears, like when someone breathes directly into a microphone.
Gracie only realized she'd started hyperventilating because she could barely make out what her recorded counterpart was saying in the video that was still playing behind her.
''We have so much fun here, don't we?''
No. No, this couldn't be.
This had to be a mistake. Some kind of horrible misunderstanding. They got the wrong person. This wasn't supposed to happen. All of this was so very, very wrong!
Gracie began clawing at her own face, trying to rip off this mask that had to be hiding her real features. She needed to make herself hurt—hurt MORE—so she'd wake up from this horrible nightmare. In her frenzy, she'd leaned too far back and slipped off the edge of the bed.
Her head bounced off the padded flooring with a painful thud, sending high-pitched ringing through her ears.
Gracie looked up towards the screen. She saw herself, her real self, with that freakishly fake smile plastered across her face. Her own honeyed voice mocking her current state, unaware that she'd one day be on the receiving end of it.
''It's good to have fun. It's good to want to have fun... forever.''
Her eyes shifted from the tv to the door. Gracie instantly scrambled to her feet and rushed towards the exit so fast she slammed right into it. She grasped the handle. It was locked. That didn't stop her from still trying to pry it open though. But the plastic tips of her fingers were missing the required fingernails to dig into the thin grooves.
''Let me out of here!''
Gracie's cry for help shifted into one of intense pain as she suddenly dropped to the floor. There she spasmed uncontrollably until the disciplinary shocks finally stopped coursing through her body.
''Now, now,'' the Gracie on the screen reprimanded with a disappointed tone. ''There is no need for all that. Remember, good toys have good manners!''
Gracie trembled. It hurt. Everything hurt so much.
''Now, repeat after me: I'm staying here forever.''
She couldn't get herself off the floor. Instead she wrapped her arms around herself, curled up and shaking like a kicked dog.
It was alright, she thought to herself. She was alright. Something had gone terribly wrong, but it was going to be okay. Surely, whoever had done this would soon realize they'd made a mistake. Right?
They'd accidentally put her through the Bigger Body procedure because of an error. Or an oversight. This wasn't actually meant to happen. Just a mistake. Nothing that couldn't be fixed. She might have to wait a little while, but eventually someone would come find her. Right?
They'd reverse the procedure and get her back in her real body. It wasn't a big deal. They'd just fix this whole mess and everything would go back to normal. She was going to be okay. It's okay. She could be fixed.
...
They could still fix this.
Right?
''Very good,'' she told herself. ''Now say: I am a toy.''
No...
NO!
''I've always been a toy.''
Gracie screamed until her voicebox cut out.
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This fanfic (and its future chapters) is also available on AO3: click here to start reading
I was watching Nicole Tompkins (Lily’s voice actress) play through Chapter 5 the other night and then I saw someone’s comment about her just munching away on chips during this scene. I just knew I had to draw it
I wanted to practise with my new alchohol markers and fineliners. It’s fun to see my skills in traditional art have actually improved and carried over from when I first got into drawing digitally.
Princess Azula sitting in the Royale Gardens of the Fire Nation Palace with its famous turtle duck pond, accompanied by turtle ducklings and gekko squirrels.
I recently got into making traditional art again cuz I get these cool new alchohol markers. So I excitedly began searching online for some coloring pages to practise my skills. However, there seems to be a serious lack of available ATLA coloring pages. And even less of my fav Fire Nation Princess: Azula!
So I went: “Fine, I shall do it myself.” And made my own custom coloring page.
Once I get around to actually coloring it, I will post that too.
You can download it to color it yourself too, if you’d like! And pls tag me if you post it, cuz I’d love to see it ^~^
For those that want to color it digitally, there is also a transparent version:
How do trees even exist, bro? Idk how to draw em. (I totally didn’t spend 1.5 hours on those cuz I’m procrastinating on having to define Azula’s clothing, nope, them trees just really were a priority, obviously)
Added sketches of some of the little critters that can be found in the Fire Nation Royal Gardens. The gekko-squirrels were a suggestion from the lovely @shoutoutout , so u know I had to put those in.
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