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#THIS IS REAL CHECK THE SHADOW AND BONE INSTAGRAM
skepticalcatfrog · 1 year
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NOT A DRILL SHADOW AND BONE S2 RELEASE DATE TOMORROW
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lilithfreya · 9 months
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Six of Crows/Shadow and Bone Modern College AU's
Finally, is Genya and David time. Let's go!!
Genya:
She had a difficult childhood, until she was adopted by a rich and adorable couple who never had children, she goes to fashion and design college and has a promising future with her private atelier that for now only exists on her instagram and when she uses her friends of models for their looks and posts the photos that make hundreds of thousands of people want their clothes. Her best friends are Zoya and Alina, but her best crime duo is Nina, they love to get together and talk about their love lives and play matchmaker, why can't alina not understand like her best friend keeps staring at her and stops everything he's doing to hang out with her and help her always. In addition, there is also Zoya who for months has not stopped talking about this spoiled prince who keeps irritating her, and because of this she goes to investigate, I mean check her friend's well-being and is even more intrigued when she sees him talking to the nerd cute guy from the engineering department, who helped her once with her cell phone and who she likes to talk to when I feel like everything is too heavy or just because she really likes him a lot and he's so cute talking about his inventions. One day she decides to ask him out on a date and he gets all red and stutters but he agrees to go out with her and when they start dating he gives her a bracelet he made himself. She loves hanging out with him in her workshop creating different pieces of clothing and watching him work.
David:
He had a pretty quiet childhood, (I like to think David is neurodivergent and has a hyper focus on building things physically or digitally and that's why he doesn't like to be touched or hugged by strangers), his parents were very good with technology , perhaps being scientists, love hypothesis felings, and supported him when he chose to study mechanical and computational engineering. He doesn't have many friends at the beginning of college, just the lab guys and every now and then he ends up helping people who have problems with their electronics because he likes to figure out what went wrong. And that's how he meets Genya and Nikolai, he thinks Genya is very pretty when he sees her for the first time but I don't quite understand why she keeps coming back to talk to him even without having any real problems and he can't believe it when she finally asks him out that this is for real and he really enjoys talking to him or more hearing about her dreams and goals and she respects him and his needs as well as his time so he is more than happy happy when he realizes that she might like him the same way he likes her. Then one day he meets Nikolai, it was before Genya, he helps solve a lost file problem on his computer and since then Nikolai has been trying to talk to him about the company he's forming and how david would be paid very well and get everything that he wants there, but he doesn't feel that way, he was almost recruited by a company that wanted him but didn't accept his time to work and limited his curiosity so he doesn't know how he felt about it. Until Genya helps both of them and makes a contract that everyone is very satisfied with the norms and legal stipulations, so he signs and ends up meeting very interesting people and ends up getting close to several people like Nikolai and Wylan, he likes their ideas and thinking about how to put them in his creations, and also Alina and Mal, who always when Genya gets too busy with one of his projects keep him company and remind him to eat and take a walk around campus and not get stuck with his inventions in the laboratory. with the money he went on to earn he finally manages to make a wedding ring for Genya and on graduation day he proposes to her with a ruby ring he designed and they live happily ever after.
this turned out a little longer than i planned but with college that wa the best I could do by now on vaccation I have more time, I think the next chapter will be the last so, stay turned for Kaz and Inej part, xoxo.
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coralsgrimes · 2 years
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I have some numbers for you since you also appreciate data. I use this one analytics site to periodically check Ben's Instagram statistics. He gains followers pretty steadily, although recently it's slowed down to about +280 a day since he hasn't been posting as much. However, after he posted the 'Choose Love' photos on Sunday he lost over 1,500 followers, which is the largest amount I've ever seen him lose in a 24 hour period. Guess we aren't the only one who found the photos in poor taste.
I do appreciate data yessss 🙊 data are cool alright? and real.... ALSO kudos to ye hun for looking into it, here's the potato 🥔 i was keeping track of the spotify numbers but gave up a long time ago lol sooo double the potat  🥔 🥔
Soooooooo part 1, I had to check it out, and the only place I know is socialblade alright x.x and the numbers in red is me pretty sure like the total of his followers per day? meaning the total of new and the ones who dropped him. Sooooo part 2, it does checks out. IDK tho muffins, might be many explanations riight? 
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I in fact never seen it. But he probably added some sun stickers DID HE????? OR Jessie borrowed his lil phone to repost it??? then no stickers lol 
HOWEVER! I got this from someone, dunno if its ye too or not ;c anyways, soooo apparently it comes from some Shadow and Bone me Daddy fan account. It was pointed out to me as how different both of their posts were reposted. And on ma side I will just leave it as it is, cuz it’s fucking not worth to touch any of this shite. 
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recurring-polynya · 3 years
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@trulytaka​ asked: um i’ve always dreamt about a tattoo artist!renji falling for a client AU. it’s okay if you can’t come up with anything, just a suggestion!
How is it even possible that I have never read a Tattoo Artist! Renji AU?? (If there is one, please, send it to me immediately). Anyway, I got way too enamored of this idea, this is not even remotely a drabble, it is 4400 words and it is incredibly self-indulgent, I am absolutely not sorry.
It takes place in America and everyone is Japanese-American, because I am way more comfortable writing about American tattoo culture. I have never actually read a Tattoo Artist AU, I don’t know how they are supposed to go, this is just based on my own experiences getting inked. It’s mostly a story about Rukia and Renji being incredible nerfballs, there are not nearly enough stories about Rukia being a nerfball around Renji.
Read on ao3 or ff.net
💀     🛹     💕
Izuru Kira found Renji Abarai in the break room, simultaneously trying to cram a burrito into his face and read a Hellboy comic. He was holding the comic open with his elbow in an attempt to avoid spilling guacamole on Abe Sapien.
“Your two o’clock is here,” Izuru informed his distinguished colleague.
“Oh, great!” Renji replied, creasing the foil wrapper into a spout so that he could pour the last of the salsa drippings into his mouth.
“She’s waiting in the consult room,” Izuru went on, watching Renji toss the crumpled foil ball across the room, completely missing the trash can. “Look, have you met her before? A Miss Kuchiki?”
“Just exchanged a few emails,” Renji replied, as he scrubbed his hands at the sink. “Why? Is she scary?”
“Not in the usual way of Abarai clients,” Izuru replied. “I was just… wondering if she was... in the right place.”
“Her request was very specific,” Renji replied, scooping up his comic and the manila folder underneath it. “In fact, I am quite proud of what I came up with for her.” He whipped the folder open.
Izuru stared at it for a moment. “That is so specific.”
“I honestly think this is one of the best tatts I have ever designed. I hope she’s a real weirdo, because not just anyone deserves a masterpiece of this caliber.”
“Mmm,” Izuru agreed. “Yeah. Anyway, if there’s been a, uh, miscommunication, see if you can just… redirect her. Both Momo and I are in today, okay?”
Renji scoffed and stuffed his comic in Izuru’s hand as he marched down the hall toward the consult room. A miscommunication. Renji wondered what was wrong with her. She was probably mousy and wore glasses. Izuru always assumed girls like that would rather have a sad poem about the sea or a sprig of herbs inked on her wrist (conveniently, his specialties). Plenty of mousy girls with glasses would rather rock some fangs or dripping daggers, in Renji’s professional experience.
“Knock knock!” he announced, as he slid the door open. He took one step into the room and stopped dead.
Rukia Kuchiki was not mousy. She did not wear glasses.
Renji didn’t know much about suits. He did not happen to own one himself. But he guessed that Rukia Kuchiki’s suit was expensive, in part because it fit her perfectly, despite her tiny frame. It was jet black, and didn’t have a single speck of lint or cat hair on it. Her perfectly manicured hands were folded neatly on top of her crossed legs. She was wearing very tall, very pointy heels. Their soles were bright red, which Renji had learned from television meant that they were super expensive. He realized that he probably shouldn’t be looking at her legs, even though they were very nice to look at. His eyes snapped up to her face, but that honestly wasn’t any better.
Renji wasn’t often attracted to women, but she had probably the most interesting face he had ever seen-- heart-shaped, with big, dark eyes, a sharp chin, the cutest little nose. Her make-up was subtle and professional, and her hair was swept up with a clip, although it must be fairly short, because a few pieces hung down in front of her ears, and a thick lock dangled between her eyes.
She looked like a mean lawyer from a movie, one that would drive a fancy sportscar like an act of violence. Scary, for sure. But not in the usual way of Abarai clients, who tended toward the large and beefy, not that sharp and sharklike.
That nose, though.
Suddenly, her face split into a big grin. “Hi,” she announced brightly. “I’m Rukia Kuchiki.” She had a deep voice, a very beautiful voice. “You must be Renji Abarai.” Her eyes flicked to his arms. “I mean, of course you are, who else would have those arms? They’re so cool.”
“My arms?” Renji said stupidly. “Are they… famous?”
Rukia’s cheeks flushed. “Oh, well, I follow you on Instagram, and you don’t have any pictures of your face, but your arms are in a lot of the shots and they’re, well, they’re kinda distinctive. Do you think, um, would you mind if I looked at them?”
Renji’s eyebrows shot up. It’s not like he wasn’t used to having his arms checked out, but most people were more… subtle about it. Oh, well, it was her dime. “I didn’t do them myself, obviously,” he pointed out, rolling up the sleeves of his t-shirt so she could see the baboon skull on his left shoulder. A skeletal arm traced down the rest of that arm, complete with an outline of his own hand bones. On the right side, a snake spine coiled around his bicep, ending with a hissing skull. “I mean, it was my design, but my friends-- the other three tattoo artists here-- all helped ink me up.” He plopped down in the chair that sat catty corner to the couch where Rukia was sitting, and held his arms out. “We’re sort of a full-service studio. I’m the skeletons and monsters guy. Izuru, the guy you met on desk duty today-- is good at calligraphy and watercolors and little, itty bitty tattoos. Momo is our nature girl, she specializes in flowers and animals, and she’s great with bright colors. The snake skull was all her. Shuuhei is really into classic tattoo art-- you need a hula girl or a heart with an arrow through it, he’s your man. He’s also incredibly talented at revamping old regret tattoos, there’s good money in that.”
“Mm,” Rukia agreed, finally tearing her eyes away from his forearms to look up at his face, and abruptly turned even pinker. A lot of people fantasized about getting a tattoo and then got a bad case of nerves when it was time to make the leap. Maybe all this was way out of her comfort zone. Renji was trying his best to be friendly and chatty, which usually helped, but he was not used to dealing with this class of lady. He hoped he wasn’t coming off as too familiar.
“Actually,” Rukia went on, pulling on her fingers nervously. “I picked this place specifically because of you. For your work, I mean. I’m kind of a big fan. I saw some of your paintings at an exhibition over at the Fine Arts College, and I just, you know, fell in love. I’d always thought I’d like to get a tattoo someday, and when I found out that you were a tattoo artist, I knew it had to be you. I’ve been looking forward to this for a long time, and I’m babbling and I’m really sorry, I’m just very excited.”
Renji blinked. “You’re not babbling,” he replied slowly. He was sort of hoping she might say some more things about how much she liked his art in her beautiful voice. “Wait, an exhibition at the art school? That must have been at least three years ago, when I was doing my MFA.”
“Er, right,” Rukia looked a little sheepish. “A friend of mine had some work in the same exhibit, you probably don’t know her. My favorite one of your paintings was the one with the Black Lagoon creatures eating hamburgers at a diner, but I also really liked the one that was like a huge monster with a big bone mask stalking through a city, the way you did the shadows was just incredible.”
That particular painting was currently wrapped in brown paper and stuffed behind Renji’s couch. His last boyfriend had told him it was “creepy.”
“Uh, glad you liked it,” Renji managed. “Who was your friend?”
“Her name is Inoue. Orihime Inoue.”
“Oh, the robot girl!” Renji exclaimed. “Er, I mean she drew robots. Constantly. For every assignment. I didn’t mean to imply she was… robotic. In any way.” Jeez, Abarai, pull it together, he chided himself. “Yeah, I remember her. I didn’t know her well, but she sure could draw some tight robots. Is, she, uh, doing well?”
“She’s doing storyboards for a stop-motion animation studio,” Rukia replied.
Renji smiled. “That sounds perfect for her.”
Rukia bit her bottom lip and Renji’s throat went dry.
“So, um, you said in your email that you would have a design for me to look at?”
Renji realized that he was gripping the folder like a doofus. “Right! I did a couple of variations,” he explained, passing it from one hand to the other. “But you explained the concept pretty clearly, and I’m really happy with how the first one came out. I mean, obviously, it’s your tattoo! Please give me any feedback you have, you won’t offend me, even if you hate it! Tattoo designs often take a few iterations, it’s very normal, don’t hold back.”
She was staring at him, those big eyes wide and sparkling. “Can I… see it?”
“Oh! Right!” He shoved the folder at her.
Rukia opened it up and gasped.
“I especially love the way you draw skeletons,” Rukia’s email had read. “Do you think you could tattoo a grim reaper doing a sick kickflip on a skateboard onto my outer bicep? I do lift, so I am pretty jacked, if that makes a difference.”
“It’s perfect,” Rukia sighed in a tiny voice.
“Um, in the first variation (that’s page 2) I added some sunglasses, and in the second one, the grim reaper is flipping the bird and also its head is on fire. I guess I thought that grim reapers should be gender neutral but now I’m wondering if you would have preferred more of a… lady grim reaper?” Renji yammered absently.
“Oh, no,” Rukia murmured softly, flipping through the pages. Renji wasn’t even sure she had listened to a word he had said. “These are amazing. I love the sunglasses, but I also like the way you put little flames in the eye sockets in the first one…” She waved a hand absently. “Oh, and don’t worry, I like a non-binary skeleton.”
A small problem had just occurred to Renji. “Hey, um, please don’t take this the wrong way, but I… may have overestimated the size of your arms.”
“Oh?” Rukia asked, and abruptly shucked off her expensive suit jacket. She was wearing a pale purple sleeveless silk blouse underneath. She held one arm out experimentally, and then flexed. The muscle definition on her bicep made Renji take an involuntary swallow, but the fact that she was wicked cut did not buy him much in the way of real estate.
“I’ll just shrink it down maybe 25%,” he reassured her. “I’ll have to simplify some of the detail on--”
“No,” Rukia frowned, her eyebrows drawing together. “Don’t do that.” She thought for a moment. “I’m not committed to having it on my arm.” She uncrossed her legs and hefted one high-heeled foot onto the coffee table in front of her. “What do you think? Is my thigh big enough?”
Renji tried to make words come out, but it just wasn’t happening.
“Er… sorry,” Rukia said slowly, tugging at her hem. “I forgot I was wearing a skirt today.”
“Huh?” Renji scrambled to recover. He needed to say something. She looked really embarrassed. Say something! Say something professional about her leg! “Sorry, I was, uh, thinking!” Good, good, now keep going. “Don’t be self-conscious, I see people’s bodies all the time. Bodies are no big deal, we all got ‘em, right?” This was true in the abstract sense, but he knew these were blatant lies as they exited his mouth. Most people’s bodies were no big deal. He had only known her for five minutes, but was certain that Rukia Kuchiki’s thighs were a very big deal. He studied her leg, stroking his chin, like he was some kind of anthropologist of thigh tattoos. Mostly he was trying to figure out what would seem like an appropriate amount of time to look at a person’s thigh, a person who was your professional client that you most definitely did not have the hots for. “There’s certainly plenty of room,” he declared. “But, you know, people are going to see it less. Which is a selling point for some people! It’s just a personal decision that you’ll have to make. It sounds like you had a big vision.”
Rukia gingerly placed her foot back on the floor. “I had actually been wondering if maybe the upper arm was too public, anyway,” she admitted. “The fact is, I just got full access to my trust fund, and this is sort of a celebration, but I may have been a little overeager to piss off my big brother. He’s very stodgy.” She contemplated the area of her leg that was covered by her pencil skirt. “But so are a lot of people in my field. I can wait until I’m running my own company before I get started on the full sleeve of my dreams, right?”
“Worked for me,” Renji replied, utterly lost by whatever she was talking about. “What… field are you in?”
“Oh, finance,” she dismissed.
Finance. Of course. Renji tried to shoo away the weight of disappointment that was settling in his stomach. He was talking to a friendly client who was clearly loaded, loved his work, and was contemplating thousands of dollars worth of future business. He should be thrilled. He should probably be trying to sell her one of his old paintings-- they were only gathering dust, anyway. Renji would never break the studio policy about hitting on clients. The fact that she would surely laugh at him if he asked her to his favorite burger joint ought to make things easier, right?
“This is so hard!” Rukia declared, and Renji was shaken from his reverie. She was just contemplating his draft designs again, though, flipping back and forth between them.
“You don’t have to decide right now,” he reassured her. “You can think about it and email me. If you’re happy enough, we can schedule your session, and we’ll work out the details between now and then. Chat it over with your pal MechaHime, she’s got good opinions.” He paused. Momo always said he was too nice during consults, they were running a business, but he couldn’t help it. “Or you can just call back when you’re ready. No pressure.”
Rukia slammed her fist down on her knee. “No! Let’s schedule it! Do I pay now?”
“20% deposit. Let’s go out front, Izuru will ring it up.”
“Perfect.” She looked longingly at the drawings again. “Can I take these with me? You’re absolutely right, Orihime will know what to do.”
Renji wrinkled his nose. “It’s actually against studio policy but…”
Rukia’s face suddenly became very serious. “Then it’s against policy.” She winked at him and smiled. “You should take care of your intellectual property, Mr. Abarai.”
“I never get over to this part of town, to be honest,” Rukia admitted as they walked back up to the front. “Is the taco place across the street any good?”
“Oh, yeah, it’s great,” Renji agreed. “Momo and I painted a huge mural on their wall, so they give us free churros.”
“Are tacos a good post-tattoo celebratory meal?” Rukia asked curiously.
“Well, you actually want to eat beforehand,” Renji pointed out. “It’s important to keep your energy up. I don’t estimate yours should take very long, I’m gonna book you a two-hour slot.”
“Ah, okay,” Rukia agreed, and Renji realized belatedly that...maybe… she had been asking him out? No. Surely not. His brain scrabbled for a response, but then he stepped into the reception area and his brain shut down entirely.
“It’s DONE!” Shuuhei bellowed. “Behold my work, ye mighty, and despair!”
Tetsuzaemon Iba, serial client, yakuza enthusiast, and assistant manager at a doggie day care, was flexing. He was not wearing a shirt.
From behind the reception desk, Kira was wearing a dour frown and shaking his head.
“It’s a masterpiece,” Renji declared. “I admit I was skeptical, but it looks fantastic, man. You happy with it?”
“It” was a massive tattoo, covering the wide landscape of Iba’s broad back. It featured a lucky cat, grinning maniacally, its paw held high. It was on fire. The kanji for “lucky charm” was incorporated somehow. It was a disaster. It was perfect.
“How could I not be?” Iba boomed.
“Whoa,” a tiny voice behind Renji said.
Iba’s face went pale when he realized that he was being Peak Iba in front of an elegant, professional woman whose shoes probably cost more than his entire net worth. “Gimme me my shirt!” he demanded of Shuuhei.
“That’s… amazing!” Rukia exclaimed, her face lighting up. “Wow, how long did that take?”
Shuuhei blinked slowly as he passed Iba his shirt. “Five sessions.”
“Well, it’s so cute!” Rukia announced. “You must love cats.”
Iba lifted at the same gym as Renji and watched Momo’s Pomeranian on Tuesdays and Thursdays. He was a regular fixture at the tattoo studio, and all four of them liked to drag him, but no one, none of them, had ever roasted him this hard. Renji cursed that no-asking-out-clients rule, because he wanted to buy Rukia Kuchiki her own body weight in tacos and then ask her to be his wife.
“He’s more of a dog person,” Shuuhei supplied.
“Great with dogs,” Izuru added.
“Shut up, you jerks, I am a lover of all animals,” Iba grumbled as he pulled his Hawaiian shirt over his shoulders. “Is this your lawyer, Abarai? Did you finally get arrested for that hairstyle?”
“I have an MBA, actually, not a JD,” Rukia replied matter-of-factly. “And I am his client. Can you show that large man my tattoo design? Is that allowed?”
Renji chuckled, and pulled out his drawing.
“That,” Iba declared, “is a wicked tatt.”
“Oh, you showed me that email!” Shuuhei recalled. “It came out great.” He regarded Rukia. “He was really excited about that one, you made his day.”
Rukia just beamed proudly.
“Are we booking a session, then?” Izuru asked hopefully.
“Yeah, two hours,” Renji nodded.
“Let me just finish ringing up Iba, and I’ll see when you’ve got an opening,” Izuru replied.
“This your first one?” Shuuhei asked Rukia conversationally.
“Mm-hmm,” Rukia nodded.
“Well, you made a good choice. Clean design, mostly black with just a few color pops, should go on quick and easy, and it’ll hold up really well, too.”
“This is Shuuhei, the one I was telling you about, who fixes a lot of bad tattoos.”
“I have never had to fix an Abarai tattoo,” Shuuhei declared. “He’s great with first timers. Very gentle. I’ve fallen asleep while he was inking me.” Shuuhei pointed to the pair of crossed scythes gracing his upper arm. “This is one of his.”
“Oooh, neat!” Rukia agreed.
“You’re being embarrassing,” Renji informed his friend.
“Always,” Shuuhei agreed. “Nice to meet you! I hope I get to see the finished product.” He waved to Iba as he headed off toward the back. “Don’t forget to moisturize!”
“Everyone’s so friendly here,” Rukia said softly to Renji. “This isn’t at all like I pictured it.”
Renji stretched his arms behind his head. “Nah, we’re just a bunch of goofballs who like drawin’ on people. Very lowkey.”
“I guess I’ve thought a lot about the getting tattooed part of getting tattooed, but I never thought of it as… a job. That people have.”
“It’s a great job,” Renji replied. “I love it. I’m just lucky that Izuru over there has enough business sense to keep the other three of us from running it into the ground.”
“That’s certainly the truth,” Izuru agreed, as Iba headed out the door. “Two hours, you said? Renji’s got a 4-6pm block open on a Wednesday, three weeks from now. The 24th, how does that work for you, Ms. Kuchiki?”
“Do you think that’s enough time to settle on a design?” Renji asked. “If you come up with changes, it should only take me a day or two to incorporate them.”
“Oh! Yes, three weeks should be fine. I thought… it might be a little sooner,” Rukia replied, sounding a tad disappointed.
“Abarai’s a busy man, three weeks is actually pretty quick,” Izuru explained.
“Right, of course!” Rukia nodded. “Yes, I’ll take the 24th!”
She then paid her deposit, a process which involved her taking approximately ten thousand items out of her purse, including a full-sized drawing pad, a single fingerless glove, and a Pez dispenser with a duck head. She was the most contradictory person Renji had ever met, and he just wanted to know everything about her. But instead, they were going to exchange a couple of emails about a grim reaper on a skateboard, he was going to spend an hour and a half two inches from her naked thigh in a state of intense, non-sexual concentration, and then he would likely never see her again.
“Okay, I guess that’s it!” Rukia said, stuffing the last of her worldly belongings back into the purse. “Three weeks, then!”
“Three weeks it is,” Renji agreed. “Unless we happen to run into each other at the taco place.”
Rukia blinked. “Oh!” she exclaimed. “Right. Ha, ha, of course!” She’d been walking backwards toward the door, an impressive feat in those heels, and she spun suddenly to pull it open.
“It’s a push,” Renji and Izuru chorused together.
“Ha, ha, of course it is!” Rukia laughed nervously, and ducked out.
Izuru stared pointedly at Renji. “Wow,” he said.
“I don’t know what you have against her,” Renji scowled. “So she’s professional. She was really nice. She’s a big fan of my work.”
Izuru cocked his head. “She’s clearly also a big fan of you.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Renji said.
“Look, I’m sorry I implied that a person who drives a Lotus Exige would not be interested in having your weird skeleton doodles permanently placed on her body,” Izuru held up his hands, “but did you really not notice the little hearts and singing birds floating around her head every time she gazed longingly at you?”
“Since when do you know anything about cars?” Renji snapped.
“It looked fancy and I asked Shuuhei what it was, okay!”
On cue, Shuuhei burst back into the reception area, Momo close on his tail. “Are we talking about the hot client who has a crush on Abarai?”
“Did you ask her out?” Momo asked breathlessly.
“She’s not really his type,” Izuru mused. “Very corporate.”
Renji frowned. Did he have a type? If his type excluded people like Rukia Kuchiki, he might need to get a new type.
“Who cares, she was adorable!” Momo insisted. “I woulda asked her out.”
“Renji, if you go out with her, can you get me a ride in the Exige?” Shuuhei added.
“I’m not gonna ask her out!” Renji protested. “What happened to the no-hitting-on-clients rule?”
“The rule is no creeping on clients,” Shuuhei correctly. “This is different. She’s clearly into you, big time.”
“Also, she seems non-terrible, unlike the questionable human beings you usually take up with,” Izuru pointed out. “We could relax the rule if it netted you an actually decent partner for a change.”
Renji scowled judgmentally at Izuru, as if his own dating history had been remotely better before he and Shuuhei finally hooked up.
“Oh!” Momo waved her phone. “Speaking of which, I googled her, like you told me to, Izuru--”
“Izuru!” Renji protested.
“--and you were right! She’s not just one of the Kuchikis, she’s the granddaughter!” Momo thrust her phone in Renji’s face. It was some article about some fancy charity event, complete with a picture that was clearly Rukia, dressed in a dramatic black and gold evening gown.
Renji wanted to push Momo’s hand away, but he also didn’t want to stop looking at Rukia in that dress. “The who?” he asked.
Izuru and Momo sighed dramatically in synchronized exasperation.
“Embarrassingly rich old money family? I don’t know what they actually do, but they’re always in the newspapers, donating money for something or other--”
“Billionaire philanthropists,” Shuuhei intoned in a fake deep voice.
“--I heard they’re descended from some famous clan of samurai back in Japan,” Momo ignored him. She jerked her phone back and started tapping at it frantically. “I’m sure you’ve seen pictures of the grandson-- Rukia’s brother, I guess. He always makes those lists of top ten hottest bachelors.”
“He’s dreamy,” Shuuhei seconded.
“Impossibly dreamy,” Izuru thirded.
Momo flipped her phone around again, to reveal a picture of a very serious, and very handsome man in a classic three-piece wool suit. Renji supposed “impossibly dreamy” was not an inaccurate description.
“Yeah, I think I’ve seen pictures of that guy before,” Renji shrugged. “He’s okay. Rukia has a more interesting face, I think.”
Momo and Shuuhei exchanged raised eyebrows.
“You do like her, then?” Izuru asked, his face brightening. “You’re wrong, by the way, Byakuya Kuchiki has the face of an angel.”
“Rukia says he’s stuffy,” Renji shrugged. “And fine. I like her. She’s cute and nice and had good taste in tattoos. What’s not to like?”
“Are you gonna ask her out, then?” Momo pressed.
“Absolutely not,” Renji replied. “She’s my client. Besides, as you just pointed out, she’s loaded. What’s she want with a scumbag like me?”
All three of his friends groaned.
“You have good delts and sexy hair,” Izuru pointed out.
“You give amazing hugs!” Momo declared.
“You draw fantastic skeletons,” Shuuhei added. “Which, apparently, is relevant to her interests, and not a thing you usually find on Tindr.”
“Also, we’ve already established that she does like you, regardless of whether she has a valid reason for doing so,” Izuru concluded. “So, if you’re at all interested, you really shouldn’t let that stop you.”
“I think you should go for it,” Momo encouraged.
“Me, too,” Shuuhei agreed.
Renji grimaced. She was an amazing girl, too good to be true probably. If she had any sense at all, she would certainly turn him down. But maybe… just maybe… she didn’t have any sense. “Okay,” he grudgingly agreed. “I’ll do it. But not until I’m finished the damn tattoo!”
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Corpses in the Meadow || Morgan & Eilidh
TIMING: Current
PARTIES: @braindeacl & @mor-beck-more-problems
SUMMARY: Nothing brings together two dead women like wildflowers and flesh eating watermellons.
Morgan had thought her days of laying in the ground for hours were behind her, but April really was the cruelest month and she hadn’t gotten free of its grip yet. Today, under a bright spring sun, she furrowed her nails deep into the earth and tried to pull herself under, as if the ground and all its creatures were a blanket for her. But of course the earth didn’t hold anyone like that except for the dead. The for real, permanent, definitely-no-walking dead. Morgan brushed her fingers along the newly sprung wildflowers, imagining what their petals felt like, if they were as tender and smooth as her memory told her they were. At least she could enjoy their colors, and their fluffy golden pollen centers. Morgan plucked some carefully by the stem and knotted them together from her sprawl on the ground. Maybe if she ever got to have a real funeral, she’d ask whosever was left to care about her for wildflowers. She should probably find out if her zombie goo was toxic to plants, but if she could go back to being a part of the world, if she could be felt and taken in, that wouldn’t be the worst thing.
Carefully, Morgan plucked more flowers from around her and wove them with care, on and off, between laying and watching the bright eye of the sun through the trees, until she heard the grass crunch behind her. Morgan tilted her head back, squinting to catch a glimpse of the figure. Please no hunters, she thought. I don’t want to convince a hunter I deserve to live today.
Springtime was here, and Eilidh couldn’t help but smile. For one so shrouded in death, life in all its forms filled her with delight. As the forest shivered, awoken from its winter slumber, she felt herself drawn more and more to its embrace. Of course, she did have the professional need to be there so frequently, but that wasn’t the main motivation. Even when her ventures were work focused, such as now, she took her time getting to the needed destination. Especially after the gateway adventure and all these damn fires. Between work and wondering what the hell was going on, she deserved to have a moment of relaxation. But she tried not to worry about that now. She inhaled a deep breath—the hint of spring air tickling her nose, so accustomed to just a suggestion of its true form she didn’t know the difference. The sounds of creatures, excited by the revitalized forest as well, filled her ears with a wonderful symphony. Colors that weren’t there the day before dazzled her eyes and—wait, who was that?
She squinted. Aye, looks like a person. Well, she should probably investigate. Changing course, she got closer, and closer, and closer, until she could clearly see what the other person was doing. Arms to her hips, brows furrowed, voice stern, she called, “Hey, you’re not supposed to do that!” A pause. Then, a grin. “Nah, it’s whatever. Just don’t pick too much, or I will have to actually ask you to stop.” Even closer now, she peered curiously as the braided flora, trying to make sense of its unfinished form. “What are you working on, anyway?”
The voice calling out to Morgan definitely didn’t sound like a hunter. “Sorry!” Morgan called dully. Then the voice warmed, not laughing, but bouncing like it wanted to. Slowly, Morgan sat up to look at her. Definitely a lot prettier and friendlier than any stranger she’d run into in the woods so far. “I’m making, well…” She looked down at her handiwork. It had gotten too long to be a circlet, unless she wanted to twist it over itself. “Honestly, I’m just passing the time. Making things helps me think. Or not think, I guess. Normally I do that at home, I’m not a serial flower picker or anything. I just didn’t feel like being inside about it.” But she did, apparently, feel like oversharing about it.
Morgan grinned ruefully and held it out to the stranger. “Do you want it? It’ll look better on you, with how tall you are.” She nodded at her, insisting. “Are these your woods?”
“Seems like you’ve had a lot of time to pass.” Eilidh mused while surveying the length of the, well, the to-be-decided. It reminded her of her own absentminded creations, especially during days when she would forego human society for days, weeks, months at a time. And it was a pretty little thing; she could tell its creator had experience.
She perked excitedly at the offering—eyes alight and giggle bubbling—and immediately claimed it, though with care. Within her grasp, she gently turned and twisted the woven piece, concentration on her face. Suddenly, epiphany. She dropped down to her knees, taking care to not disturb too much of the vegetation below. She wrapped it once around her head, quickly connecting the end piece to the rest, and then began to weave the remaining part within her own hair into a side braid. “I don’t claim them, but I do work here.” Feeling hospitable after the generosity, she continued. “Speaking of, I was heading over to do something. But I know a real good flower spot on the way. It’s not on a commonly used trail. So, nice and private. But you can’t pick any of those. And I’ll know, so don’t try. Still, they’re wonderful to look at, ‘specially right now.” She finished the braid. Part of the flowers still stuck out at the end; her hair just wasn’t quite long enough. Ah well. “Interested?”
Morgan looked up at the sky to check the position of the sun, then her phone to confirm her suspicions. She’d been laying here for hours and it had barely felt like anything. Maybe that could have been a relief, but she’d been down this proverbial hole too many times to be glad about skipping suffering by being absent from herself. “I guess I have, yeah…” Her voice tapered off into a laugh. Technically, she had all the time in the world.
She smiled in spite of herself as the woman wrapped the flowers into her hair. She seemed to have done it before. “So that’s why you’d have to stop me if I became too much of a flower thief. At least you’re a lot more pleasant than any of the other public service workers I’ve met in town.” Although between Marley Stryder and Kaden in his scowl-y asshole days, that bar was pretty low. Morgan looked at the sky again. It was well past morning, but she didn’t feel like going back home while everyone in it was away doing...alive-people things, presumably. “Uh...you know, I don’t see why not. It’s okay if I take pictures of them though, right? It’s not gonna hurt them any.” Slowly, she got to her feet and waited for the woman to show her the way. “If we’re going off on unknown woodsy adventures, I should probably know you as something better than ‘strangely nice park lady’. I’m Morgan.”
Mischief twinkled in Eilidh’s eyes when she looked upon the other. “You caught me. I want all the flowers to myself.” Sentence punctuated with a mock evil laugh. She did, perhaps, on her off time, pick flowers and use them for various things. She mostly placed them in her hair, or pressed them in a book, or added them to her crafts, similar to the one now braided in her hair. She always made sure not to take too much, and to give back to the earth in ways she could.
Her? Pleasant? James would scoff if he was near, but he was off having private time. Though, at times, she could be such a word. Especially when she was surrounded by all that nature could give: when the sun hit the nape of her neck and the breeze cooled her skin and the trees danced amongst the flow. It calmed her. It was why she always felt drawn to it. It was her home. It was the only true one she had left, anyhow.
She arose, brushing off remnants of the ground off her skirt. “Aye, photography’s fine. Just don’t have me in them. I don’t like paparazzi. And call me Macleod.” She nodded in greeting. Then, with her head, she motioned onward and began their journey. “This way. It’s not too far from here.” Initially, the trail they took was large and the ground smooth, packed down by many feet over the years: a main path. The trail Eilidh quickly turned into was less so. It was marked, and it would come up on the map if you looked, but the ground was noticeably less tame. And the surrounding wilderness knew this, knew the barrier between it and the path was weaker. Eilidh didn’t bat an eye as they continued.
Morgan laughed softly in response. “Are you saying you’re secretly an international pop star on the run, Macleod?” She teased dryly. “Because I could use the boost to my Instagram profile. Cat pictures interspersed with flowers, decaying animals, and their bones isn’t very mainstream.” She took out her phone, arching a brow, then turned and took a close shot of a tree branch. It was easier to hold herself up in front of someone, especially a stranger. She had her pride, even if sometimes she overshared to the point of distressing people. And then, new people were such convenient puzzles and experiences. She didn’t have to be sad looking at herself if she was learning their expressions and what they were like and how their presence colored the world.
She followed this woman, Macleod, down the trail. It was one of those obscure ones that was half grown over by neglect, or some unspoken message from nature. Morgan had a sense that they were passing into someone else’s territory. Morgan stumbled behind her, scanning their surroundings, the birds flying above the trees, the blur of butterflies in the distance. Further on, she thought she spied a shadow, some deer maybe, lazing on its way through its day. “And this is definitely a secret flower patch and not a secret murder patch, right…?” She asked.
“I’ll never tell.” She winked. Then, pause. Instagram. Eilidh was almost sure she knew which one that was. Should someone the age she looks like know what that was? She decided not to mention it and look it up later. “Really? ‘Cause all that already got my attention.” The brief moment the phone faced her, she stiffened ever so slightly—shoulders barely rose, face found a subtle hardness. As the lens passed on to a new target, the tension washed off her just as quickly as it came. Her eyes followed the new direction. A simple tree branch, but the way the light hit it just so… she understood the interest.
She let out a short chuckle. “Nah, the murder patch is half a klick that way.” She took note of Morgan’s unease and quickened her pace, figuring it was best to get to their destination sooner rather than later. The breeze picked up, brushing aside the flimsy vegetation ahead and the pair got an early glimpse of their goal. Colors erupted between the green, as if a window into another world. The wind took a turn, and the air suddenly became engulfed in a cornucopia of sweetness. Unfortunately, to her it was only a little tickle in her nose. Nothing more.
“Really?” Morgan said, brows raised. “Well that’s not something I hear every day. You don’t have a collection too, do you? Because I have a lot of death sculptures and I’m running out of shelf space.” Not that she’d been adding much to it lately. Between taking care of her family and being too miserable to cook for herself, she hadn’t been doing much in her studio besides breathing and spacing out. But if a normie like Cutler could find something nice in it, maybe Macleod could too.
But before Morgan could make her pitch, they arrived. It had rained the night before and the ground was still iridescent with water, which now shimmered in the sunlight as if enchanted with a glaze of pearl. White flowers streamed over the grass as if they’d been poured from the sky. Bunches of violets and peonies danced in the breeze and a thin haze of dandelion puffs and pollen floated like pixies through the air. Morgan gaped in awe, too awed to bother aiming her camera. “I was about eighty-five percent sure you were serious about this not being a murder patch, but stars above--” She tipdoed carefully into the flowers, trying to disturb as few of them as possible. “What are their names?” she asked, sinking down to brush the petals. “What do they smell like?”
Eilidh perked curiously. “Can’t say I have a ‘death sculpture’ collection. What’d they look like?” Images of a room overcome with ceramic skeletons filled her mind. And then, the same room taken over by structures constructed by pieces of the dead. But all theorizing dashed from her mind at the sudden burst of colors. Despite having found herself in the spot many times, the sight was still delightful. Especially now, when many of the flowers were finally awoken from their slumber—stretching, dancing in the spring air. Their full vitality overwhelming the area in every hue. The forest was a sky, and this was its rainbow. Morgan’s reaction reminded Eilidh of when she first found the area less than a year prior. Sadly, it was located just as the flowers began to take their rest. But now she can enjoy it in its full glory.
“Well, that one’s Jeffrey, that one’s Helga.” She pointed to flowers at random. “Kidding… Maybe. Who knows, they could like being called Helga.” Still, she wasn’t going to force upon them a name. But she wasn’t sure if her current company would understand the sentiment, so she continued. “Anyway, these are known as Dog’s Tooth,” she motioned to a congregation of yellow petaled flowers, “and those’re Lady’s Slippers,” it was the collection of peculiarly shaped flower’s turn to be gestured at. “To name a few.” She matched Morgan’s tentative steps and joined her by a dense patch of purple flowers, one of which Morgan currently caressed. While the petals were small, their large numbers resulted in a relatively tall plant. She nodded, regarding its presence. “This one is supposedly very obedient. But I can tell they still have a wild spirit.” She too placed a gentle finger on the petals, though her fingers hardly registered anything. Her nose faced the same situation. A faint sweetness lingered, but only enough to register its existence, not to understand. “Uh, they smell like flowers. Sweet. Ya know.” Odd question. It made her wonder.
Something lurked just outside of view. But it was coming closer.
Morgan was too swept up in the rainbow spray of flowers to notice anything in the shadows. She was picking her way over to the edge of the patch so she could lay down without crushing any of them. She took out her phone and photographed the biggest flowers up close, and then from as close to ‘below’ as she could. “Pixie’s eye view, you know?” She teased. She really did want to find out if this was how Sundew and the rest of her pixie family saw the world, but Macleod didn’t need to know that. “Also, I think it would be pretty great if you actually had named them. Helga’s especially pretty.” She brushed her finger over the petals and tried to remember what they felt like. She would think of them when she touched Deirdre’s lips. Sometimes they were so smooth, just a little sticky with her matte color of the day. Maybe this flower was like that. Morgan smiled fondly at the association. At last she put her phone away and sat up, simply enjoying the light in the moment. She took a deep inhale, but all she got was a faint whiff of...flower. She couldn’t detect enough to separate anything besides that soft, pollen-y perfume. “I...had my sense of smell damaged in an accident,” she said at last. “Nothing’s like it used to be. But it’s okay, if you don’t know how to describe it. And it’s probably hard, with so many around…” She let the thought go with a sad sigh, then sat a little straighter, forcing herself to brighten. “How did you find this? I know it’s your job to be here, but it must have taken a while to notice.”
For a moment, Eilidh’s eyes glanced upon Maybe-Helga: a beautiful white flower with magenta freckles at the base of elongated petals. She wished she knew what they thought of the name. She’d try asking another time. “Hm, maybe.” Before musing on that thought for too long, she looked back at the sound of Morgan taking a deep breath. Watched as her features and her words darkened in the aftermath, a rolling cloud casting a shadow over the otherwise beautiful day. Eilidh wanted to help. But she couldn’t even pretend. The true complexities of their scents had been lost to the forgetfulness of time. A part of a life she pretended was fully disconnected from her. What she could detect now was all she could ever know. Not that it bothered her much; how could you miss something you never knew?
“I spend lots of time exploring. Probably too much.” She winked, pressing a finger on her lips. “Don’t tell anyone.” While she took her job seriously, she never understood the notion that her entire time had to be utilized for work, and work, and more work. What’s the point of being among flowers if she can’t (sort of) smell them? But that thought was pushed out when a rustle occurred just on the outskirts of the meadow. An intrigued hum rushed through her throat as she got a closer look of the– “Watermelon?” Odd. She hadn’t spotted it when they first got there. And watermelons don’t just appear out of nowhere. Taking another step forward, her eyes scanned the nearby area. Trying to detect whoever left it behind. Focus drawn elsewhere, the watermelon quickly rolled up to her without detection. She looked down and it rolled to a stop near her feet. As if struck by an invisible knife, it was cleaved in two. Fangs protruded out of each half, filling the newly opened space. Her eyes held curiosity at the action.
But it craved blood. Its fangs dug into her leg. With a shout, Eilidh started wrestling it off.
“Watermelon?” Morgan repeated. She had moved on to another flower, which had a pistil so large it made the flower look like a face with a long, odd nose, and was thinking of a person-name to give it. So she didn’t notice anything was wrong until Macleod screamed.
“Oh, shit--!”
Morgan scrambled to her feet and trampled through the flower patch to get to the other woman. “Hold on, you’re gonna be okay!” She shoved her arm between its wet melon jaws, forcing it loose enough for Macleod’s leg to come free. The melon, hungry for anything, chomped down on her arm, shredding her muscles to ribbons. Morgan clamped her jaw shut to muffle the sound of her scream and tried to bash the melon into the ground. But strong as she was, the melon was pretty hefty, and with the pain and awkwardness, she only managed to dent a few chunks off its bulbous shape. “I got this!” She choked out. “Get as far away as you can!”
Pent up force building up as she struggled, when the hold of the watermelon was released, Eilidh tumbled backwards. She shot back up to see… Morgan had taken her place? Eilidh didn’t know whether to be worried or impressed by her tenacity. But it was no time for introspection, it was clear Morgan was suffering. Eilidh stuck out the—non-chewed up—leg and fished out the iron dagger strapped to the thigh. Then she launched herself back into the fray. The blade struck deep into the green flesh. She pressed it forward, adding a new gash. But this time, no teeth sprouted out. Instead, it seized, trembling for a few moments, until stillness took over. The teeth relinquished themselves from Morgan.
She stared at the mangled arm. But something, something familiar, was off about it. “Fuck. Ok, let’s get you out of–” More rustling. Eilidh whipped her head to the sound. Two watermelons revealed themselves. Perhaps this was their area? She’d usually try and leave them alone at this point, if willing. Or in this instance, pick up Morgan and leave. But her leg was still healing, so she wasn’t sure if she’d be fast enough to outrun their roll. Making a decision, she gripped her leg, fingers encircling the flesh loosened by the first watermelon. She ripped off a chunk and threw it away from the flowers. Bait. Like hungry sharks, the two dived at the morsel. While they were distracted, she kicked into one so hard it bent her toes into the balls of her feet. The watermelon went flying into the trunk of a tree. Smash! Red chunks flew out of the mouth cavity as it rolled back onto the ground. Her eyes locked onto the remaining one. While her attention had been focused elsewhere, it had started making its move towards Morgan. But Eilidh interrupted, pouncing on it and sending stab after stab. It tried to roll away, the thing was surprisingly slippery considering, but with one final strike of her dagger, it stopped as well.
Morgan tumbled free and rolled onto the flowerbed. The watermelon’s teeth hurt coming out just as much as they’d hurt coming in. She dug her hands into the ground, ripping up grass as her arm knit itself back together again. “What are you doing? They’re gonna--” She turned her head toward the carnage. Macleod was--handling herself just fine? She saw the woman rip off her leg and use it as bait. The rest of Macleod’s watermelon slaughter passed in a daze. That woman had just ripped off her leg. She ripped off her leg like it was nothing and she didn’t have anything coming out of it except for a few black globs of blood. She didn’t even look phased. Was this what it felt like when people watched her cut off her fingers?
When the last watermelon had been stabbed to a pulp, Morgan sat up, staring at Macleod with open wonder. “You ripped off your leg to save me,” she said. “And I turned my arm into hamburger meat to save you.” She held out the still-healing arm for emphasis, laughing deliriously. The two of them pouncing on watermelons to save the day when neither of them were in danger of dying again. It was hilarious. “So...you’re a zombie too, huh?”
Eilidh looked over at the carnage. Hopefully those watermelons would have a better go next time. She nodded, a casual bow, with words leaving her lips, so soft they were illegible. She turned, remembering eyes were still on her. Passions had distracted her. In the heat of the moment, she forgot to consider how Morgan would react to, well, the way her body reacted to violence. Her leg was in clear view, already at work to reseal the newly torn muscles. There was no denying it; no future attempt at naivety. She considered her options. The grip on her dagger tightened. Wait, no, no, not that. Not again. She sighed. “Let’s just forget this and get you help.” But before she could pick up the injured woman, her eyes focused on her arm. The arm that was also in the process of healing. Same as her own tattered limb. Tissue that hadn’t been there just a moment prior concealed parts of the lesion, with more on the way. Where the fresh skin hadn’t been produced, a familiar black ooze leaked out. Arm mirrored leg. Realizing no real danger to Morgan was present, Eilidh relaxed. All the two needed was rest. She wished she had known that a minute earlier, though. Poor critters.
And there it was. That word. Tension returned, forcing her body into a straight fixture. Face contorted, words sour. “No, I’m not! I’m a–” She took a deep breath. “Doesn’t matter what I am.” It sounded more like she was trying to convince herself rather than Morgan. “So you’re one then, yeah?”
“Oh, no!” Morgan said, grimacing with embarrassment. “It’s just. I’ve only seen two more of us. Ever. And one of them was my best friend who made me like this at the last minute. My last minute, not theirs, obviously. Uh--” None of these were the words she was actually trying to get out. “I’m not used to this. Or asking for personal terminology. Sorry. What I’m trying to say is I’m sorry. I know the z word isn’t for everyone and I shouldn’t have assumed, I was just--” She looked at her haplessly. “It’s just been a really lonely time for me lately. And you’re--kind of incredible. And it does matter to me, what you want to be called. Very much. But yeah. I’m one too. A year now, so, still new. Newer at this than it feels like. How long have you been...you know? Do you meet a lot of people like us out here?”
While her ears listened to Morgan’s words, Eilidh’s eyes drifted to the blade in her hand—both slick and sticky with the juices of the fallen. Curiously—it was flesh after all—she gave it a lick, collecting the remnants of the slain creatures on her tongue. Nothing. She tasted nothing. Figures. She wiped the rest of the juices off with her sock before returning the dagger to its holster. Her eyes returned to looking, watching, Morgan. Studying her. The heat from her outburst still burned at her throat, but it started to cool as the woman’s words sunk in. The apology seemed genuine, and the attempt at reconciliation was appreciated. The creases on her face lifted, revealing a softer expression. Especially at the admittance to the newness of her existence and the loneliness following; at that she finally lifted her hands, patting the air in a calming motion. “It’s alright, it’s alright. That word is just—I hate it. But I’m not mad.” Not anymore, at least. The flow of apologetic words had been enough to calm Eilidh’s sudden temper. Brief silence followed as she looked Morgan up and down. Considering. “I’m a Slúagh. Similar to—yeah. But not the same. Guess we’re sorta like cousins in a way. Besides you, I’ve only met one zombie in White Crest. But I’ve seen a few here and there over the years.” Never another just like her, however. But she refrained from mentioning or even hinting at… them. That would only lead to further questions; questions she was not in the mood to answer. “And let’s just say I’m old.”
Morgan squirmed under the intensity of Macleod’s gaze. “Hated, noted,” she said. “I’ve never heard that other term before. Slu-aagh? Is it a regional thing, or a time period thing, do you think? But either way, I mean, all my birth family died before I did, so I barely remember what it’s like to have a cousin. This still feels really--I know we don’t have biochemical instant affinity for each other like fae do, but it feels wrong to brush off finding each other, when there don’t seem to be many of us who survive long enough to be found. And if we’re lucky, there won’t be many other people who can know us as long as we can. That, and we just saved each other…” She petered into laughter. “Even if we were pretty much fine the whole time. So, why not? Be friends, or as much as we can be to each other. Have you fed recently, by any chance? Because I have some meal prepped brain burgers at home, if you want. Or I could grab some of whatever you eat, if that’s something different. If you want, of course.”
“Slúagh.” The word rolled off her tongue naturally. “Not just a term. It’s what I am.” Eilidh insisted, that fire ready to return if resistance was found. At the following statement, Eilidh simply just stared. She couldn’t remember having—no, she’s never had a family. At least not biologically. Slúaghs can’t reproduce after all. No matter how much she had tried. With the mention of friendship, the blank expression plastered on her face shifted into the hint of a pleased one. Eyes widened in interest. It was always nice, making a new connection. And she was right. This existence could get lonely, in that sense. It was impossible to find those like her, and rare to run into those like Morgan. At least ones that had a good grip on themselves. Not everyone was cut out for their unique lifestyle, even with help. And moaning and groaning didn’t make for good conversation, though the wrestling could be fun. The other ones, well. Most acted like she was lying about who—what—she was. Sometimes the thought was enough to send her tempers firing. Enough to make her generally avoid association with them, in case of opposition. But for some reason she still craved that kinship. While the use of us didn’t go unnoticed, and her face had tensed at the usage, Morgan seemed to be less dismissive than the average. And those gentle eyes were very persuasive, inviting. Morgan reminded her of James; she should introduce them.
A drop of hunger stirred from within at the thought of feeding, dashing out any contemplation. “Nah. And getting your leg chewed to hell makes a gal hungry.” The damaged leg was close to appearing as if nothing happened, a craving the only reminder it did. She hummed curiously. “Brain burgers! Fun. I usually don’t bother cooking. So, brain burgers it is.” A small chuckle escaped her. “What a first friend date, though, huh?” She gestured to the watermelon gore surrounding them.
It meant far too much to Morgan to hear the word “friend date.” She was smiling too much. When she looked at the watermelon gore around them, she burst with laughter that startled two birds from their nest. She had to clench herself still to keep from bouncing. “Yes! I mean, to the burgers. They take awhile to make, getting some flavor to actually, you know, flavor, but they’re pretty nice! Not like what you remember, if you do remember, but it’s better than plain grey stuff.” And now she was talking too much again. As you do. Morgan got to her feet and dusted herself off. “But all this--” She gestured, laughing again. “I think that’s just how White Crest brings people together.”
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writing prompt: me as a demigod
HI so if you don’t know i’m primarily active on instagram @percabethfeelsfandom and I’ve decided to join this prompt thingy for the month of october except i’m super behind so i’m gonna be posting them in random sprints it’s hosted by @pickocha on insta (thank u for all the support on what i’ve been writing thus far :) 
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“I’m not leaving you,” I cried. The satyr smiled, blood coating their teeth as they gripped my hand tightly. 
“Yes, you will. You’re going to run. You’re going to keep running until you see the hill. You’ll know when you see it. Don’t stop, don’t stop till you see the tree.” I held on tight and lowered us to the base of a tree, hiding among the shrubs. I peeked above the leaves to check if the monsters had followed but the night was dark, the moon hidden behind the clouds. 
“Dylan it’s a forest! There are trees everywhere,” I said forcing sarcasm into my tone to keep it lighthearted but my heart felt like it was caving in on itself. Rain pelted down in sheets, and I could feel the cold in my bones. But the sickly warm feeling of Dylan’s blood was like fire in my hands and soaked down the front of my shirt. 
They’d gotten shot on a loose thorn of a monster, and I didn’t need to look down at their front to know that it was poisoned as well. 
“They’re catching up. The rain can only hide your scent for so long. Let them find me first. GO,” they began to cough, more blood coming out of their stomach in small spurts. 
I held back a sob and pressed my shirt against their front again trying to absorb it. Why wouldn’t it stop?
“You will be a powerful demigod. It was an honour finding you Caitlin. Please run.” 
I swallowed and finally nodded. I pressed a kiss to their forehead and thanked them for everything they had done for me these past few weeks. 
I helped them up and they walked off in the direction we’d come from, screaming for the monsters to come and get them. 
They turned to me once more and nodded in goodbye. I couldn’t bring myself to mirror them so I turned around and ran. 
My body seemed to go into autopilot. My mind shut off and every ounce of my energy went into dodging trees that seemed to appear out of nowhere, branched that had fallen in the storm and puddles of mud that made me sink into the ground. The ground seemed to tremble beneath my feet as I ran, thunder booming as I kept running. 
I craned my neck looking behind me but the moon had come out from behind the clouds and cast shadows along the trees so everything looked like a monster reaching out to me. I pushed myself to run faster, the voice of Dylan still echoing in my mind.
I’d left them. I had left them to die. 
I choked as I paused by a tree. Pushing my dark hair out of my face, trying to see the hill Dylan had described. The entire forest blurred together but in the distance, I could see a hill taller than the others I’d been on. I felt a pull on my gut, like a magnet pulling me and I knew that there was where I was meant to go. 
Even with the sounds of the storm crashing around me, I heard a roar pierce the night. White panic sparked through my entire body and I sprinted towards the tall hill. As I ran I tore at my shirt covered in Dylan’s blood and threw it as far as I could towards the right. I did the same to the left until I was only in my undershirt and the tattered remains of my jacket. My jeans stuck to my skin but I took precious moments to kneel into the ground and smother my face in mud and crushed fruit that I found beneath the shrubs. 
I didn’t know if it would mask my scent but it would have to do for now. My legs pumped, but I had no idea where on earth I was getting all this energy from but I knew it couldn’t last. My body was reaching its limit.
Another roar pierced through the forest but I finally broke through the edge, opening into a small clearing. The hill stood tall in front of me, a towering pine tree with a golden fleece glowing on its branches. Even from here, I had to blink at the bright light and the aura it was giving off. There was no other way to explain it but magic. 
I took off again but my body was spent. My legs felt like lead. I tripped over a branch I hadn’t seen and cried out as my hand caught all of the weight. Even under the cover of the rain, I slapped my hand over my mouth terrified the monster had heard me. 
I forced myself up and began crawling up the hill. 
Claws sunk into my ankle and I screamed as I was dragged from the hill. For a moment I was weightless as I fell. 
The impact of the fall should’ve killed me. But it didn’t. 
I pushed myself up and came face to face with the monster that had been hunting me and Dylan since they’d befriended me at school. 
The monster’s human face was contorted in anger. But whatever that thing looked like, was nothing in comparison to the sheer fury that was coursing through my veins. 
“You want to kill me! Well come on and do it!” I challenged. 
I had no weapon on me. Dylan had left me nothing but knowledge about the monster that was hunting me. The ancient manticore. 
The monster cracked its neck and began to shift. In moments, as its bones cracked it took the form of a lion, scorpion hybrid. Only it’s human face remained the same, its sleek body blood-red in the night, and it’s tail a dark whip. Seeing it in its true form only inflamed my anger. 
This had killed Dylan. My friend. 
It tilted its head at me, mocking my stance as I picked up a branch from the ground and held it up like I was wielding a sword. 
It roared and charged, but I was already moving. I dropped to the ground and heard it land behind me, its claws scraping against the bark of a tree. 
I got up and ran. My senses seemed to heighten as I focused on the area around me, my brain somehow both quiet but also completely aware of exactly where everything was in my immediate vicinity. 
It charged again but I grounded my feet, and threw the branch I was holding into the ground. The ground that was soft and supple because of the rain. It sunk deeply in the mud and stood straight like a spike.
The manticore realised too late and felt on the spike, the underneath of its armour pierced completely through. I stayed where I was and let it come to me. I gripped the ground for another weapon and threw gravel into its eyes. 
It’s teeth glinted in the moonlight as it cried in pain. 
This time I ran. I ignored the pain in my hand from my earlier fall. I ignored the heaviness of my heart at Dylan’s death. I ignored the freezing cold of the rain. 
And I ran. 
The monster was right behind me, but I knew I’d slowed it down because its footsteps were heavier as it followed. 
The pine tree was just out of reach when I turned back for one final look. 
“FIRE.” 
I looked for the source of the voice and saw a line of people just beyond the pine tree all armed with arrows and quivers. Dressed in an odd mix of orange shirts, armour and pyjamas their arrows loosed shooting towards the monster behind me. 
I cradled my head as the arrows whizzed past me but I kept moving. I reached the tree and leaned on it for support, a ripple of energy seemed to pass through me as I stepped past it. 
Two people in orange shirts, a blonde girl and a boy with dark hair held their hands out to me as I walked. 
My vision turned to static as I felt them grip my arms in support. Their voices blurred together and I pressed my hands to my ears. 
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry,” I whispered until my mind finally shut off, and everything turned black. 
~
“On her own? How is that possible?” A deep rumbly voice said as I twisted and turned in my sleep. My entire body screamed in protest but I kept moving, trying to stop the voices. It was too loud. 
“It’s not impossible. Percy did it barely.” A girls voice this time. 
“She’s a lot older than most campers don’t you think? She’s about our age Wise Girl.” A third voice, a guy this time, different from the first voice, younger. 
“Let her rest and then we will ask. What she did was no small feat. Have a small group camper look for her satyr. They have to be out there somewhere.” The older voice said, and I heard the sound of hooves? Before a door closed and shut. 
“I know you’re awake.” Even with my eyes still closed I froze, and held my breath. 
“We’re not going to hurt you,” the girl’s voice said, “I’m Annabeth.” 
I opened my eyes slowly and turned to her at my side. 
“Caitlin.” I offered. 
She smiled softly and held out a drink, the ice clinked softly in the glass and I sat up slowly, trying to hold it. She lightly batted my hand away and held it up to my lips. 
I took a sip and nearly spit it back out. I wiped at my lips and stared at the apple juice coloured drink. 
“What did you taste?”
“Nutella?” I whispered. 
She laughed and took the drink away. I stared at it still confused. 
“Nectar. The drink of the gods. How much has your satyr told you?”
I swallowed hard and looked at my bandaged hands, still trying to wrap my head around it. 
“Names have power,” I started off slowly. Annabeth nodded in encouragement. 
“The Gods of Olympus are real?”
“Yeah, that’s pretty much it. There’s tons more to it, but I’ll let you heal up more before I blow your mind up.” She got up to leave but my hand shot out and I grabbed her wrist with surprising speed. 
“Wait- no. You can’t just drop that on me, the gods can’t be real. I’m Catholic. There is only one God. I’m not a child of- What?” She was staring hard at me and frowning.
“Your eyes. I didn’t realise they were grey.” 
“Yeah, my mum said I got the genetic lottery. My ancestors had lighter eyes.” She nodded but didn’t add onto what was bothering her. 
“If you can walk I can give you a tour.” I agreed and let her help me out of bed. A pair of shoes had been left by my bedside my old shoes nowhere to be found so I slipped them on and followed Annabeth out. Someone had thankfully put me in a proper shirt and I was in a faded orange shirt that read Camp Half-Blood with a pegasus on the front. 
Annabeth began to lead me around her camp, pointing out cabins and areas for training. Training for what I wasn’t sure. 
My body was tired but it wasn’t on the same level that it had been when I’d woken up. Breathing was easier and the pain in my hand was gone almost numb. We stopped in front of a grey building with an owl carved over the doorway and plain white curtains. 
I felt a similar tug in my gut like I had down on the hill and started towards the building. 
“Hey wait you can’t!” Annabeth cried as I walked up the steps. The tug was so strong I thought I was going to drop to my knees. I touched the owl on the doorway, my fingertips grazing the wings and felt another ripple of energy like I’d just walked through a forcefield. 
“Caitlin.” I turned to Annabeth and she was staring at me hard again, except she was focused on something above my head. I frowned and looked up, the shape of a silvery owl hovered just above my head, it’s wings outstretched over me. 
“All hail, Caitlin, daughter of Athena, goddess of Wisdom,” she whispered with a grin and dropped to her knee. Other people around her applauded and sunk to their knee as well. 
19 notes · View notes
gobydana · 5 years
Text
Have You Ever Cared?
Hi! Could I request a batfam x batsis reader fic where she’s not a vigilante and everyone thinks of her as a spoiled trust fund kid and say some pretty mean stuff to her during an argument causing her to storm out. She’s killed and nobody really does much. So when she is resurrected she stays off the grid and leads a simple life until the batfam finds he and confront her where she reveals how hurt she is.
Batsister was a lot of things, biological daughter of billionaire Bruce Wayne, Gotham’s party child, twenty-some year old with no real path in life, living off her father. Or well that is what one would think if they read the tabolids or even talked to her family. As one of the only family members not in the superhero business. The gossip columns loved to feature her. Who she was out with, where she was partying, what car did she wreck. Her family loved to get on her case. Why didn’t she go to college or do something besides chilling at home. Why waste the money on drinking, being the party persona Bruce took on for many years. 
Tonight was one of those nights, only it seemed worse. Maybe it was due to the non-stop shit she got or maybe just today she didn’t want to deal with it. Either way it didn’t seem to stop and just kept coming. 
“They said you were drunk and saw you driving.” Bruce about yelled as he pushed the car away. 
“I wasn’t drinking.” She hollered back. 
“Really? Then do you just suck at driving? Can’t find the line?” Damain added in. 
“C’mon sister, we can’t have two family dissapointments. Just drunk driving?” Jason said from a top the stairs. That got him the bird. 
“When are you going to grow up.” 
“Father can’t get you out of trouble all the time.”
“What if you cause someone else’s injury? Did you ever think about that?
“Stop being the billboard for trust-fund child. Like c’mon can you actually use that brain in your head.” 
“I can’t believe we are related. Are you sure you are Bruce’s kid.”
“Enough!” Bruce yelled among the insults shooting out. “I am very disappointed in you.” He said with the most even, cold tone he could. 
With that batsister left towards the door not wanting to hear anything more. She couldn’t take it anymore. They of course wouldn’t listen to her but take the word of the press. It’s not like any of them were around enough to even get to know her. That’s why she knew they wouldn’t know where to find her. 
She went to the graveyard. It was her safe place, minus certain times of the year her family really didn’t come here. She walked towards the only two people  she hadn’t manage to disappoint in life: Thomas and Martha Wayne. She sunk down in defeated and started talking to the tombstones. Having the feeling at least someone would listen to her. 
“Your son hates me again. Family wouldn’t even listen to. Thought I was drinking and driving all cause of some Instagram videos taken of me not driving in a straight line. You want to know why I couldn’t drive? I was crying again. Had the stupid police radio on and heard bat down. Didn’t know which was got hurt, but judging by the sling on Jason’s arm going to guess it was him. They don’t know what it’s like. Finding out the same time the public does when one of them gets hurt. Every time I am home I see a new bruise, stitches, broken bones. Don’t they care that one day I might come home and find them gone? Hell doubt anyone would even tell me if they died. I probably would find out from the press.”
“Got into that university for a degree in chemistry biology. Think I might just pack and leave. Would they even care? They give me shit cause doing nothing, but they don’t know what goes on in my life. If they did, they would know I was applying. That the press’s opinion of me hurt my last chance. Been trying so hard. I am going to pretend you are proud of me though. So at least one or two Waynes would be.” 
She brushed the tears off her face. The thing she would never let her family see. Stay strong until she was alone. She was a Wayne and they were strong. But times like this she couldn’t be. After a few hours she knew she had to go. The rain was starting to come down and the moon was already hanging high in the sky. Grabbing her backpack, she walked towards the road. Starting tomorrow she was finding her own place and living a  new life. Maybe move to Metropolis. 
The dark night, slick roads, and her black clothes made her hard to spot. It didn’t help she was walking from the graveyard to the main road. That might be why the driver didn’t see her. The tears in her face cloudy her vision so that she didn’t see the car until it was too late. The last thing she registered was red blinding pain as the car made contact with her body at 45 mph. A driver who didn’t even care enough to stop but instead drove away. 
From the shadows though stood someone who did see. Someone who recognized her and knew of her family, Both as civilians and with capes. Someone who wanted to get back at Bruce and see him suffer. So Talia stepped out of the dark and picked up the bleeding girl. Batsis had died upon impact, but that didn’t mean she had to stay dead. Her father had a way to fix that. 
Green and pain was the next thing she remembered. It was almost glowing green as every injury she just suffered came flowing back. Her yells and pleas for it to stop echoes in the dark cave. Finally she found her way out towards the end of the pool where Talia and a guard were waiting. She explained everything to her and what happened. 
The first thing she asked was about her family. They might have been mad at her, but truly they would mourn her at least? But when Talia showed her newspapers and camera that she hacked into the manor, it surprised her. No mention of her death or the accident. Her family was acting as if nothing happened. Just carrying on like normal. When each of her siblings died and her father, she cried for days. Often feeling like she couldn’t get up each day. 
Everyday she found herself checking on her family with the same results. Talia saw the girls spirit died a little each day. After a few weeks she handed the girl a wad of cash and some new clothes. Gave her a chance that once she wanted more than anything. A do over, living a life not as a Wayne but as herself. She took that chance and left the compound to another world. It wasn’t long before she found a job and a place. Settling into life away from the family who didn’t care. 
It would be months before someone found her backpack. Bruce went to the cemetery to visit his parents' grave. On the way out he saw the backpack hidden in the bushes. At first he thought it was a normal one until he saw the W.E pin that she always had on hers. Closer look saw blood that was long ago dried up. The weather got to the backpack, no doubt being there for some months. He thought she had left mad at them, to another city. But maybe it was something else. He took the bag to examine further. 
Back at the cave, he emptied the contents. He was surprised at what he found. A college acceptance letter to pretious program, volunteer shirts from an orphanage the next town over, notebook and pencil, and her wallet. So much of it surprised him so much he didn’t know about his own daughter. Soon he found himself lost in thought he didn’t hear Talia come in at first. She knew he would be at the graves today and made sure he would find the backpack. 
“She died you know.” She said with hands up as he stood up with a batarang in hand. “A hit and run. Her killer just drove off without a care in the world.”
He sank down into the chair with a sad realization coming over him. She hadn’t been avoiding them, she had been dead. The rest of his kids were coming down the stairs at that moment for patrol. Every single one stopped in their tracks as what she said echoed in the cave. Not one knowing. 
“DId you?” He started with her only to cut him off. 
“Yes. SHe is alive again and if you truly cared about her, you would stay away from her. What family doesn’t know that one of them is dead. Prioritizing cape life over your own blood?  She died alone thinking you all hate her.”
With that she left. Bruce couldn’t say anything but waived the rest of them off to patrol. While they were gone he went up to what was once her room. Some place he hardly walked into since she was a child. He could still remember when she was younger and wanted it decorated pink. A pink glitter canopy hung over her bed. She was so happy to help him put it up. THat room no longer existed. Some time between now and then she painted it a different color. 
On the dresser was pictures of all of them. She was younger in 
most of them. Thinking back it had been a while since he had done anything with her. Between Gotham and the league, something was always pulling him away. Different college applications clouted her desk along with an old text book of his. Looks like she was teaching herself different science items. A police radio sat on the bed side table with a wrinkled sheet. On the sheet had all the code names the police used for the different bats. She must have been listening at night. Further discovery of wrinkled up tissue told him more than he ever knew. 
Through out the next week, they all found parts of her around the manor that surprised them. Jason found the book he recommend she read before his death as Robin laying on her bookshelf. It was worn out and no doubt been read a  few thousand times. Damian discovered that she had a sword hint half painted. It was going to be a gift for him. Dick found the old letters he use to write her when he first left the manor and started on his own. It appeared he was the one who stopped writing. Tim found his old camera and pictures in her room. Duke saw she wrote down his parent’s birthdays as a reminder for herself what days might be hard for him. 
It was Bruce who went looking. Everyone else thought maybe the best thing was to let her move on. Him though, he just couldn’t give up. She was his daughter, an only child he got to raise up. He had baby pictures of her and more growing up until the pictures stopped. He couldn’t give up on her. He might have found the man who hit her and threw him in jail with a lot of bruises, but none of that could make up all he forgot. 
He remembered as a child she was fascinated with France. Claimed she was going to live in southern France one day. So on a hutch, he went there. A few weeks later he saw her. It was in a small village near a university. She was working at a café. He sat across the road and watched her. The whole time, she looked genuinely happy. Something that didn’t happen in Gotham. 
That night he followed her home towards a small flat where she lived with a cat. She turned around when he came through the window, just starring at her. 
“Wonder if you were ever going to come. Was it better without worrying about a press nightmare living at home.” She asked. 
“I didn’t know you died.”
With that she threw up her hands. Of all he could say, that is what he said. SHe exploded. 
“I died and saw you all move on. You didn’t even know? What thought I just up and left. Didn’t even care to find out where? Did I ever matter to you? Because it sure as hell didn’t feel like it. I was second string to everything. Sorry missed you birthday, had to go save the world. I wanted a Christmas morning with my family? Too bad Joker broke out. I seem like I am hungover? Nope been up all night crying because the police reported one of you asses were massively hurt. Seven I wanted to go trick o treating but nope went to a fellow soliciaties party because the bat was too busy to take his child out. The damn league saw you more then me. I debated often just joining the rogues because then maybe you would pay attention to me. Nope just caused you problems that you couldn’t ignore. Put the Wayne name in the spotlight and you started paying attention to me. 
“I didn’t know.” 
“Is that all you can say? LIke I know you weren’t a man of many words but c’mon. How hard is it to say you are proud of me? To ask about my day just once in awhile instead of scolding me? Well guess what, I am proud of me. I am starting my degree of chemistry biology while working at the cafe. I made friends here who are friends with me not because of my family but because of me. No more wondering if I am good enough for you or good enough to be a Wayne. I am good enough for me. So there’s the door, don’t let it hit you on your way out. 
That night Bruce grabbed sleep at hotel and video chat with the family. Each one of her brothers ashamed that she thought she wasn’t good enough. For the next year, they came separate and slowly got her to be at least friendly with them. No doubt they could never undo the damage done but they tried to be a family. Bruce thought has the longest road. 
For the longest time he could never get the picture of her as a little girl asking for story before patrol. But over time he slowly saw her for the brilliant young woman she had become. He started talking time off from Batman to see her. Wanting to not waste more time. He almost lost her for good due to his own stupidity. Seven years later when she graduated with her doctorate, he made sure to be there with the family front row. He had missed so many memorable moments he wasn’t going to miss that one. 
Over time she also started to forgive them. The sadness and loneliness that had made a permanent place in heart had finally left.  She finally heard her father say that he was proud of her. That was something she never thought would happen. Also as a promise to her, he never came as Batman. Only as her father, Bruce Wayne. The family started to inform her more of when they got hurt instead  of her finding out herself. ANd some days when she came home to two of her brothers crashing on her couch bickering, she couldn’t be happier. 
Tagging: @the-shadow-of-atlantis @superwhoteen @speedypan 
554 notes · View notes
saint-patrice · 5 years
Note
Tbh I would like to have the 34 *other* Bergy pics on your shortlist, complete with commentary lolol. And then (if you’re still waiting that is) any other Marchy pics with commentary? xD xD
oh my godddd you are my favourite person anon - ask and ye shall receive 😎 i should maybe warn that while this doesn’t have actual nsfw content you probably wouldn’t want to read this to your kids as a bedtime story. anyway, here we go: 
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this was very close to making the original list. i like the soft lighting and the kind of floofy hair, yet he still looks like he could absolutely fuck me up (both like in a fight and various other ways). this photo gets me thinking some thoughts ™ if i am being honest
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a literal saint and god amongst men right here. his brown eyes are so soft and his little smile puts me at ease. this is a man who would treat me right (fact). this photo is also from quite deep into the playoffs so the beard is going a little wild, and whilst i’m glad it isn’t like this all of the time, i very much appreciate it when it’s around.
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O CAP’N MY CAP’N (sorry zee). nah for real this exudes some real sexy alternate energy. if i were on the opposing team and i saw this formidable man just skating around looking like that i think i’d just go back down the tunnel and hide in the locker room. this man will fucking kneecap you for the sake of a goal if that’s what it takes. and then i remember that it’s patrice and he’s the nicest man alive and he would literally never, but that’s still the energy this image has. and i ain’t saying i don’t like it.
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okay this is just cute. they look like 2 dads who aren’t entirely sure how to take a selfie but are willing to try. the outfits lend this a slightly chaotic energy - i can’t commend zee’s colour combo if i’m honest, and when juxtaposed with the plaid shirt it kind of hurts my head. but it adds to the dad energy so i still love it. also this is from chara’s ig and the caption is super sweet.
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DADS WITH THEIR KIDS ALWAYS GETS ME. i don’t even want kids, nor do i particularly like them, but seeing a man with his child is the cutest thing in the world and this, predictably, is no exception. patrice’s son 100% has his eyes which is really cute. speaking of patrice’s eyes, he may be smiling here but if you look into his eyes all you will see is fear - that child does not appear too bothered about remaining upright on the ice, and i suspect thay bergy is concerned about this. it would be criminal for me to not comment on the jeans. bergy has some exceptional thighs as these jeans do an excellent job of highlighting that.
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this is Hot, and i’m not accepting criticism on that opinion. the crisp white shirt w no jacket or tie, and the top buttons undone???? i need a lie down. the hands are also making a nice appearance which i can always appreciate. basically what i’m saying is that i’m jealous of that snake this is an excellent photo and i owe the bruins instagram person a drink for posting it.
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do you remember when i said bergy had marvellous thighs? well take a fucking sip babes - they’re like tree trunks carved out of carrara marble. if i have to die i want it to be because they crushed my skull. this is also one of the clearest photos i’ve seen of his tattoo, so it has that going for it too ( sidenote if anyone has an image with literally a pixel of his tattoo pls send it my way, i’m getting desperate at this point). i also think men in jewellery is a good look so i’m digging his beaded bracelets and silver chain. fantastic picture all round.
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yeah okay there’s no escaping that the main reason this one made the list is 🍑. it’s exquisite. those pants also do a great job on the thighs too. the hair, socked feet (no i dont have a fetish i just think ppl in their socks with no shoes is kind of funny), and hands get an honourable mention
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is this the only picture that has ever mattered? i’d believe it. patrice just lovingly gazing down at his son giving his hockey husband a handshake? you just can’t beat it. i have also been emotionally ruined by that tiny #37 jersey oh my
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in the interest of being polite, i will describe this look as rugged. he has probably objectively looked better but i just like this photo and awful lot.
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i don’t think i can give any commentary on this without saying something genuinely not suitable for public eyes. the 2 things i will say are: the only thing keeping me going completely feral horny looking at this is those pants,, if they were black or navy i’d be dead; and patrice i am begging you to do up a few more buttons on your shirt or remove it completely or i’m not going to live much longer.
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oh man i just love this??? i can’t even explain why. the lack of much beard and the expression in his eyes just makes him look massively soft - i would give him a kiss on the nose and a cuddle in this photo
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(gif via @gaudreau) i am slightly loathe to admit this bc it sounds weird but cuts and bruises can sometimes be a real look so this checks that box for me. his smile when he talks truly is one of the finer things in life too. also the lil shrug. i love you mr pikachu
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a** fantastic **angle. this is just prime beautiful bergy.  excellent level of beard imo, the lighting shows off his v nice bone structure, and the nose is looking fab as always. weird observation of the day is that his neck looks nice in this
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i mean obviously this had to go in - lord knows it’s fucking iconic. i have so many questions about how this situation came to be (aside from the fact that alcohol was involved. did brad initiate it? or patrice? why are they spinning? what the fuck? how the fuck? why was i not invited?) but anyway, this photo increased my thirst for a shirtless bergy photo at least two-hundredfold. at this point it’s a need not a want. i don’t think i can continue to comment on this without straying into nsfw territory so we’ll leave it at that. oh the things i would do
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classic humble patrice making an appearance here, reminding us that he is not only the most handsome bastard to ever walk planet earth, but he’s a great guy too. just can’t hate him. and boy is he handsome in this gif. excellent stubble (im really invested in his facial hair if you hadn’t noticed), and the smile that could melt even my cold heart on display here. also bonus points for the previously mentioned thing about cuts/bruises. (sorry). i love this one 
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in contrast to some of the prior ones, this picture is so cute that i can make nothing but pg comments about it. this is exactly the same face we all make when someone points a camera at us and says “cheese!” and i love that. the man looks good in white. good, wholesome content right here.
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(gif via @weekendatbergysblog) okay the baby is cute but the fucking headband is what gets me in this. i’m able to make no further comment because this short circuits my brain.
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(gif via @davidpastrnut)when i first saw this gif i had to go find the source video because i didn’t believe he actually said that but i’m here to tell you: he did. i love these hockey husbands so much. also i saw this tagged as “# hot waiter” one time and i still haven’t got over how accurate that is. someone more talented than me, i’m begging you for that fucking au 
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(gif via @gaudreau) can patrice please stop looking up ??? it’s unfair that someone can look so good just looking in a direction what the fucK. he’s so stunning.
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i love this one. brad pulling his hoodie down like that looks like he’s... soliciting and honestly who could blame him. bergy looks very cute, if a bit edgy in the all black. the hand is a treat in this one hooooooooooooooooo yes
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this one show’s off patrice’s dark features very well. it’s amazing how he has such dark hair, dark eyes, big dark eyebrows, and dark facial hair, yet it doesn’t overcrowd or shadow his face ( except occasionally in awful lighting) ??? does anyone actually know how that works?? he’s looking very pensive here, and that hoodie looks oh-so-cosy. absolutely would cuddle.
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**how cute is this y’all. **in case you thought you were just missing something, no, patrice is not sitting on a chair. he’s just maintaining that deep squat like a champ. maybe that’s the secret to his sublime thighs... the navy/deep red is an excellent look on him, and we get a rare glimpse of bergy with his wedding ring, which i find to be oddly cute. bonus points for him being beside a very cute kid too :)
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(gif via @jakedebrask) this, i, ummmmm. i- uhh. just. um. yeah. so like. uhhhh... swiftly moving on
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(gif via @davidpastrnut) this motherfucker and his handsome fucking face even looks good in that god-awful wooly patriots hat. honestly it looks like he’s about to go out and have a snowball fight (presumably with brad). decidedly rather domestic and i love it
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(gif via @davidpastrnut) intense media patrice is intense. this is such a classic bergy face though, i love it. every time some media person asks him some big long question he puts on this exact very-invested-and-slightly-concerned face, its iconic. looking cosy in a hoodie once again. stop it. 
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nice polo, dude
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(gif via @davidpastrnut) that tshirt looks like its fighting for its life to contain those biceps. a dark, brooding patrice that has some sort of slow burn au stirring deep in my mind. from other angles in this interview the tattoo is fairly visible also.
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this has such a strong energy it almost knocked me off my feet. again, i can see this being some sort of business or maybe criminal masterminds au. but fuck me, does that man looking something beautiful in a suit. the one hand in the pocket is quite frankly BDE too. i’m glad i’m not into dadkes or esle i think this whole picture would be too much for me.
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he is literally the kind of man you’d want to bring home to your parents. i’m glad he seems to have cashed in on the navy/deep red combo because it really does suit him. he looks so fucking dapper here i may be very much in love
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another excellent on-ice shot of him, albeit his slightly concerned expression. the beard is looking fucking crisp here hello sir. not much else to say on this, just a handsome, handsome boy.
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(gif via @jeffsamardzija) another one that gives me Thoughts. he’s literally so beautiful. hair is cut a little shorter than usual on the sides and on anyone else it would scream fuckboy but i’m kind of digging it on bergy, at least on this one occasion. if i say anything else we’ll go down the rabbit hole
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oof this is_ intense. _bergy aside, this is just an incredible shot tbh. rare that we get to see mr perfect not completely level-headed and playing it cool so it feels like a treat when we do. lowkey hot ngl
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last but very certainly not least, mr patrice bergeron, four-time bergeron award winner, holding the award itself. this photo honestly just makes my heart swell a little with pride - it’s what he deserves!!!! just absolutely dapper in a beautiful suit as always, and a smile that could topple a nation to round it all off.
thank you so much for this anon!!! it was rather self-indulgent but i hope you like it :) also i will absolutely do another one with marchy, although my nails have been dry for about 2 hours now so i’ll probably do it tomorrow or friday, but it’s on its way :)
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singt0mecalum · 5 years
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alright so more on Mali bc that’s a thing now: You meet Mali through coincidence really. You’re done with college and you move to London (bc why not and we’ll be on the same time zone that’s always good) And you decide to check out a bar some friends recommended to you that play live music. And you see Mali singing there and you get to talking and hit it off immediately and talk for hours and hours. And over the next months y’all become better and better friends
omg Lena being in the same timezone for the past three weeks has been magical let’s be real. Okay so i guess we can say this is part 1 of the whole Mali setting you up with Cal thing.
but like yes one day i want to move far away from the US and potentially never come back and I loved London when i visited so i’m down for this. So like okay imagine you’ve been been living there for a few weeks maybe a little over a month and like you’ve gone out with your co-workers a few times and you’re friendly but not like friends ya know? and then one of them finds out how much you like music and going to shows and stuff and they recommend the coffee shop/bar that does live music a few nights a week and so you go one night after you got off work and stuff. and so like you show up and sit kind of close to the stage and order a latte and check your phone while you wait and when a girl pops up on stage to sing you put your phone down to watch. and so she starts singing and you’re like damn i love her and so you sit there a vibe along to the like four or five songs she plays. and then when she steps off stage you decide to approach her to tell her how much you enjoyed her set and how you thought she was like super talented. and she’s just like “omg thank you that means so much. what’s you’re name” and so you tell her duh and she goes “i’m Mali” and so y’all find somewhere to sit and y’all just sit and talk for the rest of the night. y’all talk about anything and everything. she tells you about her time on the voice and her family back home in Australia and kind of grazes over her brother and how he’s a musician too and the she’s just so so proud of him but you don’t really get more than that about him (do you really blame her though). and of course you tell her about you’re family back home in the states and why you decided to move to London and what you do for a job. and then when it’s time to go bc sorry guys we gotta kick you out we’re closing now y’all decide to exchange numbers and social media and stuff and after y’all walk outside you definitely make plans to meet up again later in the week. and y’all do and it’s great.
and then suddenly y’all are joined at the hip and y’all have sleepover at least once a week. and y’all know everything about each other. she knows how you don’t like being around a lot of people and you’re pretty shy. and you know all about her insecurities of people not liking her music or how she’s scared to fall into her brothers shadow. and she knows about your shit luck with guys in college and how you’ve literally been single your whole ass life because men ain’t shit and how you’ve given up on finding anyone and how you’ve pretty much given up on love at this point. and eventually she tells you who her brother actually is and that she waited because she thought you were really cool but was scared you’d only want to be her friend to get to him and you reassure her that while you like his band you like her and y’alls friendship more. (cue the cute friendship bonding tears)
and when her parents come to town you meet them and go to dinner and lunch and fall in love with them too just like you have with Mali. and one day Mali has press stuff she has to do so you take them out around the town and show them some of your favorite places and then y’all go back to Mali’s apartment and Joy teaches you how to make traditional Maori dishes for dinner while David watches tv. and when Mali get’s home and sees you and Joy making dessert and dinner waiting on the stove she gets all soft because her best friend and mom are getting along so well. and she thinks that now all she needs is Cal there and the picture would be complete and that’s when she realizes that she’s never going to let you escape now. and when Mali has to take them to the airport a day or two later she drags you along too and as she’s saying goodbye to her dad Joy pulls you into a bone crushing hug because you’re my daughter now too (ugh i’m crying) and David pulls you into one too and tells you it was so nice to meet you and that he can’t wait to see you again. and Mali is just watching all of this happening with the biggest heart eyes. and so any time her parents call or facetime you’re there too because they can’t not talk to their second daughter. and at some point Joy gets your number from Mali and y’all talk pretty often. and when Mali goes home for a short trip it’s an unspoken thing that ofc you’re going too because momma and dad Hood would kill her if she didn’t bring you with.
and of course the longer you’re friends the more y’all appear on each other social medias and so the boys get a lil curious and ask about you and she goes that’s my best friend you’ve been replaced Cal sorry not sorry. and when the boys call or facetime sometimes you’re in the backgroud or across the room and small “hi”s are exchanged every now and then and they all follow you on instagram and twitter but y’all don’t really talk except like maybe a comment here and there. nothing major. and then at some point Mali has to go to LA for her music stuff and to visit her brother and she’s gone for like ever or at least it feels that way when it’s really only like 2 weeks. but y’all facetime every day and Mali starts making little comments here and then about her brother but you don’t really think anything of it and then when she’s at dinner with the boys one night she makes a comment here and there to Cal about you but ofc he’s oblivious BUT Ash isn’t and so after dinner he’s like “yo what was up with that” and she’s like “oh you caught on to what I was doing? here let me tell you my plan” and so she tells him about how she thinks y’all would be so good together and that y’all are both so similar and that mom and dad love her so like why not? and so after she goes home to London she’ll subtly drop hints here and there, but naturally you don’t pick up on them. and Ash is also dropping hints but like Cal’s the same level of oblivious and of course Mali and Ash are texting back and forth about it the whole time.
and so like after she comes back y’all are pretty much together every day and when one of y’all go on a date the other anxiously waits for you to get done and then when it’s finally over you go to the others apartment and talk about it and whether or not you’ll see the guy and with you it’s pretty much always a “yeah definitely not” but with her it’s nine times out of ten a no from her and sometimes if she does go on a second or third date it doesn’t progress past that. and y’all both just bond over how guys fucking suck and that’s usually when she’ll slip in a comment about her brother and how “i wish more guys were like Cal and the boys” or “my brother and the rest of the boys would never” and stuff like that. and after a while you just give up on going on dates and y’all just gush over hers but ofc she’s like “we need to find you a good man… like Cal…” and you just give her a strange look, “or Ash. you didn’t let me finish. plus i wasn’t actually serious” but she totally was serious because who better for her best friend than her other best friend/brother and vice versa because she just wants the two people she loves the most to love each other too.
okay i need to stop now before i actually kill myself.
@asht0ns-world @tequila-clifford @h0tsos @saintlaurentcalum @dukesnumber1
@boytoynamedcalum @cxddlyash @naivelystan
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pens-and-parchment · 6 years
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Hello fellow bookworms! I saw a few different bloggers/bookstagrammers (most recently, Cait @ Paper Fury) do this tag and it seemed like a ton of fun. Given that I haven’t done a tag in a loooong time, I figured this was perfect to get back in the game!
Three Favorite Authors
LEIGH BARDUGO – (as if y’all didn’t see this coming from ten miles away) Leigh is my Queen. She writes character development like no one else I know. I worship her and very much wish that I was her. Enough said, honestly.
RICK RIORDAN – This one might actually be more of a surprise, since I never really talk about Percy Jackson in my posts. But PJO is arguably the series that changed my life the most, and given how Rick manages to use his privilege as an accomplished white dude to write very diverse casts and stand up for marginalized representation, I basically will stan him for the rest of my life.
LAINI TAYLOR – This one was a tough slot to fill, since Rick and Leigh have always been my go-to favorites. But when I think of stunning writing, I think of Laini. I’ve read her DoSaB trilogy and Strange the Dreamer, and with every book she publishes Laini only seems to get better and better. Her prose are lyrical and luscious, if I’m ever able to write half as well as her I’ll consider myself to be a pro.
Three Weirdest Things I’ve Used as a Bookmark
Truthfully, I’m a really boring bookworm that actually just uses normal bookmarks most of the time. But here’s a few random things I’m pretty sure I’ve attempted to use as a bookmark before:
RECEIPTS – Everyone has done this at some point so it’s not really that weird, but I seem to lose my bookmarks a lot and receipts are everywhere in my house, so they end up taking a spot in my book all the time.
A HAIR TIE – My room has approximately 83 billion elastic hair ties sprawled all over because I notoriously wear one and then lose it, so in moments of both desperation and laziness I’ve used these as bookmarks.\
MY CAT’S TAIL – Saving the weirdest for last, I’ve attempted to use my cat’s tail as a bookmark more than once! She’s always laying next to me on my bed while I read, so when I have to get up for a short period I’ve kinda just sneakily slid her tail in between the pages. Sometimes she wakes up and gets mad, sometimes if I return fast enough it actually works! Such is the problem with using an animal for a bookmark.
Three Books Binged
We all know I’m a notoriously slow reader, so there aren’t too many books out there that I’ve managed to binge read in one go. But I managed to think of a few!
TO ALL THE BOYS I’VE LOVED BEFORE – I remember randomly picking this book up one night and not finishing it until 3 am that same day (well, technically the next day, but you get what I mean). I just couldn’t stop reading until I saw what would happen between Lara Jean and Peter K!
SHATTER ME – I’m kind of cheating with this because I think it actually took me two days, but I read this dystopia on my Nook over vacation and remember blazing my way through it!
SIMON VS THE HOMO SAPIENS AGENDA – Another contemporary that I read in just over 24 hours, also on my Nook. Becky’s writing is so funny and relatable that I’m pretty sure my eyes were glued to the screen until the very last sentence.
Three Characters I Love
KAZ BREKKER – Another answer you definitely should’ve seen coming. Kaz is my favorite character of all-time, I always joke that if I had had a terrible childhood, me and Kaz would be identical. Other than his crappy past, we basically are already.
AIDAN – AIDAN’s chapters in Illuminae are, in my humble opinion, the best written, most creative pages in a book that I’ve literally ever read. Jay and Amie are fricking geniuses. AIDAN is such a morally complex and dichotomous character, his internal dialogue definitely qualifies as poetry.
ENNE SALTA – If you guys haven’t read Ace of Shades yet, I have to kindly ask you to drop literally every single thing you are doing, run to your local library or bookstore, and grab this gorgeous book. Enne is feminine, logical, tough, sexy, and insecure all at the same time. I think she’s the perfect example of a real teenage girl that finds herself neck-deep in a ton of trouble.
Three Unpopular Bookish Opinions
Oof, buckle up kids.
MOVIE/TV ADAPTATIONS SUCK – Okay I know that not all adaptations suck, but I personally get sick to my stomach when news comes out that my favorite stories are being translated for the big screen. I actually wrote a whole blog post on it a while back, but it basically boils down to the fact that the Percy Jackson movie gave me deep-rooted trust issues for the rest of my life.
TROPES ARE ACTUALLY PRETTY FUN – While it does admittedly depend on the trope, I find that most of them don’t bother me. Fake dating? Give it to meeee. Dark, swoony guy with a tragic backstory? As long as he isn’t problematic, I’ll probably fall in love. Competition to the death? Hasn’t gotten boring yet.
OLD BOOKS SMELL TERRIBLE – New books smell fricken amazing. The crisp pages, freshly printed ink, I could smell it for days. Old books, however, smell musty and make my nose itch and remind me of old people.
Three Favorite Book Covers
AGFKAOSUFBDOOAUDF THIS WAS HARD SO I CHOSE A BUNCH OOPS
Let Shadow & Bone represent all Grisha covers because they’re the best and I’m clearly an original person
I didn’t really like Onyx & Ivory or The Hazel Wood but both of them have gorgeous covers so I guess they deserve appreciation
I’m pretty sure every human under the sun chose Caraval for this question because honestly how could you not
All the Nyxia covers together are so spacey and colorful and you all NEED TO READ THIS SERIES
I hope you guys enjoyed the tag, now tell me what books or authors you would choose for each question! And what’s an unpopular bookish opinion of yours?
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  What are your top three favorite authors? Three unpopular bookish opinions? Check out my new post, where I talk about a bunch of fun things in groups of three! Hello fellow bookworms! I saw a few different bloggers/bookstagrammers (most recently, Cait @ Paper Fury) do this tag and it seemed like a ton of fun.
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aion-rsa · 3 years
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Is Virtual Photography the Next Great Artform?
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2020 saw the release of highly-anticipated games like The Last of Us Part II, Death Stranding on PC, Ghost of Tsushima, and Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales. What do all of these games have in common? Stellar in-game photo modes that allow a growing online community of virtual photographers to capture the beauty and complexity of these game worlds. 
Fans have been taking screenshots of their favorite games for almost as long as they’ve been playing them. Photo modes themselves have existed at least as far back as 1999’s Metal Gear Solid: Integral, which featured a bare bones “photoshoot mode” as bonus content. And even back when most games didn’t have in-game photo modes, the most avid photographers created their own camera mods on PC or used third-party software like NVIDIA’s Ansel camera tool. 
Photo modes have only grown more sophisticated since then, and a new generation of virtual photographers have honed their craft and are sharing their unique perspectives on social media to thousands of followers. You can now find dedicated virtual photography communities, hashtags, and aggregators on social media platforms as well as online magazines dedicated to the craft and even an app called Captis that’s pitching itself as the social home for the medium.
cnx.cmd.push(function() { cnx({ playerId: "106e33c0-3911-473c-b599-b1426db57530", }).render("0270c398a82f44f49c23c16122516796"); });
“I think the biggest benefit [of a photo mode] comes from having the ability to capture precious in-game moments that one can also share with others. It works as a sort of connection between the game world and the real world,” says Hiroaki Yoshiike, a lead level designer at Kojima Productions who worked on the stellar photo mode for Death Stranding, a game full of moody, detail-rich environments that serve as a particular paradise for photographers who love to capture stunning landscapes.
In fact, from the moment Kojima Productions decided to integrate a photo mode for the PC release, its main goal was to provide a user-friendly camera tool that also provided advanced features for more seasoned photographers. Yoshiike’s team worked alongside the Lighting and Cinematics teams on iterations of the mode.
“We created a prototype, but they told us it was too basic,” says Yoshiike of testing an early version of the photo mode with members of the team. “So we went back and started adding more features, adjusting until we arrived at the specs that you see in-game today. One part we got caught up on was figuring out how to provide the right tools for making pictures better, from lighting adjustments to stylized filters.”
These tools are very important to virtual photographers, who aren’t just taking pictures of “what looks cool” but are considering elements of real-world photography like composition, framing, and the rule of thirds. They’re thinking about depth of field, lighting, and filters. Virtual photographers take their craft seriously, and there’s a sense that their community of followers — many of which aren’t gamers at all — are doing so as well, following handles for the photographs themselves and not just because they’re fans of the subjects being captured. Could this mean that virtual photography is on the rise as the next great artform?
We talked to a group of photographers about their process, what they look for in a photo mode, and why they think virtual photography is becoming more popular.
Sindy JB
Sindy JB has photographed many games, but her haunting shots of Death Stranding on PC are among her best as they capture the phases of a long, Odyssean journey through a post-apocalyptic America. Shots of photorealistic mountainscapes and war-torn cities have earned her almost 20,000 followers across Twitter and Instagram, where she posts under the handle @mesopatmian_meow. 
“Landscape pictures are probably my favorite subject to capture,” Sindy says of her technique. “I almost never plan my shots. I wait for the right place and moment. I don’t use filters a lot because I like my pictures to look as natural as possible.”
Rockstar’s award-winning Old West action game Red Dead Redemption 2 was the game that originally got her into virtual photography, and she’s gotten to know many photo modes since then. There are a few things she looks for when picking up a game’s camera component.
“The most important thing for me is the camera movements. Without free camera control it’s very hard for us to take the pictures we want to take. Some games restrict the camera with an orbital control only in their photo mode and it’s just terrible. I know I speak for many virtual photographers when I say it’s by far the most disappointing thing to see in a photo mode.”
Sindy’s following has grown quickly since her debut in 2018, and she posits that a lot of that has to do with the game makers themselves.
“I think there are many factors that led to the increased popularity of virtual photography, the first being the support we are getting from the game developers these days on social media sites. We often get likes, retweets, and comments from them, and it’s very encouraging.”
Berduu
Petri Levälahti, who goes by Berduu on Twitter, is one of the most popular virtual photographers in the community with over 40,000 followers. In fact, Levälahti has turned virtual photography into a career. He works as a Screen Capture Artist for Swedish game studio EA DICE, best known for the Battlefield and Star Wars Battlefront games.
Interestingly enough, the Battlefield 4 pictures taken by virtual photography legend Jim2point0 are what first enticed Levälahti to get involved with the community.
“Jim and other members of the screenshot community showed me the ropes. This was back when there really were no photo modes in games, outside of a few racing titles, so all the free cameras were created by fans. Most of the actually good game cameras are still created by fans, by people like Frans Bouma, for example.”
Levälahti does it all — portraits, landscapes, action shots. He needs to be multifaceted and have a keen eye for what will catch the viewer’s attention, a key element of his day job. At DICE, he takes marketing screenshots as well as the images you see on their games’ menus and loading screens.
“I get a request for a specific screenshot, let’s say an Action Shot in place X, with focus on Game Feature Y,” Levälahti says of his normal day-to-day at DICE. “Then I start to look for a good location or two and play around with ideas. I’ll do a handful of iterations before settling on one or two, consult an art director for notes, get approvals, do final captures, and ship it.”
Levälahti loves to shoot other games outside of DICE, too. Standouts include stylish portraits of characters from Control and Cyberpunk 2077 you could easily imagine as magazine covers. How does he do it?
“I always check that my shots work at small size — that there’s a clear subject, and that the shot is easy to read and you can tell what’s going on. I [also] check that my shots work at large size — are there ugly textures or assets shown too close and thus causing eyesore? Does the character’s leg clip through the floor, is there anything ruining the immersion? Awkward poses, non-existent shadows, aliasing? Always look for good light! Shadows and light make or break your shot.”
Soulsurrender
Soulsurrender, who also works as a freelance graphic designer and photographer in Sweden, got into virtual photography thanks to the seminal fantasy RPG The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, a game often celebrated for its beautiful vistas, lively settings, and cavernous depths.
“Mods made the game pretty and I just wanted to capture that. I didn’t really call it virtual photography or share any of my shots back then. That came much later, after realizing there was a whole amazing community out there.”
Soulsurrender has captured many subjects, including those within the worlds of Fallout 4, Mad Max, and Cyberpunk 2077, and she has a real eye for finding the majesty in dystopian settings. Her awe-inspiring shots of Mad Max’s endless deserts don’t even look like they’re from a video game despite the fact that she took up virtual photography after growing bored with shooting her real-world surroundings.
“I’m currently on a break after getting kind of burned out, getting frustrated with gear, and living in a small town of which nothing feels left to explore and shoot. Which naturally led me to find other ways to express my creativity: I started shooting virtual worlds instead, where the possibilities are nearly endless.”
Soulsurrender mainly likes to shoot vast landscapes, characters standing far off in the distance, colorful skies as backdrops. She says her approach to virtual photography is the same as in real-life: “go explore and find something interesting.”
Voldsby
“I’ve been a hobby photographer for a few years, so when I discovered that there was this feature where you can literally just stop the whole game to take pictures, that was when I became addicted to it.”
Danish photographer Voldsby has made a name for herself in the community with her portraits of The Last of Us Part II’s main characters. On her Twitter page, you’ll find pictures of Ellie and Abby, their faces half shrouded in thick shadow, as if to hide something in their expressions, while one eye looks straight at the camera. The gaze is so piercing it might make you cower.
“I like to really get close to my subjects and make them feel like they’re looking into the camera, [that] they’re aware that I’m taking the picture,” Voldsby says. “I know it sounds silly because it’s a video game, but it makes the photo come alive.”
Why has she spent so much time photographing TLOU2 specifically? Well, first off, she loves the series, but it also has a lot to do with the game’s incredible lighting. So much of the game takes place in creepy, enclosed areas like hallways and underground tunnels, and Voldsby finds it particularly exciting when she discovers “beautiful little light beams just sitting there in a window” to light her shots. 
After Voldsby takes a picture, it goes through a “rigorous procedure” before she shares it online. She transfers the picture over as a PNG to a USB drive (pro tip: never use PlayStation’s Share function to upload your high quality photographs) and then she touches it up a little on Adobe Lightroom, mostly to add a bit more lighting or shadow to make sure things are popping. But when it comes to capturing the picture itself, Voldsby prefers a simple photo mode.
“It’s all about simplicity. Less is more, you know? I don’t really need any of those fancy features that a lot of photo modes have,” Voldsby says. “It’s just like real photography. Buying an expensive camera with loads of features doesn’t automatically make you a good photographer.”
Kayne
Kayne, whose Instagram handle @firstpersonshutter boasts almost 20,000 followers, dreamed of traveling the world as a freelance photographer for outlets like National Geographic, but soon found that he couldn’t afford it due to the cost of lenses and other equipment necessary for the job. But that hasn’t stopped him from practicing his craft in the video game world.
His favorite games to photograph are Insomniac’s Spider-Man series, and it’s easy to see why. Kayne can get a lot out of the high-flying web-swinging mechanics in the game as well as Spidey’s superheroic poses and myriad suits.
“In Spider-Man‘s case, arranging Spider-Man to where he’s looking at something that’s well-lit puts those reflections in the eye lenses so that you can actually get all those details on the face masks,” Kayne explains.
With photo mode, Kayne has found a new way to think about photography, and hopes that other artists will start to think of virtual photography as an artform, too. Will we one day see one of the pictures in this article hanging in a museum?
“I am very hopeful that it takes off into something bigger. And I feel like we’re on the ground floor.”
The post Is Virtual Photography the Next Great Artform? appeared first on Den of Geek.
from Den of Geek https://ift.tt/2LTkexm
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illbefinealonereads · 4 years
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Blog tour! I’m offering you information and an excerpt from Out Now by Saundra Mitchell.
Out Now: Queer We Go Again! By Saundra Mitchell On Sale: May 26, 2020 Inkyard Press YOUNG ADULT FICTION/Diversity & Multicultural | YOUNG ADULT FICTION/Romance/LGBT 9781335018267; 1335018263 $18.99 USD 416 pages
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A follow-up to the critically acclaimed All Out anthology, Out Now features seventeen new short stories from amazing queer YA authors. Vampires crash prom…aliens run from the government…a president’s daughter comes into her own…a true romantic tries to soften the heart of a cynical social media influencer…a selkie and the sea call out to a lost soul. Teapots and barbershops…skateboards and VW vans…Street Fighter and Ares’s sword: Out Now has a story for every reader and surprises with each turn of the page! This essential and beautifully written modern-day collection features an intersectional and inclusive slate of authors and stories.
Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Out-Now-Queer-We-Again/dp/1335018263 Barnes & Noble: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/out-now-saundra-mitchell/1133810272 IndieBound: https://www.indiebound.org/book/9781335018267 Books-A-Million: https://www.booksamillion.com/p/Out-Now/Saundra-Mitchell/9781335018267?id=4861510030088 AppleBooks: https://books.apple.com/us/book/out-now/id1481649552 Google Play: https://play.google.com/store/books/details/Saundra_Mitchell_Out_Now?id=0SeyDwAAQBAJ
Saundra Mitchell has been a phone psychic, a car salesperson, a denture deliverer and a layout waxer. She's dodged trains, endured basic training and hitchhiked from Montana to California. She teaches herself languages, raises children and makes paper for fun. She is the author of Shadowed Summer and The Vespertine series, the upcoming novelization of The Prom musical, and the editor of Defy the Dark. She always picks truth; dare is too easy. Visit her online at www.saundramitchell.com.
Author website: wwww.saundramitchell.com Facebook:  https://www.facebook.com/pages/Saundra-Mitchell/164136390442617 Twitter: @saundramitchell Instagram: @smitchellbooks Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/52172088-out-now
Excerpt:
KICK. PUSH. COAST. By Candice Montgomery
Excerpted from OUT NOW: Queer We Go Again! Edited by Saundra Mitchell, used with permission by Inkyard Press, © 2020 by Inkyard Press.
 Every day, same time, same place, she appears and doesn’t say a word.
Well, she doesn’t just appear. She takes a bus. You know she takes a bus because you see her get off the bus right in front of 56th Street, just in front of the park where you skate.
You know she takes a bus and gets off right in front of the park at 56th Street because you are always at the park, wait-ing to catch a glance of her.
She—her appearance—is a constant. Unlike your sexuality, all bendy like the way your bones got after yesterday’s failed backside carve.
Bisexualpansexualdemisexualpanromanticenby all bleeding bleeding-bleeding…into one another.
That drum of an organ inside your chest tells you to just be patient. But now, here you are and there she is and you can’t help yourself.
She’s beautiful.
And so far out of your league.
You’re not even sure what she does here every day, but you probably shouldn’t continue to watch her while trying to nail a Caballerial for the first time. Losing focus there is the kind of thing that lends itself to unforgiving injuries, like that time you broke your leg in six places on the half-pipe or the time you bit clean through your bottom lip trying to take down a 360 Pop Shove It.
You’re still tasting blood to this very day. So’s your skate-board. That one got split clean in half.
She looks up at you from underneath light brown lashes that seem too long to be real. She reminds you of a Heelflip. You don’t know her well but you imagine that, at first, she’s a pretty complicated girl, before you get good enough to really know her. You assume this just given the way her hair hangs down her back in a thick, beachy plait, the way yours never could.
Not since you chopped it all off.
That’s not a look for a lady, your mom says repeatedly. But you’ve never been very femme and a few extra inches of hair plus that pink dress Mom bought you won’t change that.
You hate that dress. That dress makes you look like fondant. Someone nails a Laserflip right near where you’re standing and almost wipes out.
Stop staring. You could just go introduce yourself to her.
But what would you say?
Hi, I’m Dustyn and I really want to kiss you but I’m so confused about who I am and how am I supposed to introduce myself to you if I can’t even get my label right, oh, and also, you make me forget my own name.
And in a perfect world, she would make eyes at you. She’d make those eyes at you and melt your entire fucking world in the way only girls ever can.
Hi, Dustyn, I’m in love with you. Eyelashes. All batting eye-lashes.
No. No, the conversation probably wouldn’t go that way. Be nice if it did though. Be nice if anything at all could go your way when it comes to romance.
You push into a 360 ollie while riding fakie and biff it so bad, you wish you possessed whatever brain cells are the ones that tell you when to quit.
If that conversation did go your way, on a realistic scale, she’d watch you right back. You would nail that Caballerial.
Take a break. Breathe. Breathe breathe breathe. Try some-thing else for a sec.
Varial Heelflip. Wipe out.
Inward Heelflip. Gnarly spill.
Backside 180 Heelflip. Game, set, match—you’re finished. That third fail happens right in front of her and you play it off cool. Get up. Don’t even give a second thought to your battle wounds. You’re at the skate park on 56th Street because there’s more to get into. Which means, you’re not the only idiot limping with a little drug called determination giving you momentum.
Falling is the point. Failing is the point. Getting better and changing your game as a skater is the point. Change.
But what if things were on your side? What if you’d stuck with that first label? What if Bisexual felt like a good fit and never changed?
Well, then you’d probably be landing all these 180s.
If bisexual just fit, you’d probably have been able to hold on to your spot in that Walk-In Closet. But it doesn’t fit. It doesn’t fit which kind of sucks because at Thanksgiving din-ner two years ago, your cousin Damita just had to open her big mouth and tell the family you “mess with girls.” Just had to tell the family, a forkful of homemade mac and cheese headed into said mouth, that you are “half a gay.”
That went over well. Grams wouldn’t let you sit on her plastic-lined couches for the rest of the night. Your great-uncle Damian told her gay is contagious. She took it to heart.
No offense, baby. Can’t have all that on my good couches. You glance up and across the park, memories knocking
things through your head like a good stiff wind, and you find her taking a seat.
Oh.
Oh, she never does this. She never gets comfortable. She’s changing things up. You’re not the only one.
Maybe she plans to stay a while.
You love that she’s changing things up. You think it feels like a sign. It’s like she’s riding Goofy-Foot today. Riding with her right foot as dominant.
The first time you changed things up that way, you ended up behind the bleachers, teeth checking with a trans boy named Aaron. It felt so right that you needed to give it a name.
Google called it pansexual. That one stuck. You didn’t bother to explain that one to the family, though. They were just starting to learn bisexual didn’t mean you were gay for only half the year.
You pop your board and give the Caballerial another go.
It does not want you. You don’t stick this one either.
If pansexual had stuck, you’d introduce yourself to the beautiful girl with a smaller apology on your tongue. Hi, I’m Dustyn, I’ve only changed my label the one time, just slightly, but I’m still me and I’d really love to take you out.
And the beautiful girl would glance at your scraped elbows and the bruised-up skin showing through the knee holes in your ripped black skinny jeans. She’d see you and say, Hi, small, slight changes are my favorite. And then she’d lace her bubble-gum-nail-polished hand with yours.
But you changed your label after that, too. It was fine for a while. Your best friend, Hollis, talked you through the symp-toms of demisexuality.
No wonder holding the beautiful girl’s hand seems so much more heart-palpitating than anything else. A handhold. So simple. Just like an ollie.
You take a fast running start, throwing your board down, and end up on a vert skate, all empty bowl-shaped pools that are so smooth, your wheels only make a small whisper against them.
A whisper is what you got that first time you realized sex was not for you. Not with just anyone. This was…mmm, probably your biggest revelation.
It was like you’d been feeding your body Big Macs three times a day and suddenly—a vegetable!
Tic-tacking is when you use your entire body to turn the board from one side to the other. It’s a game of lower body strength, but also a game of knowing your weight and know-ing your board. You are not a tic-tac kind of girl.
You are not a girl at all. You are just…you.
That.
That one’s sticking forever. You know it all the way through to your gut.
You make one more attempt, which probably isn’t super wise because you are so close to the spot where she’s sitting that not only will she see you bite the dust, but she’ll hear that nasty grunt you make when you meet the ground.
You coast by.
The friction vibrates up through your bearings and you know you’re going too fast because you start to feel a little bit of a speed-wobble, that lovely, untimely, oscillatory behavior that means bro, you are about to lose control.
And you hate that word. Control. You hate that word be-cause it is so very rare that you have any. Over your life, your sexuality, your gender, your pronouns, your heartbeat when you’re around your beautiful girl.
But then you do.
You gain control. And you nail that Caballerial.
And the three guys who’ve been watching you make an ass of yourself all afternoon pop their boards up, hold them over their heads and let out wolf shouts.
And you’re smiling so hard. You get like that when you nail a particularly difficult one. You’re smiling so hard you don’t notice the someone standing behind you.
Beautiful girl. You don’t even want to control your smile here.
“You did it,” she says.
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I need a fix cus I'm going down
Made the mistake of appraising myself sufficiently healthy to attend a bonfire with normal decent tax-payer type folks. Stood up too fast in my chair and blacked out completely, hit my head on concrete. When I came to i had no earthly fucking memory of having driven to the bonfire, nor could i really recall the names of the three concerned hipsters perched over my limp doughy abscessed jaundiced shit heap of a body. Told them it was a problem with blood sugar, i had forgotten to imbibe my afternoon orange juice! Translation-haven’t slept in four days, taking in roughly two hundred calories a day all in ginger ale. Meth heads opt to sustain themselves on a diet of paranoid resentment in lieu of proteins and grains. The cook gets super spun and lectures us like we’re babes about the dark leftist forces presently waging war on the masculinity of the white man-for one thing, he's convinced that jews run the porn industry and that fucking pornhub is riddled with overtures both overt and subliminal intended to brainwash white guys into identifying as weak and feminine and to associate men of color with heroism and strength. He also believes that soy causes gender dysphoria. All of these batshit crazy delusions act like stars in the broad constellation of the cooks worst dystopian fears-a workforce with no room left for traditionally male-centered leadership characteristics dominated from top-down by a host of future ladies who make their trade in creative collaboration, rather than fear and theft of other peoples ideas. Without a need for a provider, our nazi-bespectacled methamphetamine cook envisions a new sexual economy in which women will jettison their attachments to the family structure in favor of like, industrialism, i guess, and men will have no other resort but a desperate turn to cross-dressing and dick-taking and i guess maybe stitching scarves. It was at this point that i was really tempted to tell the cook something he needs to hear-if you really believe that large shadow societies are orchestrating history just cus they want to make you some dudes boyfriend, its probably cus part of you wants to be. I get that, sucking dick is a blast. if you’re terrified that you can’t compete in a post-modern job market, it might just be because you aren’t. There’s no place left for cowboys or outlaws or methcooks cus those professions only make sense in the context of an insanely violent frontier. You feel obsolete and useless because you are, but make no mistake, that hurt has nothing to do with the world everything to do with your soul being severely malnourished. I know cus mine is too! Real moral christian courage is showing up to your crucifixion with a smile on your face ready to graciously thank the romans for every nail they put through your wrist. You feel empty because your a paranoid fascist meth cook, i feel bad cus I'm a junkie. We are bad. The nazi pilots who blitzed france in two sleepless, speed-fueled nights probably felt fucking fantastic, as if they were aloft on the trade winds of history itself and their momentum across europe must have seemed like proof enough of the moral righteousness of the german cause. But then the morning comes and the meth wears off and your skin smells like piss and your back aches and you can’t stop grinding your jaw and the first wave of survivors begin to trickle out from the camps and presumably in that moment a few nazis had the epiphany-that the very same starved beaten traumatized jewish women and men and children they had aspired to extinguish from human memory were now going to tell the story of what had happened. Power loses, grace is its own kingdom, etc etc. Furthermore those german officers who managed to transition back to civilian life and start families must have experienced a very strange new parental dynamic-can you imagine a family at a dinner table and the proud head of household instructs his small son to finish his vegetables and after pausing to mull it over for a few moments his son turns to him and says Father having thought about it a great deal i don’t think ill be following your instructions-after all you were only following instructions yourself when you helped to engineer the greatest cruelty in human history! To which ostensibly the father mumbles to clear his throat and asks his wife to pass the potato salad. Not even to invoke the possibility that the Fuhrer himself Mr. Adolph Hitler probably died surrounded by a swarm of shadow people, fucking hilarious just the thought, him yelling in that distinctive manic patois of his that he’s the leader and the abeyance of his will is sacrosanct blah blah blah while the little invisible mites under his pale skin shift and swell and scratch and the shadow people dancing around his peripheral vision taunting and cajoling and ridiculing him and the absurdity of his final solution and because he didn’t know speed the way we now know speed he probably didn’t know anything about the shadow people at all from his perspective they might just as well have been the ghosts of his victims come to taunt and ridicule him in his lowest hour pointing and laughing and daring him to pull the trigger!   
The same entitlement motivates the mass shooter who imagines a world full of seven billion perfect strangers as an attack on his rightful pursuit of happiness. No one will sleep with him and he can’t make sense of his place in a world built on fucking so he begins to indulge in fantasies of coercion, revenging himself on the very public space he so craved Now if our hypothetical douchebag had any pretense of self-awareness he might have looked into the possibility of adopting several dogs, and in turn coming to see his life as a story about caring unconditionally for animals. That’s a helluva life-Saint Francis got into the catholic hall of fame for doing not a whole lot more. Or perhaps he could adjust his expectations of intimacy in consideration of the countless plain-to middling-to ugly folks who are forced to come to terms with the truth early on that all of our bodies are grotesque and hideously deformed billboard advertisements for our big beautiful impossibly dense souls-come see a kernel of divine inspiration made self-aware, shimmering in the glory of creation,  just two exits past the tits and chin and ankles and all the rest of our faulty parts. 
Now a discerning reader(however unlikely you’d be to find one in an audience consisting of absolutely fucking nobody lol) might have already begun to detect a certain heady strain of hypocrisy in this authors conclusion. Because while I'm not much of anything the one thing i certainly am is a self-destructive drug addict. So maybe its one thing for me to make fun of the cook for his wrath-filled flu-stricken infants tantrum of a way of viewing the world, assigning to his solipsism a generation-hopping solidarity with his nazi forefathers who came before and identifying in his politics the germinal seed of fascisms future, a politics so personal and self-contained that every divorce will be debated as if it were a stand in for larger cultural decay, every morning hangover a portent of spiritual decline, the vitals of the stock market remeasured and reassessed each time someone finds on the sidewalk a loose dollar bill. Political assemblies with real largesse exclusively devoted to trolling the instagram of a nebraskan man named doug’s now ex-wife  for pictures of her maui vacation with husband number two drinking mojitos on a beach with sand bleached white as bone and both of them grinning with surgical precision an opulent almost confrontational kind of public grinning Doug couldn't recall that bitch ever having felt for him and the kids off playing in the surf and well how could any concerned and conscientious citizen fail to see the basic threat to democracy that whole scene represents? Donald Trump is probably the loneliest man in the world. He’s never met another person. He spends his time wandering the halls of his head checking for reoccurrences of his own reflection, a lifetime spent pathologically re-telling the same story about how he came to be the most powerful person in the world, so that by the time he really became who he had always pretended to be, the most influential figure in the free world, he had long-since bought into his own fraud to such a great extent that even the real thing couldn’t compare. Only a selfishness and self-centeredness as grandiloquent as his could explain the mindset of the modern mass shooter and the micro-politics informing him. He confuses his head for the world and then becomes enraged when it won’t do as he wishes, cursing the rain for its cold lash against his shoulder where he’d rather there have rested warm summer glow, furious at the thought of all the people he would never meet in far-off places he would never see who never paid him any attention whatsoever. Playing peek-a-boo a little bit of cheating peer through chubby fingers arrayed like a geisha’s fan and for the first time see that objects don’t disappear without our gaze to ontologically anchor them to earth. What a hurt. Now it might be technically correct that my addiction does to my loving family what the selfishness of the mass shooter does to public space. It intrudes like an alien thing and turns the air chilly in our childhood home and it transforms the medicine cabinet into a contested territory in need of defensive fortification and now that Cassies marriage has crashed on the rocks of addiction nobody could blame her if she never allowed another addict to darken her doorstep again and there was the sight of Jan opening my trucks passenger side door and a few rigs fell out onto the floor and all the spoons in the house have one side burnt-and-bruised like a black-eye you say you got from falling down a flight of stairs despite body language that says something entirely else why is it we don’t have a single spoon in the house what ghost spends all night punching the walls full of holes 
recently went to an Alanon meeting to sneak a glimpse of how the other half lives...this lady said my addiction is to loving my addict. Bawled rivers out from red raw-rubbed rubber eyes and said my addiction is to my addict Not her person or qualifier or partner but her addict. Syntax almost seeming to suggest that something about the existential plight of the addict gets her intoxicated dizzy on pain. It’s quaint though cus that sort of sentiment is for fucking rookies-guarantee you no ones crying over me like a romantic. Not anymore. My thing these days is of a distinctly more shakespearian strand of tragedy, with wittgenstein and derrida’s influences also undeniable. I’m sick now in a way where people stop crying and praying you’ll find God and change and decide instead it’d be easier to just cross the street. Schizophrenics lost in a chorus meant only just for them, apocalyptic street preachers who stand on soap boxes while reeking of shit and give voice to visions of an America not our own, an alternate dimension where european arrival at the shores of the new world stalled out somewhere halfway across the pacific ocean on a wave so tall it scraped the heavens and America grew up a nation of nomads who set their watches to the rumbling migration of herds of buffalo and not even the highest priest could dream of a more beautiful idea than that of motion, movement without cease, the only acceptable fixed still frozen property being the burial mounds where the dead went after all their motion had gone-if they could view us on the other side of the looking glass stolen away in our own personal homes they would almost certainly come to the conclusion that this place where we live is just the land of the dead, a negative photograph of everything vital and good. Who would i be to disagree though, right? 
The point is anyway that some alchemical reaction of A. Mental illness and B. Amphetamine abuse has more or less stranded me in words. Verbs and nouns and adjectives and adverbs in place of sky and grass. What Fredric Jameson called the prison house of language. Where derrida’s difference goes to play for eternity, never quite meaning what it had meant to say. What shook wittgenstein speechless. The president’s rhetoric so hollow that you can almost see him suffering a kind of dementia or spiritual torpor that results from the badness of his faith. Chewing and chomping consonants and sounds till they all are made to mush and shearing syllable after syllable off the network of signification until all that’s left is one satellite pinging a distress call hello is anyone there off of its own side. It’s own side like Adam plucked Eve from his rib and said put on this dress-after they ate the fruit and God cast him/her out to walk the world alone reportedly God said have fun all alone you worthless slut. Imagine trumps final state of the union-i am very sick, i have been alone for as long as I can remember, i wish i hadn’t lied so often, i wish i had occasionally told the truth, i would trade all of it to have known just one person. 
Anyways, barring that miracle of political theater, the body gets sick and dissolves while the spirit is lost in words. I’d like to die in a bathroom stall in haughville with a rig stuck in my arm and the words I'm sorry stuck at the tip of my tongue and God decides to show some compassion and makes me a deal says you were never much good to people didn’t believe in a thing but you sure could do some impressive vomiting up of nonsense words and so what ill do is your soul will dissolve and turn into ink and for the rest of eternity you’ll be a naughty joke or a half-scribbled doggerel scrawled on the wall of a piss-soaked bathroom stall in the ghetto or you could say call this number here for a good time and don’t forget to ask for large marge and nobody’d ever suspect you were trapped in there or maybe a joke like this favorite of mine about my son it goes something like Jesus Christ was a God-awful carpenter, couldn’t pull a nail to save his own life. Christ was a God-awful, couldn’t pull a nail to save his own life. Couldn't pull a nail. Christ was God-awful. Couldn’t nail his own couldn’t save a carpenter terrible couldn’t pull god-awful a terrible carpenter he couldn’t pull a nail to save his own life. I can’t pull this nail to save my own life. It’s right there sticking out of my wrist, but for whatever reason I just can’t find the right words to pull it out he was a carpenter who couldn’t pull a nail even if his life depended on it couldn't save his own life he couldn't-
For a good time call this number 1-555-555-5555 and don’t forget to ask for-
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