#and so i thought those were the only prints available
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Cremation is just another fun(erl) service
So blaming random 4am thoughts that have been plaguing me all day for this
----
Jason woke to a bright room, thin sheets and the smell of a hospital embedded in his body.
First as always, assess. Hospital. No affiliation printed on the walls or anywhere. Private room, but small. That door looked like it led to a private bathroom. Generic flower picture, a mounted screen turned off. Really fucking bright sunlight from the windows.
There was no fucking way he was in Gotham then. Everything was too nice. Normal by standards outside of Gotham. There were blinds, not metal shutters. The walls were cleaner than Gotham allowed outside of Downtown and he could see greenery through the window.
Okay. So what had he been doing? Jason remembered and then wished he had his Jerichos to shoot himself with. Mystic Shit™. Okay. Okay. That was not one of his better ideas, but if he's recovering in a hospital, it worked. World saved.
So recovery. How fucked was he?
His skin looked so fucked. Which meant he had been worse. He's had time to recover and lose muscle tone in, going by how twiggy his arms were. His hands looked good. Clearly someone knew he cared about those if they went through the effort of restoring those.
Hmm, that was odd. No matter how much Jason hated the Lazarus Pits and all its by-products, it would have been a faster and more simple way to recover from near-death than the long incarceration in a hospital for a John Doe.
Jason wasn't sure if he'd been abandoned yet again by those who called themselves his family because he could, "take care of himself," or if he had been written off dead. Again.
Hospital beat the coffin by a long shot.
And it was with that cheery thought, a nurse -obvious meta human nurse- came in and burst into excited Japanese, because that was of course, his luck.
It's after the nurse and doctors leave that Jason loses his shit.
It looks like he's sulking in bed, but mentally everything in his head is exploding. Imploding.
Three. Fucking. Years. Coma.
Burn victim so bad they not only expected him to die in the first couple of days, but still expect it because of the infection risk his fucked up skin represents.
Still the conversation with the medical staff -of varying degrees of bizarre- was enlightening.
No, he has no idea who he is. Did he ever get anyone visit? How did he get here?
Of course some amnesia is to be expected. No, some of the nurses visited. No one knows how he got here.
Does he know what his quirk is? Uh?
Trauma blocked amnesia, the doctor mutters.
What's the last date he remembered?
Saturday. Maybe? The last year? No, I'm pretty sure my memory is shit and I'm trying hard not to freak out over not knowing anything. So could I get the year number?
And then there's the fucking year number. Once he got it translated into more normal terms.
Mystic Shit™ said fuck you to the future.
Except Jason knows this is not his future. Again, if it was, this would have been treated as a fucking inconvenience. Effective skin restoration goop -the proper name escaped him- was easily available to those with the right connections. A normal baseline human with 2nd and 3rd degree burns would be fine in less than two weeks with it, with nary a trace to show for it.
Thanks to the three year coma, his muscles were all atrophied as fuck, despite their best attempts at physical therapy. Because of all the burns and later burn scars and infections making it basically impossible to actually do fuck all about maintaining muscle tone until he was basically burnt skin and bones anyway.
He was so fucking weak now. It wouldn't last forever. He'd escape this hospital before he was discharged, before whatever "benefactor" showed up for whatever "purpose," he was suppose to serve now, as they had the medical debt over his head or was threatening his loved ones or whatever. If one didn't show up in the next week, he was losing his genre-savviness, because shitheads always wanted to claim shit, if it looked useful.
And Jason was used to looking useful, until he was no longer useful and they just didn't care. The amnesia made him less shiny, but Jason couldn't pull off the brain dead zombie imitation without actually being a brain dead zombie crawling up out of his grave.
So under the thin hospital sheets, Jason twitched his muscles.
Two weeks of emotional freak outs, watching the news, physical therapy and drugs Jason had had enough.
And he broke out.
----
Yeah, he regretted it almost immediately. Hard not to in the stupid paper gown, barefoot and bare ass.
Thankfully people were people, even with the plethora of meta humans he had seen, so it actually wasn't hard to find clothes. Someone left a hoodie in their car and Jason broke into said car. Put on the hoodie. Hotwired the car and drove off.
Somehow for being in the fucking future by two centuries and change, cars really hadn't changed. More evidence of Mystic Shit™ slamming him sideways.
He drove to the next town over, picked another direction, drove some more. Parked the car near what looked like a chop shop, negotiated the car for some money. He probably got ripped off, but better than nothing.
He walked to a corner store, bought some flip-flops after bullshitting an excuse that his had broken. First aid stuff. You know, for his feet. Hair dye in three different colors, because Rose Wilson could pick out a bad dye job at a hundred meters and so Jason learned how to dye his own hair properly so as to avoid her mockery, only to get mockery (affectionate) anyway.
It was a mix of instinct and lifelong observation that let him find an empty apartment quickly. He stole some sweatpants and passed out on the bed.
----
The thing is, Jason doesn't regret his crimes like Bruce thinks he ought to do, with a massive pity party and flaming self-hatred and punching criminals instead of shooting them. He hates the necessity of doing crimes, even if that crime is a net gain to society, but that's why all his serious crimes are premeditated. He's homicidal, not a psychopath.
Not Pit-mad either, no matter what the rest of them might have thought.
Again, he's homicidal, not a psychopath. And when he doesn't have to be some sort of costume soldier to be discarded by family for the disgrace of disfiguring the memory of a dead boy? He's actually chill and boring.
That is to say, he crashed at that apartment for three days, felt progressively more like himself, especially after the dye job -white hair all over, now a solid and boring black- but it still didn't change all the other issues the Mystic Shit™ inflicted on him.
This body isn't actually his. Too young, scars not right where the burns didn't fuck him over. Thankfully his existing coping mechanisms for dysphoria work and it's shoved to the side.
It's also a shit body. Not even a month out of a three year coma with inadequate -by his standards- of medical care. It's weak and building muscle to do everyday civilian shit, is going to take months to do. Pushing as hard as he did during the escape wrecked him the next three days. Jason may not know what's going to happen, but with his luck, it's going to suck and training is preparing to make it suck less. The only certainty he's got is that his skin or lack thereof is going to kill him from infection if he doesn't fix it.
He's got no legal identity here. Which basically puts him back onto familiar ground of legally dead.
Beyond the lack of paperwork, he's got a lack of funds. He also has no easy target to steal funds and equipment from, even just for fun.
For more disadvantages, he's in a different country, with different laws and a whole different culture. He would be climbing on board a fucking plane to Gotham, if it existed in this world, for some familiar ground.
He really is the unluckiest Robin. It also means he is also the most prepared Robin.
---
The first six months after waking up in this mockery world of heroics were the absolute worst.
He started at one foot in the grave and crawled out of it before the casket could really eat him alive. Jason had experience in casket busting. He didn't wanna repeat it.
He still didn't know who he was -in who was he inhabiting- but it wasn't like Jason had a lot to go on. 'His' quirk was thermo-manipulation, most obviously in the blue fire he could call to his hands but he could do some ice too; it was thanks to Duke's light and shadow manipulation that he had even tried for the duality. He had white hair. Presumably Japanese heritage but quirks had really erased or blurred a lot of racial lines. Also presumed dead and young.
Access to the Quirk Registry took some doing, but again, not everyone followed basic computer security, much less what it took to keep someone bat-trained out of their systems. Again, for nearly two centuries in the future, a lot of the technological development had stagnated. Searching through the Quirk Registry hadn't yielded any result but none of his other methods had struck anything either. And he had looked at the recently dead and/or presumed dead. Sure, he had some leads that looked viable, but he wasn't going to follow those up yet.
He had fixed a few of his most pressing issues the past six months. His ignorance of the local area, the local and national politics and so on. This world supported and had an entire industry catering to making child soldiers and sell their image and reputation to make money and more child soldiers that called themselves Heroes.
His weak ass body no long cried doing daily tasks and only hated him after working out. Yes, Jason was pushing it but he was well aware of how months of preparation could mean shit in the face of seconds.
His infection risk was severely reduced after quick research bender let him make the most generic knock-off brand of the skin restoration goop in a shitty homemade lab. Did it fix his skin being patchwork fucked in places? Some. He wasn't going to get feeling back properly, but at least he looked more normal. Maybe with enough moisturizing he might look a little less Frankenstien's monster.
He also had a cash inflow. It wasn't great, but it supported his apartment. And the second set of papers. And the 2nd apartment.
Which meant in grand old tradition for Jason, time for him to bounce to the next apartment and come up with a new name.
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Tokyo revengers boys reaction when yn suddenly sit on top of them. Them as your husband,
if ur doing this, please add sanzu and ran, I am whore for them 🧍🏻♀️🤸🏻♀️🧍🏻♀️
Understandable, anon.
𝓢𝓲𝓽𝓽𝓲𝓷𝓰 𝓸𝓷 𝓽𝓸𝓹 𝓸𝓯 𝓽𝓱𝓮𝓶 - 𝔁 𝓻𝓮𝓪𝓭𝓮𝓻
character(s): sanzu haruchiyo, both haitanis, sano manjiro (mikey), kokonoi hajime, hanma shuji
gn!reader
genre(s): fluff, neutral
warning(s): some are slightly suggestive, mentions of guns, blood and wounds
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━♣
Sanzu ⤵
The pinknette just got home from work. As usual, he was in a pissy mood, huffing and oofing in exasperation, unable to stand still in one place. You, his beloved spouse, tried to cheer him up or at least tried to coax him into sharing his worries with you, but to no avail.
-Y/n, please, just leave me alone. I am moody and I just want to rest.
And he went into your shared bedroom, throwing himself onto the bed, not even bothering to take off his work clothes, and fell asleep. You don't give up so easily, and knew exactly what to do in situations like these. You left him to rest for an hour or so, until your patience was gone and you got inside the bedroom, you grimaced when you saw him, still salty from how pushy he was with you.
You approached the bed carefully, tip-toeing so you don't wake him up, and took the sheets off of him, placing yourself comfortably over his crotch area. You were ready to launch your tickle attack, but little did you know, he was awake already and his eyes shot open, lean arms suddenly wrapping around your waist and giving you a hard smack on your ass.
-You're a pesky one, hm? Want my attention so bady? Now you have it wholly.~
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Ran ⤵
It's been hours, and Ran still hasn't left his room, fingers paging over a report book he was given soon that day. You got inside quietly, handing him a cup of coffee he asked you to prepare for him. In an attempt to get his attention, you began massaging his shoulders, making him moan slightly from the way your fingers relaxed his muscles. He, however, knew your true intentions behind this.
-Not now, my dearest, I need to finish this.
-Ran, you've been in this room for hours, you need to rest and eat something.
The man looked at you and raised a brow, unamused by your words.-Yeah, yeah, later.-and he brushed you off just like that, eyes buried into the printed words on the paper in front of him. You let an offended gasp, crossed your arms and then placed yourself on his lap. His purple eyes widened in surprise, but his lips perked in a slight smirk, placing his free hand on your thigh and squeezing it softly.
-Come on now, my needy darling, I can see you're impatient, but this work is important. But I won't mind if you stay in my lap while I finish this.
-I'd be more than willing to stay here, Ran.
Your husband looked at you with those sultry downturned eyes, then placed a peck on your neck, gently nibbling on it.
-You might distract me a little, but you're forgiven. You're my little impatient bug, after all.
You only smiled and kissed his forehead, brushing back strands of his hair, while his hands traversed your butt, thighs and stomach.
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Rindou ⤵
Your husband was unusually quiet the whole day, as if he was contemplating something. It was a frequent occasion - him being deeply in thought, almost completely ignoring you. You weren't mad at him at all, in fact it was quite the opposite - you understood him and didn't bother him when he had his moments like this.
Out of the blue, he began training like crazy, even when he was dripping sweat onto the mat he used for his routine, face red from the plank he was doing, he didn't stop. It worried you, but all your words were quickly dismissed. He was doing push-ups like crazy, panting and huffing, but still not backing down. His breath was shaky and he looked like a mess, panicking you, and out of pure instinct you approached him and sat on his back, making him fall down.
-Agh, Y/n! Why did you do this? Don't you see I am training?
-Rin, baby, you were overworking yourself, your eyes almost popped out of your eye sockets, I got so worried!
You mewled out, tears forming at the corner of your eyes, standing up from him and sitting next to him. Rindou quickly got over his irritation and got up, hugging you from behind.
-I understand your worries. Sorry, my love. I just felt like I was not training enough, and pushed myself a little bit over the edge...
He sighed and placed a kiss on your shoulder, gently caressing your arms to calm you down. He blew raspberries on your neck and it made you giggle.-Stop it, and go shower, you're sweaty.
-If I do so, will you sit on my face instead?-he snickered and gently bit your ear in a teasing manner, and you nodded in an approval.
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Mikey ⤵
-Y/n, I told you, and I am not going to repeat myself. I don't want to go.
He was stubborn, extremely stubborn. It was almost headache inducing, and you knew it, you usually never tried to argue further with him, always backed down so easily, but this time you were tough.
-Manjiro, I am tired of you always declining all kinds of suggestions for us to go out. I don't want to stay cooped up in this dark apartment.
-Then go yourself, why should I be there?
-Because you're my husband, and I want to spend some time with you outside of our home, making memories.
-We can make memories here too, Y/n.-he brushed you off and laid back on the sofa.
You wanted to go the beach with your husband, but unfortunately, he rejected your yet another proposal to go out. You wanted him to see you in your new swimsuit you bought so badly. You wanted to step your foot down, and didn't say anything before approaching him and sitting on his neck, your thighs squishing his cheeks, making him widen his eyes in surprise.
-You're coming with me. I don't care, or I will suffocate you.
-And you actually think I'd mind that?-retorted Mikey, placing his hand on your thighs and turning around to kiss each one of them. It kind of tickled, so you squeezed a little harder.-Are you sure?-you smirked at him and leaned a bit closer.
For the first time ever, you won, and he came with you to the beach. He was sulking the entire time, but at least you both enjoyed your trip to the beach and had lots of fun.
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Kokonoi ⤵
Another trip at another lavish hotel. The sweet smell from the aroma diffuser wafted around in the hotel room, or should you say apartment, for this was larger than the usual hotels you stayed in. Your husband, Kokonoi, was browsing something on his laptop, with a cup of tea in his hand.
You decided to grab a drink from the hotel minibar. Kokonoi always told you to stay away from alcohol, because you were a lightweight. However, the atmosphere was too aesthetically pleasing not to add a taste of expensive whiskey, sitting on a couch in front of a huge window, overlooking the entire city.
-Sugar, I will go to the pool, wanna join me?-your husband asked you, gently massaging your hand
-I will come later, I want to stay here for a little more.
He nodded and placed a kiss on your lips.-Don't drink too much, sugar.-and with this, he left the room in his robe
You should've listened. A wave of dizziness washed over you. You weren't able to put your swimsuit properly, and swayed left and right on your way to the pool. Kokonoi sighed when he saw you, helping you fix your swimsuit.
-Sugar, you shouldn't have drunk that much...-he exclaimed, gesturing you to get inside the water with him. The pool wasn't very deep, so there wasn't any danger.
You were very clingy when tipsy, so you held onto him like a koala, until he slipped and fell down the pool stairs. Good thing they were underwater. You just remained sat on his lap, wrapping your hands around him and absentmindedly caressing his jawline.
-Hugs-s...-you slurred out, causing Kokonoi to chuckle
-C'mon my tipsy koala, let's have a little swim together.-he wrapped your legs around his waist, gently swimming around with you, only the gentle splashes of the water echoing through the big room.
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Hanma⤵
A loud bang in the middle of the night woke you up from your deep slumber, causing you to fall out of the bed. The drowsiness was swiftly gone and you took the gun your husband gifted you to protect yourself from your nightstand.
Slowly, you went out of the bedroom, just to see your husband slumped down on the ground, panting, covered in bruises and cuts, blood dripping off of them, parts of his suit torn. You gasped at the sight and threw the gun down, rushing to take the first aid kit from the bathroom.
-Oh my god, Hanma, what the hell happened???-you helped your husband to the sofa and placed him gently down
-Sorry, sweetcheeks, I got into yet another fight on my way here. But I took these bastards out all alone.-even in this state, he had his signature grin, but that didn't calm you down the slightest
-Honey... you could've gotten yourself killed... but it isn't your fault, good that you've dealt with them alone.
You took a cotton pad and applied iodine to it, then you placed yourself on his lap to clean his wounds thoroughly.-Oop.-your husband exclaimed, and placed one of his hands on your lower back, the other one massaging your buttcheek.
-Don't get too excited, honey, I am just cleaning you up, and this position is more comfortable.-you choked in between a giggle, knowing damn well you were lying a little bit
-Yeah, okay, sure. If you clean me up like this every time, I will get hurt more often.
He got a light punch from you on the shoulders, but both of you giggled and you cleaned his wounds, placing small kisses on each one of them.
a/n: why aren't they real I hope you liked it!
#tokyo rev#tokyo revengers#tokyo revengers x you#tokyo rev headcanons#tokyo revengers x reader#tokyo revengers headcanons#haitani ran#ran haitani#rindou haitani#haitani rindou#sanzu haruchiyo#sano manjiro#manjiro sano#kokonoi x y/n#kokonoi hajime#hajime kokonoi#hanma shuji#shuji hanma
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Hi! Absolutely adore your DBZ analyses, thank you so much - just spent a delightful time reading them all. I was wondering, since you've commented on Chi-Chi and Goku's marriage, what do you have to say about Vegeta and Bulma's relationship? (I've always been entranced by it - mostly because as with all his romances, Toriyama had the wisdom not to show any of it onscreen. But I'd love to know your thoughts about it.)
Bulma and Vegeta are a match made in Hell, and they deserve each other. (Which is to say yes, I love this ship.)
Hooking Bulma up with Vegeta was a hell of a narrative swerve. Generally speaking, stories rarely do this; They rarely let characters break up once they're already invested in a romance, unless it's supposed to be like a love triangle thing.
And Bulma? Bulma was invested. At least, to a degree.
This was the birth of the original Bulma romance that ran through about half of the manga. Two teens interesting in the opposite sex suddenly realize the availability of the other and a relationship is born.
Toriyama says he's bad at writing romance but to be honest, this has always hit me as more believable than your typical drawn-out five-seasons-of-pining Will They/Won't They affair. I'm a girl. You're a boy. Wanna go out and see what clicks?
And these two... these two do not click. We only really see their relationship from Bulma's perspective but it's clear that these two are miserable together.
The manga sorta takes Bulma's side, in that we never really get to hear Yamcha's opinion about their relationship one way or another. When he's around, all he wants to do is talk shop about martial arts. Since Toriyama doesn't like to write romance, we simply don't see much of it from them. What little we do hear about it comes from Bulma complaining about how miserable she is.
Bulma is pretty much always pissed off whenever the relationship is in focus at all.
Anime filler tends to take Yamcha's side instead, portraying him as a put-upon victim of Bulma's jealousy and abuse. A nice guy who doesn't deserve the way she treats him.
It's not hard to buy into this interpretation of their relationship since, as noted, we rarely get anything from Yamcha with regard to his relationship to women or Bulma specifically but we know Bulma's a lot. It's easy to accept Bulma as the "bad guy" of this relationship because. Like. Remember that time she enslaved a sentient being? Good times.
Though one particular moment from Yamcha later on kinda stands out as a bit of a retroactive Yikes.
Yeah. Uh. Threatening violence against a woman for rejecting his bro is a bit of a Yikes. Is this who we were supposed to see Yamcha as all this time? Because, if so, it might have helped to let him opine about the relationship more. Just saiyan.
According to Toriyama in interview, Yamcha and Bulma ultimately broke up because she caught Yamcha cheating on her. I guess that's what him being "popular with girls" was supposed to mean: Once he got over his gynophobia and found confidence with the opposite sex, Yamcha became a player.
But that doesn't necessarily come across from the statement, "Bulma can't stand that Yamcha's popular with girls." A lot of fans took that to mean girls just like him for no reason, and Bulma's unreasonably jealous about it. The anime took that position too.
Note that the "Yamcha is popular with girls" thing isn't helped by the fact that we never see it on-panel because he's only ever talking shop when he's around. But we do see a wandering eye from Bulma often enough.
There's nothing wrong with enjoying the aesthetic appeal of another party even when you're in a monogamous relationship, but it doesn't really present the "Other party is a womanizer and cheater" case when you're the only one ever seen doing this.
So it feels like there's a lot about Yamcha and Bulma's relationship that never made it to print yet influenced later decisions. Those decisions ended up being controversial because the foundation for those decisions was never laid. Here, Toriyama's disdain for writing romance worked against him.
But ultimately, regardless of whose side you take, it doesn't really matter. It doesn't matter who the "bad guy" is. A healthy relationship does not have a "bad guy" in it.
Whether or not Yamcha cheated, whether or not Bulma's just an unreasonably jealous hell-beast, it doesn't actually matter. What matters is that once you reach the point where you're taking sides over which party is the most obnoxious asshole and I hate you and I wish we never met... this relationship is not working for anybody.
It doesn't matter who the bad guy is. It doesn't matter who deserves the blame for this relationship being a toxic shithole. That there is blame to throw around in the first place is the problem. Every relationship has its ups and downs but if one party is constantly miserable for years and has possibly been looking for an escape hatch since year 1, that's not a little tiff.
What matters is that these two are not working out. Any time we see their relationship in focus, they are miserable together. The anime tried to do some patchwork on that with audience reception by giving them some cute moments as well, but because those moments aren't canon the pair remained miserable.
And then this happened.
Despite everything, I think we all assumed that Bulma and Yamcha were going to work it out. Fictional relationships are often portrayed as tumultuous. To a writer, nothing says true love like being constantly miserable and despising every waking moment you spend with your awful, nagging ball-and-chain of a spouse. That's just. Like. What the straights think romance is. It's weird.
I think we all thought that was going to be the deal here too. And then Trunks came along and said, "Nope, actually, they finally severed the cord."
Again, Toriyama says he's bad at writing romance but holy shit, the toxic and miserable relationship actually ended. The two characters involved who only got together out of loneliness and desperation later found they were incompatible with each other. That's so real. Much moreso than a lot of fictional romances.
Instead, we got the absolute crack ship that is Vegeta and Bulma. What a wild-ass revelation for Trunks to drop.
Like. Until the end of the Namek arc, this was the only time these two characters even met.
She also saw Vegeta for like two seconds here.
That was it. That was their entire history together until Goku defeated Frieza while Kaio sent everyone to Earth. But that's when everything changed for Vegeta.
Stranded on Earth with no ship, no affiliations, no ability to leave the planet and nowhere to go or be and no obligations to anyone but himself, Vegeta's circumstances were wildly different than they'd ever been before. He had become one of the Namekian refugees.
And Bulma was offering refuge.
Hard to resist, indeed. That moment is absolutely hilarious in retrospect. Bulma rolled a Nat 20 on that charisma check. It's pretty clear who the instigator of this relationship was.
Like. It needs to be stated that at this point, the only thing Bulma knew about Vegeta was that he tried to kill them all multiple times, and also he's kinda hot. But. Like.
It's Bulma. Anyone who doesn't expect this from her by now either hasn't been paying attention or started watching the English dub of the anime when they did Z first.
So, naturally, Vegeta is a kind and loving man and became a phenomenal husband and fa--
Wait. No. I got my notes mixed up. It says here Vegeta's a rotten dirty bastard. Like. Chronically. He has Supreme Dickshit Syndrome. It's genetic.
Most of Bulma and Vegeta's developing relationship happens offscreen. From what snippets we get, Vegeta has a tendency to vanish during the day, but he still lives at Capsule Corp so Bulma sees him around.
By the end of the three-year timeskip, it's official. Or semi-official. Yamcha and Bulma broke up at some point during that timeskip and Bulma's given birth to Trunks.
As for Vegeta, he's evidently moved out of Capsule Corp and into his own place.
I guess he's still keeping contact with Bulma since she knows what his intentions are. Not to mention he found his tranquility during these three years, though it's somewhat ambiguous as to what exactly brought that peace to his heart.
But the relationship is off to a rocky start nonetheless. Clearly something went down between Vegeta and Bulma that drove Vegeta out of Capsule Corp. To. Uh. Somewhere.
I like to imagine Vegeta living in some shitty West City apartment he rents off a stipend Bulma's sending him that he refuses to openly acknowledge. Like, room 101 is a down-on-his-luck tax accountant, room 102 is a couple with a kid trying to make ends meet off two retail workers' salaries, and then room 103 is Vegeta, Prince of All Saiyans. Sometimes he goes to community events and pretends he isn't having fun.
No lie, I would absolutely watch that as a sitcom.
As for Vegeta himself, he's still a rotten dirty bastard.
Worth noting that Vegeta's saying this as a Super Saiyan which means he's drunk on the form's enhanced aggression. But. Still. Vegeta is an absolute monster being dragged kicking and screaming into a pleasant life that he'll one day resent himself for enjoying. This is his arc moving forward.
It's not so much a redemption arc as it is a domestication arc. The uniquely evil even by Saiyan standards Vegeta is gradually being changed by his new terrestrial life. He doesn't want to own up to how much he enjoys it here. Seven years later, he's still desperate to avoid owning up to it.
He doesn't want to be happy here. He doesn't want a loving wife and a son who looks up to him and the most lavish home wealth can afford him and easy, comfortable days spent with friends and loved ones by his side. He doesn't want a happy ending.
But it's like Bulma warned him: Dragon Ball's queen bee is hard to resist.
Welcome back to Capsule Corp, Vegeta. We hardly even noticed you were gone. Honestly, Future Trunks deserves a lot of the credit for this; Watching him die at the Cell Games was what flipped the switch in Vegeta's head that he wants the family he and Bulma have spawned together.
Sure is a good thing we have Dragon Balls because this is a hell of a time to suddenly decide you love your son. But we see the consequences of that seven years later, since Vegeta moved back into Capsule Corp from... I don't know, wherever he went. They're gonna miss him at the next community poolside summer BBQ event for all tenants.
Part of what makes Vegeta and Bulma work, I think, is that they're on the same page about one crucial point. For Bulma, there is one person who will always take precedent in her life above all others. Romance comes and romance goes, but this is the relationship that matters most to her.
Especially when it comes to martial arts and fighting. Bulma doesn't know a lot about the subject, but she knows that Son Goku is her #1. She has no reservations about saying that to her lover's face either.
When fists start flying, Bulma knows who she's rooting for. If Goku's involved, then it's not her guy. That's. Just. Something that anyone who wants to be with her has to be willing to understand. The single most important relationship in Bulma's life will always be her friendship with Goku.
And the thing about Vegeta is... He kind of agrees? Like. See above, re: I wanted Babidi to destroy my feelings for Bulma so that I could become the warrior that can fight with you, Kakarot.
As much as Goku will always be Bulma's #1, he'll also always be Vegeta's #1. He even gets included into Vegeta's fond farewell to the family he loves.
Goku is basically the platonic third in a two-person polycule. This is the second marriage that this poor ace plays a vital role in despite having no real interest in romance whatsoever.
Bulma is selfish, spiteful, petty, and vain. At one point, DBS: Broly directly compares her to Frieza; A comparison that manages to be unbelievably unflattering to both participants.
They're the same picture. A revelation that would probably be horrifying to both.
And Vegeta. Especially Vegeta. But. Like. She warned you she was irresistible. You didn't take her seriously and now look where you are. Married to the She-Frieza. Maybe you should think about your life choices.
This is just. So much fun. As I said at the outset, Bulma and Vegeta are a match made in Hell who make it work because they're both similar brands of awful.
As for Yamcha, it's a little known fact but Yamcha rebounded and moved on with his life. He stops having much story relevancy after he leaves Capsule Corporation so we see very little of his private life from there. After retiring from martial arts and splitting up with Bulma, Yamcha's left without any story hooks to keep him involved.
But there was this interesting moment, when he realized they had a Shenron wish to spare.
After Krillin comes up with something better to use the wish on, he takes it back and claims it was a joke.
This is, surprisingly, a point of contention in the fandom as some of Yamcha's fans prefer the idea that he died miserable and alone after Bulma ruined his life by leaving him. This takeback gets pointed to as proof that he made up his girlfriend entirely. However, in context, it's clear that a) he's trying to brush off his earlier attempt at making a petty wish and b) the thing he's transparently pretending was a joke is the necklace wish, not the existence of his new girlfriend.
Like Bulma, Yamcha moved on with his life after the break up of their miserable relationship. And that was the final word that was ever uttered on Yamcha's romantic prospects, because this was the last time he was ever meaningfully involved with anything at all.
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Hi!!!!! I've been reading your fanfics and I liked how you those write stories. Can I request a one shot story. About Malleus saw reader fall and save her by catching her in a bridal style and noticed injuries from her ankle so he led her to infirmary to cure her with cute or teasing moments of the two along the way if you don't mind. Thank you!!!
Thank you for making a cute request and for reading my stories! It means alot to me, I really enjoyed making this oneshot but I took so long and stayed late a bit but it was all worth in the end.
"Ace, you know i'm magic-less right?" Yuu asked after a few heartbeat.
"Of course I did! This is why I stole this from the lab earlier so Deuce and Grim wouldn't stop complaining."
"How is that helping when we got it from stealing?!" Yuu screamed, Her brow furrowed and massaged her temple.
A laughter erupted from Ace's lips while Yuu turned to the other heartslabyul student, Deuce, and to her dorm member, the bane of her existence. Deuce wore a wry smile while Grim grumbled in annoyance.
"Ngrhh can you two make it quick already?! There are some of us who want to fly in the broomstick if you don't mind!" Grim yelled, crossing his arms while pouting.
It was mid afternoon, no one is at the fields when suddenly Ace got an 'impressive idea' pulling the three of them into a mess ones again. Yuu and Deuce kept convincing Ace but to no avail, he took the magic broomstick that Divus was experimenting and sprinted into the fields while they followed suit. Luckily no one sees their escape. Deuce clenched his teeth and marched to Ace who happily grinned as he held the broomstick.
"Ace! Let us return the broomstick! We don't know what capabilities of this broom and we can get detention if we were caught!"
"Ehh no one would see us at this hour!" He snapped back, pulling the broom and showcase it infront of them like an advertisement. "Plus, this broom could actually fly without a magic user riding this thin—No don't look at me like that, I'd heard Divus mumbling about it when he thought no one is listening,"
And he had an audacity to pat Deuce on the shoulder while staring intensely on his eyes, "Yuu never got the chance to use a broom to fly, Deuce, this is a chance for her."
Deuce almost got convinced there for a second before shooking his head. "But it still wasn't right to steal it Ace!"
"it was only for a day, no harm done."
"You two keep forgetting about my opinion here." the adeuce duo turned to Yuu with questions in their eyes. She paused for a moment before Grim click his tongue impatiently.
"Henchman make up your choice."
"I know I know, sorry." at last , she took the broom from ace with a doubtful look on her face.
"Only one time couldn't hurt right?" she whispers to herself and chuckles. Deuce had the same reaction as hers while the other two celebrate.
The three of them slowly and steadily made their way in the air while Yuu stayed behind. She gripped the broom tightly that her knuckles turned white, taking a deep breath, she went ahead and let the broom take her high in the sky.
The Adeuce and Grim watched Yuu as she wobbly flew to their side. She flew higher than she she anticipated, her gripped to the wood tightened as if her life depends on it. The ominous aura she felt unsettled her when she flew across the air.
"Ah Ace? Is this normal?" Yuu questioned, worry printed on her face before it was replace with fear. "Ah—"
In the speed of light, Yuu flew away from the gang. Flying forward then backward, levitating through the air before turning into zigzag motion. Yuu screamed in terror while wrapping her arms around the broom.
"YUU!!" The trio screamed as they flew their way towards her. Yuu held the broom tightly while she spins but to no avail, the broom was on a mission to let her fall. The three tried to save her but the broom had other plans, the tip of the broom pushes the three away causing Yuu to topple over from the process.
The three screamed Yuu's name while she falls from the sky. She could feel her heartbeat thumpering while watching the three infront of her attempt to catch her with their hand held out in slow motion. The wind gust roughly to her while Yuu make her way near to the ground. Grim cried and uses his paw to hold onto her but she was falling to quickly from his reach.
The ground was seemingly more closer and closer as seconds gone by, Yuu closed her eyes in resignation. Bracing herself from multiple injuries but it was quiet. The air shifted until there's no wind blowing her figure.
Hard and sturdy arms wrapped around her back and underneath her legs, her head gently rest on the side and felt their heartbeat hasten.
Yuu's eyes fluttered open and gaze at her savior. A pale skin, and cool-black hair greeted her, his bright green eyes held a worry on them as he gazed at her.
"hmm... Malleus..." Yuu breathed. She was both mentally and physically exhausted as she lay onto Malleus.
Malleus eyes softened before laying his chin on her hair as he inhaled her scent. Yuu's arms hang loosely to his shoulders while she snuggled closely to Malleus.
The trio move their way to Yuu after landing before stopping quickly when Malleus craned his neck glaring at them with his eyes glowing in darker shade. The three of them gulp and apologize was at the tip of their tongue when Malleus walk away from them. Grim was about to follow them when Ace and Deuce motioned their head in negative sign.
Malleus stride past some students while they gawk at the display. Yuu groaned, half asleep as malleus move his way to the infirmary. Malleus slowed down and watches her with a soft expression before moving her into a comfortable position in his arms. When her heart has fallen into a rhythm, Malleus continued his way before settling her down into the bed. He stayed by her side holding her hands while he caressed them.
Yuu woke up afterwards with her hand still being held by malleus who seemed to have fallen asleep on a chair besides her. Yuu let a smile graced her lips and remove her hand to tuck his hair behind his ear. But to her surprise, his hand shot up to held her hand on his cheek and nuzzled deep into the palm of her hand. He kissed it gently before his eyes move onto her with a sad expression.
"I almost lost you."
Yuu gave a sad smile and mumbles an apology. She reach out to malleus by standing up when she fell forward. Malleus immediately held her from his arms whilst she winces in pain from her bandage ankle. She could guess by struggling to hold the broom, it causes her injury.
"Don't move child of man, you are still recovering." He put her back into the bed as she laid her back onto the headboard while Malleus moved the chair closer and sat again as he held her hand again.
"How long was I asleep?" she asked as she caressed his bare hand on hers.
"Not for long." he replies before taking her hand and rest his cheek against to it. Silence engulfed them as they drifted into their thoughts.
"Please forgive the three of them despite what had happened today..." She broke the silence while Malleus paused for a period of time before nodding.
"You have my word, child of man." Yuu sighed in relief before moving closer to the edge of the bed and rested her forehead into his, calming his nerves as he closed his eyes in content.
"Thank you my dear dragon."
"Anything for you my dear prefect."
Taglist
@luciel1 @fluffle-bean @growingupnrealizing @hazukiix @worldussysblog @daruderuyoo
#twisted wonderland x reader#disney twisted wonderland#disney twst#twisted wonderland#twst#twst wonderland#twst x reader#twst malleus x reader#twst malleus#malleus draconia#malleus x reader#twisted wonderland malleus#twst grim#twst ace#ace trappola#twst x yuu#twst deuce#deuce spade
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Matt & Me🎀
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24
a story heavily based on Priscilla Presley’s Book “Elvis & Me” based in the 1950’s - 1970’s.
fem! reader x singer! matt
disclaimer!! - in no way am i saying matt would ever support or do these kind of things, for the sake of the book certain unethical things do happen at times.
y/nn = your nickname for any confusion🩷
Chapter 10
It was the era of the Polaroid and the beginning of videotape. He was the director and I his star acting out fantasies. We dressed up and undressed, played and wrestled, told stories, acted out our fantasies, and invented scenes. Whether it was dressing up in my school uniform and playing at being a sweet, innocent schoolgirl, or a secretary coming home from work and relaxing in the privacy of her own bedroom, or a teacher seducing her student, we were always inventing new stories, and eventually, I learned what stimulated Matt the most.
Almost every night I made quick trips to the local drugstore to buy considerable amounts of Polaroid film. Some of the cashiers knew me, and I wondered if they suspected what we were doing.
I put on dark glasses to “disguise” myself, but ended up looking even more conspicuous as I’d sweetly request twelve packs of Polaroid film while making excuses like, “Gee, the others must have been defective. I just can’t seem to get them to come out right,” or “You’re not going to believe this, but someone stole my film.”
Making it in and out of Graceland was no easy feat, either. I’d pass Mr. Stall at the gate at odd hours of the night, smiling and waving hello, returning shortly with the same smile and the same wave. I was sure he harbored some suspicious thoughts about what I was doing.
Matt laughed when I told him. “It’s all in your mind. He’s no more thinking anything than a dog sleeping.”
“Well, what if he starts spreading rumors, like I go out at night?”
“It might create some excitement around here. This town’s dead. Boston needs a little gossip!”
Matt and I both loved creating these sexual fantasies and it seemed to bring us closer together. I had no previous sexual experience to compare with his inventive sexuality and I was ready to indulge him any way I could. Being in the fast lane, he was exposed to every pleasure available in life. Ordinary thrills sometimes were not enough, especially when he was under the influence of powerful drugs.
At first I was totally open to Matt and many of his ideas. I lived for those moments we were alone. I was careful to say little that might jeopardize my bond with him. I fulfilled his needs, and his beliefs became mine. Under no circumstances were his ideas or playfulness perverted or in any way harmful.
A few days after he came home, he led me to his long black limousine and we sped off to one of Boston’s most exclusive boutiques on Union Street for some after-hours shopping, just as we’d done in Las Vegas. While the boys milled around the shop and the store’s sales staff tried to look nonchalant, Matt got a big kick out of having me model dozens of stunning dresses and suits and coats that were so stylish I was doubtful I could wear them. I was still an insecure teenager.
“Matt,” I said, wearing a sexy gold lamé gown that clung to my every curve, “these clothes are too sophisticated for me.”
“Sophisticated?” he said, regarding me admiringly. “What’s sophisticated? You could go around wearing a feather and that would be sophisticated.”
“Well, bring me a feather then.”
We spent four hours at that shop and during that time, I had a personalized lesson in the Matt Sturniolo Fashion Course.
As I tried on dress after dress, Matt delivered a running commentary on color. He liked me in red, blue, turquoise, emerald green, and black and white—the same colors he himself wore. He liked solids only, declaring that large prints took away from my looks. “Too distracting,” he said. He hated browns and dark green, colors inextricably associated in his mind with the Army.
Exhausted and a little confused about my new look, I walked out of the shop dressed in a sleek black linen suit with four-inch highheeled shoes to match. With Matt sitting proudly beside me, the guys loaded the trunk of the limo with armfuls of packages, and I felt very special.
Back at Graceland he had me model all my new clothes again for Grandma, who patiently sat through a long two hours of changes. I was Matt’s doll, his own living doll, to fashion as he pleased.
It was the early sixties, when clothes and makeup veered to extremes. Women’s eyeliner was heavier, their hair more teased, and their skirts shorter than ever before. All the rules I’d learned about dressing and applying makeup (less is more, the simpler the better) were being broken, and men seemed to love it. Matt certainly did. If I went a little light with the mascara or black eyeliner, he’d send me back upstairs to apply it more heavily.
Matt liked long hair. When I’d cut mine without asking his permission, he was shocked.
“How could you cut your goddamn hair? You know I like long hair. Men love long hair.”
He wanted it long and jet black, dyed to match his because, as he said, “You have pretty eyes, baby. Black hair will make your eyes stand out more.” He made a lot of sense to me and soon my hair was dyed jet black, like his.
The more we were together the more I came to resemble him in every way. His tastes, his insecurities, his hang-ups—all became mine.
For instance, high collars were his trademark, not because he especially liked them, but because he felt his neck looked too long. He never felt comfortable unless he was in a customized high-collared shirt, though in a pinch he’d turn the collar up on a regular shirt as he had when he was in school.
When he told me that the collar I was wearing on a particular blouse was too small for my “long, skinny neck,” I too began wearing high-collared shirts. Why not? My sole ambition was to please him, to be rewarded with his approval and affection. When he criticized me, I fell to pieces.
The Pygmalion nature of our relationship was a mixed blessing. The most fundamental thing at this stage in our life together was that Matt was my mentor, someone who studied my every gesture, listened critically to my every utterance, and was generous, to a fault, with advice.
When I did something that wasn’t to his liking, I was corrected. It is extremely difficult to relax under such scrutiny. Little escaped him. Little except the most salient fact of allthat I was a volcano about to erupt.
There were evenings when he’d send me back upstairs to change clothes because my choice was “dull,” “unflattering,” or “not dressy enough” for him. Even the way I walked came under review; he told me to move more slowly, and for a short while, he had me walking around the house with a book on my head.
I appreciated his interest, but I hated having to hear him remind me of my shortcomings so many times, and each time having to promise him that he’d never have to tell me again.
Would I ever be able to live up to his vision of how his ideal woman should behave and appear? She had to be sensitive, loving, and extremely understanding, meeting unusual demands any average woman might reject. This included being left behind when he made spur-of-the-moment, questionable “business” trips.
She had to be pretty and she had to possess an offbeat sense of humor to survive all the joking at Graceland. Often I’d walk into Sunday afternoon football gatherings and hear inside jokes about the cute all-American cheerleaders. Eventually I found myself thinking like one of the guys. “Nice tits and ass,” I’d say to myself. “A little heavy in the thighs, but the face makes up for it.”
Matt had a strong aversion to wearing jeans. As a poor boy, he had no choice but to wear them and he never wanted to lay eyes on another pair. That applied to everyone in the group.
His firm ideas on my wardrobe didn’t make it easy for me to go out and buy clothes for myself. One day I came home proud of a dress I’d just bought and couldn’t wait to put on. I knew he didn’t like prints, but this was a blackand-white flowered silk that I thought very special.
The first words out of his mouth when he saw me were: “That dress doesn’t suit you. Does nothing for you. Takes away from your face, your eyes. All you see’s the dress.”
As he tore me apart I started to cry. “Are you quite finished?” I inquired. I didn’t give him a chance to answer, bolting for my bathroom and slamming the door.
A few minutes later I heard his voice from the other side of the door: “You gotta keep away from those large prints. You’re a small girl, Sattnin.”
I opened the bathroom door and snapped, “Okay, I’ll return the fuckin’ dress.”
Matt fell to the floor laughing; eventually I joined in, unable to stop myself. Once again I’d compromised my own taste.
He ignored no aspect of my appearance, including my teeth. He took me to his dentist, told him to clean my teeth and give me a thorough examination. He was to look for probable cavities only and should I need any fillings, they were to be made of white porcelain. To him a mouth loaded with gold or silver was an eyesore.
He was equally fanatical about posture. If I slumped, he’d straighten my back. When I’d look up at him and wrinkle my forehead, he’d smooth it out—or tap it—telling me not to get in that habit. I didn’t like him rapping me, so I learned that one fast.
When we came home from the movies one night, I was getting ready for bed and he was in his office playing the piano. I came in to listen, propping my foot on the bench where he was sitting. He looked down at a small chip in my nail polish and I immediately withdrew my foot from the bench and started making up excuses about why it wasn’t fixed. “I’m going to have my pedicure tomorrow,” I promised.
“Good,” he said, “cause that doesn’t look like my Little Girl’s. You should always keep them looking nice.”
I was leading a double life—a schoolgirl by day, a femme fatale by night. Our evening appearance downstairs usually resembled a grand entrance. Even when our only intention was to have dinner, we always dressed for the occasion. Matt might wear a three-piece suit with a brocade vest and a Stetson hat. Under his coat he always carried a gun. He’d given me a small pearl-handled derringer and I carried it in my bra or tucked it into a holster around my waist. We were a modern-day Bonnie and Clyde.
Matt loved films, and we went to the Memphian almost every night. He was still renting the whole house after regular hours since he couldn’t attend a movie without being mobbed. One of the guys always lined up several films in case Matt didn’t like one of them or decided to see as many as three or four in a row. We usually arrived around midnight, our limousine pulling around to the back of the Memphian. From there we’d proceed into the side door like a royal couple leading their court.
Already seated in the theater were the usual crowd of thirty to fifty local friends and fans. Matt always sat in the same seat—with Nate Doe to his right, me to his left.
Before calling “Roll ’em!” he looked around the theater to make sure everyone was seated. He was an acutely aware person and could immediately spot any unwanted or unfamiliar faces. If any new faces were sitting too close to him, Matt suggested they move elsewhere. He was more lenient with the girls. He might not demand they move but he certainly wanted to know who they were, and should they object to being asked for this information or smart off in any way, he would not hesitate to have one of the boys escort them out, telling them never to come back.
There were times Matt rented the entire Boston Fairgrounds after closing and we all spent hours on our favorite rides. We tried such daredevil feats on the roller-coaster as seeing who could stand the longest with both arms outstretched as it whipped and twisted around the track again and again.
Matt loved the bumper cars and would team up with the entourage against some locals. They’d spend the night seemingly trying to kill each other, laughing and bruising themselves like tough little boys while we girls watched and cheered them on. After several hours my own enthusiasm waned.
Excerpt from: "Elvis and Me" by Priscilla Beaulieu Presley. Scribd.
This material may be protected by copyright.
a/n - hope u enjoyed this chapter!!🎀
#chris sturniolo#christopher sturniolo#matt sturniolo#sturniolo edit#sturniolo fanfic#sturniolo imagine#sturniolo smut#sturniolo triplets#sturniolo x reader#nick sturniolo#matt stuniolo fanfic#matthew sturn#matthew sturniolo#Spotify
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5 brazilian horror movies
since it’s october i wanted to make a post to recommend some of my favorite old brazillian horror movies. i tried to add links to watch them but not all have subtitles unfortunately! this is mostly in the order i thought of them, not exactly of content/quality/whatever. i haven’t watched many myself yet but i figured this would be a nice introduction to anyone who is interested!
1. as filhas do fogo (1978) dir. walter hugo khouri
ana & diana are a couple who go on a trip to diana’s family estate - an old house owned by old money, german colonizers. there we learn about diana’s family, her controlling & wwii-obsessed grandfather who wanted to get away from everything and bought this land & her mother who commited suicide years ago. we also meet the groundskeepers who live there, including the mysterious mariana. a heavily atmospheric, dark (both in content & the poor quality of the available print..), quiet, haunting & wonderful movie. khouri was mostly disregarded by critics because he seemingly went against the grain: while directors at the time were documenting concerns re the brazilian working class, khouri was mostly in old big homes, filming the ennui of a middle to upper class. that’s not to say that his movies are without a critique, however, and as filhas do fogo is a good example of his cinema that was well aware of, not only the history of the country, but the current political climate of a dictatorship. besides all that, most importantly.. it is so creepy! this is my favorite from khouri (and not just because it stars a lesbian couple) and possibly my favorite movie on this list.
watch on archive.org (w/ eng subtitles)
2. barão olavo, o terrível (1970) dir. júlio bressane
in this lovely experimental film, bressane pays an homage to horror & insanity in a very brazilian manner. the titular baron olavo owns the home which is the central point of the film and the inspiration for bressane, who saw this 19th century house as a laboratory of light. there’s no central plot exactly, but a spectacle of colors, horror, tenderness, absurdity and indulgence.. i love it. and yes, maybe lesbians are involved too.
watch on archive.org (no subtitles)
3. estrela nua (1984) dir. josé antonio garcia & ícaro martins
a very recent watch, estrela nua is a movie that could be easily paired with perfect blue or any of those 2girls1persona films. carla camurati plays glória, an aspiring actress who is suddenly cast to substitute troubled actress ângela, who has recently died in a car accident. ângela was working on an incestuous erothic thriller, and as glória starts working on the film she begins to.. maybe blend with said dead actress?? obsess over her?? dream about/with her..?? you know where this is going. there’s the clear element of a film within a film in this, but as it ends we realize we might have watched more than a couple movies - and they all work. carla camurati & cristina aché are phenomenal and the great selma egrei (from as filhas do fogo) also shows up as a lesbian actress.. it's just so strange and good.
watch here (no subtitles)
4. excitação (1977) dir. jean garrett
i opted for his garrett instead of a mulher... even though i consider both great brazilian horror films. both lean heavy on the erotic (or rather, the pornochanchada) and deal with, among other things, The Gaze. but i think excitação’s atmospheric beach scenes fit this list better. helena's husband buys a beach house hoping that she'll be able to rest & recover from whatever has been ailing her (hysteria..? paranoia..?). there, she finds out the past owner killed himself and that perhaps is what has been haunting her.. or is it maybe all the electronics in the house? excitação is, as i said, incredibly atmospheric. helena is mostly isolated, away from her husband, walking around the beach alone at night. she looks and looks: at the sea, at beautiful women, at every possible machine around her. this is one for the psychotic women enjoyers. kate hansen is so good.
watch on youtube (no subtitles)
5. as noites de iemanjá (1971) dir. maurice capovila
as noites de iemanjá is in my mind reminiscent of 40s val lewton films like i walked with a zombie.. both in the sense of women at the beach & also the vital element of african religions/deities, in the case of this movie the afro-brazilian iemanjá. and also because while that is the background (and it is very important to the story), the movie centers women that aren’t exactly a part of said religions, even if they are influenced by them. it’s a mysterious one, i can’t remember much of the dialogue, but joana fomm is hypnotic in this. she plays a nameless character who goes to the seaside with the lover because she is ignored by her husband. there, they watch together a group of people making offerings to the sea, to iemanjá. after this her lover disappears. it’s another good example of the mix of horror, folklore and the erotic, so characteristic of these brazilian movies of the time. this one (along w/ as filhas do fogo) shows up on kier-la janisse’s folk horror doc and it was a lovely surprise!
watch on youtube (no subtitles)
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youtube
Watch the 2024 American Climate Leadership Awards for High School Students now: https://youtu.be/5C-bb9PoRLc
The recording is now available on ecoAmerica's YouTube channel for viewers to be inspired by student climate leaders! Join Aishah-Nyeta Brown & Jerome Foster II and be inspired by student climate leaders as we recognize the High School Student finalists. Watch now to find out which student received the $25,000 grand prize and top recognition!
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Bab Rats: Chapter 5
DISCLAIMER: This POV story contains diaper usage, humiliation, masturbation/diaper sex, gender transformation, breastfeeding, and other ABDL themes. I hope you enjoy!
Commissioned By: Strawberry
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“Hi dewe, Sam…chus feewin’ any bettew?' ' said Hanna with her partially perma-regressed vocal cords, receiving no response as Sam shied away from her. Undeterred, she shifted her approach, “Hey, I has an idea. How bout chu take chus mind off evewyfing and twy one of da new diapees dat da hazmats dwopped off dis mownin’? Ish a diapee dat can onwy be removed by da pewson who puts it on. See?” She tugged at the hem of her diaper with all her might to no avail before giving the simple lock print on its front a hardy slap. Sadly, her attempt at levity earned no reaction from Sam. Lowering her head, she took a step back from Sam’s crib. “Sowwy. I-I’ww jus weave chu awone until chus weady.”
“My life is ruined,” muttered Sam, his words lingering in the back of his throat and choking him up, “I thought I knew what I was signing up for. Now…I might be stuck as a girl forever.” He lowered his head between his knees, sulking.
Walking around to the side of the crib Sam was leaning against, Hanna reached through the bars and gently placed a hand on his head. “I sowwy,” she said, reaching through the crib bars and gently patting Sam’s shoulder sympathetically. Thankfully, he seemed receptive to her touch, allowing them to ease their tension slightly. Taking advantage of the opportunity, she decided to inject some fun into the situation, “Ya know, doh, bein’ a girl isn hawf bad. Take it fwom me: a fuww-time girl since da day I was bown. Suwe, da pewiods suck buh we gets wots of fwee dwinks.”
“Being as we’re stuck here, I’m not sure I’ll be able to cash in on those drinks. Good to have in the back pocket, though,” said Sam, unable to suppress his reaction to the mild humor being lobbed his way. He sighed hard, ridding himself of as much negative energy as he could, “Sorry, I’m sure you were hoping for a more playful playmate. It’s just…I always dreamed about being locked away in a nursery for as long as I can remember. I want to enjoy this…I just can’t get out of my own head. And now, I have to deal with this!” Using both hands, he grabbed onto his ridiculous double-Ds.
Had it not been for the lactation drug Hanna was testing, she was fairly certain Sam would have bigger assets than her. It was always the lucky ones who were never grateful. “Iswa says dey wowkin’ on da antidote so dis pwobabwy isn fowever. Why not enjoy it a widdwe?” she said, hoping to raise Sam’s spirits by showing him all the benefits of being a girl, “Wike finks about it. How many peepo wud do anyfing to swap gendews even fo one day? Fo aww dose poor twans girls out dewe, live a wittwe.”
Once again, Sam found himself in stitches over Hanna’s abrasive yet sincere comments. It was clear that she cared about his well-being, at least to some extent. “Oh…I-I’m not so certain that's a good idea,” he said, squeezing his thighs together to subdue the faint stirring in his unfamiliar loins. It was strange but for some reason, although Hanna and he had only met a few days ago, he felt like he’d known her all his life. Blushing as he caught himself staring at her in silence, his eyes darted away from his attractive roommate.
Yanking her hand away from Sam’s shoulder, Hanna too was in the midst of a flustered response as she quickly realized the reason for Sam’s abrupt head turn. As a bisexual woman who leaned toward liking women, she hated to admit Sam was exactly her type. Well, she didn’t exactly hate it per se but she did feel guilty about it. If he was even slightly into it, she would ravish him without a second thought; an intrusive concept that only intensified whenever she looked his way.
Trapped in a state of growing arousal, both Hanna and Sam were sweating multiple days of pent-up sexual frustration. Especially Sam, who hadn’t masturbated a single time since arriving at CrissBaby HQ. The same couldn’t be said for Hanna, though her steady use of the various vibrators made in-house at CrissBaby for testing purposes had certainly upped her sex drive.
Biting his lip, Sam knew if anything kinky was going to happen, he as the emotionally vulnerable one was going to have to initiate it. Mercifully, he had the perfect icebreaker stationed right between his legs. “O-Okay, we can try some stuff,” he said, shying away physically in spite of his bold words, “How about we start with my first diaper change as a girl? I think mine should definitely be put out to pasture.” He gave his overly ripe diaper a soft poke, demonstrating how absurdly used it was after more than three days without a change.
Lowering the crib bars, Hanna’s heart was threatening to leap out through her throat. How she was going to manage to conceal her lust while changing Sam’s diaper was beyond her. She didn’t even want to change him. She wanted to mash her face into the base of his ultra-squishy diaper until he came for her over and over again. “Hmmm…I not so sure chu neesa changie yet afta aww. Seems wike dere’s stiww pwenty mowe room in hewe,” she said, lightly dragging her hand along the muck balloon around Sam’s hips while passing off her desire to knead his diaper like a ball of dough as nothing more than playfulness.
*GASP!*
Having avoided touching himself at all costs for three days, one touch was all it took to amplify his need for relief. A shaky breath exited his plush lips as waves of sensitivity, unlike anything he’d ever experienced as a guy spread across his entire body. Now, he was the one wondering how on Earth he would survive a diaper change in this condition.
The strained silence from earlier reared its ugly head again as Hanna and Sam waded through extremely awkward waters. It couldn’t have been more painfully obvious what was on each of their minds. All they needed was for one of them to say something. Luckily, Hanna’s filter was nowhere near good enough to stay quiet, “Fuggit. Be honest, chu jus wanna do howny diapie stuffs wif me?”
“Yes,” said Sam without a hint of hesitation. Even he was a tad shocked by how rapidly the simple affirmation fell from his mouth. That shock served only to elevate his carnal needs as he opened his legs wide in preparation for the profusion of pleasure coming his way.
Unsurprisingly, Hanna wasted no time jumping into Sam’s crib and kneeling over him now that she had the green light to get freaky. Two wet spots began to form on her shirt thanks to her hyperactive titty lactation, triggered by an uptick in arousal over Sam’s approval. She paid it no mind, her passion too powerful to slow down over some slight humiliation. “way back and twy not to scweam too woud if chu can hewp it. I’ww take cawe of evwyfing,” she said, returning her hand to the center of Sam’s comically full pamper. Only this time, her touch was anything but light. Her fingers sunk into nearly a foot of the swollen wadding and its semi-soft, messy core. “Wowza! No way I cooda kept my hans off dis fo thwee days. I nuh seen one dis messy befo. Chu mus be one pwoud baby,” she cooed, adding some verbal teasing into the mix while her sensual hand motions cut through Sam’s defenses like a knife.
Sam responded in kind as his face transitioned through various hues of red until his complexion was cherry-colored. However, Hanna’s words, while embarrassingly seductive, were nothing in comparison to the shockwaves impacting his nether region. His body felt weak as he leaned against his crib bars, allowing his new, female hormones to take over his senses. Everything from the way his hair brushed against the back of his neck to the softness of the blanket beneath his thighs turned every part of his figure into an erogenous zone. “I-Is that what…s-sex feels like for you?” he muttered, stricken by the stark difference between men and women when it came to the Big Bang. For men, all stimulation was housed within the pelvic area leading up to a large explosion at the end. The arousal women experience, on the other hand, is far subtler, spreading throughout the entire body the vagina acting as an epicenter.
It was hard for Sam to necessarily say which was superior, especially since he had yet to lose his virginity as a guy. That being said, he was certainly finding a lot of appeal in the female side of things if his libidinous moans were anything to go off. Even the pitch of his feminized voice was turning him on, sounding akin to something one might hear in a porno.
“I gonsa make chus addicted ta bein’ a girl,” said Hanna, intensifying her hand motions as she whispered the horniest things in Sam’s ear; her breath sending pleasure signals from his brain to his slit. With her free hand, she grabbed onto his left breast and began rubbing it softly, ensuring her delicate touch never got too harsh enough to cause pain, “Chu boobas awe gonna be so sensitive cuz imma pway wif dem aww da time. Fink of aww da dwess up games an tea pawties we can have. I wonder how long it wiww be befo chu beg me ta fiww da widdwe pocket between chus legs. You wanna have somefing inside chu, doncha?”
Done in by Hanna’s bedroom skills, Sam couldn’t argue with what Hanna was saying even if he wanted to. It was as if his feminine side had a magnetic field around it, pulling him in and refusing to let go. Maybe it was the sex talking but the more Hanna talked, the more alluring the idea of exploring the opposite end of the gender spectrum became. He’d already given up being an adult and accepted the fact that he wanted to live the rest of his life as a horny baby. It wasn’t a stretch to believe he would throw away his birth gender for the same reason. “Y-Yes! I-I want it all! I want to be your girl! Oh fuck!” she shouted, mounting her first female orgasm.
Hearing Sam say those fateful words was all that Hanna needed to push her over the edge. She scooted her padded butt forward and mashed her wet diaper into Sam’s messy one, joining her in ecstasy. “Come here,” she said, wrapping the hand around Sam’s neck that had previously been massaging her mooshy diaper, she pulled him into her lactating chest, “M-My boobs are so sore. Please s-suckle them.”
Hanna’s pleas were immediately answered as Sam pried open her play partner’s top and planted her lips on her right nipple. Her cheeks puffed up with fresh cream, unable to keep up with Hanna’s flow now that he had engaged her milk sacs. “Ish sho yummy,” she said between swallows. Even her subsequent orgasm wasn’t enough to unlatch her from Hanna’s tit. The flavor was just too good.
Lost in the deepest depths of passion, Hanna and Sam had entered CrissBaby HQ riddled with uncertainty. No longer was that the case. Every horny thing they’d read online or dreamed up in their heads was now at their fingertips. Letting go of the last of their reluctance, they embraced what it truly meant to be a Bab Rat as they climaxed together over and over again.
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“Okay, I’ll admit when I’m wrong. This first batch of testers, while untrained, have given us more data to work with in a mere three days than anything the official testing team could pull off,” said Mark, sitting behind the glass partition of Hanna and Sam’s nursery as he watched them go to pound town with each other. He may have been skeptical of the Bab Rats Program at first but the numbers didn’t lie, “The only downer news at the present is that we still need to tinker with the aphrodisiac formula. It definitely shouldn’t have taken three whole days for these two to go to bone town together. But that can wait for tomorrow. Take your victory lap. You’ve earned it.”
Smiling proudly thanks to Mark’s praise, Dr. Madrigal was thrilled to have her superior’s approval, especially after he outright dismissed her idea initially. Soon, the rest of the test nurseries that had been assigned to her program pending final approval would be filled with useful idiots like Hanna and Sam who were willing to give up everything to be a market research dummy for an ABDL company. Where she’d go from here was anyone’s guess. Heck, for all she knew, Mark’s job might be hers in the near future. “Thank you, Mark. Coming from you, that means a lot,” she said, playing up her gratitude to ensure her rise to the top was as subtle as possible.
THE END.
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#ab/dl#ab/dl art#ab/dl stories#ab/dl girl#crissiebaby#diaper art#diaper stories#diaper humiliation#dirty diaper#diaper messy#wetting diaper#diaper hypno#hypnosis#crissbabydiaperco
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BLOGGIES 2023 BEST BLOG POST OF THE YEAR
On 31 January 2024, the tabletop-roleplaying-game community voted for the Best Blog Post Of 2023.
Contenders were drawn from the winners of four categories. Links, as well as their very excellent acceptance speeches---more exhortations and manifestos, really!---found here:
Theory
Gameable
Advice
Review
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Anyway---you voted. Results were very close; I was constantly worried about a tie. Nevertheless, a winner emerged:
Congratulations are in order, and an acceptance speech follows.
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(Like an idiot, I didn't plan for, and therefore didn't have the time to make a bespoke prize for the overall Bloggie winner. So they'll just get a full quadtych of lino prints. Fortunately these don't look too bad together!)
PLATINUM BLOGGIE FOR BEST BLOG POST OF THE YEAR:
🔮Re-inventing the Wilderness: Part 1 - Introduction🔮
from SachaGoat
Sacha:
As an (award-winning) blogger who only started 6 months ago - I want to use this "acceptance speech" to share the 5 steps that will start your blog:
1. You don't need a cool blog name. screenname(dot)blogspot(dot)com is probably available - you can move it later if you think of a cool name. The trick here is to set it up so your ideas can go live as soon as you're happy (or tired of editing).
2. Post something. Dust off your notebook (or note-taking app) and turn those musings into a structured post with paragraphs and context. Don't have anything ready to go? Take your latest game session and write a play report or spotlight a specific moment. This will take less time than your ttrpg prep.
3. Share it! With your gaming group, ttrpg friends, community discords, xwitter/bluesky, reddit, forums etc.
4. Don't worry about the rest. I don't have a fancy blog template. I've yet to compile a sidebar or blogroll. I don't have a newsletter or patreon.
5. Continue. Your readers will contribute with comments. You will be shared in community newsletters. Peers will write posts inspired by your posts. Your ideas will be used at another gaming table. (And if you're lucky, you can win the next BLOGGIES.)
If you've shared your prep with a fellow DM… if you've contributed opinions on a ttrpg discord or forum… if you've read a blog post and have a thought that builds on it… if you have any tabletop advice or ideas … 👏 Start 👏 a 👏 blog
This finally brings me to the "thanks". Winning the 2023 BLOGGIES is such a wonderful welcome to this creative niche. Many thanks to the creators who encourage the community to blog (especially around June 2023, I can actually see the thread that motivated me to start). I also want to thank a community whose collective enthusiasm and support nudge me to release the next post. And finally, everyone who voted for my post over the amazing nominations this year - a huge thank you.
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On a personal note: I am really thrilled at this final result.
The BLOGGIES can come off as clique-ish. Voting is public, but "public" on the Internet generally means a circle-jerk between subculture friends, a popularity contest.
This thing began as a jokey riff on those best-tweet-of-the-year polls over on Twitter. While Prismatic Wastelands grew it into a celebration of OSR blogging culture, it still has NSR / POSR inclinations---the specific community soil it sprung from.
As host this year I tried to extend the BLOGGIES' reach. Canvassing for nominations outside the OSR space got a couple of indie-RPG designers on the finalists list. Am proud of that; we have much to learn from each other.
I made prizes---hoping that, one day, with enough dangling carrots, these awards will eventually be tasty enough for non-POSR cliques / communities to attempt a takeover? We'll see.
Ultimately: I am glad to water this sapling and watch it grow slowly. Community is made by growing trees, not building greenhouses.
+++
SachaGoat snagging the final win is a vindication.
Sacha's blog is new. We don't share any Discord servers. We've never spoken, hitherto; the first time I messaged him ever was to tell him he'd won the Advice category.
The BLOGGIES fulfils its purpose: to introduce folks to quality blogs; to preach the gospel and importance of blogging. Its shade is spreading.
I'm glad to get to know Sacha and his blog. (Obviously it's been added to my must-read list!) I am honoured to be passing the torch: Sacha has agreed to host BLOGGIES 2024.
Thank you, everybody. Here's to growing trees.
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I joined this fandom 10 years too late and there's rarely new fics being posted so I guess it's up to me now!
Dipper makes a little oopsie when texing Pacifica late at night.
Also available on AO3.
---
Read Receipts
word count: 2,613
rating: T (language)
He could blame it on the fact that it’s after 2 A.M. and he was up at 5 A.M. for Varsity Swim practice this morning. He could just say it was an accident, pure and simple, like when little kids call their teachers “mom.” He could say he meant to text it to his cousin in Phoenix (he doesn’t have one, but she doesn’t know that). He could claim that Mabel must have been messing with the auto-correct features on his phone again; some sort of mean prank. Hell, he could say it was Mabel who had typed it out in the first place.
None of these thoughts occur to Dipper Pines in this moment. In this moment, the only thought repeating through his head is:
Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck
He sits and stares at the offending text. The bright blue bubble surrounding it confirms that yes, he actually sent those words.
Goodnight, love you.
He watches in frozen horror as the “delivered” text below it transforms into “Read: 2:23 AM.”
Fuuuuuuuuck.
Snapping out of it in an instant, his thumbs feverishly begin tapping out an apology. He stops, erases what he wrote. This isn’t really something you apologize for, right? Would that be weirder than leaving it be? She’s his best friend. She knows he loves her, at least she knows he loves her platonically , and calling it out might draw more unnecessary attention.
But then, he’s definitely never said those words before.
Yeah, this is new. It’s weird. He needs to say something.
He starts again, tapping in some bogus message about how life is short and tomorrow is never promised, and hey why not tell your friends you love them? This line of thought is pretty out of character for him, so he blames it on some sappy coming-of-age movie that Mabel was watching the other night. And hey maybe it was kind of saccharine but there’s some truth in all art, right?
She will totally call bullshit. He erases this too.
He starts tapping out a simple “ I didn’t mean to send that ” but that’s no good either because he doesn’t want her to think he doesn’t care for her. He just doesn’t want her to know that he’s desperately in love with her, that he thinks about her every night before bed, about how he turns bright red any time his mom innocently asks how she is, or that he printed out that photo of them at the lake last summer and has it taped in his locker at school.
(“Who is THAT?” his lab partner Tyler once asked, and he just smiled in response. Nothing wrong with letting people think he has a super hot out-of-town girlfriend; he can’t help it if rumors circulate.
They don’t, but it was worth a shot.)
He’s broken out of his reverie by the appearance of three little blinking dots appearing on his screen. He swallows.
Pacifica: You know I can see each time you start your message over again, right?
Dipper feels his cheeks warm. He braces himself and slowly taps out an answer.
Dipper: Yeah, sorry. Overthinking I guess.
Pacifica: You? Never.
Relief floods him. She’s teasing him, this is normal.
Dipper: I know, right? Better call the feds and alert the media.
Pacifica: I’ll start working on the press release.
Dipper: Maybe I can give Toby an exclusive interview.
This is good, he thinks. They can just banter a bit, and he’ll guide the conversation to another topic and then they can say goodnight again ( sans accidental love confession ) and he’ll push this little slip to the recesses of his brain where he stores every other embarrassing memory. It will live blissfully ignored next to memories of the lamby lamby dance and the time Mabel accidentally uploaded an episode of Dipper’s Guide to the Unexplained to the school server instead of her AV assignment.
Pacifica: So…
Well, shit . Nevermind .
Dipper: So…
Pacifica: What exactly were you overthinking just now?
Dipper: I mean, I think you know.
Pacifica: I’d like to know we’re on the same page though.
Dipper snorts. They haven’t been on the same page about this particular topic since the night he realized just how delectable the smell of champagne and flowers could be, or since the afternoon she entrusted him with her deepest insecurities, and he realized she was one of the most courageous girls he knew.
He smiles grimly as he types his response. Be brave, man.
Dipper: I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to type that. I know that’s not something we say… not in the way that Mabel and I do, or even Mabel and you do. Sorry if I made you feel weird.
Brave-ish, anyway.
Pacifica: So it was an accident then?
He frowns. Was he not clear?
Dipper: Well, I mean yeah.
Her response takes a long time to come in, and he wonders momentarily if she’s fallen asleep.
Pacifica: Okay, I understand.
Wait, what? Is she… disappointed? No, no that doesn’t make sense. She must just be offended, she thinks he doesn’t care about her at all.
Dipper: No I mean, I do feel like that. Like obviously you mean a lot to me, and that is a real feeling I have. But I just didn’t want you to feel uncomfortable. Since you know, I’m a guy and normally when a guy says that to a girl it means something else.
That’s better, he thinks, satisfied with himself. Why didn’t he just say this in the first place?
Pacifica: I get it, Dipper.
What the…?
His blood pressure is rising and he feels a jumpy anxiety course through him. Fix it, fix it now his brain screams.
His finger is tapping the tiny photo of her at the top of their thread and jabbing call before his brain manages to catch up.
She picks up on the first ring.
“Hello?” answers a small, sniffly voice.
“Paz? What’s wrong? I’m sorry. What did I do?”
He hears a quiet chuckle muffled by another sniffle.
“You’re apologizing without even knowing what you did?” she teases lightly, voice still shaky.
“Yes,” Dipper responds without hesitation, not seeing her point.
“You don’t need to apologize, Dip. You didn’t do anything wrong,” she sighs.
“I don’t understand, Paz. Why are you crying?”
“It’s nothing, don’t worry about it.”
“Paz, I’m going to worry. You’re upset and it’s my fault.”
“It’s not your fault. It’s mine,” she says quietly, so unlike herself.
Dipper’s head is still swimming, looking for answers. The emotional whiplash he’s gone through in the last ten minutes isn’t helping.
“Can we talk about it?” he ventures, keeping his voice low. In his urgency to call her he forgot that everyone else in his house is asleep. The last thing he needs is his dad walking in on this conversation and ushering him to bed.
Pacifica is quiet for a few long seconds, but eventually he hears a soft “okay.”
He stays quiet, giving her space to pull together her thoughts.
“I… liked what you said earlier. When you said goodnight. It felt nice. And I guess it made me sad to find out you didn’t mean to say it.”
Well now you’ve gone and done it. Idiot , he thinks at himself.
He takes a deep breath, decides to edge a little closer to honesty.
“I’m… really glad it made you happy. It’s… true. I do…feel that,” he says carefully, not having the courage to repeat the forbidden L-word . “You mean the world to me,” he adds, hoping it will be a bit of a balm to his earlier fumble.
She sniffles again, but it’s not quite as wet as her earlier sniffs.
He continues, slowly, deciding to edge one more toe a bit closer to the truth. Under no circumstances is he about to confess his undying and likely unrequited romantic love, but he can make her feel better.
“I don’t think you know how much you mean to me,” he adds.
“That’s probably true…”
He puzzles at her response, chewing on his bottom lip. Before he can reply, she continues.
“That’s why I’m sad. I don’t… know, really , how much I mean to you. In…” there’s a long pause. “In what way.”
His heart leaps into his throat, hopefully. Could she…? No…
“Oh,” is all he manages to say.
“I wish I did,” she says bluntly.
There’s no avoiding what she’s hinting at. Hell, she’s not even really hinting. He’s so close to telling her, telling her all of it, but there’s that one small, mean voice in his head telling him that she could never return his feelings, that she just wants to clear the air because it’s become so obvious that he’s crazy about her, and she wants to let him down easy so they can go on being friends…
But she keeps talking, interrupting the small, mean voice.
“I want you to know how I feel, too,” she says, a bit more of her usual confidence finding its way back into her tone. Dipper senses that she’s made up her mind about something.
The only thought present in his mind now is that he’s about to either be the happiest he’s ever been, or have his heart shattered into a million pieces.
“But can we talk about it in person?” she asks.
He chokes.
“Yeah, yeah of course, that’s fine,” he lies.
It absolutely is not fine , his heart wails. He won’t be in Gravity Falls for another two months. How on earth is he going to wait two months to hear the answer to the question that’s been on his mind for the last four years?
“Can you… ugh this is embarrassing–” she starts.
“What?” He interjects. “Whatever you want, it’s done.”
He winces. Ugh, he’s such a goner.
But he thinks he can hear a smile in her response, which calms him a little. “Could you tell me some things you like about me, in the meantime?” she asks. “I’m… uh… feeling a little vulnerable right now.”
“Oh… yeah, yeah of course.”
He thinks for a beat, cataloging the thousands of images, feelings, and memories currently flooding his mind.
“Well just to get it out of the way first because it’s incredibly obvious, you’re gorgeous. But you don’t need to hear that from me.”
“But I like hearing it from you. I like hearing… you say that,” she repeats, with emphasis.
He’d have to be pretty thick to not catch her meaning there, and Dipper may be many things but he’s not a complete idiot.
Emboldened, he goes on.
“Alright, well, you’re stunning. Like, the way your eyes match the sky, and when the sunlight hits your hair and it just kind of shimmers.” He makes a waving motion with his fingers even though she can’t see it. “And when you smile, I swear it makes everything brighter. Whenever one of my friends down here sees your photo…” He almost tells her about the locker photo, but decides against it. No need to out himself as a total creep just yet. “They’re always just like, shocked, that I even know someone like you.”
Pacifica giggles. “Okay, okay, I get it. You think I’m pretty.”
“It’s not just that though,” he adds quickly. “The way you stand up to your parents– and I know you can’t go full-on rebel-mode– but you do it in your own subtle ways, and I just want you to know that I see that, and I think it’s amazing. You’re brave; you always have my back when we’re exploring. You’re hilarious, even if half of your jokes are at my expense… I don’t mind it. Because they’re usually true. And I like that you’re paying attention to me. I like being seen by you, too.” He swallows. “I’m happy when I’m around you. Even if you’re driving me up a wall. It… it feels good.”
His honesty, rather than feeding his insecurities, has him feeling bold.
“I like it when we’re together. I think we’re good together,” he finishes.
And it sort of feels like he just took a flying leap off a cliff.
“I think we’re good together too,” she says.
And it’s also like landing in a soft, warm, solid bed.
“Okay,” she starts. “Okay, I feel better. Thank you, Dipper.” He hears her sigh contentedly. “I can let you go now; I know you’ve had a long day.”
But he’s still feeling brave. And he’s not really used to the feeling when it comes to this, so he doesn’t want to let it go to waste.
“Hey, not so fast, missy,” he says, keeping his voice playful. “I can’t let you go to bed hearing all those sweet nothings without getting some for myself.”
She giggles, and his heart soars.
“Okay, mister,” she teases back. “Fair is fair.”
“Feel free to start with my devastatingly handsome features, too. Rogue-ish good looks. All that.”
She giggles again and ugh he’s going to get addicted to the oxytocin that floods his brain at the sound. Oh, who the hell is he kidding? He has been for a long time.
“Okay well, yes, you do have a certain inherent charm that is somewhat related to your cute, cocky smile, I suppose…” Dipper feels himself grin involuntarily. “But what I like most about you, devastatingly roguish features aside, is your character. How you care about right and wrong. How you challenge me to be better, but never make me feel judged. How curious you are about the world around us, and how you help me learn new things, too. How you love your family, and stop at nothing to protect them… and me. You make me feel safe. And I just… I admire you.”
“Paz, I don’t want to wait until June for–” He almost says “for this” but realizes they haven’t exactly called a spade a spade yet, and he wants to keep up the charade they both know they are playing until they are face-to-face. “--to talk about this.”
“...what are you doing Saturday?”
“This Saturday?” he asks, surprised.
She hums in confirmation.
“Uh… well, nothing. Some people were going to the movies, but that– that’s so not important.”
“Well, there’s… this little city off the five, near Mount Shasta, it'd be about a three hour drive for each of us. We could both leave early… have a late breakfast together… it looks like there’s this arboretum that could be cool, or maybe just walk along the river…”
“Wow, you know a lot about this particular town, Paz,” Dipper teases.
“I’ve never been, but… I might’ve done some research into the area…” she admits, and he thinks he can hear a shy smile breaking through in her voice.
“Sounds like a date.” And he grins at his own cleverness, at the double meaning.
“Yeah,” she laughs. “I guess it is.”
“I’ll see you Saturday, then,” he says, and the butterflies in his stomach somersault happily.
“See you then,” she replies, and he knows he can hear her own grin now. “Goodnight, Dipper.”
“Goodnight, Pacifica.” He pauses. Fuck it. “Love you.”
“I love you too.”
Dipper lets the phone drop on his chest as he falls backwards onto his bed, dopey smile plastered to his face and pleasant warmth coursing through his body.
He starts thinking of all the ways he can tell and show her just what she means to him– just as soon as she’s in his arms. And as these pleasant thoughts slowly shift into dreams, he gives in to sleep with an unburdened mind and full heart.
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A Survey of Available Lore on Baalphegor, Princess of Hell
Summoned from the Candlekeep libraries by @sky-kiss, from her ask here.
I burst through the door, scrolls tumbling everywhere. A bat flies out of my cloak and up to the rafters. Welcome to my TedxTalk wait where are you going-
Okay so. My pet topic du jour: Baalphegor. You’ll find tinfoil hats taped underneath your seats; please save those for the end of the presentation.
Sky is very much correct that the last information we have for Baalphegor is that she is “missing”, with no more real information than that. We have no information on the timeframe of her disappearance relative to Raphael’s own residence on Cania, so there’s a lot of room for extrapolation.
I have compiled what is, as far as I am aware at least, every notable reference to Baalphegor. Note: if you have knowledge of any others that I’ve missed, please tell me.
Most of the primary and/or more modern (as in, printed in the 21st century) sourcebooks just refer to Baalphegor in passing, as seen in the entire sum of her appearance in the Fiendish Codex II (my beloved):
Meanwhile, his new courtiers, selected for their ability to deliver innovative applications of his hellfire techniques, work to solidify their positions. Foremost among this group are Baalphegor (Mephistopheles’s consort) and the pit fiend Buldumech.¹
We have to go way back to get anything of interest for her, back to the 1980s, and the Dragon and Dungeon magazines. These were the two official magazines published for players of Dungeons & Dragons, filling a role similar to that of modules in the present day version of the game.
Baalphegor is referenced first in Dragon issue #76, published in 1983. We actually find a lot of detail about her here, the most pertinent of which is:
Baalphegor is consort to Mephistopheles, and a most highly regarded she-devil. Personally attractive (and a practiced diplomat), she is charming in manner and artful in thought; she has invented many of the strategies and devices used in the hells. Asmodeus regards her as one of his most valuable assets, and tolerates the machinations of Mephistopheles largely because of her. Baalphegor’s own desires are seldom revealed; she appears loyal to the hells and devoted to Mephistopheles, and manages to avoid making a distinction between the two.²
This tells us that not only is she clever and diplomatic, but also staggeringly intelligent. Mephistopheles spends a great deal of his focus on research and development of new spells and magical items - for Baalphegor to be the source of “many of the strategies and devices used in the hells” says a great deal about her intellect.
As well, the regard Asmodeus holds her in is wildly unusual for any devils, let alone the Lord of the Ninth. True loyalty among devils is largely regarded as a character flaw, and never to be trusted.
Dragon #76 goes on to describe her physical appearance (or one of them, at least):
Baalphegor is a musical-voiced, beautiful female, apparently human, save for her ruby-red eyes, forked tail, and slim, delicate leathery wings. Her feet are human in appearance, and she is sleek and curvaceous, with cinnamon-brown skin. She appears young and carefree, but when angered her light voice can crack like a whip, and her eyes flash fire.²
Baalphegor appears again in a module in Dungeon issue #2, published in 1986. In this adventure she is, unknown to the player characters, their true antagonist, controlling events and planning her machinations from the shadows, a true devil to her core.
In the module, she appears as a child, named Belle Fagor, keeping tabs on the members of a devil-summoning coven. (It is important to note that she is not the devil they summoned, but a lesser one.) Her stated motivation for this ruse is:
Desiring a break from the infernal politics of the Nine Hells, Baalphegor is enjoying herself and regards her interplanar tinkering as a sort of game, with its own rules.³
She’s on vacation.
We find another description of Baalphegor here, one that matches physically that of Dragon #76, but restates her relation to Asmodeus in an intriguing way:
One of the Nine Hells’ most artful and beautiful she-devils, Baalphegor is an honored diplomat and a consort to Mephistopheles, and counts Asmodeus as a close ally.³
Once again, extremely out of the ordinary for most devils to actively consider true loyalty to or from another, let alone in this manner, that seems almost reciprocal when held against the excerpt from Dungeon #76.
The final excerpt of note from Dungeon #2 is this:
Though extremely powerful, Baalphegor was not included in order to crush the player characters. She should be played with care and cleverness, befitting her extreme intelligence.³
The final mention of Baalphegor to be found - in Dungeon #135, published in 2006 - is only in passing, referencing her disappearance with glancing indifference in favor of the magic artifact that shares her name:
Baalphegor’s Grace is a potent artifact reputedly crafted over six hundred years ago by the archdevil Mephistopheles, who created the vial to capture the blood and tears of his consort Baalphegor for loan to favored cultists on the Material Plane. Recent events in Hell have claimed Mephisto’s attentions for several decades, and in that time he has lost track of Baalphegor’s Grace.
Any character who successfully drinks from the vial finds that he becomes linked to a group of powerful erinyes devils known as the Blessed Angels. These devils once served Baalphegor as elite guards, yet since her disappearance and the artifact’s fall into the Material Plane, these erinyes instead serve whoever drinks from the vial.⁴
From this excerpt, we learn several things: that Baalphegor has been in existence for longer than 600 years (pretty much a given already), that there is some manner of power conveyed within her blood and tears, that a group of erinyes - the furies of the Nine Hells - formed her retinue, and that she has, at some point in time, disappeared from Cania.
Alright… do you recall those tinfoil hats? Under your seats?
Please don them now.
What follows is materially the stark opposite of what preceded it. Above is simple lore, derived directly from the source material with no diffusion. This next is simple headcanon and speculation, albeit entirely plausible based on the existing lore.
To wit, I propose that Baalphegor might be two things:
an aspect of Asmodeus
an earlier iteration of the incubus known in present-day as Haarlep
Stick with me you already put the hats on
Okay, so every archdevil can make an aspect (or multiple, if they have the spare power for it), described as such:
An aspect is a physical embodiment of a portion of an archdevil’s life force, created to serve as a proxy on another plane without placing the archdevil in any actual danger. An archdevil and its aspect have separate bodies but share the same mind; what one knows, the other knows.⁵
Baalphegor being an aspect of Asmodeus is truly one of the only reasons I can fathom for why they would both be specifically noted to consider the other a staunch ally. It also makes a great deal of sense. Asmodeus is not easily able to travel out of Nessus due to his vast power and its effects, so aspects are his primary method of directly interacting with affairs on any planes.
Aspects of Asmodeus could be found anywhere in the planes where they advance Asmodeus’s main goals…⁶
Many of Asmodeus’s aspects are unhidden effigies of their originator, said to “evokes the same fear that its master does, and other devils are extremely cautious about associating with an aspect of Asmodeus on a personal level."⁶
With this in mind, it tracks that Asmodeus would, on occasion, play the long con (something he is in fact famous for), and fashion an aspect far removed from his regular, all the better to have an agent of his own, one truly loyal, to plant among the other Circles, all unsuspecting.
As for the Haarlep connection, well…
First of all, Baalphegor’s long-time but ambiguously dated disappearance certainly allows for the possibility in simple chronological terms.
Second, it would make sense for Mephisto to make use of someone he, presumably, trusted to remain loyal to him above his son, and who better in that regard than Baalphegor.
Third: Think about it. Isn’t it hilarious to consider? Doesn’t it fill your mind with chaotic glee to imagine?
Mephisto, thinking himself a genius, sending his own most loyal to keep tabs on his disobedient but oh-so-aspirational son. All the while never knowing Baalphegor was serving the same purpose in regard to him, and there was never an action he took truly hidden from the watchful eye of Asmodeus.
Thus concludes my presentation. Thank you for your attendance, and please consider making a small donation to your local chapter of the Candlekeep Scholars, to keep the spark of knowledge alive! All honor to the Binder.⁷
I am carried away on a cloud of bats.
¹ Fiendish Codex II: Tyrants of the Nine Hells. 2006, p. 69
² Dragon Magazine #76. August 1983, pp. 28-29
³ Dungeon Magazine #2. November/December 1986, p. 37
⁴ Dungeon Magazine #135. June 2006, p. 71
⁵ Fiendish Codex II: Tyrants of the Nine Hells. 2006, p. 141
⁶ Fiendish Aspects II: A Web Enhancement for Fiendish Codex II. 2007, p. 23
⁷ One of the titles of Oghma, greater god of inspiration, invention, and knowledge.
#bg3 raphael#bg3 mephistopheles#baalphegor#bg3#asmodeus#bg3 meta#if you ask me how long i spent on this i will smile at you while crying tears of blood#haarlep#my meta#lore#voidling speaks#baator#d&d#forgotten realms#raphael#sky-kiss#if you saw the reblog version of this i didn't realize those don't show up in tags and i didn't put in four hours of work for nothing#meta
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in honor of fantasy high minis going up for auction, I'm remaking them in HF
I'm only doing them as they go up for auction though I have a paper to write.
this week (3/4) we got Adaine, Kristen, and Fabian on the Hangman.
3/11 oops i did it again but forgot i already made a post lol
pics & explanations under the cut.
things i can't match perfectly
color. I did my best, but i mean they did the painting bit IRL so some stuff I can't recreate with decals. also eyes are detailed in HF, I just picked what I remember their canon eye colors as being.
faces. HF completely changed how they do faces recently. I did my best but the mini faces are real tiny and hard to see and I'm unlikely to be able to recreate them.
poses. while there's very little advanced posing for these guys, there is some. I picked the base pose I think they started from.
this was actually much harder than I thought, because I had to remember what HF stuff was available way back then and what wasn't.
Adaine Abernant! (auction mini)
notes:
they made her before HF separated pants/skirts into an upper layer and lower layer, so I have no idea if there were leggings or anything originally. I am almost 100% certain those low poly flats are accurate though.
HF doesn't have socks, so I did my best with decals, but the skirt covers up where the sock color fades into skin color.
surprisingly, Adaine's mini has like. dark red lipstick. its a good look I just didn't notice it earlier.
couldn't get the Hudol decal on her jacket or the stripes on her tie. you can get patterns on the shirt but not on the tie :/
she's not smiling as much bc the 3d printed face isn't smiling that much its just the way the lipstick's painted that does the smiling for her.
Kristen Applebees! (auction mini)
notes
they don't have corn on HF. I think this rotated fern looks OK though. same w her book, I scootched some decals around to try and match the design at least a little.
while they do have patterns for clothes now, they don't have a tie-dye one. this is a heavily modified leopard print. not as many different colors, but the ones that are on there do match the ones on the mini's shirt.
this is one of the few where I think I did in fact get her face right. I copied my old Kristen design from before the face customizer came out, so this is the old "round face" preset.
the freckles are subtler obviously but i s2g they're there and they are reddish-orange
Fabian Aramais Seacaster & The Hangman (auction mini)
notes
his hair. ooh boy. they did the tiny mohawk and then painted on shaved sides but HF can't do shaved sides like that so I used a truly ghoulish amount of decals to approximate. [update: they have since added shaved head decals and I have updated the boy accordingly]
also he does technically have eyebrows 3d printed on i think, but they aren't painted separately. its just skin color. and that just looked bad and wrong on HF so i took his brows off altogether.
they made the skull themselves, but otherwise it's mostly the same bike. I used the "bloody skull" color for the headlight as a lil tribute.
this type of rapier used to be much chunkier, whatcha gonna do. I like this one better anyway.
they can do decals on the back now but none on just the sleeves, or on the front where the A is. rip.
fun fact: this is not a letterman jacket. This is what's called the "outlaw's shirt and vest" props to the team for resourcefulness, good jackets in HF are relatively recent.
#original post#d20#dimension 20#art#fanart#heroforge#fantasy high#minis#miniature art#miniatures#auction#dnd#this post is quickly going to become a nightmare to load and i apologize in advance
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The notice, printed in black on a sheet of plain paper, appeared inside the lockers of a gym popular with members of the military. Jack had seen many such postings-requests for dog-walkers or notices for help moving, stuff like that. Cheaply xeroxed, and hurriedly composed, he rarely gave them more than a glance. But, this one caught his eye.
“Wanted, current members of the armed forces between the ages of 20 and 46, height between 5’6” and 6’4”, weighing at least 165lbs for participation in a readiness study conducted by the Office of National Military Standards.”
“Readiness Study”, I’ll just bet! Probably some pornographer “offering to make me “star”, he laughed to himself, why don’t they just ask?
A local address was given and the date listed was today in little more than an hour. Jack, a marine corporal, was curious. He fit the height and weight requirements, 5’11” and 180 lbs. So little other information was provided, but he was available at the listed time, so why not. It was curious to him that he hadn’t heard anything from official channels at the base. Maybe this was one of those clandestine operations carried out under the radar. Certainly, participation has to figure in future promotions, he thought. He checked the other open lockers for similar notices and found none, only bits of paper stuck to the inside of the locker doors, held in place by remnants of scotch tape. Was this an indication of a big expected turnout?
Jack hastily changed into his workout clothes, a pair of olive green shorts and a military issue sleeveless t-shirt. It was an old shirt, used since he joined up and his muscular chest and arms have necessitated cuts in the neck and arms holes and cropped about six inches, giving him the appearance, if not of “The Hulk”, then of a Hulk-to-be. Making his way to the gym floor, he paused at the full-length mirror just inside the door and gave it a quick “double bi”. It was a chest and biceps day and he felt sure that once they got a look at his 17 inch arms and 45 inch chest, he was a shoe-in for inclusion into the program.
His workouts usually lasted an hour and a half and while he chose a time of day when the gym would be largely empty, there were still a few die-hard lifters like himself around to spot him when necessary and to size him up as he was sure they were aware of being sized up themselves. Were any of these guys scouts for the program? Sizing me up? He made sure to really push his reps. If 85 pound dumbell chest presses were his max, he made sure to go for 95 pounds and was surprised that he handled the heavier weight with ease-aware that he was being watched by the other guys who paused their workouts to stare. Nothing wrong with that, he thought, as he frequently did the same. Do I go for the hundred pounders next? He thought for a moment-what if I fail to get a rep? If he dropped the weights without completing a rep, he was sure to get a reaction. A muffled derisive laugh and an offer to spot him next time-the kiss of death for serious bodybuilders like himself. “What the hell”, he pulled a couple of hundred pound dumbells off the rack and slowly made his way to a free bench. Whacking your knee with a hundred pounds of iron can really mess it up so he was careful to hold the weights just above the knee caps and letting the motion of sitting down, bring the weights to rest on his muscular thighs. Another grunt and he was flat on his back-the two weights just above shoulder level.
Jack was stoked and he put his full concentration into thrusting the weights up off his chest. His pecs, dripping sweat and his heart beating so hard the whole bench vibrated “One—-two—thrrrrreeee” he counted out loud, and the massive weights rose up and paused a moment while he locked his arms and held them aloft. Jack was gasping for air, his chest pounding, his heart clearly visible in that massive chest. He brought the weights down to just above his shoulders and with a loud gasp forced the weights up for a second rep and then slowly brought them back down-emphasizing the slowness for the benefit of the other lifters who were now watching. “I know they’re as hard as me” he thought and dropped the weights to the floor.
Jack sat up and paused to catch his breath for what seemed like an hour but glancing up at the clock showed only a couple of minutes had passed. He was on a roll. This was how his entire workout was to go. Each exercise, every rep he exceeded his personal best. After an hour Jack’s shirt was soaked with sweat and so stretched out from his swollen chest and arms, that he removed it and tossed it next to his gym bag in the corner. He looked at himself in the mirror and put together a posing routine to take advantage of massive chest and arms. The sweat running off his body collecting in his navel only to pour out when he flexed his abs. Damn! Why can’t every workout be this intense. He thought ahead to the the posted flyer. He needed to report in less than half an hour. Enough time to complete his workout but no time to shower. No problem-I’ll show up pumped up, sweaty and shirtless. That ought to attract some attention!
And so it would…
The day was a hot one. Even though Jack pushed his workout into the late afternoon, the temperature still hovered around 98 degrees, with a level of humidity matching a sauna. Ahhh, the South in the summertime. Sweat was dripping off his body in streams and the intensity of his workout had his heart pounding so hard the dog tags bounced off his chest. His car had been sitting in the sun the whole afternoon and when he climbed inside the wave of heat swept over him. Euphoric from his elevated blood pressure, pounding heart, and the adventure to come, Jack sat in the intense heat of the closed car gulping deep breaths of air and enjoying the insane pounding of his heart as he arched his body against the seat back. His tags, flying up with every heart beat, throwing spits of sweat against the steering wheel. It was almost four thirty-he had about 15 minutes to get to the address listed on the flyer. He flicked on the AC and headed out to a location he couldn’t picture in his head. He had lived in the area only a few years so he wasn’t surprised by his lack of familiarity. He would be surprised, however, that the location the flyer took him was an empty lot in the middle of nowhere, the crumbling foundation of a long ago demolished gas station poking up through tufts of grass. This can’t be right, he thought, but the address matched. He was still a few minutes early. Jack climbed out of the car and sat in a shady spot along the edge of the lot. He didn’t sit long. Exactly at the scheduled time a car carrier, painted Army drab pulled to a stop directly in front of him. As he watched, the driver, a marine sergeant dressed in fatigues got out leaving the hauler in neutral.
“Soldier, here for the 4:30?” He approached Jack, who was now standing at attention, a force of habit on seeing a higher rank. “Can I see your I.D.?”
“Can I see yours, sergeant?” Jack said warily.
“Fair enough, it probably seems a little sketchy, the middle of nowhere and all.” The sergeant pulled out his wallet and swapped with Jack. “I’m used to it-been doing this all day.”
While Jack was studying the Sergeant’s papers, he became aware of the sergeant staring at his chest. The weather, the workout and the current circumstances have kept Jack’s heart pounding. The sergeant no doubt noticed the dog tags jangling against his pump.
“I can hear it, corporal!” The sergeant said. “That’s quite a motor you got there. Pounding a good 180, sounds like!”
“Yeah, just come here from a workout.”
The two men kept their distance as each went over the other’s info. The sergeant broke the silence. “Well let’s get your vehicle loaded up. Got a schedule to keep. Here’s your I.D., everything checks…”
Jack cut him short. “Just a minute, sarge. Ya gonna tell me what’s going on?”
“No corporal, I’m not. I’m here on orders to make a pick up. Instructed to tell you to take it or leave it.”
What the fuck! Jack thought. This is a helluva lot to take on faith. He paused in consideration.
The sergeant could see the deliberation and chose not to press him.
Jack pondered the situation. This was just too much, even with the paperwork he was shown. But, he also knew the marines. He was an enlisted man and any possible advancement might rest on his decision now. And besides, Jack smirked. I can take him!
“Yes or no”, the sergeant said as he walked back to the idling hauler.
“Pull up a little further and I’ll pull my car around.
When Jack brought his car around to the back, the sergeant pulled the lever activating the hydraulic ramp. He wasted no time adjusting the ramp, just brought it down with a slam. From the side of the hauler he directed Jack to drive his car up onto the ramp. Another pull on the lever and the ramp pulled up from the pavement.
“C’mon out,” the sergeant shouted,” give me a hand securing your vehicle.” Jack slid himself out of the tight space between the car door and the hauler and jumped down. The bed of the hauler was a little higher than expected and Jack took a tumble. He’d have hit the pavement if the sergeant wasn’t there to catch him. Falling back, the sergeant grabbed Jack in a bear hug and pulled him straight up off his feet, knocking the wind out of him in the process.
“Can’t very well show up with damaged goods can I,” the sergeant laughed. Jack was aware that the sergeant hadn’t released his hold but instead positioned one hand over Jack’s pounding heart. Jack could feel the sergeants heart pounding as well. He was going to have to adjust his assessment of the sergeant’s strength. This was one solid dude. Better to just take orders and see where this goes. The sergeant released his grip and motioned for Jack to get into the cab.
“Shouldn’t we wait for the other guys” Jack asked as the sergeant climbed into the driver’s seat?”
“You’re it today!” And throwing the hauler into gear, pulled away from the curb. “Must be special, usually I’ve got a couple more your size up here in the cab-get’s a little overloaded with testosterone!”
But Jack didn’t feel special, he crossed one arm over his chest to attach the seatbelt, realizing he left his t-shirt back in the car.
Noticing Jack’s discomfort, the sergeant said, “The cab doesn’t have A/C. You’ll be fine shirtless. I’ve got some water there,” motioning to the backpack at Jack’s feet.
As Jack leaned over to grab a water bottle he saw a couple of open bottles of poppers on the dash. The sergeant saw Jack staring at the bottles, “some of these drives are pretty long. This stuff keeps me alert.” Jack grabbed the window regulator but it came off in his hand. “Yeah, it’s broken, you know marine motor pool!” The driver’s window was open, but just a crack.
“Ya wanna roll down your window then? Jack said beginning to breathe heavily.
“Can’t. Broken too.” The sergeant’s eyes remained focused on the road, but he could hear Jack breathing heavily. “Don’t worry, a little poppers won’t hurt you, and we’ll be there shortly.”
“What’s shortly” Jack asked.“Three and a half hours, five with traffic. I stocked up incase the trip ran long.” He reached over without taking his eyes off the road and opened the glove box. Jack saw 4 six-packs of Jungle Juice, with three loose bottles just rolling around. Reaching in, he pulled out one of the loose bottles, cracked it open and set it on the dash with the other two. “Gotta replenish these regularly-they evaporate quick!”Jack’s head pressed into the head rest as his chest began to pound. He hadn’t really recovered from his workout, and now with the heavy fumes inside the stifling cab his heart was nearly at it’s max. His breath was coming in gasps and his dog tags made a constant jingling sound as they bounced with his heartbeat. The sergeant put his hand on Jack’s chest pushing the tags against his pump. “Yeah, you’ll do fine!”
Jack lost track of time, between the pounding in his chest and the pounding in his head, he felt like he was floating outside his body. He was no stranger to poppers, but this was way more than he thought he could handle. Periodically the sergeant would reach over and feel his heart pound, just brushing his left nipple with the course skin of his fingers. Jack’s whole body convulsed now. He had regularly had his heart up over 200bpm but this felt faster still. The brush of his nipple, caused him to come almost immediately. His right hand managed to knock two of the bottles from the dash. The clear fluid ran and puddled on the floor. The fumes became even more intense as they evaporated on the rubber mat. The sergeants hand was now more or less a constant pressure on Jack’s chest. Making sure to rub his fingers across Jack’s nipple.
“Fuuuuuuck! I’m gonna pass out,” Jack’s head fell back against the headrest and tilted toward the sergeant. His mouth open and his breathing coming as short gasps. Sweat poured off his body and soaked the seat cushion. But his heart pounded on, with occasional tweaking of his nipple. He could hear the sergeant-but couldn’t tell what he was saying over the pounding in his chest. He watched as the sergeant reached around him to grab a couple more bottles from the glove box, open them, and place them next to the one remaining on the dash. Fresh waves of fumes filled the cab. How the hell is this not affecting him? His heart should have arrested he thought, and then dropped off again.
It was dark by the time Jack came to. He thought he must be dead. unchanged was the beating of his heart. Still hammering away inside him. Unchanged also was the heat and humidity in the cab of the truck. His shorts were covered in cum. “How many more times did I cum?” He asked the sergeant.
“Oh, three or four—six—a dozen? I lost count. Enough to glue you to the seat!” The sergeant chuckled. Glad to see you’re still with me. I’d have made this trip for nothing. After I broke into the second case you started convulsing again. I thought I’d have to drop you by the side of the road.”
Jack squirmed in his seat. From the floor he could hear the clinking of glass as he moved his feet.
“What the…,” he looked down at the floor and it was littered with little brown bottles.”…hell.” He glanced up at the glove box and saw only one box remained unopened. And the sergeant drove on. “How the hell aren’t you affected by this?”
The sergeant pounded on his chest. “Strong as a fucking machine!”
Jack’s breathing was fast and deep. “Damn, my heart ain’t slowing down!” He exclaimed. The sergeant put his right hand on Jack’s chest.
“Yep!” He said. “Pounding out a good two forty the whole way! The cardiac specialists will be excited by this, Probably work up a whole battery of tests. Your trial is just beginning my friend.”
The truck had at last arrived at their destination. The sergeant flicked a badge to the sentry, who waved him in. They drove a short distance through a thick woods which ran right up to a pole barn with a large garage-style door. As the truck approached, the door clanked open, and without slowing down, the truck with its cargo drove into the darkness towards a faint light at the very end of the building. As they approached the lights came on, one by one, slowly revealing what looked like a well outfitted research facility. Jack, even with his vision blurred by the insane amount of poppers, could make out a treadmill and full workout facility. Men in white coats were standing in front of various pieces of diagnostic equipment, studying the gauges and their clip boards intently.
“Where are the rest of the applicants? I wasn’t expecting to be the only one?” Jack said nervously. Jack was still pretty jittery from the popper fumes, only now dissipating from the cab. His heart was still pounding at a crazy 250 beats a minute.
One of the techs came up to the drivers side and spoke briefly with the sergeant. “Yeah, got a good recruit here, heart’s still pounding at 250-“
“250?” the tech seemed surprised. “In that case, let’s get him on the exam table pronto!
Two other techs appeared on the passenger side and opened the door. One tech, the beefier of the two, grabbed Jack under the arm as Jack slid out of the cab.
“OK soldier, we’re gonna take a short walk over here” the other, smaller tech motioned to an exam table about 20 feet away where a group of techs was now congregating. “
“Get him up on the table and hook him up to the ekg.”
The head technician now directed the group of assembled specialists beginning to gather around Jack. One tech pasted electrodes to Jacks’s chest. Jack could see his hand bouncing off his quivering pec as he attached the adhesive pads.
“Should we do an angio set up as well?” Said another.
“Yes, we’ll want to see what’s going on in that pump before we start the full workup”
The lead turned to another tech, “Set up the pacer as well.” The lead tech marked two small XS on Jacks left pec. “This ought to give us some measure of control. Insert the probes on these marks. Watch the ekg. There will be a voltage spike when the probes touch the ventricle wall. Insert the probe and additional three centimeters.”
“Are you ready with the angio?”
“Yes, check monitor three.”
Jack watched as the wire was threaded through the femoral artery and travelled directly into his heart.
“We’ve got to get his heart rate down before we proceed. Have you got the probe in place?”
“Yes.”
“Ready to insert the pacer wires?”
Working quickly, the tech pushed the first pacer probe into Jack’s heart. Jack and the techs watched on the monitor as the wire entered the sinus node.
“First probe on target!” Then pushed the second wire about 3 centimeters from the first. “Ready!”
“Deliver 250 joules to arrest his heart and then set the rhythm for160. With any luck this kids pump should respond.”
“Clear!” The tech hit the button on the console sending a jolt of electricity into Jacks heart. In response to the shock, Jack’s heart barely slowed and then returned to 250bpm..
“Alright, we don’t have time to mess around. Hit him with 800. That should stop his heart.”
The tech reset the device for 800 joules. “Clear!” Again the tech pressed the button, delivering a massive jolt of electricity to Jack’s heart. His chest convulsed and his eyes rolled back into his head. The EKG showed flatline “Asystole! Get ready to activate the pacer. Set at 160?” Jack was unconscious now, his heart stopped in his chest. They stared momentarily at the lifeless body on the table. The lead tech looked over at the other techs. “C’mon, let’s go! Pacing at 160?”
The tech flipped the switch, sending a series of shocks to Jack, arrested heart to regain a sustainable 160 bpm.
Heartbeat captured, heart beating at 160.
All right, prepare to reduce pacing rate to 150, and every minute bring his heart back down to 100bpm by 10. Switch off the pacing device and monitor his heart to maintain a steady rhythm unassisted.” Jack was conscious again and now aware that he was restrained to the exam table.
“What the…” Jack became agitated and started thrashing about against the restraints.
Take it easy.” You’re just newly back from your first cardiac arrest.
“Vital signs are good, BP at 110 over 90.”
“Respirations 22 per minute but dropping back to normal range.”
One tech placed the stethoscope to Jack’s chest. “-steady at 90-Heart sounds good!”
“No indication of damage on the EKG. This kids gotta hell of a motor!”
Jack’s breathing became more relaxed and he stopped fighting against the cuffs.
“We had to restrain you in case you became combative.”
“Are you putting all the applicants through the same tests?” Jack asked.
“Well, yes” the techs all exchanged glances.
The lead tech now joined the group and explained to Jack the testing procedure. “Now that we’ve stabilized your heart rate, we’ll begin the actual testing. Let’s get him over to the treadmill.”
One tech disconnected the leads from Jack’s chest, while the others went to different stations, Jack could only make out shadowy figures around the perimeter of the room, but still no sight of the other inductees. The testing protocol now moved over to a small glassed-in room housing the exercise treadmill where a new tech was readying the equipment.
Jack, we’re going to apply these leads to your chest to monitor…
I know, I know. Been through this before.” Jack instinctively straightened up and pushed his chest out.
The tech was momentarily distracted watching Jack’s heart beating in his chest. Pushing out forcefully below his left nipple. “Well…well this will be a much more extensive exploration of your heart under actual stress. The Amyl you were subjected to during your trip here, while it stressed your heart chemically, couldn’t give us a reading on how much your heart can take.
“Can take?” Jack caught him in mid sentence.
“Yes. Each of these tests is designed to take your heart to failure. Resuscitation is the end result of each of the tests. Each test will conclude only when your heart has arrested. Of course, if you should experience an infarct, that would conclude the testing immediately, and wash you from the program. This occurs quite often. In fact, you’re the only recruit that hasn’t failed the exam this session.”
And with that, Jack was harnessed to the treadmill. The EKG leads were reattached, and his arms were passed through what looked like a combination of life vest and backpack.
“Kind of elaborate isn’t it?” Jack wrapped each hand around the padded straps.
The lead tech explained. “This isn’t an ordinary treadmill stress test. As you can see. These straps will keep you from falling off the belt and the backpack portion has an open pouch allowing us to add weight during the course of the exam. As the degree of climb increases, we will add weight in 25lb increments to the pack. To simulate an actual hike, the temperature and humidity can be controlled in the room. The mask will measure your respiration rate, but it will prevent you from communicating during the testing. We’ll start you off level at a temperature of 70 degrees and you’ll have 25lbs in your backpack. Good luck and we’ll see you at the conclusion of the test.”
Satisfied that Jack was correctly harnessed and all the monitors were recording his vital signs, the techs filed out of the small room and the door was closed. The treadmill was facing away from the wall of monitoring devices, yet Jack could hear the muffled talk of the techs outside the glass box. A small timer mounted on the wall of the enclosure counted down from 10.
“Jack,” the lead techs voice came through the glass. ‘Get ready to begin.”
The treadmill started moving. Just as the lead tech said, the pace was at a relaxed rate. Jack wondered how they were going to induce cardiac arrest…he was about to find out. After several minutes the counter again began to count down from ten. The pace became noticeably faster and there was a marked increase of the incline. A tech, reaching through the back of the box added another 25 pound weight to the backpack. Jack could feel himself beginning to sweat-was he getting hot from the exertion or were they also increasing the temperature. He watched the techs through the glass as they wrote on their charts and followed the readings on the monitors. He hadn’t noticed it before, but the timer also had a temperature gauge. It now showed 80 degrees, and it seemed like it was getting harder to breathe. His respirations picked up.
“Jack, we are also changing the air mixture to reflect the rise in altitude. You’ll be sprinting in the mountains soon.”
10, 9, 8, 7, 6, Jack knew they were going to be changing again, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. Barely ten minutes into the test and the angle and speed of the treadmill increased again. He didn’t notice the tech adding an additional 25 pounds to the pack. The temp had climbed too-now reading 90 degrees. Jack could feel the air mixture was thinner also. Each breath burned in his throat.
“Heart rate’s taken a big jump, reading 160bpm”
“Vitals are still excellent. Let’s increase the humidity of the enclosure” The lead tech was walking back and forth, studying the readouts while he adjusted the parameters of the test. “Increase humidity to 65 percent.”
The windows of the glass box began to steam up, and Jack could feel his heart pounding in his throat. He wasn’t about to give up easily so he pushed himself harder-his feet were pounding on the track of the treadmill keeping time with his heart. The straps supporting him felt tight across his chest, and sweat was now pouring off his body and hitting the track like rain.
“He’s throwing off some PVCs, show me the EKG.” the lead tech studied the readouts. “Jack, your heart’s just a little pissed at you right now, but the EKG is still solid., so we’re going to continue.”
10, 9, 8, 7, 6, …as the timer reached one, Jack could feel the increase of incline, and one more weight added to the backpack brought it up to 100lbs., the humidity and temperature increased as well. His lungs were beginning to react to the low levels of oxygen and Jack was sucking so hard on the mask, he threatened to collapse the tube.
“100 degrees, 100 pounds, and 100 percent humidity, and your heart is still…” the lead turned his head to the techs now scurrying back and forth at their stations.
“Pressure’s falling, 140 over 110…”
“Big spike in heartrate, 200bpm”
“Increase the flow of air through the mask-let’s take over his breathing”
Air was now being forced in and out of Jack’s lungs.
“Watch the respiration rate and set volume at six liters, we don’t want to burst his lungs.”
Jack was struggling now. The relentless pace of the treadmill, the forced breathing, the weight, temperature, humidity-all of it was causing him to stumble on the belt. It was only the harness that was keeping him upright. What was keeping his heart beating was now of intense interest of the techs. He could hear them arguing through the glass.
“This guy’s a machine!”
“I think we ought to supplement his air supply with an increase in nitrogen.”
“His heart is already maxed out at 230bpm.”
“Are we sure? His heart rate was 260 when he came in, without any damage to the myocardium.”
“Well, we’ve got him all hooked up, why not find out?”
“How long on the treadmill?”
“30 minutes”
“Hmmm,” the lead tech walked up to the glass intently studying the specimen inside. Previous candidates had all experienced myocardial infarction within 15 minutes, and here Jack was at 30 minutes, still with a rock-steady heart pumping at 230bpm..
“OK, up the nitrogen to 90 percent”
When the increased level of nitrogen reached Jack’s lungs, his heartrate soared to 275bpm. The increased workload this placed on his heart caused a marked enlargement to his left ventricle. The enlarged ventricle in turn stretched the membrane of his aortic valve to where it couldn’t close completely. The techs noted the regurgitation caused by the flowback of blood into the ventricle and kept a close eye on the EKG and other telemetry. Up till now Jack’s heart was more than capable of optimal performance, but at 275 bpm, it was only a matter of time before his heart arrested-or infarct-or worst case-exploded. A tear to his myocardium now would be instantly fatal, even with immediate intervention.
Jack’s heart, now swollen to twice its normal size and even with the regurgitation of the valves in his heart kept pumping.
“Is the catheter still in. Place?”
“Yes, the tip is right here in the coronary artery” The tech pointed to the angiographic image on monitor 2.
“Alright, I want to inflate the balloon at the end of the catheter to simulate a 25% blockage.”
Jack kept up the pace on the treadmill oblivious to what was happening around him. As the balloon swelled in the coronary artery, Jack’s heart was under continued assault by the medical team. His heart having to work harder than ever to supply sufficient oxygenated blood to keep his heart beating had now swollen to a size seen only in men weighing in excess of 300lbs or those bodybuilders who have been addicted to steroids. Sweat was pouring down his chest, collecting in his navel, spilling out and splashing on the treadmill. His heartrate hovered near 300bpm even while blood pooled in his ventricles and his heart valves unable to close properly. Now there were pronounced changes to his EKG and his once rock-solid heartbeat started throwing off irregular beats and pauses, the murmurs caused by the leaking valves was now a roar.
“Increase inflation to 50%” the lead tech now instructed his team to ready for the inevitable as the balloon swelled to block off 50% of the blood flow in Jack’s coronary artery.
And suddenly, not more than a minute in…
“He’s arresting!”
So this was the limit they were waiting for.
“Get him down!” Shouted the lead tech. “Over to the table-assess his condition.”
Jack was unconscious now. His heart had stopped beating. But was his heart still viable? He slumped over as the two techs unstrapped him and spread him out on the exam table. There was a flurry of activity around him now. His sweat-soaked body still showed the muscular build even while limp on the table. The mask was removed-substituted with a breathing tube. The next few minutes will be critical.
“BP zero!”
“Full arrest”
“OK everybody, keep focused.” The lead shouted.
“EKG-flatline!”
“Begin CPR”
“Defibrillator ready, charged to 600!”
“Ready with the adrenaline?
“Right here”
“Get me three syringes-cardiac needles, c’mon faster!”
“Stop CPR “
“First syringe!” The lead held the needle up to make sure there were no air bubbles and plunged the first needle directly into Jack”s heart. Even with the commotion in the room, the lead could still hear the shrill whine of asystole on the monitor.
“Nothing”
“Prepare to defib”, the lead quickly grabbed the paddles from the assistant-“clear”
The lead pressed the paddles against Jacks massive chest and delivered the first of many shocks. His body convulsed with the charge. His chest punching up off the table.
“No change!”
“C’mon soldier” The lead readied the second syringe and quickly shot the contents into his still heart.
“No change, we’re ready in surgery, wanna crack his chest?”
But the lead didn’t hear as he grabbed the paddles again.”clear!”
Again the electrical charge surged through Jack’s chest. Again his back arched and relaxed.
“Again-clear!”
“Again-clear!”
“Again-clear!”
The lead tech became concerned that too many electrical shocks would severely damage the heart muscle, he pulled away the paddles
“Continue CPR” This time the big tech, easily the size of a linebacker, rushed up to the table and placed his giant hands on Jack’s chest. Even as large as his hands were, they were dwarfed by the size of Jack’s chest. He began CPR. The force of his hands compressed his chest and caused Jack to groan.
“He’s coming around-“
“No, that’s just the air being forced out of his lungs”
“One, two three!” The big tech counted out the compressions. Each so explosive, they caused Jack’s body to bounce up on the table.
“Six, seven eight…” At 10, he stopped and another tech pushed air into Jack’s lungs through a mask. Now Jack’s chest, just moments ago, crushed down on the table the air forced into his lungs caused them to swell.
“Easy!” The lead tech called out. “He’s not a balloon.”
It seemed like hours since Jack’s heart had arrested, but looking at the monitors, it was only about 12 minutes. Again the big tech resumed counting.
“One, two ,three-“
The shrillness of the alarm was replaced with a steady beep. All the techs present let out a cheer. Jack’s heart had resumed beating! Even the lead tech gave a sigh of relief.
“That was cutting it a little close! Keep an eye on him and report back to me every 10 minutes.” The lead tech now returned to a small office at the end of the room. Leaving his techs to handle the follow up.
When the lead tech entered his office he was startled by the presence of the sergeant sitting at his desk.
“Looks like you almost lost me another one.” The sergeant exclaimed.
“Well, no more so than the others. His resilience has proven a surprise though. Bet you were a little scared!”
“Nah!” The sergeant was still looking at the lead tech. “I knew he could do it! I was very thorough in my selection process. When will he be ready for the mission-I’m on a tight schedule.”
“Well, no more so than the others. His resilience has proven a surprise though. Bet you were a little scared!”
“Nah!” The sergeant was still looking at the lead tech. “I knew he could do it! I was very thorough in my selection process”
“Well then I have good news for you! Don’t plan any trips for the forseeable future. If this kid has a good night, we can be ready to go tomorrow morning.
“That’s what I was hoping to hear!” The sergeant now stood up to leave ”I’ll be here at 08 hundred.”
One of the techs supervising Jack’s recovery squeezed past the sergeant as he left.
“He’s up and wants to speak to you.”
“Well, that was quick!
The lead tech went over to the recovery area to check on Jack. He was a little concerned that Jack had enough and they’d have to “process” him out. He quickly forgot about that when he saw Jack was up and anxious.
“Alright, what’s next?” Jack said with a characteristic enthusiasm that caught to lead tech by surprise. “I’m ready to go!”
“Well, let’s take a look at your stats.” The lead read each monitor and read them out loud. “BP 120 over 70, heart rate 60, blood gasses look good, EKG rock solid” The lead pressed the bell of his stethoscope to Jack’s chest. “Hell, your heart sounds are perfect! Anyone examining you would think you just walked in off the street, and not been in cardiac arrest for 15 minutes or subjected to the regimen we’ve put you through.”
“So like I said, what’s next?” Jack said with more than a little impatience in his voice.
“Well,” the lead spoke without looking up from his clipboard. “like everything else in the service, it’s hurry up and wait! Your next round will start promptly at 08 hundred hours. I suggest you get some rest. If you’re hungry, we’ve got a pretty good cafeteria. Why don’t you put on your shirt and get something to eat.” Now turning to one of the techs present. ”Get him cleaned up and remove all the…”
Without finishing his direction, one of the two techs in the room started removing the leads to all the monitors and pulled the intravenous lines, leaving the in Jack’s forearm.
The sergeant now appeared only this time stripped to the waist. Jack now knew what he felt that time serge held him up. Two tubes, one larger than the other were coming directly out of his chest and taped to his chest and belly led to a fanny pack on his right hip.
“What gives” Jack pointed at the tubes.
“I figured you’d have a few questions. In short, this contraption keeps me alive. This tube…” holding the smaller of the two in his hand, “ …leads to a small air pump. The air powers my mechanical heart, keeping it beating at a steady 90bpm. This other, is connected to a second, bigger pump provides oxygen to my artificial lungs. Together, they keep me going.”
“How long…:
“How long have I been bionic, so to speak? About 18 months now. But they can’t function indefinitely. Two years is about their max. Which is why you’re here. Almost since the implantation of these artificial organs I’ve been looking for a permanent replacement.” Turning now to the lead tech,” how many applicants have I interviewed?”
“Almost two a month.”
“So let’s say 36 applicants have applied and been rejected.”
“So you’d better be finding a suitable donor, and soon” Jack exclaimed.
“…I have already, in fact I got his application just a little over a week ago. Ran him through some preliminaries and then a more rigorous series of tests-came through as a perfect match.”
Placing his huge, furry hand on Jack’s chest. His index finger rubbed over and over Jack’s left nipple causing Jack’s heart to race.
”In about an hour, you’ll be wheeled into the operating room. I’ll already be prepped and my chest opened. At this time under partial sedation, the surgeon will open your chest and abdominal cavity, a bone saw will cut through your sternum and rib spreaders will crank open your chest cavity. Your heart and lungs will be carefully but quickly removed from your chest and transferred to an ice water bath and brought over to my table where my open chest will have been cleared of the artificial heart and lungs. Then, barring any unforeseen complications, your heart and lungs will be transplanted into my chest. Think of it as service to your country.”
All the while, the sergeant was explaining the transplant process and without Jack noticing, the surgical team was strapping Jacks wrists and legs to the operating table. By the time Jack was aware of what was going on, the techs had already hooked him up to the various monitors and inserted a central line through his neck. The immediately injected Jack with a paralyzing agent to keep him from struggling on the table.
“Let’s keep moving people-we gotta get this soldier prepped.”
Jack could turn his head but the full breathing apparatus prevented him from talking. From his vantage point he could see the sergeant strip. With his shirt off Jack could make out the scars from previous open heart surgeries. The scar tissue had built up pretty thick’ running from his neck down to his navel. Clearly, the sergeant had been through this a few times already. How many other guys like me has he “recruited” for this honor. How many more will there be. While Jack watched, the sergeant was prepped. First his chest and belly were shaved. This took some time, because even though he was flat on his back, his chest and abdomen were deeply muscled. Two surgical assistants were tasked with shaving the sergeants body. He watched as the sergeant was anesthetized, hooked up to monitors and then, surprisingly quickly, a scalpel sliced through his muscled body. He could hear the bone saw cutting but everything was getting hazy as the sedatives took effect.
If Jack had been fully conscious, he’d have been aware that the bone saw he heard was actually cutting through his rib cage, that’s how quickly the operation was proceeding. The surgical team now prepared to open Jack’s chest. He could hear the cranking of the rib spreader, but couldn’t feel the surgeon’s hands as reached into the open cavity and took hold of his heart.
“This is just about the biggest heart I’ve ever seen” the surgeon said as he felt the beating organ, pressing his gloved fingers into the pulsing ventricles. The surgeon felt the surface of the heart, paying particularly close attention to Jack’s coronary artery. “Good color, and very supple, no apparent hardening.” Now addressing his surgical assistants. “You may remember recruit 22. His heart looked as good as this and when I pressed my finger into the artery” he demonstrated for them. “When I pressed here, he suffered a massive infarct. The plaque inside was dislodged and traveled through his heart, rendering the entire organ useless.”
“Here, this is where we will sever the aorta.” He traced his finger just above the aortic arch. “Once clamped we will begin the removal of his heart. Team two will then simultaneously remove the lungs. Alright you can clamp here.”
At the moment the aorta was clamped, Jack’s entire body tensed and slowly relaxed.
The sergeant had just picked up a new recruit and loaded his car on the carrier. The jumped into the cab. The recruit messed with the A/C controls.
“Geez, does’t this thing work?’
“Well, that’s the army for ya. The radio’s pretty good though” as he turned the dials.
They broke into a news report. “We have a gruesome story to finish out the 5 o’clock hour, Methodist General hospital reported that an unmarked van was found this morning in their ER drive up. Doctors on the scene weren’t prepared for what was waiting for them. The body of a young man, approx 25yrs old, possibly a solder stationed at the local base was discovered in the back of the vehicle. His heart and lungs had been removed, and his chest cavity packed with ice. Reports are still sketchy. We reached out to the base commander but he hasn’t responded. We will update as information comes avai…”
The sergeant turned the dial, “Enough of that! Find another station! There’s gotta be music on there somewhere.”
As the recruit turned the dial, the sergeant reached over, opened the glove box and pulled out a box of poppers. “Here, open a couple of these.” And dropped the box in his lap.
“Is this standard procedure for this program, sarge?” The recruit said skeptically.
“Yeah, it makes the trip go faster, oh, and one more thing, drop the “Sarge”, my name’s Jack.”
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Oh my God, Rikerssexblouse! That salamander embroidery is just stunning!
Did you do it freehand? Or did you have some kind of instruction because if I wanted to take up embroidery before - I now need to do it! 😂🦎💕
Thank you! It was not freehand, and this was actually my first attempt doing one that wasn’t out of a kit. Before this I’d only bought kits on amazon or Etsy, which is nice because you get everything you need, plus instructions. But for a while I’ve wanted to do something of my own design, but I hadn’t quite figured out how. So since it would have been useful for me when I was trying to figure this out, I’m going to explain the whole process. And to be clear, I’m just figuring this out, so maybe people have other strategies, but it worked for me.
First, I took a screenshot of the salamander babies poking out of the hole and opened it up in Procreate. I am not at all experienced with Procreate (my 9 year old is better with Procreate than I am), but I created a second layer, and then drew on the second layer to outline the image. That looked like this:
Then I hid the layer with the screenshot, so you only saw the outline. It looked like this:
Then I printed it out.
Michaels has little squares of fabric for embroidery, so I bought two of those, one white and one purple.
It’s probably overpriced for the amount of fabric you get? But it’s a very convenient size for one embroidery project and it’s just two bucks.
But then I had to transfer the pattern to the fabric. This meant that I had to lay the fabric on the printoff and trace it with a special pen. I used this one.
It’s water soluble, so you can rinse the marks right out when you are done.
The problem I ran into, was that the purple was much too dark to see through to be able to trace, so I had to use the white (I just thought the purple would be more fun but dark colors won’t work well with this strategy). Then I was just filling in the shapes from my pattern. After I was done, I took it out of the hoop, rinsed it in water to rinse away the blue pen marks, pressed it between towels overnight, then put it back on the hoop and tied it up the back.
I think figuring out what stitches to use were might actually be the hardest part. It’s a combination of your vision/creativity and just enough experience with the stitches that you can visualize what they will look like. I used satin stitches (to fill in the big spaces like the salamander babies’ faces and the rocks), lazy daisy stitches (the nostrils), stem stitches (for the outlines), and about a thousand million french knots (the moss). Oh and straight stitches for the letters.
The salamander babies’ heads were hard, because I had to work around the spots and eyes and everything. The hole might be the part I’m most proud of, because my plan to give it depth actually worked. Instead of doing a satin stitch to fill it in smooth, I did straight stitches and arranged them directionally (into the middle and then down) to try to give it shape so you could see how the the hole goes down into the ground. I also used a little gray in between the black to give it some dimension.
The french knots that made up the knots aren’t particularly hard (although I do suggest finding a YouTube video to see how to do it, I could NOT figure it out from written instructions when I first started) but it used up SO MUCH more thread than I ever anticipated. Doing a kit, you get everything you need, but I didn’t know what I needed. Whoops. So I had some last minute panic about running out of thread (literally the night before Threshold Day). So a lot of the color variation is a matter of necessarily rather than my plan. But it worked out well.
If you look closely, the moss on the left has a lot more color variation than the moss on the right, and that is because I was running out of thread. But it’s not too noticeable (hopefully). I do love how the moss looks though! French knots are usually used for little details, but the mass of them gives it so much texture. I love it.
I will say, if you are trying it for the first time, don’t start by doing your own design. Follow a kit and figure out what you are doing first. And don’t be afraid to look up YouTube videos when you can’t figure out how to do something. Video is a MUCH better teacher than words can ever be, in this context. But at the same time, there really isn’t anything that difficult about embroidery. You mostly just have to be patient. I find it quite relaxing.
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Spy's Spec-Bio Essentials
I honestly didn't mean to write a full-on essay, but I couldn't help myself -I love specbio, and the recent revival of interest in it makes me very happy. If you wanna just get right to the meat: normal links are highlighted blue, YouTube links are highlighted red.
Speculative biology has its roots as far back as Pliny the Elder and his Natural History, though most consider H.G. Wells to be the true grandfather of the genre with works such as War of the Worlds, The Time Machine, and Man of the Year Million. However, any speculative biologist worth their salt credits Dougal Dixon as the father of specbio as we know it today –especially since he is the man who coined the term! Dixon's books After Man, Man After Man, and The New Dinosaurs are considered the foundational works of modern specbio. So too is Wayne Barlowe's book Expedition.
While the original printings of these books are very expensive to acquire, After Man recently received a Kindle version, and Expedition has a very good documentary adaptation available in totality on YouTube. Another important work of early speculative biology was the Discovery Channel limited series The Future Is Wild, a documentary show exploring the possible futures of life on Earth in several million years' time.
With the rise of the internet, people interested in speculative biology –those few and far between– could share their thoughts and amateur works with each other. Online specbio hit its first height around the mid-aughts to early tens, featuring many notable works that were very influential to me personally when I joined the scene circa 2014. Unfortunately, right around when I joined there was a notable "mass extinction" –many of the more active and prominent figures of the specbio community left the web behind for various reasons, and thus the golden age ended.
In recent years, partially thanks to certain YouTube video essays on the classic projects, interest in speculative biology seems to have increased dramatically! I've taken to calling the current era the "specbio renaissance," and it makes me so happy to see new, younger people interested in this unique facet of creativity. In light of this I've created this master post of my personal recommendations of essential specbio works for new "speccers" to enjoy!
The specbio community has congregated on forums for decades. I personally joined the community via DeviantArt right around when the old ZetaBoards forum underwent a massive host shift and never participated on the forum all that much, but fortunately the old Speculative Evolution Forum is still up and still active!
For those who'd prefer a simpler way to keep up with current events in the specbio community, Astrovitae is a free e-magazine dedicated to contemporary spec. A product of the recent specbio renaissance, Astrovitae only has a handful of issues thus far but is already becoming a staple publication in the field.
I made this post to provide what I think is key information and important resources, but the SpecBio Wiki is a far more thorough companion to your journey into the world of speculative biology. As always, though: beware ye old Wiki Rabbit Hole!
Biblaridion's Alien Biospheres video series is an excellent entry point for anyone looking to learn the basics of specbio. It's a demo xenobiology project, with a heavy focus on the scientific concepts used in building up the world and its ecology.
Curious Archive's Alien Worlds video series is an excellent collection of bite-size examinations of various specbio projects, including several on this list!
Nemo Ramjet (C. M. Kösemen)'s Life on Snaiad is universally considered a classic work of speculative biology, started in the early days of the golden age of internet specbio. Snaiad is an alien planet, in its early days of human habitation, filled with strange lifeforms bearing two "heads."
Kösemen's other well-known classic work is Alltomorrows, a short ebook exploring hundreds of millions of years' worth of possible human evolution. Readers, be advised: this work contains extensive body horror and discussion of human extinction, both circumstantial and deliberate.
Sagan IV, originally created by Hydromancerx, is one of the oldest and most extensive specbio projects. Started as a simple artistic exercise on a forum in 2006, Sagan IV has evolved into a large, highly collaborative vision of an alien world inspired by the works of Carl Sagan. It is still ongoing today, and you can participate in their regular contests and activities!
Gert van Dijk's Furaha is another of the well-known classic specbio projects, and one of the few from the golden age that is still fully active. Furaha itself is an alien world orbiting Nu Phoenicis which harbors a fascinating native biosphere, built upon carefully-researched biomechanics. The site itself is laid out much like an encyclopedia, and the accompanying blog is a treasure trove of specbio know-how and community history!
Sunrise on Ilion, a xenobiology project by @supermalmoworld, is a personal favorite of mine. Ilion is a planet tidally locked to a red dwarf star, and its endemic lifeforms often challenge our expectations for Earth-like ecology. The website boasts extremely detailed information on the setting and its inhabitants, as well as in-universe articles and logs of the various human expeditions to this fascinating world. The project is still active on a very sporadic basis, at least as per blog entries.
Nereus is a xenobiology project created by Evan Black; another reasonably well-known golden age work but one that is unfortunately no longer active. The world of Nereus, orbiting the star Achird, teems with life unfamiliar to the humans which seek to adopt it as their home. Like many specbio projects it adopts a documentarian style, but there are plenty of nuggets of story tucked in the articles.
Serina is a contemporary speculative evolution project created by the legendary Sheather; it is what I would consider the holotype of the "seed-world" branch of specbio. Serina is a planet populated only by the descendants of the domestic canary (and a few other organisms like guppies, snails, ants, sunflowers, bamboo, algae, etc). The project digs deeply into the various unique niches of the world and the organisms that evolve to fill them, and in doing so mixes nature-documentarian style with some of the most compelling and emotionally engaging storytelling I have read in years.
These are just what I think are the essentials. There are numerous other fantastic projects, both contemporary and from years ago, that I would highly suggest investigating! Contemporary honorable mentions that personally inspire me include @alexriesart's birrin, @iguanodont's birgs, @jayrockin's Runaway to the Stars, Christian Cline's Teeming Universe, Keenan Taylor's Kaimere, and my friend Mičkin's Temere!
#sorry about the @ mentions folks I just think your works are cool and deserved inclusion!#edit: thank you to the anon who reminded me about Sagan 4#spy has thoughts#long post#please don't mind the organizing tags here#speculative biology#speculative evolution#speculative ecology#xenobiology#specbio#spec bio#specevo#spec evo#dougal dixon#after man#man after man#wayne barlowe#darwin iv#the future is wild#snaiad#all tomorrows#Sagan 4#Furaha#Ilion#Nereus#Serina
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Misguided Ghosts, Part 2
Summary: Jake comes to help out in your new house
Pairings: Jake Jensen X Reader
Rating: explicit
Warnings: explicit language, explicit sexual content, somnophilia, fingering, air humping, pissy Charles, mutual pining, 18+ ONLY
Word Count: 2K
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Series Masterlist
*dividers created by @firefly-graphics
Letting out a soft sigh, you peek your eyes open in the gray room. You felt wrecked. Your body used in an almost unholy way. Flipping towards your side, you know that your late night masturbation, and dreaming of the man over your fireplace had you feeling off. “What did you do to me?” You ask, closing your eyes. Charles nods his head while staring at your spent body. You were going to be perfect for him, and all alone.
You loved it. Every time his body would slither in between your legs, you would open your thighs wide, ready to take him. Lucky for him you felt it was just an erotic dream. What luck he had. He couldn’t wait for every time your eyes started to drift close. He would have his way again and again, until it took. If it could. He wasn’t sure.
He was sure that he came in you. Watched his almost translucent spunk ooze out of your body. But would it be enough?
You groan as a geeky little diddy lights up your phone. The theme song to Game of Thrones only meant one thing. Reaching over onto the bedside table, you just answer, not saying a word, “Giggles!”
“Shh, not so loud, Jakey.”
“Okay, listen. Like, I’m thinking I’m almost there, but…okay, there’s this Addams Family house up on the hill.”
“That’s the one,” a soft smile prints on your face, realizing your ridiculously handsome and sexy best friend was just down the hill. Throwing your covers off you, you search for some shoes to put on. Not caring about your appearance, Jake has seen you at your worst.
“So, I just drive up to the house on Haunted Hill? And then, I get to see your gorgeous face?”
“Yes, cutie! Now, let’s go.”
Cutie? Charles’ eyes dart around the room, before he leaves his portrait. Who were you talking to? Why did your smile get bigger? And you were just sore, and now you were dancing around down the stairs.
“There’s this giant gate. Never mind,” he whispers when you go to have them open. “Am I really at the right place? Colonel Mustard isn’t going to whack me in the head with a candlestick in the library, right?”
“No, I would never be Colonel Mustard, Jakey,” his ridiculously yellow hummer pulls into the drive, and you have to calm your breathing. Even when he jumps out and those gigantic arms are right there, and ready for you to just pinch and hold. Pretending you weren’t in love with him, by saying he’s your best friend. You wanted all of Jake.
“Jake!” You scream running down the porch steps, and bouncing into his arms. “I thought you weren’t coming for another week,” he smelled amazing. His arms wrap around your chest, and hold you tight into him. He didn’t realize just how attractive he was.
Get rid of him. Charles did not like this man. You were his. He stares hard at Jake, but he never makes any romantic gestures. That was working in this stupid man’s favor. But he was holding you too tightly. And you were his!
“Yeah, well, the bimbo…”
“Jacob, I told you, you’re the bimbo in the relationship, you can’t date another one. They don’t deserve you anyways,” he sets you down onto the ground, and Charles spots it. His hand coasts down to your waist, settling at your hips. His fingers twitch around wanting to hold you closer. He wanted you pressed up against him again.
“I know. You’ve told me before. Next girl I date, I’ve got to get your approval. Ahh!” Jake screams pointing at the steps. Charles nervously waits, thinking that he had been spotted. Some humans could see ghosts without being made available to them. “A black cat! You literally bought Leatherface’s house.”
“Leatherface is modern,” you groan, pulling at his hand, and that goofy man smirks as you pull him into the house. “This is historic. It’s gorgeous. It needs work, but,” you open up the door, and Jake lets out a sound of awe. “The space! It’s close to town, but far enough away, so when there’s children…I mean, if I have kids, it’s like they live in this castle.”
Blackwood Manor! Charles screams into Jake’s ear. Jake grimaces, rubbing into his ear. “You okay, Handsome?”
“Yeah. This place slightly gives me the creeps. Who ya gonna call, am I right?” His mouth turns up in that crooked smile, as a laugh huffs past his lips. “Look at that chair!” His voice growls out as he walks towards a sitting chair.
Do not let him sit in my chair! Charles’ hand touches your own, and you shake your head at Jake.
“No, that chair stays empty.”
“Odd request. Is there something I should know?” His hand pets over the arm, giving you his best crazed smile.
“It just feels wrong. I think it’s his,” you start to walk up the stairs, and Jake bounds after you.
“Who is he?” You don’t answer. You just giggle walking up the stairs. “Giggles! Giggly box! Who is he?”
“Wait,” your laugh was so heartwarming to Jake. He could get used to it. Could listen to it daily.
“I just have so many questions. A creepy house like this has to have such a history. It’s so retro, but then also it’s eerie, no?”
This is my home! You need to get rid of him! I don’t like him! He’s touching you and looking at your ass! He gives you no respect! Only one man in this household!
You glance back at Jake, stopping on the stairs. He was in fact looking at your ass, and not paying attention to what you were doing, and ran into your back. “Ah, why are you stopping?”
“What were you doing?”
“Counting the steps. It’s a tick of mine,” he answers quickly, looking away from your rear end. You were always going to have to walk in front of him.
How many are there?
“How many steps then?”
“There's twenty-seven. It’s an odd number. I don’t like it,” he awkwardly smiles at you when you bite your lip.
He’s lying! There’s twenty-four. He was looking at your ass!
Judging by his awkward smile, and his fidgeting hands, you had caught him. And you didn’t care, you would rather have him touching your ass. “If you say so. Now,” grabbing at his hand you pull him into the room that you decided would be your own. Opening the door wide, Jake jumps backwards at the portrait. “There he is. Charles Blackwood.”
I’m the handsome one.
“It’s looking at your bed.”
“He is,” you laugh. You can’t believe you brought him in here with your room and bed a mess.
“Did you have company last night?” His voice seemed sad, and you look at him oddly, shaking your head.
I fucked her all night last night! Had that cunt hugging my cock all night long. That’s why she was sleepy, and you ruined everything!
“Why are you asking?”
“It’s just…your bed’s a mess,” Jake’s feet shuffle around, and he looks back over towards Charles. “Maybe it’s his fault.”
It is! I had her gripping onto the sheets, crying at how good I made her feel. You could never! Now leave!
“I don’t think he likes me,” Jake stares at the portrait. The hair on his back starts to prickle up, and he scratches at his neck. “I’m gonna turn him around.”
Don’t you dare! That is mine!
“Suit yourself,” continuing to make your bed, and unaware of the tantrum that your ghost man of the house was pitching. Jake gives a nod to the portrait facing the wall now. “It looks like he’s in a timeout. What do you think he was like?”
I was handsome! I will live like that in eternity, and we will have the most beautiful hybrid babies of mine. But he needs to go! Get rid of him!
“I don’t want to talk about him.”
What?
Jake walks over to your body, grabbing your hips to pull you closer to him, “Jake?”
“I bet there’s an amazing old record player with these scratchy albums that would make the most amazing music for us to dance to, or,” he stutters out, getting a whiff of your perfume from the day before. It still smelled so perfectly sweet, and so very you. “Or y’know, just clean up this filthy place.”
It’s not filthy! It’s old. No one has lived here with me. I can’t clean.
“It has character. Let’s work on your room,” you gulp up at him.
“Or, if there’s more important things. We don’t need to worry about making you a room. I mean, the bed is big enough. We’ve slept in the same bed before. It is big enough,” he was repeating himself, and becoming more nervous with each moment. Ugh, why did you make him nervous?
No! No! This is our bed! You keep him out!
“Yeah,” you whisper, nodding your head. This was not at all how Charles had envisioned his life with you. You were to take him every night. He was exhausted trying to keep Jake away from his things. He was tainting this house. Charles saw the way you stared at him, and the need you felt to please him, it sickens Charles. You were supposed to do that with him! Only him!
He needs to go!
Charles’ fingers drift up your leg, settling in between your thighs as he works on your bundle of nerves. Careful to stand on the side of the bed, seeing how Jake was on the bed with you. You would see Charles Blackwood was better suited for you. His fingers drift lower and into your drenched folds.
His free hand starts to undo his shirt, and he starts panting, when your breathing turns labored. Maybe he could pull this off. Have you with Jake beside him. Maybe. Your whimpering though, wakes Jake. He sits up a bit in the bed staring at your body. Your skin glimmering with your sweat. Those pretty little sounds echoing off your lips. “What’s got cha worked up, Giggles.”
Me!
Jake bites at his lip, he knows he shouldn’t touch you. Knows he should just enjoy whatever wet dream you were having, but he needs to feel you. His hand gets closer to your core, and Charles lets out a growl.
Don’t you dare! This is mine! I made her this wet.
Jake goes into a zone, touching on your sex, and everything else disappears.
I do it better! Charles pushes his fingers deeper into you, while Jake rubs gently over your little nub. A salacious moan fills up the room, and Jake’s cock strains under his boxers. You looked so pretty like this.
Quit touching her! This is my princess!
“You’re so wet,” Jake laments as his fingers push into your warmth. “Fuck!” He can’t believe how wet you were. How tight your cunt was, and just how your body moved with his motions. “Wow.”
I did this! Get out!
Your eyes start to flutter, and Jake pulls back. “This is wrong.”
Exactly! Leave her alone! What?
Your body turns to the side, throwing a leg over Jake, and you start grinding over him, “You’re killing me, sweetheart. But I’m gonna let you,” he was rock hard watching you. Your slick coating his thigh, and unbeknownst to him, Charles stares angrily at the moment.
I hate you! But Charles doesn’t leave. He just watches how desperate you were for touch. He got you that hot, but Jake gets to feel you.
His voice mixes with yours, creating a lewd and sensual theme song to your mutual pinings. Charles is furious. Jake’s hips jut upward, matching your speed perfectly. “Right there, Giggles,” he pants, trying to envision you bouncing over top of his cock. “Fuck. Fuck. Fuck,” his voice starting to trail off with every thrust into the air.
“Jake,” you whisper, a hard and nasty grind over him making you come undone.
“Yeah,” he whispers as he cums untouched. “Yeah, that was incredible,” he looks towards you and pouts, “And you won’t even remember it! This isn’t fair.”
I fucked her all night the first night, you pathetic weasel! She is mine! Now, I must get rid of you.
“Jake,” you whisper again. Jake wraps his arm around your back, and pulls you closer to him.
“You’re gonna be the death of me. And I will give you babies, and we can live in your creepy house.”
My house! My babies!
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Masterlist
Taglist: @tis-thedamn-season @marveloustaylortot @pono-pura-vida @sstan-hoe @infatuatedjanes @whiskeytangofoxtrot- @peaches1958 @thedarkplume @duuhrayliegh @rebekahdawkins @johndeaconshands @seitmai @redbloodedgurl @whimsyplaty92 @sgtjaamesbaarnes @missusbarnes-rogers @km-ffluv
#misguided ghosts#jake jensen#jake jensen x reader#jake jensen x fem!reader#jake jensen x y/n#jake jensen x you#jake jensen smut#jake jensen fics#jake jensen fanfiction#jake jensen fic#charles blackwood#ghost!charles blackwood#charles blackwood x reader#charles blackwood x y/n#charles blackwood x you#charles blackwood x fem!reader#charles blackwood smut#chris evans#sebastian stan#charles blackwood fic#charles blackwood fics#charles blackwood fanfiction
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Don't really see any Fluffy content in this account. So can I have Soft!Yandere 1 p or 2 p America( your choice ) headcanons. Please make it as Fluffy( yet kind of dark) as possible.
I feel most obliged, thus you are getting both
Yandere Americas - Fluff
1p America
Alfred would, on a part, dream of having of living out that Americana dream with you – a house, a family, him coming back home every day to you setting the table for dinner. While he would claim to everybody he would know that he is a progressive man that would allow you to work, in truth he would balk at that. This would partially be because a part of him is old-fashioned and would want to see you subservient to him – it would stroke his ego. Other than that, if you have work that would mean that you would have your own source of income and would know people other than him; and he can’t let you have a life outside of him.
He might let you work in a low-contact job, as an archivist or from home, and that would only be if he were feeling generous. Additionally, your bank accounts would be joined officially, entirely his unofficially. Alfred would do everything in his power to ensure that you wouldn’t have any financial freedom and that you would have to fully rely on him. What he would allow would be very casual contacts. For that, he would take you to a lot of parties, from formal gathering to raunchy frat parties. It would also serve as a flashy distraction for you from his darker sides.
Ideally, in his mind, you would be available to him at any and all times of the day. Sometimes, he would even forget that you have to do other things other than entertaining or appeasing him. In those moments, he would be inclined to be waspish and might even snap at you.
Being as materialistic as he is, Alfred would gladly give out a lot of money, a.k.a spoil you, to ensure that you would find him attractive and a good partner. He would give you anything, as long as he would endorse it, from the newest iPhone to a luxury trip to Bali. If it would be something really expensive, even by his standards, he would simply print more money and not worry about the long term costs. Should you get upset with him about something, then he would simply buy you something costly, something that he would think could “buy” him your affections and goodwill. Do be wary though – he wouldn’t take it well if he thought you are just playing so nice because he has a lot of money.
Since Alfred is a die-hard idealist, he would see himself as the moral template everybody has to follow. Or at least, everybody has to live according to his rules. While he would allow to be have your own personality, there would be a moral baseline that he would make you adhere to. If you would already do so, be would reinforce those believes, if not, then he would refashion you to his ideal. He would boast on how he lead you on the right path, flaunt you as an example of his righteousness. In order to get you on “the path”, he would implement a carrot-and-the-stick system.
Part of that would reflect on how much affection you would get from Alfred. Once in his thrall, he would be very affectionate towards you. However, if you would go against his will, he wouldn’t hesitate to give you the cold shoulder from a few day.
Else, he would constantly have a hand on your waist, on your shoulder or on your knee. He wouldn’t be sparse with the praise, electing to smother you so that you would be more inclined to stay with him. Of course, he would in turn demand that you would be equally affectionate and if you wouldn’t want to be left to rot, you would better do that.
2p! America
Allen would be less physically affectionate than his 1p! Counterpart but he would make up in that by isolating you all the more. Seeing that he would be well-aware of you being disillusioned by the fast-paced modern lifestyle, he wouldn’t encounter much resistance in convincing you to move away and join a commune with him (for all you know, it could be a cult). There he would have considerable control over you, since you would only really have him and the commune cult to rely on. Tearing yourself out of your newfound social circle would only grow more difficult, the more time that would pass, after all.
With so many people watching your every move, and lecturing you on morality and the world, he wouldn’t have to do much work himself. Should you confess to him that you have grown sick of your new lifestyle, he would present mock-consideration; and then he would gossip about what you told him.
That way, somebody else would wind up punishing you and he could continue to present himself as the hero in the whole story, as the good guy that would always have your back. Nevertheless, there would be times would be would be snide and pushy towards you. After his anger or frustration would dissipate, he would do his best to make it up to you – foot massages, hot bathes and swaddling you in fluffy blankets.
On that note, out of the two Americas, he would be the easiest to guilt trip. Alfred would just laugh off your blatant manipulations or even outright accuse you of lying. Allen on the other hand, would actually listen to you and take your complaints into consideration, however, only as far as his pride would allow him. He is also the person that would be very inclined to sweep certain issues under the rug and therefore hyperfocus on others.
A/N: At this point, I just want to throw my two cents in: I think it is a bit ironic when American conservatives talk about the ye good old day, aka the 1950s. That was a decade when the US, aside from all the social oppression, had stricter gun laws, and programms for free college education and free health care. Not to mention that taxes were higher and the country was moving towards being secular at the time. Figures.
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