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bluebudgie · 1 year

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So... what's up with these two?

(I love recycling old pictures.png)

You may or may not have seen me draw these rats repeatedly and you may or may not care what's up with them.

Well, in case you do... buckle up, we'll be here for a while.

Just in case: very vague ableism mention. I'm cutting down on pretty much all details, but just so you know the general topic comes up at some point. Don't want to make anyone uncomfortable.

Unrelated disclaimer: words are difficult.

It's probably smart to start with a general character introduction so you get an idea of who you're dealing with.

So, Petthri.

(Shared most of this stuff about him before, now it's gathered in one place at least.)

The outgoing guy, grew up in a supportive family, always been the popular kid among peers, and later a pretty popular professor with his students (less so with some other colleagues, but hey). Very passionate about animal bioacoustics. Very hands-on when it comes to research and teaching. Infodumps a lot.

He's got his heart in the right place, but he's obviously not flawless. Has his thoughts constantly drifting in twelve different directions at once, can definitely not read the room, and has absolutely said and done things that hurt others just because he didn't think (and probably never realized). Likely to nervously laugh his way through most dangerous situations, but does manage to pull himself together and get things done if things turn really bad.

He got – at some point (precise date TBA, sometime around PoF events) – kidnapped by the Inquest because they wanted some of his research but didn't manage to sort through his mess. So they just took the entire man to the CoE and decided to keep him. Niche knowledge could always be useful after all. They were even kind enough to gift him an additional facial scar during the welcome interrogation! (The other one was a field trip accident). True hospitality.

Not sure if it's incredible optimism or naivety, but he's generally been doing alright during this whole prisoner situation. He's not locked up, they let him work on things he actually cares about (albeit not for the right cause), and overall he's had enough hope to believe he'll get out of there one day. Make the best out of the present, it'll be fine somehow.

I'm sure if you were to dig deep enough he'd find out he's actually less alright than he thinks he is. Oh well.

Let's talk about the other guy. Lahpp.

Me. I created you. (I've said barely anything about this man on here so far bc while I could fill the 20k essay with him alone, writing about him intimidates me lol. Also in case you're ever asking yourself this, no I did not realize his name sounds like 'lab' until weeks after I created him. Unfortunate coincidence. So, anyway...)

Obedient Inquest scientist, questions but doesn't oppose orders, has been doing the same work for the better part of the last two decades. Day in, day out, getting up early and staying up late. Somewhere in the middle of the pyramid scheme, he's definitely got a bunch of heads above him but he's nowhere near the bottom end of the chain. Got his own little lab space. Enjoys music theory in the little free time he allocates. Assertive, lets people know when not to bother him, but very polite nonetheless. Has mastered the art of superficial small talk. The guy who holds open doors and pulls your chair back for you with an acted but convincing smile. Truly employee of the month material.

He's never known anything but this perfectly ordered working drone life so he's fairly content with his current position.

....

Yeeaah you guessed there's more below the surface.

So this man's life started with being the subject of a failed genetic dragon magic experiment, first one in a handful of infants that actually lived, but ultimately he got nothing out of it but a fair share of various health conditions and disabilities. The initial project was dropped after a few years of surveillance with no results, and instead he got handed over to one of the medical departments so they could "at least make use of him" and test some cutting-edge medical tech. No wasting ressources, am I right? (:

Fastforward some years, a miserable childhood full of abuse and ableism (and by extension just as much of it internalized) essentially left him with the obsession of wanting to fit in with everyone else, wanting to be like everyone else, never having anyone find out anything about his conditions and his past. Worked his ass off in college so it wouldn't be apparent he struggled when others didn't. Created a work environment for himself that he knew would be accommodating to him while not raising any possible questions.

He's been doing fine for some time now; while he definitely hasn't gotten rid of his insecurities he has somewhat accepted that he just... is who he is. Some days are worse and some days are better. His brain has done a very thorough job suppressing pretty much all his early childhood memories. He has also convinced himself that being a perfectly exploitable asset to the corporation that abused him for years is definitely the right way to stick it to the system. They said he'd never be useful for anything and die an early death? Ha, showed 'em! (I am saying this with a lot of sarcasm. He is genuine.)

He's definitely a product of the environment he grew up in, which is a shame because if he hadn't been indoctrinated by the Inquest since birth he would have probably turned out a pretty decent person. He doesn't have the absolute worst inner moral compass. Alas, as it is he has contributed to [some fucked up things] and has [some fucked up views]. And he's not about to change that.

So... at what point do the stories of these two actually connect?

Petthri and Lahpp first met within a larger group of mostly scientists from mixed divisions that were sent on a trip to Rata Primus.

I won't go into the full details of The Rata Primus Odyssey now because that is a whole different story arc involving a total of six of my characters, but the relevant information is that they arrived in the wrong place at the wrong time (A Bug In The System says hello!), and got trapped in the main complex together (alongside Phlish and my charr engineer Leto) when Awakened shit hit the fan.

In short, the following escape mission lasted way too long, and made for an incredibly exhausting 0/10 experience for everyone involved. Cooperation between our two relevant asura actually went surprisingly smooth for the most part, at least way better than with the rest of the small group.

(Bringing that old edit back. Two criminals actually getting shit done in the back while the others are about to snap each other's head off.)

I did once offhandedly mention that Lahpp held Petthri at gunpoint exactly one time – that was here. He was not going to risk getting onto HQ's watch list for letting a prisoner slip away while he's even remotely involved.

Ultimately exhaustion and having no access to important medication for a prolonged amount of time got the better end of Lahpp, and while the other two would have probably just left the "dead weight" behind, Petthri made sure he made it out with them. Not a great time for the little Inquest criminal, both physically and mentally given his inclination for secrecy regarding certain topics.

A few days after they returned to the CoE Petthri checked up on Lahpp to make sure he's recovering, but afterwards... radio silence from both sides for the next few years.

–

Fastforward, it's now Cantha time!

If Lahpp had a piece of gold for everytime HQ sent him away on a "business trip" that'll end up nearly killing him, and likewise Petthri had one for everytime he'd be witness to that, they'd both have... two pieces of gold, which isn't much, but it's still weird it happened twice.

Once again as part of a larger group, our criminals find themselves in New Kaineng City. And because I am a mere human being that is not above resorting to overused tropes, they do of course end up having to share the same room for the time of their stay. I never claimed to be a mastermind storywriter.

At least this time the trip starts out fairly unspectacular, with mostly guided group tours through the city and its labs. Lahpp is not feeling too great (understatement) during all of this for reasons he can't quite grasp, but he's got a really bad gut feeling. Petthri actually notices he's lingering a lot and falling behind, so he suggests they split off from the rest of the group and go back to their room early. Get some rest, the journey to Cantha was long after all.

The next days are pretty calm, the Inquest is snooping around while our two heroes actually have some time to talk and get to know each other a little more. Petthri finally gets to tell someone his whole 'and this is how I was kidnapped!' story. Petthri's questions are getting a little too personal for Lahpp's taste, but overall they get along alright. It's almost like two people that have been way too lonely for several years are actually finding a bit of comfort for a moment. (Side note: Petthri warms up to people very quickly, and he might be (without realizing it) getting a little too comfortable with the idea of having found someone "redeemable".)

Now wouldn't it be great if a nearby reactor blew up and an elder dragon escaped?

The event itself isn't really affecting them (yet) but I do think Lahpp must be questioning the Eternal Alchemy at this point. Thaumanova. Multiple near-meltdowns in the Crucible. Rata Primus. Now this. Seriously, at some point it's just ridiculous.

With each new information surfacing, the "bad gut feeling" is slowly but surely turning into mild but continuous panic. Something is off and it clearly has something to do with dragons. Now, Lahpp never really cared about the whole elder dragon business. Whatever sort of magic experiment he was used for, it's the outcome that affected his life, not the source of it. Still, the thoughts are starting to occupy his mind more than he'd like to admit. Petthri is entirely unaware of any of this.

Oh wait – what's this? A new unknown form of raw magic rapidly spreading and threatening to destroy Tyria? Obviously this is something to be investigated, so the larger group coordinates an excursion to Dragon's End. And obviously they end up getting into the battle for the jade sea.

I guess at this point you see where my art is coming from.

Petthri and Lahpp never get to fight Soo-Won herself (no canon meta participation alas), but they are busy enough fending off Void creatures on ground level anyway. It's unclear (to me) if or how much the Void actually affects Lahpp on a physical level, but regardless he is not having the best time being confronted with something that is so unknown to him and yet so closely connected to his very being.

Some resurfacing traumatic memories combined with a not-so-pretty panic attack (and the physical stress of fighting) later, it's poor Petthri's task to once again take a blacked out criminal to safety. Meanwhile he's got absolutely no idea what is going on, but he's definitely going to demand some explanations.

For some days after this Petthri's playing bedside vigil in a New Kaineng medical facility. The two have a lot of time to talk. Personal topics. Uncomfortable topics. Lahpp does tell Petthri to go back to Rata Sum, he's beyond caring at this point. Quite frankly he thinks HQ won't care either. Petthri refuses to leave just like that. Asks Lahpp to come with him, he'll be better off away from the Inquest. Obviously Lahpp is not having any of it, he's very well aware the Inquest is as corrupt as it gets, but so is Rata Sum. That's just how the world functions. The Inquest has the meds and tech he needs to survive. He's not leaving. And he certainly doesn't need anyone acting self-sacrificial out of pity. It's degrading.

He tells Petthri to sleep on it and make up his mind the next day.

–

Aaand that is pretty much where the somewhat coherently planned part of my current rat-timeline ends. A glimpse into vague concepts for the future:

Enter a third character to the roster! It's Luqqah, Inquest medic-turned-biochemist. She happened to be in Cantha for a while now, doing her own research. She gets involved treating the injured after the whole Void mess. Naturally she ends up finding Petthri and Lahpp. Lucky for the latter, because she obviously has better knowledge dealing with asura than any of the human medics. And... in fact... she has pretty detailed knowledge about what's up with Lahpp specifically. Dealt with his medical papers in the past. Oh, also... they're exes. Don't worry, parted on good terms. Haven't seen each other since shortly after the Thaumanova meltdown. What a reunion.

So... yeah. It's gonna be trio time from now on. I don't know yet for how long the three of them stay in Cantha, or if they're going to get involved with the whole Gyala Delve storyline (or whatever comes out of it). Lahpp's not doing great, he'll need a while recovering. If he ever fully recovers. Petthri has a few of his own inner demons to fight. Time will tell.

As a conclusion... Petthri's saviour complex sets him on a good path towards a corruption arc while Lahpp's as close to a redemption arc as he'll get. They're both questioning their life and views a lot. Spoiler from the Omniscient Narrator: Both of them will be back in the Crucible. But with more thoughts to think than before. And more time to spend together.

And that's what's currently up with the rats.

#godspeed to all of you.#if you actually made it to the end: you have my eternal gratitude these rats mean a lot to me and this ultimate infodump was difficult #there is so much more to each of them separately and to some of the things i'm mentioning kinda briefly. some things i didnt mention at all #but this should cover at least a good chunk of what is relevant to both of them together #i wish i could just transfer all my thoughts to you telepathically but alas assorted words and images will have to do #budgie plays gw2

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killerbananas · 2 years

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What We Do on the Big Ass Island

Chapter Four ↝ Lyre, Liar, Bonfire

Series Summary: Crack! mockumentary of a bunch of immortal youths competing for something grand. They may be just shy of two centuries old on average, but these gifted people know how to tear shit up. Honestly, if these interviewers don't get their act together, you'll happily do it for them. Fuck the tranquilizers. Let's find out why you're here and who is blessed with your very irate and aroused company.

Chapter Summary: The war council quartet gets interviewed to various success. Eventually, campfire revelry breeds bonds of kinship.

🔞 Ch. One | Previous Chapter | Masterlist | Next Chapter | WC: 4,170

Pairings: afab!reader (she/her) x multi; x polycule (Erwin, Miche, Levi, Hange)

Warnings: smut; dubcon/inebriated/aphrodisiacal sexcapades, Dom/sub dynamics, restraints/shibari, objectification, exhibitionism, voyeurism, masturbation, frottage/leg humping, intercrural sex, thumb sucking, hair pulling, degradation/humiliation, come eating, come play, come marking, just so much come, oral sex sorta, nipple piercings, sexual magick and manipulation

"Dialogue." 'Thoughts.' "Past dialogue."

The camera zooms out in a candid misfocus as the image improves to reveal Erwin, smiling welcomingly as the host clears their throat. Their scales reflect the oddly angled lights as the cameras whir and blink into harmonized livelihood.

“Welcome back to another interview. It seems you’ve found your group well enough.”

“Well, we were all left in the same wing of rooms when we woke up.”

“Fair. Moving along. Do you find yourself being the natural leader in these situations? What does that say for other competitors?”

“I suppose so. I like organization and unity. It’s worked well for me in the past, but it depends on what the group’s and individual’s goals are really. Some work out more cohesively than others. Perhaps they need a little nudge in development or whatever the right direction might be if they are a bit, say, tunnel-focused. Nothing that can’t be addressed.”

“Interesting philosophy. Do you plan to keep everyone in your group at a fair playing field? Or is it going to be one of Those kinds of things?”

His cordial countenance does not waiver as he maintains his line-of-sight, responding with what translates as genuine curiosity.

“Hm? Can you elaborate?”

The host’s vertically slit pupil contracts with a flaring of their nostrils as they reevaluate the budding front-runner. Erwin was already mentally planning his afternoon.

‘I need to ask Miche if he got anything more out of that little unknown in our den. Better yet, perhaps I can try to get a bit from our friend here.’

Erwin let his mind tether the ties needed to socially maneuver the conversation where it would benefit him the most just a few syllables in to saving the host from having to lose face over what kind of explanation they would have to intonate. It was the right move considering he could pick up on the intentionally vague aspects the interviews often held. It was as if the interviewer was offering rope to hang oneself with in doses interspersed by methodical precision, revealing patterns. It didn't ring natural, but rehearsed in the guise of simply disrespectful reverberations of someone else's motivations projected for the situation. What pompous ass was handing this rhetoric down?

"To be honest, that also depends on the individuals around me. It's hard to justify the responsibility to make grand judgments simply because I could possibly see myself as somehow more capable than them. Even if it's factual faith in their historical precedence alone or knowing their subconscious denials and humblings, it takes a great deal of evidence for me to want to alter anything without a compatriot's knowledge. I know a lot about those around me. I listen, but we all know the world could stand to be a bit fairer in general. Why don't you tell me a bit about how fair the competition is here? We've been given a new player late in the game. Was that to be an intentional boon, a fool's trap, or chaotic chance?"

"Ah ha, well, would you believe me if I said all three?"

'Perhaps, but should I?'

The camera lightly jostles as its holder accidentally bumps the tripod with a nervous chuckle in the pin-drop quiet atmosphere seeping between the lithe man in the chair, sculpted arms easily dwarfing the rests and just managing to keep him supported, and the host.

“Ahem, Mr. Mee-Kay. Are you with us? Did you hear my question?”

He wishes he did not, but he has waited too long to play the silence off as anything other than via deserved inquiry, “Repeat that again for me?”

“Ah, yes, well, I asked: Are you going to do that thing with your flute?”

“You perhaps mean my lyre?”

“No, I’m fairly certain it’s a flute. That one with the strings.”

“My lyre.”

“So, when will we hear some of your famous flute works? Planning to entrance any pests to weaponize?”

“I think you’re referring to a children’s fable, but yes, I am hoping to play my lyre tonight around the fire.”

‘The only vermin I’d like to hypnotize into fucking off, is you.’

“Should we be concerned that you might raise an army of unliving beings from the island like last time?”

Miche raises an eyebrow, concerned for Xavier’s mental wellness at this point.

“I think we’ll be alright, but tell me more about this previous episode you're recalling.”

Levi carefully tucks his hair back to perfection before giving a brief nod to the eagerly awaiting interviewer.

“What plans are being made in the group?”

“What makes you think you have a right to know?”

“Well, I am here on behalf of our sponsors for this whole Rites of Passage you’re all doing. I believe that between that fact and the darts, there isn’t anything you should really be holding back from me.”

Levi stares unblinkingly at the lidless dark gaze of the host, as if daring them to ask again. Xavier clears their throat before trying a different route.

“What do you intend to do if you place in the top?”

“When I place in the top, I’ll do whatever is needed to erase the titans plaguing our lands.”

“Alright, very ambitious. How do you think your team is going to do with tonight’s initiation?”

“Initiation?”

Levi’s eyebrows furrow, energy crackling around his aura in a testy manner. Xavier listens to the panicked voice of their assistant in their ear wailing that the question was not meant for this segment, encouraging the endangered host to creep their fingers closer to the Lights Out button. Levi’s eyes readily follow, foot quickly acting to kick the plate off the table before him and smash into Xavier’s hand.

“I do not like to repeat myself.”

Hange rearranges their legs to a more open stance, energy forthcoming with their torso erect and eyes widely attending to Xavier.

“What kind of physical prowess comes with your intense intellectual focus? Word on the vine is that some people are questioning if you’re any use outside of the library? Lab? One of those “l” words.”

‘What kind of creature is this individual? Their eyes are quite the conundrum of life, nothing I’m familiar with except the lizards in the forests. Do they think this tactic works on everyone? I assume it’s meant to rile me up. Are all the local sentients this low in intellect or is it just my outlier experience? Hmm.’

“I am so elated you decided to mention my lab work. I have a few updates that I would love to get into detail with you about. Y’know, Xavier, I really treasure our time here and I’m going to love getting into the nitty gritty for you, my friend. Tell me, what do you know about titan reproduction? I have been investigating the darkest places on Earth to try to shed some light on understanding these crucial phenomena.”

‘Stay with me, buddy. I need some answers.’

“When was the last time you had a close-up encounter with a titan? None of us have felt any tremblings along the island to indicate heavy activity, no smashed human remains. This place is pretty pristine. Has it always been that way?”

Xavier raises an eyebrow and looks confused.

“I’m not sure I know what you’re talking about.”

Hange amps up the emphasis of their radiant grin, unbothered in the face of more obstacles to verbally overcome when they could win alone by drowning their opponent in every single thought contending on their mind for a complex topic.

"You came to the right person to elucidate!"

Your bare toes massage the loose sand, still warm to the touch and soothing in distraction, comfort to the nervous pattering of your heart. The organ threatens to unavail itself from your chest, trembling in anticipation. The word audience swirls around your mind with reverent butterflies, encouraging your limbs to carry you on to the destination your cunt is throbbing over. It had been a time, trying to deal with being so aroused all day, masturbation barely taking the edge off, mind repeatedly wandering.

Just as the conjured image of Erwin with half-lidded pools of lust sends a pang of desire to your apex, the radiant blaze of embers crests your horizon, dune obfuscating your full view. Swallowing your nerves and straightening your shoulders back, you funnel your bravery forward and follow it with confidence, footsteps the picture of certainty.

“You owe me laps tomorrow, Erwin.”

As Levi feigns carefree ease with grace, you’re impressed upon the loss of a bet having to do with your appearance, grin fanning the debtor's face, sitting coyly on– is that… The query is obvious on your features with your furrowed brows that Erwin finds several kinds of adorable.

“Oh, I suppose you’re curious about this? It’s my chair for the evening. We ran out of respectable places to sit, so I requisitioned this sturdy piece to support my sore muscles.”

You consider asking him why he’s been exerting himself enough to leisurely comment on it, but you catch the splatters of evidence on their bodies in the form of swollen and hued areas on their bare skin and it adds up. Especially glancing at the blooming mark on Miche’s neck where Erwin had gotten a little lost in the moment, teaching him some manners.

“You have excellent taste in acquired goods. Looks quite comfortable.”

And your words are true; Erwin is the picture of languid nonchalance, wide torso nearly eclipsing the equally spanning chest of Miche as he reclines into the warmth. The air has a tint of chill to it, but between the body heat and the fire, Erwin truly looks relaxed. That is, except for the way his cock keeps swelling every time Miche flexes his erection under his respectfully grinding hips. It’s sinful, the way both of their thighs twitch with kinetic arousal that bolts their nerves into curling toes at moments of perfect friction.

“I helped with the ropes!”

Hange hops out, arms laden with two baskets full of fruit as they approach the four of you. Their smile is radiant as they get close enough, depositing their goods, tugging carefully at the aforementioned binds that crisscross Miche’s sun-kissed skin, contrasting possessively with the azure swirls against his bronzed nude tone.

The precision and balance in the smooth knots and wraps show mirrored symmetricality that has your eyebrows raising appreciatively as you walk around to take it in. It only fuels the fire in the pit of your stomach as you follow the lines of Miche’s naked form beneath Erwin’s partially clothed one.

"Impeccable representation of the craft. What an honor to be used for such aesthetic pleasure and genuine utility."

You let the comment out with a chuckle as you meet Miche's winking gaze, brandishing your wrapped bottles.

"I brought some spirits for the evening. Fair forewarning, it is a strong batch. We use this back home for festivals and it can be a bit intense. Sip slow, as the old adage nags."

The four perk up at your explanation, curious and only just a tad weary.

"Hope you don't mind, but we never use cups for this either."

You tug the cork with a little bit of extra strength and a plume of plum hued vapors escape the lip. It forms into a hazy orchid, delicate and wispy, for the blink of an eye before dispersing on the breeze.

"Mas!"

You tilt a healthy first swig to break the tension before passing the bottle to Hange's outstretched palm. They eye the opening with intrigue, remaining wisps faintly teasing their nose on a thoughtful inhale, flirting with their senses. Their eyes land on you before they bring it to Miche's face over Erwin's shoulder. He doesn't hesitate to take a slow, suspiciously long inhale, savoring something unnameable to the others as he nods in acceptance of the contents, apple of his throat bobbing deliciously when he swallows his salivary response.

Given an infallible source, Hange deems the present as an opportunity to chug back an underappreciated ass load of the bottle before you could intervene, toast hiccuping from their lips as they wipe their mouth on the shoulder of their shirt.

"Now, Erwin, be generous with yours too and we'll compare our results."

They gleefully smack your gift into his wide palm, smile exuberant. Given the effects of the brew, a kindred look begs to form on your lips when Hange gracelessly plops down on the blankets thrown around the fire, sand flinging off their toes with the force of their succumbing inebriation. Erwin appreciates the creeping change in his companion’s waning sobriety and still chooses to consume nearly the same amount, but not before an initial sip that allows him to properly perceive the complexity in the notes of your gift, licking his lips of the amaranthine ichor with unapologetic sensuality.

“Delicious. Your tribute honors us tonight.”

When the ever-stoic Levi only partakes a mouse’s thimble of the liquid, no bigger than Erwin’s initial sip, you’re not insulted. It doesn’t take much to be effective in its potency, but as the final member of your soirée is left out, an olive branch propagates in your mind’s eye. Your extended arm encourages the silent companion to return the object of your desires back to your deft fingers and you approach Erwin to stand a foot from him, firelight bathing your barely clothed form, nipples prickling in excitement that draws paired gazes to the breezy fabric’s hint of your intimate jewelry.

Lifting the aforementioned gift, you inquire, “May I relieve your partner’s thirst?”

Accepting your respect to the underlying dynamic of their duality, Erwin nods his assent, tilting his head only just enough for you to reach Miche’s mouth. Therein lies the limits of your deference as you bring the bottle to Miche’s lips, chin upturned to meet the liquid’s arrival, fingers barely but intentionally grazing the side of Erwin’s neck as his partner wraps his lips around the spout. You don’t miss Erwin’s honey-thick long inhale or half stutter to his heart beat, but choose to keep your eyes focused on Miche’s as he partakes and holds your sight with unconcealed mirth. As he finishes, a droplet escapes his plush lips that your thumb follows to hinder its path at the same time as Miche’s tongue, incurring a meeting that has you groaning when he chooses to pull your digit into his mouth, licking the droplet avidly. You remove the sensitized appendage reluctantly, slowly savoring it just as much as your wine. He smiles openly at your budding, then flourishingly bashful beam of seductive enchantment, eyes sparkling their arousal.

“Thank you, little doe.”

Hange grins façades indignance when they realize Miche has stolen their moniker for you.

"When was the last time you heard the furniture talk, Erwin?"

Hange’s outburst is tailed in giggles as their cheeks heat attractively.

"Can't say that I have before."

"You might find this happenstance to occur more frequently at the bottom of a bottle of this mix though."

"Would it make you wanna fuck the furniture?"

Hange’s humor is contagious as you follow up with another swig for yourself, tempted to temporarily hide your face from their knowing eyes.

"Sure would, but I don't think we need any kind of inebriation to appreciate we'd all fuck the furniture tonight."

The pervading arousal on the night air is thick around you, atmosphere dense in the notes of heady sanguine debauchery that lights your soul aflame in kindred spirit and potent vigor in primal spades. You query the source only enough to know that actions preceding your arrival instigated the spark, but your aim is to fan the flames.

“Oh? It sounds like you’ve put some thought into this.”

You turn at Erwin’s forward question, too flustered to respond beyond a whispered 'perhaps,' and moving slowly with a captivating and gentle sway of your hips that has everyone following your form with appreciative eyes that do not hide their open gazing even as you sit spaced yet adjacent to Hange on the large, soft blanket. It had taken your mind a bit to figure out the exact position you would want to take up for the night, find your best vantage point in all honesty, but this would do. From where you’ve lowered yourself, you have a prime view of Erwin’s lap and Hange’s energetically charged form as they begin to pester Levi to your right. The crashing waves in the near-distance mock the thrum beginning to pound in your ears as you recline, choosing to casually spread your legs a little more than a foot apart, drawing Erwin’s attention as the magicks of your people burrow into the heated blood coursing through his veins.

The unraveling around you begins gradually, Hange’s needy whines catching your regard as they finally wear down Levi’s last thread of patience with ardent exasperation, backside hitting the blanket with a thud after attempting to unbuckle his pants. You would think him shy and his behavior could support your thoughts when he compensates with a firm hand to Hange’s locks to drag them closer to his leg, not unveiling an inch more of skin, yet.

“Impudent devil-child. You can use my leg if you’re so desperate.”

‘Oh.’

You part your lower limbs a bit further as the blood rushes to your cunt from his response and Hange’s eager acceptance as they readily comply and place themselves firmly to the proffered extremity, hips already building pace to seek absolution. Levi’s dilating gaze holds a counterpoint of affection as he ruffles their hair without another word. Hange’s eager hips nearly dismount in the fervor of their movement until Levi’s softer yet filthier reprimand sets them back on track to completion.

“Be more mindful, you merry little harlot.”

Another lewd melody joins the harmonious revelry and reaches your senses as the sanguine concoction permeates your barriers. You turn just in time to see Erwin take the opportunity to stand, at least momentarily long enough to remove his only article of clothing and revealing his now fully throbbing length to the night’s open air. It gives you a glimpse of Miche’s tied form as well, bearing witness to the heavy thudded thwack of his erection springing to splatter prespend on his flexing abdominals that pulls a barely audible whimper from him. The blue cords continue down over his artful hip bones, meeting just under his heavy sac, tenderly rubbing at the sensitive spot they rest upon with even the slightest movement. Erwin reclaims his throne, this time allowing the small mercy of a softer relief by trapping Miche’s member between his thighs. A finger traces over the weeping head, dragging the pearlescence to the edges in another merciful gesture that aids the furtive rutting of his hips as he tries to hold himself back at the stimulation. He knows to be grateful for what he gets or he will end up much worse off.

Once returned to his poised pose, you can hardly mind your own manners, openly staring at Erwin’s thickness as he takes it in steady hand. When you do manage to drag your eyes upwards, you do not flinch from the returning heat you find blooming in your chest at the pair of beryl and azure gems that incur the molten honey to slick your swollen folds. Seeing both Miche and Erwin watching you emboldens your own limb to travel over your form. Cresting your breasts with a heaved sigh fruitlessly meant to unburden your lungs of tightening arousal, you lift your hips enough to slide the gauzy fabric off, legs unabashedly splaying outwards, and finish the flourish with a tug to the knot keeping your bust bound, unbothered to even let the top drop off your shoulders as your goal is too readily accessible to stop you from dipping into the pool of your oasis.

A swiped digit allows you to relish the tart cream that the night’s mischief has impelled from you. The motion has Erwin compressing the vice of his hand and thighs, nearly making Miche’s head spin. Perhaps it was truly the liquid courage intoxicating his senses, but the provocative situation was overruling his desire to care. Miche had a tunneled focus and it rang true to the ache his cock suffered in each panging clench or smidgen of attention from Erwin. He finds the delicate chain swaying between your breasts as mesmerizing as his lyre's nearly forgotten tune, watching the chain tug at the connected bars threading through your nipples, but the way your fingers part your petals triumphs the captivating amethyst jewelry every time you dip down to retrieve and relish the piquant nectar.

Erwin admires the task you set forth for yourself, digit finally choosing to swirl around your throbbing bud with a few flourishes that bolt twitching longing through your muscles, displayed visually down to the curl of your toes. A detour further, punctuated with another full swig from your bottle, and paired fingers plunge into the silken heat of your cunt. You could outdrink each of them, familiar with the encumbering virility it possesses, but only partaking enough to lessen the nerves whispering at the edges of your emboldened nature. The complex tannic notes complement the ghost of your ambrosia and thrum the desire of your body concordantly.

Erwin’s enthusiasm grows as he strokes himself with all the time in the world, lust laden sac nudging the crown of Miche’s cock as his resplendent spend spreads slippery stimulation for the trapped member rutting at a pace equal to Erwin’s hand. Erwin pictures himself spearing you on his length, teasing Miche further for his disobedience, and recalls the words you had uttered in a breezy offering.

“I might hear the voice of reason for a little obedience, if you're sweet about it.”

He hopes you remember them even when the climax threatens to undo your being. Cream coats your fingers, begging a third as you too mime Erwin’s pace. When he speeds up, both you and Miche follow suit, and it pleases him to no end that you blend in with such innate manners. Erwin teases alternating shorter and longer strokes, occasionally jerking his head faster in its swelling sensitivity and grins lasciviously as he witnesses you use the heel of your palm in kind, hips nudging in–

“Ah!”

Hange’s cry of completion rends the air deliciously, pulling the attention over to the duo entranced in their own dance of desire. Levi’s quick to follow, spurting cock painting Hange’s panting face in droplets of greedy devotion that coat their wayward strands and proffered tongue. As Hange whimpers in overstimulation, Levi shakes the last bit from his member and allows Hange’s mouth to finally eclipse their goal while he slowly softens in their warm embrace.

The humming madness in your veins has you bringing your fingers to rub over your clitoris in stirring titillation that catches Erwin in spirited vigor to match. Gazes attuned once more, the mounting pleasure in your bodies chases symbiosis of relief, but Erwin’s true undoing is the power of the twin supplications from both yourself and Miche.

“Please, Erwin, may I?”

“Fuck, Commander, have mercy, please.”

This show of obeisance ripples to Erwin’s writhing toes and invites the wavering notion to deny you both, burst ribbons of pride along his chest, and demand you each lave him clean with your subservient tongues. Yet, the genuine nature of your beseechments proves the victor, his own end too close to deny even himself.

“Don’t hide your cries. With me, now.”

As if a seasoned crew intimate in synchronous wickedness, the snapping tension breaks each of you into pieces of relieving euphoria heightened by the magicked vintage flooding the charmed impulses of your minds. Erwin’s lap and cock are laden in Miche’s essence as his twitching head first overflowingly weeps then explodes his pleasure gloriously. Erwin’s cream arcs up to his built pecs as he firmly grips himself through the release. The charismatic moans still escaping your lips drag an aching final burst from him and on the next exhale of his ardent aftermath, he finds you besides them both, head tilted and eyes alight with a look that begs his lagging mind to heed it more, but your query keeps him in the present as your slicked fingers hover a few feet between you.

“Barter a morsel of kinship, Commander?”

Your gaze travels to his equivalent appendage still cradling his cock and he finds himself inclined to indulge in the trade of equality, though he questions the truth of that notion of parity when he feels the humming power that laces over, under, and around your bare form in the exchange. He stores the response away for now, intrigued at the puzzle you present him while he savors your nectar and finds a new vigor imbuing his own stores of magicks.

“It seems we have much to learn of each other, but I find this a fascinating introduction.”

Previous | Next

AN: Google translate tells me “μας”/mas means ‘us’ in Greek and unity was my intention. Additionally, the orchid has a Greek background representing virility as “όρχις”/órchis refers to testis ;) Blessings to “I Get Off” by Halestorm as I listened to this on infinity repeat to help me keep mood-focus. Sidenote, use of harlot here does not necessarily entail female gendering of the term. Managed to locate a definition just using “person” so I do mean it in the nonbinary manner. Sometimes I miss aspects like this and biasly use pronouns for Hange. Please never hesitate to respectfully bring this to my attention so I can right my wrong.

Taglist: @aotwarriorsimp @alex--nya @animediplomat @antoxsmith @armoredpotato @bakidose @bakunny @beffjurky @blondboyfiend @casuallyck @chaotic-nick @dearbaji @dilferwinsmith @erwinsbaby @eyesucket @fairypiku @fandomficsobsession @i1k @icecreamranwich @interfectio-mortales @kireirengoku-main @koulakoukoula2003 @lavenderdaisyhoney @lailamedea @mybadluckshouldmakemefamous @nathalunalune @peachysunrize @pockcock @sweetforlevi @pocks-waifu @seychellse @shigarakiapologist @sinnerofthewalls @sparklekitteh @stigandr-the-cat @syrma-sensei @reiners-milkbiddies @tiffanyy-21 @theinariakuma @tohailalegacy @tonaken @torapologist @we-are-so-close @witchycamisado [Hello babes 💜 Didn't have my taglist up for this before.]

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thesewordsareallihavetogive · 3 years

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Roommates - Theo x Reader

(gif source)

Summary: y/n’s landlord is increasing her rent once her lease is up. She has two options: move out or find a roommate. Theo, coincidentally, is looking for a new apartment.

Word count: 2105

Warnings: cursing, theo being a total house husband

a/n: and they were roommates

master list

“So then he finds out that Leia is his sister and- y/n, are you even listening?” Stiles cut himself off and looked over to where the y/h/c was nervously bouncing her leg. y/n’s head snapped up when she heard her name, nearly dropping her phone in the process.

“Uh, yeah, of course! I just um, keep going, I’m listening,” she replied unconvincingly. Her odd behavior caught the attention of the rest of the pack - not that they were really paying much attention to Stiles’s retelling of Star Wars: Return of the Jedi - causing the previous conversation to be forgotten.

“Okay, spill. There’s a handful of mostly human polygraphs in here and you’re a terrible liar. What’s up?” Malia grilled, looking at y/n expectantly.

“It’s really nothing, everything’s fine,” y/n squeaked out, her ability to lie getting worse and worse with each word. After receiving another pointed look from Malia, she finally cracked. “Ugh, fine. I just got an email from my landlord that he’s bumping up the rent when my lease is up and I can’t afford to stay there by myself anymore,” y/n ranted. The group, minus y/n, glanced around at each other with frowns. Each and every one of them would drop everything to help y/n, but it just so happened that they were all already stuck in leases or didn’t have any extra rooms at their homes. After a few moments of silence, Theo piped up.

“I could be your roommate and split the rent if you want,” he offered nonchalantly. Stiles looked between Theo and y/n as if they’d both grown two heads. Before y/n could decline the offer, Theo continued. “My lease is almost up and your place is much nicer anyways. It’s a win win,” Theo pointed out casually and leaned back deeper into the cushions.

An awkward silence hung in the air for a moment as y/n mulled it over. It wasn’t a horrible idea. Having a chimera as a roommate was basically like having a top-of-the-line security system. Plus, between being a full-time student and working part-time, y/n was hardly home so it didn’t really matter who her roommate was, just as long as they did their fair share of chores.

“Sure, why not,” y/n replied warmly.

It had been about a month since Theo moved in. Aside from sleeping, y/n had spent very little time at their now shared apartment. If she wasn’t at school or working, she was spending time with the pack, which felt like a full time job in and of itself. Too bad they weren’t getting paid to keep the whole damn city safe. For what felt like the first time in months, y/n finally had an entire weekend off. No looming deadlines from her classes. No long and grueling shifts for work. No supernatural threats.

When she got home that Friday night she dropped her purse by the door, toed her shoes off halfway through the room, and unceremoniously flopped down onto the couch, sighing loudly as she did so.

“Well hello to you too,” Theo called as he entered the room stealthily. y/n jumped, startled by his presence.

“Jesus, I didn’t even know you were home. What are you, a ninja?” y/n asked, chest heaving slightly.

“Something like that,” Theo smirked, earning an unimpressed eye-roll from y/n. Theo moved to sit down on the couch next to her, making sure to leave a respectful distance between their bodies, and kicked his feet up on the coffee table. “So, you’ve been busy,” Theo began, striking up a light conversation. y/n snorted and leaned her head back into the cushions.

“You’ve got that right,” y/n groaned, running a hand through her tousled hair. The last thing y/n expected when Theo moved in was for him to be willing to hear her vent about school and work, but he actually seemed to enjoy the conversation and company. She told him about her lazy group project members and the sleazy old men who came to the diner she waitressed at. She told him how poetic justice had been served when one particularly disgruntled customer slipped and fell on the drink that he’d intentionally spilled when a waitress wouldn’t give him her number. Theo actually laughed in response to that story, his gleeful chuckle brought a warm smile to y/n’s face.

“I didn’t mean to unload on you, thanks for listening though,” y/n finished shyly. Theo brushed off her comment.

“That was entertaining, thank you,” Theo replied with his signature grin. y/n felt heat rise to her cheeks but turned away before Theo could notice.

“Anyways… as much as I’d love to not move from this couch for the next 48 hours, I should probably clean up a bit. I’ve been a pretty shitty roommate,” y/n grimaced as she forced herself off of the couch. Theo gave her a puzzled look and patted the spot next to him on the couch, rolling his eyes when she seemed unwilling to sit back down.

“You’ve hardly been here since I moved in. I don’t think you’ve eaten a meal here, much less made a mess. Except for maybe your shoes in the middle of the floor,” he pointed out, gesturing towards her anti-slip waitressing sneakers. y/n’s face continued to burn as she moved to kick the shoes towards the shoe rack by the door. Naturally, she turned to sarcasm as a defense mechanism.

“What shoes? I don’t see any shoes,” y/n quipped slyly, waltzing back across the room to once again sink into the couch. Theo chuckled wordlessly at her antics and tore his eyes away from her to look at the TV.

“Friends or The Office?”

As luck would have it, y/n’s free weekend was short lived and the following Monday she was back to her never ending stream of school work and back-to-back work shifts. Fortunately, she was able to run home during her lunch break and wisely chose to use the time for a well-deserved nap. As she pulled out her keys to open the apartment door, she heard mechanical humming coming from inside. Truth be told, she had yet to figure out what kind of roommate Theo was, much less come close to understanding the walking enigma, so she had no idea what she was about to walk into. Was he building something? Did he figure out a way to bring the dread doctors back? Was he doing something unspeakable with a lady friend that would surely scar y/n for years to come?

As y/n mentally prepared herself for the horror movie that she was expecting to walk into, she inserted her keys in the lock. I need a fucking nap, whatever weird shit going on behind this door be damned. She pushed the door open with tense shoulders and hesitantly peered into the apartment. There stood Theo. Not holding any tools, not actively in cahoots with the nightmarish scientists that occupied part of their high school days, and (thank God) fully clothed...

But vacuuming.

Her murderous, half-human, former dirt bag roommate was vacuuming. Like a bona fide house husband.

Theo heard the door softly close shut behind y/n and he turned to face her, unplugging the vacuum machine in the process.

“What’s with all of this?” y/n asked hesitantly, gesturing vaguely to the vacuum cleaner and the various cleaning supplies set out on the coffee table. Theo glanced at the area around him, proud of his work.

“I had some time to kill so I figured I’d clean up a bit. I’m pretty much done now so I shouldn’t bother you if you’re studying or…” he trailed off, giving y/n an opportunity to fill in the blank.

“Ha, I probably should, but no. I will be dead asleep for the next thirty minutes and then I have to head to the diner for a double shift,” she groaned and shrugged off her jacket as she made her way towards her room. Considering the fact that it was only noon on a Monday, y/n seemed far too tired. Theo frowned for a moment and genuinely considered going to have nice civilized chats with her manager and professors. That’s probably a bad idea though. Unless...

For some reason unbeknownst to y/n, her professors had begun to show some mercy in the number of papers and projects they assigned. Her manager at the diner even offered to decrease the hours she worked each week if she was feeling overwhelmed. Theo wore a knowing grin when a joyful y/n came home one day and explained this all to him. If y/n caught his mischievous smirk, she certainly didn’t call him out on it. With all of her newfound free time, y/n decided that she wanted to host a pack movie night at their apartment.

“Alright, the pizza is on the way and Scott is bringing snacks. We should probably get the movie set up before Stiles gets here and somehow convinces us all to watch Star Wars again,” y/n rattled off while she paced the apartment to make sure everything was in order. “I washed a bunch of blankets earlier, could you take them out of the dryer and put them on the couch?” y/n requested as she anxiously walked to the kitchen and began pulling out plates and cups. Theo nodded gently as he popped into the kitchen to check things out.

“Don’t stress too much. As long as there’s people and pizza, everyone will be happy,” Theo said, attempting to ease her anxiety. y/n smiled lightly at his words and took a deep breath. Lately he seemed to have some magical ability to calm her down. Theo left the kitchen to take care of the blankets while y/n put together a makeshift snack bar, complete with plates, bowls for snacks, and beer. The pizza and most of the pack arrived just as y/n and Theo were finishing up with their respective jobs. The pizza delivery boy seemed a little scared by the tall, muscled men and tiny but mighty women surrounding him so she gave him a decent tip and rolled her eyes at her friends’ naturally intimidating nature. After y/n ushered them all inside and set the pizza down on the kitchen counter, she joined the rest of the pack in the living room. To her surprise, the blankets had been neatly set out around the room and folded with expert precision. She sent Theo an impressed smile and winked when she thought no one was looking.

Stiles was the last to arrive and much to his disappointment Ghostbusters had already been set up on the TV. It didn’t take long for everyone to grab food and get situated around the living room, so by the time y/n was done buzzing around the apartment like a madwoman to get everything situated there was only one spot left on the couch. y/n knew that her friends - aside from Stiles - weren’t actively trying to hurt Theo’s feelings, but seeing him tucked into the corner of the couch distanced away from everyone pained her more than she’d admit.

So, she did what any good friend would do. Not only did she gladly take the spot on the couch next to him, but she also casually tossed her legs over his and covered the two of them with a blanket. The action definitely earned her a few raised eyebrows, including from Theo, but no one dared to call them out. y/n was able to easily ignore the sideways glances they earned throughout the course of the movie, mostly because she had fallen asleep about 15 minutes in. By the end of the movie her head had fallen to lazily rest on Theo's shoulder and he had subconsciously pulled her in closer to his side.

After the movie finished and they spent some time catching up, the rest of the pack began to trickle out of y/n and Theo’s apartment. Lydia was the last to leave so she offered to lock the door behind her so that Theo wouldn’t have to move and wake y/n. Lydia tossed out a few stray cups on her way out the door, and because she was never one to tell secrets, she definitely didn’t send the girls a picture of Theo and y/n now both passed out and cuddling on the couch.

a/n: this seemed like a great idea in the shower and now i’m not sure i even like it but i hope you enjoyed :)

edit: enjoy my best friend’s live reaction to this fic

join my tag list!

@linkpk88 @grace-wade-08 @plq-cid @jazzyhales @ineedyourskulls @lilyspells @pure-ghost @ellxpsismm @samkysnks @sweetfairyprincess17 @basicbibitxh @rogershoe @dashkana

#theo raeken imagine #theo raeken x reader #theo raeken fanfic #theo raeken fanfiction #theo raeken x y/n #teen wolf fanfiction #teen wolf fanfic #teen wolf imagine #theo x reader #theo x y/n #theo imagine #theo raeken #theo being a total house husband #probably a totally incorrect characterization #but i'm really tired so i can't quite bring myself to care #read and enjoy the garbage i guess

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elwenyere · 3 years

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A Very Small Grease Fire (and Other Human Disasters)

(Thanksgiving ficlet for the Stony and Avengers fam; also on AO3)

The Avengers didn’t have the best track record with Thanksgiving. The first time the dinner had ended in disaster, it had been Steve’s fault. One rainy fall Sunday, just months after the Battle of New York, Steve had been picking at a bowl of mint-chip ice cream, feeling tired of getting looks of sympathy about the holidays and absolutely exhausted by feeling sorry for himself. If Bruce and Clint hadn’t chosen that particular afternoon to ask him whether there was anything special he wanted for Thanksgiving – raising the question with just enough gentleness to make Steve’s jaw tighten – he probably would have said, “I’m a sweet potatoes guy” and left it at that.

Instead, Steve had been seized by a spirit of mischief. Putting on his most morose poker face, he had proceeded to invent a series of Depression-era dishes, from “Hoover Rolls” to “Poor Man’s Potatoes,” the recipes for which he concocted out of the blandest ingredients he could imagine. By the time he was in the process of describing his third Crisco-based dessert, Steve was sure he had gone far enough to reveal the joke; but Bruce and Clint had continued nodding encouragingly and jotting down notes.

The results had been borderline inedible. And even though the sight of Tony doubled over with laughter when Steve finally fessed up had thawed out a part of his heart he hadn’t even known was still on ice, the experience of eating a holiday dinner in which half the dishes tasted like over-starched socks forced even Steve to admit that the prank had been a bit of a Pyrrhic victory.

The second time…well, Steve would have said the second time was his fault too – though he supposed the rest of the team would blame the extremists who tried to kidnap the governor. Clint had just started basting the turkey when the “Assemble” alarm went off, and the team had to pile in the Quinjet to deal with a hostage situation at the capitol. It should have been an easy job – in and out with plenty of time to take the butter for the piecrust out of the freezer – but then one of the extremists had pulled the pin on a grenade just yards away from a state senator’s eight-year-old son, and four hours later Steve was waking up in the burn unit at Walter Reed hospital with the anguished sound of someone shouting his name still ringing in his ears.

“You fucking idiot,” the same voice had greeted him, and Steve looked up to see Tony sitting by his bed, the lines around his eyes drawn tight over a surgical mask. “You’re supposed to be a tactical genius, and you haven’t learned a single new method for containing explosives since basic training in 1943? I’m going to equip your suit with goddamn ballistic plates.”

“Tony,” Steve managed, feeling a halo of pain radiate up his scalp. “Are you okay? Was anyone hurt?”

Steve thought he saw something mist across Tony’s eyes, but he couldn’t be sure. The more fully he became aware of his body, the more he noticed the pull of his skin cells contracting in uneven loops around the burns on his torso, and it was taking a considerable amount of energy to keep Tony’s face in focus.

“Everybody’s fine but you, Steve,” Tony assured him. “And the doctors said you should be able to move to the general floor in a few hours. So shut those baby blues and let the serum do its job, because there’s a whole team of keyed-up superheroes waiting to see you, and they’re emptying the hospital vending machines fast enough to cause a run on the Frito-Lay factory.”

Steve had drifted in and out of consciousness for a while after that, finally waking up long enough to eat a holiday dinner of contraband take-out, which Natasha had smuggled into the hospital using only Thor’s tendency to knock over delicate instruments and Bruce’s oversized jacket.

“When you sign up to be an Avenger, no one warns you about doing overtime as a falafel mule,” Bruce had mused, leaning back to let Natasha steal a fry off his plate.

“I still think we could have gotten that eighth kebab if you’d been willing to consider pant legs as additional real estate,” she told him.

"You should all be eating stuffing and pumpkin pie,” Steve grimaced. “I’m sorry you’re stuck here on Thanksgiving.”

“Listen, Cap,” Clint replied, waving a dolma at him, “if you’re going to apologize for anything, apologize for the purgatory potatoes you tricked me into making last year. At least this year we have food that doesn’t have the texture of fast-drying cement.”

“Those tubers had truly been abandoned by the gods,” Thor agreed solemnly. “But I maintain that the Big Band Banana Pie was actually quite delicious.”

“Just don’t make the third-degree burns and hypovolemic shock a holiday habit, Rogers,” Tony put in. “Some of us are trying to watch our blood pressure.”

Tony had leaned over to adjust the settings on Steve’s bed as he spoke, and by the time he finished, a dull tugging sensation across Steve’s chest had loosened – the pain subsiding almost before Steve could register that it had been bothering him.

So that was why, after two years of throwing wrenches in the Avengers’ Thanksgiving plans, Steve was determined to make sure that year three went off without a hitch. He’d drawn up an elaborate plan for maximizing the utility of the Tower kitchen’s two ovens and seven burners and for optimizing the team’s various culinary skills. The operatives had been briefed the night before, and by 10:30 AM on Thursday, Steve was fluting a pie crust, Bruce was stripping fresh thyme leaves into an herb blend, Clint was whipping up a roux for the mushroom gravy, Thor was mashing potatoes and parsnips in an industrial-strength metal vat, and Natasha was dicing carrots and celery with a speed and precision that felt vaguely unsettling.

After checking the team’s progress against his itinerary, Steve turned to the next task on his own list: bringing Tony Stark his emergency coffee. Bruce had just made a second pot, and Steve poured some into the largest cup he could find: a purple novelty mug, featuring a drawing of the Hulk and the words “You Wouldn’t Like Me Without My Coffee.” He paused to tuck a few biscuits into a napkin (Tony’s relief at sighting fresh coffee sometimes opened up a narrow window during which Steve could feed him breakfast without being noticed), and headed down to the lab.

He found Tony standing with both arms braced against his worktable, designs for what looked like the paneling of Steve’s uniform projected in front of him. Steve cleared his throat, and Tony whirled around, the slump of his shoulders morphing into a graceful lounge by the time he was facing Steve.

“I was just about to come up,” he said. “I have a few finishing touches left here and then I’m all yours, Cap. Give me everything that can survive being the tiniest bit overcooked.”

Steve walked over to put Tony’s coffee on the table and then felt his breath catch in his throat when Tony reached out and took the mug from his hand instead.

“There’s no need,” Steve responded to cover his reaction, flexing the hand that had brushed Tony’s as he let it fall back to his side. “We’ve got the schedule covered for now. I was actually hoping I could talk you into a snack break.”

He waved the napkin of biscuits experimentally.

“Are you cutting me from the Thanksgiving roster, Rogers?” Tony asked. “Just because one time I set a very small grease fire – which I contained almost immediately, by the way.”

“The vase I broke when I sprinted into the kitchen would beg to differ,” Steve smiled. “But it’s not that. I just wanted to do this for you: a big dinner and sitting down with family.”

“For me?” Tony blinked at him. “Why?”

Steve started to cross his arms across his chest before realizing that he would risk crushing the biscuits. He settled for clasping his wrist with his free hand instead, widening his stance slightly and taking a deep breath. Come on, Rogers. Take it on the chin.

“Because I wanted to tell you that I woke up in this century alone,” he said, “and that you were the first person stubborn enough to make sure I wouldn’t stay that way. Now I wake up to a kitchen full of people who tease me about my lists but who know why I need them – who will eat dinner rolls that taste like soggy chalk just to make me feel at home.” He paused. “People who stay by my side for eight straight hours at the hospital.”

Steve looked up and caught Tony’s eyes, his heart rate picking up speed as memories of those same eyes flashed through his mind in quick succession: tearing up with laughter over a plate of cornstarched bananas, pinched with fear over a surgical mask, narrowed in concentration over the remote control for an adjustable bed.

“Romanov has an awfully big mouth for a spy,” Tony said with a rueful smile.

“I think it was a tactical leak,” Steve acknowledged, “to motivate her mark. She knew I needed a push. Because I’ve messed up the past two years, and I needed to tell you: pretty much everything I’m thankful for in my new life is here because of you.”

Tony was staring at him, his eyes darting quickly across Steve’s face as if JARVIS were scanning it for data. Steve held up under the silent scrutiny as long as he could before letting out an explosive breath.

“Anyway, sorry to interrupt you,” he said quickly. “You’ve got work to do, and I’ve got to go make sure everything’s on track upstairs. I’ll uh – I’ll have Bruce come get you when dinner’s ready.”

He started to make an about face toward the door, but Tony caught his arm and held him in place.

“Give a guy a goddamn minute, Steve,” he said softly. “I’m having to do a major cognitive reboot over here. It takes a while for the operating system to come back online. Just…sit down? Let me show you the new flame retardants I’m adding to your uniform.”

Steve complied. And as he watched Tony run through the specs, gulping coffee and nibbling absently at the biscuits, he realized that he knew what Tony was saying even before Tony finally spoke the words: “I’m thankful every time you wake up.”

#stony #stevetony #stony fic #festive ficlets #avengers as family #idiots in love #they're human disasters your honor #this got out of hand #and personally I blame every single character in this Tower #happy thanksgiving #stony fam

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poepoe-thebunny · 4 years

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SEWING SPIDERS Spiderverse headcanon: All of the spidefam are, on varying levels, (somewhat) competent at sewing and other needle arts for multiple reasons.

Peter B, Gwen and Noir are the best in terms of actual skill.

Peter B and Noir learned from their respective Aunt May's as a way to stretch out the wear and tear of their clothes, since they didn't always have money for new ones. Between that and the time they spent sewing their costumes back together, they became pretty good at it.

Noir uses it as a reflective, relaxing activity when he can't sleep or the nightmares keep him awake. Because of this, he has the most patience when it comes to hand sewing even if it's larger projects or when dealing with an endless amount of small stitches. He is also surprisingly good at embroidery, and has made many patches for the Fam to stick to their jackets and bags. They all come out gorgeously detailed and monochromatic, but once the Fam gives him other colors and he has them all labelled and sorted (they know better than to mess with the labels) Noir occasionally asks them for help on color theory and what colors look good together.

Peter B is decently competent at sewing and fixing hem lines, waist lines, and holes. His aunt May was also a master knitter, so he has borderline medium level skill there, and can make a mean scarf or blanket if he really gets going. He has tried to use a loom before, but finds it too bulky and his rows often have large gaps because the struggles with yarn tension.

Gwen is by far, the best out of them. Not just because she can fix things, but because she can make them. Gwen has dipped her interests into many aesthetics ranging from punk, rock, vintage, pastel, or the softer looks based off of ballet and lyrical dance. She has made, and worn, a corset a time or two. She also isn't afraid to rip her clothes up and patchwork them together to see what she gets if she likes it enough, and has a good eye for diy stuff. She can make pretty rockin' circle skirts and blouses, and is the only other one besides Noir and Ham who knows how to take measurements and what they mean. She also legitimately sketches out her ideas and has a mannequin bust for her projects, and can use a sewing machine even on thinner slippier fabrics. She has a lot of talent for sewing and clothes making, on the flip side she has very LITTLE talent for things like knitting and embroidery and has rage quit them more than once.

Ham is exactly in the middle of them all in terms of skill. He can do the basics pretty well, knows how to keep his stitches lined up and even, can take measurements, and is better at short bits of hand stitching. His own skill is more for fixing holes and hemlines more than anything else, although he occasionally struggles with the learning curve of human bodies when it comes to the Fams' clothes because he is, in fact, a pig. And humans and pigs don't share a lot in terms of physical features. The Fam sometimes wonders WHY Ham needs to know how to sew, but since they're not sure about Zany Cartoon Logic when it comes to clothing they decide not to ask.

Miles is not necessarily GOOD at sewing, but he IS learning and getting better with practice. Apparently sewing your own costume is par for the course when you have a secret spider identity. He learned sewing from his mother, but the Aunt May of his dimension is also willing to help and a very tired miles is grateful. He still wants to do it on his own thought cause he feels guilty, which leads to several poked fingertips and sore hands and somehow getting wrapped up in the measuring tape while his mother laughs and scolds him for his lack of patience. His stitches are a little large and not spaced very well but he's getting there.

And while Miles can't sew very well, him and Gwen get along fabulously because Miles can diy pattern layouts in his head, dye/dip dye/acid wash/paint fabric pretty well. He actually learned it initially from both his father and uncle Aaron. He can use fabric glue and sealant pretty well, and can use acrylics and tea and coffee for cosplay style costume aging. While he's better at drawing, his dad taught him pastel dying with stuff like kool-aid, and how to properly iron patches onto his jackets and backpack. His uncle Aaron would always help little Miles out around Halloween time, and Miles learned things like placement, making texture, and making shadows and highlights with things like fabric paint and hairspray for costumes.

Peni is generally the worst of them in terms of sewing. Partially because she has no interest in it, and partially because her interests in science and technology tends to bleed into her other interests. As in, she's the kind of person who would rather make a Lazer scanner to get your measurements because it's more accurate and time effective versus doing it by hand. She CAN hand sew, kinda, but finds doing it on clothes time-consuming and frustrating. Being from the future, when she does feel like doing cosplay or fixing things, prefers to use her tech because she loves to see how accurately she can recreate things. She introduced the other spiders to characters she cosplays, that have futuristic designs or weapons, that Peni likes to recreate just to challenge herself. If she has to get something done to her clothes beyond her own skill, she prefers to be an informed consumer and look up local businesses to support that can fix her clothes, or where she can buy bolts of fabric that are no longer being mass used (deadstock) so they won't go to waste for Gwen and miles.

That being said, she CAN sew. Kinda. She often goes to Noir for help learning how to do it by hand since he is surprisingly patient with her, compared to an amused Gwen smacking Miles in the head when he doesn't listen. and Peni believes in being fashionable AND functional. She doesn't always have the time or interest for full length projects like Gwen or Miles, but her hand stitching is getting better with practice. Her interests lies more with accessories and decorative designs. She has begun practice on stitching ribbons and bows made of silk, or hair pins, belts, and patches made of fabric flowers/leaves and faux gems and pearls. She has even made the odd plush toy and doll. Noir has been teaching her basic embroidery, and she sometimes helps Gwen and Miles pick accent colors and textures for whatever they're making.

All in all, it's another weird little thing they all have vaguely in common. Ham snickers and jokes that they're Spiders, of course they can stitch stuff together cause that's what they do. But it is nice, having something they can all bond over like this. On good days when they can all hop over to someone's dimension and just need to relax and get things done, every inch of the room will be covered in needles, threads and fabrics of various colors.

Sometimes it's a Learning Day. Noir, Gwen, and Peter B help teach hand stitching, while Peni and Gwen drag Ham along with them to learn. Ham wants Gwen to teach him how to cut, measure, and drape fabric, because just like in the human world, in Ham's world there is a struggle to find clothes that fit certain looks and body types and he would like clothes that FIT please and thank you. He will also help Miles with his hand stitching when the others are busy, and is surprisingly good at distracting Miles long enough that he doesn't get bored when sewing. Noir teaches Peni ladder stitching to fix her plushies, and how to bind and cut fabric edges so she can stitch her silk belts and ribbons in clean lines. Peni shows Noir pictures of different tree and leaf designs, and helps describe the colors to Noir while he copies the unfamiliar shapes onto fabric with markers so he can practice the designs. Peter B teaches Gwen to find the rhythm of her knitting, and how to count time and stitches and rows with songs under her breath. Miles Shows Peni and Noir how to stick patches/ribbons/cloth to bags and clothes, what fabrics work with certain fabric glue, and whether something should be ironed on or sewn on (in which they turn to Noir for help).

Other times it is a Work Day, fun and relaxed but full of concentration. Gwen and Miles will be hunched over her sketchbook, bickering about draping and texture, what colors and patterns work best with what fabrics and what pieces should be layered together, occasionally asking for Peni's thoughts about what spots need something eye catching. Peni will be sitting next to Noir, hunched over with her tongue sticking out of her mouth, small quick hands working stitches into a plush toy or doll dress, or if the kids are working on something together, occasionally silk ribbons or belts with colorful glass beads, or a fabric flower hair piece. Noir is almost always next to her, half-watching her lines and guiding her softly when she gets frustrated, his own fabric pulled tight in his embroidery hoop and thread looping into something beautiful. Ham sits across from Gwen, grumbling as he fixes the holes in his work shirts and pants, and occasionally having Gwen help him redesign something that just doesn't fit right because he is working on a reporters salary and can't afford to waste it on clothes that aren't built for him. Peter B winces in empathy because he has BEEN there, and hums as he counts rows for the scarves and blankets that will help the others survive a New York Christmas. Occasionally, if Gwen is busy, Miles asks for Peter B to help him stitch his costume together, and amid bickering and exaggerated groans of death by boredom Miles feels a little proud of his stitches, neater and more precise than anything he has done so far.

#into the spider verse #spiderverse #miles morales #peter b parker #gwen stacy #peni parker #spider noir #spider pig #ham #peter benjamin parker #headcanon #headcanons galore #they can all sew ok?#it's metaphorical and stuff #Noir is good af at embroidery dont @ me #gonna put on my masterlist don't mind me

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newmusickarl · 3 years

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Album & EP Recommendations

As there is a HUGE amount to cover this week, I’m trying something a bit different with some slightly snappier reviews and a genre inclusion so you can head straight for the recommendation that matches your musical preference. There’s at least one album from all the key genres this week too, so hopefully a little something for everyone. Without any further ado then, here’s what’s good:

Album of the Week: Comfort To Me by Amyl & The Sniffers (Punk/Rock)

My personal preference from this week is the rip-roaring sophomore album from Australia’s own Amyl & The Sniffers. Although I was already vaguely familiar with the band’s previous work, I was still not prepared for the full throttle, smashmouth, rifftastic contents of this utterly brilliant record. As a result, this one hit me like a lightning bolt, thanks to the furious energy of frontwoman Amy Taylor and the mind-melting guitar work throughout.

From the off, absolutely nothing is held back here, as Taylor’s punk vocals and razor-sharp lyrics hit you in the ear like haymakers. What’s most surprising though is how the shredding guitar riffs that are littered across this record manage to sound so astonishing and impressive, yet at the same time as if the band are not even trying at all. It’s completely hypnotising yet everything is made to sound so easy and natural thanks to the sheer rawness of the music.

This one also already plays out like a greatest hits record too, with Guided By Angels, Security, Hertz, Maggot and Capital five of the best pure punk rock tracks to emerge in the last five years. Concise, in-your-face and no moment spared, this is a rock record the kind of which rarely gets made anymore. Without a doubt, one of the best of the year for its genre.

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Hey What by Low (Experimental/Alternative)

They may be 13 albums and nearly 30 years into their career at this point, but American experimental rockers Low show no sign of slowing down at this point. Still relatively fresh off the back of their hugely acclaimed album Double Negative, which was widely seen as the Album of the Year in 2018, Low are back yet again with another sonic trip into the weird and wonderful.

Now I must admit although a lot of people adored Double Negative, I personally was always a bit indifferent towards it. I appreciated the sonic textures and the heartfelt moments, but it never completely resonated with me like I know it did for others – one that fell into the “easy to admire, hard to love” category. That is not the case with this new album however, as with Hey What they seem to have further refined what they started on that record, creating an album that’s just as impressive but possibly more accessible than its predecessor.

Opener White Horses picks up pretty much where they left off under a tidal wave of soaring vocals and stunning yet unsettling distortion. From there you’ll once again be checking your audio equipment hasn’t broken, as Low playfully mess around with musical conventions and gargantuan glitchy soundscapes to great effect. This also allows the slightly sparser tracks like All Night, Don’t Walk Away and particularly Days Like These, to emerge out of this masterfully produced cacophony as some of the most haunting and stirring moments.

They may not have won me over with the last one, but they certainly have now – an outstanding album that leaves a lasting impression.

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Star-crossed by Kacey Musgraves (Country/Pop)

Golden Hour was another hit with the critics in 2018 that, much like the Low album, didn’t quite capture me. But again, just like Low, I prefer this latest work from country-turned-pop singer, Kacey Musgraves. With Star-crossed, Musgraves aims to craft her own Shakespearean tragedy, with all the theatre and the drama that goes with it.

The title track opener perfectly sets the stage as the gentle plucking of the acoustic guitar is suddenly surrounded by soaring, multi-layered instrumentation. It is all hugely cinematic and from there on in, Musgraves weaves her tale of heartbreak with plenty of catchy hooks, polished production and solid, heartfelt songwriting. However, the best moments are arguably when Musgraves keeps it raw, such as on camera roll where she takes something as simple as finding old photos of a lost lover on a phone and relaying back to the listener the pain that moment can bring.

In a year that’s already seen some brilliant pop albums, Musgraves stakes her claim with a well-crafted record built on a tried and tested concept. It’s a successful outing with more than enough great tunes and interesting instrumentation (see the jazz flute on there is a light in particular) to keep you interested from beginning to end.

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Enjoy The View by We Were Promised Jetpacks (Alternative)

Scottish indie rockers We Were Promised Jetpacks also released their stunning fifth album this week. This one pulls at the heartstrings from the get-go as the gentle waltz of reflective opener that’s Not Me Anymore immediately locks you into the record and refuses to loosen its grip until the very last note. There’s plenty of spine-tingling moments throughout too, such as the melancholic riffs of All That Glittered, the haunting sparseness of What I Know Now and the uplifting melody of I Wish You Well.

Listen here

Back In Love City by The Vaccines (Indie)

A band well adept at writing killer hooks at this point, indie rockers The Vaccines have also returned with their fun fifth album this week. Not too much to say about this one other than if you are a fan of their previous efforts the chances are you’ll adore this one too, as their music continues to deliver big riffs and anthemic choruses aplenty, but with more refinement and polished craftmanship at this veteran stage in their career. Highlights include the ultra-catchy title-track and the galloping, Western-stylings of Paranormal Romance, which comes across a bit like their own version of Muse’s Knights of Cydonia.

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Mother by Cleo Sol (R&B/Soul)

Fresh off her high-profile collaborations with Little Simz and Sault, singer-songwriter Cleo Sol has once again stepped out on her own, this time exploring themes of motherhood. Gracious, compassionate and quite moving, it’s a stirring soul record where Cleo’s soft yet powerful vocals take centre stage against a backdrop of minimal instrumentation. If you need something peaceful and easy listening, you won’t go wrong with this one as Don’t Let Me Fall, Promises and We Need You offer up the most beautiful moments here.

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The Melodic Blue by Baby Keem (Hip Hop/Rap)

There is a lot of pressure that comes with being Kendrick Lamar’s cousin, however you wouldn’t know it listening to Baby Keem’s assured debut album. Although it is admittedly quite hit and miss (first two tracks trademark usa and pink panties ironically leave a lot to be desired), there are enough high points here to make this record worth your time. The collaborations with Kendrick (range brothers and family ties) both strike a chord while the Don Toliver (cocoa) and Travis Scott (durag activity) featuring tracks also dazzle. That said Keem is arguably at his best when he’s riding solo, such as on the heartfelt issues and the Kanye West Love Lockdown sampling, scars.

Listen here

I’ve Been Trying To Tell You by Saint Etienne (Ambient/Electronic)

Crafted over lockdown, this tenth studio album from the London trio is a gloriously understated dive into modern British history, 1997-2001 to be precise. By using evocative imagery and samples from the turn of the millennium, where R&B and bubblegum pop dominated the musical landscape, they have forged quite a dreamy ambient record. Wonderfully creative and a fairly chill listen, it’s a fascinating reflection on a time when the world seemed a lot less complex than it does today.

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The Blacklist by Metallica (Metal/Various)

And lastly on the albums front this week, I have been promoting the various Metallica covers released as part of the The Blacklist project for several weeks now, but now finally the full album has been revealed along with all the covers yet to be shared as individual releases.

At 53 songs long, the tribute to Metallica’s classic Black Album is certainly not one to run through in a single sitting, however there is plenty of fun covers here to dip into and explore. In case you haven’t seen, amongst those offering their own versions of these classic tracks are: Miley Cyrus & Elton John, Phoebe Bridgers, Dermot Kennedy, Weezer, Biffy Clyro, St. Vincent, Rina Sawayama, Sam Fender, Flatbush Zombies, Portugal The Man, IDLES, Cherry Glazerr and many, many more.

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Tracks of the Week

Beautiful James by Placebo

I’m also over the moon to say Placebo finally released their new single this week, their first since 2016’s Jesus’ Son. Beautiful James shows that Brian Molko and Stefan Olsdal haven’t missed a step in their five-year hiatus, with this one centred on a typically instant chorus and some neon-soaked synths. A big welcome back to one of my all-time favourites!

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I Don’t Live Here Anymore by The War On Drugs

Although the first single from their forthcoming new album may have been more understated than normal, on this title track Adam Granduciel & Co. return to the soaring stadium-sized rock for which they are known. Undoubtedly one of their finest tracks to date, you’ll want to stick this one on repeat just so you can keep getting lost in those wonderfully atmospheric guitar riffs.

Listen here

Arcadia by Lana Del Rey

And finally, Lana continues the build towards her second album of 2021, Blue Banisters, with this latest single seeing her on typically vintage form as the song sounds as if it was pulled from another time. With distant horns and a gentle piano, it’s as stunning as any of her best recent work.

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winter-turtle · 3 years

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House Of Wolves - Chapter 3 - Winterturtle - Multifandom [Archive of Our Own]

Chapter 3: Hope Is Fatal

(posting now because I'm a dumbass and I forgot to post it here after I put it on AO3)

Bound to a chair, he couldn’t move around too much. He was in pain.

“You need to learn how to be still.”

No, stop.

“The pain won’t be as bad once you stop squirming.”

He tried, but he couldn’t stifle the scream completely.

“Do you think someone else will give you a breather?”

It hurts.

“It’s for your own good.”

Peter’s eyes flew open with sharp intake of breath. He wouldn’t scream. He couldn’t. He’d learned long ago not to do it as it would show his enemies that he was weak.

And Peter wasn’t weak.

His hammering heart started to slow down to a more reasonable pace as his eyes adjusted to the dark, scanning his surroundings. The memory (nightmare?) began to fade into the back of his mind upon taking in the familiar shapes of his room.

When did he stopped thinking about it as a cell?

He was safe. Nobody could touch him here.

But… he didn’t fall asleep here. He didn’t remember walking back here either, so that only meant that someone had to carry him.

Again, he suspected who.

When one spends most of the time in confinement, it was only natural that they had a lot of time to think about things. That’s exactly how Peter was doing. He thought. He wondered. He went over every single interaction he’s had with the heroes in hopes of figuring out the reason why they were… trying.

More precisely why Stark was trying. Yes, the man might be persistent and his stubbornness seemed to turn everything into a disaster as the trip to the gym had proven, but Peter just couldn’t sense any hostile intent.

None of this made any sense. Why would people like the Avengers show any care to him?

“Hurting their own children is not something normal parents do.”

Peter shook his head. Those stupid words refused his mind since they left Stark’s mouth. “Normal parents…” he said softly under his breath, as if testing how the words felt. Normal. How normal parents behaved? How would his life turn out to be if he had normal life?

Then again, he never was normal, was he?

Deciding that the constant swirling of his thoughts won’t let him fall back asleep, Peter slipped from underneath the covers and walked towards the door. Moving around always helped. He stood there for a moment before placing his hand on the handle. What were the chances of it opening?

“Here goes nothing.”

He pushed and to his surprise, the door opened. “Huh.” Okay, so he wasn’t locked, but there was no doubt that the AI was watching his every move. Well, don’t look gifted horse in the mouth, he thought as he walked.

Turn the corner, first window, second window, third window…

Peter stopped before the fourth window. He didn’t get past this point the last time. “Okay,” he whispered to himself, raising his hand, “okay.” Ever so slowly and with bated breath, his hand inched towards the invisible barrier. His heartbeat picked up as he expected the stabbing pain any second.

But no pain came. No stabbing of needles, no sudden lightheadedness and no sudden loss of consciousness. Peter only released the breath when his hand was fully outstretched in front of him.

Peter put his other hand in front of him and took a step forward. Then another one. Then another one and then, when he realized that nothing was about to happed, lowered his hands so he wouldn’t look like a total weirdo that was pretending to walk like a zombie.

Stark kept his word.

Another speck of doubt fell on what once used to be carefully balanced scales, tilting it even more.

More or less, Peter found his way to the gym by following his nose. The room was dark, only illuminated by the moonlight streaming in through the windows under the tall ceiling. The light fell on various machines which in turn threw long shadows all around the room. When Peter was little, he’d been terrified of shadows like these. He’d felt like they would turn into a monster that would drag him away.

And then he’d spent five days in almost complete dark all on his own.

“See? That wasn’t so bad,” his mother smiled sweetly after he was let out, tired and with dried tear tracks on his cheeks. “The only monsters in the world are those people who call themselves heroes.”

Okay, no. He was getting side-tracked. A nice workout session was bound to clear his head.

Soon, Peter fell into a familiar routine. Warm-up, push-ups, sit-ups, some gymnastics… it did wonders to his mind. For the first time in four weeks, he felt himself truly relax.

Still, a tiny part of him remained on edge. Maybe it was the childish part of him that somehow remained in him despite the countless attempts to beat it out of him, but he could swear he saw the shadows shift every once in a while. Yet every time he looked, there was nothing amiss – just the same equipment sitting on the same spot.

Peter dropped down from the rings with almost inaudible thump. His eyes closed.

“A bit late for a workout.”

Peter whipped around, pinpointing the source of voice. Black Widow sat on a nearby bench, almost shrouded by the shadows, her gaze trained on the dumbbell in her hand.

So he wasn’t paranoid; it was most likely her who caused the occasional shift of the shadows. But that left one question.

Why didn’t his spidey-sense alert him to her presence?

“I must say, that was quite impressive set of moves.”

“What are you doing here?” Peter asked instead.

She switched arms. “I live here. Can’t I come for a late-night workout session too?”

Peter opted to remain silent. The woman continued through her set before standing up and putting the dumbbell to its original spot. “Care to give me a hand?” she asked as she lied down on a bench and grabbed ahold of a barbell.

Not a single of her footsteps could be heard, even with his super hearing. Peter found it impressive.

He didn’t know why, but he followed. He got ahold of the metal bar, securing it in case Romanov’s arms would buckle.

“You know,” she began, her voice slightly strained, “I always come here too when sleep seems impossible. Those night when something is keeping you up…”

Silence.

“So, what kept you up? You looked pretty tired at the movies.”

Peter huffed. “What kept you up?”

She shrugged. For a while, Peter thought that was the end of the conversation, but the universe loved to prove him wrong.

“It’s confusing, isn’t it? When two worlds clash and suddenly you are left to question everything.”

Peter didn’t like the direction the conversation was headed. “What do you know?”

“A lot.”

Okay, even if Peter was vaguely aware of Romanov’s background, the answer wasn’t helpful at all. “Why?”

“Why what?”

“Despite the warning, despite me saying what I did… you know I could just let go of this barbell and let it crush your throat. Nobody would be able to do anything to stop me.”

“Then by all means do. Feel free. You have a perfect opportunity,” she said, perfectly unfazed.

Peter stared at her as if she was a particularly difficult piece of puzzle.

She wasn’t afraid of him.

Why wasn’t she afraid of him?

The weight gave a sudden jerk down. Peter instinctively gripped it, preventing it from dipping further. His slightly widened brown eyes locked with Romanov’s green, trying to read them, although unsuccessfully. But whatever the woman was looking for in his, she must have found it.

With a final grunt, Romanov put the weight back and stood up. She gave Peter a onceover before nodding to herself and then headed to the door, dabbing her sweat away with the towel.

“Why did you come here?” he asked in lowly before she crossed the threshold.

She shrugged. “Just a late-night workout. Same as you. And with that out of the way, I believe the sleep will come easier. You should head to bed too. Growing boys need their rest so they can get big and strong.”

Peter stared at the spot until he was sure he was alone. His mind was whirling.

Was this some kind of test? It certainly felt like it. But if it was, it brought on a question of whether he passed or not. He didn’t know which option he preferred.

A glint coming from underneath one of the bicycles caught his eye. Peter, pretending to tie his shoelace, picked up the object. A smile slowly spreading across his face at the sight of the forgotten black bobby pin. The hair stuck to it was long, too long, so that ruled out Black Widow as the owner. Peter doubted she would be careless enough to leave this lying here.

Finally something he could use.

He resumed the “tying” of the shoelaces when in reality, he slipped the pin into his shoe. He stood up and left.

Getting the bracelets open took him longer than he would like to admit, but prying small panels off with nothing but a bobby pin wasn’t the easiest task. But here he was, sitting on a bathroom floor, staring at the exposed mechanism. If he was correct, these parts were responsible for dampening his powers.

Peter positioned his wrists so they would be in line with the ends of the bobby pin. He had to do it correctly if he wanted to succeed. He didn’t even want to think about what would happen if he messed up.

It could shock him unconscious, release a lethal dose of the sedatives… the list went on.

Taking a steadying breath, he curled his hands into fists, and narrowed his eyes in concentration.

“Three, two… one.”

He brough his wrists together in one swift motion, stabbing the exposed areas at the same time. The bracelets let out a single spark of light each and thin trail of smoke.

“Well, that probably short-circuited something else too,” Peter muttered as he closed the exposed areas. You could spot the faint scratches on the sleek silver surface only if you looked for them. After he removed the pin from the soap and tucked it where, hopefully, nobody would find it, he returned to the living area. Had had mapped the field the camera could see, which allowed him to pick the blind spot big enough to test the results.

He placed his palms on the wall. “Here goes nothing,” he said and jumped.

He didn’t fall.

He didn’t fall!

Grin threatened to split his face in two. “Yes! Yes!” he quietly cheered. Wasting no more time, Peter climbed the rest of the way up and nestled himself into the corner. The familiar feeling was soothing him instantly. Well, it looked like he was about to get first full night of good sleep since he ended up at this place.

That was his last thought before he fell asleep, the corners of his lips quirked upwards.

“Friday, is the kid awake yet?” Tony asked from where he was pouring himself a cup of coffee. When Natasha came to him earlier and told him her night encounter, it actually put him in a good mood.

“I am unable to get my eyes on Peter.”

Tony’s smile froze. “Is he in a bathroom?” The kid didn’t get sick again, did he?

“Negative, Boss. He left the bathroom in early morning hours and then I lost sight of him.”

“Bracelets?”

“I am unable to detect the location from those.”

Tony’s heart skipped a beat at that. “Comb through the footage.” With heavy heart, he abandoned the coffee and headed to the kid’s room.

Kid, for both of our sake, but mostly for yours, I hope you didn’t run.

Peter woke up to a sound that sounded suspiciously like a wheeze. He let out disgruntles sigh and turned his head to look over his shoulder. To his surprise, he found Stark below him, his arms awkwardly in front of him.

“Why do you look like you’re about to have a heart attack?” he mumbled sleepily.

“Oh, I don’t know. Maybe because you’re stuck to a ceiling?!”

The brief flash of confusion turned into understanding once he realized where he was. “Oh. Right.”

“Oh? Right?! That’s all you’re going to say about it?! You could’ve fallen!”

“Don’t worry, Mr. Stark.” Mr. Stark, huh? Now when did that happen? “I won’t fall.”

“You don’t know that.”

“Yes, I know,” Peter said, rolling his eyes. “My powers, remember?”

Wait-

Oh shit, his powers! Mr. Stark knew caught him. “I, uh…”

Smart, Parker. Really smart.

“Right,” Mr. Stark said slowly, “how about you come down?”

Shit, shit, shit- Peter did his best not to outwardly show his panic. He messed up big time. And when there was a mess-up, a punishment usually followed. What a pity. He went so long without one.

Peter could’ve jumped, but he wanted to savor those precious seconds before the pain came, so he started climbing down. Well, the least he could do was to face it like a champ. Like always.

No place for weaknesses.

“Hey, is everything all—"

New voice.

Peter froze still stuck to the wall. Mr. Stark whipped around. It seemed like the time in the room stopped as Wilson and Barnes’ eyes slid from Mr. Stark’s form to him.

Maybe if I don’t move, they won’t see me, Peter thought.

“I’m pretty sure he’s not supposed to do that,” Wilson said warily and to be fair, Peter couldn’t blame him. He did attack the man before.

Peter soundlessly lowered himself to the ground, the slight shift of the two newcomers’ bodies making Peter’s own tense in response. He will defend himself should he be attacked.

Mr. Stark stepped in front of him, shielding Peter from the view. “Everything’s fine,” he said. “Leave us. We’ll join you shortly.”

Wilson leaned to the side to catch a glimpse of Peter. The boy didn’t need to be a telepath to know what was going through the man’s head. “Are you sure?”

“Yeah. Go.”

The man looked like he wanted to protest, but Barnes’ hand on his shoulder stopped him. The former Hydra assassin nodded towards the door. Wilson, though reluctantly, relented. “Okay.”

Once the two were out of the sight, Mr. Stark turned to face Peter and took a step towards him. Here it comes. Peter lifted his head, his jaw clenched as he waited for the blow to land. Will it be a slap or punch? Will it be just his face that gets struck or his torso too? Will he get kicked once he’s on his knees?

Two arms sneaked around his body, one around his arms and one burying itself in his hair, made Peter turn into a statue. But no pain came. The touch was… gentle, actually. The hand in his hair began to cradle through his curls. It felt like someone pulled the plug and all of Peter’s tension went down the drain.

“I’m not mad,” Mr. Stark murmured into his hair, startling Peter and making him free himself from the hold before he could sink into it fully.

“What was that?”

Mr. Stark quirked one eyebrow. “Me saying I’m not mad or the hug?” When Peter didn’t reply, the curiosity turned into a small frown. “Did you ever get hugged?”

“Uh, yeah, yeah, plenty. All-all the time,” Peter rushed out, but the lie sounded fake to his own ears.

“Right, as I was saying, I’m not mad, but I have to ask – how did you disable it?”

Peter decided to take the risk and merely shrugged. He fully expected Mr. Stark to press further for the answers, but the man only nodded and said, “Okay. Now come on, breakfast is on the table.”

Peter could only blink after the man. Mr. Stark didn’t strike him. Mr. Stark didn’t strike him! Peter messed up, did something he shouldn’t have done… yet there was no beating. Not even after he refused to say how he disabled the bracelets. All those things would get him pretty beaten up back home, what the hell?

Safe, his mind whispered.

Peter mulled over the word. Safe. Yes, he was safe, wasn’t he? Mr. Stark stepped in front of him, shielding him with his own body. Mr. Stark hugged him.

Nobody could touch him if he was near Mr. Stark. Mr. Stark meant safety. Safety felt nice.

Peter decided he liked Mr. Stark.

The day was spent by the kid glued to the TV, watching one sci-fi movie after another. The rest of Star Wars saga, Alien, Back to the Future, Jurassic Park – it didn’t matter. It was like he tuned out the rest of the world, only acknowledging when someone joined him on the couch with brief glance. Tony couldn’t help the tiny smile at the sight of childish wonder in Peter’s eyes. With all of the training his parents had put him through, there was no doubt that the boy had any time to just… be a kid.

Tony decided not to do anything about the bracelets. That was another point he wanted to bring up – trust. And besides, if the kid wanted to run, he would have done that the moment he disabled the power dampener.

He made a note to clean and basically child-and-villain-proof his workshop. He wanted to see on what level the kid was despite never attending school. He had to have some knowledge if he was able to disable them.

The whole confrontation refused to leave his mind. Peter looked like a deer caught in a headlight once he realized he was sticking to the ceiling. Like he was expecting him to lash out.

The addition of Mr. and Miss in front of their names came as a pleasant shock. Well, except Steve. Steve was still called Call-Me-Steve. And to Steve’s annoyance, the rest of the team took on the nickname as well. Still, it helped to ease the atmosphere between Peter and the group.

The efforts seemed to start paying off, because the kid basically imprinted on Tony like a duckling, checking from time to time if Tony was nearby.

When Tony found Peter sleeping in the same corner the next day, he had a comfy hammock installed there. Though he thought the kid would appreciate it, it was also mostly for peace of Tony’s own mind.

And as it turned out, he was right. Peter’s whole face lit up once he spotted the little nest.

Tony’s heart flooded with warmth.

Tony craned his neck up. “You sure like that book, huh?”

Peter, sitting on a ceiling, glanced over the top before returning his gaze to the pages. “It’s alright.”

Over the days of interacting with their little charge, Tony believed he became fluent in the teen. He never expressed outward joy and Tony for some reason suspected that it was because of the kid’s fear of having the object of his joy taken away. That, or he didn’t know how to properly express what he was feeling, which Tony found relatable.

Another round of laughter came from the group huddled near the TV. The team had taken up watching the aforementioned PSAs, making their local fossil cover his face in embarrassment. Clint was bent over, holding his sides. “Aw, man, these are hilarious.”

“Play the one about reproduction. You can see Call-Me-Steve’s soul leave his body in that one,” Peter said without looking away from the page. Eventually, he looked, but not at the group. He looked at Bucky, who was only half-attempting to hide his staring. “Why are you staring at me so much?”

“I’m sorry,” he said softly.

Peter’s eyebrows knitted together. “Uh, okay? For what exactly?”

“For trying to kill you.”

“Do you have any idea how little that narrows it down? Many people tried to kill me. As you can see, they didn’t succeed.”

Bucky shifted, bowing his head slightly. “I tried… as a Winter Soldier, I was given the order to kill you shortly after you got your powers. I’m sorry.”

Aside from the rowdy group going crazy over the videos, everything was quiet in their little corner.

“Eh, it’s no big deal,” the kid said, making both men turn to him. “I don’t remember it at all, you obviously failed as I’m right here, so… no hard feelings on my side.”

“But I—”

“If you want to hear ‘I forgive you’ from me, then fine. I forgive you. You can cross my name off some list if you have one, but I literally couldn’t care less.”

Tony watched as Barnes’ shoulders fell in acceptance and mentally added him on a list of people that Peter started to slowly warm up to. First it was Natasha, then Rhodey and then Clint being, well, Clint, got jealous and practically started to buy the kid with chocolate. He puffed like a peacock when Peter told him ‘you’re not so bad’.

But Tony knew he was still number one and nobody could take it away from him.

His idle scrolling through SI documents that Pepper labeled as “important” got interrupted by an alert lighting up on his watch. Peter’s vitals were all over the place for the past five minutes.

Peter hadn’t moved from his spot on the ceiling, but it didn’t escape Tony how hunched over the book the kid was, wide eyes furiously going over the page and lips slightly parted. “Pete?” Nothing. “Kid?” Still no response. “Must be hell of a book,” he muttered under his breath.

A broom in the corner caught his attention. Shrugging, he grabbed it and then poked Peter’s side. The effect was instant. The kid yelped and if it wasn’t for his stickiness and quick reflexes, he would’ve fallen. “What the hell, Mr. Stark?” he cried out as he slightly swinged from side to side.

“Breathe!” Tony said, exasperated. “Or you’ll faceplant on the floor when you pass out.”

“You almost made me fall!”

Tony poked the kid’s ribs with the broom handle. “Well, what was I supposed to do? You didn’t react to anything else!”

“Well, maybe I acknowledged you with a hum but your old man ears didn’t catch that.”

Tony let out dramatic gasp. “You sassy little shit,” he said, flipped the broom over and began to playfully whack the boy with it. Peter giggled – actually giggled – and moved out of the broom’s reach. Tony gave chase, eliciting more giggles from the kid. “I’ll let you know that I’m not that old!”

“Whatever makes you feel better, old man,” the kid replied cheekily.

Tony huffed and shook his head. “Kids these days have no respect,” he grumbled. “Just breathe next time.” He went back to the documents, aware that Peter was following him to stay close.

And just when Tony thought that everything went well, of course it had to go to shit.

Tony heard the kid draw in shuddering breath, noticing that he made it through the book. But that wasn’t all that caught his attention. No, he tried and failed to decipher the emotions that rapidly flashed across Peter’s features. In one flash, Tony could’ve sworn that the kid was about to cry.

Just as fast as it appeared, it disappeared, Peter closed the book shut, jumped down, threw the book on the table and stormed from the room. Tony grabbed the book in hopes to find what had upset the kid since he enjoyed it so much. He flipped to the last page and he immediately understood.

“What was that about?” Rhodey asked.

“I’m going to get that girl from that bookstore fired,” he muttered angrily, passing the book to Sam’s waiting hands. Hope was apparently one of the themes; that was the reason Tony got it in the first place. “No wonder he’s upset with an ending like that!”

Sam passed the book to Natasha. “Well, it is a trilogy. If you wanted cliché happy ending, you should've gotten some standalone. Or different author.”

“Tony,” Steve said, “don’t—”

“What, Steve?” he snapped. “Don’t bother trying? Is that what you’re trying to say?”

“No.”

Tony stopped.

“I wanted to say that whatever went wrong this time, you’ll be able to fix it. You always do.” Tony stared, dumbfounded. Steve continued. “I had my doubts before, but after seeing you two earlier… I was wrong. Whatever you need, we’ll help.”

“Huh. Never would have thought that we would see eye to eye, but… thanks, Cap. I appreciate it,” Tony said, and he meant it. But now onto more pressing matter. “Okay, I’m gonna go talk to him, make sure the kid’s okay.”

“Wait!” Clint called out, making Tony stop. “A bit of advice from seasoned dad to a new dad – if you push a teenager to talk when he doesn’t want to, you’ll do more harm than good. You have to let him blow some steam off first. And until then,” he opened a vent hatch and pulled out a chocolate tablet from now not-so-secret stash, “here.”

Tony accepted the sweet treat. Clint must really want to help if he was willing to pass up on an opportunity to bribe the kid into liking him. “Thanks, Clint.”

He was almost out of the room when he turned around so fast it almost gave everyone a whiplash.

“Hold on… what do you mean a new dad?”

In the darkness of his room and in the comfort of his hammock, Peter made up his mind. He was running away. He didn’t know where exactly he would go since his parents most likely changed the locations, but he could go to some of their old hiding spots. Those places still had running water and provided safe cover from the weather. Food will be a trouble, but he could figure that part out once it came to that.

He glanced at the chocolate in his lap that Mr. Stark brought him earlier and then threw it into the hammock because he couldn’t reach that high up and Peter refused to come down. He set it aside and jumped down.

He’ll miss the taste.

He’ll miss the comfort of the hammock.

He’ll miss Mr. Sta-

Peter firmly cut himself off. No. He had to stop this before he got in far too deep. Because if he dared to hope that things could be better, it would simply get taken away from him anyway. Hope was fatal. Better to spare himself the pain.

Assuming that all doors were locked for the nigh, Peter found a stairwell and bean to climb up in a search for the roof. Then he could scale down the wall and leave all of this behind.

He found the door at last. With a sense of finality pooling in his stomach, he gripped the handle and pulled the door open.

Peter looked up and stopped.

It was a good thing that Tony wasn’t asleep when Friday alerted him that the kid was on the roof. He put on one of his old zip-up hoodies and headed to his destination, not knowing what to expect. Aside from the time in the gym, Peter never wandered the Compound at night.

He opened the door and whatever he was expecting, it definitely wasn’t a pair of feet hanging in front of his face. Ducking underneath them, it didn’t take long to find the rest of the teen. Peter was sprawled on his back above the door. “A bit late to be outside.”

“There are so many,” the kid whispered, pure awe in his voice.

Tony looked up at the inky sky littered with millions of tiny bright dots. “There sure are. Not a cloud in sight. Perfect time for stargazing,” he said as he leaned on the wall next to Peter’s legs. “You’ve… never seen the stars?”

“I never really left the city. You can’t see this there with all that light pollution. Plus, when we were doing night missions outside of the city, it was always on cloudy night for maximum cover.”

Yeah, that would make sense. Though Tony couldn’t help but feel queasy at the memories of being up there. It was enough to make his skin prickle.

“You’ve been to space, right? During the battle of New York.”

Dang, the kid had to bring it up. But he was talking with Tony willingly, so he wouldn’t let the chance go to waste. “Yeah. I was.”

“How was it?”

Terrifying. Traumatizing. Nightmare and panic attack inducing. “It was… big. Vast and dark.”

“I would like to see it one day.”

Tony huffed. “Let’s hope it will be under better circumstances.”

“Thank you for closing that portal. I don’t know what I would’ve done otherwise.”

“Wait, you were there?”

“Of course. Like every person in New York.” The kid paused, seemingly contemplating to elaborate. “I was outside when the invasion happened. I wasn’t fast enough to hide in the safehouse and those things cornered me. I fought but more and more kept coming… and then they all fell. The portal closed.”

Tony found himself sitting next to Peter. He pushed the memories away in order to focus on his young charge. “Wait, that was you?”

Peter glanced at him. “Huh?”

“There was a part of the city where we weren’t fighting, but we found a bunch of Chitauri that were incapacitated before the mothership was destroyed. That was you, wasn’t it?” But none of them were killed. That planted some serious doubt about Peter’s claims that he killed someone. Sure, he was way younger then, but child soldiers killed since very young age. Plus… “There were several civilians claiming that some enhanced human had saved them.”

The kid averted his gaze. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I just protected myself.”

Lies. Tony never thought he would be grateful for those. “Well then,” he said with small smile, “whoever saved those people is a hero.”

“I didn’t save anyone.”

“I didn’t say that.”

More silence. About half a minute passed before Peter sat up, still looking up at the sky. “Do you really think that I can change? Despite everything I’ve done?”

The vulnerability in those words made Tony’s heart ache. “You just have to have a little bit of hope.”

“Hope is fatal.”

“Is it though?”

Peter shrugged, then shivered.

“Are you cold?” Tony asked.

Peter wrapped his hands around himself and shook his head in amusement. “The spider part of me doesn’t exactly like the cold.”

Oh. Right. Spiders can’t thermoregulate. Tony immediately shrugged off his hoodie. “Here,” he said as he wrapped it around Peter’s shoulders.

With wide eyes, Peter pulled the hoodie tighter around himself. “I- I don’t think I’ll ever get used to this… or understand.”

“But you’ll learn.”

A brief hesitation. “But I’ll learn,” Peter repeated. “Thank you.”

Tony’s heart leaped with joy. A grin threatened to betray how he truly felt, but thankfully, he got saved by the kid’s stomach rumbling loudly. He laughed. “Hungry?”

“A little bit,” Peter muttered, his cheeks dusting pink. Another loud rumble could be heard. “Traitor,” he muttered, looking down pointedly.

Tony ruffled Peter’s hair. “Let’s get some food into you then. Nothing is better than the good old midnight raid of the fridge.”

They tinkered in comfortable silence in Mr. Stark’s workshop. If Peter counted correctly, tomorrow should be five-week anniversary of his capture. When he compared his current-self with his past-self, it was almost unbelievable how much has his attitude towards the heroes changed.

Where there used to be struggles and attacks and rude words, now there were group meals and playful banter. Peter still struggled with that one, but as Mr. Stark had said, he’ll learn.

And oh how Peter was willing to learn, especially in Mr. Stark’s workshop. So much technology in one place. It was a dream come true! Yes, he had restrictions because of his villain status, but he still made the most of what he was allowed.

Peter dared to say that he was… happy.

A sound of muffled explosion made his head snap up and not a second later an alarm started to blare. “What’s going on?”

Mr. Stark brought up a footage Peter couldn’t see. “We’re under attack. Don’t worry, just… stay here, okay?” he said, and with that, he was gone.

The tightness on Mr. Stark’s face, along with the churning of his stomach, gave Peter a pretty good tip on who was attacking. More explosions could be heard over the alarm. They were louder. Closer. Like they were on…

The roof.

Peter was torn. Why now? His own words echoed in his head.

“They’re just waiting for the right moment to strike.”

Dammit.

Mr. Stark told him to stay put. And he wanted to obey, he really did, but… the sound of the battle went on for too long.

Peter knew what he had to do.

With his features set with determination, he headed out of the lab, but not before slipping a metallic disc into his shoe. He willed his hand to stop shaking as he pushed the pulled the door to the roof open. Unsurprisingly, he was met with the sight of a battlefield. There were dents in the roof. Charred spots from where the explosion went off. Even some bloodstains.

“Peter?” he heard Mr. Stark say. “What are you doing here? I told you to stay put!”

Peter didn’t get the chance to reply. “Spider!” He knew that voice. That was his mother’s voice. “What are you waiting for? Come on!” Peter spotted her on something that resembled a helicopter. His father was piloting, but still shot small rockets at the heroes on the roof.

“Peter, don’t,” Mr. Stark pleaded, shooting from his wrist gauntlet.

Peter squeezed his eyes shut and gulped. Then he began to sprint across the roof towards his parents. Someone tackled him.

“Pete, kid, listen,” Mr. Stark said, “you don’t have to go with them. Remember what we were talking about? You can be better! Don’t throw everything away. Please,” he choked the last word out.

But he knew what he had to do. So, flipping the man easily off of his body, he took off running once again. “I’m sorry,” he whispered, not sure if it could be heard through the lump in his throat. Peter came to the edge of the roof and jumped. His hand clasped around his mother’s extended one.

“Now!” his mother yelled at the same time as their hands connected.

An electric blast went through the tower, rendering all electronic on the roof useless. Peter heard the clang of Rhodey’s metal suit as it hit the ground. Peter risked the glance over his shoulder at the people he left behind.

“Nice one, Richard!”

“You were great too, hun!”

As always, no praise for Peter. A sudden stabbing pain came from around his wrists. Peter set his lips into thin like. “I forgot about these,” he muttered.

Well, he guessed he deserved it.

Darkness swallowed him.

#marvel fanfiction #tony stark #peter parker #villain peter parker #irondad #spiderson

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finalcreacher · 4 years

Text

Protection - Sydney Novak x Modern Witch! Reader

A/n - Hey, it's Sid here! :)

Back with a requested one shot from a wonderful person on the IANOWT Amino. They wanted the Reader to be practicing modern witchcraft, which I thought was such a spectacular idea. I have never had this much fun researching for a fan fiction before(the exception being TS,AMM, that's an absolute passion project right there). With that, I hope you enjoy!

T/W - mentions of death/a dead character

Word Count: 1,555

You knew Stanley from school, mainly, and that you had lived only a street or two away from each other our whole lives. You weren't best friends, but it wasn't uncommon for others to see the two of you together. Stanley found you after class one day, claiming that he had something important, and you were required.

"I'm sorry, what?"

"I need you to bring all of your witchy stuff for my friend."

"Stanley, I'm not sure what you need this for, but I can't just come up with something right on the spot. I need time to prepare, and I need to know what I'm preparing for."

"Well, I can't quite tell you."

You let out a long, exasperated sigh. "I can't believe you," you mutter, "at least give me something to work off of."

Stanley stays silent for a bit, fiddling with hands, and trying to think. "You see, it's my friend..."

///

Of course, you knew her- everyone knew Sydney Novak. Living in a small town, you know every little thing that happens, including that her dad just died. You knew the best way to deal with grief was time, and you weren't entirely sure what Stanley wanted out of you for today, but you'd try your best.

The two of you concluded that he and Sydney would meet at your house over the weekend. Giving yourself time to prepare, and so you would have all of the materials you would need. The thing is, Stanley wasn't precise in what he needed. He didn't even say it was Sydney at first, but describing her as a friend whos dad just died- well, it would be hard not to know it was her. He said that she was dealing with something dark and confusing, and you hoped Sydney would be less vague.

Not only had the ambiguity of the scenario worked you up, but you were also incredibly nervous. Your experiences with witchcraft had always been very personal, and you hadn't shared it with anyone else before. Save for Stanley, who was perpetually curious and asked too many questions. But you had never performed a spell near or for him, or given him an object- he was merely a spectator.

Stanley enjoyed the idea of witchcraft though, he loved how enthusiastic about it you were, so it wasn't Stanley you were worried about. The thought of sharing this personal thing with someone else, was- simply put- scary. While one person accepted it, another may not. A lot of people, when given the idea of witches and their practices, think it's bullshit- that it's only for fantasy realms, and TV shows, and movies.

It's so much more to you, though. Magick's real, whether people want to believe it or not.

A booming noise comes from the front of the house, harshly knocking you out of your thoughts. You saunter out of the garage(part your room- part spiritual living space) and open the front door- revealing your guests.

"The two of you couldn't knock any louder?" You joked, stepping aside to let the two of them in- you shut the door softly behind them.

Stanley had been in your house a thousand times, so when you closed the door, he had already found himself(and Sydney) in the garage- standing awkwardly inside, waiting for you.

When you're finally able to get a good look at her, there's an overwhelming aura surrounding her- one that even the most simple of us, like Brad on the football team, could sense. You had never felt anything like this. Realizing you'd been staring too long, you shake your head slightly and prepare yourself for a small and suitable hello.

"Oh, sorry- you must be Sydney," You smile, holding your hand out for her. She nods, giving you a short shake.

"Yeah," she trails off, looking from you to Stanley, back and forth, back and forth. "And you are?"

"I'm Y/n."

"Stanley, why'd you bring me here?" She looks at him, confused, and gives him a beady-eyed stare.

"You didn't tell her? God, you're killing me, Stanley!" Your smile is unwavering, but your annoyance with Stanley was only growing. "This dork over here said you've been dealing with a lot of shit lately- thinks I might be able to help." You lower your head a bit, speaking in a low voice, "I'm a witch." You chuckle, letting it sink into her.

"No, no- I can't do this," Sydney replies harshly.

"Would you at least try? It's not harmful- I won't do anything without your word." You lift your head again, giving her a calm, sort of sad, puppy look- the eyes and everything.

She begrudgingly nods, "fine."

I sit crisscross applesauce on the floor, and invite her to join me- she follows suit, plopping herself down in front of me. "Stanley's told me some of what's been ailing you, but I think it will be beneficial if you tell me yourself. I mean- who knows what other sorts of stuff he could be saying."

Stanley looks at you in mock offense, "First off, how dare you," he begins, holding himself from grinning. When you start laughing, though, he can't help to join in, and neither does Sydney.

Once everyone has settled down, you reach your hands out, arms lying against your legs. Sydney does the same but connects her palms down to yours. You could practically feel her energies coursing through your fingers, and you wondered if she sensed it too. "Now," you whisper, "How do you feel?"

She shrugs, "okay, I guess."

"Is," you pause, uncertain of how to go forward. "Is there something dark and unknown following you? Let that be for a person, or a feeling, or something outside our realm."

She still seems hesitant but nods again. You can sense an internal conflict when she moves or speaks, a part of her wanting to tell you something, the other part- terrified.

"You don't have to tell me," you give her a comforting smile.

"Strange things keep happening," she replies. "I'm scared it will hurt someone."

"Yourself included?" She hums in agreement. "Let me see what I can do- I think I have just the thing."

You find yourself looking through a container of various crystals, a different meaning, and property to each one. You pick up one of the pieces and rub your hands along the smooth, black stone- this would be perfect for her, you think. Grabbing a piece of twine, you loop it through a small hole in the crystal, and tie a knot at the top, allowing just enough room for someone to slip it over their head.

"Here, Sydney. This onyx- keep it close to you."

"What will it do?" She hesitantly reaches out for it, and you motion to her to lay the palms flat- which she follows. You place the pendant in her hand, the twine twirling down, and you help to press her fingers closed around it.

"It will help to block the negative energies, whatever is out there, whatever is going on- this will help."

"Will it stop it completely?" Sydney wonders- her eyes appearing to be hopeful.

You hesitantly shake your head, "It won't, not entirely. There's something downright evil following you, but this will keep you safe in the meantime until I can make a more potent protection spell."

"Oh, thank you." The two of us stay silent, and Sydney plays with the onyx, eventually placing it around her neck.

You get up quietly, noticing Stanley picking up a few rare items, and you scold him to stop. You can hear Sydney getting up as well, and laughing softly at our shenanigans. "If you need anything else, you can always come to visit, even if it's just to talk," you smile, your cheeks dusted pink, as you begin to put away all of the materials, gently in each of their spots.

Stanley's already slipped out of the room, probably waiting on the porch or in the living room. Frankly, you hadn't even realized he had left, and he must have said something, it's just your mind was elsewhere. You couldn't quit thinking of Syd. You had never met someone like her.

"Syd?" You call out. You knew she was in the room with you, but she was reticent. "I was wondering, would you want to go out sometime?" You're still turned away from her- no longer putting away anything, but to save you from the embarrassment the oncoming rejection would give.

"I'd like that," You turn around, and she's sitting on your bed, beaming at you- albeit still as red in the face as you were. You chuckled to yourself, finding yourself sitting next to her in a matter of moments. "So," she begins, "How about tomorrow?"

Your heartbeat was rapid and hard, and you wondered if she felt the same warm, bubbling happiness that she made you feel. Even though you had only met today, you knew she was special.

The following day, the two of you had gone out, gotten shakes, and walked around town. Parting when the sun began to fall, and promising to meet up again, and to say we'd see each other during school—and watching Syd hold her onyx pendant close to her as she left for her house.

#I am not okay with this #IANOWT #Sydney novak #Sydney Novak x reader #reader insert #x reader #reader x character #IANOWT Reader #IANOWT Reader Insert #fluff #witchcraft #fanfic #fanfiction #requests open

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eyecicles · 4 years

Note

what do you think about the idea that near and l are just the way they’re (isolated, socially inept etc) bc of wammy‘s?

It’s a) not supported by the text and b) not how I personally interpret them.

If we look at it from an outside perspective, it’s rather the other way around: eccentric genius type characters are very often cast in these sort of roles (isolated prodigies). Even when there are vague references to trauma, we are mostly meant to accept that they were always like that. Which is precisely why they’re written that way, not to make a meaningful commentary on Watari, or whatever, who’s treated as a mostly inconsequential character.

Near - and even Mello - stick out because they‘re inherently eccentric. They are like that before L picks them, very obviously contrasted with the other Wammy‘s kids who are, while only shallowly & collectively characterised, intelligent/talented but otherwise „normal“. It’s hilarious how mundane Wammy’s House comes across in the manga when you compare it to „Another Note’s“ version. It’s not overbearingly fantastic even when you don’t make that comparison; it’s just slightly less trite than, say, the portrayal of the Kira Task Force. (It still feels slightly out of place for me, but that’s another topic altogether.)

DN is not about trauma. It’s, in fact, something they actively gloss over, especially when you consider what Light and Misa went through. The only exceptions I can think of are Mikami and Sayu, but in these cases it’s anything but subtle.

As much as we can criticise Wammy‘s House (and for good reasons), it’s just not meant to be this horrific orphanage fans and „Another Note“ make it out to be.

And there’s another thing to consider: writers create eccentric character that are self-isolating all the time, for various reasons. It’s a trend for the fans to then pathologise them and everything they do, even when they don’t seem unhappy.

I suppose I never felt the need to do that because I’m a bit like them too. Most socially integrated people think I’m lonely or think of my behaviour as „socially inept“ even when I consciously choose to live the way I do. It can be difficult to fathom, but it’s something one of my therapists supported because she understood me as a person. Which is why I feel confident in saying that collectively pathologising this sort of life style is pointless, if not harmful.

I have seen so much sadness projected onto L, while I personally always understood why he seems in actuality quite content with his life. It’s partly the anime‘s fault, but not solely.

Near’s a bit different, because he does at least seem more miserable than L, though especially after Wammy‘s and particularly after the Kira case. And I’ve seen this discussed to death, but it’s a fact that the story never even attempts to „explain“ why Near and L are they way they are.

I frankly believe that it doesn’t need an explanation, meaning that I don’t see how there are in-universe events that could‘ve possibly „made“ them like that.

Does this mean Wammy‘s and the L role didn’t shape their behaviour at all? No, of course not. It just means that they likely wouldn’t be well-adjusted social butterflies under different circumstances either.

#asks #anon #near #l lawliet #mello #death note #wammy‘s house #meta

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gascon-en-exil · 4 years

Text

Mercilessly Judging the Men of Fòdlan: The Alliance

It’s been a long time coming, over eight months in fact, but now that it may be assumed that the last of the DLC has been released and the fandom as a whole has settled comfortably into its various camps I think there’s no better time than now to answer that burning question: how raunchily, outrageously gay can the male cast of Three Houses possibly be? For those unfamiliar with this fun little series of mine, I’ve been applying my extensive knowledge and experience of gay male sex and hookup culture to the men of Fire Emblem, originally as a way of reckoning with the refusal of the games themselves to provide me with any worthwhile self-insert M/M content. I stand by that premise for FE16 - you all know how absolutely nothing appeals to me about m!Byleth or his prospects on that score - but in the years since my first outing of merciless judgment with Awakening that idea has expanded into something broader, an imaginative modern AU of sorts where all these guys are into men (if not always exclusively) and willing to put themselves out there in the lewd and semi-anonymous world of hookup apps in search of their preferred carnal delights.

A note on organization before we begin, as this material is too long to cram into one post. Excluding Byleth (as Avatars and their spawn always are for this project) there are twenty-one playable male characters in Three Houses. This makes for an even threeway division to preserve the eponymous conceit of the game, but not a particularly neat one. Aligned with the Leicester Alliance I therefore have below the male Deer, Almyran and former Goneril indentured servant Cyril, runaway Alliance noble Balthus, and Alois because his biography states that he’s the son of a merchant family. The Alliance is the nation most associated with successful mercantilism, so there.

The Empire

The Kingdom

Claude

Indecipherable from the start. The alluring shirtless selfie and goofy profile read like a fun and easy lay, but rather than sending nudes he engages in long meandering conversations that last for days or weeks before the first meeting. An expert at drawing people out while revealing almost nothing of himself in return, this takes on more literal dimensions when talk and pictures get more explicit; he’ll respond to dick and ass pics with vaguely positive emojis but deflect repeated requests to send some of his own, but he’s so disarmingly chatty that few guys get angry about this. In-person encounters are similarly frustrating in a way that’s hard to convey, as he’s eager to get his hookups naked and cumming via whatever method expedites the process with as little effort on his part. He’s left more than one satisfied but confused partner wondering some time after their meeting if he’s even really into guys at all, or if he’s playing out some weird service kink or vicarious voyeurism. Whatever the case he’s not much the dating type, not because he’s closeted or non-monogamous but because he has other priorities that don’t mesh well with long-term companionship. A shame too, when he’s become a permanent part of the masturbatory fantasies of many a man with whom he’s had even the briefest of encounters (particularly tops, who see in him a cocky bottom who desperately needs to get wrecked). That’s mostly all it is with him though: just fantasies, quick and dirty and unfulfilling because sex is apparently little more than a means for him to connect with people who may help him reach something bigger. Open-minded about his partners’ kinks, but is extremely touchy about race play; he’s aware that he has an ambiguous look about him, and does not appreciate anyone bringing that up even if the intention is completely innocent.

Favored erotic tea time subjects: your erogenous zones, your fetishes, your guilty pleasures

Favored gift: a lavish dinner, not for the expense but for the pleasure of sharing it

Lorenz

You may not like the hair, or the overwrought floral motif, or the polite but pointed way he pursues dates with the men he’s scoping out, but it’s undeniable that his reputation precedes him as someone who is known and who is worth knowing in the community. He’s not as slutty as that suggests, far from it, but he does enjoy his lunch dates and his inordinately expensive shopping dates and generally being as publicly social as it is humanly possible to be. Has an assortment of fem bottom BFFs on speed dial who are always up to the minute with him on social media, but it turns out he’s more versatile than his age and his...expressive fashion sense might imply. Would absolutely love a boyfriend, but judges all his dates in every aspect and considers least of all the size of their dick or what they know to do with it. It’s unusual for him to run across a guy who’s as well-educated and career-oriented as himself who also meets his admittedly snobbish criteria regarding class, and most of the time when he does they make better friends than marriage candidates. Cannot abide poor manners in or out of bed, and has corresponding expectations about proper condom use and prep (also PreP) and won’t hesitate to interrupt a makeout session with a lecture on not fingering him when he just ate an hour ago and he hasn’t had the chance to use an enema yet. Jock types do little for him, although he does have this one celebrity crush of that sort that he holds dear to his heart precisely because it will never, ever happen (although, he does happen to move in adjacent circles....).

Favored erotic tea time subjects: office sex, hustlers, the tea itself...not like that

Favored gift: his crush’s contact info, also measurements if he can get them

Raphael

His selfies come in two varieties, gym and food, and this perfectly sums him up as a person and a friend and sexual partner. Sociable but not particularly quick-witted, his conversations are filled with emojis and exclamation points and it’s not very long before he’s making invitations to hang out at either his favorite fitness center or one of his many favorite restaurants. Don’t expect much from the latter however, as he favors quantity over quality. Is more or less the perfect boyfriend if you like them big and dumb, and on some level he knows this because he’s clearly comfortable with who he is and the goals he’s set for himself, both in body weight and in life in general. Even nicer, he likes skinny nerds just as much as he likes guys who can hold their own (or even surpass him) during workouts, and he’ll try just about anything once. Not the most skilled at topping or giving head or anything else that demands precision in action, but he’ll always give his best effort anyway. Besides, he makes a great bottom, with enough cushion and stamina to take a really hard pounding and jerk himself to completion in just about the time it takes for him to coax his partner to orgasm. A simple man with simple tastes and an insatiable appetite for food and pleasure and good company, and if it comes to it a sweet and devoted familial sort as well. Doesn’t have much of an imagination for kinks, but the person who shows him how to combine food with sex might be on the receiving end of a marriage proposal right then and there.

Favored erotic tea time subjects: sexy workouts, feeders, power bottoms

Favored gift: food, especially if you get into watching him eat it

Ignatz

Fucking an art student is always a unique experience, and he’s determined not to disappoint. More likely to share pictures of his latest projects than nudes up front, although he welcomes receiving them himself as he’s quick to explain that he draws his influence from all areas of his life. Has a particular fascination with the kind of unintentional eroticism found in certain religious art, which is more likely to be found quietly perplexing than offensive in hookup spaces. Is shy and relatively untested when it comes to sex, and as such he’s a natural fit for tops who love to break in new twinks. Said tops may have to put up with his request to sketch them in the bed or on his sofa afterwards though, because apparently the nude models in his classes just can’t compare to the men who ten minutes prior had their dicks in him. As he gets older and acquires more familiarity with the medium he’ll start to gravitate more toward guys of a similar age and disposition as himself, who can be subjects for his art without the constant demanding to get off. (They still get off with him of course, but he has trouble convincing the less understanding that that’s not his first priority.) Sometimes too he’ll just want someone to cuddle with and tell him that he’s good at what he does and isn’t making any questionable life choices. However, with art being the uncertain career that it is he may find himself one day having to reconcile himself to a sugar daddy to spare him from a mind-numbing day job - or worse, admitting to whatever disapproving relation(s) he’s got that he screwed up his professional prospects and isn’t doing so hot in the dating scene either. Never quite loses his mawkishness in bed, but hopefully he’ll get past his public anxieties with a bit more success. Is not really into the gym bunny types, although they love him to death and he has to admit that all that toned musculature is easy to work with. Keeps the glasses on during sex, or at least until he has an accident with them.

Favored erotic tea time subjects: artistic nudes, sexy statuary, missionary (he likes to watch the top)

Favored gift: a set of professionally done nude selfies, for modeling

Alois

A loving and devoted husband and father, he’s only in the app space because a friend made a joke about them and he just had to check it out. Utterly clueless on the terminology and the rules of etiquette, such as they are, for a place where it’s considered perfectly acceptable to begin conversation with a picture of your erect cock. Needless to say he completely misunderstands the term “daddy” in this context, thinking it naturally applied to him without being aware of all the horny twinks that would be hitting him up as a result. Will eventually be prodded, laughing and blushing the whole time, into taking and sharing some mildly saucy selfies, and the boys go wild for his literal dad bod and hair in just the right places (including on his face; the handlebar variation is a few decades out of date, but that just makes him more endearing in a dorky retro way). It’s not clear initially whether he’s even attracted to men, but after a few months of chatting and swapping pics and perhaps furtively jerking off to the ones he gets he might agree to a discreet encounter or two. Well, they would be discreet if he weren’t always so loud, and if he didn’t always resist everyone’s immediate impulse to shove a dick in his mouth just to get him to shut up by coming up with yet another dumb joke. Doesn’t get much further than the idea of oral anyway, as he’s not the most sexual guy to start with and he can’t quite get past the immature giggling over ass play. Not a bad jerkoff buddy when it’s all said and done provided you can stand all the puns, nor is he all that bad to look at or cuddle with afterwards once he figures out that guys like his hugs too. One can only wonder what his wife thinks of all this.

Favored erotic tea time subjects: (bad) sex jokes, porn, glory holes

Favored gift: links to daddy porn, so he’ll finally figure it out

Cyril

Born into a rough background and forced to get by in some difficult circumstances has left him hardworking to a fault - emphasis on “fault.” His greatest act of teenage rebellion was to be aggressively not rebellious, and he still hasn’t grown out of that mentality as he’s quick to scorn his more carefree and hedonistic peers and wouldn’t even be on the apps at all were he not so privately, guiltily horny all the time. As may be expected this mentality wins him few admirers and even fewer friends, of any age, the more so because he’s inexperienced and still figuring out exactly what he wants from a sexual encounter. Will bottom but has a complex about the implications, but unfortunately most of the guys willing to hook up with him are tops and expect to get it in at least for a little while. Manages better when it comes to swapping head, having experimented with his more adventurous friends in school. His fastidiousness and unusually good eyesight lead him to subconsciously fixate on his partners’ minor bodily blemishes, and since pointing those out never goes over well he’s taking to prefer sex in the dark. He’s absolutely not looking for a daddy and is annoyed at the suggestion, just as much as he’s annoyed by guys who try to turn pillow talk into impromptu therapy sessions regarding his past. Will take a few more years and probably some time away at school to properly find his footing; there’s a no-nonsense if slightly insecure top buried under the fading twinkish exterior, and provided he learns out to mellow out a bit he could be quite popular one day.

Favored erotic tea time subjects: circle jerks, docking, race play (which he feels guilty about)

Favored gift: a cock ring, for those size woes

Balthus

He was on the wrestling team in school and acquired a notable reputation for his strength and skill in a brawl, although it was also at this time that he realized he was getting hard every time he would throw down with another guy. Deflects this with an exaggerated womanizing demeanor and a blank profile announcing only that he’s looking and saving even the headless torso shot - impressive though that shot is - for messaging. Gets handjobs and blowjobs and occasionally tops, all NSA and very discreet, but his internalized insecurities fortunately do not extend to his partners. This is probably because his preferred types are either closeted muscle bros like himself or self-confident young bottoms with no patience to take anything from him except a hard fuck and a thick load. His awkward younger days will be long past him before he learns to open up to anything more than that, and even then it’s unlikely that he’ll be very relationship-minded. Has to be educated by more experienced partners on lube and prepping a bottom, and it’ll take a lot of drinks and a lot of convincing to get him to try eating ass (he will though, eventually). Bottoming himself is out of the question except perhaps with the most dedicated of vers guys, but put him on the mat with another total top and there are good odds that someone’s going to end up penetrated before it’s over. Speaking of odds, is terrible with money and not domestic in the slightest, but he’s got a rich family that he can theoretically fall back on in a pinch. Not really boyfriend material, more like the ideal perpetually naked roommate with wandering eyes and a boundless libido.

Favored erotic tea time subjects: erotic wrestling, dirty talk, praise kink

Favored gift: a harness and matching jockstrap, he’s got a thing for gear

#Fire Emblem #FE16 #Fire Emblem Three Houses

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happymetalgirl · 4 years

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May 2020

Umbra Vitae - Shadow of Life

Converge frontman Jacob Bannon is so impressively artistically prolific, sometimes to his own detriment, that I am hardly surprised by the arrival of and results of Shadow of Life, a more death metal-oriented project that still has Converge’s DNA all over it. Still teeming with wild hardcore energy, Shadow of Life is really not all too different in approach from any of Converge’s most direct work, Bannon pulling from a different elemental this time. The project’s brevity works in its favor, but despite being so short, it feels quickly exhausted of its creativity. Converge is made great largely by the dynamic of the band’s direct metalcore aggression and the variety of curveballs they throw in, but Umbra Vitae reduces that to the raw aggression that sure hits hard, but becomes easy to predict after not too long.

6/10

Havok - V

So it’s not as good as Conformicide, but Havok still deliver the goods on their unfortunately unimaginatively named fifth LP. The band’s Megadeth-esque brand of politicallly charged thrash shredding certainly comes at a particularly apt time and the riffs they deliver indeed sound inspired and the performances ripe with frustrating at the various systems that got us to this seminal moment in history. David Sanchez’ piercing, throat-grating screams are as fierce and fiery as ever and impressive in how quickly he’s able to rattle some of his lines off, and the rest of the band remain tight and cohesive across the album’s eleven experience-crafted thrash tunes. Compositionally I feel like there aren’t as many individual high points within songs that made so many tracks on Conformicide such ferocious bangers, but the band certainly still show themselves to be a good few leagues above average when it comes to writing potent thrash. Where I wish the album went harder was the lyrics. Granted this came out right at the beginning of May, before the killing of George Floyd, and was probably recorded and written before if not early on in the pandemic, but it still feels like it could have gone for more than just the usual targets. I appreciate the band’s tackling of the crisis of credibility of modern media on “Post-Truth Era”, their explicit condemnation of the United States’ unhinged military bullying overseas on “Merchants of Death”, and their acknowledgement of the bias/lies of retelling of history by the powerful and how the lies get bigger over time, but I wish the band were this precise and cutting most of the time on this album because so much of its lyricism is super vague, sometimes in a kind of non-comittal way. The song “Fear Campaign” points out the various ingredients in a fascistic rise to authoritarianism happening right now, but it never moves beyond the usual thrash tropes of distrust of government and corporate media. Meanwhile songs like “Don’t Do It” speak just a bit too generally of social despair to pack much of a lyrical punch, while the lyrics to the track “Phantom Force”, whole not particularly offensive, just repetitive paranoid gibberish. It’s not directly related to the music, but it doesn’t help that the band, who have built their identity so heavily on musical political commentary have been rather quiet in the wake of George Floyd’s death and the sharp heightening of the volatility of the political climate. You could argue it shouldn’t impact their music, but it does suggest that they’re intentionally trying to maintain a level of ambiguity in their railing against the system that will allow anyone to read their own ideology into certain crevices, an approach to artistic sociopolitical critique that isn’t really right for this time. Despite that criticism, I still quite enjoy this album for its continuation of the hypercharged thrash the band has been doing so well.

8/10

Green Carnation - Leaves of Yesteryear

Joining the ranks of recently reawakened bands, Green Carnation returns from their fourteen-year slumber with a five-track slab of their trusty slightly gothic/doomy prog and for the most part it goes pretty well. The band’s performances are solid and it sounds like they never even left. The album likes to sway between melancholic (but not entirely hopeless) forms of gothic sorrow and slower classic heavy metal forms of inspiring melody much like Khemmis, Spirit Adrift, or even Pallbearer. I’d say the opening title track is the example most rife with sweet guitar melody that hits this spot well, and while the rest of the album isn’t a drastic drop in quality, the band definitely hit with their best shot first, and overall make a pretty worthwhile comeback.

6/10

Vader - Solitude in Madness

The Polish death metal icons are on their twelfth album now and at this point for them it’s just a matter of proving to themselves that they’re worthy of their status as aforementioned icons of the genre. At this point their solid and consistent discography speaks for itself and justifies the band’s similarly consistent approach. While never being one for overly lengthy projects, Vader’s twelfth is one of their shortest projects to date, not even breaking the half-hour mark, but making great use of its brief runtime nonetheless with vibrant, pummeling performances and just enough compositional dynamic to bring out the quality in everyone’s performances. Sure it’s kind of predictably direct, but that has been Vader’s MO for decades and it continues to deliver ripe, juicy organic death metal, so I’m fine with them not changing their style up with how well they can consistently conjure a half hour or so of sufficiently exciting and potent death metal. What they decline in stylistic evolution they continue to make up for in raw, experienced, and expressive performances, and Solitude in Madness is just another example of it.

7/10

Chaos over Cosmos - II

Dazzling with proggy guitar technicality again on this quick response to last year’s EP, Chaos over Cosmos take another diversion on the vocal front, with the vocals on this album being both much less present and more predominantly unclean. The third track “One Hundred” is probably the standout cut of the four tracks here, layering on the synths and the whispered passages between space-traversing guitar leads. I still think the band could work on making the production a little more crisp and the compositions maybe a little more frequently injected with flair, but I definitely think they’re on the right foot going forward.

6/10

Witchcraft - Black Metal

Going the route of Thou on Inconsolable, Swedish doom occultists Witchcraft bust out an entirely acoustic album quite fit in its ultra depressing tone for these ultra depressing (or enraging) times. Taking such a minimalist approach does pose a bit of a gamble for any band used to a more bulky instrumental arsenal on the make-up-less appeal of the performances at the core of their ethos. Thou absolutely nailed it, and I’d say that Witchcraft are pretty successful here as well, for just how committed to potent acoustic depression Black Metal is. It’s a bit heavy handed at some moments, but for the most part it’s a well-measured half hour of candid sorrow at a rather fitting time for it.

7/10

Tortuga - Deities

I feel like at this point, I’ll give any band points for playing stoner doom and only half sounding like a Black Sabbath rip-off, and Tortuga definitely earn those points. This album actually released on the first day of the new year, but I didn’t hear about it until now, and I figure it’s worth propping up. Deities is the Polish outfit’s sophomore full-length after their eponymous debut in 2017 (which I also missed of course), and it is definitely a breath of fresh air for the genre it represents. Relying not on monotonous Iommi-imitation to carry otherwise thin compositions, Tortuga follow their own uniquely ambient approach to the genre that focuses more on building a dense atmosphere and mood with the thick, hazy guitars and rumbling bass lines than on numbed, bong-worshipping psychedelia. We get a few of the other staple elements of the genre: wild effects-pedal psychedelia, lyrics about mythical Lovecraftian monsters, and audio samples of old-timey Christian fundamentalist preachers fear-mingering about drugs; but none of it sounds contrived or unoriginal. Deities sounds like if Dopethrone-era Electric Wizard had a little more atmospheric dynamic and less on-the-nose Sabbath worship. Granted the vocals on Deities aren’t as fuzzed the fuck out and the bulk of the album is not dedicated to pissed-off, drugged-out, gargantuan heaviness, but it sure is a solid album in the path it walks for itself.

8/10

...and Oceans - Cosmic World Mother

Despite checking all the productional and stylistic boxes for a modern death metal record, Cosmic World Mother offers not very much in the way of anything compositionally or aesthetically unique or exciting. It feels almost like it’s just embodiment of the Emperor/Behemoth-inspired wing of the genre as a hive mind just on autopilot. The band crank out a few brief highlight motifs here and there, the occasional epic pairing of synthetic strings and tremolo-picked guitars, but most of the album is (while competent, no doubt) pretty one-note and predictable in a way that really only becons repeated listens to make sure you’re really sure you’re not missing anything from the homogeneous blend of songs together you remember from your last attempt to stay attentive through it.

6/10

ACxDC - Satan Is King

After a long road to their debut album back in 2014, grindcore stalwarts ACxDC finally follow up with a worthy sophomore effort this year, during which time Full of Hell have happily risen to the occasion on at least two stellar modern grindcore full-length (as loaded of a term as that is for grindcore) releases. But the L.A. quartet is back and quite fired up in the midst of the sociopolitical turmoil that we’ve all been submerged in. While more traditional in its instrumentation, not as laced with industrial noise elements as Full of Hell’s music tends to be, ACxDC captures a similarly powerviolence-adjacent thrashing intensity and the band do not take their foot off the gas at all throughout the 23-minute affair. The guitars blare with a shout all their own and chug with the kind of mechanically smashing crunch found in modern death metal, the drums and the bass lines are never over-the-top in terms of speed or technicality with the band opting more often for synchronized hardcore punches than grinding through blast beats, which probably puts this album deeper into powerviolence territory than I initially let on. And Sergio Amalfitano’s vocals shift from intense death howls and growls to fast-paced blackened hardcore shrieking with respectable fruidity, probably not as erratically as Dylan from Full of Hell, but certainly quite capably. I’ve been turning to a lot of intensely aggressive and violent metal in these infuriating times, particularly grindcore, and Satan Is King has been a solid addition to that alongside the new WVRM and Caustic Wound albums.

8/10

Old Man Gloom - Seminar VIII: Light of Meaning

The prequel to the band’s previously released full-length this year (Seminar IX: Darkness of Being) finds them in an even more esoteric vein than what they were in back in March. Oscillating between Sumac-esque sludge (which Aaron Turner’s vocals make those parts of the album featuring them all the more uncannily similar to) with subtle experimental flair and more modern-Mastodon/Isis-esque sludgy post-metal to full-on noise music experimentation, the band’s “eighth” “seminar” at the very least makes for a dynamic and interesting listen. Some of the band’s exhibitions in certain styles don’t really do much convincing for their branching off into those directions; some of the noise passages feel kind of like waiting at a traffic meter for a more invigorating portion of the album to kick in, as do some of the less-imaginative sludgy sections. But for what the collective do with their array of experiences, influences, and artistic instincts they come through with more hits than misses, I’d say. The longest track on the album, “Final Defeat” is impressively cohesive in its amalgamation of so many sonic elements. though the subsequent and similarly lengthy “Calling You Home” is an example of the other side of that coin, dragging and uneventful. It’s worth at least a cursory listen for its eccentricity alone, it may vibe with you even more than me, if not, at least it’s an interesting meeting of various creative minds in the post-metal sphere.

7/10

Xibalba - Años en Infierno

Offering an especially weighty slab of sludgy/doomy death metal with some tasteful streaks of hardcore and sludge metal mixed in to the dense swirl, Xibalba bring slow-churning, bulky death metal to the conversation of the various injustices and catastrophes of this year, and the band’s hardcore energy and knack for pummeling rhythms in that vein are exactly the kind of pissed off that such an album as Años en Infierno needs. And that hardcore compositional approach and/or mindset means that Años en Infierno is no homogeneously sluggish record; Xibalba pick up the tempo for rapid-fire hits of deathly hardcore punches and slow down to wind up for devastating finishing blows all with magnificent smoothness. Whether trudging through thick, filthy riff sludge like a massive beast stomping its way through a knee-deep muddy battlefield on slow burners like “La Injusticia” and the doom-laden “El Abismo, Pt. 1” or like that same muscular hulk sprinting on dry land on songs like “Santa Muerte” and “En la Oscuridad”, Xibalba are an organic, brutish force in all the ways I like my death metal and hardcore to be, at the same time.

8/10

Behemoth - A Forest

Named after the cover of The Cure’s “A Forest”, Behemoth’s EP-sized mark on 2020 is ultimately a mild one. Intended clearly to show a more eccentric side of the band with the theatrically tortured guest vocals from Niklas Kvarforth of Shining, the band’s cover of the titular track is really not all that wild for a band who came up from raw shitty black metal roots and traversed their way through blackened death metal to the biblical glory of The Satanist; the band have already shown their vast capacity for branching out from and expanding death metal and black metal, and this cover of The Cure happens to be just a more clumsy, rather than illuminating, display of that ambition. It’s not a terrible cover or a poor representation of Behemoth’s ambition, but I don’t think it’s quite the grand statement the band is making it out to be. The same can be said of the redundant inclusion of the live cut of the cover song. As for the other two tracks on here, “Shadows ov Ea Cast upon Golgotha” (which kind of drags and meanders with no real direction) and the more fast-paced “Evoe” (which is at least a lot more fastinstrumentally vibrant), both are solid enough cuts that sound very well like they could have come from the I Loved You at Your Darkest sessions, though not surprisingly notably below par for that course, much less the high bar of The Satanist, which ultimately makes this kind of a benign addiction to Behemoth’s catalogue.

6/10

Helfró - Helfró

This actually came out in April, but I’m late as it is so what the hell, hailing from the small, but mythic black metal scene of Iceland, Reykyavík’s Helfró make quite the standout statement with their self-titled debut record here. At a modest thirty-seven minutes, Helfró is a stinging and searing, but also impressively aggressively balanced display of black metal and blackened death venom. The guitar riffs are sharp and cutting when they need to be and also quite full-bodied while able to keep up with the high-flying tempo set by the double-bass-blast-beat drumming to capture the delirious hysteria of . The band takes their attack from the icy piercing of mountaintop blizzards of speed and distorted dissonance to fiery rumbles of hellishly low guitars and demonic bellows of damnation, and all with such control and gracefullness; I am all for it! This is a hell of a debut record and I will certainly be looking for more from Helfró to come.

8/10

Asking Alexandria - Like a House on Fire

After being completely put off by the band’s self-titled album a couple years ago, I have not returned to Asking Alexandria at all since then, until now with Like a House on Fire. Honestly, I was kind of expecting some sort of response from the band after such a light and messy album to prove to people like me that they can excel with heavy music still, and I mean the only way to go was up after the catastrophe that was the band’s self-titled album, right? Well I was wrong in the kind of response the band came through with; doubling down instead on their departure from metalcore, Asking Alexandria go all in on pop rock and arena rock in a way that I suppose constitutes a mild improvement, but not a justification for their doubling down. The band bit off way more than they could stylistically chew as they clumsily try to chameleon their way into several styles of pop rock. The class consciousness anthem “They Don’t Want What We Want (And They Don’t Care)” and the alternative metal power ballad “In My Blood” offer a brief glimmer of hope for some vital, conscious arena rock for the album, but the shitty motifs and writing decisions don’t take long to follow. With its gratingly annoying vocal riff, “Down to Hell” sounds like a rejected 2000’s Shinedown song (or a 2010’s Shinedown song). “I Don’t Need You” is a glam rock ballad brough to the 21st century with a knock-off-Halsey feature before “Take Some Time” comes through with more annoying vocal wooing. If not outright awful, Like a House on Fire is most often just aggravatingly wash-rinse-repeat boring and banking on current pop rock trends that Asking Alexandria don’t even have a great handle on. Danny Warsnop’s clean vocals and uncomfortable attempts at coming across sultry are especially hard to listen to, as are the completely out of place and unmeshed EDM elements that pop in and out of various tracks. I wasn’t the biggest fan of Bring Me the Horizon’s last album’s blatant pop campaigning, but holy shit at least they were competent and showed they could handle the variety of styles they implemented. Asking Alexandria are clearly trying a similar angle here but they’re not capable of mimicking Shinedown and Imagine Dragons better than either of those bands, and that’s saying something.

2/10

Revenge - Strike.Smother.Dehumanize

Coming up among all the great new grindcore I’ve been finding these past few months, Revenge bring a distinct blackened edge to the brutish force of grindcore and powerviolence. While a pretty effectively churning grind of manic drumming, chaotic bass lines, and jagged guitar galloping, Strike.Smother.Dehumanize is one of the more homogeneous grindcore records I’ve heard this year, spiced up mostly by the artificially low-rumbling toilet bowl growls (that do lose their novelty before the album’s finish) and the consistent individual flair brought by each members’ performances. But compositionally, the band doesn’t really abide by much more than the usual grindcore mantra of constant intensity, but at that it sure is successful.

7/10

Bleed from Within - Fracture

The fifth album from Glasgow’s Bleed from Within brings such a pedestrian and unambitious of a forty-two-minute offering of melodic metalcore as seemingly possible. It’s just like the definition of a baseline, C-grade performance with passable performances of predictable resortings to of metalcore’s most trodden out tropes; like I saw the opening track’s title, “The End of All We Know”, and I knew exactly how that chorus was gonna go before I even heard it. For its few sick breakdowns like those on “Pathfinder” and “Utopia”, there’s just so much more filler generic metalcore (and some completely unsatisfying breakdowns too) to get through. I’ll give Ali Richardson credit for coming through with some impressive double-bass syncopation that sometimes breaks from the metalcore mold to give the music som brief flashes of being more than ignorable metalcore, and I’ll acknowledge the considerable gusto of Scott Kennedy’s vocal performance across the album as its most consistent positive feature, but it’s not enough to make me eager to return to Fracture as a whole or even throw any tracks into my workout playlist.

5/10

Okkultokrati - La Ilden Lyse

In their prolific first decade or so of action, Okkultokrati have done a decent job injecting grimy hardcore crust punk and a head-turning variety of other styles into the kvlt black metal of their Oslo hometown. After nearly four years of crafting since their most aesthetically ambitious effort to date, Raspberry Dawn, La Ilden Lyse is a bit of a regressive and stylistically reductive letdown after its lush and fascinating predecessor. The production of the black metal elements is much cleaner now, but the trade-off isn’t worth it, especially given that the fuzzier production of the previous albums kind of partially contributed to the unique aesthetic the band cultivated. I don’t know what the point was of going more traditional/typical this time around, but the band certainly aren’t making a stronger case for themselves by blending in MORE with their contemporaries. I hope this is just a one-off and the band get back to making more interesting black metal again soon.

5/10

Alestorm - Curse of the Crystal Coconut

I said in my review of Alestorm’s previous album that I am continuously amazed at how the pirate metal masters are able to keep finding material in their super specific vein, especially with how fresh 2017’s No Grave But the Sea sounded while returning to the more “traditional” sound that characterized the band’s debut album. Somewhat unsurprisingly, Curse of the Crystal Coconut finds the band playing around with their sound a bit in a similar way to what they did on Sunset on the Golden Age, and I would say this year’s effort to grow their sound went a good bit better than it did on that aforementioned preceding album. The band are as irreverent in their wacky sea shanty storytelling as ever (and I wouldn’t have it any other way), though they bring a few “futuristic” (for pirates’ times) elements to the table here, which a folk metal purist could certainly argue are blasphemously out of place on a record about pirate life, but if you’re a purist like that I doubt you’re listening to a sixth Alestorm LP to begin with. I actually think the band did well to make these new elements a part constructive to the overall campy aesthetic of their sound. Opening the canon hatches is “Treasure Chest Party Quest” with a hedonistic schlock rock mission statement that sounds like if Kansas were a bunch of Viner douchebags, but moving into the melodic shanty “Fannybaws” right out of the gate reaffirms the band’s folk metal chops. But it’s the introduction of hip hop elements on “Tortuga” that shows Alestorm is here to sail pirate metal to the farthest corners of the seven seas as they can; the band’s foray into trap territory under the influence of this lighthearted and loveable ambition with Captain Yarrface on this track is honestly impressive. And the band’s experimentation doesn’t end there, with “Zombies Ate My Pirate Ship” also featuring the unexpectedly beautiful vocal feature from Patty Gurdy. All these modern music elements made me ponder the possibility of a modern, internet-pirate-themed Alestorm record; perhaps someday... Beyond just the introduction of electronic elements, the thrashy folk bangers like “Chomp Chomp” and “Pirate’s Scorn” are welcome shots of liquor to jolt the album into pirate eager mode while melodic folk metalcore bangers like he nonsensically gorgeous “Zombies Are My Pirate Ship” are surprisingly invigorating. The quick metaphoric jab at the band’s imitators (or detractors) on “Shit Boat (No Fans)” is a good bit of fighting pirate spirit breaking the fourth wall creatively. There’s also the ridiculously overly epic sequel to the fast-chanting nonsense track, “Wooden Leg”, from Sunset on the Golden Age, whose conclusion is so beautifully stupid *chef’s kiss*. Honestly, I needed this album so badly this year, and I’m glad Alestorm came through with such a fun expansion pack of pirate metal tunes.

8/10

Sorcerer - Lamenting of the Innocent

I don’t know what happened. I loved this album the first time I heard it, but my enjoyment with every subsequent listen since then has been significantly diminished. Perhaps I was just appreciative of the dose of classic heavy metal with tasteful modern production updates to liven up my repertoire of new albums to listen to. As grand, nostalgic, and even 2000’s-Maiden-esque as Sorcerer’s sixth album is, I can’t help but feel at least somewhat distracted by how heavily derivative it is of the NWOBHM, even as it takes some cues from Candlemass and Dream Theater to elevate its grandiosity through proggy, epic doom metal. Now all those influences do combine into a generally effective and exciting aesthetic, and I do think the core sound the band have tapped into is potent and worth chasing, as evidenced by songs like “Institoris” and “Dance with the Devil”, but that sound at its best doesn’t show up in full enough on this album. Lamenting of the Innocent is hampered so heavily by its length and the proportion of that length that is comprised of filler balladry like “Deliverance” or the just slightly too dragged out “Where Spirits Die” and unnecessary repetition that draws out even the better parts of the album like the title track. For all this nit-picking, I feel like I should at least emphasize that I do still quite like this album for its solid performances, especially Anders Engberg’s tactful operatic vocals and the distinctly NWOBHM-style duel-guitar soloing from Kristian Niemann and Peter Hallgren. I do hope that Sorcerer do continue to distill their sound down to its best elements because I could see them being a shining beacon for the continued reverence for the era of heavy metal they so heavily emulate.

7/10

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drmedicsgamesurgery · 4 years

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Danganronpa Togami Volume 3 Part 6 (Summary)

Time for more good weirdness.

Thanks to @enoshima-pyon @shockersalvage @jinjojess @hopeymchope for helping out!

CHAPTER 13- The Ascension of K

Karel Čapek [0] wrote, "I don't need any masters, I know what I should do."

Franz Kafka [1] wrote, "‘What’s happened to me,’ he thought. It was no dream."

Milan Kundera [2] wrote, "Kafka learned to kill Kafka because of his insistence on deciphering."

Even with losing Borges, I can still quote the words of the Czech writers. As for why, well, that was a good thing to ask K.

> Go to the city

> Climb the mountain

Shinobu decides to climb the mountain where the sniper is supposed to be. It’s dangerous, but she believes that it’s not as dangerous as wandering around in the city while being wanted.

She starts climbing the mountain, but with only one eye, it's difficult to estimate the distance between her and the trees so she stumbled upon them several times.

Suddenly she find an open space right before her. There was an old log cabin, which looked like a restaurant, with tables and open air seating. A sign said “Temporarily closed for business”.

An old man stood there. Although it was summer, the old man wore a black hat and a black coat. It might be a bit redundant to say that he was a Westerner. From his sharp blue eyes, she couldn't see anything like sociality and friendliness.

"Have you gotten rid of Borges?" the old man said. "Follow me, Shinobu Togami."

She follows the old man to his house on the mountain. He hangs his coat and his hat on the coat rack and boils the kettle. Shinobu notes that the place has a low ceiling but the door is big enough not to be claustrophobic, and she sits at a table.

As I watched his movements with the corner of my eye, I watched the tableware placed on the homemade bar and the woodworking tools piled near the doorway. A picture hanging on the wall came into my eyes.

It was a weird painting.

A small animal that looked like a rat with a scary nose, where its nose supported its body like a leg. There was a certain factor in the painting that made it sinister, which caused my interest and anxiety. [3]

The old man, who has beautiful silver hair, puts two cups of coffee on a table and asks Shinobu to sit down and drink. Then he hands her an eyepatch saying her face looks scary with a hole in it.

"I have already understood the situation. That fake’s ‘World Domination Proclamation', even if I don't want to hear it, has been ringing in my ears. Others call me K."

"K?"

"Thirteenth in Latin, the thirteenth in poker."

“Speaking of K, that is the protagonist of “A Hunger Artist”, right?” [4]

K says that is incorrect and is the name of the protagonist from various other stories. Shinobu apologies, but admits to herself she didn’t come across as genuine.

"Forget it, as long as you say it is white, then black can also turn white," the old man who claimed to be called K snorted. "The initial letter of Kafka is also K."

"Are you...?"

"The reason why people call me K is many, but the most common one is KLAMM [5]. In the era of the Czech Republic and the socialist countries, that was what everyone was secretly calling the official of the Secretariat."

"I don't know Czech at all."

"It means 'fraud'."

Shinobu shows him the piece of paper that Hiroyuki gave her. She says that it’s too much of a coincidence that she met K right after getting the note, so she asks who is he.

"So, please, tell me. Who are you? Why do you know me?" asks Shinobu.

"Who are you? If you want to use that question to figure out my career and position, then it is still a little troubling to answer you. If you want to talk about the why, it is because I am an alumnus of Hope’s Peak Academy. I participated in the development of the Bible Plan. That project and later in the participation in the development of Borges with the Togami Family." says K.

When Shinobu brings up the Hasegawa Institute and if he has any relation to the Ketouin Conglomerate, K has no idea what she’s talking about. K goes on to talk about an interview with a writer who was questioned as to why he didn’t go into detail about a character’s past or appearance. His response?

“'You dare to ask this in front of Kafka? What color is the character's hair, and whether this person's father has money, you should decide it yourself!'"

K delves into what is important or not, is dependant one what one’s worldview is, using several books as an example and asks if what she sees as her reality is different.

"Enough."

"Enough what?"

"I understand it, all these things. Please don't say these words. This is the right thing, only..."

"Only the reality I see is different, right?"

I have been vaguely aware of it. And now that I think about it, even though others have pointed this out to me again and again, I pretended not to notice it. In order for me to be me, in order for me to be a secretary, I can't admit it. However, after losing Borges and "Journey Under The Midnight Sun" and my identity...now I have that idea in my heart.

Do I want to admit it?

That Borges, as an irreplaceable right eye, as a vital signpost, that has always been with me...it has been lying to me, in a rather obvious manner.

In this case, I don't have to be so stubborn. I firmly believe that I am not wrong.

K quietly drank coffee for a while, before suddenly the wrinkles in his eyes trembled and he whispered.

"The cause of this is Borges." he said before continuing. "You use Borges in order to master the situation in this world. It makes the scene you see different from the reality in the eyes of ordinary people."

"I don't understand."

"The writer that I mentioned said that when he translated his work into other languages, he was shocked because the translation was too casual.The French version changed, the English version changed, as for the Spanish version, I heard that the translator didn’t even understand Czech at all. So the question is, how faithful was Borges translation from the original, or to be precise, how shameless was its adaptation of it?”

K explains that he, alongside other graduates, were contacted by Hope’s Peak Academy’s Steering Committee and given an outline of the Bible Plan. After being pressured by the committee, he joined their research team alongside other former Super High School level students who shared similar writing abilities (such the former SHSL Literary Critic, Poet, Writer, Suspense novelist, Children's Literature Writer, Essayist) and was the head of the software department where he collected talent data from the students in the school who had similar abilities. From there, the data is placed into the automatic writing system that was created by the hardware department. Thus, the creation of the Story AI was born.

K then continues on to explain his hand in creating the AI’s method of writing stories program since, as he puts it, it’s like the difference between using AI for novels and chess.

"To let AI play chess, just tell it the rules, let it read the past chess scores. But novels have no rules. If there are no rules, the AI can't write novels. So, as well for 'story data' I also wrote the 'method of writing stories'." says K.

“Don't you let it learn writing skills?” asks Shinobu.

K explains that the meaning of it is different, although it has methods of writing stories, it has many differences in writing technique then just what he fed into the system. He explains what he means by quoting Čapek and Rousseau [6], who all have different styles of writing, logic, techniques and the like. He mentions that Karel Čapek is also a K.

“What you are saying feels a bit complicated.”

“I’ll tell you an analogy. For example, there is such an experiment where a mathematician and a writer live on an uninhabited island. The condition is that the two islands have the same area and have the same problem. They can be escaped the same way. However, at this time, the two people may take completely different actions, and the method of fleeing may be different. Since their occupation is different, there is no common ground for the two people's actions or principles. Thus, as a result, the actions that they take are different."

So, the difference between the actions taken by mathematicians and writers against uninhabited islands serves as the differences in the novel? And that’s the "method of writing stories"? Is that really the case? I doubt very much how much I understand K.

"In any case, the 'Bible Plan' started like this. Then it failed."

"Failed?"

"It takes a lot of time, a lot of money, a lot of manpower, and the story generated by AI is not that great. At least this thing can only be judged after I read it with the team members."

“Why would it fail?”

"Of course it would."

“How can you write a story that anyone can recover hope on first reading?”

"You said it yourself so clearly that I don't know what to say..."

"'A life changing book', there is such a saying. Some books can make people immersed in it, and some books can change one's outlook on life. But I want a book that can have an effect on all humans. To get this effect is simply an idiotic dream. To make readers with different ages, genders, nationalities, and political positions have the same opinion after reading, how can such a book be written?"

"So because humans can't write it, so let AI write it?"

"In fact, the Story AI has done a good job. It responds brilliantly to the requirements of human selfishness. However, the result is terrible. The story AI has written a Bible-like thing... a fake Bible. This is also a matter of course. For now, to say which book is the best book that can bring hope to despairing people, a Bible is certainly the best choice."

"What……"

This is true, that's it.

"The 'Bible Plan' shamelessly carried out the biblical reproduction, which is really boring. This is no different from the shameful behavior of other cults around the world. To transcend the Bible, creativity is indispensable, because if there is no creation, then it cannot be broken. It's at the forefront."

"If you don't have the ability to create, you can't write a story."

Shinobu thinks to what Byakuya had said previously, being similar to this. Using the database to write stories is too limiting as it can only create stories similar to the existing story. The essence of creation is indispensable for a truly new story to be born. The story needs originality, as well as ancient and modern writing technique.

Silence. When I was with K, I had a few coffees from time to time and spent a period of speechless time together. My gaze naturally turned to the painting of the small animal hanging on the wall. The animal that stands with a surprisingly small nose should be a fictional animal, but it has eyes, ears, and legs. If a painter with the essence of creation draws something new, I don't think it will be a creature at all. Creation is such greatness, and it is such a deformity, therefore it must be.

K reckons that even though the Bible Plan was frozen, that the rumoured Despair novel was a product created with the same Bible Plan technique, but it’s difficult for him to tell. It’s possible the Story AI may or may not be involved with the Despair Disease, as well.

“Is there someone who supplements it, like someone other than you?”

"It shouldn't be possible, but I have a hypothesis. If it can make it work, it's just as good as the effect that Borges has on you, or maybe not."

"What's the matter?"

"Don't worry, I’ll explain it one by one. Although the 'Bible Plan' is frozen, as a matter of course, the story AI shows a very intriguing tendency."

"That is……"

“With just one story, it can produce different research ideas from multiple different perspectives.”

“Can you please tell me something more straightforward?”

"Do you know the Mona Lisa?"

"Of course I know it."

“Have you actually seen it?”

"No."

"Since you haven’t actually seen it, how can you say that you know it!"

He seemed to be suddenly angry.

"Because there are textbooks or on TV, I can see it whenever I want..."

"Since there it’s in a textbook, who photographed the Mona Lisa with a camera? Since it is on the TV, who recorded it with video? This is what the story AI can do. Do you understand?"

"I don’t understand."

"Because we are not Da Vinci, it is impossible for us to draw the Mona Lisa in principle. However, we can create the back or the lower body of the Mona Lisa, we can use Mona Lisa's portrait data for use in collage art creation, or writing about the Mona Lisa in a woman's novel. In fact, there are such works of art and books. According to this current statement, it’s secondary creation... Combining or deriving something from that work."

"Secondary creation?" [7]

Suddenly a modern vocabulary emerged, and I was somewhat unprepared.

“The Story AI has become an expert in 'fiction techniques'. Although there are no rules in the novel, there are some things that are customary. It must show the characters, tell the background, and let the plot blend into the historical situation. It must be empty when the scene is converted. Lines, must be numbered, must add a new description, new description texts..."

Shinobu thinks that this premise is too big, which justs makes K more upset that she doesn’t understand. He uses examples of various authors which all come to the main point that while you think these books would be based in realism because they are about real events and real people, but they also have the freedom to blend in things like jokes which never happened at the real event, only added later. He also talks about how many of these realist authors too have a K in their name.

"Hey, although the tangent you are talking about is very interesting, can we get back to the main focus of topic?" Shinobu cuts in.

"This is also the topic, but forget it," K nearly retching said, using his coffee to moisten his throat. "We let the Story AI swallow a lot of data, and as a result, it has the kind of tendency I just stated prior... For a story, it can produce different research ideas from multiple different perspectives... We did an experiment on it. Do you know Metamorphosis?" [8]

"I’ve read it."

K explains that by feeding the story Metamorphosis to the Story AI, that it was able to study that data, and then write many different versions of the story with many different and altered scenarios. It even created stage play and comic book versions as well. Shinobu sounds like it became a light novelist who specializes in Metamorphosis.

"It wasn’t only limited to "Metamorphosis", even if other works of other writers are given to it, it can also be used for secondary creation and writing fake books. We named the story AI “the K2K system” and decided to let it evolve on its own."

"The K2K system." [9]

It seems that the letter K also appears here, two of them even.

"The Bible Plan ran out of funding, but even so we didn’t think failure was important. We were obsessed with the K2K system and even developed up to version 2.3.[9] The K2K system began writing and kept writing, it turned into a writing a machine, a writing robot."

K's words made me feel shocked. I am a writing machine, a word puppet, just a note-taking tool for writing "Journey Under The Midnight Sun". Now, after losing Borges and "Journey Under The Midnight Sun", can I still be so sure of myself?

K continues by saying that the word robot was developed in Czech as forced labour, which was widely known at the time due to Čapek’s writings. He states that propositions like robots gaining the same dignity as humans is dying due to the fact of what the K2K systems can manufacture. Basically, because the K2K system can now go beyond human authors, they will have a sense of crisis in their own dignity as writers. Shinobu says that it would be fairly unbearable if robots were to really take over the artform.

K says "However, this is the reality. In this way, after becoming the perfect pen machine, the K2K system soon triggered an incident. It destroyed a person in the research team."

It created interference, K says.

"“This book changed my life.” One of the people in the group collapsed after seeing it as required."

"Is that person dead?"

"From that point of view, the opposite is true. That person has become a murderer."

“Wait, you just said interference, right."

"Oh."

"So what you are saying is the Story AI... the K2K system can write something that affects human thoughts, but the 'Bible Plan' has not been successful?"

"In the end, it was just interference with an individual. Didn't I just say it, 'This book changed my life', not 'our lives'. The K2K system wrote a story for that person."

"Does the K2K system have the will to do this kind of thing?"

"The K2K system has no will. Even if there is no will, AI can get a car to a destination, and you can talk to AI on the phone. Now in schools, AI has become the secretary of most people. It can recommend things to you, a book you'd like, help you pick the hotel you want to stay in, and tell you the symptoms of your sickness. It can also give you the most suitable medicine. The K2K system is no different from that, just that it mechanically makes a 'recommended book for you'. However, its destructive power is enormous, just like recommending "The Sorrows of Young Werther" [10] to a person who is troubled by love."

Not long ago, I couldn't do anything without Borges, but this interpretation made me feel scared. Among the things recommended by AI, if something intense and full of charm has the ability to destroy the human spirit, can I refuse it at that time? No, maybe I have already seen it before I even noticed it.

"Because that person took the data, what kind of story he saw was unknown, but only from the results, that person became a murderer. Nearly half of the research team was killed, and because of this After the storm, Hope’s Peak Academy learned about the existence of the K2K system. After understanding the situation, the steering committee intended to freeze the entire K2K system, and we took it away, because after the data was separated from it, the capacity of a disk was enough to accommodate, the system is always as simple as possible."

"Then there is actually no K2K system in the school, right?"

"Because we are also worried that the steering committee would use it for other purposes. That school was like this before, they can't be trusted at all."

"Then Despair High School grabbed it from the team members who fled with the K2K system..."

"I have never heard of a stupid organization with that name, but I don't rule out this possibility. There is also one possibility that is the most terrible. I also said that the research group of the 'Bible Plan' had data from many super high school level students. If these people are trying to take their talents, it would be easy to embark on the path to evil."

"Used to do evil, huh?"

"They probably don't think it's evil at all."

It may be that someone leaked the K2K system to Despair High School. Although I am very reluctant to think so, it is not impossible to see that the current "Despair Novel" has actually spread throughout the world. We may face countless enemies. This kind of uneasiness makes a chill crawl up my spine.

"Listen to what I say next and then tremble."

K's blue eyes turned to my right half of the face, so I noticed that the topic finally turned to this point.

"I was trying to hide Borges and finally found a suitable vault. That is you, Shinobu Togami." K said, "Borges is controlled by the K2K System."

Translation Notes:

[0] Karel Čapek was a Czech writer, playwright and critic. He has become best known for his science fiction, including his novel War with the Newts (1936) and play R.U.R. (Rossum's Universal Robots, 1920), which introduced the word robot. He also wrote many politically charged works dealing with the social turmoil of his time. Influenced by American pragmatic liberalism, he campaigned in favor of free expression and strongly opposed the rise of both fascism and communism in Europe.

[1] Franz Kafka was a German-speaking Bohemian novelist and short-story writer, widely regarded as one of the major figures of 20th-century literature. His work, which fuses elements of realism and the fantastic, typically features isolated protagonists facing bizarre or surrealistic predicaments and incomprehensible socio-bureaucratic powers, and has been interpreted as exploring themes of alienation, existential anxiety, guilt, and absurdity. His best known works include "Die Verwandlung" ("The Metamorphosis"), Der Process (The Trial), and Das Schloss (The Castle). The term Kafkaesque has entered the English language to describe situations like those found in his writing. Kafka was born into a middle-class Ashkenazi Jewish family in Prague, the capital of the Kingdom of Bohemia, then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, today the capital of the Czech Republic.

[2] Milan Kundera is a Czech writer who went into exile in France in 1975, becoming a naturalised French citizen in 1981. Kundera’s Czech citizenship was revoked in 1979 and was not restored until 2019. He "sees himself as a French writer and insists his work should be studied as French literature and classified as such in bookstores". He is known for his beautiful silver hair and blue eyes, which contrast the black outfits he enjoys wearing. As of 2020, he is the only author mentioned in Danganronpa to be still alive. Whether or not you understand what I am saying, well i guess is up for interpretation.

[3] If you are a fan of the other Danganronpa spin-offs you should know exactly where this is going. If not, I highly recommend reading Kirigiri Sou before the next part releases. Link can be found here.

[4] "A Hunger Artist" (German: "Ein Hungerkünstler") is a short story by Franz Kafka first published in Die neue Rundschau in 1922. The story was also included in the collection A Hunger Artist (Ein Hungerkünstler), the last book Kafka prepared for publication, printed by Verlag Die Schmiede after Kafka's death. The protagonist, a hunger artist who experiences the decline in appreciation of his craft, is typically Kafkaesque: an individual marginalized and victimized by society at large. "A Hunger Artist" explores themes such as death, art, isolation, asceticism, spiritual poverty, futility, personal failure and the corruption of human relationships. The title of the story has been translated also to "A Fasting Artist" and "A Starvation Artist".

[5] KLAMM refers to the short story by Kafka “The Castle”. The german title Das Schloss may be translated as "the castle" or "the palace", but the German word is a homonym that can also refer to a lock. It is also phonetically close to der Schluss ("conclusion" or "end"). The castle is locked and closed to K (The protagonist of the Castle, whose name is K). and the townspeople; neither can gain access. The name of the character Klamm is similar to "Klammer" in German, which means "clip, brace, peg, fastener" and may hold a double meaning; for Klamm is essentially the lock that locks away the secrets of the Castle and the salvation of K. In ordinary usage, "klamm" is an adjective that denotes a combination of dampness and chill and can be used in reference both to weather and clothing, which inscribes a sense of unease into the main character's name. In Czech, "klam" means delusion, deceit.

[6] Jean-Jacques Rousseau was a Genevan philosopher, writer and composer. His political philosophy influenced the progress of the Enlightenment throughout Europe, as well as aspects of the French Revolution and the development of modern political, economic and educational thought.

[7] “Secondary creation” is not a term commonly used in copyright jurisprudence and it is difficult to ascertain its actual coverage. For instance, there are views suggesting that “secondary creation” should include translations and adaptations, or should be treated as “derivative works”. However, the concepts of translation and adaptation, both being derivative works, are clear under international copyright treaties and copyright laws in different jurisdictions. In particular, the owner of the copyright in a work has the exclusive right to make a translation or an adaptation of the same. Although there may be original elements in the later work itself, it may not be appropriate to take this as the sole basis in considering any copyright exception.The provision of a copyright exception solely based on the rather ambiguous concept of “secondary creation” may blur the line between infringing and non-infringing works, create uncertainty and increase opportunities for abuse.

[8] The Metamorphosis (German: Die Verwandlung) is a novella written by Franz Kafka which was first published in 1915. One of Kafka's best-known works, The Metamorphosis tells the story of salesman Gregor Samsa who wakes one morning to find himself inexplicably transformed into a huge insect (German ungeheures Ungeziefer, literally "monstrous vermin"), subsequently struggling to adjust to this new condition. The novella has been widely discussed among literary critics, with differing interpretations being offered.

[9] Yep, so this is what is speaking to “the reader” during the books openings, and that one interlude. Not Yuya Sato. So suck it TV Tropes and your bullshit misinformation.

[10] The Sorrows of Young Werther (German: Die Leiden des jungen Werthers) is a loosely autobiographical epistolary novel by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, first published in 1774. A revised edition followed in 1787. It was one of the most important novels in the Sturm und Drang period in German literature, and influenced the later Romantic movement. Goethe, aged 24 at the time, finished Werther in five-and-a-half weeks of intensive writing in January–March 1774. The book's publication instantly placed the author among the foremost international literary celebrities, and was among the best known of his works. It is written in the form of Letters, and is basically a depressing love story.

To be continued.

https://drmedicsgamesurgery.tumblr.com/GameSurgeryDRTranslations

#danganronpa #danganronpa togami #danganronpa:togami #danganronpa: togami #drt #drt3 #DRT3 summary #part 6 #i reccomend #reading #Kirigiri Sou #before next part

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nvzblgrrl · 4 years

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On the subject of old fics 1

Allegedly, A Gentleman’s Tale (published 1-6-2012) was my first fanfic ever (again, allegedly - will explain after a bit). It only exists now as a private copy at least one person has saved and a capture on the WayBackMachine (which thankfully covered the whole ten chapters of it), because I have a habit of... deleting stories that embarrass me after the fact. It’s something I’m trying to break myself of, mostly because there are a number of people who do enjoy my work even if most of what I see in it are the flaws and I would feel bad about taking away something they enjoyed.

The ‘allegedly’ part comes in in that, based on my memories of my One Piece OCs and stories (along with more concrete evidence from my tumblr), I had a few OCs with snippets of story (with one who had at least a few chapters worth of story that I have memorized in broad strokes) attached that preceded that by at least one or two years, even though the description of ‘my first fic’ was in the synopsis of the fic as it was posted. Unfortunately, it’s hard to trace that information thanks to the ‘destroy all the evidence of me embarrassing myself’ habit (I completely deactivated my deviantart account on account of ‘cringe’, that’s how bad it got) and the passage of time making it unclear which mutuals might have been around at that time or if they even remember those things.

Now, I still have the computers that I typed up those stories on (they’re hanging out in my basement), but - they haven’t worked in quite a while. I’m not sure if they’re completely bricked or not, but I haven’t had anything to do with them for a while and I know that at least one of them was replaced because it refused to turn on anymore. Someday, I might get the chance to pull out their hard-drives and get a look at the data there, but that’s not a ‘now’ solution so...

Anyway - got a bit distracted there -, thanks to the power of the WayBackMachine, I was able to reread this specific fic in its entirety.

‘A Gentleman’s Tale’ was a little thing that was pretty much Brook backstory wrapped up in the framing device of Luffy wanting a story to help him get to sleep. I was 18, had maybe a year or two of creative writing experience/interest under my belt, and a whole lot of Soul King Stan energy to spend on my favorite character despite being at the tail end of my high school career.

Surprisingly, it was not entirely awful for an alleged ‘first attempt’. The formatting was a little eh, the pacing was borked, and a lot of characters were fairly flat (and a few leaned too hard on certain stereotypes while a lot had Western order names for some reason), but other than that, it was actually palatable. Ten chapters, about 8000 words, not a whole lot to write home about or find objectionable outside of the odd grammatical error and the fact that alcohol is mentioned in almost. every. single. chapter.

Seriously, I have no idea why that was a thing for me 2012-2013ish (it ended up in Witt and Witticism a little bit - more heavily on the rewrites that never took off back in the day but a little present in the original too). I was 18-19. I’d never had alcohol. I still haven’t had alcohol. I’d never really been around drinking at that age, socially or not, beyond like, enjoying brew fries and eating chicken tenders at a bar one time because my shit father wanted to have lunch there for some reason. I just guess that I woke up at the start of 2012 and thought Drink Mixing and Booze were interesting things.

The story wasn’t much to write home about, but the characters are the real area of interest here, so let’s cover them and a few of my plans for handling them in the rewrite.

Brook - Starts out his backstory being seasick, gets to have five decent minutes when he meets Yorki, and then is immediately shoved into the wall-to-wall shitshow that’s his life as the battle convoy captain and resident responsible adult, despite 70% of the convoy being at least ten to fifteen years older than him. Somehow that makes his interest in getting black out drunk almost every single night sound reasonable. Seriously, that’s what he was doing in that story, according to what happened almost every other chapter of the fic (because pacing is for writers on their third or fourth story). That’s one reason why the timeline is being stretched out in the rewrite plans - so we don’t kill the main character through alcohol poisoning (though with the kind of stress he was under in that original cut, I can’t blame him for trying - he got saddled with three weird + constantly fighting teenagers and a dying military organization, snubbed by the king, publicly embarrassed in front of 90% of the kingdom’s nobility, and so on in the course of two to three days max). Honestly, in retrospect, I’m not sure how well this plays with the framing device of Brook relating his backstory 62 years later, because he should have lost so many brain cells to this nonsense.

Yorki - Starts his introduction by saying ‘hey, my name’s Yorki, i’m close, bi, and willing to take you on a whirlwind adventure literally two seconds after meeting you’ which Brook immediately responds to as the best thing that’s happened to him in the last (and probably next) month. Probably the only person in Brook’s life as of the fic not stressing him out or enabling his self-destructive coping habits, though that doesn’t stop him from being one of the better things Brook woke up to after one of his blackout drinking nights. Also got an incredibly shitty nickname thanks to me not knowing how that sort of thing works from his mom. In the rewrite, he’s from Ohio (because I and my Middle-Ground lingering Self-Insert are from Michigan and the opportunity for a struggle between ‘hey we’ve both being isekai’d into this weird place and have similar backgrounds/music tastes so we’re going to hang together based on that’ and ‘200 year old inter-state hatred turned into over the top sports rivalry and disliking the other state on principle’ was too good to pass up).

Luchere Gregg (Gregg being her surname) - junior member of the battle convoy. Incredibly thorny and violent personality, with very little respect for authority (outside of her father, probably) and a generally superior attitude towards literally everyone except her father, especially when she perceived someone as being weak and ‘uppity’ at the same time - Maysure was the main target of this (as was intended at the time of the writing), but considering that Luchere was taking a similar tone with Brook (which was probably intended to be for different reasons, but honestly reads very similarly almost ten years on, given that Brook’s everything is very much not in line with her ideal anything) but not Hana (who was ‘weak’ but definitely not trying to mess with Luchere’s preferred social order), I think I can get more development out of her in that dimension. Her everything was probably was cool and badass back when I was 18, but now she just strikes me as petulant and unpleasant brat.

Minalee Hana - Generic smart guy of the junior team, complete with ‘shy’ personality and ‘harmless cute’ look... which, in retrospect, makes it really confusing why she’d join a military force in the first place and just raises suspicions on the fact that she did. Honestly she could be a Government plant and I wouldn’t be surprised. Another ‘problem’ with Hana is that she was based on someone I was friends with at the time I wrote the fic, which kinda ended up helping me dislike her a lot on more recent rereads, just because of the nature of that real world ‘friendship’ and the way it blew up in the end (with a whole lot of ugly reveals along the way that went back to pretty much when I first met that person).

Maysure Semenov Tara Su-all Evony Taebory Celeste - was originally a parody of the Mary Sue archetype, as you may have guessed from the name. Flashy, overeager, desperate for acknowledgement, and not quite managing to act in ways appropriate to her age (15, directly stated in text), either being too cutesy with her speech pattern and body language or dressing in ways that would be suited for a very different profession than soldier. I ended up liking her the most out of the junior trio out on my most recent rereads, just because she’s the only member of the group that’s actually making an effort at anything (well, beyond Luchere being hostile + trying to make Brook leave), doesn’t go out of her way to be hostile or destructive, and isn’t vaguely there in a way that makes me suspicious. Apparently was the only one of the junior trio ever stated to have weapons training (with Luchere being an unarmed fighter and Hana... just being there) and was apparently dedicated enough to it to have the schedule for the different training drills memorized.

Captain Gregg - the former captain of the battle convoy. He was never seen, only ever referenced in the fic. Based on the content, he was pretty much Luchere 1.0 - crass, unpleasant, violent, and without a lot of tolerance for those that couldn’t deal with or keep up with the unfortunate matter of his everything. The notes on rewrite so far have him becoming a lot more pleasant and lot less generally awful person, though still a bit of a roughneck and unpleasant to be around if you aren’t cut from the same cloth or a similar weave. Was not inspired by Captain Clegg until I started imbibing pop culture in preparation for the various parts of the project.

Jeevenine - quartermaster of the battle convoy, bartender, and carrier of heavy butler vibes, which feels like it might have been intentional. Said to be a master of ‘improvisation combat’ but honestly seems to be the person most likely to have taught Brook his style of fencing (based on his speed and precision being noted as something Brook had difficulty keeping up with in text) and his gentlemanly ways, considering every other character I wrote into the convoy is some flavor of hot mess and either a bruiser or a gunman. Still loses points for enabling Brook’s blackout drinking habits and being passive-aggressive instead of properly helpful.

Jack Rackum and John Delacroix - sniper-spotter pair, as indicated by their nicknames of ‘Windward’ and ‘Leeward’ respectively. Highly implied to be in a long-standing romantic relationship with each other or at least in a long-term holding pattern of pining. Delacroix’s tendency to sleep in the nude is used as half of a ‘my eyes’ joke that Brook is the victim of (the other half is Maysure’s chosen nightclothes being both stereotypical of a ‘Mary Sue’ and vastly age inappropriate, which is a running gag with her). Rackum gets the most description out of the set, with his brown leather hat and green-grey hair being mentioned, along with his taste for fruity cocktails (he might also be an alcoholic, which isn’t really all that remarkable in this fic).

Kurotora Ren - Big Guy McHugeBeef. Also the guy responsible for keeping the battle convoy awash in homebrew booze. Almost kills Brook by accident during his introduction by clapping him on the back at the exact wrong moment. Doesn’t have a lot more detail than that, mostly because he slides into the background after that brief focus moment, but I like him for being genuinely sorry about the near-death thing on top of being friendly for real and not being duplicitous about his wants + thoughts.

Zest - noble. Stupid. Probably the closest thing that Brook has to a friend in his actual age range at the start of the story, which is really fucking sad considering Zest’s everything and the fact that Brook doesn’t enjoy his company at all. Somehow when I was 18, the idea of a guy who spent most of his time in some state of wasted and trying to get his ‘friend’ (who doesn’t even like him that much but seems to tolerate him more than literally everyone else Zest ever interacted with who wasn’t being paid) into a similar condition because of unrequited love or something was tragi-cute-slash-funny instead of pathetic and faintly disturbing (though I guess I might end up writing him as tragic again anyway just because it probably takes Some Shit to make a person like that). Spent 90% of his screen time in the old story making Brook’s life inconvenient and the remaining 10% fully aware that his own life is going nowhere. His personality is oddly similar to Maysure’s, which is... interesting, implications-wise. Holy Shit, is this guy going to be a trip to work with as an adult.

#the big fat one piece fic project #talking about old fic #a gentleman's tale #my writing #if you have any questions about this or other fic i've done feel free to fire away

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thesilverheroineproject · 5 years

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Kate Zambreno’s Heroines is a hard book to read. Every page is a reckoning with the unbearable phallocentrism of Writing as An Institution, and for the reader who’s also a marginalised, struggling writer and/or female, it’s a memory trigger. There’s a thread running through Heroines that memory-work is political. That the literary canon is “a memory campaign that verges on propaganda, that the books remembered are the only ones worth reading.” It’s impossible to review the book dispassionately. Zambreno’s style invites personal recollection; it’s affecting, and in order to get what she’s doing with this book one has to be able to feel it.

Heroines is part literary criticism, part literary history, part memoir, part feminist polemic. In its form and in its writing, Heroines is what the author is trying to rescue and reclaim: to use Zambreno’s favourite words, it's messy, girly, and excessive. It’s also sharp, finely-structured, and meticulously (voraciously) researched. Heroines grew out of Zambreno’s blog, Frances Farmer is My Sister, or more precisely, the blog grew out of ideas for a book. In an interview with The Rumpus, Zambreno talks about her earlier plans to write a fictionalised notebook titled “Mad Wife”—and is comprised of many things, but is most clearly made up of equal parts rage and reflection.

Zambreno began blogging after her partner took up a university job in Akron, Ohio, and the early sections of Heroines record much of what Zambreno finds stultifying and destabilising about being The Wife in a new place: “I have become used to wearing, it seems, the constant pose of the foreigner.” Like Helene Cixous in “Coming to Writing”, Zambreno begins to form an invisible community—communing with the women writers and the “mad wives of modernism”—a community borne out of invention, yes, but also need. The brutal honesty with which Zambreno recognises her particular condition—“I am realising you become a wife, despite the mutual attempt at an egalitarian partnership, once you agree to move for him”—is both disruptive and comforting to the reader. Here is a truth alongside other truths and someone is finally speaking it, but here is the truth and we must now face it.

At the end of reading Heroines, I had accumulated about 17 pages of handwritten notes. Heroines brought into clear view for me names that had only circulated vaguely around my head from an undergraduate survey course in Modernism in Literature. Perhaps my professors had mentioned Zelda Fitzgerald and Vivien(ne) Eliot’s writing, but then why didn’t I remember any of it? The result is that I read the early sections of Heroines with a kind of numb shock. As Maggie Nelson writes in her blurb for the book, “if you didn’t know much [about the “wives” of modernism], your mouth will fall open in enraged amazement.” Vivien(ne) and Tom’s troubled and troubling marriage; Vivien(ne)’s writing cast aside, T.S. Eliot the writer winning the Nobel Prize a year after her death—after he left her, after he hid in bathrooms allowing his secretaries to calm his “mad” wife, after using her lines, her typing services, and disregarding her worth as her writer. Vivien(ne) with her female maladies, staining the bedsheet red. Zambreno tells us of what Vivien(ne)’s brother said to Michael Hastings, the British playwright who wrote Tom & Viv: “Viv’s sanitary towels always put a man off.”

Dear reader, I read that and saw red.

These “wives” of modernism didn’t just suffer at the hands of various men, including their husbands, but were also negated or ignored, made invisible or an object of derision by other women, particularly women writers like Virginia Woolf who had to slay their own demons both in life and on the page. Woolf, who so memorably and wittily describes Vivien(ne) as “this bag of ferrets … Tom wears around his neck”. Zambreno writes: “I think of Viv as the mad double Virginia both identifies with and wants to disassociate herself from.” And this is perhaps also something that infuses Elizabeth Hardwick’s critical writings of other women writers.

Hardwick’s essay on Zelda Fitzgerald in Seduction and Betrayal is curiously committed to omitting the recognition of gender and patriarchal norms; she talks of Zelda and Scott as being twins, and how “only one of the twins is the real artist”, seemingly complacent in her acceptance of the accepted notion that F. Scott Fitzgerald was the real artist while his wife was merely mildly talented, but more of a dilettante. It seems like a neverending senseless loop, this question of artistry, genius, and legitimacy: only a real artist like F. Scott Fitzgerald would be acclaimed; thus, because F. Scott is acclaimed, he is the real artist. Nowhere in this interrogation does Hardwick devote much attention to how phallocentrism structures the creative output of men and women, and how it structures how those works are received. As Zambreno points out, even while Hardwick seems sympathetic to Zelda’s situation, she seems keen to distance herself from that kind of “mess”, to render a particular form of female experience as sick, perhaps, and dysfunctional, and therefore something to be pitied but not common or predictable or in any way relatable.

But then I think of Linda Wagner-Martin’s biography of Zelda, and how she writes that “Zelda’s crack-up gave [Scott] both alibi and cover.” If men’s wives are officially mad—diagnosis confirms it!—then men are never to blame. Badly-behaving, outright misogynist husbands can be forgiven, excused, comforted, and indulged. But as Zambreno points out through all her meticulous research of these ignored and sidelined women, all Zelda wanted to do was whatever she needed to do at the time: write, using her own life—herself—as the material. This made the Real Writer of the marriage, the husband, really, really angry. Scott tells Zelda, “You were going crazy and calling it genius.” Hardwick seems to buy this assessment in her essay. Zambreno explains: “In a way, Hardwick’s essay reads as an elaborate defense of the supreme rights of (male) artist.” Wagner-Martin, in her biography: “The irony of the Scott-Zelda relationship from the start, however, was that Scott regularly usurped Zelda’s story.”

Heroines is thus also a meditation on writing and the act of creation: whose lives count as “material”, and who gets to use and shape the material into the story? Whose hand guides the words? When it’s women who are mining their own lives for both material and meaning, it’s all-too easily seen as easy, lazy, unreflective, unworthy work. “The self-portrait, as written by a woman, is read as somehow dangerous and indulgent,” Zambreno writes, and asks, “Why is self-expression, the relentless self-portrait, not a potentially legitimate form of art?” For me, these questions bring up attendant questions about writing and accountability, about how the need to create can be an almost-parasitical hunger that feeds on people’s lives, even (or perhaps especially) their own.

Zambreno takes exception to Toril Moi’s aversion to a certain type of women’s confessional writing in Sexual/Textual Politics, where Moi dismisses it as a kind of “narcisstic delving into one’s own self”. Yet these are questions that trouble me, and I can’t oppose them as clearly as Zambreno does, to see all objection to narcissism (or even the use of the term narcissism) as a form of censorship that attempts to silence women’s writing. Clearly the fact of sexism structures how writing and publishing operate as an institution, and Zambreno certainly makes a fine case about just how openly and covertly patriarchy attempts to silence women’s voices that do not fit its image of “good woman”.

But I also wonder about the dangers of looking inward, the idea of the self that might harden and become its own kind of hegemony. The danger when one starts to believe that one’s condition doesn’t reveal a particular human condition, but is the human condition. Can looking inward feed upon itself so thoroughly that it, does, in fact, become a form of narcissism? Where you’re so attuned to your own pain that you’re unable to recognise the pain of others, or worse, imagine that your pain is the pain of others?

I recognise that a big part of Zambreno’s project in Heroines is its effort of reclamation: as such, she tells the stories of the neglected, abandoned, derided writers and writer-wives of literary history in order to project a different, erased history. As such, her perspective is clear and focus is sharp: these women are rescued from formerly patriarchal narratives and given new forms of being in the pages of Heroines. Still, all of these women are white, and most of them come from a background with roots in bourgeois respectability, and so I recognise that while another story is being told, the whole story is, perhaps, still unclear.

Heroines is a record of how these women were wronged, and it’s a necessary intervention into both literary history and criticism, but we don’t hear anything about how these women may have used their class and social position and their whiteness in order to get ahead, how they may have exploited other people, people who were economically, politically, and socially positioned as middle and upper class white women’s lesser others. (I think of Toni Morrison’s 1989 interview in Time magazine, quoted in Nina Power’s One Dimensional Woman, where Morrison talks about the old-boys network and the “shared bounty of class.” Although many of the women writers Zambreno writes about were often deprived of independent income, and some even fell into poverty, I still wonder about the class networks and social connections that may have worked in their favour, even when patriarchy stood in the way.)

As such, these women tend to come off uniformly victimised, wholly victims of patriarchy and nothing else. And while I recognise Zambreno’s need to record instances of “girl-on-girl” crime, it also makes me somewhat uncomfortable—as though all writing by women, then, is somehow necessarily above criticism. This is a grey and complex area, obviously, but I can’t help but wonder if this lets women writers off the hook a little too easily. Criticism from other women critics can often stem from internalised sexism, no doubt, but other forms of criticism take to task certain forms of confessional writing by women writers because it stays silent on issues of race, class, and sexuality, or worse, considers those issues unimportant in relation to one’s own work. Zambreno writes:

"This idea that one must control oneself and stop being so FULL of self remains a dominating theory around mental illness, and, perhaps tellingly, around other patriarchal laws and narratives, including the ones governing and disciplining literature."

This is certainly true, but I would rather not see it as an either/or option: either write, FULL of self, or suppress the self and suffer. The problem of writing the self is that the self can become all-encompassing, preventing the writer from hearing the stories of others. Being full of self can work as a form of self-care and self-preservation, and this is necessary, but sometimes the self needs to be shattered open into recognising and accepting other possibilities. So there is a danger, perhaps, in not interrogating statements like “The subaltern condition of being a literary wife,” when literary wives may at least get a stab at writing and giving voice to their thoughts on the page, while the true subaltern (may speak, write, shout, scream) and remain unheard by ears that are trained only to listen to the voice of the self or voices that sound similar to the self. There is a form of power in writing, despite how it’s received—and perhaps this is a power that is all too conveniently ignored by those of us who do write.

And Zambreno does exhort her girl readers/writers to write—“to write and refuse erasure while we’re living at least”—and is ecstatic about the proliferation of Tumblrs, blogs, and Livejournals by girls and young women that are at turns “emo, promiscuous, gorgeous, dizzying, jarring, irreverent, cinephilic, consumed, consuming, wanting, wiity, violent, self-loathing or self-doubting”, to quote just some of her adjectives, I’m also wondering about the attendant tyranny of these forms of social media and blog platforms that demand and require the personal. If we’re writing on the internet we’re using some if not most of this technology, and all of us are daily exhorted to share, divulge, like, favourite, promote, or take a gpoy or a selfie.

While it’s true that many subvert the rules of engagement on social media and blog platforms—by posting deliberately unappealing selfies, for example, or selfies of the ungroomed self—the internet is also run by corporations who try to exploit, in increasingly covert and “creative” ways, users’ personal information. And the young, pretty, wayward girl is now profitable data in a still (still!) sexist society. So much of girls’ writing online, like in the case of Marie Calloway, is (still!) used against them. One thinks about the problem of encouraging girls to write and also to be responsible and accountable to themselves and to each other; the problem of how to use oneself and one’s loved ones as material or content with care in a culture of increased surveillance, especially when the technology we use for writing and performing is also the technology that enables the surveillance and scrutiny.

In her earlier works of fiction O Fallen Angel and Green Girl, Zambreno gave us devastating yet finely-wrought portraits of girls in distress—portraits of acute suffering, where the girl in question (Maggie in O Fallen Angel, Ruth in Green Girl) is unable to consider the world outside of her because she is, in some ways, trapped inside. This, I think, is a testament to Zambreno’s intelligence and artistry—and a cultivated sense of empathy—and also a searing portrait of the fractious and unstable female self and its relation to mental illness. An important theme in Heroines is the institutionalisation and medicalisation of women—how the same misogyny that brings about or catalyses the splits in self in the female subject is the same misogyny that is applied to treat and “cure” it, and it is in these passages that Zambreno is particularly acute, sensitive, and moving. As she points out, language is itself complicit: “I’ve always found the language of borderline personality diagnosis, a label assigned to women almost entirely, compelling in that it’s an identity disorder which is defined almost exclusively by not actually having an identity.” Zambreno writes about always having had a “tremendous fear of being institutionalised”—and relates this to how works and canonised:

"(She was institutionalized, as Mad Woman, as Bad Wife, and he was institutionalized, as the Great American Author.)"

Institutionalisation is also a memory campaign, where the man-artist is generalised and the woman-artist individualised. I’d like to think of Heroines as a cure for this wilful, institutionalised amnesia. It’s a book that has lodged itself in my mind and likely to stay there for a long time, despite, or maybe even because of some of my problems with certain sections of the book. It seems fitting to let Zambreno have the last word:

"Fuck the canon. Fuck the boys with their big books."

#silver heroine #thesilverheroineproject #women are mad men are geniuses bs #female tropes that need to die

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youmaycallmebrian · 5 years

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Hey i understand how weird and intense and out of place this could sound, but i need to say it: I really want to have a big open discussion on religion, more precisely christianism.

Let me explain my context and my background so that it makes sense to you:

I was born and raised in Québec, Canada. Here, the “norm” in terms of religion has always been christian catholicism (historically speaking, it was like the official and most common one). That’s what my ancestors identified as. I know my grandparents were a lot more into religion than me when they were young: catechism was still part of the school curriculum, idk if they went to church every sunday but i know they went a lot more than i do. My parents still had catechism as part of the school curriculum, but it was less present. They didn’t go to church every sunday. And now, me: Growing up, I was taught very very basic things about christianity. Mostly, it was my grandma who told me stuff here and there about it. I don’t think my parents taught me anything about it except maybe like the story of the birth of jesus. I understood from what she told me that Jesus was good and he loved me and all of us very much and he’s in the sky in heaven watching over us with God. He had a mom called Mary and a dad called Joseph (now I know it’s not really his dad but that’s what I understood back then). In school, up until I was like 10, we still had what was called “religious teaching” in the curriculum, but it was a very very small part of what we were taught (I barely remember anything from it) and it was really vague. Then, they completely deleted this class and changed it for “Ethics and religious culture” (in the public school curriculum) because of various reasons.

I was baptized but (obviously) i don’t remember it because i wasn’t even a year old. I did my first communion at like 9 years old. my parents did theirs with the school during their time, it was part of the curriculum. same for their confirmation. i did it bc i saw other people in my class who did it and i didnt want to be left out. my parents agreed but they were confused bc they thought the school was taking care of it but not anymore haha. The confirmation was supposed to be at like 12 years old but i didn’t do it bc i was starting to understand more about what religion meant and what it was and realized i didn’t care and didn’t really identified as a christian. Later, my cousin wanted me to be the godmother of her son but i needed my confirmation in order to be officially recognized as the godmother during his baptism. So i did it, but only because of that. I was around 18 years old.

The things I had to do for my confirmation made me question my faith a lot. I knew for a fact that I believed in God (like, a superior entity or a superior kinda force responsible for the creation of the world) and i believed in Jesus (i mean theres scientific and historical proof he existed) and from what I understood and knew about him, I thought he sounded like a really neat guy. But I didn’t identify as a christian, really. Religion just wasn’t part of my life, period, so I never really thought about it or about my beliefs. But then, i started to be more and more interested in what the frick was in the bible and what was it that made people so so so so PASSIONATE about it. So i started reading it a bit and i thought it was a cool story lmao but i didn’t get very far, like i read maybe 1/20 of it. What really bugged me about it in the first place is that I knew that the people I hated (homophobes, transphobes, sexists, racists, etc.) were often really religious and often backed up their arguments with “the bible”. So i just assumed that i wouldn’t agree with the bible anyways bc it doesn’t match my beliefs.

I didn’t continue reading the bible (should probably continue, one day... like 5 years later lmao) simply bc i’m a procrastinator and i can’t keep up with my 109357976598 personal projects and ideas. But i watched many videos on youtube about religion, i watched a lot of debates, i listened to people with very different points of views and interpretations of the bible and of christianity in general. And it just confused me even more lmao bc i don’t know what the frick i believe in.

I questioned myself a lot on the validity of the bible. I know that for some of you christians, reading this probably makes you cringe and want to vomit but please understand my background and where i’m coming from. I was confused bc so many conservative people are like “being gay is a sin, it says it in the bible”, but there are also SO many things that are considered “sin” in the bible that these people are actively doing... So, how do you know what to follow and what to ignore in the bible? How do you know how to interpret the messages? And how do you know if YOU interpret the messages right? Who can dictate us except god itself or jesus himself? I was so confused. It seemed like downright hypocrisy to me. Like... who are we to interpret god’s words? we’re just dumb humans. Maybe we got it all wrong. we’ll never know!!!! that’s scary to me...

Also... from everything i read about Jesus, i knew it was my boi. I loved him. I agreed and felt everything he preached. But then why do those conservatives who have like the opposite values as me love Jesus too? Is there something i’m getting wrong? Is there something that THEY are getting wrong? How is it possible? That means we must be interpreting things differently... so then the question comes again, HOW DO WE KNOW WHO’S GOT THE RIGHT INTERPRETATION AIUDGOIGHEOIRHJEROITHWIEUYG And then i started to dig deeper in my thoughts and to wonder: who REALLY wrote the bible? Men did. They are just writing down “god’s words” but dang, the words are still nonetheless written by men. mere mortals. human beings like you and me. How do we know they wrote down god’s words correctly? How do we know they were not imposters? And then, there’s the translation of the bible. I can’t believe there weren’t any translation mistakes? how do we know they did a good job?

Do you understand my concern? I’m just wondering how can we place our faith into the bible when we know it was written by men.

I know it may seem like a very bold question but please understand that I know next to nothing about christianity and religion, i’m new to all this. I am just trying to understand.

So now I would like to know, what do you guys think about this? Is there one of you who has a similar experience? Any one of you can relate? What’s your opinion?

P.S. Just to make it clear, I am not here to start a debate or to attack anyone. I am currently pretty neutral in terms of christianity, like I’m just trying to view it from an objective perspective. As I told you, I don’t know enough about it to really take position. I am clueless. So please, do not view my questions and my invitation for discussion as an attack or the start of an argument. I’m just a dumb girl who wants to discuss and open up her mind. Whoever you are, christian or not, even if you’re an atheist, i’m interested in hearing your opinion.

I love you all and i hope i can learn from this. <3

#religion #christianity #bible #catholicism #sin #god #jesus christ

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