#working-class town

[cavenewstimestoday]

When Frogs Dream

CHAPTER ONE: The Awakening, The Stillness Beneath Jackson Jackson, Michigan wasn’t what it used to be. Once a proud, working-class town with grit in its bones and coney sauce in its blood, it had faded into a ghost of itself. The factories had long since closed. The last union hall burned in a mysterious fire, and the Coney Islands—every last one of them—had sold out, changed the recipe, and…

[softh0neycomb]

Baker!Reader X Butcher!Simon

First little noodlings

You’re sat in your local Costa, sadly picking at an overpriced, sad sandwich and lukewarm coffee. Chains are never your first option if you can help it, but this small town doesn’t have a local cafe open past 10am.

Another sigh, you could do it so much better, you think, grimacing at a bite of soggy bread. As a baker, you know good bread and this, this is not good bread.

How difficult can it be, really, you sip from your cup; musing.

You could do it, you think, you already have a steady business as an online bakery and a presence at the closest local markets, known for your delicate bakes with pretty decorations.

The savoury side of things though…you know what’d you’d do, sandwiches with homemade focaccia, doorstep thick toast, savoury pastries.

It’d have to be right though. The voice pops up unbidden and you bite your lip, your need for perfection is both a blessing and a curse.

You abandon the remnants of your sandwich and head home thoughts churning.

In your kitchen, you create a focaccia, flaky salt, the good olive oil, rosemary and cherry tomatoes.

Once it’s cooked you realise you don’t have the right meats and you drag yourself to the store, you stand in front of the deli meats aisle for longer than you want to admit, until your fingers start to get a little numb and you take home a selection and painstakingly try a little of everything with the bread and nothings right, nothing works.

You hiss in frustration before cutting a large chunk and wrapping it in wax paper and grabbing your keys.

You know you must look like a crazy person, stomping into the butchers and dropping the bread on the counter in front of the mountain of a man who works there, bottom half of his face covered by a black mask.

“I need help” you say shortly “I’ve tried the supermarket meats and it’s not right.”

He stares at you, shocked, confused, you can’t tell.

“Look you’re an expert right?” A slow nod. “Good. I’m fed up of having no good cafes so I’m gonna do it myself but I’m a novice at savoury, so taste that.”

You wave a hand irritably at the wax-paper wrapped focaccia “and please tell me what meat is supposed to go in it.”

There’s a beat, two, before callused hands are unwrapping the bread and tearing a chunk off, corner of the mask lifting to accommodate before being lowered.

A moan. “I know” you say, slightly smug “so I’m not putting it with mediocre fillings”

The man hums, swallowing, before turning to a leg of something along the back counter and cutting a thin slice, dropping it onto a paper plate before handing it to you.

“Try that” he rasps, you take the plate and try the meat, it’s salty, slightly smoky and so much better than whatever you brought from the supermarket and combinations throw themselves into your head.

You’re unaware of the butcher staring at you.

“How much will I need to make at least….four sandwiches?” You half ask, half demand.

“Bout 15 slices” he replies after a moments thought.

“Great, that then please” you say sweetly, “and you can keep the rest of the bread.” you add on when you’ve paid and have the wrapped meat in your hand before almost running out of the shop to get home.

Simon stares for a long time, before devouring the rest of the bread.

[twinsfawn]

i’m gonna kill all of you for this

[puppetmaster13u]

Prompt 181

“Hey. Hey Tuck. Tucker. Tuck look. Look.” 

Tucker looked over the edge of the screen lazily, the half interested words on his tongue dying as he let out a wheeze of laughter. “Oh my Ancient Sands, dude, how did you manage that?” 

Danny had, for the last near year, been trying to mix shapeshifting, thank you Amorpho, with duplication. Something he’d apparently succeeded in today, if the massive fuck-you hydra standing before him was any indication. The very pleased looking, well did it count as a hydra if it had wings too? 

“You need to show Sam. Oh my Sands we need to show Val too. And Wes. You did it dude!” He floated up to look at Danny, who did a little twirl to show off. He shook his head, flecks of gold and sand falling from his hair as he laughed. 

“Do you think,” Danny lost it in laughter as several other heads echoed his words, from whichever the main him was. “Holy ancients that’s great- do, do you think we can make a dragon club? Hydras are totally dragons right? Do you think we could pull a Tiamat?” 

He landed on a head, taking a selfie to add to the groupchat labeled Preparations. “Dude, we should, but let me send this to the others first… But I am so down.” 

They can, in fact apparently, pull a Tiamat- with a little help from Princess Dora, practice in front of Frostbite in case something goes wrong, and some advice from Pandora on controlling extra limbs. Honestly, who is going to want to mess with Amity when there’s a giant dragon? And hey, maybe they can break the barrier now! 

The heads for those wondering who I was thinking of for each lol And perhaps what they might all get ((1) Kwan, Pressurized Water) ((2) Wes, Sonic Blast) ((3) Sam, Poison Gas) ((4) Star, Plasma) ((5) Danny, Ice Breath) ((6) Paulina, Acid) ((7) Tucker, Electricity) ((8) Valerie, Fire Breath) ((9) Dash, Pressurized Wind)

[ed13d1]

one 4 each of us

[kacievvbbbb]

I fucking love this image so much, because this is such a Yuta pose I fucking can’t 😭. It’s the little awkward lean into maki’s arm around the hands at his side tge slight angle. This is the definition I don’t know how to Pose in pictures pose and I love it so much

[lovesodeepandwideandwell]

Mom: well, I should go, we're on the way to pick [brother] up from golf camp--

Me, already in hysterics: GOLF CAMP????

Mom, laughing also: We thought it would just be normal! We thought he would like golf! We didn't know it would be rich people--Kaylie, the kids all have their own golf clubs, and they have names like Leland and Paxton [pause for more laughter], the other day I was trying to help [brother] out and I said "hey, look, you could talk to that kid, he looks like you, kinda just a normal guy"

Me: [further screaming]

[strawbebbiesart]

june/ july / august 💌🥪🦢

[greasebabexpress]

Small Town AU fic!!! Currently working on Chapter 2

[inbabylontheywept]

The Mormon Heretic, and the Leviathan

I have decided to make an explanation of how a Mormon heretic gave me the idea for my short story, Leviathan. It is very long explanation, mostly focused on the fascinating theology the heretic created on accident. The explanation of how it led to the story will only be at the end. You have been warned.

So, a short explanation of the heretic: He was a seminary teacher of mine that had deep dived into theology and Jungian analysis and the views that he'd come out with were just... fascinating. He didn't really consider this stuff heresy, because he didn't think it wasn't directly disagreeing with normal doctrine, just adding stuff into the margins. I think that his definition of Godhood and the nature of God was so alien that it was essentially an entirely new religion wearing the same terminology as the old one like a skinsuit. Calling it Christian would be stretching the word to the point of meaninglessness. And without further adieu, his beliefs: He was big on the idea that Jesus/God and GOD/Elohim were separate entities. He based this on the fact that Elohim refers to a plurality, while there are later words for God that are purely singular. He'd envisioned this sort of weird cycle where the God Cluster (Or Big God, or Elohim, or the Monad, he used a lot of terms for it) is this sort of outside-of-time entity that encompasses everything in an unconstrained sense. To exist in this way is to be incomprehensibly lonely, because there is literally nothing in the world but you. So it would, occasionally, go mad and cut out a temporary pocket of reality where it could not go. Sort of the "God creating a rock so heavy that It could not lift it" moment. This God-Cluster would then manifest a sort of physical reflection of itself in these constrained spheres, a self-that-was-not-the-self. That physical unself would go through apotheosis as a rite of passage, to create something different enough from the Monad that it would temporarily alleviate the isolation of being everything. So the God that there was with Eve and Adam was basically just a fetus-demiurge, and the reason that paradise failed was because it was still learning how to not suck at being a God. That was Lesson 1. Lesson 2 was the flood, which was really important because it was, according to Heretic Teacher, the first time that God felt shame. It had not blamed itself for the loss of Eden, it had blamed us, but this time it knew that it had overreacted. After Lesson 2, it spent a couple thousand years mulling over why it kept failing to predict humans and decided to try being one. That was Lesson 3, and the experience went so unbelievably badly that it decided it wasn't going to keep micromanaging us until it got its own shit together. It also gave it quite a bit more sympathy for us in our condition, and basically promised us that it was going to be nice to us, and to please be nicer to each other. This whole little thing relates to the prompt because, in his eyes, the grand cycle of existence seems to be based around the higher powers creating separations within themselves to avoid loneliness, with the goal of each split to be finding a way to reform into the big thing again, thesis-anthesis-synthesis style. We were mini-runs of the demiurge, who was using us to try and understand Itself, and It was in turn a mini-run of the monad, who was using it to try and understand itself and also as a way to pretend that it is two things, because being the only thing is very lonely. In this context, I made the Leviathan as the singular state, and humans as the sort of temporary split within it. That's why it eats people. We were always part of it. We were just a weird embarrassing stage in its life cycle.

As for why the flood is a recurring motif, that teacher talked a lot about the flood. He was fascinated with it, considered it the primary sin of God against man, and in turn, a sin by God against Itself. That one day, as we progressed back to unity with mini-God, all of our pain would become Its pain, and that as it progressed back to unity with the Monad, our pain would because its pain, and that in this way, even the Gods would be held accountable for forcing us to deal with some amateur hour schmuck of a deity for the first several thousand years of our existence. The universe is just a lonely god trapped in a room, arguing with a sock puppet, and occasionally getting so heated that it punches the sock puppet into the wall and hurts itself.

I don't even know how he came up with this number, but he'd estimated that something like a trillion people died in the first flood, which was comparable to how many people had died since. Even as a teenager, I had this weird realization that the synthesized proto-monad of our world was going to be comprised mainly of drowned, which was unsettling. Our world was the world of the drowned God.

I could write more about the weirdness of this guy. He was fucking fascinating, both because of his beliefs, and also because he genuinely viewed himself as a normal Mormon. But this is how that guy accidentally helped me write cosmic horror. By truly and genuinely believing in one.

[vulpine-gentleman]

hello flondon blog i have been working almost all day. let me out.

[dionysus-complex]

re: that last post the thing is my parents are very politically left by the standards of where I grew up and especially where they grew up but neither of them fits the stereotype at all

[ssstarlighttt]

this is how i feel trying to get my fic done for the exchange currently

[c-kiddo]

it feels like a lot of people look at him and go ‘teehee my fav who’s committed war crimes!! <3’ but. only want to appreciate him as the archetype of ‘vaguely problematic fav’ and not actually engage with the specific things he’s done. i woke up like 5 seconds ago so maybe that’s not worded perfectly but that’s the vibes i get if that makes sense

no dont worry i get what you mean, that is kind of the vibe. and to be fair i feel like the cast kind of ended up doing that later on too, like after that plot was done the reaction is Aw he's such a problematic little baby hotboi (typing that feels like when adults call a dog a doggo i hate to say it but it pains me) lets draw him as a chibi eating soup. like no he was able to get away with what he did (giving away the beacons, working With ikithon and ludinus and igniting a war that destroyed sm peoples lives), frame another innocent man for it who ended up tortured and given to the empire as a prisoner too, lied to all of tmn about it to their faces, putting them in danger by asking them to retrieve the beacons for him when he knew where they were and who had them. . he got away with this (in the plot, to the cast and fandom) because he's a young, attractive, extremely wealthy, privileged and politically powerful man. like ?

[songtwo]

like if white ppl wanted to make a movie about learning from ur mistakes and reconciling with your past they should’ve just made it about someone who like cheated or whatever not about a very real situation that kills, torture, rapes and kidnaps hundreds of mexicans everyday and doesn’t even let us have small businesses or go outside or live normal everyday lives bc of how much damage it has caused in our society like kys jacques audiard and everyone involved in that movie

[nando161mando]