#Tinker is definitely Scottish

[tathrin]

Oh no help, why is my brain suddenly full of an RAF (or RFC) AU where Legolas is a pilot who gets the nickname “Greenleaf” because of how lightly and acrobatically he flies (and also he should probably be Irish or Scottish so the Brits can be derisive about his “more dangerous and less wise” people hmm? ooh or Indian! doesn’t really matter as long as he wears a lot of green so the nickname makes sense lmao) while Gimli was too short for the army but is a fucking amazing mechanic and basically single-handedly responsible for how amazing this unit’s planes are and how no matter how wrecked their planes are if they can get them back to base at all he can fix them, and Legolas fell in love basically the first time he saw Gimli work his miracles with that wrench and Gimli is not in love thank you, he is very very annoyed by this chipper pilot who keeps getting holes shot in his fucking wings and he definitely doesn’t like him at all and certainly doesn’t go out of his way to tinker with Legolas’s plane all the time and make sure it’s the absolute best machine in the air oh no nope definitely not dammit and he certainly doesn’t fret every time Legolas flies off into battle or comes back with his engine smoking again that fucker oh how Gimli loathes him! until one day he finally hops out of a just-barely-landed-successfully plane that is literally on fire Legolas what the fuck you idiot and oh and he stumbles what’s wrong oh no is he hurt oh no and Gimli runs over to help him up and instead they kiss right on the runway oh fuck—!

And the whole unit has been taking bets on this forever, so Commander Strider has to come break up the fistfight between Éowyn-who-definitely-isn’t-using-her-brother’s-ID-and-the-whole-unit-doesn’t-know-she’s-secretly-a-girl-NOPE and Boromir over who now owes whom money before Boromir’s little brother, the only one in the unit who hasn’t figured out that Éowyn is a girl yet, does something stupid trying to stop his brother fighting with “the fellow” he definitely doesn’t have a crush on Boromir please—!

Strider is so tired. He didn’t sign-up for herding idiots in love, he’s just trying to win the damn war, do you lads MIND???

Lord Mithrandir is sitting in his office watching the show from the window and laughing so hard, he fucking loves his deranged pilots so much. He has pulled  so many blatant cover-ups for their hijinks, and everybody in high command knows that he’s tossing aside regulations left and right, but his units are the most successful pilots in the damn skies so nobody can do anything about it dammit. (He’s also definitely in cahoots with General Galadriel, who pulls his ass out of the fire every damn time somebody tries to bestow some kind of reprimand or punishment, and who gets regular “briefings” about his pilots that absolutely aren’t just gossip in disguise, and which she certainly doesn’t pass along to her granddaughter who’s engaged to Commander Strider, who definitely isn’t royalty in disguise, nope nope and also nope.)

[moonriseoverkyoto]

That’s Where I’m from, Sweetheart

Synopsis So I’ve been tinkering with southern reader and everyone’s favorite Scot.

cw: none? Maybe one mention of blood, talk of strip poker, some playful but still threatening language (all is fair in love and war guys), just a teensy eeensy bit suggestive (if you don’t wanna see it, just scroll by it’s that easy.)

Pairing: southern(texas/Georgia fusion inspired)!medic!reader x John "Soap" MacTavish

Author’s note: literally doing this as a test but if nobody likes it I’ll still repost it. Anyways all inspo and motivation comes from @glossythor

©️moonriseoverkyoto 2023. please do not steal, copy, plagiarize, translate, or repost any of my works without my permission. do not steal any elements of my theme without permission.

- Southern Medic!reader didn’t learn their tricks traditionally from med school, no in fact they aced their classes and almost graduated top of class.

- So when you were specifically invited to join the 141 in the field, you can imagine the look you received when you pulled up the flight deck in your low rise jeans, and a cowboy hat sitting on

- You can also imagine the peak curiosity you were going to withstand for the next few months on the mission

“Soap won’t be the only one with a tough accent around here anymore.” Announced Price as you walked into the room with a big smile only to be greeted by hardened eyes scanning you for your weaknesses and possible ulterior motives.

“hello everybody, I’ll be y’all’s medic for this trip. Believe me I’ve already heard all the western jokes, the hillbilly, and the redneck bullshit so can it for me okay everyone?” You spoke to the room with a gleaming grin that hid your boiling anxiety.

As the day proceeded on there was a tension stuck between your shoulders especially when you got placed between ghost and soap for the flight

“So what part are you from darlin?”

“The part where Mama doesn’t let you come home until the sun goes down and where you’re more likely to get kicked by a horse then learn the alphabet. That’s where I’m from sweetheart”.

- You never grow used to the look you receive from others as the team grows close to you. Nor do you ever live down the jokes and the constant harassment from the team to “get a room” with soap once your accents kick into high gear and his gaelish comes out.

- “dinnae be in any rush darlin, our captain isn’t bleeding out any faster than usual. I would hate to clipe to the rest of the group that you get slower when I come around.” The Scottish flirted with a wink as he dragged Price in one rainy day to base camp.

- “and I’d hate to hogtie you to a mustang and magically push my Nana’s spurs into it’s hide so you can eat shit for all the shit you talk, sweetheart.”

- “aye love if you did that, I’d let you just for the moment I’d be under you, even if it makes me boggin eejit being tied to the horse.”

Price’s grunt as you sprayed the wound stopped you both and the man spoke to you both with his look of surprise between you both.

- Soap definitely pulls you everywhere by your belt loops when you’re not in scrubs. Like I’m talking you’ll be doing something and just feel a tug before you’re face to face with your favorite (you don’t have favorites right :)? )

- the absolute one time you played strip poker, you whipped everyone’s asses and they’ve been begging to know your tricks since. You even had your cowboy hat on still by the end

- Soap who secretly goes weak at the knees hearing you say sweetheart but he would never admit how whipped you have him

-Soap who talks Ghost’s EAR off about you so much so that Ghost could win a jeopardy game about you

- Soap, the man who confesses by… well I’ll save that for another time

-Soap definitely is shitting bricks nervous to meet your family and actually makes your dad shit bricks instead when he sees your hunk of a boyfriend.

-Everyone turning their comms off once you say sweetheart because they know you’re just talking to Soap

-Soap sending everyone a video of you hogtying a pig, and winning first place at a rodeo held in your hometown over holiday one year

- now they actually get a little nervous when you start stomping around in your infirmary/makeshift medic tent talking about hogtying whoever who misplaced your special medical needle gifted to you from your nana/papa/mama/whoever you find special in your life

authors note again: Anyways I’m just gonna yk slip on past here. Lmk if there’s anything that offends you or anything I should improve as I’m still super new to writing fanfiction (so much harder than literature analysis or film writing) I loved doing this and I hope I can do more!

My requests are open and I love writing these as a emotional release

[serpentsillusion]

Sebastian, Ominis, and my x MC

🐍✨

What are their zodiac signs and birthdays? *Near the end of 5th year* 🤔💚

Ever wondered what our 2 favorite idiots were, based on the stars? I studied astrology and similar things before it was mainstream. From what I've gathered based on their characteristics and personalities in the game this is the assumptions I've gathered (and some random other observations I've gathered). These are not fact but just my personal ✨Lore✨ plus a little bit about my MC. Welcome to my spicy brain and my spicy imagination. 💚 I hope you guys enjoy the lore! Hopefully it will give you more insight into my next coming shorts. 🐍

Sebastian: born March 28th 1874. He's MOST definitely an Aries. Aries personality traits include confidence, passion, and independence. But this sign can also be impulsive, impatient, and self-centered. They're Competitive. As a fire sign, Aries are fueled by intensity. They love to challenge others to friendly competition. Positive Traits: Energetic, Bold,  possesses Leadership Skills. Negative Traits: Impulsive, Stubborn, Impatient. Aries brings dynamism. His Mother and Father were named Johnathan James Sallow and Mary Anne Sallow. I figure his middle name is probably of his father's also. I kinda dig the thought of Sebastian James Sallow. 🤔🤭

Sebastian 100% smells like Sandalwood. Have you ever smelled that on a man? Holy Merlin TAKE ME AWAY! 😭 Sandalwood screams masculinity to me. But like a mysterious and seductive, curious masculinity way. The first time MC smelled his cologne on him she immediately had to know what it was. He told her, because she asked, very bluntly to be honest.... And now sometimes her girls bed room smells like burning sandalwood when she misses being around him or his dumb ass gets detention and she has to go to classes without him. (my real life partner wears this and it is INTOXICATING) Give it a try. 😏🤭

Nicknames: Seb, Sebby Boi, idiot #1, Sebs, sex panther (MC keeps that one to herself)

Sebastian's talents: he's really good at wood work and tinkering. He likes carving things for his friends out of tree branches. One of the very few things he doesn't use magic for. He once made a tiny carved bear for MC for her 16th birthday, she put it in a trinket box next to her bed and cried about it when she went to bed that night because it was so precious. Ominis got a teeny tiny carved peepee one time as a prank. He was not amused. ALSO Seb's surprisingly good at making food. (had to survive on his own for a little while)

Favorite food: literally anything. Jelly beans, haggis (he's Scottish, and his mom used to make it ALOT) Tablet (look it up) MC's Dad once sent a whole loaf of homemade banana nutbread to the Slytherin common room for her and she only had like maybe a bite. That was a new thing for Seb he had never tried, and unfortunately he ate most of it and was very upset with himself afterwards because it was for her. It was DELICIOUS 😂 MC couldn't help but love that he loved it. He wanted the recipe but she told him no. It was a family recipe, and if he wanted it, he'd have to marry her. That was a challenge accepted in his mind. Ominis doesn't like Bananas but he tried it and was nice about it, after spitting it in the trashcan without MC seeing. (he really hates Bananas...it's a texture thing.)

Seb=Dom. Likes to be in control 24/7. Turns into a complete and utter almost feral animal when confronted with matching Dom energy. Especially with a female.. aka MC

Probably most definitely has sad boi depression and anxiety. Which turns into fear, which turns into anger. Probably has PTSD. MC shares his pain from her upbringing and that's another reason why they have bonded so incredibly fast.

Ominis:  born September 25th 1874. Definitely a Libra. Libra's are extroverted, cosy, and friendly people. Libra's, like the Scales that symbolise the sign, are often concerned with attaining balance, harmony, peace, and justice in the world. With their vast stores of charm, intelligence, frankness, persuasion, and seamless connectivity, they are well-equipped to do so. I'm going to assume his father was British and his mother was Irish according to ✨le internet.✨ His father's name was probably something fancy like Elias and his Mother was probably something super classy like Violet. Idk 😐😂

Ominis probably smells like vetiver, tobacco (for some reason) and leather. Like a high society lounge for men. With ✨class✨ The epitome of sophistication.

Nicknames: idiot #2, omnomnom he hates it when MC calls him that but it's cute, snakey boi.

Ominis=Sub. Too nervous to touch a girl. Doesn't know what to do. Too gentleman like. Wants to wait until marriage. Probably screams and runs if he tries to be kissed by a girl. Like Poppy.

Ominis and Sebastian are already best friends but Ominis feels drawn to MC in a way a brother is drawn to protect his sister. Ominis feels obligated to help protect MC because he views her as a sister, and the fact that his best friend is absolutely smitten with her. Ominis will 100% be the best man at Sebastian's wedding to MC. She just doesn't know she's gonna get married to that idiot yet.

Ominis talents: is surprising very very good at playing the piano. It was something he was made to do as a child for his parents extravagant parties.

Favorite food: Anything, except fucking bananas.

My MC: aka Jessica "Jess" Garyn Burke born October 16th 1874. The youngest of The Silver Trio, and also similarly of Borgin and Burkes owned by Mr Borgin and Mr Burke, who were known to deal with unusual and ancient artifacts.😉 I picked Jessica because it's actually an OLD name meaning "To Behold" and Garyn meaning "warrior" Everything she knows she learned from her Dad, including protecting herself magically and *physically* like when she decked Leander Prewett in the face for calling her a rather "prude" name and teasing her in front of everyone including Sebastian and Ominis. 0/10 does not like being sexualized by other men, finds it incredibly disrespectful. She can handle her own. Obviously. It only cost her 2 weeks of detention. Leander and her are cool now btw. He's fine. His pride is not. Sebastian purposely got 2 weeks detention shortly after that so he could be around her more. 😂🤭😁✨ She is incredibly sassy, blunt, domineering, sharp as a whip, and not traditionally "ladylike". MC is not afraid to dig her nails in the dirt if she has to. And she will 100% knock a man on his ass for grabbing her butt. "Bitches get shit done." Is her Mantra.

MC=Dom a dangerous mix when tangled around Sebastian. They constantly fight for dominance but he usually always wins. Only because he's taller and a lot stronger than she is. Not sexually active because she's afraid of her father finding out and killing the poor guy. But she does know how to tie a cherry stem in her mouth without using her fingers. 10/10 proud of herself for that after almost choking on a few in her time trying. She learned that from one of her friends back in London. Father doesn't approve of said friend. Useful skill for seduction. Will keep in her back pocket for later. Is actually kinky. She's read A LOT of books about it. Can "work her magic" so to say if need be.

MC usually has her butternut ash brown hair up in a beautiful and detailed bun with intricate pieces framing her face. Slightly pale skin with mild freckles and bright blue eyes. She loves fresh flowers but fresh roses are her ABSOLUTE favorite!! Which is her perfume of choice. Just straight up Rose.

-She also cries when she gets yelled at. Because she's sensitive, but also immediately gets immensely pissed off. You would prefer having her as a friend, and not an enemy. That is why Sebastian and her formed an incredibly strong bond shortly after becoming friends. They are actually very similar. Did not speak to Sebastian for a whole month after he got mad and called her ignorant that one time. Made her cry after he left the undercroft. Did not understand why she would walk past him in the halls and ignore his owls until he apologized.

MC talents: loves drawing. She doodles some of her classmates in her spare time outside the grounds of Hogwarts, while on picnics or laying against trees. She's drawn Ominis and Sebastian. Especially Sebastian. Several times. She hides those ones because she doesn't want him to know she gets butterflies in her stomach around him. MC is also really good at singing, she just doesn't do it in front of literally anyone. She plays the lute but doesn't really care for the high pitched twang if it. Sometimes she wants someone to invent something very similar. They both should have 6 strings so it wouldn't be hard to learn a different instrument that's very *similar* to a lute. Does not like playing in front of anyone. Sebastian heard her one time when she was sick and stuck in her room practicing all day because she was bored. Everyone was "supposed" to be in class. He was befuddled and so incredibly impressed he couldn't move. MC is also formally trained in hand to hand wandless combat, trained executively by her father, Incase expelliarmus gets casted on her. Doesn't want anyone to know she can whoop ass. Also MC is like REALLY good at dancing, LOVES music and making people laugh. Will purposely embarrasses herself dancing just to make her friends laugh.

MC parents and Family: David Burke and Ramona Nielson. Wizard and Muggle. Divorced cuz Ramona is not dependable as a mother and is scared if her magic welding children, had to be obliviated regarding that part of her children. Ramona still got custody even though she wasn't really around for her daughter growing up which made MC want to stay longer with her father during summer vacation, away from school and sharing holidays between both homes. MC has to have that little bit of stern staleness from something...🤷🏻‍♀️ MC was "raised" by her loving and supportive father who served in the Royal Wizard Military as an elite and very powerful wizard. After he retired from the RWM her father decided to travel, collecting ancient artifacts which is why MC is so good at tracking them down so fast. Her uncle is Caractacus Burke who is the founder of Borgin and Burkes. MC has 2 other siblings. An older brother Roderick, and an older sister, Seraphina. Both past Slytherin alumni. Seraphina is diplomatic but deceitful. Spending most of her time working for the Ministry of Magic directly under the Minister. while most unfortunately Roderick is estranged from the family due to criminal "acts" on house elves. MC's father was in Gryffindor. He is somewhat a little disappointed that none of his children were accepted into Gryffindor, however he is still grateful they ended up possessing magic. Does not know his youngest child can see ancient magic. Wouldn't be surprised if she did. MC's bff is her father and her cat Oliver. MC constantly stops to pet cats in hogsmeade whenever she can.

ANYWAY! I HOPE YOU GUYS LIKED THIS!! It took me literal hours as I'm still trying to figure out how to navigate Tumblr editing 😂 my eyes and hands hurt. Lol

Stay stunned for more ✨lore✨

[jacscorner]

Been tinkering around with Jango's Halfling design and decided to make Halflings out of the rest of my main OCs.

I've been calling them "Brownies" in private; which is a type of fae creature in the same vein as Goblins, Elves, and so on, but I don't think they've been put into the public lexicon. Brownies, I believe, are from Scottish folklore as mostly friendly/helpful spirits who clean your home when you sleep, but are easily offended. But you know, for the sake of my own uses, they're just slightly hairy, short humanoids that like to be friendly.

Ya shouldn't cross them, cause despite their short stature, they can rise up to many challenges and are quite capable of adapting quickly. They have a long history of molding the world around them, being big players despite being so small.

Yeah, I'm definitely drinking the Brownie Brown kool-aid, lol. Play Magical Vacation and Starsign. :P

I wanna tinker with this concept to try and make it less Hobbit/Halfling coded. Mostly cause I WOULD like to use this concept for personal use and I really don't wanna risk a fight with the Tolkein Estate and WoTC - I mean, one of those fuckers literally sent the Pinkertons after someone, lol.

[drewxjackson]

THE MAGICIAN

The Magician tarot card reveals how determination and willpower can realize your wishes and desires. When this card appears in your reading, you can be assured that you have the drive to make your dreams happen.Remember: You’re powerful! And the outer world will follow if you create your inner world. Yet, you have to focus and concentrate on achieving your dream. Get rid of any discretions and make a detailed plan to stay on track.

STATISTICS

BIRTH NAME :  Andrew Fergus Jackson ALIAS : Drew AGE : 37 DATE  OF  BIRTH :June 18th, 1987 RELATIONSHIP STATUS: Divorced; Single HOMETOWN : Edinburgh, Scotland TIME IN KISMET HARBOR : Since the age of 7 RESIDENCE : Cresthill Meadows FACECLAIM : Richard Madden

trigger warning: Homophobia

EDUCATION :Medicine at Edinburgh University OCCUPATION : Owner of Jackson Constructions, Part time  physical therapist at Hopeful Horizons Medical GENDER :Cis-Male PRONOUNS : He/Him SEXUALITY : Homoromantic, Pansexual.

HAIR COLOR : Brown EYE  COLOR : Blue HEIGHT :5′10′’ BUILD : Athletic ACCENT : Scottish LANGUAGES :  English, German, French, Gaelic TATTOOS : None

ZODIAC : Gemini LOVE LANGUAGE : Physical touch, words of affirmation CLOTHING : casual chic  CURRENT HAIR STYLE + BEARD: ( x ) CONDITIONS : None ALLERGIES :  Cilantro, Penicilin EATING HABITS : Literally has to be reminded to eat when under duress.  EXERCISE HABITS : Exercises along with his patients. SLEEPING HABITS : Sleeps on his back. Two pillows, preferably no clothing as he finds them constricting.

ADDICTIONS : None DRUG  USE : None ALCOHOL USE : Barely.

POSITIVE  TRAITS : Adventurous, Open-minded, Handy, Creative NEGATIVE TRAITS:  Blunt, Indecisive, Cluttered PHOBIAS : Claustrophobia, Germaphobia (mild) FEARS : Being untrue to himself.  HOBBIES : Building/Tinkering, Kayaking, Beer brewing kits. HABITS : Shrugs things off like they don’t bother him, reflecting with humour. USUAL TEMPERAMENT : Jovial. 

FATHER :George Jackson † MOTHER : Maisie Jackson SIBLINGS : Robert Jackson, TBD Jackson, Benjamin Jackson and Travis Jackson (twin) PARTNERS : None. CHILDREN : None PETS : none.

BIOGRAPHY

trigger warning: homophobia, firework incident, burn out.

Andrew grew up in a family of five sons. He’s born as the fourth son, a few minutes before his twin brother. They were all born and raised in Edinburgh, Scotland until the family decided to move to Kismet Harbor, where his father hailed from. Andrew was very well behaved and aimed to please his parents, doing so by doing good at school, having the right kind of friends and doing some extracurricular work. He was a popular kid in school, which definitely helped with his self esteem. Andrew always had an affinity for building and tinkering but surprised his parents when he studied healthcare in the university of Edinburgh, also to be closer acquainted to his heritage. He eventually switched his studies to become a physiotherapist, after his mother had an injury that limited her movement. He became fascinated by the ways of reducing the limitations and decided to make a living out of it.

Him and his twin-brother always joked about starting a contractor business as they were both handy and would often build things together. He got married at the age of thirty-one. Marriage was never in the cards for him because it never felt right, but after the pressure of his parents he succumbed and proposed to his then girlfriend. They got married and moved to the next village over.It took him a few years of marriage to begin to realise why he never had the complete sense of experience in his relationship, or any of them for that matter, when he hooked up with a man when on a work trip to New York.

He decided not to tell his wife the full extent of what had happened, but was ambushed when his wife set him down to have the talk about whether they should start having kids. At that moment he felt like the harsher he was, the more angry she could get at him without feeling any sense of embarrassment herself. Frankly also to protect his own. He told her that he wanted to end their marriage because he had come to realise his feelings for her were gone and he had always been one foot in the marriage anyway. They split up and Andrew moved back into the neighbouring village of Kismet Harbor.

Since separating from Nazli, Andrew ended up experiencing life as hectic. Telling the truth to his family ended up in fracturing his relationship with his father who had no open mind to same sex relationships and cast him out. His divorce with Nazi was messy as he eventually had to explain why he denied her attempts reconciliation for the truth, which led her to accept their divorce, but not without the process of hurting her feelings even more. Andrew learned to love himself more when he found on the receiving end of love by the hands of Roman Rhodes, of whom he took care after he got injured at the firework incident of the July 4th 2023 event, the same event that injured his father and month later resulted in his passing. After a rough period in his life, Andrew had decided to spend his time recuperating wisely and reviving his father’s construction company: Jackson Construction.

Andrew believed to have had it all, the man, the job, a loving village. Yet when he engaged a conversation about marrying and having children with Roman, he panicked. The easiest thing would have been to be ignorant and keep quiet, but he didn’t want Roman to sacrifice his happiness for him, and children just wasn’t part of the plan. He broke up with Roman, doing the same as he had done to Nazli and lied, even claiming that he wasn’t happy at the farm knowing that Roman would never give it up. It was shocking just how easily Roman believed him and with a heavy heart he left the love of his life behind. In order to keep his hands busy, he went back to work as a part time physical therapist again. Yet Andrew couldn’t get away, couldn’t find the escape that he needed that didn’t confront him with his reality. Per his twin’s suggestion, he left town. A hiking retreat with a spiritual ending in Nepal where he was cut off from technology for a few months, other than a few allowed hours per week to make a phone call. Andrew managed to get back in touch with himself, finding his distractions in more than one way. He dreaded the end of the retreat, but when he sat on the plane back on his way home, he felt rejuvenated, more focused. He returned home with the prospect of his twin soon to become a father, his company thriving and a place to call his own. 

[octoagentmiles]

Do you think any of the Octonauts would like Disney movies? If so what do you think their favorite characters be? I'm asking because, well, Encanto(Luisa and Camilo, my beLOVEDS!!!!)

(draft edit: i misread your ask slightly bc i missed the word "characters" and just wrote their favourite movies instead, whoopsie--)

hear me out I think Kwazii would L O V E Moana unironically. troubled teen who never fits in with the people around them no matter how hard they try? wants nothing more than to protect, save, and be in the ocean? even if it means going against their family?? GIANT LAVA MONSTER??? heck yeah.

I feel like Shellington would like both Atlantis and Tarzan for some reason. Tarzan I can't explain but I know I'm right (his favourite character is either Jane or the professor), and Atlantis is his jam because he vibes with Milo (but he does NOT vibe with how he refused to learn Kida's name pronounciation, and thus taught himself how to say it out of spite.) I considered Brave for a bit,, because. Scotland. but what if he actually hates it- not as a movie itself, but because they probably watched it together as a crew and I'm imagining him having to deal with listening to everyone's (mostly Kwazii's) bad Scottish accents for like a week afterwards.

Dashi's favourites are Lady and The Tramp OR Fox and The Hound, and The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes. I also can't explain this I just feel it in my soul. (tbh I feel like she wouldn't have a favourite, unless one of them reminded her of one of her friends but I haven't seen those movies in a long time so I can't remember)

Peso likes sequels. Whether ironically or not I cannot say. (his favourite character is always the animal sidekick.)

Barnacles likes 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea because it's about boats. That's all I know about that movie, I've never seen it because it's Too Long but he'd enjoy it probably. Also Treasure Planet, he and Kwazii hang out sometimes just to watch it together. They have fun. (they both love Captain Amelia.)

Inkling has a giant collection of all the animated shorts from the 1920's to the 1950's, he lets them play in the library and sometimes random crew members (or vegimals) will straggle in to check them out.

Tweak likes Flubber :) and WALL-E!!! (WALL-E my beloved.) that is all. I lied that's not all I think she'd like Tinker Bell.

They definitely watched Encanto together as a crew, and everyone just Stared at Barnacles (prolonged eye contact. prolonged eye contact. prolonged eye contact. PROLONGED EYE CONTACT-) during the entirety of Surface Pressure. it was. uncomfortable. they made him a cake after. Kwazii kins Camilo.

[lady-starbind]

POKEMON LEGENDS ARCEUS RANT

So um... before we begin, Imma warn u dudes ‘n dudets that my rant will NOT be spoiler free so um, ignore this post once you’ve been spoiled OR proceed if u don’t care about being spoiled or not. SO FIRST THINGS FIRST... I HAVE ANCESTOR OCS THAT I’VE CREATED, WHICH I’LL BRIEFLY EXPLAIN: Anne Rose (my persona’s ancestor, sister of a grandparent on her paternal side): Fiery Scottish woman from Galar, has come to Hisui in search of gold.... Instead of gold, she finds Pokemon friends and learns the art of a tailor from Anthea (who becomes her mentor) ...Anne was originally going to be the MC I played as, but I’ll explain later why that is now SCRAPPED. (Rose is her middle name btw, her real last name is my last name which is none of y’all’s concerns lols) Angus Rothes (Timothy’s Very Great Grandfather, a direct ancestor from his Paternal side): Best friend of Anne’s and helps her with her studying for the Pokedex and such. Unlike his descendant, Angus is not near as timid and is pretty social and brave. Probably doesn’t look up to Anne as a mother figure, but she’s definitely his bestie. Angus is around 13 during this timeframe ig Bramble (Fan Ancestor of Thorton, he’s likely related as a Great Uncle of sorts): Bramble is a highly curious boy who loves tinkering with machinery! (...well, whatever machinery can be tinkered with in Hisui ig), Unlike his Atheist nephew, Bramble likely practices Shinto and worships his Bronzong. Bramble is also around 10 years old in this timeline. He has a crush on Anne that is never reciprocated. THERE WE GO, HAVE A PICTURE OF... HISUIAN GROWLITHE AS WE GO ON TO THE NEXT SECTION:

RELATIONSHIP CHART THINGY FOR MY OCS WITH THE CANON CHARACTERS: Anne: Angus = Best friend, Bramble = Close friend and study buddy, Melli = MORTAL ENEMY (lmbo deep down they at least respect the other's abilities.... and do care about the other... at least somewhat? In an odd twisted way perhaps?) Anthe = Mentor, probably teaches Anne how to make clothes? Two are close ...close-ish,

Angus): Anne = Best friend, Bramble = friend and study buddy... lowkey jealous of Bramble's friendship with Anne, Melli = Acquaintance ...he's not a big fan of the guy, Anthe = Probably friends or acquaintances,

Bramble: Anne = Close friend and study buddy ...develops a crush on Anne that is never reciprocated, Angus = friend and study buddy ...can sense Angus' jealousy and he's lowkey jealous of Angus's friendship with Anne,

Melli: Anne = MORTAL ENEMY (mutually respects one another's abilities... though would rarely be humble enough to admit it. Cares about her as well... just another human being ig, human decency if you will. His rivalry with Anne has left him with a scar where she bit him once, and has helped him be more physically tough... might come in handy for protecting his sweetheart/future sweetheart.) Angus = Annoying friend of Anne's ...at least he's not as obnoxious or barbaric though. NEXT SECTION

I HAVE LEARNED THINGS ABOUT THIS GAME I WAS NOT EXPECTING 1# Ingo in Legends Arceus is NOT Granpa/Uncle Ingo... No, he’s THE Ingo! The same fricker that you take on in the battle subway! I knew his clothes looked a bit too much like Ingo’s... I never counted on him being THE Ingo though... Hope he and Emmet can get a reunion soon :’( ....I MUST LEARN MORE ABOUT HIS BACKSTORY IF I CAN!

2# MC-CHAN IS NOT FROM HISUI?! THEY’RE APPARENTLY YEETED FROM A DISTANT FUTURE!? (Hence why my lovely fictional ancestor Anne will likely no longer be our MC rip ;w;) ...I’ve read online that said future is a future beyond the Modern Sinnoh we all know and love?! SO DO YOU MEAN TO TELL ME MC-CHAN IS LIKE, BOTW LEVEL INTO THE FUTURE BEFORE THEY ARE YEETED BACC IN TIME BY ARCEUS!? GAMEFREAK AT LEAST LET THEM BE FROM MODERN DAY SINNOH... I COULD HAVE AT LEAST YEETED MY BOI NESTOR BACC IN TIME AND MAYBE HE AND INGO COULD BECOME BROS!!! (Nestor is like... from normal Modern day ig?) I may just say “frick u” and yeet normal modern day Nessie boi bacc in time to Arceus, I believe he’d have lotsa fun exploring a freaking new TIME PERIOD I just love the idea of Nestor’s cousin Neoguri and Ingo’s bro-bro Emmet going back in time in search of their kinfolk. Give them all a happy ending... TwT Ig I need to verse myself with the lore more before I go and make more fanlore but... ig any of u guys who have played, y’all think it too farfetched for a character from normal modern day to be yeeted back in Hisui? Or can I frick the story and yeet a modern day Nessie boi? OH AND HAVE A CURSED HEADCANON BEFORE I LEAVE YOU LOVELY PEOPLE

SO PEOPLE HAVE BEEN TALKING LIKE THIS FRICKER (Melli) IS AVERY’S ANCESTOR... WHICH HAS ME THINKING... DOES HE MARRY A POKEMON?! Now, before you guys throw off at the absolute absurdity of this headcanon, hear me out lol. Avery’s family naturally has like, Psychic powers... You know what else has naturally occurring psychic powers?! POKEMON Remember that lovely scene in DPPt where the player read about people in the olden days, MARRYING POKEMON?! THEREFORE, I HEADCANON THAT MELLI LIKELY MARRIED A PSYCHIC POKEMON, MAYBE A GARDEVOIR AND HAD A FAMILY WITH IT... THUS LEADING TO ALL THE WEIRD PSYCHIC PEOPLE THAT IS FREAKING AVERY’S FAMILY... Now look... I don’t really fancy the idea of Pokemon x Human couples persey but.... I mean, there is canon grounds that this cursed event could have happened. Yes you guys, y’all are very welcome for the nightmares I have bestowed upon you lol.

one thing I do appreciate about Melli, and Imma bet that this is a thing most of the dudes in the Avery family has went through: I honestly thought Melli was a girl before I found clarification that in fact, he was a guy. The same situation happened when I was first introduced to Avery... The men in this family are feminine and elegant no?

[quaggas]

hi there! im salem, 23, any pronouns. i have 3 cats and a service dog 🥰 my main blog is @cryptcatz + insects and arachnids is @mantidz and the twitter equivalent to this blog is called mantidaes. trying to have a nice tagging system but am l a z y

kinda just a general blog to post abt animals, info/facts on them, etc. since i adore animals! some faves include: cats, tigers especially, bats, dogs (esp GSD), foxes, frogs, possums, raccoons, birds, hamsters, african wild dogs, wolves, red pandas, chickens, otters, mice, rats, ferrets, anteaters, reptiles (especially geckos), zebra, sharks, okapi, bears, capybara, armadillos, cheetahs,….you probably get the point, i like 99% of animals lol im also very into animal behavior so will be posts in that area too

i do NOT support outdoor cats or declawing cats. my opinion on adopt don’t shop is mixed— adopting is definitely far better, but i am not against seeking full bred dogs specifically as that is often the only option with service dogs. however a lot of breeding is done unethically and certain dog and cat breeds (i.e. French Bulldog + Scottish Fold) should not be bred anymore. getting from a breeder is also often gives better chances of knowing what you’re signing up for with temperament etc. im against owning wild animals that cannot be properly cared for such as big cats, foxes, raccoons, etc. as house pets. certain exceptions like reptiles are a more nuanced situation tho. im willing to explain more if you ask! i support animal welfare and animal agriculture but obviously see the issues within the farming industry (and EVERY industry) that need solving to be more ethical towards animals, i.e. more humane slaughter and better living conditions. i have no issue with veganism but am not vegan myself. also yeah sometimes i reblog from everythingfox because sometimes their reposts are cute but i don’t follow them and overall think their content is Yikes

my current animals are Moose: my black lab mobility service dog, Cooper: a very fluffy boi cat with no brain, Tinker: beautiful black and white old lady kitty, and Star: a very grumpy tabby cat. each one has a tag that is “[name] tag” 💖

[straight-to-the-pain]

Okay but are you going to share your list of whumpy films because I seriously need some new recommendations!

Film Recommendations 

I’m sorry this has taken so long, but it turned out that I had a lot of recommendations so I needed to figure out a way to group them. I’ve decided to highlight some of my favourites and give them little descriptions, and list some other films in the same vein that you might enjoy. These are all films that I’ve watched and I haven’t included any ratings or content warnings, but those can be easily found online. Please feel free to shoot me an ask if you want to know more about any specific film! Edit: not all of these are inherently whumpy, some of them are just films that I’ve enjoyed but not for whump reasons.

-> Martial Arts 

The Raid 2: you should definitely start with the first one, but this is my favourite simply because of the very fun dynamic between the undercover cop and the known criminal and some beautiful knife content (also this is the favourite film of my notorious eye liking friend, and he would like you to watch it ;) 

The Night Comes For Us: this is basically just pure violence but it is wonderful, there’s some great murder lesbians and a garrotte yoyo and a lot of really good silat fighting (and Iko Uwais is very cute when covered in blood)

Other films you might enjoy include: Chocolate (2008), The Raid, Headshot, Ong-Bak, The Protector (2005) 

-> War

Mine: a soldier gets stuck in the desert for 52 hours after stepping on a mine, featuring dehydration, hallucinations, some shooting and a surprising amount of romance for a film with only one main character 

Saving Private Ryan: a group of soldiers try to locate one of their colleagues during the Normandy landings, features gunfights, field medicine and general scenes of war

Other films you might enjoy include: The Railway Man, Unbroken, The Bridge on the River Kwai, Dunkirk, The Book Thief, The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas, Life is Beautiful, The Pianist, Inglourious Basterds, Hacksaw Ridge, Imitation Game

-> Sci-fi

Blade Runner: this one’s a classic but it does have some great action scenes and a wonderful aesthetic (including someone being shot in the rain in a transparent coat) and of course ‘eye world’ so I can’t not recommend it 

Other films you might enjoy include: Gattaca, The Matrix, Inception, The Martian 

-> Action 

John Wick: I’m sure most people are familiar with the franchise, but it truly has everything you could want: knives, guns, gangsters, branding, plenty of revenge, and a lead who will do anything for his wife and dog 

Reservoir Dogs: a classic about a robbery gone wrong, featuring some great torture, plenty of dramatic death sequences set to fun music and all the blood you would expect from a Tarantino film 

Other films you might enjoy include: Mr. and Mrs. Smith, The Cold Light of Day, Arena, Ocean’s Eleven (2001), The Boondock Saints, Trance (2013), Acts of Violence, Mad Max: Fury Road, Baby Driver 

-> Espionage 

The Man from UNCLE: this film manages to be funny but also give us some brilliant torture at the same time, and the rivalry between the two spies who are forced to work together is brilliant, plus there’s a surprising amount of scenes where people get beaten up in bathrooms which is always an added bonus 

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy: this one’s all about the intrigue and tension of finding a mole within MI6 in Cold War times, but there’s also a fair amount of threats and implied torture, sad but satisfying in a way that’s hard to explain 

Other films you might enjoy include: Red Sparrow, Kingsman, The Lives of Others, Argo, Johnny English 

-> Political Thrillers 

The Last King of Scotland: this film follows the life of a Scottish doctor who becomes the personal physician of the Ugandan dictator, Idi Amin, featuring political intrigue and some really fun torture involving being suspended from the ceiling by metal hooks 

Other films you might enjoy include: Salvador (1986), Colonia, Munich

-> Horror 

Red Dragon: the prequel to Silence of the Lambs, this film about an FBI agent searching for a serial killer obsessed with mirrors, starts with a breathtaking stabbing that I had to rewatch a couple times, and has some haunting shots as well as plenty of suspense and action 

Would You Rather: a sadistic game orchestrated by a rich man will only end when one person is left standing, and the contestants are prepared to go to brutal ends to ensure they win the prize money, has some fun gore and whipping and of course the terrible dilemma of hurting others or yourself

Hostel: this is probably the most gory film on the list, with some very graphic torture scenes, and I would say the unfortunate fate of the young travellers is almost comical, watch for the slightly slapstick gore and a fun time 

-> Others 

The Green Mile: this film follows the lives and executions of several death row inmates, including one with an exceptional gift, as well as some expected brutality from a sadistic guard 

The Princess Bride: this one is pretty lighthearted, but as the origin of my blog title, I couldn’t not mention it. With sword fighting, loyal gentlemen and even a bit of torture, this is probably the origin story of many a whump lover. 

And many more examples of whump in media can be found here, in the @whumpapedia. Please feel free to add more films or leave your suggestions in the comments, because I know I’m always on the lookout for more! 

[charlottedabookworm]

lols, I kno I've sent in a bunch of these, so feel free to opt out if you're not interested. How about a fix-it Doctor Who crossover for FFXV? Teen Noctis and Prompto end up being Companions to The Doctor (I'm partial to 13, 9, and 10 but it's up to you) and somehow, this saves everything.

1) Prompto actually meets the Doctor first, when he’s 10.

(Prompto first meets the Doctor when he’s just a few months old, when a blonde wearing rainbows happens to run past a man carrying a baby in a lab.

The lab blows up.

Surprise)

He’s maybe somewhere he shouldn’t be, camera in hand and glasses perched on his nose, when he walks into the weirdest fight ever.

(That guy was a fish)

And, just as he freezes, thinking he’s about to die, a man in a trench-coat sweeps in - a redhead a half step behind him, already yelling at literally everyone - and breaks it up easily, even if it takes a couple hours. Prompto is amazed.

The red-head - Donna, my name is Donna - sits with him while everyone else argues (occasionally yelling at the trench-coat guy) and walks him home and makes sure he’s got food and that’s he’s okay (and maybe she has some words for his parents who aren’t home again but he mostly ignores that because she’s so cool) and then they sweep out of his life.

(Or not.

The first letter comes days later, dropped in the letterbox with Donna’s signature scrawled on the back and Prompto feels so warm he could burst)

(The letters last for a couple years, telling him about dangerous exciting adventures and her idiot best friend and giving him tips with people and getting things done around the house and… 

and then, one day, suddenly, they stop)

(He’s pretty sure he knows why)

2) Still, for all he’s met the Doctor, Prompto has never really seen the TARDIS.

Which is how he and Noct end up accidentally inside when on the run from a couple kidnappers.

The TARDIS promptly takes off. The bloke in a leather jacket demands to know where they came from. 

Prom and Noct just stare.

(Best. Kidnapping. Ever)

3) So- the thing is.

The TARDIS? Still a little damaged by the Time War. And by ‘a little’, there’s a lot of damage, and a rather large dearth of spare parts.

And Eos? Not easy to get to.

The Doctor has no idea how the TARDIS got through the energy barrier surrounding the planet in the first place but she does not want to go back.

Which- considering that the Prince of Lucis is currently staring at him in horror - is not the best thing.

Noctis looks a lot less worried and a lot more confused when he reassures them that he will be able to get them back, and at the same moment they left, it just might take a while.

Prompto just nods.

(He’s already figured out that this isn’t the Doctor he knew. But Donna had told him a lot about Time Lords and the TARDIS and the Doctor - he’s realised, as he grew up, that maybe she just wanted someone to talk to about it all - and he definitely recognises the name Rose so)

4) Prom is bouncy and Noct is calmer but they both fall in love with the TARDIS so easily and they love the adventure and the travelling and meeting new people and it’s amazing.

Their enthusiasm helps a Doctor who is struggling so much to see any joy in the universe. They bring life to the TARDIS and the sound of their laughter intertwined with Rose’s (and with Jack’s) fills him with something almost like happiness

And the boys- they’ve grown up in the Crown City of a country in a century old war. 

They might be young, might be fairly sheltered from the worst of it, but they’ve spent more than enough time around war veterans

They don’t push, on the days the Doctor can’t handle it, and they distract Rose and it helps

5) Eventually, almost 6 months after they were ‘kidnapped’, the TARDIS is well enough to take them home.

They almost don’t want to leave.

They do anyway.

The Doctor lands exactly where they’d entered, at that exact moment, and they say their goodbyes - get the hugs and the phones in their back pockets and the promises to pop back sometime and they leave with bags that are expanded far beyond what they probably should be (but the Doctor knows things and he will not leave these children with nothing)

Nobody noticed they were gone.

Technically they weren’t.

6) Noctis lays Gladio flat with a move he picked up from an archaeologist he met on one of their trips

Prompto’s flirting now makes people blush like crazy, nobody knows how he’s suddenly so smooth

Jack is proud

7) Nobody understands the sudden banana obsession

8) Prophecies are one thing

Fixed points in time are another

It isn’t hard, to figure out what being The Chosen King means

But 6 months travelling all of time and space makes someone a lot less likely to bow down to fate

(If it’s Fixed, you’ll die anyway, Prompto whispers to him fiercely when it looks like he’s about to give in to it all, but we’re going to make sure you live)

9) The thing is- by the time they hit 20 (or so their birthdays say) they’ve seen more than one peace treaties. The Doctor has a habit of ending wars and, sometimes, he’ll stick around for the treaties and even the parties

So they know what they look like

They also know what a trap looks like

Noctis refuses to leave the Citadel, Prompto by his side

and, well, everybody’s rather thankful later

10) The square gun (totally not stolen from Jack) in Prompto’s hands takes a nice square out of Glauca

Might have taken a lot of tinkering to get around the safeties but totally worth it

11) when a phone box that appears between Aldercapt and his father it doesn’t surprise Noctis

he can’t say the same about the rest of the room

and he might not recognise the face that pokes out of the TARDIS with a grin but he knows the Doctor and the time lord still feels the same 

Prompto waves cheerfully, bouncing on his toes like he hasn’t just taken out Niflheim’s best General in a single shot

Six, Noct loves his best friend

then a woman steps out behind the Doctor and Noctis grins

“River!”

(The archaeologist winks. and promptly threatens the Emperor. very bloodily. the Doctor looks very smitten. and also very confused about how they know each other.

if he wanted to know he shouldn’t have lost him in that jungle, Noctis thinks, still feeling a little spiteful)

12) Everything gets wrapped up pretty quickly after that - at least with the empire

and then the Doctor runs into a man who is almost a fixed point but not (like Jack but artificial, not of time like he is, and oh, oops, do the boys know about Jack? spoiler alert, they do, they aren’t happy but Jack said he’d already punched him so) but this one he can fix

it isn’t hard to just reach out and tweak

there’s a reason his kind were called Time Lords after all

Ardyn disappears, still angry, still vengeful, but mortal

the Doctor leaves not long after

River promises to visit and the boys grin

everyone with any sort of common sense fears everything

13) A few months later, when they call him up again because they need someone to yell at a giant lizard about making people immortal against their will and trying to get teenagers to sacrifice themselves, the Doctor who appears is grey haired and grumpy

Prompto hugs him, just because

The Doctor flails

Bill - who introduces herself while the Doctor is flailing and is around their age - is brilliant and they exchange stories while the Doctor gets all Scottish-Grumpy and Value-of-Life and Oncoming-Storm on Bahamut and the dark-haired evilish one - Missy, Bill calls her - rolls her eyes and Nardole does

-something. He does something. He maybe goes and makes a cuppa tea

It’s great, reminds the boys of exactly what they missed about being 15 and travelling with the Doctor

(for everyone else, it’s a dawning realisation about why Noctis and Prompto are so good at dealing with chaos in general)

and then they totally dart off for another trip, just a short one dad we’ll be back for dinner!

Prompto asks this Doctor, who knows him, who recognises him from both times, about Donna, that night in the console room, and it’s not what he thought - she’s not dead - but she doesn't remember anything and he just

he cries

so does the Doctor

(later, Noctis decides to test if potions could help with the whole, meta crisis thing. because Prompto is sad

they do. because i say so

Donna gives Prompto the best hugs)

[hvnriks-archive]

✦ — [ nick robinson. 22. he/him. how to train your dragon ] HENRIK HADDOCK III was just spotted coming out from THE ENGINEERING LABS, with RUN RIVER NORTH, GROWING UP; playing as a constant tune inside their head, it might as well be their song. easily noticed by their GREASE SMUDGED FRECKLED NOSE, OVERSIZED KNIT JUMPERS & WARM CROOKED SMILE. HICCUP is not one to be forgotten.

✦ — what are you keeping from the original canon

i’m trying to stick as close to the vibe of the start of the first movie as i can without yknow, actual dragons - i’m keeping that his mother disappeared mysteriously at a young age ( potentially in a plane crash? ), that he has a tense relationship with his father who he just can’t seem to impress, that he has a knack for inventing but not anything physical as his dad would have liked, all that stuff. comes from a small village in norway and very much the awkward odd duck out. i’d also like to keep his prosthetic foot from the end of the movie

i’m swapping out the dragon riding for just a love of flying in general, in much less cool planes, not dragons. i’m thinking he was in cadets growing up ? it seems appropriately militaristic and involved flying. the foot injury would probably also be related to a plane accident. basically dragons = planes is what i’m going for here i suppose

✦ — personality

unfortunately, he lacks a single cool bone in his body. he’s awkward, fumbling, and flustered in basically every conceivable situation. super intelligent and creative sure, and so so genuine in his earnestness, but lacking in any real confidence and desperate to prove himself. he’s pretty shy and insecure in … most situations and so will default to sarcasm or dry humor. basically just a genuinely good person with a lot of skills to offer that’s hidden under ten million layers of social ineptitude and a scrawny frame

+ intelligent, creative, empathetic, hard working, genuine, compassionate

- awkward, shy, insecure, clumsy, overly trusting, sarcastic

✦ — your characters schooling

henrik is currently studying mechanical engineering, though he does have a more specific interest in aerospace and all things flying if it came down to having to choose. he just enjoys inventing and creating in general - not that that’s something he can specifically study, nor is an ‘inventor’ exactly a viable career these days

he’s doing fairly well in school probably from a combination of factors - natural talent, an almost feral need to prove something to his father, and the simple fact that he lacks anything resembling a social life so what else is there to do but study

re: lack of social life, he isn’t in any clubs because again that would require some actual social skills? he used to be in cadets and he would start a tinkering club or something if he could find the confidence in his own leadership skills, but that’s not really in the cards right now

rooming in thoresby hall !

✦ — two connections

( NICK ROBINSON ) our HICCUP is looking for ASTRID to fulfill their CHILDHOOD CRUSH. They would be 21-25 and would most likely look like UTP. You DO NOT have to contact the player. @hvnriks. description: mostly just looking from something similar to the start of httyd ! henrik probably very obviously and embarrassingly had a crush on astrid growing up ( or still does ) but how she deals with it is up to you !

( NICK ROBINSON ) our HICCUP is looking for UTP to fulfill their BEST FRIEND. They would be 21-25 and would most likely look like UTP. You DO NOT have to contact the player. @hvnriks. description: listen, in this world he has no toothless to rely on and you know mans is so useless when it comes to people his first real friend was a literal dragon. someone who could balance out his more self-sabotaging tendencies ( and drag him out of his room ) would be greatly appreciated

✦ — three head canons

i feel like i’m beating a dead horse with this by now, but henrik is just SUPER into planes / flying. growing up it was probably one of the only times he could get away from his overbearing father and he just loves the sense of freedom and rare confidence it gives him. he definitely has his pilots license and snuck out to go flying more often then his dad realizes and more than once had dreamed of just flying off and never returning

his entire hometown calls him hiccup after an unfortunate incident where he literally couldn’t stop hiccuping for like 3 days. his dad started it and then it caught on in his tiny hometown and he’s just really praying it doesn’t somehow make it’s way to university because he’d rather die

his fashion sense is literally nonexistent. everything is either second hand, riddled with holes, 2 sizes too big and hanging off his frame, or all of the above. he just doesn’t care, as long as he’s comfortable and can work in it then what does it matter? the number of jumpers and flannels this boi owns is criminal. along with his messy hair and crooked smile he’s probably never looked put together in his life

i know they all sound vaguely scottish in the films but henrik has the faintest norweigan accent ( #vikingrights )

pray for his roommate(s) … his place has got to be littered in half realized inventions and crumpled sweaters and random shit he just thought was neat. YES that eraser slingshot made of pencils, elastic bands, and a paperclip is ABSOLUTELY necessary you can’t throw it out

against his fathers wishes, he definitely designed and built his own prosthetic like in the movies

i’m also keeping that his birthday is february 29th bc that just seems appropriate given the comedy of errors that is his life

[displacedprincess]

Willpower || Elena & The Gargoyles

@carvedfromlivingstone

Backdated: January 19th

Summary: The gargoyles smell a change in Elena’s hormones, Elena weaponizes a loaf of bread and calls bullshit.

ELENA

“Felipe! Raf!” Elena called out, practically kicking the door open to Goliath’s. “Where are you bitches at? I’m gonna fight you!”

This, of course, was said in the same playful tone she used when she threatened to kick Naomi, Isa, or even Goliath’s ass. No asses would actually be kicked, however, her little gargoyle brothers absolutely owed her five quid or a Chippamunka’s milkshake each. 

“I told you that guy Maru was crushing on was gay!” Elena exclaimed, doing a little happy dance. “As a bisexual, my queerdar is spot on. I have been deciphering the sexuality of humans a lot longer than you kids have. You’re welcome.”

GOLIATH

As all of the gargoyles were currently in the kitchen, none of them saw her come in. They all certainly heard her, and Goliath simply grinned as Raf and Felipe both groaned. 

“Bite me, princess, we already agreed he was probably gay,” Felipe yelled back, grabbing an orange slice and preparing to throw it at the older girl when she came around the corner. Cesar reached over and snatched it up first, tossing it in his mouth while giving the younger gargoyle a look that said ‘Don’t you dare’.

“But that’s good to have it confirmed, right Maru?” Raf said. Ever the peacekeeper, that one. Maru, of course, had his face practically glued to the screen of his laptop and had missed all of this.

“You’re just in time, joya,” Goliath called out. “Lunch is almost ready.” He gave her a smile as his daughter stepped into the room, leaning in to press a kiss to the top of her head in greeting.

He stopped midkiss, eyebrows furrowed.

Wait. He couldn’t possibly- she wasn’t- was his nose on the fritz? Was this a side effect of aging?

Cesar had caught his bewildered look and Goliath motioned down to Elena with his eyes. ‘Smell her’ he mouthed. It’d be good to have confirmation.

“Oi, no greeting for me?” Cesar grumped while giving Goliath a subtle nod.

ELENA

Elena grinned at the gargoyle she now affectionately (teasingly) called abuelito when he was acting particularly like an old man, and launched herself at him. “I could never leave you out, Cesar!”

The princess was, of course, oblivious to the eye conversation going on about her. 

“Papá, what’s for lunch?” She asked as she pulled away from Cesar. 

GOLIATH

With her attention diverted, Cesar sniffed at the princess’s hair and gave Goliath a similar wide-eyed look to the one he’d been wearing not a moment before. Shit. It wasn’t just him.

Felipe had picked up on the two elder gargoyles eyeing each other and gave them both a questioning look. Cesar dismissed him with a wave of his hand while Goliath kept Elena distracted.

“Aggressively Scottish food, I promise you’ll hate it,” he joked. Just act like everything was normal, Goliath. Be cool.

“Princess, come sit by me and we can throw stuff at Maru until he looks up and you can tell him about his crush,” Felipe ordered, pulling out the bar stool for her and ignoring Cesar and Goliath’s glares. When Elena got close, he ruffled her hair up just enough to be annoying and so he could smell her over the cooking food without getting too close. 

His eyes also flew open and he looked back at Goliath and Cesar, mouth falling open. They silently told him to shut his trap.

ELENA

“Ooh, sounds fun! I never realized how fun having three little brothers would be.” God, fucking with the boy’s was the best. Thinking nothing of Felipe’s request, she sat next to him and began to peel an orange to throw slices at Maru. 

She shot Felipe a glare as he messed up her hair, only half as annoyed as she looked, then tossed a slice into her mouth. Only to immediately spit it out. 

“Ick! Aw, man! Every orange I try to eat lately is nasty.”

GOLIATH

"Just recently, huh?" Felipe asked, and Cesar kicked him under the table hard enough that the younger gargoyle went stiff to try and keep in his yelp of pain.

Raf had seen all of this go down, and while the curiosity was killing him, he didn't want to get too into Elena's space. While Elena was distracted with trying to distract Maru, Raf looked at Goliath meaningfully and pointed to Elena under the table before gesturing with his open hands. The universal sign for 'What's wrong with Elena?'

Goliath turned so his back was to Elena and his side was just in view of Raf, appearing to be checking on the food cooking away. But instead he was tapping a hand against his lower stomach with wide eyes. Raf's eyebrows furrowed in confusion. She's…. Hungry?

ELENA

“Moon Market must not be able to get good batches in right now.” Elena added, pouting. She did so love oranges.

Not to be dissuaded from distracting Maru, however, Elena quickly stood up and scurried over to him. She threw her arm around his shoulder and put on the greatest show of her life. 

She gasped, horrified, and pointed to his screen. “Maru! I am scandalized. I’ve been in a German dungeon, and that is not what they look like.”

GOLIATH

Maru had actually been working on a program he'd been tinkering with. It wasn't much, but he was hoping to set up something that could be used to keep the remaining gargoyle clans around the world in contact so long as they had access to the internet (and these days, who didn't?). He had not been paying attention to the silent conversations going on around him, to the rest of clan bouncing Elena around like a scented teddy bear.

He was not aware there was anything to hide.

Which was why when she shocked him out of his trance and he took a sharp breath to snap at her for being a brat, he stopped, sniffed again, and said blunty "Why do you smell pregnant?"

"Elena's pregnant!?" Raf gasped as Felipe and Cesar both smacked their foreheads with their open palms. Goliath looked like he wanted to dangle Maru and Raf both off his roof by their ankles. While the sun was up.

ELENA

Maru’s quip shocked Elena into genuinely gasping, dumbstruck at the notion that she would ever be-- 

“Oye pendejo!” She shouted, picked up a loaf of bread in its little bread plastic and, wielding it like a club, smacked him with it repeatedly.  “I’m going! To kick! Your ass! If you ever! Spread some bullshit like that around! Understand!?”

She beat him a few more times with the bread for good measure before tossing it in Felipe’s general direction. “Goliath, you need to buy bread.”

GOLIATH

Well, life with Elena was certainly never boring. She even managed to catch Cesar and Goliath off-guard, and that was nearly impossible.

"Oi- hey!" Maru yelled, ducking and covering his head. "Stop hitting me you crazy princess!" he barked in Gaelic, wishing more than ever he had his wings to protect him. Raf was the one who rushed around to stop her, grabbing her hands and gently pulling her away. He was the last one to get a sniff of her, and he could recognize the weird smell of a woman who's hormones were all over the place. There had been enough human women at the castle when he was growing up that even he could recognize the smell.

He looked at Goliath, panicked, which was when their dad finally stepped in. "Don't beat your brother with a loaf of bread, Elena," he said, though his voice was a little too soft to be properly scolding. "What Maru means is your scent is… different."

ELENA

Elena was not finished with Maru, oh-ho-ho, no. For saying something as idiotic as why do you smell pregnant, Maru deserved a proper ass beating. How can he say that!? After the pregnancy scare she had while Mateo was in the underworld that she never told anybody but Naomi and Goliath and Mateo about, that Maru’s ignorance of if entirely his own fault, that he should definitely know about despite Elena never telling him, how could he say that?

“Let me at him before I bite your hands off, Rafinha!” Elena growled in very colloquial Avaloran Portunhol, reverting to her truest native tongue in her rage.

At Goliath speaking up, Elena stopped struggling against Raf and looked over her shoulder at Goliath. “Previously unsaid sentences in human history.”

She flipped her hair over her shoulder and crossed her arms over her chest, glaring hard at Maru before she turned to properly face the rest of the clan, rolling her eyes. Pregnant. Seriously, Maru? 

“Yeah, well, that’s not a very funny joke. Especially after Halloween before last.”

GOLIATH

“What happened the Halloween befo-” Felipe started, but Goliath silenced him with a wave of his hand. He did know what had happened, and knew how frighted Elena had been. 

This was… not going to be a fun week for anyone.

“Mija,” he said gently, taking one of her hands from where they were crossed together and holding it in both of his own. “I think we need to see your doctor.”

Six out of six gargoyles agreeing was all the confirmation Goliath needed, but Elena needed a human doctor as well.

ELENA

Elena was not pregnant. She refused to be pregnant, and therefore she wasn’t. The great pregnancy scare of 2018 took any last shred of ‘I will tolerate pregnancy’ out of her. So, no. Her fatigue, nausea, and super light periods that were absolutely periods and not spotting, did not mean she was pregnant. Because she couldn’t be pregnant. Because she refused to be. Therefore, she wasn’t.

She stared at Goliath with a look of betrayal, because how dare he entertain that she would possibly be- and she just stared at him for a long moment before she shook her head and laughed.

“Gargoyles have a crazy sense of humor, this really isn’t funny. No, nope, I’m not. I’m not pregnant, I’m on birth control.” That she doesn’t ever remember to take. “And Mateo uses condoms.” Usually.

“I’m not stupid.” Elena insisted. “I’m not stupid.”

GOLIATH

No, she wasn’t. But she was pregnant.

Felipe opened his mouth, but this time it was Cesar who glared him quiet. Unfortunately, Maru was out of range. “Six gargoyles smell baby on you, yes you are,” he said, still annoyed to have had his work interrupted. Raf leaned over and punched him - hard - in the shoulder. “What the hell-christ!?”

“He means pregnant, not stupid, by the way,” Raf added, trying to help and failing. “You’re not stupid.”

The look Goliath gave them all was unimpressed to the highest degree. “Okay, none of you are allowed to talk anymore,” he told them as he gently ushered Elena to the living room, away from the rest of their tactless family. He sat on the couch and nudged Elena down next to him.

“I wouldn’t joke about this,” he said softly.

ELENA

Elena sat next to him only because she was twenty-five years old, which was far too old to petulantly refuse. One could also say it is too old to beat your brother with a loaf of bread, but Maru had had it coming.

She shook her head, she’d deny this even if it killed her. “I’m not pregnant, I can’t be. I refuse to be, and if my body betrays me like that right now I’ll - well, I can’t death threat my own body, can I? The same energy remains though.”

She pulled her legs up onto the couch and wrapped her arms around her knees. 

“I don’t want to be pregnant, so I’m not.”

GOLIATH

That’s really not how it worked.

Goliath could only exhale long and slow through his nose, rubbing Elena’s back gently. “Then go to the doctor and prove us wrong,” he offered. “I’ll go with you and you can rub it in my face immediately if you’re right.”

If Goliath was right - and he was - then he’d be on hand to comfort his daughter. 

ELENA

Elena really didn’t see why they were sooooooo sure she was pregnant. Like...she was a human! Maybe they got the scent markers all mixed up because they’re different species. 

Yes, yes that was it. 

But you know what, fine. She’d humor her old man and the rest of the gargoyle clan, and go to the doctor. And prove them wrong. 

“Fine.” Elena held up her hands in surrender. “It’s okay, I can go by myself. If I’m pregnant — which I’m not — you don’t want to be the person who came with me to find out.”

She checked her Apple Watch and sighed. “If I leave now I’ll have time.”

GOLIATH

Actually, he did want to be there, because he knew Elena’s reaction wouldn’t be a calm one, but he also wouldn’t pressure her. Instead, he leaned in to kiss her forehead and stroke back her hair. “That’s my girl,” he said warmly. “I’ll pack some food for you to eat on the way. And text me later, alright? I’d say call, but I’m probably going to be busy kicking some sense into your brothers so I may not reply.”

(If Goliath heard a hissed ‘Shit’ and three sets of footsteps bolting out the kitchen door as softly as possible while Cesar snerked, then he didn’t point it out.)

ELENA

She nodded, now a little concerned that maybe Goliath was right. Wait, what? No, don’t think like that Elena. Will it away, will it away. 

“Yeah, I’ll— I’ll text you when I get the good news.” That she’s not! Pregnant! That her uterus is STILL not on the market!

Elena stood up and before Goliath did, turned on her heel to kiss him on the cheek. “Te quiero, Papá.”

[scotianostra]

On 19 June 1937 J M Barrie, the Scottish playwright and novelist, died.

The creator of the boy who never grew up, Peter Pan was born and brought up in Kirriemuir, the seventh child to David Barrie, a hand-loom weaver, and Margaret Ogilvie, the daughter of a stone-mason. Surviving on the income provided by declining weaving industry, the Barries were never wealthy and it is from his early childhood experiences as a dweller in the tenements that Barrie drew his sympathetic portraits of the rural poor.

The death of his older brother, David had a profound effect on the young Barrie, His mother never recovered from the loss of her son, whom Barrie perceived to be the favourite and whose place in his mother’s affections he strove to replace. The psychological significance of Barrie’s relationship with his mother and his need for maternal approval are apparent in the uncritical, almost doting biography of her life which he published in 1896. The exploration of feminine identity was to become a marked feature of Barrie’s writing. The experience of death in childhood would also influence Barrie’s work, which is constantly pre-occupied with the themes of exile, immortality and the otherworldly.

Barrie's most famous work is of course Peter Pan and his tussles with Captain Hook are legendary, but you might be surprised to know Hook was not in the first drafts of the story, the villain of the piece was actually Peter Pan himself!

The original draft to me sounds more like the Peter Pan inspired horror film in which the boys retain their youth and gain their powers, including flying, by becoming vampires.

Of course if you've read the books, you will know of them, they never really featured in the Disney cartoon, but were in the later film Hook.

Barrie himself described the original Peter Pan as a “demon boy” and depicted him kidnapping children from their beds in the dead of night. Although Peter’s image definitely softened once Hook was added to the story, he is still not an altogether heroic hero. As Allison Kavey, co-author of “Second Star to the Right: Peter Pan in the Popular Imagination,” told The Week, "He is selfish, devoted to his own entertainment, and except in battle scenes, incapable of taking care of himself. He also loves like a child, without thought to the effect his love has or what it will mean if he forgets for a while.

More on the Disney film and the character Tinkerbell, contrary to popular myth, Tinker Bell in the Disney movie was based on actress Margaret Kerry, not Marilyn Monroe. Stills of Kerry modelling Tinker Bell poses (including with giant prop scissors and other objects from the movie) can easily be found with a quick Google search.

Another myth is that Barrie invented the name Wendy, not true, the name Wendy in the playBarrie arrived at the name by shortening ‘my fwiendy-wendy’, reportedly how the young Margaret Henley, who had trouble pronouncing her Rs, referred to Barrie. But the name Wendy had been used as a girls’ name since the nineteenth century deriving from the much older name Gwendolyn. However Barrie is credit with inventing the term ‘Wendy house’. The name originates in the small house that Peter Pan builds around Wendy Darling when she is shot by Tootles, one of the Lost Boys. The idea came from the washhouse outside Barrie’s own childhood home.

Off Barrie himself, he was friends with some of the most important writers of the time — many of whom played on an amateur cricket team he started — including Arthur Conan Doyle, George Bernard Shaw, H.G. Wells, Thomas Hardy, Rudyard Kipling, P.G. Wodehouse, G.K. Chesterton and Robert Louis Stevenson. In fact, not only were Stevenson and Barrie well acquainted, so were their respective pirates — Captain Hook, wrote Barrie, was the only man ever feared by Long John Silver, the iconic villain from Stevenson’s “Treasure Island.”

Finally he gave Quality Street chocolates their name. One of J. M. Barrie’s less well remembered stage works was the 1901 comedy Quality Street, set during the Napoleonic Wars. The play is not read or revived much now, but its lasting legacy was in providing the confectioners, Mackintosh’s, with a name for their new chocolates in 1936.

Barrie’s own view of his mixed fortunes in the theatre was wittily summed up by his assessment that ‘some of my plays peter out, others pan out.

[fardell24b]

Changes in Time and Space - Chapter 2 - Part 1: The Scottish Doctor

Chapter 2 – The 12th Doctor – Part I – The Scottish Doctor

The 12th Doctor's TARDIS! Travelling through the vortex.

Felicia emerged into a TARDIS corridor that looked almost the same as the corridor that she was in before she entered the anomaly. The corridor had a more organic look to it than the ones she was used to. She could also hear the Cloister Bell ringing. She turned around and saw the anomaly disappear. She was stuck!

The TARDIS lurched, sending her crashing against a wall. The Cloister Bell stopped ringing. The TARDIS seemed to return to normal.

“Ok, this is either an earlier or later version of the TARDIS, but which is it? And is the Doctor an earlier regeneration?” she asked aloud to herself whilst feeling some fear mixed with the tiny thrill of excitement that she’d come to associate with adventure. She decided to try to find the console room, heading in the direction that she remembered that it was in the TARDIS’s future.

Although they looked similar, these TARDIS corridors were not the ones she knew and she quickly found herself lost. However she then heard someone coming.

She ducked around a corner, hid and waited for the person to come. ‘It is most likely the Doctor,’ she thought, as she tried to reassure herself.

A few minutes earlier, one of the Doctor’s companions had been looking in the TARDIS library for the lost plays of Shakespeare, when the Cloister Bell started ringing. Upon hearing it, the companion leapt down from the bookshelf and ran out of the library; looking for the Doctor and wondering what the trouble was.

“I hope that it’s not too serious,” she said.

The Doctor was tinkering in the console room when the Cloister Bell began to sound. 'Oh no!' he thought and dashed out of the console room, into the corridors.

Another companion was exploring the corridors, leaving a trail leading back to her quarters, when she heard the cloister bell.

“Not again!” she said. She turned and started running back along the trail, sending various markers flying as she knocked them aside.

Yet another companion was writing in a journal when cloister bell sounded. The journal fell to the floor as its owner ran out of the room...

Felicia waited. She could hear many people coming from different directions. She knew that one of them was the Doctor, she knew that the Doctor was different to the Doctor she knew. ‘Her walking sounds different,’ she thought.

'A previous incarnation, but which one?' she thought.

The Doctor walked towards where the TARDIS had indicated that the anomaly had occurred, and wondered what had caused it.

The first companion dashed through the corridors to where where she was sure that the cause of the Cloister Bell ringing had ended up whilst wondering what said cause was. 'I just hope the Doctor knows how to deal with it,' she thought.

The explorer companion cautiously approached the place where the TARDIS had indicated that there had been an anomaly. She wondered what sort of anomaly it was.

Felicia saw the people come together around her. ‘One of them is definitely the Doctor,’ she thought, looking around at the companions. Even after all this time she couldn’t tell who was Human and who was merely humanoid at a glance. ‘Unless their skin was green or some other non-melaninic colour,’ she thought.

“Hello, Doctor.”

“Who are you? What are you doing here?” the Doctor asked.

Felicia was surprised. This incarnation of the Doctor was a man! He looked older, with brownish hair. “I’m Felicia Lovell and I normally travel with your 13th self.” ‘Best to get it out into the open.’

“But how did you get into this version of the TARDIS without me knowing about it?” the Doctor asked with a frown.

“I was drawn through some sort of anomaly.”

“But that is impossible!” The Doctor said.

“I am here aren’t I?”

“That is true,” the Doctor said, clearly in thought.

“What now?” Felicia asked.

“What do you mean?” the Doctor asked, wondering what his future companion was talking about.

“Where is the TARDIS headed, and aren’t you going to introduce me your companions?” Felicia asked.

“Come to the kitchen and I will introduce you to the others there...”

“Okay...”

A few minutes later, the Doctor had made Felicia a cup of tea. She sat down and drank it (although it was not quite the way she preferred her tea) as the companions introduced themselves, one by one.

“I am Kiara Asheru. I am from the planet Tyria, where I was an adventurer for hire.”

“Interesting. Where is Tyria?” Felicia asked. It wasn’t a planet she had heard of during her travels with the Doctor.

“It is in the Large Magellanic Cloud, apparently. I also have only been travelling with the Doctor for a short time, but I’ve seen all sorts of impossible things, some of which have been quite frightening. Much more frightening than the things on Tyria!” Kiara said exclaimed.

“Tell me about it! I’ve only been travelling with the Doctor for about five months, but the things I’ve seen!” Felicia said.

“Yes, the universe is very beautiful,” Kiara replied, nodding, sending her medium brown hair, which was woven into multiple braids; which were in turn, tied into pigtails, all over her shoulders. She then sat down and nibbled on her cake.

“I agree with that,” Felicia said. Kiara seemed outgoing and certainly seemed to be one for adventure. She wondered what Tyria was like. Kiara had rather pale skin, ‘Maybe she’s from a region of Tyria which has low sunlight levels?’ Felicia pondered.

“I am Nathan Daniels. I’ve been travelling with the Doctor for a while. I started travelling with him after he saved me from Cybermen in 1980s New Zealand.” He smiled shyly at Felicia, not noticing that he still had a pen tucked behind his ear from writing in his diary earlier.

“Facinating, what were the Cybermen doing in 1980’s New Zealand?” Felicia asked. ‘It probably was a good thing that the Doctor happened to be there!’ she thought, looking him over. ‘He seems shy. I hope that travelling with the Doctor is not too much for him,’ She noticed the Doctor ducking out of the kitchen.

“They were a faction of Mondasian Cybermen, according to the Doctor, but he didn’t say what their plan was,” Nathan answered as he sipped from a milkshake as he waited for the last person to introduce herself.

“Hi, Felicia. My name is Tamsin Davis. I am from Devon, in England, next to the more famous Cornwall. Seriously; Cornwall is more famous...” the third companion who had been investigating the library said.

“Thanks Tamsin, I am familiar with Devon,” Felicia said, interrupting before Tamsin could rant about Cornwall.

“Because the Doctor took you there no doubt,” Tamsin said.

“That is one reason. We have been, or will be, there only once. Anyway, from which time period are you?” Felicia asked, whilst wondering what Tamsin had against Cornwall besides it being more famous than Devon.

“2010. Shortly after that ‘giant planet in the sky’ incident. I don’t think that was real. Harold Saxon assassinating President Winters was real, but not that. It took a while to refurbish the Archangel Network after all.”

“How can you say that? What about the various Christmas incidents in London?” Felicia sceptically.

“Hoaxes, apart from the last one,” Tamsin said, whist running her hands through her ear length dark blonde hair.

“So how’d you end up here?”

“I was studying history at the University of Exeter. Once I learned that the TARDIS travels in time, I felt that it was a great opportunity to experience history first hand,” Tamsin said.

“I’m from the year 2025. I was studying at an East Anglian university when I started travelling with the Doctor.”

“What were you studying?” Tamsin asked, her voice showing curiosity.

“Economics,” Felicia said. She continued telling Tamsin and the others about herself.

They didn’t notice Doctor come back into the room. “We are now approaching our destination.”

“Cool,” Tamsin said.

Kiara smiled as if in anticipation of the adventure ahead.

“Which is?” Felicia asked last.

“Wait and see,” the Doctor said, he lead them out of the kitchen and towards the console room...

“He never tells us where we are going, unless we happen to be in the console room when he sets the course,” Tamsin said.

“Oh,” Felicia said, surprised.

“Tamsin is right,” Kiara said as she left the kitchen. “Even then we still don’t know what we’re going into.”

‘That’s quirky,’ Felicia thought as she followed them out.

[crapfutures]

Et in Orcadia ego

In a recent post (‘scrap futures’) we mentioned a project we’re doing with Laura Watts from ITU Copenhagen and partners in Scotland that involves building a gravity battery on the small island of Eday in Orkney.

We’ve just returned from that island-to-island journey. It was quite a trip, a proper eye opener. We arrived on Sunday evening with nothing - no tools or materials of any kind - and by Thursday we were running a public demo of a gravity-powered Casio keyboard playing Ode to Joy. Here is a brief (and highly subjective) travelogue and technical account of the process, which was not unlike a 72-hour Scrapheap Challenge, but involving the whole community.

The northward trek

Three of us left Madeira early on the Friday, bidding farewell to sunshine and flower blossoms. The fourth in our party, Mohammed, coming from rural Sweden, met us that night in Inverness. By Saturday morning we had reached Kirkwall, on the Orkney Mainland. Laura arrived on the next flight, and over a lunch of fish and chips we shared our thoughts about the gravity battery, including what sort of scrap we might use to make it - an old motorcycle, a car or tractor, even a crashed Vespa someone had mentioned. There was also the question of what we should do with the energy it released. Previously we had powered a record player; this time we had in mind a lamp, or an old radio playing The Shipping Forecast. None of us had ever been to Eday, an island of ten square miles with a population of just 130 people.

The wind picked up and the afternoon ferry was cancelled, so we headed over to Stromness on the other side of the Mainland to spend the night in the atmospheric Stromness Hotel. Enrique waxed poetic on the irony of Silicon Valley’s dreams of colonising Mars, when we were stranded ten miles from our destination by a bit of wind. But we made the best of it, and after a full Scottish breakfast with haggis on Sunday morning we drove back to Kirkwall and caught the afternoon ferry. We arrived after dark, windswept and seasalted, and followed the island’s only road to the only year-round accommodation, the hostel, where we met our documentary filmmaker, Aaron Watson. The trip north had taken three days, leaving only three days to build for the demonstration.

Build Day 1

We woke Monday morning to the sound of a large wind turbine spinning fast outside the hostel, telling us the weather conditions. In fact the island grid is powered entirely by renewable energy - Eday’s experimental and community-driven use of renewables, including wind, tidal, and solar, as well as storage in hydrogen fuel cells, is the main reason we were keen to visit. Even the electric heaters in the hostel are powered at certain times by energy overflow from the wind turbine outside. Everyone we met on Eday was extremely well versed in energy generation and storage, including the seven children of the local primary school who spoke knowledgeably about electrolysers and curtailment.

We met Clive, our local fixer and project partner with Eday Renewable Energy Ltd., after a solid breakfast of porridge and bacon butties. Before we set out to gather scrap materials and tools, he gave us a pep talk of sorts: ‘This may look like chaos. But I assure you the machine will be built, it will be demonstrated, and you will leave happy on the ferry Friday morning.’ In the car he pointed out the island’s landmarks and mentioned some of the people we would likely meet that day. As far as we could tell you were not allowed to have the same name as anyone else on the island - when a second Kate arrived she was renamed Katie, and the second Mike became Mick. This we decided was as good a definition of a small island as any we’d heard. Clive warned us that the community would need some convincing before they got involved. We should expect questions like: What’s in it for Eday?

The first stop of the morning was the Old Church, which had been bought by a woman from London with big plans in the 1980s and has sat derelict ever since. Here we found an old motorcycle, a red Kawasaki, parked in the middle of the church amongst other scrap (a Super 8 camera, a record player, a typewriter). The bike had only 12,000 miles on the odometer, but it was buried under a thick blanket of corrosive pigeon shit, and all of its insides were seized beyond reasonable use. We took a lot of photographs. At the second stop, the New Church a minute down the road, we found a large brass bell salvaged from a sunken steamship. We thought we might use it as a weight for the gravity battery. Permission would have to be sought, Clive said. The third stop was an old mechanic’s back garden, full of rusted cars and a jumble of engine parts. ‘Did he die?’ someone asked. ‘No, just left the island’, Clive replied. James opened the hood of an old BMW and found a live rabbit inside.

We checked out the building site next, a shed by the pier used mostly for deliveries. It had a forklift and plenty of room - the first real success of the day. We would have to clear out twice a day when the ferry docked, but aside from that it was ours. We agreed it would do very nicely. Our other Eday contact, Andy, who works with Clive, met us at the shed. From there we drove to an old quarry on the far side of the island, a five-minute journey. As we walked around the site, staring up at the sheer sides from the quarry base, someone had an epiphany about making a gravity-powered keyboard. Andy, it turned out, not only knew how to play (he was currently the church organist), he had also been the keyboardist in an eighties band called Freeez, who had a number one single in the US dance charts (‘IOU’). We all agreed that if we could get hold of a scrap keyboard the issue of what to do with the energy released by the gravity battery was solved.

After lunch at the hostel we met some people from the community in a building next to the island shop. The key moment in this meeting was the suggestion that Mick, who was spotted leaving the shop outside, had an old motorcycle in his barn; someone ran out to talk to Mick and he kindly agreed to let us follow him home. He was a large man in a CCCP shirt, who told us in a Liverpool accent to mind the ducks and sheep. He opened the barn and dragged out an old dirt bike, its wheels clogged with hay; he used an axe to free up the front wheel, and four of us rolled it up the driveway in the rain and waited as someone found a van to bring it back to the pier shed. We were cold and wet, and the light was fading on our first day, but we had a motorcycle and a rough plan. We ate a hearty dinner at Roadside, the island’s former pub turned occasional restaurant (actually just a dining room in a private house), and then returned to the hostel to drink whisky and sleep.

Build Day 2

We arrived at the shed Tuesday morning at 9.05am to find several islanders already waiting in boilersuits, ready to work. We introduced ourselves, made some tea, and set up to start cutting into the bike, while Clive got on the phone to order a new chain from the Mainland - the only part the bike was missing. We quickly sourced some necessary tools from generous community members, including an angle grinder (Aaron the filmmaker’s favourite, because it made a photogenic shower of sparks), a lathe, and a socket set, and got to work. By lunch the bike was stripped, leaving only the parts necessary for the gravity battery - the frame, engine, and rear axle. In the afternoon two of us went to the school to give a workshop while the others stayed back at the shed. The wind blew and the rain poured down. Countless cups of tea were consumed. Soon the day was over, the children went home, the shed was locked up, and at the hostel Mohammed made his special dhal. It was Halloween night on a remote Scottish island, so obviously we watched The Wicker Man. More whisky was consumed.

Build Day 3

The challenge now was how to get the gravity battery over the fence and down into the quarry, our chosen site for Thursday’s demo. We noticed a large tractor - who did it belong to? Could somebody drive it there? Health and safety was still a headache that Andy was dealing with, negotiating with the property owners in England and the insurance company. It was blowing a gale all the previous night and all morning; the rain beat down on the corrugated iron roof of the shed, making it hard to hear anyone speak.

On the positive side, people from the community were beginning to get excited about working together on this strange and unexpected project. Old habits were shifting as people from different parts of the island who rarely spoke to each other met and pitched in as a team. Hamish and Mel, native Orcadians, came to join in and brought their son Robbie, an apprentice engineer. An old Casio keyboard was found, and after some minor tinkering was brought back to life. The chain arrived by afternoon ferry. Calculations were underway for rigging a pulley over the quarry edge. More people showed up, to work or to watch. Clive told us stories of moving to London in the late sixties, working in Carnaby Street, seeing the Stones in Hyde Park. ‘What brought you up to Eday?’ we asked. ‘Cheap innit’, he said with a smile. We met other southerners who said the same thing. But their attachment to the place had obviously gone very deep.

On Wednesday afternoon we went to use the lathe in the shed of a friendly guy named Mike, another Englishman and ex-submariner who lived in the old schoolhouse. Mike left a note in the shed telling us what to do if a blackbird showed up at the door - he had trained the bird to come in and ask for food when it was hungry. Sure enough the bird showed up, looking at us expectantly until we passed it some raisins and a biscuit. When we finished our machining Mike invited us into the main house. In what turned out to be one of the highlights of our week in Eday, Mike showed us not only a display he’d made on the history of the school, but also - leading us through a hole in the wall - no less than a full-sized model of the inside of a submarine, complete with salvaged periscope, control panels, and torpedo launchers. We walked through room after room, through sleeping quarters with life-sized mannequin sailors, until we reached the end and emerged back into the schoolhouse. We shook hands with Mike, somewhat unsettled by what we’d just seen, and returned to the pier shed.

That night at dinner we discussed our visit to Eday as a three-act play. The first two acts, we decided, had established the principal characters and their relationship to the world they lived in. The inciting incident of Act One was our arrival on the island, with a mad plan to build a gravity battery from scrap. The rising action of Act Two was the first three days of building, where we pitched in with the community to make the thing we’d set out to make - the spectre of public humiliation creating tension and driving us forward. The character arcs of ourselves and everyone in the community developed under this pressure; Andy and Clive even told us that relationships between community members had been altered - for the good - by our presence. People who hadn’t spoken to each other in years exchanged words; old feuds were put to rest or laid aside. For our part we gained insights about ourselves, our roles, and the nature of our work.

Every story needs a climax, and it usually involves collectively overcoming a crisis. So it was not unexpected that we should receive a phone call at dinner that night, the night before the public demo, telling us that the absentee landowner would not allow access to our chosen site, the quarry, without insurance - and negotiations with the insurance company had reached an impasse. Andy was trying his best to provide evidence of due diligence to both parties; but insurance is about predictability, and is naturally risk-averse. Testing a gravity battery made from scrap in an abandoned quarry with children present is not an ideal scenario from the insurer’s perspective. How could we bridge the gap between health and safety, on one hand, and daring innovation and experimentation, on the other? How could we achieve a satisfying resolution and leave happy, as Clive promised, on Friday morning?

Demo Day

Andy, as we mentioned above, was a professional musician in his previous life - he had played on Top of the Pops and The Old Grey Whistle Test. So when he sat down to rehearse for the demo on Thursday morning, perched on a wooden crate in shorts and hiking boots and a down jacket, tapping at the keys of a salvaged Casio, the other islanders laughed and jibed goodnaturedly: ‘You’ve come a long way, Andy!’ The crisis at the quarry had been overcome, or rather bypassed completely, by ten o’clock: just as the insurance problem was solved, we decided it would be easier to stage the demo at the pier near the shed, so that no major moving of equipment would be involved. Now momentum was gathering towards the final event and resolution.

The demo was scheduled for after lunch. Word spread and by late morning a small crowd started to gather. We were busy with small jobs: like untangling rope for the pulley to suspend the mass, a 25-litre water container, from a long metal pole extending off the fork of a tractor Hamish had driven over from his farm. The motorcycle chassis that formed the heart of the machine was strapped to a wooden pallet. We only had to figure out how to lift the weight into the air - in Madeira we had used a solar panel, but that was not an option in Orkney. Various attempts were made, including hooking up the battery from Mike’s car, but with no success.

The school bus pulled into the parking lot in front of the pier shed and the children got out. They lined up in front of the crowd and showed drawings of the gravity batteries they had designed earlier in the week. One child broke down under the pressure and sobbed loudly, but eventually held up his drawing between shaking hands. The weather was calm and dry. We handed out Madeiran sweets to the kids, who wore reflective vests for safety. Everyone stood facing us in a semicircle and waited for the show to begin. At the last moment a solution was found: James improvised an attachment to a rechargeable electric drill and used it to drive a super low-gear winch, slowly raising the water container. It seemed a bit of a cheat - though in fact it wasn’t, since the island’s grid is powered by renewables - but the mass was now suspended, the energy was stored until needed, and that was the main point. We called for everyone’s attention; released the mass; wires were connected and the keyboard came to life. Andy played ‘Ode to Joy’, followed by ‘The Flintstones’ for the children. The performance lasted several minutes, then the keyboard fell silent at the instant the water container touched the ground. The crowd went wild. We did it again, and then again - the last time letting the kids take turns banging out some noise. It was a success. We cleaned up as dusk fell.

That evening there was a gathering at the community centre. Andy led a discussion with ourselves and some of the islanders, including Hamish and Mel and their children, ‘Submarine’ Mike, Ivan and his son Jordan, and many others, that felt productive. It verged at times on emotional, as people discussed past achievements like the installation of the massive community-owned wind turbine, along with possible futures of the community and the island itself. We tried to impress the point that, given enough time and ideal conditions, their energy storage solution (or ‘Newton Machine’) would not be a gravity battery - which was something we had created out of the particular materials and terrain of Madeira - but rather a bespoke solution for Eday, built not from Madeiran sucata but from Orcadian bruck, taking advantage of local conditions, like a flow battery made with seawater. But we had three days to produce something spectacular with the community, so we decided to make an Eday version of a gravity battery - and according to those terms, we succeeded. As we sat around talking into the night, surrounded by absolute darkness except for the lights of neighbouring islands and the hostel in the distance, we also agreed that the machine we built was, in some real sense, a social machine.

We hoped that our strange event on Eday, our intervention of sorts, had made an impact on the community. We received a positive sign from Andy the day after we returned, in the form of a message that read: ‘I'm about to order my very first angle grinder, just so I can make my own sparks, just for the sheer fun of it.’ He said he’d been inspired to ‘have a go’. Between Andy’s words (and music), Clive’s stories, Mike’s submarine, Mick’s motorcycle, Ivan’s joyful exclamations of ‘happy days!’, the schoolchildren’s imaginative designs, and Hamish’s son Robbie melting aluminium in a kitchen pot with a blowtorch to cast parts for the gravity battery, we concluded that some good had come of the trip. Still ahead, Laura will write up our experiences on Eday from an ethnographer’s perspective, and Aaron will make a short film to present at our exhibition in Barcelona early next year. The gravity battery itself, meanwhile, remains on the island - being too heavy to transport - and will hopefully power Andy’s reconfigured Casio keyboard through the winter months.

Images:

Julian Hanna and James Auger.

[corixus]

Language reality and image

Wednesday, July 13, 2011

The artist is the opposite of the politically minded individual, the opposite of the reformer, the opposite of the idealist. The artist does not tinker with the universe, he recreates it out of his own experience and understanding of life.

~Henry Miller

The big question for those researching the languages of representing reality is why do some suggest that the motivations behind art and science represent conflicting impulses, while others see the two approaches as integrally related? Model-making is an essential feature of all human thinking and applies to obtaining both a scientific and an artistic understanding of the world. In both activities, the "abstraction ladder," leads from observations of a material reality to simpler models made visible using the 'languages' of numbers, diagrams, poetic descriptions and pictures. Through abstraction, art as picture making today is becoming increasingly complex and referential; aspects of culture and our ecological identity are constantly being brought to together, by either implication or association, in landscape. The conjunction of these processes in the work of Susi Bellamy, implies a new way of cross-discipline thinking, which needs clarification through the critiques of artists and/or scientists if none is provided by the artist herself.

As soon as a person starts to think she starts to criticize. Human nature is inclined to comparison and discussion, particularly now that we live in an age when the public have come to expect the artist to constantly review her relationship with images. This is usually achieved using abstract forms. The objective is to create a personal language for articulating a sharper reality of relationships between people, environment and the psyche. Explanation of a work of art involves discovering a meaning and its significance to the human condition. An important part of the critics' role is to discover and write about the intended and perceived meanings the work may have for the viewer. This is particularly important when reviewing Susi Bellamy's work because she has been for the past two decades always in the territory of experimentation. There she has engaged with research into pictorial representation aimed at the blurring of direct human references in order to reconstruct a more thoughtful relationship between people's inner and outer worlds.

From time to time she has immersed herself in the skills of representational art to create traditional still life and portraits. But her real motivation has been to apply old master techniques and palettes to create abstract metaphors of topographical mindfulness. In this endeavour she grapples with the historical procession of art in order to re-conceive, experience and revise it as a personal language.

Since the 17th century exotic shells were a favourite item in still life paintings, often in combination with large bouquets of flowers. Many would say that Susi Bellamy has picked up this historical thread of realism to explore the way randomness and precision, which come together in shell pigmentation, may give rise to pleasing patterns.

Every artist has to find a way of describing the inner truth of things. This is the unified complex of characteristics that give each thing its subjective uniqueness and differentiates it from other things. Then there comes the definition of a route to transmit it as a mental wholeness to others in the hope that it will be seen as more than a pleasing image. The term 'inscape' was invented by the Jesuit poet, Gerard Manley Hopkins, to describe inner truths of things in conjunction with the term "instress." By "inscape" he means the unified complex of characteristics that give each thing its uniqueness and that differentiate it from other things, and by "instress" he means either the force of being which holds the inscape together or the impulse from the inscape which carries it whole into the mind of the beholder. He also uses the term to mean ‘the stress within’, the force which binds something or a person into a unit.

It is possible to trace Hopkins’ ideas on the nature of perception to his early encounter in 1872 with the writings of the medieval author, John Duns Scotus (c.1265-1308). Scotus was a Franciscan friar born in Duns, in the Scottish borders, and studied and taught at the Universities of Oxford, Cambridge and Paris. He, in turn, had taken the germ of the ideas from Peter Lombard's ‘Sentences’. Peter Lombard was an Italian theologian (c.1100-c.1160-64) who wrote his book of 'sentences' in about 1150. Arranged in four parts, it discusses all aspects of theological doctrine systematically in a long series of questions. A key phrase in Scotus which seems to have been developed by Hopkins was:

‘By grasping just what things are of themselves, a person separates the essences from the many additional incidental features associated with them in the sense image… and sees what is true… as a more universal truth.’

We can take from Hopkins the essence of probing a divide between descriptive science and spirituality. For example, on 13 August 1874 he wrote;

‘ The laps of running foam striking the sea-wall double on themselves and return in nearly the same order and shape in which they came. This is mechanical reflection and is the same as optical: indeed all nature is mechanaical, but then it is not seen that mechanics contain that which is beyond mechanics’

Modern neuropsychology is investigating these two aspects of seeing and communicating because it is at the heart of both our feelings of 'belonging' and 'alienation'. In the poem "Ad Marian," Hopkins impersonates the inscape of the month of May in a pre-Christan spirtitual setting as Spring's daughter. In so doing, we see the inscape as an archetype of the Mother of all humankind, who is as vital "as Dew unto grass and tree." The poems remind us that the female principle of fecundity is ever present in the landscape. It is significant therefore that Susi Bellamy during a period of residence in Italy came to focus on the re-construction of 13th and 14th century icons of the Madonna. Her starting point was the extensive collection of Madonnas in the Venice Accademia Galleries, where they are stranded high and dry from the sea of faith which produced them seven centuries ago. What she has produced are powerful and disturbing contemporary icons of motherhood in which the naturalistic facial features of Mary and her child are enfolded in a complex expanded decorative collaged cosmos. Their instress emphasises the truth that a noisy unruly world can't take away the persona and its relationships with the processes of nature. They are most essential for each of us. These Madonna inscapes should be reassuring to anyone in the midst of a world of trivial productions that is threatening to remove what is most essential to their individuality.

Susi's choice to manipulate a powerful Christian icon is not the beginnings of cultural disavowal but an attempt to make visible and readable what for most people in the West has become withheld from comprehension and symbolisation. She has made the surfaces of the paintings visibly deeper and each Madonna is the equivalent of a mental 'big bang'.

The decorative random, yet ordered, matrix constructed from mass-produced paper patterns produces a deep cosmic depth in which many narratives are possible in the mind of the viewer. Her pictures, like the works that led up to them, are really toolkits for meditation on our affair with consumerism, which today pervades everything we are.

Every day, we move through landscapes that are the historical results of local economic processes of programmed randomness. Susi began painting on the premise that there are many ways to combine abstract language with the stylistic forms of figurative painting to reveal intermediate hidden truths of mental picturing. This is evident in her many 'halfway away/half way back' effects, which are the outcomes of moving up and down the ladder of abstraction on a quest to capture and transmit more than is visible to the naked eye. This has involved the controlled use of randomness to enable works to form freely. The Madonna pictures came after a period when she was engaged in producing formless but dynamic 'plasmas' which explored combining chaos and order of liquid paint on tilted canvas. In the end, order prevailed in which areas of colour were arranged like rows of classified rocks and vibrant microcosms constrained within golden ribbons. The Madonnas and their characteristic colour palette seem to emerge from the end point of this phase where entities coalesced like technicoloured polished sections cut through meteorites.

This emphasises that Susi's consistent probing approach to reveal inscapes has been based on the adoption of a distinctive, vibrant palette echoing the false digitised colours used by astronomers to delineate the complexity of galaxies and the birth and death of stars. In this respect, they are miniature expressions of cosmic thinking. Another development of randomness-with-order, was her printmaking carried out in the Florentine print workshops, which served Picasso and Henry Moore. In these experiments rows of darker, angular, horizontal structures divide up a landscape format, like inscribed stone walls. These are inscapes where the instress could focus on compartmentation as symbolising either 'belonging' or 'exclusion'.

Regarding the expressive power of her work, an ambiguity of meaning is one of its most definitive characteristics. At one time you may imagine you are looking at a section of Hadrian's Wall in the empty Northumbrian landscape. Another time, the same picture may appear as a piece of crumpled patterned fabric. A jagged mass of blue might be a transient break in a threatening sky implying a forthcoming natural disaster, whereas its incidental feature was the surface of a lighted swimming pool overlooking a deep Tuscan valley in twilight. Here, as in most of her work, Susi literally harnesses randomness and makes it operate on the entities selected for exploration. Many people like her paintings, probably because, as just another species, and the result of natural selection, we seem to gladly embrace fractal and chaotic structures and work on them to discern some kind of order. In the ever-threatening world in which our biological evolution occurred, such behaviour would confer a survival advantage by reinforcing a sense of place.

With her early background in fashion journalism it was inevitable that Susi would become interested in the relationship between the frame and the picture. In contemplating a picture, the frame is generally taken for granted. It is a fait accompli, and most of us may be unaware of how powerfully the frame can influence our perception and enjoyment of the picture within. It was in Florence that she studied the classical proportions, abstracted sculptural ornament and muted patina of Renaissance and Baroque frames. Florentine frame-making is part and parcel of the family histories of master carpenters who still ply a trade as old as the Madonna icons.

The marriage of picture and frame may be harmonious or discordant, enhancing or depressing, or somewhere in between. In Susi’s view, most private and public collections contain pictures the true impact of which has been compromised by their frames - often in an insidious way - for decades or even centuries. Susi is adamant that the artist should devote much thought to the way a frame can enhance the 'performance' of an image. Her frames possess a timeless quality, not necessarily related to a specific period of interior decoration.

In all her works, Susi has produced modern icons for meditation on the birthing moments we all have when suddenly becoming aware of a new arrangement of the natural or built environment. This is a pointer to the fact that for many modern artists the instress of human adaptation to environment is a steady process of being at one with the physical laws of the universe and the random events they produce. Humanity is not the one-off supernatural project of an omniscient being.

The opening up of windows on non-religious spirituality happened for Susi Bellamy when she gave up strict control over the application of paint with a brush to dribble and paste directly onto the canvas. The actual shapes, patterns and textures were largely determined by the random dynamics of the material and her process: the viscosity of the paint and the speed and direction of its flow on the canvas. An important random factor in the making of Madonnas was the availability of commercial patterned papers. This is simply to say that throughout her career Susi has been firmly in the territory of artistic experimentation, intent on making various kinds of paintings as alternative solutions of equal worth rather than attesting to a life-long process of relentless technical development. Her consistent aim has been to render visible 'inner' or 'immaterial' phenomena. In this respect, she sits firmly at the forefront of part of the contemporary art scene, which is a play of language, reality and image. As art and science continue to bump up against each other, new images are constantly required to express new models of reality and Susi's diversity of artistic style becomes a deliberate stylistic principle of cross-disciplinary research.

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