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socially-awkward-skeleton · 1 year

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tagged by: @direwombat and @madparadoxum (for wip last line)

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With the new chapter of American Beasts posted this week I haven't got anything worthwhile there to share, so have some more from Kit's Herald/Role Swap AU Kakia (warnings: for guns, violence, and straight up patricide):

There were countless times she’d pictured doing this, hurting her parents the way they’d hurt her, vengeance for how she was raised. A father’s brutal lack of love. Overbearing and cold. He treated her as no more than an offshoot of himself, just an added limb to his legacy, his memory. Nothing was ever for her, it was all for him. Selfish, conceited and controlling. Her mother’s feigned sympathy, coddling a scared and angry dog, only to try and dress it up for her own amusement. The party trick kept around to amuse the guests, no better than a piece of art on the wall, something her mother could briefly point at to draw attention to it before turning away from her as she always did.

Boots thundered on shining wood floors, polished to the point you could see your own reflection, clean enough to eat off of and God only knew with the money they were flashing it certainly wasn’t her mother on her hands and knees doing it anymore. Kit’s hand tensed around the grip of her gun, as she passed by the farmhouse style Live, Laugh, Love sign complete with scuffed chalk paint and tarnished metal corners. It was revolting. A mask slapped on top of the horrors that hid underneath, no better than sticking duct tape over a hole punched in a wall.

“Yes, do it. They deserve it.” The whisper in her head was the only accomplice she needed. “Quiet, quiet. No one will hear you. You’re almost free.”

She turned the corner down the hall and made her way to her father first. The root of all her evils. He broke her, ruined every chance she had at a life of her own. But with his death she’d find her release. No longer bound to him, cutting the cord that had held her to him since birth.

The door to his office had been shut tight – just as it always was while she was growing up – not to be disturbed. But his law of the land no longer stood with her. The door swung open, the lock clicking open of its own will, and with her gun at the ready, Kit stood in the doorway.

He barely had the time to look up from his monitor to see her. His eyes (ones that had filled her with so much guilt and shame) were spared only a moment to grow wide before a hole was made between them. The blast caused his head to snap back against the headrest, his mouth gaping open in stunned surprise as deep purple blood oozed down from the wound. With no life left in James, he slumped over, his head hitting the keyboard below, the weight of his cheek and forehead causing the keys to clack loudly in response. It was a quicker death than he deserved, but at least he left the world knowing just how excellent a weapon he had made. Quick, clean, efficient.

Unstoppable.

“Excellent. We’re almost there.” The Voice slithered in her ear, a forked tongue lapping at her lobe.

Storming the kitchen, her mother had already raced to the security unit by the back door with the sound of the gunshot, but she’d soon find she was as alone as Kit had felt for all those years with no one to turn to, no compassionate ear to listen to her problems, to take her away from the hell of another’s making. Elaine could press the alarm call button over and over and it would serve as much purpose as the cooing she would do over her daughter when she was worn down and told she was some monstrous thing, when she was told God was watching her and that He knew what she was thinking at all times, and that she needed to shape up.

Seeing the red specter of death that was her daughter enter the room caused Elaine’s heart to race, stumbling backwards into the kitchen island. “Kitty, what’re - what’re you doing here?” Her mother’s eyes glanced around the kitchen, looking for something, anything, to defend herself with, but to no avail.

Pale eyes tracked her every movement, the same way she’d been trained to. Keeping herself three steps ahead of her mother at all times. Kit lifted her gun, aiming it at her mother’s chest.

Elaine’s attention turned to the hall her daughter had come from. “You - your father - why? Why are you doing this?”

Kit’s cold, emotionless face slipped into a deep scowl. Teeth bared, she became more animal than human. Her lungs forcing out each anguished breath she’d kept locked up in the cage of her chest for so long. “You’re fucking kidding me, aren’t you?” she rasped.

“Is this because of the explosion? Some sort of PTSD? We can get you help, Kitty. I can help you.” Elaine opened her arms wide as if to accept her daughter, to embrace the burden of her own bosom.

The anger cracked, a smile pulled at her lips and a laugh trembled out of her. “You, help me? When have you ever done that?”

Watery eyes looking back at her would do nothing to dissuade Kit from her mission, and it was clear that her mother knew it all the same as she crumpled down to the floor, resting up against the kitchen cabinets in fetal position waiting out her inevitable demise, shaking like a lost lamb.

Every thought she’d ever had about her mother came true in that moment, proof positive she’d been right all along. She was weak. Pathetic. A burden beset upon the world, and Kit was doing her and the rest of mankind a favor, ridding them all of Elaine Cross.

Sobbing as the cold metal bite of the muzzle of her daughter’s gun was pressed to the top of her head, eyes the color of forget-me-nots stared up at Kit, pleading desperately with her through streams of tears and snot. “Please…what did I ever do to deserve this?”

The empty stare Elaine was met with befit the shell it belonged to. Icy eyes with a darkness to them so deep it was practically bottomless. A machine of her husband’s making, a monster made flesh from within her own rancid womb. A daughter of Cain completing her reflexive duty, something born and bred with a killer instinct.

“Ask God.”

#wip wednesday #fic: kakia #oc: kit cross #alas james and elaine you had this coming to you #the one timeline where kit gets her sweet sweet justice

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baobikhangloi · 1 year

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A brief history of colors and some popular pigments

Black pigment

Black pigment has a long history, starting with charcoal paintings in Stone Age caves. Through centuries of research, people have known how to change the burning conditions and choose the type of wood to customize the shade of this black. Coal can be pressed into a dry bar, or it can be ground into a powder and mixed with water or other liquids to produce the black dye that is now known as carbon black, with the pigment code PBk 7.

During the renaissance, artists often worked with black obtained from the soot of oil lamps, known as lamp black pigment – PBk 6. This pigment has a matte black color with a slightly cool tint. The lamp black is also used in Egyptian tombs and murals, replacing charcoal, which is denser but less pure.

Ivory black or bone black was originally created by boiling the crumbs obtained during the ivory making process to remove fat and gelatine, then ground and concentrated into a harder and coarser form to produce black. The production of ivory pigments was stopped in the 1930s, and today the pigment is mainly made from animal bones, with the color index name PBk 9. This pigment is semi-transparent, has a tinting strength is lower than that of carbon-based black pigments, but has a unique feature of deep yellow or brown undertones.

PBk 11 is an inorganic iron oxide pigment, which is different from all the black pigments mentioned above because there is no carbon in the composition. PBk 11 has a very high color fastness and is almost indestructible. In a mixture of colors, it can easily overwhelm all other colors. PBK 11 is also known as Mars black, named after Mars, the god of war in Greek mythology.

white pigment

The first white substance in history is thought to be natural calcium carbonate chalk, which is an exceptionally soft limestone, formed from the shells and bones of microscopic organisms deposited and compacted over millions of years. The calcium carbonate (CaCO3) that gives the white color can also be obtained from eggshells, oyster shells, ... In European literature, the term "shell white" is often used to refer to these ancient whites. Natural white pigment with calcium carbonate composition is still used to this day, has the pigment code PW 18.

The first synthetic white pigment produced on a commercial scale was lead white (PW 1), which dates back to around 300 BC. Despite its proven toxicity, white lead remained in widespread use until the late 19th century, when the superior zinc white and titanium white appeared and replaced it. There are many documents detailing how to make white lead. In the oldest process, lead rods were exposed to vinegar fumes in sealed clay pots. These pots were buried in manure or tree bark to maintain the temperature for several months so that the lead converted to white lead.

Zinc white (PW 4) with zinc oxide composition (ZnO) is produced by burning zinc in an oxidizing medium or zinc ore in a reducing medium. This pigment has the special property of being able to emit yellow fluorescence under long-wave ultraviolet light. Zinc whites are not toxic, nor are they as clearly affected by hydrogen sulfide as lead whites, but their whiteness is clearly inferior.

In 1908 in New York, a metallurgist named Auguste Rossi invented a brilliant white pigment, titanium dioxide (Titanium White - PW 6). This pigment is extremely stable, it is not affected by heat, dilute acids or alkalis, light or hydrogen sulfide. Most importantly, titanium white reflects about 97% of light, making it the best white ever known. Because of that, it quickly became popular in many fields. Titanium dioxide also provides UV absorption, which greatly improves weather resistance and durability for outdoor applications.

The chemical classification of titanium dioxide, which for many years was considered no problem, is even widely used in the pharmaceutical and cosmetic industries. However, they have become the subject of heated discussion over the past few years, when a European Union authority has changed the way they are classified and evaluated. Titanium dioxide (TiO2) particles with an aerodynamic diameter ≤ 10 μm are considered hazardous when inhaled.

Before titanium white appeared, the dominance in the segment belonged to Lithopone white (PW 5). They once accounted for 60% of the white pigment market, outperforming both lead white and zinc white combined. Lithopone is moderately strong in blends, not as strong as Titanium white, but not as gentle as Zinc white either. For those who are concerned about the durability of zinc white, but don't like the opacity of titanium white, PW 5 can be a good alternative.

Red pigment

Red is a color associated with love, excitement, and danger. This color also symbolizes good luck in many Eastern cultures. There are many red pigments that have been found and present in the pigment database.

The earliest red pigment discovered by mankind was red ocher, which is clay that has been colored by rusted (oxidized) iron. The red iron oxide pigment consists of the mineral hematite with some minor minerals such as clay, chalk and quartz. Red ocher differs from yellow ocher and brown ocher in that they do not contain H2O in their chemical structure. Today, synthetic iron oxide red pigments have the pigment code PR 101. They are chemically very similar to natural red iron oxide (PR 102), but transparent and more vibrant in color.

Lead red (minium) is an ancient pigment that is considered to be one of the first synthetic man-made pigments. Red lead is made by heating white lead to oxidize it at high temperatures. They are still used to this day, in anti-rust paints for steel structures, especially used a lot on ships.

The famous Chinese red color dating back to the fourth century BC is “Chusha” (Cinnabar), which is used to make paints, lacquers, ceramic glazes and calligraphy ink. Many people mistakenly believe that cinnabar is a plant because it is also a medicine in traditional medicine, but in fact, cinnabar is a mineral with the main component mercury sulfide (HgS). Artificial cinnabar, used by the Romans since the Middle Ages. This pigment is named Vermillion, has a color index name PR 106. Vermillion is much more vibrant than natural cinnabar, but both are quite toxic.

Besides the red pigments obtained from minerals, history also records some organic red pigments obtained from plants such as kermes tree, brazilwood or some palm species in Asia. The Incas also had their own red pigment for dyeing their robes, obtained from the Cochineal - a beetle that feeds on cactus.

The age-old reds made from lead and mercury, though toxic, have been commonly used throughout human history. The real alternatives have only appeared for more than a century, with the development of modern chemistry.

Red Cadmium (PR 108) is a dual product of zinc ore. PR 108 can include many different shades of red, for example Cadmium Red Light leans more towards orange, while Cadmium Red Deep is slightly maroon.

Naphthol red pigments PR 5, PR 9, PR 112, PR 170 and PR 188 are a large group of synthetic organic red pigments. While PR 5 can serve as the primary, medium-tone red in the palette, PR 9 is more of an orange hue. PR112 has a soft bright orange color, PR 170 includes Naphthol Red Light with an orange-red color and Naphthol Red Deep leaning towards purple.

Alizarin Crimson (PR 83) has a deep, cold red color and has high tinting intensity. Mixing PR 83 with Viridian Blue (PG 18) or Phthalo Blue (PG 7) creates a very deep black. PR 122 – Quinacridone Magenta is a vibrant red with a blue tint that makes them almost purple. The same Quinacridone family also has a red color PR 202 which is a bit greener than PR 122, PR 206 - Quinacridone Maroon has a red color that turns brown, while PR 207 - Quinacridone Scarlet is bright coral red.

Yellow pigment

Of all the pigment groups, yellow is the largest and most diverse because there are many substances in nature that can produce this color.

The oldest yellow pigment in prehistoric cave paintings, is yellow ocher, also crumbly clay colored by iron oxides. They are still in use today, with the pigment code PY 43 for natural yellow iron oxide and PY 42 for synthetic yellow ocher. Both natural ocher yellow and synthetics are both great colors in art, as they will produce very natural looking greens when mixed with blue pigments.

In early civilizations in Asia, Egypt and Greece, human used a yellow substance called Orpiment, which was synthesized by subliming a mixture of sulfur and a small amount of arsenic oxide. The Babylonians used Napoli yellow, which was prepared by heating a mixture of oxides of lead and antimony. Napoli yellow currently has a pigment code of PY 41.

Another well-known yellow is Indian yellow, which is said to be made from the bladder gravel of cows eating mango leaves. However, the original Indian yellow color dating from the 15th century no longer exists. Today's Indian yellow is Diarylide yellow (PY 83).

The 19th century saw the introduction of more modern inorganic pigments such as chromium yellow (lead chromate), cadmium gold (PY 35 and PY 37), nickel gold (PY 53 and PY 150), …

Some other yellow pigments include: Hansa yellow group (PY 3) with bright greenish yellow, PY 65 with deep yellow and PY 97 medium yellow, Barium Chromat lemon yellow (PY 31), Strontium chromate (PY32), cobalt yellow (PY 40), arylide yellow (PY73 and PY74), Isoindolinone yellow (PY 110), Diazo yellow (PY 128), Quinophthalone yellow (PY 138), Benzimidazolone yellow (PY 151, PY154 and PY 154). PY175), …

Blue pigment

Blue includes sky blue and navy blue which are very rare colors in nature. Less than a tenth of plants have this color, and in animals it's even rarer. Even if they're blue, it's not because they actually have a blue pigment, but they've actually done light tricks to achieve.

In plants, blue color is achieved by mixing or altering natural pigments, most commonly by altering the acidity on red anthocyanin pigments such as in canaries, bellflowers, and hydrangeas.

Instead of mixing or changing pigment, the blue color in many animals is caused by structures on their bodies that are able to change the wavelength of light. For example, the Morpho butterfly is blue because the scales of its wings are ridged, causing light to bend, making the only wavelength of light it reflects is blue. The only exception in nature is the Obrina Olivewing butterfly, the only animal known to have a real blue pigment.

The raw material of mankind's first green pigment was "lapis lazuli", a precious stone originating from mines in Afghanistan. "Lapis" means "stone" in Latin, "lazuli" comes from the Persian word "lazuward", meaning "blue". The blue created from this stone is called Ultramarine Blue, is a most perfect pigment, with its qualities said to be unique and unsurpassable. The color index name PB 29 is assigned to both natural and synthetic Ultramarine blue pigments, but today's natural Ultramarine Blue is actually exhausted. Lapis lazuli contains sulfur anions held in an ordered lattice. These sulfur anions have charged particles that move from molecule to molecule, traveling along the surface, helping to create a spatial effect and a deep blue color.

The synthetic blue pigment Ultramarine was discovered in 1826 by the French chemist Jean-Baptiste Guimet. He made a pigment chemically identical to lapis lazuli, by heating kaolinite, sodium carbonate, and sulfur. Synthetic ultramarine usually has a warm red-blue color, which is even more vivid than natural ultramarine blue but is not as pure and has the same depth.

Lapis lazuli is very precious and expensive. Faced with the need for an available and affordable blue pigment, the Egyptians invented the world's first synthetic pigment: Egyptian blue. Calcium copper silicate is calcined at extremely high temperatures, producing a blue-green compound resembling glass. When ground into a powder and mixed with a binder, they create a pigment that persists over time.

Across the ocean, the ancient Maya also found their own color of blue: Maya blue. Scientists are all confused about the origin of this brilliant blue color. It was not until the 1960s that scientists were able to determine the origin of this pigment. It is made by mixing a rare clay (attapulgite or palygorskite) with a dye from a plant in the indigo family.

In 1704 in Berlin, the first modern pigment was accidentally discovered by a dye maker named Diesbach: Prussian Blue (PB 27), also known as Berlin blue. Pigments made from iron ferrocyanide quickly became popular, simply because they were much cheaper than the earlier blues.

Phthalocyanine dark blue was first sold commercially in 1935 under the trade name Monastral Blue or Phthalocynanine Blue. This is a transparent, highly pigmented and reliable blue pigment. PB 15 is divided into 2 types: PB 15:1 – Phthalocyanine Blue Red Shade is more red and warmer, while PB 15:3 – Phthalocyanine Green Shade has a shade closer to green.

Mangan blue (PB 33) is produced by heating a mixture of sodium sulfate, potassium permanganate and barium nitrate at high temperature. This pigment is inert, unaffected by light, heat, acids or alkalis. Manganese blue pigment has now been discontinued due to concerns about the environmental impact of the manufacturing process.

The most common blue color is cobalt blue (cobalt aluminum oxide), which includes a range of pigments such as PB 28 which has a slightly greenish blue tint, PB 29 which is a bit darker, PB 35 which is sky blue, PB 36 is blue with a green tint, while PB 74 contains a little bit of red. Various cobalt minerals have been used since ancient times to color glass and ceramics, but the first synthetic cobalt blue pigment was discovered in 1802 by Louis Jacques Thénard. He discovered that the combination of cobalt oxide and aluminum oxide produced a highly stable blue pigment. Of all the blue pigments, cobalt blue is the only one with opacity.

It was not until 2009, more than two centuries after the last blue was discovered (cobalt blue), that humans found a new blue pigment, and also the last blue pigment up to the present time. It was YinMn Blue (PB 86), which was discovered by chance by a graduate student at Oregon State University. This pigment gets its name from the elements within it including Yttrium (Y), Indium (In) and Manganese (Mn).

#plastic #colour

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woodpaintingau · 24 days

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Building Painting in Perth: Transforming Spaces with Expert Craftsmanship

Building painting plays a crucial role in enhancing the aesthetics and value of any property. In Perth, a city known for its dynamic architectural landscape, the demand for professional building painting services is high. Whether it's a residential complex, commercial building, or industrial facility, expert painting can make a significant difference. In this blog, we will explore the essentials of building painting in perth, covering everything from the benefits of professional painting to choosing the right painters.

1. Why Professional Building Painting Matters in Perth

Perth's climate, characterized by hot summers and mild winters, can take a toll on building exteriors. Professional building painting is not just about adding a layer of color; it's about providing protection against the harsh elements. High-quality paints and coatings act as a barrier against UV rays, rain, and pollution, preserving the building's structure and appearance.

A professional painting service ensures that the right type of paint and technique is used for each surface, whether it's brick, wood, or metal. This not only enhances the building’s look but also extends its lifespan, making it a worthwhile investment.

2. The Benefits of Repainting Your Building in Perth

Repainting a building is an excellent way to boost its value and appeal. Here are some of the key benefits of repainting your building in Perth:

Increased Property Value: A fresh coat of paint can make a building look new and well-maintained, which can significantly increase its market value.

Enhanced Curb Appeal: A visually appealing building creates a positive impression on visitors, clients, and potential buyers.

Protection Against Weather Damage: Quality paint protects against moisture, reducing the risk of mold and mildew, which is especially important in Perth's coastal areas.

Improved Energy Efficiency: Light-colored paints can reflect heat, helping to keep interiors cooler during hot Perth summers and reducing energy costs.

3. Choosing the Right Paint for Perth’s Climate

Not all paints are created equal, and selecting the right one for Perth’s unique climate is crucial. High-quality exterior paints with UV-resistant properties are essential to prevent fading and chalking. Moreover, choosing paints that are resistant to mildew and mold is important, especially for buildings near the coast.

Interior paints, on the other hand, should be chosen based on the building's function. For example, high-traffic areas may require washable and durable finishes, while eco-friendly paints are ideal for health-conscious environments. Consulting with professional painters who understand Perth's climate and building materials is key to making the right choice.

4. The Process of Building Painting in Perth

A thorough building painting process involves several steps to ensure a long-lasting and high-quality finish:

Inspection and Preparation: A detailed inspection of the building is conducted to identify any damages or areas that need repair. This step also involves cleaning the surfaces to remove dirt, grime, and old paint.

Surface Repair and Priming: Cracks, holes, and imperfections are filled and sanded for a smooth finish. A primer is applied to ensure better paint adhesion and durability.

Painting: Professional painters use high-quality brushes, rollers, and sprayers to apply the paint evenly. Multiple coats may be required for a uniform and vibrant finish.

Final Touches and Cleanup: After the paint dries, a final inspection is done to ensure no spots are missed. The site is cleaned up, leaving the property spotless and ready to enjoy.

5. How to Choose the Best Building Painters in Perth

Finding the right painting contractor can make all the difference in the final outcome. Here are some tips to help you choose the best building painters in Perth:

Experience and Expertise: Look for painters with extensive experience in commercial and residential projects. Check their portfolio and customer reviews to gauge their quality of work.

Licensing and Insurance: Ensure the painting company is licensed and insured to protect yourself from any liabilities during the project.

Quality of Materials: Inquire about the type of paints and materials they use. High-quality paints and equipment lead to better and longer-lasting results.

Transparent Pricing: Choose a contractor that offers a detailed quote with transparent pricing, including labor, materials, and any additional costs.

Transform Your Property with Wood's Painting

At Wood's Painting, we specialize in delivering top-notch building painting services across Perth, Australia. Our team of experienced painters understands the unique requirements of Perth's climate and uses only high-quality, eco-friendly paints to ensure a beautiful, long-lasting finish. Whether it's a residential, commercial, or industrial project, we are committed to transforming your property into a stunning masterpiece. Choose Wood's Painting for reliable service, exceptional craftsmanship, and competitive pricing. Contact us today to schedule a consultation and discover how we can revitalize your building with a fresh coat of paint.

#building painting in perth

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homeimprovementway · 5 months

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A Vintage Buffet Makeover: Transforming Antique Charm

Revive a vintage buffet with a chic makeover by refinishing, repainting, and updating its hardware. Explore step-by-step tutorials for a DIY project to transform your antique piece into a stylish and charming furniture item. Learn how to clean, repair, prime, paint, and finish your buffet to give it a new life while preserving its classic appeal. Discover tips and tricks for setting up a visually pleasing buffet table with varying heights, clear organization, and strategic layouts for a stunning display. Elevate your dining room decor with a beautifully refurbished vintage buffet that adds character and elegance to your space.

Why Transform A Vintage Buffet

Transforming a vintage buffet allows you to breathe new life into a timeless piece of furniture. Whether it's a family heirloom or a flea market find, giving a vintage buffet a makeover can revitalize its beauty and functionality. It provides an opportunity to unleash your creativity, personalize your space, and contribute to sustainable living by repurposing existing furniture. With a touch of creativity and the right techniques, you can transform a vintage buffet into a stunning focal point for any room in your home. Antique Charm Vintage buffets exude an antique charm that adds character to any space. The time-worn patina and unique craftsmanship of a vintage buffet evoke a sense of nostalgia and history. By transforming a vintage buffet, you can preserve its authentic appeal while enhancing its aesthetic to suit your personal style and decor preferences. Making A Statement A vintage buffet makeover provides the opportunity to make a bold statement in your home. Whether you opt for a distressed shabby chic look or a modern elegant finish, the transformed buffet can become a conversation piece that reflects your individuality. Its versatility allows it to serve as a functional storage solution while also enhancing the overall ambiance of the room.

Choosing The Right Buffet

When embarking on a vintage buffet makeover project, the first crucial step is selecting the perfect buffet that aligns with your style and functional needs. Let's delve into the key aspects to consider when choosing the right buffet. Styles And Materials Styles: Vintage buffets come in various styles such as traditional, mid-century modern, rustic, or French provincial. Each style offers a unique aesthetic appeal, so choose one that complements your existing decor. Materials: Consider the materials used in the buffet construction, such as wood, metal, or a combination of both. Opt for high-quality materials that ensure durability and enhance the vintage charm of the piece. Size And Functionality Size: Measure the available space in your dining room or kitchen to determine the ideal size for the buffet. Ensure it fits comfortably in the designated area without overwhelming the room. Functionality: Evaluate the storage needs you have, whether you require ample drawer space, shelving for display items, or a combination of both. Choose a buffet that offers the right balance of storage and display options.

Prepping The Buffet

Transform your vintage buffet with a stunning makeover, reviving its charm and elegance. Discover antique buffet makeover ideas and DIY tips, from repainting with chalk paint to reviving old hardware. Get inspired by vintage buffet transformations and learn how to make a buffet table look exceptional with strategic layouts and varying heights. Removing Hardware Start by carefully removing all the hardware from the vintage buffet. Cleaning And Sanding Thoroughly clean the buffet to remove any dirt or grime. Next, sand the surface to create a smooth base for painting. Making Repairs Inspect the buffet for any damages and make necessary repairs such as filling in cracks or fixing loose joints.

Painting The Buffet

When it comes to giving an antique buffet a new lease on life, painting it can be a transformative and cost-effective solution. A vintage buffet makeover through painting allows for creativity and personalization, turning a dated piece into a stunning focal point in any room. Here are some essential tips and techniques for painting a vintage buffet to achieve a beautiful and durable finish. Choosing The Right Paint Before diving into the painting process, it's crucial to select the right type of paint for the vintage buffet. Chalk paint is a popular choice for its matte finish and ease of application. It adheres well to various surfaces and requires minimal preparation, making it ideal for a DIY project. Acrylic or latex paint can also be used, offering a wide range of color options and a durable finish when properly sealed. Consider the desired look and the buffet's intended use when selecting the paint type and color. Priming And Painting Techniques Priming the buffet is essential, especially if the original finish is dark or if the wood has a tendency to bleed through paint. A quality primer ensures better adhesion and prevents stains from seeping through the new paint. After priming, it's time to apply the paint using the chosen method, whether it's with a brush, roller, or sprayer. Ensure even coverage, and consider using multiple thin coats for a smooth and professional result. Sanding between coats can help achieve a flawless finish and promote paint adhesion. Additionally, sealing the painted buffet with a protective topcoat is crucial for long-lasting durability. A clear polyurethane or furniture wax can provide a protective layer and enhance the paint's longevity, especially in high-traffic areas. Choose a topcoat that suits the paint type used and follow the manufacturer's instructions for proper application.

Staining And Finishing The Top

Transforming a vintage buffet with a stunning stain and finish for a chic makeover. Reviving the charm of the piece with expert refinishing techniques in this furniture flip. A step-by-step tutorial on enhancing the buffet's appeal through careful restoration. When it comes to vintage furniture makeovers, staining and finishing the top is an essential step that can take your piece from drab to fab. In this section, we will cover sanding and staining techniques, as well as applying a protective finish to ensure your newly stained top stays looking beautiful for years to come. Sanding and Staining Techniques Before staining the top, it's essential to sand it down to remove any existing finish or imperfections. Start with a coarse-grit sandpaper and work your way up to a finer grit to achieve a smooth surface. Be sure to remove all dust and debris before moving on to staining. When it comes to staining, there are many options to choose from, including oil-based, water-based, and gel stains. Each type has its pros and cons, so be sure to do your research before selecting one that best suits your project. Apply the stain in thin coats, using a brush or cloth, and wipe away any excess. Allow the stain to dry completely before applying a protective finish. Applying a Protective Finish Once your stain has dried, it's crucial to apply a protective finish to prevent damage and maintain its beauty. There are many options to choose from, including polyurethane, varnish, and wax. Polyurethane is a popular choice for its durability and ease of application. It comes in a variety of finishes, from matte to high gloss, and can be applied with a brush or sprayer. Varnish is another protective finish that provides a hard, durable surface. It's available in both water-based and oil-based formulas and can be applied with a brush or sprayer. Wax is a natural and traditional protective finish that provides a soft, subtle shine. It's applied with a soft cloth and should be reapplied periodically to maintain its protective properties. In conclusion, staining and finishing the top is a crucial step in any vintage furniture makeover. By following these sanding and staining techniques and applying a protective finish, you can transform your piece into a beautiful and functional addition to any space.

Hardware And Accessories

When giving a vintage buffet a makeover, attention to hardware and accessories can make a significant impact on the overall aesthetic. From selecting new hardware to adding decorative accessories, these elements play a crucial role in transforming the piece into a stunning focal point in any space. Choosing New Hardware When it comes to selecting new hardware for a vintage buffet, it's essential to consider the style and design of the piece. Choosing hardware that complements the overall theme and color scheme can elevate the visual appeal. Opt for handles, knobs, or pulls that align with the desired aesthetic, whether it's a sleek modern look or a more traditional vintage vibe. Adding Decorative Accessories Enhancing the visual appeal of a vintage buffet can be achieved by adding decorative accessories. Incorporating elements such as ornate drawer liners, stylish drawer pulls, or decorative trims can infuse character and charm into the piece. Additionally, incorporating complementary accessories like antique-style key tassels or vintage-inspired embellishments can further enhance the overall look and feel of the buffet. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8XC4z_9vcbc

Setting Up And Styling The Buffet

Setting up and styling a vintage buffet can elevate the entire look of your space, adding a touch of elegance and charm. Whether you are hosting a dinner party or simply updating your home decor, the way you set up and style your buffet can make a significant impact. Tips For Setting A Buffet Table - 1. Vary the height of your display items for visual interest. - 2. Use table runners or decorative cloths to add texture and color. - 3. Group similar items together for a cohesive look. Choosing Complementary Decor When styling your vintage buffet, it's essential to choose decor pieces that complement the overall aesthetic. Consider incorporating: - 1. Vintage glassware or china for a classic touch. - 2. Fresh flowers or greenery to add a pop of color. - 3. Candle holders or lanterns for a warm ambiance.

Frequently Asked Questions

How Do I Update An Antique Buffet? To update an antique buffet, first, remove hardware and clean the piece thoroughly. Apply a primer coat to prevent bleed-through. Use quality paint and brushes for a fresh look. Optionally, add decorative elements like new hardware or drawer liners for a personalized touch. How To Make A Buffet Table Look Nice? To make a buffet table look nice, vary the height of dishes, use strategic layouts, and create an Instagram-worthy backdrop. Identify dishes, offer support, and position utensils strategically for an appealing look. Additionally, consider varying the heights of serving platters and using decorative elements for a stylish touch. How Do You Dress Up A Buffet? To dress up a buffet, vary serving platter heights, use pedestal pieces, tiered plate holders, and decorative items for a visually appealing display. What Color To Paint A Sideboard? When painting a sideboard, consider neutral colors like white, gray, or navy for a classic look. Alternatively, go bold with a pop of color like teal or mustard for a modern touch. Ensure the color complements your decor and personal style.

Conclusion

The vintage buffet makeover showcased the power of creativity and resourcefulness. The transformation not only breathed new life into the piece but also reflected the owner's personal style. The step-by-step tutorial and tips provided valuable insights for anyone looking to undertake a similar project. The success of this makeover is a testament to the timeless appeal of vintage furniture and the endless possibilities for reinvention. Read the full article

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youngdeity · 9 months

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When You Were Alive

transcibed at 2:47pm 12/22/2023

we built a home, far from the lives expected for us. we filled it with things that grew, flowers in pots and vegetables in dirtbeds, and chickens that laid eggs. you painted the walls with chalk paint, so I could draw a new picture every day. i kissed your eylids when you fell asleep.

When you were alive, i painted your nails, and when they grew out, i would remove the paint, wash off the acetone, and clip your nails. i would file them, and scoop the dust and the tiny clippings into a pale with the scraps of our vegetables, then I would throw it into the compost.

when your hair grew out and touched your ears, I would clip it off. You said only I was allowed to touch your ears, but a baby chick pecked you there once, and you gave her an extra seed.

when you were alive, i would sweep up the hair from the kitchen floor, and leave it outside for the birds to build nests in. I wonder how many beings came to life in a home of your body.

i came alive in the home of your body

when you were alive, we would take walks in the woods outside. I fell and tripped, and I spilled my blood into the earth where you would soon lay. did our blood mingle together? did too much time pass between when we were alive together and where you are now?

when you were alive, i would pick an eyelash off your cheek and let you blow it out into the garden. "make a wish," i would say, but now i wish i had collected every eyelash and stored it in a jar. how foolish was i to think i had so much of you that i could give some away.

when you died, I stopped dusting. I read in a book somewhere that 90% of dust is just flaked off human skin. I let your cells settle in our home. now, as the months pass by and the dust grows, i fear this is more myself than you.

when you died, i ate the tomatoes that we grew from compost. your fingernails and the egg shells added calcium to the dirt. I eat from our garden, and i feel you in my bones.

when you died, i went into the forest and found every sparrow egg. i checked the nests for pieces of your hair, golden brown like the straw. i think i saw some.

i cracked the eggs into my mouth, none of you would be lost to the heat of fire. i ground the shells with my teeth. life given and life taken.

when you died, i scowered the dirt for your blood. i nearly drowned in dry clay. maybe if i add my own blood, i can make silt to grow some flowers. maybe if i add salt water, i can hydrate you enough to make a cup and drink back all my tears.

i kill a chicken, the one who used to be a chick and kissed your ear, i eat her heart and stuff a pillow with her feathers. now, your kisses can never leave me.

i kill the flowers growing in our kitchen. the dirt of the pot may hold something of you, and nothing else may have that.

the paint of the walls chips off, and i lay with a pillow on the floor, trying to give my bones to you.

I will find you, and i will make you in death.

#poetry #chat chat

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colorrenovation · 10 months

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clarissalance · 3 years

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Hints of something more

Albedo x fem!reader

Warning: Slight suggestive language at the end.

Word count: 2k7

Summary: Apparently, visiting Albedo in Dragonspine has somehow opened a new door to your vague, no-label relationship. And Kaeya won’t stop teasing you about it.

Before leaving for Dragonspine two days ago, Albedo told you to bring him some canvas, a few pencils and a paint set of watercolour. However, he failed to mention which brand and type of watercolour he wants you to bring. Is it a set of 24 colours? 48 colours or the 12 colours set? Furrow your eyebrows, you stared questioningly at the shelves, hesitating to pick one up. Knowing how picky Albedo is if it is not up to his standard. The man would refuse to touch the paint.

What would he choose usually? You can’t seem to recall his watercolour preference. Funny how it is, he usually encourages you to follow your instinct. Human instinct is the best to study. He would say something like this out of nowhere. Sometimes they make a really questionable decision that I can’t decipher. Definitely one of his catch-on phrase.

Drilling holes on the shelves for too long is not the solution, so you finally choose the most expensive set of 48 watercolours in the store. You cross your fingers and hope that he doesn’t question your choice. There it goes for half of my salary. Far away, you can faintly see the outline of the money fairy waving at you, flying toward Celestia. I hope he will like this one.

Packing up the last few things inside your backpack, you prepare for the adventure to the Dragonspine to meet with the chalk prince. The bright sun on the blue canvas is almost halfway to the top. The weather would be lovely for a small picnic, too good to waste over climbing to Dragonspine. Dragging your body toward the front gate, you lazily hope to hitch someone carriage. It would be best to start early than arriving at the lab late.

The journey takes an hour by feet to walk from the city to the foot of Dragonspine and then takes another 2 hours to walk to Albedo’s lab on the mountain. It would be much faster if you can actually have combat fighting skill to head-on with the cryo mitachurl, but life is much a sadder reality. You don’t have a vision nor a combat skill to solo a whole camp of hilichurl. However, with your brain and your gifted survival (escaping) instinct, dodging a few camps and distracting a few of them isn’t very hard.

The weather in Dragonspine is much better than what you anticipated. The sky deep and clear, the veil of fog has thinned enough. The air is crisp, mist rises and slowly dissipates after each exhales. The sheer cold is as brutal and sharp knife-like as usual. You can’t understand how Albedo loves the weather in this place enough to set up a lab in here. A summer person like you refuses to set foot in this area unless for commissions and Albedo’s related purpose. Hnng, you are starting to regret coming here.

There are a few more camps of hilichurl than usual on your way to the mountain, so you decide to take the longer route. At least meeting with a few Fatui is much more comforting than getting hit by an ice mitachurl shield.

By the time you get to the camp, the sun is standing proudly on the top. You get here an hour late, and much to your dismay, Albedo wasn’t in his lab. He is going out to look for more sample again. Heaving exhaustingly, you drop the heavy backpack thud on the ground. Scampering over the fire, you let out a satisfying at the charing fire. A pyro vision would be convenient to have in this weather.

With the sound of wood cracking under the desiring heat, the frost bearing breeze slowly finds its way into the camp, cooling the scorching radiation from the glowing fire. Warmth slowly crawls and sinks in on your dry skin, soothing the icy air. Exhausted, your eyelids slowly pull themselves over, threaten to extinguish your consciousness. A nap wouldn’t hurt anyone, right? You let out a long yawn, curl into a fetal position and use the bag as a pillow. Darkness comes within a second.

_____________________________________________________________

You are woken up by the warmth on the hand caressing your cheek, running through your hair. The familiar smooth hand resting on your face doesn’t know you have woken up, the thumb fiddling with your soft skin. Nuzzle lovingly at the palm, you let out sigh contentment. The hand is big enough, gently and carefully tracing your face outline like it’s treasuring a gift. This familiar feeling tickles you like a feather.

Groggily, you peel your eyes open and greet with a stunning sight. Albedo is sitting next to you, the fluffy blond hair softly falls on the cheek, some being tucked under his ears. The teal eyes focus intently on the notebook in front of him, glimmering with interest and dedication, his long lashes fluttering like a butterfly wing on a flower petal. The golden diamond on his neck glimmers faintly under the flicker of light, stand out on his creamy white skin. His warm slender fingers still lightly touch your hair soothingly make you feel so relaxing. Letting out a satisfying purr, you press your plump lips on his wrist, successfully gets Albedo attention.

“ How long have you been up?” His soothing voice has never failed to calm your nerve. You yearn up a little bit, trying to peek at the notebook on his lap. It’s so far away, you can’t catch a glimpse from here.

“ A while.” You hum. “ Long enough to get drunken at your handsome features.”

His eyes widen a little bit, not expecting that coming out from your mouth.

At the corner of his eyes, he catches your cheeky grin. Beaming widely at him, you internally cringing at your cheesy remark. You don’t even know what gives you the courage to slip the embarrassing words.

Albedo smirks at your blatant flirt, his reaction opposite what you look for. He returns his attention back to the notebook. His eyes still remains a hint of amusement. You want to dig a hole and jump in it.

Slowly rise up, you rub your eyes tiredly, and notice Albedo’s coat on your body. Did he put it on you? You glance at him curiously, trying to seek an explanation, but he remains quiet, focuses on the piece of paper. The sound of pencil rustling on the parchment eases you somehow, like waking up in a small cottage with your loved one.

“ What time is it? ” You let out a big yawn, voice thicks with sleep. His light coat somehow is warm. Maybe you should ask him where he got this.

“ It’s around 3.” Albedo mindlessly points out. “ You can sleep more. Put my coat on if you're cold.” He reminds.

“ I shouldn’t be sleeping longer. Let me help with your work so I can get back to Mondstadt on time.” You scratch your head, your body is numbing over the sheer cold. Throw on Albedo coat, you hope the thin layer can keep you warm a little bit longer. His coat smells like frost and Cecilia. Inside the pocket, you find a heating pack. Maybe this is what kept you warm when you were sleeping.

“ M almost finished.” The sound of paper rustling each time he turns a page. “I can accompany you back to the city.”

“ But I haven’t done anything?” You furrow your eyebrows in confusion, hands folding at your chest, trying to saviour some warmth. “You’re sure you finished?”

“ Yes, just a few more retouches, then we can go back.” Albedo nods, his eyes still glued on the piece of paper. Abruptly, he stops and looks up at you, waving his hand, signalling you to get closer. Obediently, you walk toward him. When you are an arm-length from him, the man gestures at the chair put closely next to him. He wants you to sit down?

You sit down quietly, trying to take a look at the drawing he is working on. Hmm, is that you? Did he draw your sleeping form? On the paper is the portrait of you curl like a fetal, your long hair splaying on the floor. Each stroke of pencil depicts the gentleness you have in your face when you are sleeping. The drawing is mundane somehow, you feel comfortable and relax when looking at the piece.

Suddenly, you felt a warm hand slotting in your palm, elbow nudging yours. His slender digits are weaving tightly with your fingers, warmth tingling on the tips of your fingers. . Look up from the drawing, you see a tint of pink on his ears. So he can also get embarrassed.

“ You look cold.” He mumbles, eyes avoiding yours, his cheek flush furiously. “Sit closer.” You gladly shift closer, your hand and shoulder touching his. Albedo picks up the pencil and returns to his drawing. This time he turns to a new page, start to draw another specimen. Looking at the sketch, you guess he is trying to sketch the abandoned ruins. The comfortable silence envelopes the two of you.

Being so close to him, you can make out the whiff of fresh Cecilia and pine. Engulf by his coat and, now next sitting next to him, you are bathing under his signature scent. It would be nice if I could feel him more. Blushing at the thought, you try to push away those not-so-innocent thoughts. Obviously, he is trying to be a gentleman. You should be grateful, if not because of him, you're going to freeze to death.

Albedo is much warmer than you, his body radiating heat like a furnace after a while. Silently, you pick up a book you left here last time on the table. Most of his books are either textbooks or ancient language book about the alchemist, which you think you are qualified enough to read. Waiting for him in silence is a form of torture if you don’t do something. Your attention removes from his body and to the novel on your hand.

After what feels like two hours, Albedo finally puts down his pencil and stretches. His long limb knocks your hand a few times, your knees bump with his. He let out a tired yawn, cracking his knuckles.

“Finished?” Your eyes still glue on the thick book. You hear him let out a hum, his hand remove to clean up the mess on the table.

“ What are you having for dinner?” Albedo casually asks, hand dusting the enormous amount of eraser dust on the paper before dumping them in the trash. His voice wavers a little, but you aren't sure why.

“Hash brown and cream stew. I have a brownie for dessert.” You notice Albedo never makes small conversation like this. He is the type who would get straight to the point or request. Perc up from the book, you are faced with his back at you. He is arranging the bookshelves.

“Do… you want to join me for dinner? ” After it felt like a while, you finally break the silence, your voice laces with uncertainty. If you read the atmosphere wrong, it can cost you quite severely.

“Sure.” He shrugs nonchalantly, continues sorting the stacks of books on the ground. Somehow you can feel the tension in the air is lifted, and he seems more relaxed than before.

“These are some observations and speculations I made in the last few days in here.” The chief alchemist hands you a folder.

You flip through the files, they are mostly pictures and drawing of large camps of hilichurl. At the end of the file is a map marked with their locations. The Abyss Order's activity has increased rapidly in this month. Commissions have been sent out continuously, yet many of them haven’t been sorted out properly yet. It seems like the sheer cold of Dragonspine can't prevent their enthusiasm. On your ways here, you have met 4 more camps, hence the reason why you choose to be acquainted with the Fatui instead.

“I will give this to the Adventurer Guild. Thank you for this.” You exhale, fingers rubbing your eyes tiredly. The next few days are going to be very busy.

“If you are done, then pack up. We are going back.” He announces, returns his attention to pile on the ground. Fold the corner of the page, close the book, prepare the pack-up for the leave. You can’t wait to leave this devastating sheer cold and return back to the realm of fog and wind. Shuffling through your backpack, you put the art supplies Albedo asked you to buy on the table neatly. You didn't take anything out, so no need for packing. Basically, you are done.

“ Let’s go back.”

_____________________________________________________________

On the way back, you both walk in silence. Most of the camps are cleared, barrels and boxes shatter into tiny pieces scatter on the ground. Seem like our dear traveller has their job quite well. The place is almost spotless, even with the Fatui camp. You are impressed with their productivity.

It takes less than 2 hours walking back from Dragonspine, now that your bag is lighter. Walking comfortably next to Albedo, your hands grazing past each other a few times. You watch the sunset etches widely on the blushing hues orange sky in Dragonspine can be so romantic.

Suddenly feeling so motivated, you gently slip your index into his palm. Albedo freezes but still complies, his fingers caught your hand, slowly interlocking yours. Your heart thumps loudly in your chest, heating creeping up your cheek. Shutting your eyes, you mumble incoherently something about how unfair life is.

He let out a breathy snicker, with your fingers interlock, sharing the heat in the harsh weather. Look up the fading orange, slowly disappear behind the layer of thick snow, you blow out warm air, fog gathers and dissipates in the air. Sunset in Dragonspine can be arguably one of the best scenes in Mondstadt.

“I’m going back to my office to put this away.” When you arrive at the gate, Albedo decides to head to the HQ of the Knight of Favonius. He motions at the package in his hand.

“ See you later at dinner.” Nonchalantly, he plants a kiss on your cheek, hand ruffles your hair a little bit before head off in the opposite direction.

You stand there, still trying to comprehend what just happened a few seconds ago. The peck on your cheek is too short, too light, like feather brushes. He can’t do this to you. Your cheek is blazing with fire, and if not careful, a spark can ignite an explosion right here. You turn your head sideways, trying to saviour and recall the feeling of his lips.

“ Tch tch.” The sound is coming from the nearby alley, the click-clack of boots coming closer. You whirl your head toward that direction, just to realize the source of the sound is all-mighty Calvary Captain of the Knight of Favonius.

“ Love is really in the air.” He comments sarcastic, hand waving around to shoo away those imaginable ‘love’.

“ Living this long, I have never thought I would be able to see our Alchemist Chief giving someone a goodbye kiss.” Kaeya smugs at you, his deep blue eyes gleaming with mischief. Oh, you really can't wait to wipe his shit-eating grin off his face.

“Stop being a drama queen, Kaeya.” You shot back. “ He gave Klee one too, don’t treat this as such an abnormal supernatural act.” Internally, you have to say that Albedo giving affection is kind of a supernatural incident too. Kaeya eyes at you like you grow another head, shaking his head.

“ You know what I meant.” The captain shrugs, his voice ringing with a hint of smugness.

The man suddenly walks closer, his gloved hand pats your shoulder, squeezing it lightly. “Must have been really cold in Dragonspine for him to give you his coat.” He winks at you, his eyes slowly drag down your figure. You cautiously look down. Shit, you totally forget this.

“We have a meeting at 8 tomorrow at the HQ. Please tell him to not stay up too late.” The cryo user whistles teasingly, heading toward Angel Share, his hand waving in the air. Your face flushes furiously, smoke almost come off your burning face. Now you realize why people have been giving your pointed gazes when you first enter the gate. Damn it, Kaeya, it is not what you think it is.

#albedo x reader #genshin x reader #genshin albedo #genshin impact #genshin kaeya #fluff #hint #genshin headcanons #albedo kreideprinz #dragonspine

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watermelonlipstick · 3 years

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Dean’s Jeans 2

What better day to post a sweet little family oneshot than Mother’s Day? This is the same setup as Dean’s Jeans, just a different late summer afternoon on your cul-de-sac with Dean, Sam, your daughters, and their cousin DJ. I already have bare-bones drafts of a few other installments for these cuties, especially considering this one got a little deeper than I had intended. Stay tuned!

Title: Dean’s Jeans 2

Pairing: Dean Winchester x Reader

Word Count: 5561

Summary: Spending the afternoon working on the driveway with Dean, Sam, your daughters, and nephew.

Warnings: fluff, some family angst, minor injury, little dollop of smut at the end

It was a big day for driveways and garages.

You had been sitting in the apron of Sam’s drawing loopy pastel paths with DJ and your eldest daughter for your youngest to roll her cousin’s old matchbox cars down, watching adoringly as everyone’s palms and knees got covered in chalk dust. When the concrete was relatively full and the older two started getting a little antsy, you decided to try to stave off any bored bickering ahead of time.

“Babe, is our garage unlocked?” you called over to Dean where he was trying to snake an extension cord out of Sam’s front door and down the porch.

“Should be. Why, what’s up?”

“I thought maybe DJ could take Picasso here over to the park to break in her new bike.” You turned to your nephew, sitting with his arms resting on his knees. He was just barely starting to fill out around the delicate Winchester features that had made him such an angelic looking child, the angle of his jaw seeming to sharpen every day, growing rapidly though you might still be able to throw him over your shoulder in a pinch. Hopefully it was a sign that he wasn’t destined for the late puberty you knew had frustrated Sam so much when he was younger; at least he could have one gift from his other parent, lost otherwise to the wind without as much as a periodic birthday card. Not the time for that thought, you reminded yourself, refocusing on the child’s glossy hair, carbon copy of his father’s with sun-lightened tips this late into summer. Dean would’ve taken him to get a haircut about a month ago, but as you and Sam both reminded him: not his hair, not his kid. It made you smile and likely made Sam proud that at his age, where so many kids were rebelling against their parents, DJ didn’t mind looking exactly like his dad. Somehow you had a hard time believing Sam would want to rush that process of teenage rebellion along. “What do you think, Deej?”

Your elder daughter squealed and threw her arms around his neck, nearly tackling him onto the driveway. “Please please? Maybe Sarah and Davey can come too.” Her inclusion of the Fiore siblings into the mix was smart. They lived between your cul de sac and the park and were pretty similar in age to DJ and your older daughter. You suspected she thought on some level that DJ was on the cusp of being too cool to hang out with his baby cousin, but hanging out with the Fiores as a group gave them a little more social grace. Hopefully she’d realize, as you had, that DJ absolutely adored her and would likely rather catch some flack from his peers than drift apart.

“Yeah but I’m not carrying your bike up the hill if your legs get tired,” he grinned at his cousin, who immediately took off across the street to get her bike from the garage.

Sam and Dean had to move their whole setup from in front of Sam’s garage door so DJ could get his own bike out, the step ladder, extension cord, and electric drill going into the lawn next to the rest of their project, the basketball hoop. He almost got to the end of the driveway, swinging his leg over the seat, before Sam stopped him. “Nice try. Helmet, please,” he called out after his son, who reluctantly dropped the mountain bike onto the pavement and trudged back into the garage to pull a sticker-covered helmet out of a box and throw it on his head. By the time he made it into the street his cousin had done the same, yelling out over her shoulder for you to Mommypleaseclosethegaragethankyou as she tried to pump petite legs to keep up.

You were thankful that your youngest seemed to be fully engrossed in the chalk patterns on the driveway and hadn’t seemed to notice the other kids’ leaving, not interested in having an argument about whether she was too little or not to go with them alone. Trusting the older kids or not, she was small and curious in a way that led to her sometimes running off to explore, and you didn’t want to add that into the mix. After a while, she picked up the green again, moving up the driveway to draw a picture of a dragon and immediately swipe hair out of her face, covering it with fluorescent dust. She got to her feet, and the amount of colorful powder on her made you beyond thankful that it was Dean’s turn to give her a bath that night. Crossing the driveway in a few skittering steps, she wrapped herself around Dean’s legs, practically leaving a silhouette imprint of herself on his jeans as he ruffled her hair. The way they had worn out and lost much of their dye over the years highlighted the contrast.

“Daddy, come look! It’s a dragon!”

Dean and Sam exchanged a smirk and Dean winked at you. “A dragon? Sounds scary.”

“No, he’s a nice dragon,” she insisted, grabbing his hand and dragging him down the driveway, leaving Sam to drill holes into the wood above his garage door.

“A nice dragon, huh? What’s his name?” Dean asked, grinning as he let her lead him.

“Maurice,” she said, so matter of fact it made you laugh out loud. Sam did too, pulling the drill out of the wall to keep from wiggling the holes. “Can you do the fire?”

“’Course I can, princess. How big are we talking?” He eased down to sit cross-legged next to Maurice The Dragon, accepting when you offered him yellow and orange sticks of chalk. You leaned back in the afternoon sun with a lap full of matchbox cars listening to the radio Sam had brought out to the porch, the chalk scratching on the concrete, and the rhythmic drilling of holes into siding for a few minutes.

“Dean?” Sam asked, backing down the step ladder.

“Got it,” he answered, putting a little flair on a lick of fire that went around Maurice’s nose and handing your daughter the chalk. “I need to help Uncle Sammy for a minute but I can come right back, sound fair? Your mom is better at scales anyway.” The girl seemed to consider it for a second then pouted her lips out in agreement, tilting her head to the side just like her dad did all the time. Dean got up creakily and brushed off his hands on his back pockets, the orange joining the other stains like an abstract painting.

“You guys need any help?” you called over to Sam, who was trying to stabilize the hoop with long arms and struggling a little bit to keep it balanced in the light wind, powerful muscles rippling in his forearms and impressing upon you how heavy it must truly be if even he was having trouble with it.

“Actually, yeah, that would be great,” he chuckled, jerking his chin to Dean to suggest his brother help him hold it up. He did, grabbing one side and having to reach up to his tip toes to match Sam’s stretch. They were both standing on a kind of bastardized stool Dean had thrown together for this purpose, a few planks of wood balanced on some huge cinderblocks that had been in the garden holding up one of Sam’s compost setups. “It’s just those 12 screws, holes should already be lined up.”

You climbed up on the ladder with the drill, having to crane to reach over even with the added height. When the last was in, the Winchesters carefully removed their hands. Seeing that it didn’t immediately fall, Dean grabbed the bottom corner and tried his best to rattle it to no avail. “Good job, babe,” he said, lightly smacking your ass as you backed down the ladder.

“Watch out,” Sam said over your shoulder, and you saw him walking backwards a handful of steps down the driveway, being cautious to avoid his niece and her drawings.

“Dude, there’s no way you can—” Dean started, cut off by Sam taking a running jump and leaping into the air, catching the rim of the hoop like nothing and doing a baby pull-up on the metal.

“Can what?” Sam cackled, punching Dean’s arm playfully as he dropped to the pavement. “Don’t be jealous, old man.”

“Jealous of Sasquatch? You can practically reach it standing, Lurch.”

“Yeah, okay. Let me know when you can get up there without a stool and a trampoline.”

You were giggling as Sam and Dean started putting all their tools way when DJ’s bike came flying around the corner. Neither he nor his cousin were wearing helmets, and she was wrapped around his chest like a novelty monkey backpack, her legs circling his waist and her arms clinging to his neck. He had to arch around her to see, but you could tell from the half-block length away that he was saying something to her. By the time they got close enough to get reprimanded for the lack of helmets, or for one of their dads to ask where the other bike was, you could hear the crying.

Sam crossed over to his son in long, purposeful strides, holding his handlebars so he could dismount without letting go of your daughter. “What happened?” he asked, taking the girl from DJ’s arms and smoothing her hair back with a soothing palm. As he turned, you could see the blood trickling down her raw knees and elbows.

DJ was visibly rattled, trying hard to calm his breathing down and tensing his bottom lip when it began to quiver. “Davey and I went down that big hill and, she—she was going too fast, and, um, she fell—I, I told her we could practice later but these guys were saying only babies couldn’t do it, I swear I didn’t know she would—” and then his voice broke, fat tears finally breaking through and crashing down his face. Sam nodded to you and Dean, murmuring some comforting things to your eldest as he carried her up the porch steps into his house. At the exact same time as if practiced—that same rapid, implicit communication they’d had on hunts now used to coordinate hugging their children in tandem, you thought to yourself—Dean wrapped his nephew up in a big bear hug, cradling the boy’s head and sweeping his hand up and down his back.

“Hey, come on, you’re okay. She’s okay, she’s just shaken up, kid. Shhh shhh shhh, hey, come on, deep breaths. You’re okay,” he hummed into DJ’s hair. He gave you a tight nod over the kid’s shoulder to keep drawing with your daughter. Only a few steps away, you could still hear him as he continued. “I’m so proud of you, Deej. Got her all the way home on your bike, that’s pretty badass.” He waited for a few moments of silence until his nephew caught his breath a little. “Probably scared you, right?” he asked, his voice low and calm as DJ nodded through tears into the growing wet spot on his uncle’s chest. “That’s okay, chief, I would’ve been freaked too.”

You noticed he was rocking a little, almost like he did when he was trying to get the girls to sleep as babies, and it really emphasized the way that no matter how wise DJ seemed or whatever signs of puberty he might be showing, he was still a child, still the same baby you’d fallen in love with when Sam had gotten that call however many years ago. It took a few more minutes for the crying to subside to hiccupping breaths and seeming to sense that the moment had passed in some way, your baby girl grabbed your hand gently. “Mommy, is DJ okay?”

“Yeah, sweetie. He was just scared for a minute.”

“That’s why he needs a hug?”

“Exactly. Everybody needs hugs sometimes.” Just as she had before when considering your ability to draw cartoon scales on a dragon named Maurice, she tilted her head and pouted in agreement. When you realized what she was about to do next you almost had to wipe a quick tear away yourself, watching her get up to hug DJ and sandwich him between herself and Dean.

“It’s okay, DJ,” she whispered, the high tender pitch of her voice like one of those unsettlingly extreme medieval harmonies with her dad’s but so much sweeter, the bright welcome sting of lemon juice in a dense poundcake.

A moment later, Sam came out onto the porch with his eldest niece. One of her knees was wrapped in gauze but the other and both elbows had what looked from the driveway like a collage of Spiderman band aids. Sam appeared to have a matching one on his forehead, and both of them were giggling, though her eyes still looked a little puffy and red.

Dean looked up and turned DJ to see both of them, cradling the back of DJ’s head in one palm. “See? She’s okay, just needed a couple band aids.”

Sam winked at his brother as he walked over and patted his son on the back, taking the band aid off his forehead as he went. “Buddy, we’re going to go grab the bike and your helmets. Is there anything else you think you left at the park?”

His son shook his head up at his dad and leaned back from Dean’s embrace to rub his eyes. “Are you mad at me?” he croaked.

“Mad at you? Why would I be mad at you?” Sam asked, crouching down to a squat to look up at DJ. You had noticed he tended to do this in sensitive moments with all the children, trying his best to seem less looming. The first time you’d identified it, it made you a little sick to your stomach, realizing it likely wasn’t part of how inherently good he was with kids but because he knew what it was like to have an angry man towering over you. Thinking of it now had the same effect, especially compounded by the emphasis Dean had put on telling DJ he was proud of him even if his daughter had gotten hurt, that he too knew a protective kid was still just a kid.

DJ sniffled hard once more, finally able to take a truly deep breath. “I didn’t wear my helmet home because I couldn’t see arou—”

“Aw, DJ. No way am I mad at you.” Sam hugged his son and stood up, planting a kiss on his forehead. “I’m proud of you for getting both of you guys home safe. That was really smart, to get her on the bike with you like that.” You caught DJ’s tiny smile of pride at his father’s praise, watched it deepen a touch as Sam kissed his hair again. “So just the helmets and the bike?”

He nodded and rubbed his eyes before peeking around Sam a little bit to see your daughter. “You’re really okay?” he asked, as though he didn’t trust the adults to be telling him the truth and would have to ascertain her safety for himself. You wondered if Sam and Dean would find that nice or insulting, that ultra-fierce, trust-but-verify loyalty.

She nodded sort of sheepishly. “Sorry I didn’t listen about the hill, DJ.”

“It’s okay.”

The moment seemed a bit heavy for a half-second before Sam wrapped a big hand around your daughter’s shoulder with a reassuring smile. “Let’s go find that bike.”

After helping Dean get his wheels back inside, DJ went up to his room. You had to resist the urge to follow him, cuddle up with him like you used to when he was small enough to tuck into your lap. If he wanted to be alone, he was old enough to decide that for himself. Dean put the rest of the tools and things from putting up the basketball hoop away and walked over to you where you were laying on the ground so your youngest daughter could trace your body with chalk.

“I think we need a pick-me-up around here. How do you feel about i-c-e-c-r-e-a-m for dinner?”

You smiled, knowing you only had a bit longer of these spelling secrets left as your baby got closer and closer to proficient reading age. “Works for me. I think we have 2 or 3 kinds in the garage freezer.”

He smirked down at you. “Can you bring him over in about 15 minutes? They should be back by then.”

You tossed him a thumbs up and watched him walk across the street, the way the denim draped around his bowed legs as he went.

It was only five or six minutes later when Sam came up to the driveway, jogging alongside your daughter with DJ’s helmet in his hand. Of course Sam would know that she needed to get back on that bike right away, and of course he’d come up with something to make her laugh all the way home, even if that meant he had to run the entire distance on a late summer afternoon. He was slightly out of breath when he helped her dismount in the driveway.

“My kid okay?” he asked, taking the other helmet so your daughter could go back to what was becoming a pretty spectacular chalk surrealist piece spanning the driveway.

“He’s in his room, I think he will be. Your brother’s got a very Dean style plan for dinner in a few minutes if you’re hungry.”

Sam looked down at his watch. “Yikes, I didn’t realize we were even close to dinnertime. Let me go wash my hands and grab DJ then we can go over together?”

“Sounds perfect to me. And hey—Sam? Make sure he knows everyone thinks he did the right thing.”

He nodded, and you watched his Adam’s apple jump in his throat as he swallowed hard. Sam reached down and squeezed your hand, saying thank you without reopening the situation in front of the girls.

They came out a few minutes later, Sam in a fresh t-shirt and DJ looking a little more cheerful coiled into his dad’s side. You bundled up the girls and walked over to your house, tipping your head in thanks as Sam opened the door. The girls were the first to see the spread and took off squealing into the kitchen, where Dean had effectively set up a tiny ice cream shop on your kitchen island. Sprinkles of all different kinds, those 3 tubs of ice cream you’d been right to remember were in the freezer, syrups and whipped cream and cherries and bananas and even chopped up peanut butter cups and Butterfinger bars from the stash Dean hid from the kids. He was already handing out bowls before you got into the kitchen.

“Ah, ah! Hands need to be washed before anyone gets ice cream,” you insisted, shooting Dean a look of teasing reprimand.

He rolled his eyes to your oldest daughter, sending her giggling conspiratorially to the kitchen sink. DJ, presumably having already washed his hands at his place, helped your youngest daughter reach by picking her up to the faucet when her sister was done. You crossed over to Dean, kissing him on the cheek and grabbing his hands for inspection. “Babe, you’re literally covered in chalk.”

“You should be happy about me getting some extra calcium,” he winked, sticking out his tongue at you as you grabbed his ass on the way to the sink. “Mrs. Winchester!” he said in a faux-scandalized voice.

As you washed your hands Sam manned the ice cream scoop, doling out much bigger bowls than he would normally, seeming to know as Dean did that a little levity might help the events of the day pass faster. After all the kids doctored up heaping mounds of ice cream and toppings to beat the band, you and the Winchester brothers stood around the island while they piled onto the couch to find a movie they could all agree on.

“How’s our champ?” Dean asked, keeping his voice low.

Sam shook up a can of whipped cream as he spoke. “He’s okay. Just feels guilty, I think. He says he should’ve stopped her from going down the hill.”

“You think any kid of hers would’ve let someone tell her she couldn’t do anything?” Dean ribbed, accepting the gentle elbow you hit his side with.

“I know that, but you know what it’s like. I think once he sees she’s really okay and no one blames him then he’ll be fine.”

“Poor guy. Feels like that Winchester ‘weight of the world’ thing must be genetic.” You were partly joking but also partly not and they both knew it, looking pitiful and pitying for a beat before trying to cover with smiles. “He’s a great kid, Sam.”

“Pretty much feels like you guys raised him as much as I did, I should be thanking you,” he murmured, drawing a lattice of butterscotch syrup over his whipped cream.

You snaked an arm around his waist and gave him a sideways hug. “No, we’re lucky you let us know him.”

Sam bent over and pressed his lips to your hair. “Seriously, thank you. I’m—I don’t know where we’d be if we didn’t, you know, I mean if we—”

“Don’t strain yourself, Sammy,” Dean smiled affectionately, giving Sam a merciful out. “Tell you what, I sure wouldn’t have made it in damn Themyscira without you two around.”

Sam chuckled down at the counter while you disentangled your arms. You took the chocolate sprinkles from in front of him and scattered a few in your bowl. “Themyscira? The hell is that?”

Dean set down his ice cream exaggeratedly and rolled his eyes so hard he put a backwards bend in his spine, holding onto the island to keep his balance. “Babe. Themyscira. Home of the Amazons? Wonder Woman?”

“Riiiight. I forgot I was married to such a dork.”

“As long as you don’t forget how this ‘dork’ makes you screa—”

“Dude, enough,” Sam groaned, exasperated. Dean waggled his eyebrows at you as his brother followed into the living room with the kids, taking the opportunity of temporary privacy to slip his tongue along your neck where it sloped into your shoulder.

“Dean,” you hissed playfully, pushing his chest away from you. “They’re in the other room!”

“You taste like chalk,” he smirked, before holding your gaze for a gooier beat than you would’ve expected. His eyes softened and he glanced down. “Thank you for letting me—letting us—take that, today. I know you’re better at the Mommy Dearest stuff or whatever, but it sometimes feels like, ah, getting a redo?” He cleared his throat where it had gotten a little thick. “You know, um, like proving that it doesn’t have to be the same?”

It was a specific vulnerability he doesn’t often let you see, but you could tell by the softness both he and Sam had with all the kids, how they beat themselves up for days if they raised their voice for even a second, that they both thought about it all the time. In so many ways they were still those same little boys who wished they could’ve drawn on driveways with their parents, that their dad could’ve given them Spiderman band aids and told them everything was going to be okay.

He didn’t have to explain further, and you gripped his hand to tell him so. “They needed you two, not me. For what it’s worth, I think you guys were a pretty great team today.”

Dean smiled, and it was almost like the sleepy thankfulness he had on those nights when he got home and you’d charitably done a couple of his chores for him. He closed his eyes in invitation and you leaned forward, meeting his lips with the smell of ice cream in the air. “So come on, Super Dad. Let’s go watch a movie with these great kids everyone keeps talking about.”

The ice cream had gotten put back in the freezer immediately to keep it frozen, but the toppings had all been left out during School of Rock. Sam and DJ had left a bit after the movie, playing a round of LIFE that had been pretty ambitiously started, considering the time, and ultimately abandoned when all the kids’ yawns started to sync up. You came downstairs after trading with Dean for bath/shower duty to get out of cleaning up all the sticky dishes, the girls falling asleep too quickly for a bedtime story after you’d made sure they were thoroughly scrubbed clean and any wet gauze was replaced.

He was rinsing some bowls in the sink, the majority of the toppings slid to one side of the now wiped-down island. You sauntered up behind him, putting your chin on his shoulder. “Your jeans are still covered in chalk,” you sighed into his neck.

“Your kid was practically using them as a napkin, so I’m not surprised.”

“Like father, like daughter.”

You felt the rumble of his laugh through your chest where you were pressed up against his back. “Can’t argue with that. They asleep?”

“You’d think I drugged them.”

He chuckled again, putting down the last bowl in the sink and shutting off the water before drying his hands on a dishtowel deliberately. When he turned around, his face was inches from yours. “Is that right?” he asked, and his voice was as smooth and silky as any caramel drizzle you could’ve eaten that night. You nodded into a smile as Dean slid a washing-warmed hand to the nape of your neck and wound into the hair there, pulling you into him where he leaned against the sink and slipped his tongue into your mouth. He tasted like maraschino cherry and chocolate and you pushed up into his kiss hard, jamming him into the counter in a way that made him groan into you, tug that hair tighter. “Careful, baby. Been thinking about scandalizing the mother of my children for hours,” he growled, smirking through a voice rough like the sandpaper calluses of his hands.

You bit his bottom lip and dragged it back, leaning away from Dean just enough to reach over to the island behind you, finding the whipped cream and starting to shake it fast. “That’s funny, because I’ve just been thinking about sundaes,” you purred into his ear, nipping at his earlobe before tipping back. Dean’s eyes practically glittered as his pupils blew wide. His shirt was off so fast you almost didn’t see it, feeling like you blinked and opened your eyes to him already yanking his belt open to shuck off those chalk-covered torn jeans. Before he could, you turned over the whipped cream on top of his collarbone, dripping a stream of white foam down his chest and letting it drift for a second, melt down his skin then lapping it up with a tongue flattened wide. You shook the can again, draping a strip onto Dean’s stomach that trailed to his belly button and laying a palm on his chest, leaning him back to the counter on his elbows to watch as you licked the whipped cream with lazy swirls until you were at the hem of his boxers, sinking to your knees and taking them down his legs along with his now-opened jeans. He was already hard as rock when you took him in your palm, laying one last spray of whipped cream along the length of him and humming in delight at the “holy shi—” that punched out of Dean and fizzled into the ether when you sucked it off.

It was only a few minutes before he couldn’t take it anymore, bending down to kiss you rough and dirty, tongue darting out to get the little dribbles of cream around the corners of your mouth and dragging you to your feet. With one hand Dean flicked open your jeans, using the freed slack to dive into your panties, middle finger dipping into you as he held your jaw with the other palm. He breathed hot and sticky along your jugular. “Not even close to how wet I want you.” The viscous pour of his words onto your neck sent goosebumps spreading over your skin in a delicate fan and you couldn’t help but smile as he scooped under your thighs and lifted you easily onto the island, slipping the denim off your legs as the same time he stepped out of his. You relaxed onto your elbows, watching those long eyelashes drift open and closed as his kissed a path down your abdomen, gripping handfuls of your t-shirt to get to skin. A lazy hand offered Dean the can of whipped cream.

The smirk he gave you, bare shoulders between your thighs as he kneeled on the kitchen floor, might as well have been through a time machine for the way it made you see the cocky playboy you’d first met over a decade ago, before the faint wrinkles of years in sunny cars and staying up nights with colicky babies that accessorized his big doe eyes now. It had the same effect on you in a t-shirt that was older than DJ as it had when you were pounding through shots with eyeliner artfully smudged by the power of hangovers: pooling all the blood in your stomach and making you lightheaded. He slowly bit his bottom lip. “You taste way too good to be adding anything,” he rumbled, and when you threw your head back in a shaky laugh his tongue reminded you exactly why smudged-eyeliner girl was ready to drop her independence, jump in the Impala and follow that mouth to the end of the world.

Dean built the earth up and cracked it into pieces beneath you twice perched on that kitchen island before grabbing the counter edge to haul himself up. “Were these tiles always so fucking hard? Feel like I just took a hammer to the kneecaps.” He shook out each of his bare legs, spring of his erect cock as he did looking silly and out of place with the glisten of his lips and chin, the sultry cast of his eyelashes on angled cheekbones. The juxtaposition made you laugh, breathy as it was with muscles that had been turned to jello, thrown in a blender, and scattered about the room by the deft movements of Dean’s tongue and fingers.

“You’re thinking about your knees right now?”

“That’s how hard these fucking tiles are,” Dean chuckled, deep and still sexy somehow, bending forward to catch your lips. When you reached down to stroke him, a hand wrapped around your wrist. “I don’t know what you think you’re doing, I’m nowhere near done with you,” he murmured through kisses, a shade of playful challenge in his throat.

You giggled, leaning back as he dragged a wet path of suction down your neck. “I don’t want to torture those legs, old man.” Running a hand through hair you’d sent spiking in all directions in your writhing, you dragged Dean’s head back on his neck, giving you a chance to meet his eyes, still the same dusted olive they’d been since that first wink. Long past the honeymoon stage when it was appropriate to do that kind of thing, you’d been content to spend hours searching them, cataloguing every spindly muscle of iris for posterity, trying to gather up every grain of him for when he inevitably was lost forever to a hunt or the solitude of the road.

But here he was still.

Here you were still. Living a life—living two selves—you never thought you’d get, lucky to have grown in and around each other like mangrove roots. Those eyes still every inch as beautiful, every spark of that electric heat still there now cloaked in layer after layer of what you’d built together: the complete trust and fanatical admiration he had of you flowing out like fountains of sunlight, strong enough they streamed through any raunchy waggle of his eyebrows.

No time to think about it now with a hungry coil of desire tightening in your stomach. You traced the length of him with your fingertips, feather-light and teasing. “If you give me fifteen seconds to get my sea legs back I’ll show you who’s got tougher knees.”

“All right, that’s it,” Dean said. He tipped his head forward and bit your bottom lip with that impossible pressure that made you whimper. “I’ll show you how old these knees are.”

Before you could react, he’d put his shoulder below your sternum and thrown you over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry. When you squealed he smacked your ass. “You’re going to wake up the girls,” he buzzed, starting toward your bedroom without a stitch of clothing on, you draped over his back.

“Dean, Jesus Christ,” you giggled. “Get the clothes at least!”

“Don’t need any jeans for what I’ve got planned—quit—squirming—or I’ll give you something to squirm about,” he continued, lowering his voice to a lascivious whisper and giving one of your upper thighs an impish bite as he headed up the stairs.

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just-a-whumping-racoon-with-wifi · 3 years

Text

Pickett

*bangs spoon on pot* NEW OC NEW OC i can't be tamed

CW: Magical whumpee, branding/scarification, burning, scalding metal, Whumper as caretaker, ... nice? whumper, implied nudity for a second, restraints.

(Pickett can transform into a marten but will never be whumped as an animal.)

The magician smiled as he walked through the market, taking in the sights of the bustling coastside Town. There were stands and carts, open shops and peddlers selling their wares. He could see the docks from the stone streets, could smell the foul salt in the air.

This was the last stop before the wild, before the world opened to those brave - or stupid - enough to explore it. It was a place of last chances, of hastily made decisions and half-thought through plans. Just like all the others, he was there to make his name.

One such salesman waved him over, encouraging him to spend his coins for the compasses and maps that could guide him to riches and fame. He waved him off, continuing on his walk. A girl offered him a handheld loaf of fresh bread, but he waved that off as well. The little creature sitting on his shoulder lifted it’s head to see, slowly following the girl with it’s blue eyes as the Magician kept walking. He smiled and scratched under its chin, more than happy to stop at another stand and buy the little furry thing some fruit as a treat.

The moment the door was closed and bolted behind them, the creature jumped down from its perch around the man’s shoulders to the floor. He turned to busy himself with his organization, putting away his hat and bag with a dim blue light glowing behind him. When Errold turned, he threw the boy that had appeared in a wam brown robe.

Pickett wrapped it around himself quickly, hissing in a breath. His wrists - his wrists ached fiercely. Everything hurt, a dull pain that settled along his spine and across his hips. He had spent too long in his animal form, too long with bones and muscle and sinew out of alignment. He leaned side to side, trying to stretch out as quietly as he could. Something popped and his breathing hitched.

“Pickett? Are you okay?”

“Oh! No, I’m-I’m-I’m okay,” he said quickly, smiling up at Errold. He didn’t want him to know, didn’t want him to catch on. If he did, he might try and fix it and he, he couldn’t handle that right now.

Errold looked down at him, brow furrowed. “Are you sure?”

Pickett nodded a little too quickly, and winced. Errold raised a brow.

“I’m, it’s- I’m a little sore,” he finally admitted, pulling the robe closed tighter. He looked up apologetically to see the magician’s concerned face. “But I’m okay! It was just a long time.”

Errold hummed, walking over to the dreaded bookcase. “Not all that long, Pic. Let me see what I can do.”

“No!” Pickett tried to stand, to reach out a hand to stop the man, but his legs couldn’t hold him up and he fell forward. He hit his nose on the way down, and even though it didn’t hurt much, there was still blood on his hand when he drew it away. The Magician tutted and went down to his knees.

“Look at you, making a mess of yourself,” he muttered, examining the boy’s face. For some reason, Pickett shivered under his gaze.

“What, what, what if I, what if I just walked-” the man sighed loudly, interrupting him. Pickett cowered further into himself, avoiding eye contact. He knew he wasn’t supposed to ask, but what danger could they really be in here?

“Pic, you know better than to ask that. Again,” Errold muttered, picking up the boy and depositing him onto the low table. “You know why, you must still remember how dangerous it is out there for people like us. They’d lock me up, take you away from me.” He paused, lifting his chin gently until they finally met eyes.

“You don’t want that, now do you?”

Pickett blinked up at him and took a deep breath before he shook his head. No, no he didn’t want that. Errold laid a hand on his chest and pushed him back flat against the wood. As the man walked around, back to his book and supplies, Pickett’s heart was slowly starting to race. While he was distracted by his own fear, a hand slipped under the boy’s shirt near his stomach.

Errold cried out, jerking his hand back and shaking it to get rid of the spark of pain. Pickett sat up on his elbows, eyes wide. The older man glared at him, hand smoking faintly.

“Wait, wait wait wait, I can explain! I can!” Pickett tried, crawling backwards off the table. Errold didn’t bother to respond, striding forward and pinning him down. The boy squirmed and wiggled, but was no match in his exhausted state. Soon enough there were long strips of linen securing his wrists and ankles to the table legs, two more going over his collar bone and hips.

Gruffly and annoyed, Errold wrenched up his shirt to examine the intricate lines of gold that covered his body. Pickett tried to interrupt, to distract him, but was shushed harshly. With a sigh, the man ran his fingers along one line that had been scratched and inched and the gold picked out of the scar. He gave Pickett a disappointed side-eye.

“Pickett-”

“I’m sorry!” Pickett cried out, eyes glossy but no tears spilling out yet. “I’m sorry! I am! But, but it itched and, and Errold please it felt better when I took the rune out. I can control it this time, I really can. I know I can!”

Errold leaned down and cupped the boy’s face in both hands. Poor thing was shaking, scared of what was going to happen. He hated to see him this way, hated that this was really the best way to apply the runes.

“I know, I know Pic - and I’m sorry, Sweetheart. But you can’t just claw them out. They’re there for a reason, and you need to respect that. I know you don’t want to, but I have to put them back. Shh, don’t cry, Shh I know, I know it hurts. But you need them, Pickett.”

He brushed his hand down the boy’s dark hair, looking into light eyes as the tears spilled over and down his cheeks. Poor thing. Pickett shut his eyes and laid back against the wood, trying hard to stifle his crying. Errold was right, he was always right. But it would be okay, he could do it. He had survived the other hours upon hours it took to bind the rest of his body, he could make it through re-placing a few lines on his side.

And whatever other ones Errold would add.

When the muzzle was placed against his mouth, he didn’t buck or try to fight it. Honestly, it was almost welcome. The process hurt, and others would be disturbed by his cries of pain. Errold pet his hair back one last time with an affectionate look before he lifted the boy’s shirt all the way and went to light the small fire.

The rods of gold were long and thin, small as a delicate sprig from a rosebush. They were expensive and shined even in the leather pouch Errold kept them in. It had to be a good quality gold, one that was pure enough to handle the weight of the magic. As harmless as they were in this form, Pickett still shivered when he heard them clink together.

Errold used a bit of dusty chalk to paint the correct lines across his skin as he waited for the fire to build. This part never hurt, but the sensation of it still made his heart race. He squeezed his eyes shut and forced himself to wait.

The magician could see how hard the boy was trying for him, and he smiled sadly. Poor thing, but it really did try and be good for him. He would of course care for it afterwards, making sure he was as comfortable as possible. Donning thick gloves, Errold picked up a rod of gold and placed it in a specially crafted pipe. He’d had to make all these tools himself, designing them to work for what he needed. This pipe would not only help him melt the gold, but also apply it in even lines.

When it was ready, he returned to the boy bound to the table. He laid a hand on Pickett’s stomach in sympathy, then began his work.

Pickett cried out the first moment the molten liquid touched his skin, back arching and struggling in his restraints. It was beyond painful, beyond words he knew to describe it. It was burning through him, searing away paths and lines to cool in his skin. He sobbed into the muzzle, tears streaming down both sides of his temple. Every line, every dash burrowed farther into his skin. The pain built and built, with no regard to how much he could withstand. It didn’t care. It had no stake in how hard his heart pounding in his chest or how his lungs heaved for air. He just had to get through it, had to survive it.

He curled his hands into fists until he could feel the bite of his nails.

Errold hushed him softly, focused on following his chalk outline. His heart ached lightly, but only lightly. Pickett knew better than to dig the runes out. Any pain from the re-working of that was his own fault. Errold was doing this for his own good, he understood that. Pickett needed these, and Errold needed them.

It was mutually beneficial, he told himself.

Right as he was on the cusp of passing out, Errold pulled the pipe away to show he was finished. The new lines of gold over the boy’s dark skin were practically still glowing red, not yet having cooled down enough to shine their signature color. The magician didn’t dare touch them, just laid a damp cloth over the area.

Pickett whined loudly at the feeling, still heaving for breath. He could barely tell if his eyes were open at this point, just feeling like the world was distant from him. A hand touched his face to remove the muzzle but he couldn’t muster the strength to respond.

“Shh, shh Pic, you’re alright. Here,” Errold started, lifting him bodily from the table. Pickett whimpered, totally unaware that he had been untied. He was gently placed in his hammock, gratefully on his unhurt side, and left there as the magician tidied the rest of the room. The boy got his eyes open a few times, but the world was still blurry. He huffed through his nose and rubbed his face against the fabric, itching at the tear tracks across his face.

“Alright then,” Errold’s voice came and Pickett raised his head up. The man gathered him back out of the hammock and laid him on the bed. With just the back of his hand to the boy’s forehead he could tell he was already getting the fever, so he laid a damp cloth across it. The other wounds were still too tender to apply anything too strong, so he just used a general salve.

Pickett remained mostly quiet through the rest of the bandaging, simply letting it happen. He was a little more aware, however, when the magician wrapped his unharmed hands in bandages as well.

“To keep you from messing with them, Pickett,” Errold chided at the boy’s confused sound. Picket hadn’t done it much, but it would have to be something he would have to keep an eye on now. Perhaps he would pick up some mitts somewhere.

By the time he was done, Pickett’s fever was raging and he had to replace the cloth. He then returned him to the hammock to rest while he turned to his real work.

A request for a spirit guide had just come in, and it was an offer Errold had no desire to resist.

Tagging @yet-another-heathen cause this idea actually came from a convo with them!

#whump #magical whump #branding tw #burning tw #whumper as caretaker #painful transformation tw #pickett #errold #whump fic #magical whumpee #hehehe

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let-love-run-red · 3 years

Text

Ghost

ART BELONGS TO ALIZERA62 ON DEVIANTART

Female reader insert

AO3 link

The house was a mess. You knew it hadn't been inhabited in awhile, but you hadn't expected to need a tobacco cleanup before you even started. The woman you had hired did a good job but even she couldn't get it all out of the paint. The floorboards would need to be replaced, the walls would likely have to be sanded and repainted, and you had no doubt the carpet had to go too.

You turned the sander off, removing your respirator and sliding your headphones off your head to take a break. You walked into the kitchen area, opening the fridge. You shuddered as a cold chill ran down your spine and you looked around. Your mother would say someone just walked over your grave, but you weren't the superstitious type. You chalked it up to standing in front of the fridge after working up a sweat.

You pulled the sandwich out of the fridge and shut it, thankful the new owners had agreed to turn the power on. You sat down on an unopened five gallon bucket of paint and dug into your lunch. You looked around the house. You had pulled down the blinds and curtains to let the light into the small space. It was nice, homey. You wondered how it ended up abandoned.

You continued to work on the walls for the next few weeks until the house was repainted. Hopefully that would erase the lingering smell of cigarettes. The previous owner was obviously a heavy smoker. Maybe that's the reason it was abandoned, they finally had one too many.

You were going to start work on the floorboards today. There was no way you could just refinish them, years of neglect and tobacco had worked it's way into the wood. You had measured the rooms that needed it and ordered the replacements, now just came the process of tearing it out. But, the house seemed angry.

You smelled cigarettes more often now. But you figured it was because of the floorboards. You heard thuds from somewhere within the house, but you figured it was just the wind messing with the attic vents. You got cold chills often but chalked that up to the newly fixed air conditioner that hadn't been calibrated yet.

You finally had enough when a violent chill ripped through you one day as you were trying to rip up one particularly stubborn floorboard. You hooked the claw of your hammer under it and pulled upwards, splintering the wood. This board had been held in with twice as many nails, that were twice as large as normal flooring nails.

"Alright listen house ghost if you're upset then come deal with me yourself. But stop giving me problems!" You shouted to nothing, feeling silly. But shouting at this "house ghost" was a decent outlet for your frustrations at this remodel. You turned to pull the rest of the floorboard up, spotting something tucked within the floor joints. You reached for it, feeling your shirt sleeve snag on one of the nails as you pulled it out. You examined the hole in your sleeve before turning your attention to the item in your hand.

"Put it back." You heard a deep voice growl. You jumped, gripping the small box tighter as you looked up. There, sitting on one of the piles of ripped up floorboards was a tall man with a mysterious green glow around him. He was holding a lit cigarette in his hands. You sat back as your chest heaved.

"How the hell did you get in here?" You snapped. You had locked all the doors and the windows while you worked. There was no way he could get into the house without you knowing, the new owners hadn't even picked up their keys yet.

"No, how did you get here?" He asked, taking a breath from the cigarette. When he blew out the smoke was green and glowed with a strange light.

"This is my house, what are you doing here?" He asked. You held your hammer as a weapon as you sat back up on your knees.

"Your house? No, this house was just purchased. I know the owners and you're not one of them." You said. The man snorted, taking another puff from the cigarette. You took a moment to examine him. He wore jeans with a white t-shirt and a black jacket. He had a heavy pair of brown work boots on and a brown hat atop his teal hair that cast a shadow over his eyes. He would be handsome, if he wasn't scaring you right now.

"Bullshit." He said.

"Who are you?" You asked. If he was here to hurt you he would have done it already.

"I already told you, I'm the owner." He said.

"No you aren't. Who are you really?" You snapped. You were starting to get tired of him.

"I'm the ghost that had until now tolerated you sanding down my walls and ripping up my floor. But I need you to put that pack of cigarettes back, or we're going to have a problem." He finally said, standing up from the pile of floorboards. His feet made no sound as he walked towards you over the floor joists. He grabbed your wrist and shook your hand to loosen your grip on the small box, that you now realized was an old pack of Marlboro cigarettes. When his hand touched yours you felt a familiar chill shoot down your spine.

You dropped the cigarettes back between the floor joists and he stood over the pack protectively.

"I, ghost?" You asked. He took the cigarette from his mouth and blew more smoke as he nodded.

"Yes, the house ghost that you've been yelling at for the past week. My name is Garcello." He dropped the cigarette in his hand and it faded away before it connected with the ground. You looked up at him and he tilted his head.

"How, what?" You asked.

"I died, and apparently my spirit is tied to that pack of cigarettes. So it needs to stay here." He said, pointing to the pack of cigarettes between his feet.

"So you can stay here?" You asked. He snapped his fingers and another cigarette appeared between his fingers that he gestured to you with before speaking.

"Now she's getting it." He said, taking a drag from the cigarette.

"Why do you want to stay here?" You asked, looking around. It was a nice house but it was small and in a state of disarray.

"It's safe." He said, looking around. You tilted your head.

"Listen I did a lot of shit while I was alive, and for a few minutes before I came back I was in hell. Literal hell. I have no desire to go back." He said, taking another drag from the cigarette.

"Actual hell?"

"Yes, real hell, with satan and the fire and all that." He said. He pulled his hat off and ran a hand through his hair absentmindedly. It fluffed out for a moment before he pulled the hat back onto his head.

"So those cigarettes need to stay here because if anything happens to them I'm gone for good." He said. You looked at the cigarettes between his feet, then back to him.

"They can't stay here." You said. He let out a low growl and his hair flared out around his head. The glow around him grew a little brighter and the hairs on the back of your neck stood on end.

"Says you? Who even are you?" He hissed.

"I'm the one the owners hired to remodel the house. I can't just leave a pack of cigarettes, that has a ghost tied to it, in the floorboards. I'm pretty sure that violates some contract I had them sign." You explained.

"What are you going to do about it?" He took a step towards you, and although you knew he was trying to intimidate you, there was a hesitancy to it. As though he didn't really want to hurt you.

"Well I'm not going to burn it or anything, if that's what you mean." You said, reaching for the cigarettes. You picked them up and examined them. The pack was worn and faded and there were a few cigarettes missing from the inside. Garcello seemed distressed as you turned the box over.

"Please be careful." He said, holding out his hand.

"You're really nervous for a ghost." You said. He rolled his eyes and shoved his hands into his pockets.

"You would be too if the eternal damnation of your soul was being prevented by a pack of cigarettes." He said. You snorted, that was definitely true. You set the cigarettes on the counter next to you and he looked between you and the pack.

"You're just going to leave them out?" He asked. You knelt back down, hooking your hammer under the floorboards again and ripping the next one up.

"I mean for now. If you're so stressed then move them." You said, tearing up another floorboard.

"I can't." He said, standing next to the pack. You looked up to him in confusion. He could obviously touch things, he had grabbed your wrist and been knocking things over.

"Why not?" You asked. He took the cigarette from between his lips and touching the corner of the pack with the tip of his finger. There was a sizzling screaming sound that came from his, skin and the pack of cigarettes. He pulled his hand away to reveal a black spot on the corner of the pack.

"If I try it burns it. I'm not sure why." He said, replacing the cigarette between his lips. You stood from the floor, walking past him and examining the pack.

"Can you just like, put it in a box and bury it in the back yard or something?" He asked, watching as you picked up the pack again.

"It would take a long time to make a box that's watertight so this wouldn't fall apart." You said, setting it back on the counter top. Garcello rested his elbows on the counter and rested his chin in his hands.

"How did it even get under the floor boards if you can't touch it?" You asked.

"I was with people when it happened. They put it under the floor and nailed it back down. For awhile they came to visit but, I guess they got busy." He said. You looked to him to see him working the cigarette around his mouth.

"What if I take this with me when I leave. Will you like combust or something?" You asked, pointing to the cigarettes. He tilted his head.

"No, I'll just go with you." He said. You nodded.

"Well you can't stay here, and I'm not just going to let you burn in hell." You said. He took the cigarette from his mouth and narrowed his eyes at you.

"You're going to take a ghost home." He said. "Like i'm a kitten you found on the street." He finished.

"Well it sounds bad when you put it that way, think of it as a roommate situation." You said. Garcello raised his eyebrows and nodded.

"Could be nice. It's been awhile since I've spent time with people." He said.

"Well you can come home with me or, I can drop you somewhere else." You said. Garcello shook his head.

"I don't have anywhere else to be dropped." He said with a chuckle. You picked up the pack of cigarettes, walking around the counter to slide them in the empty pocket of your lunch bag.

"That settles it then. I guess you're coming home with me." You said. Garcello looked at you and cracked a small smile.

"Why are you doing this?" He asked.

"Well hell doesn't sound fun. And maybe I feel kind of bad that you've been stuck her alone for so long." You said, kneeling back on the floor and working to pry up the next floorboard. Garcello knelt next to you silently before placing the cigarette back in his mouth, gripping the floorboard with one hand and ripping it up. You looked at him in surprise and he grinned.

"Lesson one of having a ghost roommate, we're pretty strong." He said with a laugh, pulling the next floorboard up as well. You let out a laugh as he pulled another board out.

"Maybe you should come with me to every job I do." You said with a smile while the two of you worked together to pull up the remaining floorboards.

"Yeah maybe I should." He said, reaching down and gripping one of the leftover nails, pulling it out bare handed.

"It would be nice to see so many things." He looked up at you with a smile.

"So I guess you're just going to live in my lunch bag then?" You asked. He wrinkled his nose.

"I don't live wherever the pack is, I just am tied within a certain distance of it." He said.

"So is it a set distance or you can't like leave the building?" You asked, sitting back on your feet.

"It's kind of a distance. Like I can get halfway out the backyard, and out to the road out front, but I can't cross the street or anything." He said. You nodded.

"So are you tied to a distance from the pack as a whole, or if I took one of the cigarettes could you follow that one specifically?" You asked. Garcello approached you with a handful of bent and broken nails and held out his hand to you. You pointed to the paint can of nails next to the pile of floorboards and he dropped the nails in the can.

"I don't know. I never tried." He said with a shrug.

"I guess we have a lot of experimenting to do then." You said. He paused to look up at you before pulling up another floorboard.

"You're serious about taking me with you?" He asked. You furrowed your brows.

"Yes? What else would I do?" You asked with confusion in your voice.

"Drop it in the first garbage can or puddle you see." He said simply, pulling up a second floorboard.

"I wouldn't do that." You said. You saw Garcello's hair float around his head a bit more as the green glow intensified briefly.

"Why not?"

"I like you. You're nicer than most of the living people I know." You said. The halo around him intensified further and his hair flared around him like a lions mane. You watched as his cheeks blushed a bright pink and you smiled.

"Sorry, it's been awhile since someone said they liked me." He said.

"Can I try something?" You asked. He turned to you and nodded before taking the cigarette from between his lips. You leaned in and pressed a quick kiss to his lips. His lips were soft and warm. You pulled back and had to squint to see him through the green light. His hair was standing on end and his eyes were glowing green. He pressed his hands to his face to hide his blush and you had to hold back a giggle as his hat started to float off his head.

"Fuck I didn't know that happened." He said. You let out a laugh.

"It looks like we both have a lot to learn about ghosts."

#let-love-run-red #garcello fnf #garcello supremacy #garcello friday night funkin'#garcello x reader #garcello x you #fnf garcello #garcello #garcello x female reader #garcello x fem reader #garcello x fem!reader #garcello fanfiction #garcello fan fiction #garcello fluff #garcello ghost #ghost garcello #ghost!garcello

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vergilthelibrarian · 4 years

Text

It Began Snowing.

GenderNetural!ReaderxCryptid!Taeyong

I based Taeyong off a bit on the yokai Yuki-Onna but I put my own spin to it. I didn’t know how to end this and personally I feel like the ending could be better. Also, it gets sorta yandereish

Anyway, enjoy ^^

It began snowing suddenly.

You looked up at the gray skies, stopping in your tracks.

Lifting your hand up, you watched as the snowflakes landing on your red glove.

You drew your close to you, staring at the snowflakes that sat on your hand when suddenly, your ears twitched to the sound of crunching snow.

You looked to your side to see a young man walking.

You assumed he was going to pass by but when he stopped about a foot from you, you became slightly irritated because you knew he was going to talk to you.

You’re raised arm went to your side as he said “You know the blizzard is beginning to start. You shouldn’t just be standing out here.” causing you frowned a bit.

“A blizzard?” you questioned out loud.

The forecast only called for a light snowfall today. There was nothing on the news about an upcoming blizzard because if so, you wouldn’t have decided to explore the woods today.

The young man nodded his head.

“Yes. A blizzard and it seems to be picking up.” he said as the wind became stronger and the snowfall became harsher.

“Do you have any place to stay at during the storm? My place isn’t too far.”

“I-I uh, no.” you shook your head, the cold nipping at your exposed cheeks.

You lived in the town next to one you were currently in since this town was more of a farming town with woods while yours was simply a small factory town.

“You should come with me then.”

“N-no. I’m fine.” you told the stranger.

“Yet your shivering. You’d freeze to death out here… Come on. Come with me. I’ll give you some hot tea or hot chocolate, whatever you like.” he smiled at you.

You didn’t noticed that you were shivering, your teeth clattering as you said, “O-okay.”

The smile never left the man’s lips as he grabbed your hand.

“You don’t mind me grabbing your hand?” and you shook your head.

“Good. Let’s go.”

He began walking, leading the way, going further and further into the woods.

The snowfall became more heavy and the young man hummed as he took you to his home.

No thoughts crossed your mind as you let this strange man take you to his home, the nipping cold making it hard for you to think.

“We’re almost there.” he said as your eyes become blinded by the snow.

After some minutes, you walked out of the woods and soon you were in front of a yellow farm house.

Once you two walked up the steps and made it to the door, he let go of your hand and took out a pair keys from his pocket, unlocking and opening the door.

He looked at you and motioned for you to go in, a smile on his lips.

You walked into the house being hit with an immediate warmth but it wasn’t enough to stop the cold the had your body frozen.

The sound of the door closing and some locks entered your ears as you shivered in place.

“Oh. You must be freezing. Let me help you take off your jacket.”

The man was soon in front of you and watched as one of his hands unzipped your coat.

You found it weird that he was being rather close to you but you just chalked it up to him being helpful.

Once your jacket was off, he hung it on the coat rack on the wall.

“You think you can take off your boots?” he asked and you nodded, crouching down to untie your boots.

“Tch tch. Let me do that.”

He came over in front of you once more and you stood up, watching the young man crouch down and began untying your boots.

Once he was done he got up and watched as you took them off.

He grabbed your boots and put them to the side.

“Are you still cold?” he asked, walking into your vision once more.

You nodded, shivering heavily.

“You should take a hot bath. I’ll start the bath and give you some clothes and a towel.”

Your eyes widen and the young man chuckled.

“Don’t worry. I’m not a pervert if that’s what you’re thinking.” he said.

“Oh shit. I never told you my name, it’s Taeyong.”

“M-my name i-is Y-y/n.” you stuttered.

“Y/n. Hmm…” he hummed in thought.

“Go take a seat on the couch. I’ll get the bath started.” he smiled before walking up the steps.

You went to the open living room and sat down on the couch, noticing how comfy it was.

You looked around the living room, seeing little knick knacks and a fire place, some black and white photos and paintings.

A bark made you flinched and soon you saw a white jindo dog who began growling at you.

The dog began moving slowly towards you.

You started shaking in fear when suddenly you heard Taeyong’s voice.

“Melpomene.” he said softly, walking up to the growling dog.

“It’s alright, I’m safe. They’re not a threat.” he pat the dog and soon its growling died down.

“She’s really overprotective of me.” he laughed, looking up at you.

“I fixed your bath. Let me show where the washroom is.” he said, his gentle eyes on your form.

You got up, your eyes on the dog as you walked passed the animal and followed the man upstairs.

He showed you the washroom and were your clothes and towel sat at before leaving and closing the door.

Your eyes left the closed door, moving to the bathtub and as you walked closer to the bathtub, you saw rose petals sitting on the steamy water and a flowery scent entered your nose.

This was rather strange but once again, you didn’t think much of it.

You undressed and slowly entered the bathtub, sighing from the warmth.

Leaning back, you closed your eyes.

It was so weird for a blizzard this bad to happen suddenly.

Then your thoughts went to Taeyong.

You’ve seen him on multiple occasions, the occasions usually being the local farmers market where he sold his produce and fresh meat.

You have never properly met the man until today and it shocked you how warmed he felt.

Though you still believed that this situation was indeed a strange one.

Local legends of your town spoke of a deadly creature who caused random blizzards during the winter whenever a someone was lost or stranded only to never be seen again, the creature being compared to the man eating siren.

So you knew that you could be in danger but honestly, what could you even do?

You’re small house was in the next town over.

You had no choice but to stay in Taeyong’s house and wait for the blizzard to die down.

After some minutes passed, your body felt warm again and soon you began washing up.

Once you were done, you dried up and put on the clothes Taeyong left out, which was an oversized white t-shirt and some gray shorts. You put the towel in a basket, believing it to be the dirty clothes hamper and left the room.

As you walked down the stairs, the smell of food alerted your senses and as you walked into the open living room, you looked to your side where the opening to the kitchen was and walked to it.

Taeyong stood in front of a stove putting ingredients into a black pot.

He looked up at you and a gentle smile graced his handsome features.

“You’re done pretty early. I was hoping you’d be finish when I was done cooking.” he said. “But that’s alright. I’m making sundubu-jjigae. That sounds good?” he asked, his eyes on you.

You nodded, making a slight noise.

“You’re not much of a talker huh?” Taeyong said and you bit your bottom lip in nervousness.

“I don’t really know you well.”

He nodded, his attention going back to the stew.

“That makes sense. I am a stranger after all.” he stirred the stew. “But I truly mean no harm. You’re too precious to me…” you frowned in confusion as you didn’t quiet catch his last sentence.

You looked pass him at the window, being met with darkness.

Walking up to the window, you saw snowflakes hitting the glass.

“The blizzard is still going strong. You should stay the night here.”

You turned around and saw Taeyong turning off the stove.

“Y-yeah…”

The young man walked up to you, his hand caressing your cheek. His face was very close to yours, his breathe hitting your lips.

Your eyes widen and you gulped as you saw the boy’s eyes glance at your lips before turning his intense gaze back to your eyes

You felt like you couldn’t move.

In fact, it felt as though you were genuinely frozen in place.

“Do I make you nervous?” he asked and you quickly nodded.

His breath smelt of peppermint and his body was too close to yours.

You felt as though you were going to pass out.

“I don’t mean to make you so nervous. I’m usually not this touchy with anyone but you make me feel… something.” he said, his face contorting in as though he was lost in thought, his eyes fixated on you.

“What d-do you mean?” you stuttered.

Taeyong’s thumb traced your jawline as he said, “Warmth. You make me feel warmth and warmth is something I never feel.”

“Why is that?”

Taeyong hummed.

“Let’s eat first and then I’ll tell you.” he smiled before removing his hand from your cheek and walked back to the stove. He picked put on some mittens and picked up the pot.

“Come on. I know you must be hungry.”

You two mostly ate in a comfortable silence, Taeyong saying some things here and there.

After you two were finish, he cleaned up your bowls, telling you to sit on the couch.

When he came back, he started breaking some wood to start a fire in the fireplace.

Once he started the fire, he took a seat next to you on the couch.

“I’m making us some hot chocolate.” he said.

You nodded.

Taeyong leaned in close to you causing you to back up slightly.

“You’re a lotus.”

You tilted your head and he instantly knew you were confused.

“You’re beautiful. I can see it. Your soul is beautiful yet because of this world, it’s been damaged, muddied, polluted.”

“I don’t understand.”

“As I said before, you make me feel warmth and I can’t feel warmth yet you…” his hands cradled your face. “Every time I would see you, whenever you were near me, I felt a warmth that those of my kind simply cannot produce.”

As soon as those words left his mouth, it hit you.

Taeyong was the creature of your town’s legend.

He was the siren like creature that would cause snowstorms to whoever was unfortunate to fall upon its gaze.

“You… are my soulmate.” he said which shocked you immensely.

What did he mean by soulmate?

“Huh?” was all you could respond with.

“You are my soulmate Y/n. I caused this storm just to see if my feeling was right and it was.”

You wanted to move but you felt stuck to the couch.

You tried moving your head away from his hands but you couldn’t even budge.

“A lotus flower forced to live in such an impure and dirty world… you are never leaving this place.” he said.

Your eyes widen.

“What? I… I can’t stay here. T-this is crazy!” you voice became an octave higher.

“You belong here.” the creature said. “You belong in this house. You won’t be able to bloom surrounded by those humans.” he said with disgust. “Especially surrounded by those who have hurt you.”

A white light began swirling in his eyes.

“Stay with me. I’ll keep you safe. I will always protect you and I’ll give you all the love in the universe. Just stay with me.”

Your eyes began to glaze over as you looked into his eyes.

“Okay.” you said faintly, feeling your body going limp.

“Promise me that you’ll never leave me.” his gentle voice soon turned strong and dominate, a stark contrast from how he first appeared towards you.

“I promise.” you said in a dazed like state.

“Good.” he said, his pointer finger rubbing your bottom lip.

“If you ever try to leave me, if you ever try to hurt me like that… I will drag back to this house and punish you. Understood?”

“Yes.” you responded obediently.

The light in his eyes slowly dissipated and his intense gaze turned soft, a smile on his lips as he said, “Good. I should go check on hot chocolate.” he said before letting go of your face and heading off to the kitchen.

#maybe i'll make more cryptid!nct fics #taeyong x reader #taeyong x you #taeyong x male reader #nct x reader #nct x you #nct x male reader #nct u x reader #nct u x you #nct u x male reader #nct 127 x you #nct 127 x male reader #nct 127 x reader #yandere nct 127 #yandere nct #yandere nct u #yandere taeyong

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hellishhin · 3 years

Text

A Clean Elf is an Unhappy One

Against all better judgement, Sadie could not stop telling the story of how she died. Within a week, everyone who frequented the Stag knew the story. Who believed it, was a significantly different number. Most chalked it up to exaggeration and assumed she was only severely hurt. Magical healing could remove scars, they believed, hence her looking unscathed. It was an enjoyable tale though, for those who were not superstitious of such talk. Each time she told it, it became just a little more embellished and very quickly the leeches were left out. Now she had perished trying to rescue Donar from the blaze and unfortunately he did not make it either. He had left town so quickly after getting his pay that it was believable enough.

As the next week dragged on, Kireen could be found muttering under her breath more often, refusing to repeat what she was saying and waving off any attempt to placate her. Sadie and K’lai’a’la would discuss her unusual behavior when Sadie made her daily walk out to the park where K’lai’a’la had made her bed in one of the trees. No amount of convincing could make the young elf stay indoors. She was safe enough in the park that Sadie quickly gave up and just made efforts to share meals with her. Kireen came at first but the later in the week it got, she stopped showing up.

They could see Ser Calentavar’s manor from their spot in the grass, its fence backed right up to the park. Both she and K’lai’a’la agreed that the debt to Ser Calentavar was probably the reason for her nervousness. Almost on cue, Kireen came stomping through the park waving a roughly opened letter.

“He invited us to a ball!” she cried, probably loud enough for Taerand himself to hear just across the way.

“A ball?!” both Sadie and K’lai’a’la said at the exact same time; Sadie with excitement and K’lai’a’la with confusion.

“A fucking ball. Like we want to dance and socialize with him!” Kireen spat and aggressively tossed the letter in Sadie’s direction. She raised the letter and K’lai’a’la leaned in to look as though she was able to read it. It was nothing special, just a formal invitation for Kireen to attend a ball the following night at Ser Calentavar’s manor.

Sadie looked up at Kireen to say something and she interjected. “Yours are back at the Stag,” which answered Sadie’s unspoken question.

“We need dresses! Kireen do you have a dress? K’lai’a’la do- never mind of course you don’t,” Sadie leapt to her feet, “we are going shopping.”

Sadie planned to wear one of her own dresses and Kireen had a noble’s taste so she wasn’t worried about her. The tricky one would be K’lai’a’la. The girl basically wore more dirt than clothing and now it was Sadie’s job to make her presentable for a ball. The first thing they did was attend the seamstress’ shop. Already K’lai’a’la was nervous being inside but Sadie reassured her, “this will be fun I promise. You can wear a dress that looks like plants.” “I can wear plants?”

Sadie just patted the back of her hand as the seamstress approached.

“Good afternoon, I need a dress for my friend here and we need it before tomorrow night. I know you won’t be able to make anything from scratch so whatever you have that you can modify will work.”

The seamstress nodded, smiling kindly “would you like a specific color, dear?” she asked K’lai’a’la, whose eyes widened at being addressed directly. Sadie gave her hand another squeeze.

“Like the trees,” K’lai’a’la whispered and the seamstress nodded once more. She shuffled through her rows of fabrics and partially sewn dresses then came back with an armful of different shades. K’lai’a’la picked a green dark like shaded grass. When the seamstress went to hold the unfinished dress up to K’lai’a’la to gauge its size, K’lai’a’la stepped back defensively.

“K’lai’a’la please just let her measure you. She won’t hurt you I promise,” Sadie reached up and placed the small of her hand on K’lai’a’la’s back and urged her forward. The seamstress looked at Sadie with the hint of a grimace “how will she do with the pins…”

The whole experience was something K’lai’a’la wishes will never happen to her again. Not only that but once the dress was on and fitted she hated it. It was tight in all the wrong places, and it smelled of dye. Any prey she hunted would be able to smell her from miles away. Her distaste was written plain as day across her delicate features and Sadie just gently encouraged her along the way.

K’lai’a’la was allowed to return to her sleeping tree that night but the following day, Sadie plied K’lai’a’la with a mince pie to return to the Stag. Once K’lai’a’la was in Sadie’s room, Kireen entered and stood in front of the door.

“Ok K’lai’a’la, we have to wash your hair and brush it out. It looks like a bird made a nest there,” Sadie gestured to the warm bath she had Gwen set up in her room. K’lai’a’la glanced between Kireen and Sadie, then at the window contemplatively.

“No. You are getting into the bath,” the edge to Sadie’s tone made K’lai’a’la shrink and comply when Sadie approached and began removing her dirty clothes. She stood naked before the tub and stared down into the water like its depths held monsters untold.

“Come on, get in before it gets cold. Please? For me?” Sadie batted her eyelashes and took K’lai’a’la’s hand who looked down at her with resentment for a moment before she stepped into the tub and promptly stood there as though satisfied she did what was asked of her.

“Ok now sit down,” gently Sadie pulled down on her hand and K’lai’a’la slowly kneeled in the tub. “Good! Let’s get this hair cleaned.” Thinking she had succeeded was Sadie’s first mistake. As soon as the first water from the pitcher hit K’lai’a’la’s head, she burst from the tub, making for the door. Kireen was fast though and had a hold of the elf’s slim shoulders before she could even get a foot out of the tub.

“Get back in there and let her wash your hair,” the dragonborn growled which just made K’lai’a’la panic even more. It took all of Kireen’s knowledge of grappling to keep the wet elf inside the tub and all of Sadie’s experience with tangles of hair to get her washed to anything resembling the societal standard of normalcy.

By the time they were finished, K’lai’a’la’s hair was straight and brushed for the first time in perhaps her entire life. There was not a leaf or twig to be found and she smelled of roses and lavender. The thought was enough to make K’lai’a’la sick but she was tired of fighting. Water covered the floor of Sadie’s room soaking her rug but they did it. K’lai’a’la was cleaned. Luckily for them, she was also exhausted and dressing her was less of a pain than they expected. When they finished, a surprisingly beautiful, delicate wood elf stood before them. Her ash-brown hair framed her light features and high cheekbones. Her kohl-lined, silvery-green eyes looked at them pathetically and her sleek painted lips had a delicate pout to them. Sadie had to admit to herself that her sun-kissed skin and the lines of her collarbones and slight cleavage turned her into quite the attractive specimen.

“You look really pretty K’lai’a’la. Not that you didn’t look pretty before, you just look different now in a good way,” Sadie beamed. Even Kireen nodded her agreement.

“I feel like cow, can’t fight. Can’t run. No knife even.”

They had to take her weapons as she could not attend the ball with them. That was a fight all its own.

“You won’t need a knife. This is a place with dancing and food and music. Music I don’t have to play! So when we get there just be calm and eat some food. We’ll be right there with you,” Sadie looked up at Kireen to get her to chime in but she just nodded. Both of her friends were in a mood which would make it difficult to enjoy herself. She sighed heavily “fine, let’s just go and get this over with.”

Taglist: (always open for adds and no hard feelings for removes, we all have our times we need to take steps back! No explanation needed.) @betwixtofficial @taerandcalentavar @talesfromaurea @faelanvance @definitelyquestionit

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jadelotusflower · 3 years

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July 2021 Roundup

Discussed this month: The Once and Future King, The Good People, The Secret of Kells/Wolfwalkers/Song of the Sea (aka "Irish Folklore" Trilogy), The Matrix Trilogy, the John Wick Trilogy, Space Jam: A New Legacy

Reading

The Once and Future King (T.H. White) - I've actually read this before, but it was a long time ago and I remembered very little of it so it seemed time for a revisit. Written between 1936 and 1942, this is a surprisingly meta retelling of Arthur and Camelot, very obviously and heavily influenced by WWII, with much academic pondering on the concept of humanity and war and ongoing conflict against Might=Right - looking to the past to try and understand the present. Some familiarity with the legends is assumed, White occasionally making reference to Malory, and there is a strange anachronistic feel - Merlin lives time backwards and talks of Hitler and other 20th Century references, White frequently refers to Old England and the way things were "back then", but also calls Arthur's country Gramarye, the narrative taking place an a kind of alternate history/mythology where Uther was the Norman conqueror of 1066, and yet reference is also made to the Plantagenet kings.

Comprising five volumes (the first four published separately at the time, and the final posthumously), it struck me on this read how each of the first four are structured around the childhood of a major player -Arthur (The Sword in the Stone), Gawain and his brothers (The Witch in the Wood), Lancelot (The Ill-Made Knight), and Mordred (The Candle in the Wind), and how their upbringing played a part in the inevitable tragedy of Camelot. In the final volume, The Book of Merlyn, it comes full circle as Arthur on the eve of his death is taken to revisit the animals of his childhood for much philosophising (at one point Merlyn argues at length with a badger about Karl Marx and communism.)

The Sword in the Stone is the most engaging, with young Arthur (known as "the Wart") and his tutelage under Merlin, being turned into various animals like an ant, a goose, and a hawk to learn about each of their societies (political allegories), and meeting with Robin Wood (Hood) and Maid Marian to battle Morgan le Fay, and the climactic pulling of the sword from the stone. This was of course the source material for the Disney film, although missing the wizards duel with Madam Mim (appearing in the original publication, but removed for the revised version).

The Ill-Made Knight is the longest volume and was honestly a slog to get through, because honestly Lancelot is pretty dull/terrible, and the Lancelot/Guenever love affair less than compelling. Ultimately it's Lancelot's hubris that dooms them - he is warned that Mordred intends to catch him out in Guenever's room, but he goes anyway, and doesn't leave when he tells her to, because he is stupid.

It’s no surprise that the female characters are given the short shrift, but there’s an uncomfortable vein of misogyny running through the book. To wit:

Elaine had done the ungraceful thing as usual. Guenever, in similar circumstances, would have been sure to grow pale and interesting - but Elaine had only grown plump.

And then later:

Guenever had overdressed for the occasion. She had put on makeup which she did not need, and put it on badly. She was forty-two.

Morgause (the eponymous witch in the wood/queen of air and darkness) is a negligent mother whose sole motivation is revenge, Elaine rapes Lancelot by deception, Guenever is hypocritical and shrill (but achieves a sliver of nuance in Candle), Nimueh is a nonentity, and Morgan le Fey is a monstrous fairy. If only White had turned his academic pondering inward and in order to examine the role of women in his worldview other than as damsels or instigators.

But Arthur also gets the short shrift - after all the focus in his childhood, he becomes almost a peripheral figure in the rest of the story until the very end, and we're not actually given much to show why he is the once and future king, other than that he tries to institute a slightly less brutal system.

Ultimately, White is more interested in philosophy than character, and so Camelot's inevitable tragedy feels more clinical than visceral.

The Good People (Hannah Kent) - If the Irish Folklore Trilogy (discussed below) is the beauty and wonder of Irish myths and legends interacting with the human world, this book is the cold danger of superstition and the devastating affect of folklore used as an explanation for life's ills. Set in 1820's rural Ireland, Nora is widowed and left with the care of her young disabled grandson Michael, believed to be a changeling. The local wise woman Nance, who feels the touch of "the good people" sets about to drive out the fairy from the child, believing that the "real" Michael will return, much to the growing dread of Mary, the teenage girl Nora has hired to care for him.

Here fairies are seen as a malevolent force, "sweeping" away women and children, causing bad harvests, and bringing death to the village - to be respected and feared. And then there's Nance, bartering traditional cures for ailments and troubles - some work, some do not, and some pose great danger. On the other hand, this is a remote village where a doctor must be fetched from Killarney, and only one priest who is less than charitable. Neither provide any help or support to Nora.

SPOILERS It's an upsetting read dealing with dark subject matter - grief trauma, child abuse and accidental infanticide, a kind of slow burn horror. If it takes a village to to raise a child, it also takes one to kill a child, as mounting fear and superstition moves through the population like a contagion, heightening Nora's desperation for the "return" of her grandson, and Nance's to prove her knowledge. It's an impeccably researched novel (based in part on a true event) but very unsettling - poor Michael is never really given humanity, and I feel this book would be hugely triggering in its depiction of disability and neurodivergence.

Watching

The Secret of Kells/Song of the Sea/Wolfwalkers (dir. Tom Moore) - I've been meaning to watch these films for absolutely ages, and I finally got to them this month. I’m pleased to say that the many people who recommended them to me were absolutely correct, because they appear to have been made to specifically cater to my interests. Some mild spoilers ahead.

I watched these in internal chronological order as suggested by @ravenya003, starting with The Secret of Kells, set in 9th Century Ireland where the young monk Brendan helps illuminate the to-be famous manuscript and befriends a forest sprite Aisling, under the threat of a Viking raid. Next was Wolfwalkers, jumping forward to 1650 Kilkenny where the English girl Robyn, daughter of a hunter, is drawn into the world of the forest and Mebh, who turns into a wolf when she sleeps. And finally we go all the way to 1980's in Song of the Sea for the story of Ben, who must help his younger sister Saoirse (a selkie) find her voice and bring back the faeries who have been turned to stone by the owl witch Macha.

Although the stories are completely separate, they've been described as Moore's "Irish Folklore" trilogy, and it’s easy to read a through line from Kells to Wolfwalkers in particular - both deal with fae of the forest, and Aisling appears as a white wolf at the end of the film (having lost her ability to appear in human form). I like to think that Aisling is in some way the progenitor of the wolfwalkers - after all, Kells and Kilkenny are less than 200 kms apart.

Song of the Sea is distant from the other two in both time and subject matter, dealing with selkies, creatures of the water. In many ways, Kells and Wolfwalkers feels like a duology, with Song more its own thing. On the other hand, an argument could be made for common fae spirit/s in different forms across all three films - Aisling is a white sprite, Robyn takes the form of a white/grey wolf, and Saoirse a white seal.

The strength of these films other than the folklore is the visual style - I really love 2D animation, and while I appreciate the beauty of cg animation, I often find in the latter’s focus on hyper-realism the artistry can be left by the wayside. These films not just aesthetically beautiful, but the art is used to tell the story - from the sharp angles that represent the darker or harmful elements (Crom, Vikings, the Town), to the circles and rings that represent safety and harmony (the Abbey, the forest, Mebh and her mother/the wolves healing circle, the holy well). The exception is probably the home of Macha, the owl witch, where circles are also prominent and represent magic, and this is often the case in folklore (fairy rings, fairy forts, etc).

Kells is the most stylised, resembling tapestries or pages and triptychs from medieval manuscripts, playing with perspective. I actually saw pages from the real Book of Kells years ago in Dublin, and remember them being very beautiful. We only get glimpses of the Book and the stunning Chi Rho page at the very end of the film, but the style of art is present throughout the film and particularly in the forest where Brendan finds inspiration for his illumination, and on the flipside his encounter in the dark with Crom Cruach, represented as a chalk-drawn primordial serpent.

This style is also present in Wolfwalkers, particularly stark in the way the birds-eye grid of the town often looms over Robyn in the background and in her work at the castle. The depiction of the forest has more of a storybook quality however, as does Song, where almost every frame resembles a painting, particularly the sequences of Saoirse's selkie trip through the sea and Ben's fall through the holy well.

Rav points out in her review that there is the ebbing away of myth and magic in each successive film, contrasted with the rise of Christianity/modernity. But there's circles and rings again, because while the ultimate power of the faerie world is fading away, the interaction between our human protagonists and faerie actually increases with each film. In Kells, we have only Aisling and Crom, in Wolkwalkers, we have Mebh and her mother whose ranks grow to include Robyn and her father, and finally in Song we have Saoirse, Bronagh, Macha, the Na Daoine Sídhe, and the Great Seanachaí.

Watching in the order I did, it does give the impression of the mythological world opening up to the viewer, gaining a deeper understanding and exposure as time progressed. On the other hand, that is also because the human world is gradually encroaching on the world of Faerie, from isolated settlements like the Abbey of Kells, to growing town of Kilkenny and the logging of the surrounding forest, to a modern Ireland of motorways and power lines, and industrialised Dublin where the remaining fairies have moved underground. It makes the climax of Song, with the fairies restored but returning to the land of Tír na nÓg, rather bittersweet.

I also credit the strength of the voice acting - the adult roles are minor but with greats including the dulcet tones of Brendan Gleeson and Sean Bean, and the ethereal Maria Doyle Kennedy (who I wish had gotten to do more). But the child roles are all performed so well, particularly Honor Kneafsey as Robyn, whose growing desperation and distress is just heartbreakingly palpable.

The Matrix Trilogy (dir. The Wachowskis) - I usually don't post rewatches in the Roundup, but I really, really love these movies. I will never forget seeing The Matrix at the cinema as a young teen, knowing nothing other than the tease of the enigmatic trailers, and just being completely blown away by it, and then becoming completely obsessed a few years later in the leadup to Reloaded.

It wasn’t my first fandom, but it was probably the first time I took fandom seriously. I was very invested in Neo/Trinity in particular as well as all the mythological/literary references that fed directly into my interests. I haven’t however gone back and read the fic I wrote, for fear that it is very, very cringe. I know where is is though, so maybe one day before the ff.net is purged.

This is Keanu Reeves at his most handsome, and while he doesn't have the greatest range (as many actors don't, although they don't get as much grief for it), when he's in the zone there's no one else who could do it better. He just has a Presence, you know? A vibe, and it compels me.

This is particularly present in Neo, a character whose conflict is almost entirely internal, burdened by the weight of his responsibility and destiny, both before and after he learns it is a false prophesy. He’s not your typical quippy macho action hero, but much like my other fave Luke Skywalker, is a character who is ultimately driven by love and self-sacrifice. I definitely have a Type of male hero I adore, and Neo fits right in there.

I also really love the sequels, flaws and all, because you know what, the Wachowskis had Ideas and they weren't going to deliver Matrix 2: Electric Boogaloo. Each film goes in an unexpected direction, and not in a subverted expectations ha ha silly rabbits way, but one that does have an internal logic and pulls together a cohesive trilogy as a whole, and how often does that happen these days?

The sequels are so…earnest, with none of the cynical cool detachment perhaps some would have preferred - at its core a trilogy exploring philosophy and the nature of prophesy vs choice, determinism vs free will, and the power of love. Maybe it can be hokey, and some of the dialogue a bit overwritten, but I don't care, there's so much I still enjoy even having seen the trilogy many times over the years.

Not to mention the great female characters - while I'm not sure any of the three strictly passes the Bechdel Test, we have Trinity and Niobe in particular who I love with all my heart. It does kind of annoy me that the Trinity Syndrome is so named, because it only applies in the most reductive reading possible, and Trinity expresses agency (and badassery) every step of the way, saving Neo just as much as he saves her. I mean..."dodge this"/"in five minutes I'll tear that whole goddamn building down"/"believe it"? Niobe piloting the Hammer through the mechanical line in Revolutions? Iconic. There are criticisms that can be made, sure, but the trilogy ultimately loves, respects, and appreciates its female characters (and important to note that the avatars of The System, the Architect and the Agents, are all white men).

Then we have the Oracle, who ultimately holds the most power and is the victor of the human/machine war. There's so much going on with the Oracle I could talk about it all day. It's that fate vs free will question again (“if you already know, how can I make a choice?”), but with the wrinkle of manipulation (“would you still have broken it if I hadn’t said anything?”). Choice is the foundation the Matrix is built on, the unconscious choice for humans to accept the system or reject it - the Architect can't control that, he can only manage it, and the Oracle can't force Neo onto the path she has set out for him, only predict the choices he will make based on her study of the human psyche ("did you always know?"/"No...but I believed"). But she plays with the concept of fate in a complicated web of prophesies for outcome she wants and trusting the nature of Morpheus, Trinity, and Neo to bring it about.

And then there's the visual storytelling - there is so much meaning in almost every frame and line of dialogue. The mirroring and ring cycles not only in the constant presence of reflective surfaces and central metaphor of the Matrix as a simulacrum, but the androgyny of Neo and Trinity, bringing each other back from the dead in successive films (and ultimately both ultimately dying in the third), Neo and Morpheus’ first and last meetings, Smith who is ultimately Neo’s dark mirror, the Oracle/the Architect, just to name a few. I just…really really love these movies? Maybe I’ll do a full post rewatch sometime.

I am however reserving judgement on the Matrix 4 - already there are a few things making me uneasy. Lana is the sole director for this one (Lilly is not involved), and Laurence Fishburne apparently wasn't even asked back, even though Morpheus actually survives the trilogy (as opposed to Neo and Trinity). But I’m interested, and don’t want to go in with any expectations, but rather ready to be surprised again like I was when I watched the first film (and hope I can stay away from spoilers).

John Wick Trilogy (dir. Chad Stahelski) - It was a trilogy kind of month! This genre is generally not my thing, as I don’t have a high tolerance for graphic violence and pure action bores me after a while, but I was in a Keanu kind of mood and I'm always hearing people go on about John Wick so I wanted to know what (if anything) I was missing. While still a bit too violent for my tastes, if nothing else I could appreciate the dance-like fight choreography, even if the worldbuulding is absolutely ridiculous - I mean, literally thousands of assassins across the world chilling in sanctuary hotels, supported by a vast network of weapon suppliers, tailors, surgeons, spy networks, etc? It’s silly, but hey, I was happy to go along with it.

What I do appreciate about Keanu Reeves, and this seems to be a common thread, is that even when in action hero mode (Matrix, Point Break, John Wick, and to a lesser extent Speed), he consistently plays a man who is completely in love with his partner/wife - like, completely, unapologetically devoted to them, and I think that is a big part of the appeal - it's that Keanu energy that is often the antithesis of toxic masculinity, even when in roles that would ordinarily rely on those tropes.

Wick is in many ways the spiritual successor to Neo - insular, taciturn, and even as he's dispatching death with clinical precision. Much like Neo, Wick is a character who is somehow Soft (tm) despite all the violence. I once listened to a podcast where they amusingly discussed the Reeves oeuvre as simulations of Neo still trapped in the Matrix, and it’s very easy to make the case here and imagine John Wick as Neo plugged back in after Revolutions, mourning Trinity and set on mission after mission to keep his mind active (and it would certainly explain why the guy hasn’t dropped dead after being stabbed, beaten up, strangled, hit by a car, shot, and falling off a building). It’s a fun little theory.

Stahelski was Reeves' stunt double and a stunt coordinator on The Matrix and there's plenty of homages in the visual style and reuniting Reeves with costars Laurence Fishburne and Randall Duk Kim (who played the Keymaker).

I did also find it amusing that Wick is also often referred to as babayaga (equated in the film to the bogeyman). Well, Wick is in many ways a witch who lives in the woods, just wanting to be left alone with his dog, and there is a supernatural energy to the character, so...I guess?

Space Jam: A New Legacy (dir. Malcolm D Lee) - I took my niece to see this at the cinema and it was…pretty much what you would expect. I thought it was fine for what it was, even if a bit slow in parts (it takes a looong time for the looneys to show up) and I wonder if they have the same cultural pull they had in the nineties (the age of Tweety Bird supremacy). But the kids seemed into it (my niece liked porky pig) and that's what counts I guess.

This time, the toon battle royale takes place on the WB servers, where evil A.I. Don Cheadle (having the time of his life chewing the cg scenery) wants to capture Lebron James for...reasons, idk. James and Bugs have to find the rest of the looneys scattered across the server-verse, a chance for WB to desperately remind people that they too, have media properties and a multiverse including DC comics world, Harry Potter world, Matrix world, Mad Max world, Casablanca world etc. Some of it feels very dated - there is I kid you not an Austin Powers reference, although it did make me smile that Trinity was on James’ list of most wanted players (skill: agility).

Unfortunately, nothing it really done with this multiverse concept except “hey, remember this movie? Now with looneys” six times, and the crowd for the game populated by WB denizens including the Iron Giant, Pennywise, the monkeys from the Wizard of Oz, Scooby Doo and the gang, etc. But still, it's fun, and hardly the tarnishing of a legacy or whatever nonsense is driving youtube clicks these days.

Writing

The Lady of the Lake - 2335 words.

Against the Dying of the Light - 2927 words, Chapter 13 posted.

Total: 5272 this month, 38,488 this year.

#roundup #reading watching writing #long post

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