#its also just hard to get the right tension on the warp without an actual loom i feel

[necrowizard]

took me like an hour to set up and i immediately fucked it. but my grandfather made me some wooden cards so next time should be better and easier to handle

[delimeful]

nothing in this world (i wouldn’t do) (2)

warnings: mild blood/violence/injury, demon slaying, miscommunication, impromptu first aid, mentions of spiders, virgil tempting fate with his internal dialogue again

-

Whenever Virgil wasn’t sleeping, he was on the move.

At first, it had been because he didn’t trust himself around towns for too long, and there was always the chance of a real demon slayer getting wind of that ridiculous rumor and trying to track him down and kill him for it, even though it totally wasn’t his fault.

But then, as time went on, his bizarre pseudo-popularity seemed to have a different side effect.

Namely, every time he managed to save another human and hauled them back to the nearest town, he’d be practically swarmed. Antsy townsfolk would hurriedly inform him of the horrible tragedy they’d heard about up north, or the mysterious disappearances by the woods between this town and the neighboring one, or any sort of rumor that they thought a “demon slayer” should know about.

Where exactly were all the real demon slayers when people needed them? Why was he, an actual demon, seemingly more accessible for seeking help?!

Still, he wasn’t exactly doing anything else with his life (his unlife?), and if there were less demons, that meant the world would be safer for Thomas, didn’t it? So off he went, taking the less-traveled paths and following vague leads right into more danger.

His latest case had been a requested one, from a weaver in the last town. She had received a letter from her brother saying that he planned to come visit, and weeks later, he still hadn’t appeared or replied to her many return messages. The worry seemed to weigh her down like a physical burden, and he’d agreed perhaps more easily than normal.

Now, he was wedged into a shallow crevice in the mountainside and sorely regretting that decision.

The issue wasn’t the demon, no. He’d actually been making good progress on getting deeper and deeper into its territory in the past few days.

The issue was that he wasn’t the only one hunting it.

First, it had been a gaggle of young teens, and he’d been so alarmed that he’d almost dropped right out of the trees and ushered them back out of the woods. The less humans traipsing around this deep in demon territory, the better.

Of course, that was when he’d managed to spot the swords strapped to their sides, and suddenly, never appearing before a human again was looking more and more appealing. He’d immediately switched gears from tracking to stealth, and honestly, should have just turned tail and left then.

Instead, because those kids were around Thomas’s age and he still needed to find that weaver’s brother and also he was a sentimental idiot, he trailed them at a distance, always staying downwind and poised to bolt.

They handled themselves well at the beginning, and then the environment began to warp around them, and then it turned out there was more than one demon nesting here, and Virgil had been on the brink of jumping down and interfering, swords or no swords, when--

Between one blink and the next, one of the demons was cleanly beheaded.

The demon slayer-- for what else could he be-- smiled brilliantly as the body disintegrated to ash, holding a hand out to help one of the teens to their feet.

“It seemed like you all could use a little assistance,” he’d said, turning to face one of the other demons with a confidence that visibly unsettled it. Above, a circling crow cried out raspily. “My dear Missus informed me of your call for backup.”

If the stranger’s swift execution hadn’t tipped Virgil off, the way the baby slayers looked up at him with blatant awe was clue enough. This slayer was powerful and charismatic, whereas Virgil was neither of those things, so he was going to stay right here in his crevice until the whole situation had sorted itself out.

The three other demons seemed to have no such qualms, lunging at him in a semi-coordinated attack. The slayer handled them with terrifying ease, and for a moment it seemed that the battle had been settled, as simple as that.

Of course, that was when the landscape twisted further in on itself, buzzing like a disturbed wasps nest, and Virgil realized abruptly that this was the first time he’d seen so many feral, newly-created demons in one territory.

A stronger demon was keeping them all in line, like the queen of a hive. And it wasn’t at all pleased about the intrusion.

The slayer seemed to have caught on as well, his sword held aloft in threat. “Looks like the real fight starts now,” he said with a sharp, cocky grin.

Mere minutes later, the smile had grown considerably more strained.

Coincidentally, he’d taken considerably more damage in that time as well.

The slayer had given as good as he got, but against a demon’s healing factor, it wasn’t good enough. He was losing.

“Get out of here!” he instructed, and the baby slayers hesitated, clearly torn. He shot them a dazzling grin, hiding all signs of fatigue even as another blow rattled his sword. “Come now, don’t you know an order when you hear one? I don’t want any distractions while I handle this gruesome ghoul, so back to town with you!”

He cut off any further arguments by pointedly leading his attacker astray, giving them ample time to flee. Virgil felt some of the tension fade from him as the baby slayers got away cleanly, leaving just the slayer and the queen.

Really, he shouldn’t want the slayer to survive. Not when having a slayer that strong anywhere near him, or even in the same country as him, could easily be a death sentence. That didn’t change the jolt of panic that went through him when the queen finally gained the upper hand, knocking the slayer back into sheer cliff face hard enough to snap something.

… A slayer that protected others from demons so wholeheartedly was one that would protect Thomas.

The queen advanced towards the slayer, wounded and weakened but already gloating about how his flesh would be more than enough to completely rejuvenate her. Her entire focus was on the human’s fallen form.

Virgil dropped down on top of her soundlessly, claws piercing through muscle and fat until he’d torn her nearly clear in half. She shrieked in outrage, but a skull-crushing stomp was enough to knock her unconscious for at least a few moments.

The slayer, exhausted, half-crumpled against a tree, and his shoulder very clearly dislocated, looked up at him for a moment with something like hope.

When they met eyes, however, that was swiftly extinguished in favor of wary frustration.

“Another demon?” he complained, trying rather unsubtly to grasp for the sword that the queen had knocked free of him. “Exactly how many monsters can one fit on a single mountain?”

The sword was entirely out of reach, but Virgil kicked it a little further away for good measure. The slayer shot him a petulant glare.

Virgil pointed at a scrap of bloodied cloth left behind from one of the baby slayers, trying out a questioning rumble. Backup coming for you?

“I’m offended that you think I would answer that,” the slayer responded, nose upturned, “or any other monosyllabic interrogative questions, for that matter.��

Virgil growled low in his throat, frustration bubbling up. If he ditched the slayer here without backup, there was no guarantee that someone would find him before the morning came, and Virgil was relatively sure that the demon he’d just stabbed through wasn’t the only threat up here.

Not to mention the cold. He hadn’t thought the nights were cold enough to harm people yet, but demons seemed a lot more durable, and the slayer was shaking just slightly. He remembered the few times he’d had to sit out snowstorms while traveling back home up the mountain, and couldn’t help but feel sympathetic.

So, leaving the slayer behind to fend for himself wasn’t an option. That meant doing something insanely, dangerously stupid: taking the guy with him.

Precautions first, then. He was pretty good at hiding himself from other demons by now, but human scents were a lot more trackable.

Virgil scooped the slayer sword up off the ground by the hilt, grimacing at the burning sensation it emitted. The slayer’s jaw dropped.

“Hey! You can’t just take that!” he cried indignantly, starting off on a tirade about craftsmanship and integrity. His rant cut off sharply as Virgil raised the sword and brought it down on the queen’s neck.

His motions were stilted compared to anyone who actually knew how to use a sword, but it hardly mattered. The sun-blade cut through easily, decapitating her in one motion and leaving only ash behind. He took a moment to hope for the soul of whoever she’d been before being turned, and a longer moment for the weaver’s brother, who was surely dead. Exhaling lowly, he planted the sword blade-first in the dirt.

It was tempting to keep it; he’d certainly wished more than once for an easier way to deal with his adversaries than the bloody scraps he normally got in, but there was no way he was bringing a demon slayer and a demon killing sword with him. That was just asking for trouble.

“That demon did all the work in an honest fight against me, and yet it’s the backstabber turning against his own kind who actually gets to eat me? That’s sad, even for a demon,” the slayer bit out, still trying to inch his way back up into a standing position.

Virgil ignored his muttering and took a testing breath in through his mouth. The slayer was definitely bloodied, but most of the major injuries mustn’t have broken skin, because the smell wasn’t too bad. It probably helped that he’d managed to avoid being injured in this fight, and so didn’t have a desperate need to heal like normal. If he was lucky, he wouldn’t even need a nap to make up for it.

He reached out for the slayer’s collar, already mentally plotting out the most efficient way to a distant abandoned bear den when a piercing shriek sounded, and his vision was suddenly full of flapping feathers. He staggered a few steps back with a surprised yelp.

“No! Missus Fluffybottom, you beautiful fool!” the slayer cried out, sounding incredibly distraught.

Virgil swatted outwards and managed to catch his furious assailant on the second try, his hand easily big enough to grasp it. He drew it away from his face for inspection, and realized that the screaming and wriggling bundle of fluff was actually a young crow.

“Scourge! Fiend!” the crow yelled at him in a belligerent tone that was uncannily similar to the slayer’s. He blinked down at it, befuddled.

“Wait! Don’t hurt her,” the slayer said in the most subdued voice Virgil had heard from him all evening. He looked up and found that the slayer had managed to climb to his knees, but wasn’t struggling to move further. “She’s a simple bird, no threat to you. You’ve already got your prize, haven’t you?”

There was something uncomfortably desperate in his gaze, and Virgil realized with a start that the slayer absolutely believed he was about to kill his bird in cold blood. He opened his hand, bracing for another assault, but the crow kicked off and flew right to the slayer instead, nestling against his collarbone. “Roman, Roman, Ro-man!” it crooned.

“Get out of here, you finicky little fowl, go! Shoo!” the slayer-- Roman?-- commanded, to no avail. He glanced up at Virgil, lifting his good hand and turning his bad shoulder slightly as though to shield the little creature.

Virgil averted his eyes from the bird, hopefully conveying how much he didn’t care about her. If he had enough self control to not murder-kill people despite it being all monsters like him wanted to do, he wasn’t going to snap because a bird the size of his palm repeated some swears in his direction.

Back to business. He grabbed the back of the slayer’s outfit and pulled, hauling him up onto one shoulder like a sack of potatoes. … Or like a sack of other, non-food items. Virgil sighed through his nose. Whatever.

Roman sucked a breath in through his teeth as his injuries were jostled, and then immediately started squawking in protest upon realizing the indignity of his position. The crow-- apparently dubbed Fluffybottom-- repositioned herself to a perch on Roman’s calf and joined in on the complaints with her own raspy calls.

Virgil ignored them, already focusing on the trek ahead.

---

By the time they reached the cave, Roman had long stopped muttering creative obscenities under his breath.

The slayer might have actually fallen unconscious, but Virgil wasn’t going to jostle him around just to check. If he stopped focusing on their surroundings, he could easily hear Roman’s heart beating, the blood pumping beneath his skin, tantalizingly out of reach--

… He had mostly focused very hard on their surroundings. The point was, the slayer was definitely still alive, which meant him passing out during their travel was fine. Convenient, even.

It certainly made it easier to squat and carefully lower his body onto the cave floor without worrying about any sudden thrashing on Roman’s part. Laying flat on his back with only the slightest crumple to his brow, the guy looked a lot less intimidating. He was probably Virgil’s age, honestly.

He also looked unsettlingly corpse-like at the moment. Virgil considered for a moment, and then sidled over to Roman’s side, tugging his injured arm out of the curled up position it had taken. He carefully maneuvered it until it was straight out, forming a right angle with Roman’s side.

Then, he pulled, applying a slow, steady pressure. The misaligned bone shifted back into place with a sickening clunk, and Roman cried out as he regained consciousness. Virgil released him, and he instantly cradled the limb to his chest.

“What in the name of--,” he started, and then seemed to remember it all at once. Or the wave of pain from all those other injuries hit him all at once. One of the two.

Either way, he sagged back against the ground, squinting at Virgil suspiciously as he bustled around the small space. Missus Fluffybottom landed on his forehead, making him look even more ridiculous.

“I notice I am not devoured,” he finally spoke, almost conversational.

Virgil ignored him in favor of moving to arrange some firewood near the mouth of the cave.

“Not even a teensy bit,” Roman continued, making a show of inspecting himself for missing flesh.

Virgil continued to stack rocks around the wood. He was beginning to regret waking the slayer up, dislocated shoulder or not.

“Now, my silent saboteur, I want you to be honest. Are you planning to turn me into some sort of spider?” the slayer asked, and that was enough to finally make Virgil turn with an incredulous raised eyebrow.

“What?” Roman defended, pinkening. “That’s a real thing that a demon did to some people! And you seem... spider-y.”

Virgil scowled at the insulting way the comment was phrased. Spiders were cool and helpful and oh yeah, they didn’t annoyingly needle him while he was busy keeping them alive. He abandoned the fire to stalk closer and drop to a squat by Roman’s legs, dodging a wild kick easily. He pointedly tore a long swath of white fabric from the slayer’s overlayer.

“Hey! Do you even know how long embroidery like that takes--,” Roman cried, and Virgil smacked a hand over his mouth, drawing close and hissing quietly. The sound was close enough to a shush to get his point across, going by the way the slayer huffed indignantly but didn’t speak when Virgil pulled his hand away.

He did whine in protest when Virgil grabbed his injured arm, but then he went still and silent, like he thought any sudden movements would end with the whole limb removed. Virgil wrapped his forearm in the fabric, and then looped the extra around his shoulder, maneuvering him as painlessly as possible, and tied it off.

Roman’s silence suddenly felt distinctly different.

Virgil pulled him up into a sitting position by the front of his shirt, and tightened the knot slightly. The sling looked just about as good as could be expected, given the circumstances.

“You are actually a demon, aren’t you?”

Speech was one of those human things that Virgil still hadn’t recovered, but he thought that the sarcastic fang-bearing smile he directed at Roman spoke volumes all on its own.

“Then why are you tenderly nursing a demon slayer back to health?” he retorted, sounding bewildered and incredulous in equal measures.

Why are you pushing your luck? Virgil thought back, clicking his teeth in irritation and shoving the slayer back into a prone position.

Roman let out a high pitched wheeze, his good arm coming to cradle his ribs defensively. “Or not-so-tenderly, I suppose. The question stands!”

Virgil rolled his eyes and returned to the half-built fire. He’d pestered the only doctor in town for first aid lessons for months, he wasn’t going to stop practicing medicine just because of a little thing like being turned into a demon that craved human flesh.

To his surprise, the silence lingered as he worked, long enough that he turned and cast a suspicious glare over his shoulder at the slayer, who jolted nervously at his attention.

“Wh-what?” he asked, fiddling with the torn edges of his sling. “No escape attempts here, haha!”

“...” Virgil squinted at him and his blatant fake laugh for a long moment, trying to figure out just what was wrong with the scene.

Wait. Where was the bird?

A chill ran down his spine, and he twisted to stare at the mountainside beyond the cave entrance. No raspy-voiced baby crows in sight.

It had to have gone for help, knowing exactly where Virgil and its slayer had holed up. Roman knew he’d realized it, was watching him with the wary expectancy of a cornered hare in front of a trapper.

A surge of furious panic did bubble up in the back of Virgil’s mind, but he quelled it with relative ease.

If backup was coming, then the human was no longer his problem.

Pleased at the neat way the situation had resolved itself, Virgil tapped two fingers to his temple in a gesture of farewell and scrambled out the cave, scaling the cliff face and resolving to put as much distance between himself and this region as possible.

With any luck, he’d never run into that particular slayer again.

[sadachmesarthim]

towers for your honeycomb chapter 3: no i do not condone underage drinking i just think it's a good plot devic-

content: the boys have One Beer Each™, peter both sets and completely ignores his own boundaries, author remembers the communion chapter from "how to read literature like a professor" and bastardizes it, both of them have anxiety but neither say anything about it, smoking

words: 2k     song: outskirts of paradise - bad suns     

Looking Tony in the eye was like staring at the sun. Peter could barely hold his gaze, always finding an excuse to turn away.

He was sat in front of the other man a few weeks later, sharing drinks and pizza at a new brewery down the road. It’d cost him his liquor license, and potentially a clean record, if anyone found out, but Richie (their most beloved regular) offered to let the pair try the latest house brew if they ever swung through.

Peter wasn’t one for beer, but he’d accepted Tony’s invite anyway.

He wasn’t entirely sure why. Since their fight, they’d worked all of maybe three hours together. No other shifts, they avoided each other at meetings, and neither were particularly willing to reach out off the clock and apologize.

It was like the world was screaming at them to stay away from each other.

Peter wasn’t sure he wanted to listen.

After his shift that morning, Peter found Tony outside, leaning up against the hood of his car & working through his second cigarette. He drummed on the side of his thigh, keeping his empty hand busy as he waited for Peter to come out. Tony jumped at the sight of him, tossing the half finished cig down a storm drain.

“You know those lead straight to the ocean, right?” There was more amusement than anger behind his words. Peter wasn’t entirely sure what Tony was up to, but he was too tired to start shit. He crossed to the passenger side of his car, tossing his belongings to the floor.

“Even if it didn’t go through the city’s filtration system – fuck the fish.” Peter rolled his eyes. Funny as he was, Tony always had to be contradictory.

“Don’t you have, like, a school of them on your shoulder?” Tony’s normally visible salmon tattoos were safely tucked away behind a denim jacket Peter’d never seen before.

“Irrelevant.” Peter rounded the hood and turned, facing the other man. “Did you need something or were you just here to argue about my town’s plumbing system?” He huffed the words out, arms crossing in front of his chest expectantly.

“I, uh…” He suddenly went silent. The ground crunched under Tony’s feet, gravel scraping asphalt under his shoes. They were a rattier pair he owned – more tape than sole, oil staining the canvas.

“I wanted to know if you’d come to lunch with me. Today. Like, right now?” He hesitated at the last few words, like he wasn’t sure he could say them out loud. “I, uh. I’m pretty sure I have some things to say to you, and Richie’s got some good stuff waiting for us at the Pub House…”

Peter was astounded. “Who are you, and what have you done with my Tony?” My Tony? What? “I- why should I trust you? I’m sure as hell not getting in a car with you.”

Tony’s face fell. A bit of- what, disappointment? flew across his face. Peter would’ve missed it had he not been staring, impatient for his answer. Tony, floundering at the rejection, couldn’t give him one.

“Okay, maybe- how about this. I’ll think about it. Give me five minutes to go wash up and I’ll be back.” He turned & headed inside, not waiting for a response.

The cool water felt good against his burning, salt-stained cheeks. Peter hadn’t realized just how tired he was – opens had always taken it out of him, and the early spring temperatures didn’t always prevent the stand from turning into a heater during rush hour.

The soap in the stand was always too fragrant for his taste, but it did the job – it felt good to wash away the day’s work and come back looking like a new man. He smoothed his eyebrows down and dried himself off, wetting his hair a bit as he finished.

He wound up with grind in it again, brushing it out with a comb he found in the first aid kit. One of these days he was going to have to start wearing hats to work. Shampooing his hair every single day was taking its toll on his curls, and he wasn’t a fan of burnt coffee smell.

Stepping back, he squinted into the warped mirror in front of him. Much better.

Back outside, Tony’d lit up his third cigarette of the day. The shakes’d largely abandoned him, allowing his anxiety to drift inward. The sticks only did so much – he missed the higher, stronger hit of his Suorin, but he was trying to quit (ironically enough).

He was actually able to finish this one by the time Peter made his way back outside, looking significantly better without $5 worth of product on his face.

“Okay, some rules.” He came up, stopping just short of Tony. “You’re paying for both of us. We leave whenever I want, without complaint. We go straight there and come straight back - it’s eight blocks, I don’t want any bullshit scenic routes.” His tone was firm – something Tony’d never encountered with him before. 

“Yes. Yes, anything. Okay.” 

Tony’s car was a lot nicer than Peter anticipated. He’d recently sold his truck, swapping it for a silver Mini Cooper instead. It was a pretty little thing, just up his alley.

It was also fucking obnoxious. He’d bought it with a modified exhaust and had plans to make it even louder. You could almost always hear him coming, little pop pop pops audible for quite a ways. 

It was… less clean than Peter expected. Tony was always so well put together, so well-maintained - seeing stray gum wrappers and drink cups littered around the interior was almost jarring. He didn’t realize he was staring until Tony spoke up. 

“She’s nice, isn’t she?” Peter nodded. He silently took in his new surroundings, nerves on fire. He’d never done well around strangers, in new places. His mind’d always screamed at him, danger unsafe bad run, overriding his sensibilities.

“Hey, are you good? I can take you back if you need.” They’d barely left the Outback parking lot. 

“No- no, I think I’ll be okay. Just… not where I thought I’d end up when I woke up today, y’know?” Peter tried to laugh it off, but he’d always been pretty transparent. 

Tony turned a corner, cutting back into the lot they just came from and turning the car off. “Seriously, Peter. If you don’t want to come to lunch with me just say so. I’ll take you back to your car and we can pretend it never happened.” Okay, seriously, who the fuck is this guy and what did he do with Tony?

“No, I- I think I’m okay. Seriously. Let’s just go and get it over with - I kinda want to hear you grovel anyway.” He settled further into his seat, failing to shake away the agitation. 

The flatbread was actually really good. It was more of a hipster take on pizza - white sauce and pearl onions definitely making it stand out - but it wasn’t a bad lunch by any means. 

The beer definitely wasn’t Peter’s favorite. He was barely sipping by, trying hard to keep a straight face as he swallowed. Damn Richie anyway. 

It’d started off awkward enough - discussing where to sit, small talk about their week, the weather. It felt more like a bad first date than an apology, but- 

“I really am sorry. For what happened in the fridge.” 

Oh. 

“Okay. Why?” Peter tightened the hand around his glass, bracing for Tony’s next words. 

“I.. I was kind of an asshole when I was younger, too. I figured I could make a fresh start here with a brand new town of people that didn’t know or assume anything about me.

“I was doing okay for a little while, too, but I don’t know man I just.. something happened and I just- I don’t know why I’m a dick to you. But I’m trying not to be. This is that, like, ‘first step’, I guess?” Peter nodded along, attentive. 

"So, I don't know. I'm sorry for being a dick to you at work. I'm sorry for being a dick to the girls. I shouldn't yell at you or drag your family into this bullshit - I'm sorry, Peter."

There it was again, that name. His first fucking name. 

“I- thank you, Tony. It’s a start, and I certainly haven’t forgiven you, but… thank you. Seriously.” Tony sighed, shoulders visibly relaxing. Peter let go of his glass and wiped it off, standing and walking around to Tony’s side of the table. 

“Okay then, time for a do-over! Hi, I’m Peter Parker. I’m 19 and I’ve worked at Outback North Espresso for a little over 9 months. What’s your name?” He stuck his hand out, waiting for Tony to make the next move.  

Tony laughed, pushing his chair back and standing to meet the other teen. “Okay, uh, I’m Tony Stark, I’m 18, and I’ve worked at Outback for almost 6. Nice to re-meet you, Peter.” He shook Peter’s hand, awestruck at just how soft it was. He quickly steeled his face and sat back down, releasing Peter and allowing him to do the same. 

Once he was sat back down at his side, Peter looked up, confused. “Wait, you’re still 18?” 

Tony laughed. “Not for long. My birthday’s at the end of next month.” 

“Wow, I can’t believe I’m older than you!” 

Tony rolled his eyes. “That’s - it’s literally three months, that barely counts.” 

Their debate lasted well into the afternoon, alongside several other discussions. Peter’s childhood in Richland, and what it was like growing up there. What Federal Way was like, and why Tony left. Peter could tell he was remaining intentionally vague, but didn’t push it. 

Their beers were warm and the pizza was long gone by the time they abandoned their table. Tony guided him out the back, hand high on his arm. 

Once they were back in the car, Peter’s anxiety returned. It was like he’d spent the last few hours speaking to a completely different person, and now that he was sitting mere inches from Tony… 

He wasn’t scared. He wasn’t. He wasn’t… sure, exactly. What it was. 

Tony spoke up when he noticed the tension in his passenger seat. 

“Hey, we’ll get you back to your car soon, I promise. Eight blocks, remember?” His right hand made its way to Peter’s knee, digging soft circles into the denim. Just like in the fridge.

“Please don’t- don’t touch me. Without asking.” It came out harsher than intended. 

“Okay, all good. No worries. We’re like, two minutes away.” Tony eased off the clutch, turning right out of the parking lot and onto the road. The windows rolled down and Peter let his head fall back in relief. Fresh air always helped him clear his head. 

It really was a short drive - right turn, left turn, right turn - and they were back at Peter’s car. The doors unlocked, and he was out in an instant. A bit too fast to be respectful, if he was being honest, but he knew he needed out. Tony stopped him before he was able to get in his car. 

“Hey, for real. Thank you for today. I’m sorry if it was too much.” 

Peter looked over and down to meet his eyes. “I- yeah, of course. No, yeah, thank you. For the apology. I’m sorry I freaked out on you. But no this- it was good. Yeah. Thank you, Tony.” 

He turned, unlocking the door and closing it before either could say anything else. After turning the key he sped off, without throwing even a glance behind him. 

Tony watched as Peter peeled away, reaching for the box of Pall Malls in his cupholder. He lit one, shifting into first and heading in the opposite direction. 

Not bad. Not good, but not bad. 

lmk if u want on or off the tags list!

@snowstark @kaleidoscopeluli @parkerrbitch @carelessannie​ @bluestarker​ @longlivestarker​ 

[homeformyheart]

prepared - adam du mortain x f!detective (twc)

day 25 – regret

author’s note: this outline was 2 pages long from weeks ago and i’m so glad i was able to figure out a non-angsty response to this one. thanks so much for the request, @agentnolastname​​. this ended up being a full fic pretty much, i hope you all enjoy!

copyright: all characters, except my oc detective, are owned by mishka jenkins @seraphinitegames​​. series/pairing: the wayhaven chronicles – adam du mortain x f!detective (regina bishop) rating/warnings: 16+; suggestive imagery word count: ~2k based on/prompt: day 25 – regret from #28dateswithunitbravo challenge by @wayhavenmonthly​​ summary: after a heated night where adam panicked, regina is left confused and hurt.

prepared

regina walked into the living room, smiling at the sight of adam reading quietly on the couch, on one of their rare days off. they had implicitly agreed to explore things between them, and she was both excited and terrified. more often the former than the latter these days, especially when he was like this, relaxed and willing to stay in her company.

“you’re staring,” he murmured, without looking up and turning the page of his book.

she tried to suppress her giddy smile as she bounced over to him, standing in front of him and casting a shadow over his book until he was forced to look up at her. she reached down and removed the book from his hands, carefully placing it on the seat next to him. he looked at her quizzically, the raised eyebrow dropping to meet the other as she placed her hands on his shoulders before settling her knees on either side of his thighs.

she sat down, comfortably seated on his thighs and wrapped her arms around his neck.

“how can i not stare at you?” she said with a soft smile. “you’re gorgeous.”

the corner of his lips quirked up into a smile against his will. “how could i possibly compare to you?” he said, delicately placing his hands on her hips.

regina hummed. “i guess you can’t,” she grinned cheekily, sliding slightly closer and watching a faint blush creep up his neck and color his cheeks.

she ran her thumbs along his jaw and tilted his head back, her attention squarely on his lips. her eyes flicked upward hesitantly before she tilted her head down, feeling his pulse quicken and his throat still under her hands as though he was holding his breath. she moved slowly, to give him the space to stop her, but his grip on her hips only tightened slightly. his mouth parted and regina closed the gap between them, closing her eyes at the feel of his soft lips moving against hers and soft moans vibrating between them.

his thumbs slipped under the hem of her shirt, whether consciously or not, she wasn’t sure, but it spurred a desire to be bolder than she usually was with adam in moments like this. her tongue danced with his when his mouth parted again, her hips mirroring the movements. she ground against him, hands moving toward his back and under his shirt, trying to close the nonexistent gap between them.

a low growl escaped adam’s throat and sent a thrill down regina’s spine. she could feel that he was hard even through their clothing and the sensation spurred her on, the room around them fading away as she ground harder and faster against him.

“adam,” she sighed, in-between kisses, moving her hands to slip under his shirt.

he froze at the sound of her voice and pulled away, stilling her hips and shifting her back. regina opened her eyes, stunned and confused, shifting her weight back on his lap.

“hey, it’s okay. it’s just me,” she said softly at the sight of his panicked expression. she moved closer to him again, settling herself against his hips.

he refused to meet her eye, standing abruptly instead, the sudden movement threatening to send her flying off him and onto the floor. his arms wrapped around her back and he set her on her feet before turning and walking toward the hallway.

“i’m—i’m sorry,” he said quickly, turning his face toward her without making eye contact before disappearing from the room.

what just happened? regina wondered, collapsing against the couch and wrapping her arms around her knees. maybe she had pushed him too quickly? the nature and state of their relationship was still a question mark, but she had thought they were making progress. maybe their relationship wasn’t meant to get physical.

or maybe it was just her. tears started prickling behind her eyes as she desperately tried to push away her deep-rooted insecurity trying to claw its way to the surface and drown her from the inside.

a few days later, at the police station

adam looked at the station doors from behind a nearby tree, internally warring with himself as to whether it was really the best time to talk about what happened a few nights ago. he certainly never pictured himself wanting to have a personal conversation about their relationship while regina was on duty, but the thought that she may have been left with the wrong impression about his intentions toward her didn’t sit well with him.

his shoulders tensed at the sudden sound of someone whistling near the station. he peeked around the tree, only to clench his jaw at the sight of the nosy reporter making his way into the station. no doubt to bother the detective.

regina sighed as she nudged the stack of paperwork to the edge of her desk with her forearm, pushing her keyboard as far back as it could go so she could rest her forehead on her arms. the last few days hadn’t been easy, between the impromptu agency meetings regarding new supernatural species moving to the area and mediating a territory dispute in the forest. it barely left time for sleep, let alone a chance for her and adam to talk.

if she was being honest, she knew she was avoiding the conversation and welcomed the additional work. but she also knew she couldn’t let this drag on much longer. there was still an awkward tension around them, even though she did her best to remain professional.

“your bodyguard isn’t around today,” bobby’s voice cut through her small office, his face partially obscured by the narrow glass vase in his hands encasing a few red roses.

“he’s not my bodyguard,” she said, rolling her eyes.

“is he your boyfriend?” bobby asked, jealousy clearly marking his features.

regina faltered and looked away. “not exactly, no.”

she could almost hear the smirk that appeared on bobby’s face and looked back at him to find that he had stepped closer to her. “so you’re single, and i’m single, so why don’t i take you out for a nice valentine’s day dinner, like old times? i even got you your favorite flowers.”

she shuddered at the memories of their past valentine’s celebrations together, none of which had been particularly pleasant for her. she eyed the vase as he set it down on the desk in front of her, placing his palms carefully on the wood surface and leaning toward her.

“first of all, those aren’t my favorite flowers. you would know that if you paid attention. and given our history, it’s incredibly bold of you to bring me roses and ask me out on a date,” she said, pursing her lips together to prevent her train of thought (presumptive asshole) from being spoken out loud.

bobby took a step back with a hand over his chest in mock hurt. “you wound me, angel.”

“just get out of here bobby,” she said, gritting her teeth.

“that’s not a no, so i’ll pick you up at seven, angel,” he called out as he headed out of her office.

she came to her senses at the nickname, standing up and rounding her desk quickly. “it’s always going to be a no to you!” she snapped at his retreating back, but he merely waved his hand at her without looking back.

regina let out a frustrated yell, grabbing the vase he had set on her desk and threw it as hard as she could at the far wall, the sound of it shattering and falling to the floor in pieces doing little to release the tension in her shoulders.

adam had waited patiently outside the door to regina’s office, not wanting to interrupt her conversation with the reporter, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t listening to every exchange between them, his grip on the doorknob tightening and warping the metal before he realized and tucked his hand into his pocket instead. he moved swiftly to the side as bobby walked out and glared at him, and it was all adam could to do suppress the urge to knock him unconscious.

he knocked twice and walked in, surveying the room briefly, lingering on the broken vase and scattered flowers before meeting her gaze. “i will not be paying for that,” he said, his mouth curving upward into a gentle smile.

regina couldn’t help but smile and appreciate that he was actually joking with her. “not that i’m complaining, but what are you doing here? i figured you’d be busy today,” she said, moving back to sit on the edge of her desk.

adam’s smile faded and regina noticed his eyes had turned a conflicted green, shifting from an icy green to its usual warm emerald. she wasn’t sure if she had seen him this nervous before; one of the things she appreciated about him was that he didn’t beat around the bush.

he finally looked at her and clasped his hands behind his back. “i wanted to talk about what happened the other night,” he said finally.

a weight settled in her stomach. “oh, right,” she said, swallowing nervously.

“i regret the way i reacted. and you deserve an explanation,” he said softly, stepping closer to her as if that would ease the awkwardness between them.

regina shook her head, trying not to let her disappointment show. “it’s okay, adam. i know we never talked about it, but it’s alright if you’re not interested in anything more physical. i can respect that. and it doesn’t change how i feel about you.”

his eyebrows shot up so quickly that regina thought they might fly off his face. “you are mistaken.”

at the frown on her face, he cleared his throat and followed up quickly, “i am very interested. i was just… unprepared that evening and you deserve… more.”

unprepared? she thought the word choice was odd since it wasn’t like they had planned to do anything physical; she had just gone with her instincts after all. although she vaguely remembered adam telling her once that he hadn’t been with anyone in that way since before he was turned.

understanding dawned on regina’s face. “oh adam, it’s nothing to be embarrassed about, i promise. it happens.”

“still, i want to make sure you are aware of how… receptive i am to progressing our physical relationship as well. in fact, i have thought about it often,” he said warmly, but the underlying tone was suggestive.

the way he said it, as his gaze slowly trailed down the length of her body and back up, sent a shiver up her spine. her mouth parted open in surprise at his boldness as she met his gaze, icy and full of fire at the same time, the intensity of them stealing her breath and rooting her to the spot, raising her body temperature even though he was still a few feet away.

he stepped slowly, but surely, closer to her until he was hovering over her and regina had to tilt her head up to look at him from where she was perched on her desk. he leaned down and captured her lips with his, her body reacting instantly, hands moving to his waist as his tangled themselves in her hair. his lips were fire and water, each movement against hers sending sparks down her throat and drowning her at the same time.

when he finally pulled away, she felt flushed from head to toe and cleared her throat, “well, i’m probably not going to get any work done today.”

adam looked a little proud that he had flustered her so visibly. “perhaps i can help you later this evening then. we can do… paperwork at your apartment together,” he said slowly.

the deliberate way he paused before the word “paperwork” made her breath hitch and she could only nod.

he walked out of the office backwards with deliberate steps, putting his sunglasses on slowly before turning away, but not before regina noticed the smirk on his lips. she looked at the pile of paperwork on her desk and knew that the end of the day couldn’t come fast enough.

* * * * * permatag: @kelseaaa​; @kat-tia801​; @anotherbeingsworld​; @crackerdumortain​; @pearlsandsteel​; @gloynporslen​; @sosolenoo​; @alyssalauren​; @wayhavenots​; @gingerbreton​; @takemyopenheart​​; @writer-ish​; @fhauvilles​;

[miki-snake]

Officer or Kitten?

📖: just some small thirst drabble/half-fic (?) on stripper!kuroo

⭕️: Smut, 18+!, stripper!Kuroo, unprotected sex (warp it before you tap it)

🔍: 1.7k+

A/N: I hate tumblr for deleting the draft i already finished😾. Nonetheless I tried to write it again but it’s not as satisfying as the first one😿. Also you can thank Ana (@mrs-kuroojinguji )for this bc she was the one who broke my thirst meter for stripper!kuroo;; Also thank you tetsu anon from Ana who suggested the stripper name kitten but i decided to turn that kitten into something else😼

━━━━━━━━━━    ༻✧༺    ━━━━━━━━━━━

When your friends told you that you were gonna go out and party as a celebration for acing the exams, you thought of a nice get together at your local bar or a karaoke night with broken voices and some kbbq beforehand. What you didn’t expect was a night in a strip club with a hot ass "police officer" grinding his dick against you.

Well, here you were, sitting in a rather large red velvet seat, while a tall, strong built, handsome man looming over you. He wore a blue police uniform that stuck to his body like a second skin, you saw a light outline of his broad chest, already teasing what was hiding underneath the fabric.

"Oi chibi-chan, cat got your tongue?", he taunted you, his sugar sweet breath fanning over your face as you felt how he traced his fingers up your arms. His touch left a trail of goosebumps, your body already anticipating what he would do to you. The throbbing in your cunt became more apparent as you watched how he leaned back up, hands moving up to the buttons of his shirt, slowly unbuttoning one after another. He smirked at you, what you could only describe as a cat-like grin, like a predator playing with his prey. Your eyes followed the continuous reveal of his glistening skin, the button up now fully open to present his scandalously defined abs. You wanted to feel his skin, feel the heat radiating off of him, feeling if his heart beats just as fast as yours. Your gaze fell down to the impressive bulge in his pants and suddenly the air felt even hotter than before, nearly suffocating, the blazing heat prickling against your skin. Just the sight of his covered bulge made your pussy clench, more slick dripping out of your cunt, wetting the already ruined panties. The dimmed lights fitted perfectly, accentuating his dangerous aura. But it was the kind of danger, kind of risk you wanted to jump into. You wanted him to pounce on you, devour you with his mouth like he did with his eyes.

You caught him fixating his gaze on your mouth and unconsciously your tongue slipped out, licking over your lips. A deep chuckle echoed through the room and he moved over to the side, pressing something on the touchscreen mounted at the wall. A light, rhythmical music filled the room and as he turned around, hips swaying to the beat, his hand moved down to his pants, opening them and you could already see that he didn’t wear anything underneath it. Throwing his shirt to the ground he turned around, slowly pulling his pants down and teasing you with the shake of his hips. He didn’t fully pull them down, they hung low in his hips and the urge to just stand up and rip those damn pants from his body overcame you. Looking at you, he must have sensed what you thought, that teasing smirk adorning his lips again, as he walked back to you. 

“Do you wanna touch me, chibi-chan? Well, I hate to say it but that would cost you something, chiiibi- chan.”, your thighs clenched at the sound of his deep voice, vibrating through your whole body. Looking into his dark auburn eyes you could clearly see the teasing glint, a burning fire that just waited to set your body aflame. Not that your body didn’t already feel like it was on fire, the sexual tension between you guys like thick gasoline pouring into your burning desires. Your heart was beating a hundred miles per minute, the thought of just throwing all inhibitions into the wind crossing your mind. “You know, just for you little rebel, I could make a special deal. How about the only price you’ll have to pay would be something like four to five of your orgasms? I’ll promise you, we’ll get you there pretty fast.”, his breath fanned over your ear, lips slightly grazing your skin and a shiver ran down your spine. 

The smell of his cologne invaded your senses, sandalwood and dark chocolate clouding your mind and you wanted nothing more than to bury your nose in his neck, while scraping your nails down his back. His hands moved up to graze against your arms, mouth trailing down to your neck as his breath caressed your heated skin. Kneeling on the cushion of the seat, both of his knees on either side of your right legs, he started to grind his raging boner against you. That was it, that was the moment you snapped and your right hand reached up to grab him by his neck, while the other one went inside his open pants, taking his burning cock into your fist. A strangled moan escaped him as you pulled him closer until your foreheads touched each other. “That sounds very generous of you, officer. Wait, no, I see no real officer, all I can see is a little kitten. So, behave my kitty cat, alright?”, you told him in a sultry voice, the grip on him tightening as you started to move your hand along his cock. 

Eyes half-lidded, you saw how the glint flared up into an inferno, ready to burn everything that was touching it. “Oho chibi-chan, you think you can make the rules here? Think you can handle someone like me?”, he tried to sound composed but his breathless voice and the throbbing cock in your fist told you otherwise. Without another word you flipped the two of you around, his back crashing against the seat, while you straddled his lap, grip never wavering. Diving into a searing kiss, it was clear that he wouldn’t back down so easily, a battle of dominance occurring between the clashing tongues. Rubbing your fingers against the tip of his leaking cock elicited a guttural groan out of him, his lips temporarily leaving yours just for you to follow him and suck his tongue into your mouth. You couldn’t wait any longer, the lust consuming your mind, so you pulled your soaked panties to the side, not bothering to take them off and rubbed his twitching tip against your dripping cunt. 

“Whoa chibi-chan, you work fast huh? I can’t let you run me over like that.”, he panted as he tried to regain his breath from the sloppy kiss. It wasn’t the first time a woman tried to take control over him but you somehow got him to stay put, making his knees feel weak from all the intoxicating pleasure. His tip moved along your folds, gathering all the pussy juice you had to offer and circled around your throbbing clit. He felt heavy and thick in your hands, your slick slowly covering his velvet skin. “I thought I told you to behave, kitten? How about you stop talking and use your mouth for something actually useful.” You grabbed him by his hair and shoved his face into your chest, his mouth automatically finding its way to your nipple, lips closing around it and sucking the hardened bud into his mouth. “Yeah, good kitten, I knew you could learn to listen AH-.”, you teased him but it was cut off by his teeth biting onto your nipple, the sharp sting shooting down to your pussy, making it clench around nothing, more of your sweet arousal flowing out. 

You glared down at him just to find him with a smug face looking back up at you, mouth still working on your bud. “You think you’re that clever huh?” Without another word you slammed yourself down onto his cock, both of you letting out a deep moan. Throwing your head back from all the stimulation you slightly regretted the decision to try and put everything in at once. Your pussy was burning from the stretch but it was a good ache, his cock snuggly fitting into your tight cunny and the veins rubbing against your walls. You both panted like animals in heat, driven by nothing but your carnal desire. Lifting your hips up until only his head was inside of you, you dropped yourself again, his cock bottoming out in your pussy. The sight in front of you nearly made you moan out, he looked at you with half-lidded eyes, lips slightly apart and a small trail of drool slipped out of his mouth. 

Both your breathings were ragged as you sped up the pace, the sound of skin slapping filling the room along with your cries and his stifled groans. The need to hear him scream for you made you rip his hand away from his mouth and pin his wrists against the wall behind him. “Come on, be a good kitten and mewl for me.”, you told him in a wavering voice, his cock hitting the right spot deep inside of you. The moment you said it he let out a string of curses, moaning like the mess he was. You two moved in sync, his hips starting to thrust back up into you and no matter how often he went inside of you, a light burn from the stretch still prickled in your cunt. 

The build up wasn’t slow, it all came crashing down. His cock thrusted deeper and deeper into your pussy, shaping it into his own fuckhole as your pussy clamped down on him. Your walls closed down on him, while his cock started to swell up, both of you nearing the high the two of you desperately chased. He was wildly twitching inside of you and you felt even fuller than before. A particular hard thrust against your g-spot made you see stars, the sight of yours spotting as you tumbled over the edge. Your pussy clenched down on him in a vice grip, unabling him from moving as you milked every single drop out of him. Spurt after spurt bursted out into your pussy, painting your walls white as your slick gushed out of your cunt, flowing down his cock. His lap was drenched with both of your juices, a mess made by the moaning mess you two were. He had his eyes closed, head thrown back as his groans slowly faded, hips still twitching from the aftershock. Your walls were also still fluttering from the fading high, slowly coming back down to earth. Exhausted you fell face first into his chest and he caught you in his arms, a small chuckle rumbling through his chest.

“The name is Kuroo by the way but I’m okay with you calling me kitten.”

[let-me-touch-your-soul]

a loveless letter

I’ve been wanting to write you a letter for years now but I just haven’t been able to formulate my thoughts into words and I never knew when would be the perfect time to write. I was waiting for us to end so I can have the whole picture to reflect on but I no longer see an end in sight for us and this letter is probably going to be very messy with no plot at all, so just bare with me for now until I can write a better, more chronological letter. And let me just preface this by saying this is in no way me putting any blame on you, this isn’t me trying to call you out and paint you as the bad guy. This is just my side of our story. 

We met when I was 4 years old, and all you were to me was my friend’s older brother, nothing more nothing less. I don’t know where exactly I crossed the line or you did, but you are no longer just that. You are now someone who stole my innocence and gave me a warped perception of this world and the word ‘love’. There is so much to say but let me try to start from the beginning. 

When we first started talking outside of family functions, I had no idea what I was getting myself into. I have no perception of time so I just like to say it all started when I was 12, but I’m pretty sure it was before that. We started talking and at that time you were just some guy I was interested in; it wasn’t even remotely close to a crush yet, I was just hyped about getting some sort of attention from an older guy. Don’t know where the lines blurred but suddenly you were making sexual advances to a little girl, someone who had no idea what some of the words you were saying meant, someone who was just learning about the horrors of the world, someone who was already getting their childhood and innocence stolen from them. 

I just went along with everything you said and wanted because I didn’t want to disappoint you and didn’t want you to stop talking to me. I became obsessed with the attention you were giving me, well my body. As someone who suffered with an altered body image for as long as I can remember, I was basking in the attention you were giving to the physical parts of me, no matter how objectified and dehumanized it made me feel at times. I lied about the number of people who had touched me and about all the experiences I never had, (I was only 12 so how could you even think I had other people touching me in my most intimate places?), just so you wouldn’t think I was as innocent as I was. You made me grow up too early. 

As we kept talking, my heart slowly made its way to the surface and I caught feelings, despite us both discussing it would be ‘no strings attached’. I thought I was the only one with these flutters and I was way too embarrassed to say anything about the way I really felt so I never brought it up, I just went along with everything you said. After all, I was still just a shy little girl who had no idea what she got herself into. But then one night, you told me you loved me. I still remember that moment vividly, as if it happened just yesterday. It was the night before my first day of school (6th grade) and I was charging my phone in my parent’s bedroom, telling you goodnight, and you replied with “goodnight, love you”, and with shaking hands and a heart going a mile a minute I replied with, “goodnight, love you too”, smiling so hard my cheeks started going numb. That was the beginning of the end of me. 

Truth be told, I wasn’t even sure at that time if I really did love you, but I still said it back because I didn’t want to lose you, but after all these years I think I can safely say that somewhere along the line I did fall in love with you, with what exactly I don’t know, but I did love you. But let’s not get too ahead of ourselves, there is so much more left of this story, this is barely the beginning. 

You made me believe you loved me. We texted all day and night, meaningless conversations filled with sexual tension. You were the first boy I showed my body to, the first boy I kissed, the first boy who held me and touched me, the first boy I shed tears for, the first boy I had feelings for and said “I love you” to. 

I remember seeing you with different girls on your snap everyday and remember hearing about you from other girls you were doing the same thing to them as were doing to me, and with every girl I lost a piece of myself. Now don’t get me wrong, I wasn’t jealous. I knew you weren’t mine, you made that pretty clear from the beginning, and I was never the jealous type. But, I was hurt. I thought I was faulty. I couldn’t blame you, because you made it clear from the beginning that you didn’t want anything exclusive, this was all just fun for you, a passing time, so with no one to blame I blamed myself. All the other girls were much older than me, and prettier, and skinnier, so if I was just prettier and as skinny as them maybe you would show me more attention right? I started changing myself. I ate less and threw up more. I started wearing tighter clothes and starting drinking and smoking, because that would make me more cooler and desirable right? Wrong. You still looked at other girls, and I couldn’t change myself anymore, I was on the brink of losing myself, love. All for you. But you never noticed. You never cared enough to know. 

I remember getting drunk one night and texting you that I loved you but felt as if you didn’t love me. Do you remember that? You replied back in the morning saying you did love me. It was all baseless though. It was very clear you only said that to not be painted as the bad guy, but I still took your word for it and never brought it up again, and neither did you. I think that was the last time the word “love” was uttered between us. Did I ruin it? 

I also can’t help but bring up how all our conversations happened within apps that couldn’t be seen by others unless specifically searched for. After all, who would even believe you were talking to lil ole me. Were you ashamed of me? Embarrassed to be seen talking to me? Well thats exactly what it seemed like. You made it very clear we were to be kept a secret, not a single soul should know you were talking to me. So I kept quiet. Didn’t tell a single soul about the boy who held my heart and crushed it along with my innocence. 

I tried to distance myself from you. I wouldn’t answer your texts, but at times my longing got the best of me and I couldn’t stop myself from responding back to you. We would go months without any contact and every time it was you who would hit me up first and I would lose the battle within me and respond and we would be back to square one, texting as if nothing changed between us. I think I found comfort in that familiarity of knowing exactly what to expect when talking to you. Our dynamic never really changed over the years, did it? I still can’t decide if thats a bad thing or a good thing. 

I tried to move on from you, I really did. But no one, nothing, lasted and I always ended up going back to you one way or another. I tried to fill the hole you left in me with drugs and drinks and boys who also only wanted me for my body. After all, that was all I knew. I didn't know love outside of what I could offer with my body. You taught me I wasn’t anything beyond my body and I never stopped to question it, and sometimes I still regress back to that little girls mind, and I’m still forced to exist in the body I destroyed for you, in the body I still let you use from time to time.

There are times when I think I am completely over you and nothing you do affects me anymore but then you text me again and all the feelings I had for you over the years come rushing back and I feel like I’m 13 all over again falling head over heels in love with you. But honestly, I think I just find comfort in the familiarity of you. We’ve been in this push and pull situationship (what else is there call us?) for I think over 6 years now, and I’ve honestly just come to accept that it probably won’t be a solid ending to this anytime soon. I tried so hard to end it and move and forget about you, but the truth is that I am too weak when it comes to you. Now, I have no idea whatsoever why you keep coming back to me when there are so many other better prospects out there for you and I try not to think too deep into it because I don’t want to create false hope and hurt myself any more than I already have. I gave you all my teenage years, and I am still giving them you. We grew up with each other and these years are just something neither of us can take back and I’ve come to just accept this and try to live with knowing there will never be anything more to us, no matter how hard that acceptance is for me. 

I told myself that going away to college was going to be a fresh new beginning for me and that I would completely cut you off. We all know that didn’t go as planned. I had sex with you for the first time this summer. Did you know that was my first time lol? Yeah I literally have never had anyone touch me like that except for you. I don’t think I can ever come clean about that to you because that’s just too much power in your hands over me with that information. I’m sorry for lying and making you think I was more experienced than I actually was, but I guess now you know why I did it. 

I think for me to be able to fully move I would need to hear your side of everything from you. But I don’t know if I’ll ever get the closure I need directly form you so I guess this is why I’m writing this, as a way to get some type of closure for myself. I never plan on telling you any of this because being vulnerable is just not something I have in me, especially to you, so I guess we both will just be living in the dark about this without any answers for the rest of our lives. 

Sometimes, and I know this sounds hilarious and dumb, I wonder what the future holds for us. I wonder if we met at a different point in our lives, where we were both older and wiser, would we have been able to be more than what we are now, whatever we are now. I’ve held feelings for you inside of me for so long I really don’t think it will ever go away; I’m just going to have to find a way to live with them for the rest of my life. I just want to end this by letting you know that if you ever change your mind about me and us, and want there to actually be an ‘us’ exclusively, I will say yes to you without hesitation. You hold pieces of me I will never get back, pieces I don’t even know if I want back, and I don’t think if I will ever be able to devote myself so someone else with the same intensity I devoted myself to you. I used to be able to see a future with you, and I would like to blame that on my naive, young brain. Thank you for teaching me that not everyone who comes into my life will reciprocate the same feelings as me and that love is only a figment of one’s imagination. I sincerely hope you never feel what I felt and that you find someone who loves you back the same way you love them. I hope you are happy and content with wherever you end up in life, just don’t forget me. :)

[raevenlywrites]

The Ties That Bind 7 of ???

Two chapters? TWO CHAPTERS??? *nods* Two chapters

Kneeling before Zane and promising to find a way was one thing. Getting back up off the floor and actually doing it was quite another.

So we compromised, staying on the floor but moving the lean up against the bed. It was surprisingly easier to talk to him this way; yes, we were touching, a bit of leg here, shoulder there, but I didn’t have to look at him, and that made all the difference. I suddenly realized that part of what made talking to Andreios in those late nights was that I put my back to him. Leaning into the solid warmth of his chest and talking into the dark made confessing my heart so much easier.

I don’t think it was my heart I was confessing to Zane, but it was still made easier by facing a neutral tapestry covered wall instead of my would-be king.

Shouldn’t that be a sign that this was a bad idea? That I could only talk to him if I didn’t look at him.

But then, he hadn’t tried to meet my eyes either. Maybe we just weren’t that sort of couple.

Couple. The thought took my breath away, and I struggled to release it, to keep from that trembling tension that I knew Zane would misconstrue.

“I’m alright,” I breathed before he could ask. “Just... adjusting. Overthinking.”

“Your thoughts might do us more good out here in the open.”

A surprised hiccup of laughter escaped me. “I don’t think telling you that the thought of us being a couple makes my limbs seize up with fear is helpful.”

“On the contrary.” Zane’s voice was soft enough it made me want to look at him, to see the kind of expression that went with that face. But I kept my eyes on the tapestry, wandering its warp and weft without seeing more than the colors.

“I think it’s extremely productive to talk about exactly how we feel with one another. My people will have a hard enough time embracing an avian queen. One that hides behind her haughty mask of reserve will never be tolerated.”

“And mine won’t like you no matter what face you show them.”

“Do you dance, Danica?”

The question caught me so off guard that I did turn to look at him then, staring in incredulity.

He gestured to the tapestry I’d been staring at without seeing.

It’s threads wove the tale of the first hawk, the golden queen Alasdair. The center was a radiant riot of gold, the hawk queen framed in triumphant flight against the sun. But the borders showed more subdued scenes, of brown and dying earth, of an infant in a feathered nest, of a young woman dancing among the clouds and then the fields, grown green at her feet’s touch.

“It’s just a metaphor,” I murmured. “Avian magic comes through song, not dance. But how do you weave a song?”

My gaze lingered on a corner piece, the queen Alasdair raised in supplication, stretched out long from the tips of her toes to her delicatedly embroidered fingers, raised high overhead with her wrists crossed. The details doublestitched over the base weaving made her pop, standing out in radiant golden threads on the more humbly woven green.

I was focusing on nonsense details again, remembering the technical skills that went into this piece rather than thinking about its deeper meaning.

“I just wondered,” Zane said casually, though this moment was anything but. “She’s woven against a backdrop of the Ahnleh, which is the sign of the dancers’ nests among my people.”

I tried to pick out the sign he’d indicated, but all I saw was the seal of Alasdair, a glyph as common to my eye as any. All coins, contracts, and sigils of protection bore some incarnation of that mark, a single line stretched from heaven to earth, with delicate branching wings meeting in the middle. It was mostly obscured by Alasdair herself on this work, but I knew it well.

 “I’m sure there are differences we just can’t see because she’s in the way,” I said, not really knowing what else to say. Was he just trying to distract me, til I calmed down and could speak more rationally?

 “I’m sure there are similarities, too.” His voice had gone all tender and soft again, and I couldn’t resist turning to look at him. “Enough so that I recognized it.”

 Our faces were unspeakably close, a breath way from touching. I knew that wasn’t objectively true, but... I’d never let my face linger so close to a man’s before. The thought of that beautifully cruel mouth so close to mine...

 “I never kissed anyone before.”

 The words came out on a breath unbidden, my mind tumbling from lips too preoccupied to hold anything back. They wanted nothing more than to press themselves against the hard softness of Zane’s, to see if those lips so clever and cruel could also be gentle and tender.

 But Zane had jerked back at my soft declaration, utterly shocked.

 “You’re joking.”

 The heat of desire flared into outrage. I felt my eyes harden and my lips thin out in a narrow, tightly pressed line.

 “Why would I joke about something like that?” My words were cold, measured, precise. “Why would I admit to such a weakeness in a moment of vulnerability where we are trying to be truthful with one another? You said anything to make this work, yet you’re mocking me for keeping chaste? It’s the way of my people, Zane. We don’t sneak into each other’s bedrooms in the middle of the night--“

 My words caught on the jumble of anger, and the memory of Elanor sneaking him into my room so he could propse to me while I was not even awake to recieve it.

 ”--and propose mad fancies as if that will solve anything! There is no easy way out of this, Zane Cobriana. We either have to work together, or make enmity anew with this pointless conversation!”

 I’d crossed my arms over my middle, holding my own ribs in that way of my most intimate of comforts. It was what I did when Rei was not there to hold so. I did it now to keep from flailing about, letting my hands speak the aggression my tone would not. I would not scream at him. I would not escalate.

 I would not be the reason the guards poured into the room and broke us apart.

 But I would also not sit here and be insulted.

 He was quiet for far too long, face turned away, hiding from me as surely as he accused me of doing with my ‘haughty avian reserve’. How dare he? How dare he! He was such a hypocrite, coming to me with this mad scheme, making grand gestures and pretty speeches and never once suggesting how this mad thing migth be done.

 I was so caught up stewing in my own fury that I almost missed his softly spoken answer.

 “I never said proposing marriage would be easy.”

 “But you never said anything more about how such a thing would be done, either, did you Zane?”

 It was all I could do to keep my voice quiet, to contain my outrage in harhly whispered tones.

 “You just dumped this problem in my lap as if I’d have any more luck solving it than you did. What am I supposed to do with this, Zane? If I say no, your feelings are hurt and we’re still without a solution. But if I say yes, we still haven’t really solved anything, have we? We’ve just made a complicated scenario more messy and entangled and vulnerable--“

 The rest of my words were cut off by his face suddenly in mine. I jerked back so quickly, I didn’t immediately process that he’d been attempting to kiss me.

 Fury burned, hot on my cheeks and in my eyes, and in my fiercely whispered words.

 “How dare you. How dare you! You think this can all be solved with an uninvited kiss?”

 “I thought that’s what you wanted!”

 He cut off my tirade with an equall fierce whisper, eyes dark with hurt and frustration. “Why else would you have brought it up, if not in invitation? I don’t know how you do things in the Keep, Danica, but I am trying my best. I know you expect me to persue you, to be the active party, so that your avian virtue remains intact, but what am I supposed to do when that isn’t the right answer either?”

 I just stared. He’d caught me so completely off guard, I had no idea what to do with him. My shock kept me from monitoring my words, kept me from doing anything but pour out the honest truth of my whirling thoughts.

 “You know--you know, do you? Well tell me, Zane, how am I supposed to act according to your serpiente morals? Because while you think you know everything there is to know about avian pairbonds, I don’t know a thing about serpiente--” I paused, groping for a word I didn’t have. “Skies above, Zane, I don’t even know what your people call it! You don’t have pairbonds, do you even marry?”

 “Would I have asked you to marry me if we didn’t have such traditions?”

 “I dont’ know!” I hated the emotion that crept into my voice. “I don’t know anything about what I’m getting myself into. I dont’ know the first thing about your people or your expectation and you’re asking me to marry you. Don’t you understand how absurd it is?”

 “Yes!” He met my fire with his own, both of us growing ever louder. “Gods, yes, I do, but I’m really out of ideas. I thought spending time with your people would help me understand them better, but I really have no idea--“

 “What do you mean, spending time with my people?”

 Zane looked away, eyes fixed on the floor. He was quiet long enough I almost thought I’d have to ask again, but he finally admited, “This isn’t my first time visiting Elanor’s aunts.”

 Again, I just stared at him. What on earth could I possibly say to that revelation?

 But he carried on, eyes drifting up to the tapestry, as if searching it for inspiration. Or apparently, memory.

 “I knew this tapestry becasue I spent a full night and a day staring at it, as I fought to work through a delirious fever brought on by that damnable falcon poison. Adelina brought me here, to the first shelter she’d found, and demanded a place to keep me safe while I healed. All I can say was that it must have been the will of Fate to bring me here, to a house sympathetic to true peace, with a wound minor enough that the am’haj didn’t just kill me outright.”

 I thought of Elanor’s retelling of his dramatic ride, of declaring it the will of Fate that he find her--and had to wonder if my dearest friend had lied to me. But Zane continued, sweeping me away with his dramatic story.

 “I stared at this tapestry and tried to keep my grip on reality as she sang to me of peace, a halluciantion to be sure. But when I heard of what you did for Gregory, I couldn’t help but remember that fevered dream, and hope...”

 “Hope for what?”

 “Hope that maybe it was a sign. That maybe things really could get better. That maybe hawks could dance with cobras, and peace could rise from bloody fields.”

 “Alright,” I said again, with less conviction than before, but more of an idea of how to proceed.

 “Alright?” Zane echoed with a raised eyebrow. I nodded.

 “I’ll sing you back to health. We send messengers to both palaces that you were injured on your return journey from the Mistari lands, and I’m attending your bedside to give you what healing aide I have. It will give us time to brainstorm, and maybe come up with a less ludicrous idea than a marriage neither of us actually want.”

 Zane just stared. I shrugged.

 “It’s the best idea I have. It buys us time. I just... I just need some time. To do what, I don’t know yet. But I didn’t have this plan until just now, so maybe, with a few more days...”

 “And what’s to stop the Keep from scouring the fields to find me and finish me off?”

 “My word,” I said firmly. “I’ve commanded the generals twice to stand down, and if they cannot obey me in this I’ll... I’ll,” I shook my head, trying to shake off some of the fury that had been building over the past several days. “I’ll discharge each and every one of them. I’ll discharge the entire army if I have to. I am done fighting. This ends here.”

 “Or they overthrow you,” Zane said with a dry wryness that was anything but humorous.

 “They can try,” I said through gritted teeth. “Shardae magic holds the key to the hidden fields on the far side of the mountain. If they want a civil war, we’ll see how long it lasts when their soldiers are starving.”

 Zane gave me wide eyes, but they were marked with approval. “Wisely put, my most bloodthirsty queen.”

 “I’m not--” But I cut off as I realized he was teasing me. I wasn’t used to people laughing at me. I was going to have to learn how to turn it into Zane laughing with me, as it was clear that was how he intended it. I was too accustomed to taking myself seriously. Even if it seemed no one else did.

I realized with a bit of a start that I liked Zane laughing at me--with me. I liked that it felt like he was honestly trying to engage me, not just manage me. I liked the thought that he, of all people, might actually see me. The thought brought color to my cheeks, and again, I felt the urge to get up and move.

 Which was why I made myself stay put, and even found the courage to lean back against Zane, to close the distance our fight had put between us.

 “I need an ally in this,” I said madly, hopefully, absurdly. “I don’t think I need a husband, but...”

 I let myself lay my head over against his shoulder, to show my serpiente counterpart that I was willing to try. Maybe not something as absurd as becoming lover, but at least co-conspirators. Maybe friends.

 “I certainly need an ally.”

 The Ties That Bind Tag list: @thehellinsideyourhead @therecouldbecolorsandlove @adventuresofacreesty​

Raev’s Gen Tag List (should I tag you guys in this? It IS a thing I wrote. I’m gonna say yes unless you guys are like “no of course not we’re sick of hearing about your stupid fic for a twenty year old book XD)

List is currently: @lordkingsmith @writinglyra @drbibliophile @mperialscribe @adie-dee @adie-dee @lexiklecksi @writinginslowmotion @raenawrites @apollon-arium @anika-writes

[caitlinsfandomthoughts]

Watching Star Trek TOS For the First Time! Season 1 Reaction

I’ve been a TNG, DS9 and Voyager fan for maybe 10 years but had never watched TOS until I decided that I would. And then I realised I couldn’t live with the possibility of the internet not being able to know my incoherent rambling reactions if it so desired. Most of these were written the day after I saw them but with the early ones it was later so sorry if I don’t remember your favourite.

Season 1:

The Cage: Be still my beating heart why must number 1 leave the show? Why?! Imagine a world in which Majel Barrett got to continue to be her in the Star Trek universe instead of Lwuxana (sorry I don’t love her) and Nurse Chapel. She’s so beautiful I love her. And she gets to where pants and be the second in command. While the episode for sure has sexist moments it does seem like there was more of an actual effort to present to future as having gender equality. When you compare this to the ultra mini skirted version of the actual show, it does feel like executives went through it to make it more marketable. It’s been noted by others that she is quite similar to what Spock’s character became: the cold, logical one, while Spock smiles in this episode. While I ended up loving Spock I still would’ve loved to see a woman in that kind of role, especially in the 60s. Although I’m not sure she would’ve been treated that well.

So Vina can’t like, get medical treatment from Starfleet doctors who know how to put a human body together? No? We’re just gonna leave her there? She’s too ugly? She’s better off living in a fantasy world where she’s pretty? Ok then…

The Man Trap: I don’t even really remember this one so I’d have to rewatch it.

Charlie X: Charlie sees women and becomes an incel, Kirk has to try and teach him not to be. This is a decent goal that somehow culminates in a space boxing match. Kirk loses his shirt. Sexual tension is presumably resolved. Uhura sings.

Where No Man Has Gone Before: The pants are back. Man becomes some kind of god and Kirk beats him up if I remember correctly.

The Naked Time: This is where The Naked Now comes from. This one was less sexual, which is probably a good thing, and less drunk, which is too bad cause I love drunk Crusher and Picard trying to focus on work while their brains won’t brain. Highly relatable mood. This one is where the immortal line “sorry, neither” comes from, spoken by Uhura in response to Sulu calling her a “fair maiden.” According to the internet that was an ad lib and I so hope that’s true cause it’s amazing. Also according to Spock Sulu is a “swashbuckler at heart” which is cool and all but I wish we got to find that out by him actually being a character that we know the personality of rather than a background diversity guy who gets to say a couple of lines sometimes. Also each to their own but shirtless Sulu is infinitely more attractive than shirtless Kirk.

The Enemy Within: Bad. Women at Warp podcast said it best, it’s bad because they say the evil Kirk is still Kirk and is needed for him to be a good captain/person. This could’ve been ok if he didn’t do something so irredeemable, or they could’ve not had him be defined as a true and necessary part of Kirk, but you can’t have both and sell it as an ok message. Rand not being able to look at ‘good’ Kirk after really makes it feel real, her acting in general makes it feel too real.

Mudd’s Women: Women take beauty pills that make them have makeup on and men find them too ugly to marry without them even though they are still beautiful. Also said women were kinda slaves but don’t worry about it! *hand waves*

What Are Little Girls Made Off: I don’t know what the title has to do with the episode. This is the episode where Nurse Chapel is introduced even though she was in a previous episode. And she’s taken more seriously than I thought she would be. Kirk gets an android version of himself made by a guy who he already doesn’t trust and doesn’t predict that maybe that’s not a good idea. Apparently to make an android all you need to do is put one person and one dummy on a giant plate and spin them around real fast. If only the guy who wanted to take apart Data in Measure of a Man knew.

Miri: Problematic. I think the crush angle could’ve worked if it was one sided, but Kirk played into it and it was creepy, and you know, also manipulative, assuming Kirk doesn’t actually feel the same way and is using it to get her to help them. That’s my more charitable interpretation anyway. Also McCoy doesn’t know how vaccines work. Also this episode doesn’t know what puberty is, or rather when it starts. If the virus is supposed to get to you then, that starts round the preteen age. Miri is older than that even though she’s not an adult.

Dagger of the Mind: This was the first one where I was starting to quite like it and it was feeling a little more like Star Trek to me (I know this is the first Star Trek but there’s a certain way 80s/90s era Star Trek feels to me). I really liked the beginning where it was setting up this whole maybe prisoners become violent because of how the prison treats them thing and that it was challenging the viewpoints of some of the main characters, although McCoy was already team prisons are bad and I love him for that. It then went more into the lobotomising asylum type story which was still ok. The guy turned out to be a doctor rather than a prisoner which I didn’t like cause I wanted the prisoners to be humanised. Although you could’ve done a “see anyone, even ‘innocent’ non criminals can be turned violent with this treatment” but they didn’t really emphasise that.

The Corbomite Maneuver: I don’t remember this. Kirk playing poker with some alien I think. Edit: I’m been informed this is the one where the alien turns out to be a lollypop guild kid lip-syncing to an adult’s voice, which I do remember, and probably thought it was some kind of sleep-deprived fever dream.

The Menagerie Part 1 & 2:  I laughed so much when they wheeled Pike out and I finally got the Futurama reference in Where No Fan Has Gone Before. I mean I obviously knew the whole thing was a Star Trek Reference, but I had never seen that specific imagery before and now the joke makes sense! Also Pike wanting to go back there seems kinda wrong. I mean they say he’s a vegetable mentally I think but he doesn’t seem to be? I can kinda get that he’s got more incentive to be there than Vina who could probably be helped by Federation doctors but also, he hated that place and spent the whole episode trying to get out of it and it doesn’t feel like a fitting ending for him.

The Conscious of the King: And here begins Star Trek’s love affair with Shakespeare. The only thing I have to say really is, if I didn’t mishear something… a father and daughter played Macbeth and Lady Macbeth? A married couple. And no-one thought that was weird? She was the daughter of a dictator though so there was an Ivanka Trump vibe.

Balance of Terror: Romulans. Spock wasn’t sure that they were related to Vulcans till this ep, though he suspected it. How far back did they split for it to be unknown? I like that the Romulans were sympathetic and we had scenes with them just in their ship from their perspective, and they had some conflicting views with each other. And I really like how Spock was suspected as a spy cause racism and of course he wasn’t and saved that guy cause he’s the better person. That said I found this episode pretty boring and I don’t know why. I kinda wish it turned into a witchhunt situation and was more about the racism on the Enterprise, kinda like The Drumhead from TNG.

Shore leave: Wtf was this episode?! And I don’t ask that because the white rabbit from Alice in Wonderland showed up, or that it was a random holodeck planet episode, that’s fine. When the White Rabbit appeared I was just like, ok it’s going to be one of those episodes, that’s fine. Holodeck episodes are fun, I don’t even mind a random magic alien or two appearing for no reason to wreak havoc, say by making everyone larp as Robin Hood, that’s all Star Trek, that’s Star Trek doing a Star Trek, what I didn’t like is this episode goes nowhere! McCoy sees the White Rabbit, we’re off to a good start, Sulu “Swashbuckler at Heart” sees an old gun that he geeks out on, cool. Kirk sees some woman of course. Also there’s some guy fending off a tiger. Random female guest star of the week rather than letting Uhura be part of the story gets her uniform torn by some guy. Then she imagines a princess dress and if that were me as soon as I realised I could think things into existence I would just imagine all my dream clothes. Kirk imagines an old student friend who is attempting very hard to be Irish (thank you Colm Meany for saving us from this).

Anyway so the planets a holodeck cool. And I’m like, Spock should beam down, I wanna know what he’ll see, this is where the episode could get interesting. And then it happens, but nothing happens, they don’t even make much of a deal of him not seeing anything. But then I thought what if! What if Spock didn’t beam down and this was another imagination?! What if he was some alien with some ulterior motive OR better than that we get to see Spock as imagined by whoever was thinking of him. You could go down a very fanfic road if it were Kirk’s imagined or desired view of him, or maybe you could show different people’s perceptions and then they still suspect he’s not acting like himself even though it’s how they see him, but its not quite right, cause it’s not actually how he is. Or at least I thought they were going to find out what was going on. But NOPE none of that happens. Instead leprechaun guy shows up again and Kirk just wonders off to fight him for the next fucking millennium! The uniforms they wore at the academy seem like they were made out of better quality material than that of a Starfleet captain’s. Poor Kirk must be having to replicate new uniforms every other day. Then they laugh I think, and sexual tension is presumably resolved. Then the aliens show up and are like yeah this planet is a holodeck we thought you’d like it also McCoy died but he didn’t and I’m like THEY DIDN’T CONSENT TO THIS. But then they decide to party.

It reminded me of a Red Dwarf episode called Better Than Life where they knowingly go into a virtual reality game which is basically the same as this planet. But over time Rimmer keeps sabotaging what he imagines cause he hates himself so much his brain won’t let him have nice things. And it’s still a comedy, but there’s an opportunity for exploring the character’s psyche with this setup that wasn’t done here and that made it boring.

The Galileo Seven: This episode was good!! In contrast to the last one it delivered on promises it made, it had a satisfying ending, it’s probably my favourite so far. The whole time I was like this should be about how Spock can be wrong and logic isn’t everything to be a good commander. But given the quality of the previous episodes wasn’t that great and Spock was always right about everything I didn’t trust them to do that. BUT I WAS WRONG. I thought it would be about how just because you don’t have emotions doesn’t mean you can disregard those of the crew. But instead it was about how he couldn’t predict their enemy wouldn’t act based on emotion rather than logic. And then he admitted he was wrong and helped the guy bury the other guy, and then they were about to die and McCoy was like at least I’ve lived to hear Spock say he fucked up. And then Spock jettisoned the fuel so that it might act like a flare but it gave them less time and I was like no you’ve learned nothing! Don’t just do things that severe without asking your crew. But then after they were saved it was described as an act of desperation rather than anything logical and Kirk was like that’s an emotion isn’t it? You acted on emotion? And Spock was like well yes but I’m not gonna say it like that.

I like that emotion was good actually. I think it’s a fine balance between the message of its ok to be different and using Spock as an analogy for racism, and inadvertently neurodiversity, but also not buying into the idea that emotions = weakness and lack of emotion, or emotional repression = objectivity. Even if you don’t factor emotion into your decisions (which would be impossible unless you don’t experience emotions at all) it doesn’t mean that you don’t have personal biases in your perspective. So I’m glad Spock was wrong for once.

The Squire of Gothos: This is Q this is Proto-Q. He does all the same things that Q does; he shows up in clothes that are way out of date (and he thinks they’re from 900 years ago when they’re clearly early 19th century) and he flirts with the captain. Oh and he has powers, maybe they were computer powers, but not all? And he goes on about humans being brutal, warmongering people but he’s kinda into it. He fights Kirk but there was actual tension so it wasn’t annoying like the one with the Irish guy. And then it turns out he was just a kid exactly like the Futurama episode, except he is a kid not 35. I think him being a kid makes the flirting seem weird though.

Arena: Kirk and the Gorn at Tanagra. Kirk fights a lizard because aliens wanted to encourage them to not fight by telling them to fight. I thought maybe these lizards could be proto Cardassians but then I thought they can’t be they don’t talk, but then he spoke so I thought they could be, but then he was the one who was invaded and was only defending his people so I thought they couldn’t be, unless that was actually just lies and justifications in which case they definitely would be, but then that would undermine the message of the episode so I guess not. I wonder how many leaders have killed each other before these alien’s negotiation tactic actually worked.

Tomorrow is Yesterday: This was fun. There were a lot of twists and turns. I wonder if it was before or after the moonlanding. Every plan just makes it worse and more and more people keep getting exposed to the future. Kirk could’ve easily just closed the door and beamed back at the end but instead opts to punch like six people. (I think this is where “a woman?” “Crewman.” Comes from).

Court Martial: What if Kirk actually did it though? Would that be more interesting? Maybe. At least here he has an age appropriate love interest. She’s prosecuting against him which is surely a conflict of interest. AND she has a uniform with a longer skirt! And it actually looks good, like it looks like an actual dress that she can sit down in and it still looks like a dress and not a crumpled up shirt. It’s elegant but it’s still short. I could see this being an option (for any gender) as a dress uniform but it would still make no sense when they’re serving on a ship.

Return of the Archons: I am LIVING for Spock in a medieval style hood. It’s giving me Peter Cook in a Mother Superior’s wimple in Bedazzled vibe, it’s not quite on that level of beauty, but it’s close. For some reason Sulu returned from the planet in 18th century gear but then everyone else is dressed like it’s the 19th century, with some medieval robes thrown in, and this annoys me more than it should. Maybe it’s because he’s a swashbuckler at heart. Apparently they had a completely peaceful society except for the nightly purge they seemed to have going on that is never mentioned again.

Space Seed: KHHANN! I liked this a lot until the end. I want to know the lore behind Data’s Dad having his middle and last name. Edit: Actually only the middle name is the same and the last name is just similar. I still think there’s lore there (excuse the pun), probably he’s a descendent of his cult followers or something. The story seemed to be eugenics bad and also the type of guy to basically be a eugenics cult leader would be super manipulative and abusive but just charming enough in a relationship. It does a pretty good job of showing the abuse in his relationship with the historian woman, how he switches between being loving and I guess charming, and flattering to being abusive and degrading. I wish that the historian woman could find someone that she can explore domination and submission with consensually cause that seems like it would be what she really wants. Anyway but in the end they just let him go? Like he tried to take over the ship but they were like here have a colony. They compared the place to Australia when the colonists arrived at Botany Bay and that it could be... I forget what the word was but basically ‘civilised’ and No NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO STOP RIGHT THERE NO Australia was already populated and didn’t need eugenicist cult leaders who were demonstrably bad to show up make it ‘better.’ AND THEN the historian is given the choice to go with them and she does and its framed like it’s good? Or at least ok? When they just did a pretty decent job of showing how abusive and manipulative he was and she had redeemed herself by turning against him? So I get that they probably wanted to bring him back although they’re probably not gonna bring her back, but they could’ve easily had him escape instead.

A Taste of Armageddon: Suicide machines. I forget the rest.

This Side of Paradise: SEX POLLEN! Well it’s more fall in love pollen, I guess, for one character. There’s a woman and there’s the music and the soft focus and BUT WAIT then the camera cuts to Spock not Kirk! Because she has taste. It’s about this point that I think the ‘Spock’s the most popular but Shatner wants to remain the star so we’ll emphasise their character’s relationship thus inadvertently inventing slash fic’ might’ve started. It’s time for a love triangle! She makes Spock get the sex pollen, which is not getting consent, and then he falls in love with her and is climbing trees and is all happy. Kirk can’t get a text back from Spock. Then Kirk and two others get the pollen except Kirk didn’t, but he did, but anyway I thought everyone would be horny but they weren’t they were just brainwashed. Soon Kirk is all alone on the bridge, then he gets the pollen and is happy to live as a poly triad but then he gets angry and it’s gone. Then he calls Spock to the ship and approaches the situation in the only way Kirk knows how: Homoerotic punching! So they fight for not long enough and then Spock is cured but he’s a little sad, there’s sadness in his voice, it’s not quite so matter of fact. Then Spock’s gf gets sad and the sex pollen is gone too, Spock might still have feelings for her but he has responsibilities to the ship and “to that man on the bridge” which if he was saying to just mean once again the whole ship, and its mission and the captain in a professional sense, seems a little redundant, which would surely be illogical.

The colonists get sad that they haven’t done anything for years because the sex pollen made them unambitious but I would argue maybe the sex pollen was right and you were better off just vibing. This episode was more interesting and less silly than I thought the creator of sex pollen would be. At the end Spock says that for the first time in his life he was happy. While every other character could still easily become addicted to a thing like that they could at least know they would experience happiness or any feelings again in their life, for Spock it was going back to nothingness.

Devil in the Dark: Spock calls Kirk Jim which I don’t think he has before, when he’s talking over the communicator and he’s worried he’s in danger, there’s some actual fear or urgency in his voice. Also the moment that got me was when Kirk wanted to send Spock back the ship cause he didn’t trust him to kill the creature and Spock was like “but… I’m not really as useful there I am here… so…” If I was writing it I would’ve played that up more but anyway, I like that they didn’t kill the creature. I like that McCoy said the thing. And also said “I’m starting to think I can cure a rainy day.” He’s my favourite.

Errand of Mercy: It’s kinda becoming the Kirk Spock show now, I like the ship but I miss McCoy. I like that the passive pacifists who Kirk was so angry with were actually more powerful. And KLINGONS! Oh yeah the orientalism, the yellow peril, it’s… it’s there all right. They were played a lot colder here, a little Cardassian maybe, still bloodthirsty but I don’t believe this guy has to do it himself to feel honourable, he can kill for sure but he’s fine ordering someone else to do it and being a chessmaster too.

The Alternative Factor: God this one was boring. But it does have a man with the worst beard wig I’ve ever seen. Now he’s stuck fighting the bad version of himself or something to save the universe. So remember that when you’re watching later Trek series, all of this could suddenly be destroyed if one of them gets tired.

The City on the Edge of Forever: UHURA GETS TO GO ON AN AWAY MISSION! Aaaand she doesn’t get to do anything :/ The usual three go back in time! To the 60s again! Oh wait… that’s meant to be the 30s? Oh. That’s some tall hair that lady has for the 30s. But at least said lady is a character, she’s a little perfect but she does things, she has strong beliefs, she might be written a little idealised, but she is still written like a person compared to almost every other Kirk love interest. “He says it (captain) even when he doesn’t say it” is an interesting line. So she has to die, I still think they could’ve just convinced her that you don’t make friends with fascists but ok. They never say what the Clark Gable movie is.

Operation Annihilate! Kirk’s brother dies, and so does his sister in law, leaving his nephew without parents. This is never resolved and the episode ends with them laughing about how Spock got his eyesight back.

[gingwrites]

Time Warp (Dad!Hades)

@demonwithasoul requested: I was thinking how cute Hades would be if he was younger, you know? He's such a rebel and would be really cute, so what about when he saves/wakes Audrey, that takes so much of his energy that the 'ember' compensates, using its own magic to turn him into a child? Wouldn't he and Mal be cute?

AN: This is also posted on ao3, which is linked to on my masterlist.

The glow of blue the ember had cast the room in was gone as quickly as it came, everyone waiting with baited breath to see if the magic had worked.

A second later, Audrey slowly sat up, the tension seeping out of the room as everyone let out a collective sigh of relief. 

“Please tell me that was all a dream,” Audrey whispered, glancing worriedly around the room. 

While Audrey reunited with her grandmother and the rest of the adults made sure she was okay and unharmed, Mal turned to thank her father for helping. She knew he really had no reason to help, and she was grateful he still cared enough for her that he would actually help out anyone in Auradon.

Mal turned, expecting to come face-to-face with Hades, but instead was met with nothing.

“Oh my gods, what has happened to me?” Mal heard a small voice. She glanced down, and standing right where her father should have been was a small child with flaming blue hair.

A gasp escaped Mal’s lips, while her hand came up to her mouth.

“Dad?” Mal whispered, too afraid to know the truth about what was standing right in front of her.

The rest of the room had quieted down, everyone glad that Audrey was okay, and had now turned toward Hades to thank him.

“Is that?”

“No, that can’t be!”

“I think it is!”

“How?”

Fairy Godmother rushed forward and pulled out her wand. She said a quick spell and waved her wand up and down in front of the tiny Hades.

“Yep, just what I expected,” Fairy Godmother said. “It’s been so long since you used magic, Hades, that when you expelled all that energy and magic to wake Audrey, the ember had to take something to actually complete the spell. Apparently, that was your age, but it seems like it was just physically. Your mind didn’t seem to be affected.” 

The room was silent, then everyone spoke at once.

“What are we going to do with him?”

“Is it permanent?”

“We can’t send him back to the Isle as a child!”

“Can you fix it?”

“He’s so cute!”

Fairy Godmother brought her hand to her mouth and let out a deafening whistle. The room quieted once more.

“Now,” Fairy Godmother said, “let’s get this all settled. No, we are not sending him back to the Isle as a child. It should not be permanent. I cannot fix it with my magic because it might cause more harm. His magic is different than mine and the two don’t mix very well together. Also, it seems he doesn’t like to be called cute if his hair is anything to go by.”

Everyone turned toward Hades to see his hair growing taller and brighter by the second. 

Mal stepped toward him, leaned down and grabbed his hand.

“Don’t worry, dad. We’ll fix this,” she whispered only to him. Even though Hades was still a little upset, he calmed down a little, his hair going back to his normal bright blue.

Mal then turned and pulled Hades toward the door, set on taking care of Hades and making sure no harm came to him while he was defenseless.

“Seriously though, isn’t he just the cutest?” Mal heard Evie whisper to Carlos as she was stepping into the hall. She felt Hades stop, but she pulled his hand a little harder, tugging him into the hallway and out of Audrey’s bedroom. It wasn’t hard considering he wasn’t even four feet tall. She really did not need a fight between Evie and a tiny Hades. It would not end well.

The two walked in silence, Hades following Mal dutifully. Mal really didn’t know where she could take him. She really didn’t want to be around a lot of other people because she didn’t need more people staring at her than usual. It was one thing to have brought to God of the Underworld to Auradon. It was another thing to have said god be transformed into a four foot version of himself. And, his hair was part of that height. Luckily, the magic from the ember had shrunk his clothes as well, or there’d be a whole other situation to fix.

“Where are you taking me? You know, walking long distances is hard when you have shorter legs and have to take more steps to get there,” Hades complained.

“Well the ember apparently didn’t change you too much,” Mal laughed. “We’re going to the Enchanted Lake. I’m not taking you out in public where even more people can stare at me. No offense.”

Hades scoffed.

“Well, your flaming hair doesn’t really leave much question as to who you are. And, since you’re supposed to one, be on the Isle, and two, be an adult, I think that would cause quite a bit of commotion,” Mal retorted.

“This coming from the girl who’s hair is bright purple. No wonder everyone stares at you already. You’re not even trying to blend in here,” Hades snarked back.

Mal laughed, taking no offense to what Hades had said. Now she knew where she got her sarcasm from. Her mom was definitely not the type to appreciate sarcasm. 

The pair finally made it to the Enchanted Lake, taking a seat in the little gazebo, hanging their feet off the edge over the lake. 

Mal looked over after a moment of silence and let out a giggle.

“What is it?” Hades grumbled.

“Sorry,” Mal got out between laughs. “But, Evie was right. You really are adorable as a child.” 

Hades’s head shot up and he glared at Mal, which caused her to laugh even more.

“Your glare is no longer effective when it’s coming from a seven year old,” Mal said. “Also, your feet are barely over the edge and my feet are almost touching the water. It’s hilarious! And adorable.”

Hades attempted to keep glaring at Mal, but it was impossible when he knew it was having no effect. He also liked the sound of her laugh. The last time he had heard it was when she was just a tiny baby before Maleficent kicked him out and banished him to the other side of the Isle.

The two went back to sitting in silence, content to just be in each other’s presence for the first time in years. 

The rest of the gang eventually joined Mal and Hades at the lake, luckily bringing food because Hades had been complaining for at least 20 minutes that he was starving. Apparently the ember also gave him the metabolism of a child.

Once the sun started setting, the group made their way back to the castle, plans made for Hades to sleep in Mal’s room so she could keep an eye on him. 

The next morning, Hades woke up with feet and arms hanging off the couch that he had fit perfectly on when he went to sleep.

He quickly opened his eyes, lifting his hands to get a good look and make sure he really was back to his normal self. Hades glanced over to Mal’s bed to see that she was still sound asleep. The room was still mostly dark, so it must have been too early for everyone to get up.

With a grateful sigh, Hades let his head fall back onto the couch and rolled over on his side. Getting up and telling everyone the good news could wait. Right now, he was going to make what little time he had left to spend in Auradon with Mal last, even if it was just sleeping in the same room, because he knew once everyone woke up, he would be in the first car back to the Isle without a second thought.

With one final thought of spending time with Mal, Hades fell asleep, dreams of spending time with Mal in Auradon filling his head.

Sorry not sorry it’s taking me forever to complete prompts. Let me know if you liked it! I live off comments/reblogs/tags in reblogs/etc. 

[jupitermelichios]

Martha Kane and the origins of Batman

Martha Wayne is the least explored character in the Batman canon. No solo books. No major storylines. Nothing but a chalk outline.

And that’s crazy, because the way I see it, she’s one of the most important character in Gotham in terms of how she shaped Batman, and the city.

Really, a lot of how you read Martha as a character depends on how you read Thomas. We don’t know all that much about either of them, and so we have to work backwards from Bruce, piece together the influence they had on him, and what that tells us about them.

Thomas is certainly eccentric - he’s a billionaire with a full-time job after all - but mostly he’s staid. Not necessarily conservative but set in his ways. He cares deeply about duty (again that odd detail of his being a practising doctor rearing it’s head) and about helping people, but he does all that as a wealthy capitalist. Wayne Industries treats its workers well, but it is still a company with minimum wage employees and a billionaire CEO. He gives money to charity, but he still keeps millions in liquid assets for himself and his family. All of which speaks to someone who doesn’t rock the boat. Who upholds the status quo. So he (and Alfred to some degree) must be where Bruce gets his patriarchal tendencies, his instinct to uphold the system even when he knows it’s broken, his aloofness.

But Bruce isn’t just a patriarchal capitalist upholding broken systems. He’s also someone who dresses as a Bat and goes out to solve crimes with his bare hands. He’s someone who will spend a year cultivating a rose the exact shade of Superman’s cape. He’s someone who trolls superhero fan discussion boards for fun. He’s someone who can inspire almost fanatical loyalty in his friends and family. He’s someone who doesn’t just do the right thing, he risks his life nightly for it. And if that didn’t come from Thomas, and it didn’t come Alfred, then it must have come from Martha.

So what do we actually know about Martha? We know she did a lot of charity work. We know her son adored her. And we know she was a Kane. And we know from Batwoman that the Kanes exist, and have existed, in a constant state of high Gothic melodrama. We know that Kate’s grandfather, Martha’s father, was a terror, a figure who would be at home in sensation fiction or southern gothic. We know that they’re a military family, and that Martha was the only daughter. We know that Kane’s are unhinged even by Wayne standards.

From that we can begin to put together a character for Martha, and the personality that emerges is fascinating. She cared deeply about things, to a degree that was almost certainly unsettling for those around her. We can guess that she loved intensely. That her sense of humour was was a little warped and a lot dark. We can guess that she was intensely herself at all times, and taught Bruce the same. We can guess that like all the Kanes, she teetered on a mental precipice (and in Flashpoint we see what’s waiting on the other side of that drop, and it’s not all that different than what would happen to her niece a few years later).

That’s all in the canon, if you pick it apart. What follows is speculation.

So we have this girl, prone by genetics and nurture to fairly extreme emotional reactions to everything, growing up surrounded by brothers who are valued more, listened to more, because it’s the 60s and they’re male and they can join the army when she can’t. There’s a tension in her home, everyone waiting to see which of them will be the first to snap, everyone hoping it’s not them, everyone praying it’s not the father they’re already scared of. And as she gets older, her brothers leave and there’s just her and her emotions in this house where emotional outbursts are all but forbidden. 

At 18 she goes to college, a real college not a finishing school, and cuts a little loose, but she’s never free, can never fully escape her father’s shadow, can never escape the knowledge that everyone’s waiting for her to be the one to snap.

She studies literature, because it’s an acceptable subject for a well bred girl, and because she loves reading more completely and passionately than she’s ever loved anything else, because there’s never been anything else too love. She looses herself in the words of women more free than her, more courageous, more rebellious, and writes brilliant passionate essays about them and debates endlessly their various merits with anyone who will listen and most of all, she dreams of escape.

When Thomas enters her life, he seems too perfect to be true. He’s a good man, not just an okay man but a genuinely good man. He has a cause, something he’s passionate about, and that more than his looks or his money draws her in. But above all, he’s safe. He’s an escape from the family home she dreads returning too, an escape that even her father would approve of. He respects her intellect without being intimidated, he enjoys her passion without being afraid. He seems so sane, and stable, and normal. (He isn’t, but even Waynes look sane to Kane eyes).

She doesn’t love him passionately and completely, he doesn’t subsume her life the way books had and her son will, but he laughs at her jokes, and talks to her about medicine and and anatomy and social reform as though she is an intelligent adult instead of just another pretty blue-blooded airhead, and she’s counting down the days until he proposes.

Of course, marriage doesn’t turn out quite the way she’d dreamed of. She still loves Thomas, but forced to live every day with him, to play the society hostess and loyal wife, to be the public face of his charity work and conscious all the time of how she will be perceived... It could be worse, she tells herself. It could be so much worse. She does love Thomas, even if sometimes he makes her want to scream and throw things. The sex is good, and she edits a literary journal now, and the charity work really is important. She has the garden, and she’s given free reign there to rip everything out and start over with her own design, the first time she’s ever been allowed to do anything of the sort. She can listen to music as loudly as she wants, drink champagne by the bucket if her heart desires, eat only foods she enjoys, buy only clothes she likes. Really, Thomas allows her a huge amount of freedom.

That’s the problem. He allows her.

She thinks very seriously about leaving. Not because she doesn’t love Thomas, she does, but because she realises she’s never done anything without the permission of a man. She thinks about funnelling money into a bank account Thomas has no access to and just disappearing. Gotham is her home, but there must be other cities of perpetual night and gothic drama in the world. She could move to Prague perhaps, or New Orleans, or Venice. A city that’s slowly sinking appeals to her sense of drama.

And then Bruce happens and everything changes. She loves gardening, and literature, and Thomas, and Channel no 9, and jazz, but she’s never loved anything like she loves Bruce. She didn’t know it was possible to love anything as much as she loves Bruce. Overnight he becomes her world and by the time he’s three it’s already clear that he’s like her, he feels things with that maddening intensity. She teaches him to be himself fully and without apology, to be the strange half-wild creature that Kane and Wayne blood were always going to create. She creates someone who lives on that edge all Kanes know so well, but instead of teetering he plants his feet like a Wayne and will not be moved. He is strange and wonderful and she reads him horror stories and teaches him to dance and gives him everything his heart desires without a care for things like whether it’s safe or appropriate. He is her son and she doesn’t even care that he’s Thomas’s as well because in Bruce she can see all the ways Thomas is her perfect foil.

What Bruce remembers of her, what he chooses to remember, is laughter and music and her perfume. What Alfred remembers, but chooses not to share, is laughter, and music, and perfume, and things thrown during arguments, and a rose bed that never got the chance to settle in before she ripped it out again, and Bruce paralysed with fear at a story but not wanting it to stop because it was his beloved mother reading it, and finding Thomas collapsed over the pages of the DSM with tear tracks on his cheeks, and her never forgetting the name of a servant who she liked but especially one she disliked.

He remembers a woman being herself as hard as she could every day regardless of the consequences to herself or anyone around her, screaming defiance at a world run by the sane and the stolid, teetering always on that brink.

[ihaveneverbeengivenflowers]

Girl crush: Integra Hellsing

Or perhaps should I say

*cof cof* *deep baritone voice* *japanese accent*

INTEGRA FAIRBROOK WINGATES HELLSING

From: Hellsing Author: Kouta Hirano

Warning: spoilers about both the manga and anime versions all the way down from here!

Basic plot: At the age of 12, Integra loses her father and inherits the command of the Royal Order of Protestant Knights, a centenary monster-hunter organization leaded by the Hellsing family to protect England and the Anglican Church against supernatural threats. However, her uncle has always wanted to control the organization, so he plots to murder her right after his brother’s death. Attempting to escape, she finds herself in the basement of the manor, where some kind of legacy from her ancestors is supposed to protect her. When she gets shot by her persecuters, the shedered blood awakes a ridiculously powerful vampire tamed to serve her family. While Alucard performs a carnage with her uncle’s men, she kills him and actually assumes the command of the Organization. Plus, she's recognized by Count Dracula, no other than Vlad III The Impaler himself as his new master.

Now let me tell you why she’s my favorite female manga/anime character ever, and let’s consider her 3 versions (the manga and both anime adaptations):

The “original” Integra (I mean, manga and Ultimate anime versions) is my personal definition of a badass girl, and getting to know her was groundbreaking for the standards of my 16 year old self. Somehow she represents my ideal of strength, proud and self-assurance, in the best “I ain’t gonna take no shit from no fucking one” style I so admire and wished I had to myself... if my anxiety disorder didn’t screw me up.

In parallel to her strong temper, there’s a delightful tendency of hers to show a warped sense of humour with sarcastic teasing and taunting jokes - much more like Alucard, for example. In my opinion, Gonzoverse (ie, the first anime adaptation) depicted her too prone to anger and hard to please - like his antithesis, while I rather think of them and their psychological bond as different sides of the same hell broken loose.

By the way, I really think of her and Hellsing in general as thick with sexual tension, and not just because the prequel of the story was supposed to be a hentai. It’s not hard at all to think of BDSM, you just need to take a closer look: she cuts or bites herself and allows the vampires to feed on the blood dripping from her fingers, watching them from above with a wicked smirk. Gonzoverse also made its way on picturing her as a temptress, especially on the final minutes of the last episode, when Alucard breaks the glass in his hand and asks her one more time to drink his blood. The gaze she gaves him, omfg... I don’t care whether I’m straight, but pray tell me, am I the only one who gets turned on with that shit?

I’ve talked before about Oscar from Rose of Versailles, one of my other favorite female characters, and I can’t help comparing them two because Oscar also represents strength, but from a completely different perspective. Somehow, I think it’s like Oscar was raised by her father as a man, but Integra finished raising herself as one due to the circumstances (please note I don’t literally mean it, there’s no identity conflict related to her biological sex or gender). Maybe we’ll take it as given that she’s a natural leader because of her tenacity, but I think that’s more related to the events that required the young girl to grow up as a tough woman, otherwise she’d be deposed from her post, disrespected by a bunch of older men or eaten up (literally or not... take it as you wish, hahaha) by the family’s vampire servant.

That leads me to the next topic: no matter how fucked up is the situation, she still has the guts to do whatever she must do. Clearly this kind of behaviour is not reasonable 100% of the times, but she’s just too stubborn to give in. She lost her father, almost got killed by the uncle that sweared to look after her, shot him dead right after whitnessing a carnage, was betrayed by the butler that probably raised her like a daughter, took a great responsability at a very young age (and 22 is still a very young age to deal with all of that vampire nazi shit, in my opinion), got shot again and lost an eye and Jesus fucking Christ, she didn’t shed a fucking tear. Just for the record, I don’t think there’s nothing wrong with crying, it wouldn’t make less of her. But I can’t convince myself that Gonzoverse didn’t fuck this up this trait of hers (I wish that was all I think they fucked up, but... yeah, you know).

Taking the opportunity to dwell a little bit more on this subject: again, in comparison to Rose of Versailles, I once read somewhere that the anime was a reinterpretation of the feminine through men’s eyes. Guess we can’t say that of Hellsing, because well, it’s a seinen (ie, mainly marketed to adult men) and the author himself is a man. But to make sure that the tv series would be appelative enough to this particular audience, it might seemed to be a good idea to rebalance her relationships with male characters. To cite a few examples: 1) she relies much more on Alucard and/or Walter than she does in the original storyline, 2) she's easily subdued by Incognito without being able to offer resistance and 3) even the surgeon who sweated a bucket to successfully operate her was a man. On the other hand, she’d rather stab herself and almost bleed to death than having her blood tainted by a vampire, and this may have been their attempt to keep her nerve somehow.

Moving on, but still considering the masculinity thing: at the original storyline, we’re first introduced to the younger Integra, and then there’s a 10 years gap. The (not so) older Integra surely has been through a lot and earned the deserved respect. And I find this change (I’d rather call it “process” if we could have followed her during this considerable period of time, because it certainly didn’t happen overnight) of hers very meaningful, and very graphic in both anime adaptations. Not just because she wears trousers instead of skirts, but also because of the color tones (brighter in the past, darker in the present), body language (wider gestures x closed posture) and interactions (physical contact x distance to other characters).

By the way, if you think she dresses like a man, please read this excelent analysis and realize you got it wrong. As the author very well explains, the canon storyline develops in the late 90′s, and she dresses like a businesswoman of her time. Besides, Kouta Hirano is not exactly a reference when it comes to fashion sense. Let me emphasize that there’s no sex/gender misconceptions at all in this character. Her feminility is recognized by other characters in the story, and we can take for instance the way they adress her: except for Sir (an honorific granted because of her position at the Round Table) and sama (which is gender neutral), female pronouns are used to refer to her - lady, fräulein, ojousama... The symbols of masculinity, I think, are employed to refer to the concepts of strenght, power and defiance. Plus omg, are you people fucking blind? Am I the only one who thinks she’s breathtaking?

Well, last but not least at all: that must be something if the No Life King, an overpower as fuck vampire who’s like 500 years old bends a knee in front of her. Alucard has been surely under her control because of the restrains her family has over his powers, but I’d bet my ass he simply allows her to hold and pull his leash, and that he somehow enjoys it as much as his freak terminator job... and she seems to enjoy it as well.

Search and destroy, motherfuckers.

[haloud]

the moon points to the sun

ao3

Michael probably ought to be flattered that he’s the last stop on the Max Evans Resurrection Greatest Hits Tour, but mostly he just doesn’t know what to expect when Max calls him out to his house near midnight about a week after he came back to the land of the living. Regardless, he answers the call because all his memories of Max right now are distant and shimmering and clouded behind the barrier of him floating lifeless in a pod. So he meets Max at his house, a twenty-minute drive through the clear, thoughtless night; he meets him right outside the shiny new French doors he put in after he, y’know, shattered the last set.

Max opens with “I’m sorry,” and it rocks Michael back on his heels.

“Apology…accepted?” He says, and he only restrains himself from shooting off finger guns by the sheer kinetic force of the awkwardness already prickling at his nerves. They don’t do apologies, Max and Michael. If they started, they’d never stop.

“No. You have to listen; you can’t…” Max swallows, and it looks painful, forced. Michael shoves his hands in his pockets, shoulders hunching ‘cause he learned a while back that Max is the kind of guy who doesn’t take comforting well. So while Michael might want to reach out and smooth everything over, it wouldn’t actually do Max any good.

“Alright,” Michael says, kind of helplessly, “Go on.”

“I’m sorry that I let Isobel think you were a killer.”

The air knocks right out of Michael’s lungs, and the breath that rushes back in is too hot and too cold all at once. With a bone-heavy weariness, Michael does not want to have this conversation, not now that it’s all over and done. But he can also tell in the tension in Max’s every muscle that this is something Max needs to say.

“I let you carry that weight for ten years. And I—I tore into you because I couldn’t look at myself in the mirror, and I left you with nobody—”

“Max.”

“Nobody, and taking care of you was every bit as much as my responsibility as Iz was, but I failed and god I am so fucking sorry, Michael—”

“Max!”

See, Max has always done this thing where he firms up his lips in a thin, hard line because if he doesn’t his bottom lip’ll start trembling and once that happens he can’t stop himself from crying. Maybe Michael just knows him; maybe to somebody else, Max might come off all strong and stoic with that straight-backed charisma that got him deputized two years after graduation. All Michael sees is that floppy-haired kid sticking a flashlight under his chin and making ghost noises when Michael had real shit going bump in the night. That kid—he couldn’t have ever understood the stuff that lurked in Michael’s nightmares. But that didn’t stop him from staying up every damn night and making the effort.

Michael snaps out his brother’s name to cut off the words, the confession, the prayer spilling out ugly and rotten between them. Max blinks wet eyes and dips his chin in some aborted half-nod. He holds himself like he’s bracing for a punch, and Michael is so goddamn tired of bruised knuckles.

“You gotta stop, man,” Michael says. “You gotta stop looking for original sin. Giving Iz somewhere else to look other than in those big dark places in her head? That was my choice. Not yours. I put that loneliness on my own back, and I put that guilt on yours, you hear me?”

Max starts shaking his head; he takes a step forward with his mouth gone even thinner and whiter, but Michael just barrels on.

“And yeah, you gave me your anger while you were passing down your own damn prison sentence, but you can’t keep living like this—hell, literally, because don’t think I couldn’t work out that you brought Rosa back and damned the consequences because you didn’t think you deserved Liz until you could fix every single thing that’s ever gone wrong in her life. Newsflash, hotshot—that’s not how people work! Life sucks sometimes, that’s how people work. And when life sucks, we’re supposed to get back up and push through. Don’t you think it’s time the two of us did that? Instead of looking for forgiveness in the mirror? ‘Cause I’m so tired of not having my brother, man. I don’t know what to do about my own mistakes, but I’m pretty sure I can forgive that kid. If he’ll let me.”

Michael ends his speech with his arms spread wide, as open as he can go. Talking to Max isn’t easy; he’s so good at acting like he’s got every little thing figured out that it feels like a crime to walk into his life and get dirt all over the rugs. Even as Michael opens up, Max shuts down. But right now…Michael can’t remember a time where Max ever looked small, but here it is. He stares at Michael for a long moment, losing the battle with tears, then he collapses into one of his deck chairs and drops his face into his hands.

“It can’t—It’s not that easy. It can’t be. You can’t just—”

“Why not? Why’s it gotta be hard?” His defensive heart curls in tight, still wanting his brother to have all the answers, but Max just shakes his head. Michael can’t help himself and steps forward, to grab his shoulder, to shake him a little bit, to make him respond; and Max must feel him getting closer because his head snaps up and the air goes a little static charged.

“Because every time I look at you I see that little kid!” He barks.

On instinct, Michael flinches back, and Max flinches with him, face twisting like he’s in agony.

“God,” he sobs, takes a deep breath, and continues, “When we first crawled out of those pods, you were the very first thing I saw. Do you remember that? I could feel Isobel, of course I could feel her, but I saw you. That’s the only thing I remember from that night. That’s my very first memory. You.”

Shakily, Michael drops into the dust next to Max’s chair. He doesn’t try to make it over to the other chair on the other side of the table, not when they spent fifty years just three feet away from each other. Those early memories are—hazy. Mostly Michael just remembers seeing that symbol every time he blinked. But…yeah. Buried deep, all the way back? A tiny hand reaches out to take his own and pull him out of the cave and into the world.

“I remember,” Michael breathes, and Max makes a wrenching sound halfway between a laugh and a sob.

“And then everything went so fast. I can’t remember any of it, just that suddenly there was Isobel and me and you were gone, and every night we’d sit on the windowsill and look outside and wait for you, but you never came and we—we didn’t have the words to ask why or how or even cry and—” Max clutches his stomach like he might be sick. “Four years later and I still couldn’t feel you, not like Isobel, and I felt so broken—I had to ask your name. You want to talk about original sin? That’s it, right there. Fuck, Michael, that’s why it can’t just be easy, because I don’t deserve—”

“Shut up about deserving shit, man. Didn’t I just tell you that’s now how the world works?”

Michael doesn’t know what else to say; hell, his mouth feels numb and he can barely tell what words he’s saying at all. They’ve never managed to have this conversation without twisting knives, and all he wants is to not fuck it up this time. Max has already been dead once; what if next time it sticks?

Michael says, “The past isn’t going to change, man. You’re not gonna stop feeling guilty; I’m never gonna stop feeling angry. At some point, you have to accept that kind of shit about yourself.”

Max nods, but Michael doesn’t let him speak and carries on:

“But if we don’t stop letting that be all we are to each other, nothing’s ever going to change.” He pauses, his gaze caught on their boots side-by-side in the dirt. Max knows the value of good shoes and keeping them in good shape; his job’s an active one, so he shells out for the right kind of footwear. Michael makes do with what he’s got, and sometimes that means eating light for a too-long while and boots that break down in a year or two.

Their lives don’t line up too well. But that’s an excuse that’s long since worn out its welcome.

“Why did you call me out here?” Michael finally asks, exhaustion creeping up inside his chest. “What did you think was going to happen? You don’t want me to forgive you, so then what?”

“I honestly don’t know,” Max replies heavily. He gestures out into the wide dark desert and laughs a single dead laugh. “Giving you permission to go, I guess? Go find something better, man. You’ve suffered too much already to stay tied to this place. You’re too much, too good, too smart to keep paying for my mistakes.”

Rage punches hot and sudden through the weariness, making Michael clench his teeth against the rising urge to explode, to shake the earth around them. “You have not listened to a single goddamn word I’ve said, have you?” He snaps, and his tone finally makes Max meet his gaze, eyes red-rimmed and shocked.

“I—”

“Seriously. You called me out here past midnight just so you could make yourself a martyr? You think I want that from you? God damn it!”

“Michael—”

“Just listen to me for one time in your life!”

Michael climbs back to his feet, towering over Max’s hunched body. Even at his angriest, his loneliness, his most bitter, he never wanted to see Max broken. And it hurts as bad as losing him again watching him breaking himself.

So he says the only thing he can, even if he can’t make Max hear it.

“If you don’t want my forgiveness, I can’t make you accept it. And hell, maybe you don’t deserve it. Does that feel better, hearing that? Maybe I do deserve a better home than Roswell; maybe I do deserve a better life. But even after everything Roswell did to me, after all the ashes blew away and I was left with the truth that there was nothing more out there worth running to? I made a choice. I chose this place, chose the trailer, chose the—the summers where the street signs fucking warp, the town that’s never going to see me as anything but a fuckup. And I don’t regret that choice, not when that choice gave me love, not when that choice let me finally feel like I had a home. The only thing that went missing was you, but now you’re here, and whether you like it or not I’m going to choose you too.”

The words die in his throat after that. Max still hasn’t moved; he’s not even shaking, even though the fine, honest tremors started up in Michael the second he opened his mouth. But Michael swallows down the hurt and confusion and want for everything to be okay, because not everyone believes with their whole body.

Say something, he thinks, eleven years old and scared nobody’s going to want him.

Frantic to fill the ringing silence, he says, “So that’s me.” His tongue trips and he starts again, “I’ll go if you want me to go. But I ain’t closing the door. I know a little bit about not liking yourself, so if you’re gonna need some time…I miss you, but like, I’m missing what we had at seventeen, and you don’t have to be ready—”

God, the words just won’t stop. His brain’s moving too fast, trying to come up with ten years worth of words now that the dam’s been breached. He presses his lips together to stem the flow; presses them all tight and thin. Just like Max.

Max, who just…loses the battle.

He pitches forward, hands on his knees, great heaving sobs rattling his whole huge frame. Michael staggers forward to catch him, stops himself, then chooses to keep going forward all the same. He thumps his brother on the back like he’s choking, not sure Max would accept anything else. Michael still hasn’t gotten the hang of healing with his hands.

How long do they sit like that? How long does Max spend shedding all that grief and guilt and hating into the dirt? Long enough that Michael’s back starts aching from the way he’s standing bent over; long enough for the high, bright moon to change angles in the sky. When he finally goes quiet, he ends it on a cough, on a shuddery inhale that fills out his chest. And it’s quiet again, only this time Michael used up all his words already, so he just stands there, helpless.

“Can we…try?” Max says, voice strained and dying. “’Cause I. I’ve been missing you for a long fucking time too, man. And maybe I don’t—” He almost smiles, and it’s a tiny goddamn miracle. “Gonna start just calling it the d-word like a middle schooler. After this one. Maybe I don’t deserve another chance, but maybe,” he does smile now, a real quirk of his lips, and Michael almost-smiles too. “Maybe…and you’re gonna like this one…maybe I need to stop thinking I’m the only person who gets to decide what’s deserved, huh?”

Michael has to laugh at that, throwing his head back like he could howl at the moon. Instead, he lets out a whoop of triumph, throwing his arms out wide and shouting into the night, “Hallelujah praise the lord—”

“Man, shut the hell up!” Max shouts back, and it’s still snuffly, he hiccups on the laugh that fights its way out of his throat, but goddamn if it’s not some progress.

“You gotta give me something or else I’m going to tell everyone,” Michael says, still loud and exuberant like he’s so happy, so hopeful he wants the stars to hear him.

“I’ll give you my guest room and pancakes in the morning,” Max says with a flicker of desperate light behind his eyes. Like he thinks Michael might still say no.

No way. Michael just grins, a little kid again.

“You’ve got yourself a deal. But those pancakes better have blueberries in them, or I might make you re-negotiate, lawman.”

“Oooh, that’s a hard bargain there, outlaw. I don’t know if I’m willing to negotiate with the likes’a you.”

“Maybe I let ya off easy this time outta respect,” Michael drawls, clapping Max on the back as he strolls past and consciously does not hesitate on the threshold of Max’s home. The chair scrapes the concrete patio behind him, and Michael swipes his hat off his head and hangs it on the peg by the door.

A year ago, he would’ve said he was too old, too bitter for cops and robbers and scary stories told by flashlight. But now, for all he’s not getting any younger, he’s gonna start treating that kid that’s still inside him, that’s inside Max and Isobel too, with a little more respect and a little more love. He’s making that choice.

And this time, it’s going to stick.

[bluekayanite]

(SU:F Theory - Snow Day) Has Steven REALLY Changed That Much?

...Or is he just still dealing with an old issue?

(I intended to post this last week, but apparently forgot to actually, you know, post it. >_<  I’ve got another one upcoming, but here’s this one for now.)

EDIT: Some edits have been made.  Not gonna stress myself over the details this time.

My Feelings on the Ep

Okay, I dunno about you, but I actually found the story of Snow Day pretty upsetting.  The whole thing was about Steven running from his childhood favorites, and he pretty much stated that it was because he didn't want to be seen as a kid.

Sure, I can get behind not liking when people assume you haven't changed, especially when the changes in question have to do with you learning and growing (been there... -.-), but it didn't feel like that was the real issue.  I mean, there's growing up and changing, and then there's more-or-less trying to hide, or to erase the past.  IMO, this ep showed Steven trying to avoid "kids stuff" to an extreme.  He literally jumped over the edge!

And not just the kids stuff, but it feels to me like he's been avoiding silly stuff in general, like that goofy charm that seemed like an essential character trait throughout the first series.

Even the idea that he could've left behind so much of the goofiness I love was pretty distressing - it really feels like he's trying to run away from a part of himself, essentially killing a part of himself (or at least a version thereof).  But that's not the whole of the issue for me.

To me, it really kind of felt like Steven believed the Gems were wrong to still want to appreciate the old stuff with him - not because of “seeing him as a child, still,” but... like they couldn't still appreciate the way he used to be, even in a nostalgic sense.  Like he believes that they shouldn't be allowed to enjoy the silly stuff, either.  Or the little things in general.

(If you're not taking the time to pet something cute, I'd say it's pretty serious.)

Also: come on!!  The Cheeseburger Backpack and Together Breakfast are two of the most iconic things of the series-es!  And personally, like I kind of said, I’d say Steven's goofiness is right up there with them!  Even the vegetarianism!  Remember how big Steven was on hot dogs?

"I think there isn't such a thing as a bad [hot] dog, though.  Only bad chefs!" - Steven, Wacky Sacks Unboxing minisode

It was even in the first opening of SU!

I don't mind that SU:F is more mature than SU, but it feels like it's missing a lot of the heart that made SU so easy to love.  I’m even noticing that there's been a shortage a star-iris-endings.  I’m pretty sure the last iris was used in Guidance... for a fake ending.

Not that I think the star-iris should be forced, but it seems like it's not being used, even when Crewniverse has a perfectly good chance to do so.  The fact that they've used it at all suggests that they're not trying to avoid using it - more like they've fallen out of the habit, or something.  And I’m really starting to feel the absence of the little bit of lighthearted warmth that it typically brings.  It just kinda quietly punctuates just how serious the show has been.

...It's pretty depressing, really.

But yeah, in general, I'm not a big fan of the idea that you have to let go of kid things as soon as you grow up.  Doctors believe that play is just as important for adults as it is for children.  Heck, that article even mentions reading aloud to someone (and I'd say, by extension, being read to) as a form of play... one of the forms that Steven specifically avoids.

And if you ask me, The No Home Boys sounds like its pretty deep - not just a basic, “silly” kids’ story.

"My favorite story is this classic one where the No Home Boys are chased[...] by a mysterious pursuer, which turns out to be the very fear resting within themselves." - Steven, On The Run

At the very least, it's what led to him having an adventure that led to him learning something important, and to bringing to light - and resolving - some previously-unspoken tension between Pearl and Amethyst.

So at the very least, I wouldn't cast aside childish things so quickly, if only for all the good that they have already brought.

There's also the fact that adult play has been accepted as a pretty important thing in our current society - it's basically our culture now.  As said on the YT Channel Lockstin & Gnoggin (in response to COPPA), "This isn't the 1970s anymore[...]  Adults are no longer afraid to be interested in things."  I mean, heck, I think odds are pretty good that if you’re reading this, you're probably an adult who enjoys “kids stuff.”  I know I technically fit in that category - I’m getting old enough that I don't like to think about it. ^_^;

Personally, I believe that the “adults can still like ‘kids’ stuff” thing could really use more representation in mainstream media, ESPECIALLY after the whole COPPA thing.  Personally, I’ve always believed that this would be done through Steven Universe.

And personally... I still think odds are good that it will.

Why I Think There's Still Hope for the Subject

The “adults enjoying ‘childish’ stuff” thing isn't just a thing with Millennials and the Internet in general: it's a pretty strong part of the culture of the Crewniverse, what with them actually enjoying Together Breakfast for the release of the ep by the same name.  Not to mention donuts topped with Pop Rocks fire salt (exact quote - for Joking Victim), a big bowl of macaroni-and-nothing (for Warp Tour), and even a Rice Krispie temple that promptly got pummeled by a giant hand (technically for Bismuth, but also referencing Jailbreak).  And those are just a few examples.

And in general, I've noticed that SU is very Millennial show, featuring values like that the reason for work should be to enjoy life, rather than to make money (Drop Beat Dad), and I've already said that being able to enjoy "kids stuff" as an adult is a pretty Millennial thing.

So to me, it seems like it's probably inevitable that Steven's going to get over the "trying too hard to adult" thing.  Heck, if anything, I'd say that Snow Day is just another part of the long-running-buildup.

Steven has a history of trying to cut everything “childish” out of his life, and/or being embarrassed when it's brought up.

This felt like an extension of that history - to me, it feels like this issue leveled up, like he's trying harder than ever before to avoid being associated with "kids stuff."  His reaction to Garnet presenting the Cheeseburger Backpack certainly looks like one of embarrassment, and one of not even appreciating the gesture, regardless.

And if you look, this whole thing started when the Gems implied that birthday parties were a "kids thing."

(My apologies for VUDU’s captions - they got better, I promise.)

Since then, he’s been stuck on the idea that he would have to leave things behind as he got older.

Before that, he was trying to convince the Gems of just the opposite.

Little did Steven know that they actually came around, while he was away...

But now?  Now that they've obviously come around, he's still having trouble getting over what was once said.

He's even overtly objecting to being called "cute," or like a kid!

I think this is a pretty good example of how one little thing can result in a problem that a person struggles with for a long time afterward; how one idea can result in a person pressuring themselves to try and be something or not, even if the people who gave the idea have changed their minds.  I think it's a pretty good example of the kind of baggage - the kind of problems - we carry around with us.

And you know what the official description of SU:F says?

"[A]s [Steven] runs out of other people's problems to solve, he'll finally have to face his own."

I very much believe that this is one of them. =3

Before I saw the movie, I had been spoiled by the “catchup” vid for the last season clearly being narrated by an older-voiced Steven.  (So sorry, Hilary, that you want through so much trouble, but the neck wasn't much of a secret to me. XD; )  And spoilers aside, it had been pretty well hinted that he was going to grow up, via both of the “Birthday” episodes. 

(Personally, I’m kind of disappointed that we missed the magic growth spurt - I always thought it would've been hilarious. X3)

I’d often thought that Steven was going to grow up when he realized that he didn't have to leave “childish” stuff behind - that he can be grown up without having to "stop being a kid," or worrying about how people would see him if he didn't.  I kind of figured it would allow him to feel more comfortable about growing up, and so he would grow up.

But, apparently, that's still a thing he needs to work on.

And sure, I'm glad Steven came around at least a little, but I wonder if it's really enough... especially since he doesn’t even seem sincere on loving that the Gems upgraded the Steven Tag game.

But also, it seems to me like this issue is affecting more of his personality than just his desire to have fun... like he's losing quite a bit of himself.  Remember how Pearl once described him?

You have to feel like yourself!  Sweet and considerate, and only occasionally obnoxious! - Pearl, So Many Birthdays

It does seem like Steven's been having trouble with the considerate angle, lately.  I mean, he kept busting into Jasper's hideout, he took over Amethyst's mentorship program (completely ignoring the feelings of the Gems being mentored), and in general, he's kinda... asserting himself and his opinions more than listening to others(').  I'd even say that he's lost a lot of his sweet, and he's... probably more than occasionally obnoxious. ^_^;  I mean, Aquamarine and Eyeball certainly think so. X3

Now?  Well... I'd say that the Gems have at least as much of a point as Steven does.  I have to admit, I feel a lot like Amethyst - I think she has a point about the direction Steven is (or had been) heading, and about what kind of example he was setting.

I agree that the issue is serious enough for Pearl to be justified in being willing to join in (which I really love her doing =3).

(Seriously, I’ve actually been worried for Steven.)

...And now I’d say that her old plea to feel like himself again is even more valid than ever.

In a way, Snow Day felt a lot like So Many Birthdays in reverse: instead of Steven trying to spend time with the Gems and making them feeling awkward about silly stuff, we now have the exact opposite.  Now, instead of allowing himself to still be a kid, Steven tries to convince them not to make him be a kid.  ...Which, again, is fair, but still.  I'd say it goes too far when he hates the idea of "kid."

But yeah...  I figure this has gotta be addressed sooner or later.  Personally, I can't wait fo the day when it is. XD;

...call me crazy - call me super crazy - but I’m hoping that a certain Pink Doofball* will talk some more sense into him. X3  That, or maybe his dad.

(*If you're not familiar with my blog... well, here's my main theory, in case you're interested.  I know it probably sounds insane, but it would mean a lot if you'd give it a look.)

[racingtoaredlight]

spencer096′s Precision Bass Project:  Setup

Everything I talk about today is going to be unique for every musician.  Beyond the actual instrument, setup is the most personal aspect of an electric guitar or bass.  The setup affects the physical feel of the instrument while you’re playing, but also the sound and your choice of notes.

So today I’m going to talk about the various aspects of the setup, why I set my instruments up the way I do, and the reasons why someone might want to set theirs up differently.

The only wrong answers here are in regards to intonation...if your guitar or bass is setup in a way where the fretted notes aren’t in tune with the open string, your setup isn’t correct.  Pretty hard to wiggle out of that aspect, but the rest of the variables of setting up an instrument are all valid as long as the musician prefers it that way.

***

STEP 1 - What do you actually want?

The biggest reason I’m building a P-Bass is because it’s organically at home in a wide variety of musical styles.  But if you’re a busy slap player, flatwound strings, high action and a single Precision Bass pickup in the neck wired in series is not going to give you anywhere near the sound you want.  Bright, light guage strings with low action, a bass wired in parallel, an onboard preamp for boost and EQ is the recipe you need.

That’s why setup always starts with asking yourself what you want to play.

***

STEP 2 - What strings do you want to play?

We talked about this yesterday.  Before you even begin to start the setup process, you need to answer this question.

For a lot of guitarists and bassists, this is an afterthought.  I mentioned that I was like this with guitar...D’Addarios were more than good enough for me, so why even waste time thinking about it?

Well, when you’re setting up your instrument yourself, it’s the most crucial ingredient because the strings are the element that puts tension on the neck.  And since setup is almost entirely related to making sure the neck operates perfectly, that tension is the biggest variable you need to account for.

Among the string manufacturers, each model has a different tension.  And each individual gauge offering of that model has a different tension.  While you can crunch numbers to your heart’s delight, it will still only get you in the ballpark as far as adjustments are concerned.

That’s why, once you get everything set up, typically musicians will stick with that same model and gauge...or they’ll get something new and make adjustments to the truss rod when they switch.  The more important aspect is to understand that the fewer variables you place on the neck, the longer and better it will respond without maintenance.

***

STEP 3 - Fuckin’ around pt. 1

I fucking hate this part of setup so goddamned much.  It’s just so much “well lets try this, great still more adjustments to make, great gotta take the neck off again, great...”

This problem was solved long ago...Gibson never had this problem to begin with...but on vintage Fenders, you gotta take the neck off to adjust the truss rod.  While you can just pop it up like in the picture below, you still have to fully screw and unscrew the four neck pocket screws every time only so you can turn that neck screw a quarter turn.

But that’s only after you string up the bass, check the fret height to make sure it’s where you want it...

...make sure there’s no fret buzzing (which there will be)...

...so you make some adjustments to the bridge...

...and the intonation’s now whacked, so you adjust the other end of the threaded saddle...

Next step...

***

STEP 3 - Testing fret buzz and intonation

So how do you test fret buzz and intonation?

Easy...you play every fret, and if it buzzes, you know you have to raise the action.  To test intonation, make sure the instrument is in tune first and foremost.  Then make sure the artificial harmonic on the 5th fret is in tune.  Good?  Good.  Repeat on a fretted 12th fret note, harmonic on the 17th fret, and then the octave harmonic just past the end of the fretboard.

It’s not as easy to say once you have no buzzing and good intonation, you’re done.  If you want low action and it’s sky high, it’s not a great setup.  Next go around, make adjustments to the bridge.

IMPORTANT NOTE...always loosen the strings when taking off the neck of a bolt-on guitar or bass.

***

STEP 4 - Fuckin’ around pt. 2

The truss rod is the adjustable rod that’s installed in the neck of a guitar or bass, allowing it to be adjusted to keep the neck straight when environmental conditions change.  This might shock you, but wood expands in warm weather and shrinks in cold weather.  Over time, this can warp the neck unless you periodically setup your instrument and get it back to normal.

When we started on our brand new neck that had never felt any tension before, it likely looked like number 2.  When we put strings on it for the first time...or if we change strings that have more or less tension than what was previously on the instrument before...the neck needs to be readjusted, likely looking like number 1.

Now, adjusting the truss rod is NOT how you adjust the action (height of strings from the frets, this is adjusted primarily at the bridge)...but it’s part of the equation.  And that equation is the same as it was in the previous section.

Adjust the truss rod, measure action, test intonation and fret buzzing, adjust action, adjust intonation, check to see if the neck is straight.  That’s a relative straight too, by the way.  A perfectly setup neck...no matter how low the action is...will still have some relief.  You just don’t want the dreaded back bow or warp.

You might have to repeat this whole process three or four times until you get it right (or more, unfortunately).  It’s important to note that you should always have someone help with the truss rod if you’ve never done it before...too much can literally destroy the instrument’s longevity.  Only turn the truss rod a quarter turn at a time, never more, even if you think it needs another one...spending 30 extra minutes is worth it if the alternative is making it impossible to ever adjust your truss rod again, or worse, cracking your neck.

***

STEP 5 - Adjust pickup height

Once the neck, bridge and strings are all good to go, you might want to tweak the sound of your instrument further.

On forums, you always hear a lot of chatter about pickup changes, modifications...shit like that.  Sometimes it’s valid, but most of the time it’s just an excuse to buy something instead of practice.  I understand it more with guitars, but not basses to be honest.

But hey, sometimes we’re just not happy with how we sound.  But before dropping $150 on a pickup and paying someone $100 to turn four screws and make two solders, maybe try adjusting the height of your pickups as that can have a pretty drastic impact on changing your sound.

If you want more aggression and higher output, move those magnets closer to the strings.  Want a mellower, more tonally dynamic sound?  Move ‘em away.  Experiment until you find your sweet spot.

On Precision Basses, there is an interesting quirk.  The split-coil pickup and the rounded radius of the vintage fretboards made the intended design somewhat of a church-steeple type thing, where they’re higher in the middle than on the ends.  Most people adjust them so they’re sitting flat...and as fretboard radii have flattened, this has become less of an issue.

***

You’ll know when it’s to your liking.  That is, if you do it yourself...

This is a skill that has been completely and utterly lost amongst the newer generations of guitarists and bassists.  Ever since the emergence of specialized  guitar technicians (/snickers) and big box guitar stores, it’s been much easier to simply hand your instrument off to an “expert.”

The amount of horrible setups I’ve seen done by these types of professionals is more common than the great ones.  There are good luthiers in most major cities still doing great work like this, but they’re completely jammed due to demand.

But more importantly, if you’re a musician, you should know how to setup your instrument yourself, rather than explaining to someone else what you want.  It’s something that I’ve found allows you to understand how your instrument behaves, and in the process, gives you insight into how to better utilize it.

Working on your own instrument kills the “grass is greener” thing and refocuses your mind on the end-product of making music, rather than playing guitar Legos.  That time you spent setting up your instrument to allow it to perform its best is time you weren’t wasting looking at new instruments.  It gets you thinking about enhancing your performance in real life.

A lot of the great guitarists and bassists did their own work.  It was an essential part of being a guitarist...as much as playing and technique, knowing the ins and outs of their gear was a rite of passage.  It could be Stevie Ray himself re-routing his Strat for a Hendrix-style lefty trem, or Van Halen’s Frankenstrat, or Jaco putting on the P-Bass neck he used to practice as the credits rolled on his instructional video...those instruments were as much a part of those musicians as their hands.

Good setups are done with practicality in mind.  What you want from the instrument in order to make the best music is what you should ask yourself during every step of the setup process, because then understanding how to adjust the instrument to meet those requirements is easy.

[qamorfakemon]

Hmm well this is... different? It appears to be some kind of newspaper currently in circulation in the Qamor region, “Estrella News”

It’s slightly outdated by the looks of it tho. In fact, it appears the event this article is reporting on actually occurred a few years ago!

Entire transcript of article under cut. I wonder what it’s alluding at...?

QAMOR SKY OPENS UP

Gabbravo City in Panic as Mysterious Rift Lights up Sky

The day started out like any other in the free spirited-capital city of Qamor. Bright blue skies, Pokémon trainers battled, and tourists enjoyed Gabbravo City’s many attractions. However, in almost an instant the peaceful illusion of the fine day were ripped apart in an event felt throughout the entire region. Before our very eyes, a bright light appeared in the city’s busiest cross section, initially causing confusion and surprising passerby’s and motorists. “At first, I thought it was lightning” said one commentator. “But then I realized there wasn’t a cloud in the sky, so it couldn’t have been that!” For a while, the light just hung in the sky oddly warping and rippling the air around it, then in an instant the sky ripped open in a burst of energy that shook trees and shuddered windows. At least 20 ft in diameter, this enormous gap in space-time pulsed and sparks with brilliant colors; it was a completely otherworldly sight. At this point the civilians around flew into an outright panic, this was an event no one in the Qamor region had ever encountered and were all understandably sent into a frenzy. For its entire 20 minute duration, news of the event spread from word of mouth and via social media. Not only was every corner of Qamor privy to the situation, but word started spreading to other regions of the world.  Before us reporters knew it, Internation Police made it on the scene elevating the police department’s duty (Although this reporter would like to say that the police were just as scared and confused as the civilians). Quarantining the area, Interpol kept us members of the press and civilians alike away from a safe distance to the rift, however they would not answer any questions we had in regards to the situation. It WAS a very tense situation, to say the least, but tensions escalated within the final minutes of the rift’s existence. In an intense pulse of energy,  some kind of “Unidentified Being” (Or a “UB” as Qamor’s very own Professor Leo, leading researcher into Paranormal and Extraterrestrial activity sciences, informed as the official classification for a Pokémon or Pokémon-like creature from unknown origin) appeared from the rift and flew away in an undisclosed location. Many first hand statements regarding the UB are very inconsistent. The air around the creature, or possibly even space time itself, was heavily distorted and neither satisfactory footage nor reliable firsthand accounts were retrieved. As if things could not get more bizarre, as the rift began to stutter and fizzle for the final time, 2 objects were launched from its epicenter as it dissipated into nothingness with one last pulse of energy. The objects hit the ground hard, enough to crack the pavement as well, however from all outside view they seemed to remain mostly undamaged. Unlike the UB, we were able to snap a few photos of these anomalies, however Interpol intervened and  attempted to stop us reporters from getting anything better than the out of focus image we displayed in this very article. As quickly as the International Police appeared, they seemingly vanished in an instant with all evidence from the wormhole taken in for analysis. Police were informed to keep the area blocked off to civilians until further notice, but we were able to interview multiple experts who arrived on the scene when this event hit international news.

(Pictured: International Police agents appear on the scene investigating mysterious objects that fell from sky rift [enhanced])

Us at Estrella News were fortunate enough to be able to talk with some representatives from the Aether Foundation, a self-funded organization that seeks to promote wildlife conservation and Pokémon research, and its associate Professor Burnet, lead scientist studying alternate dimensions in Dream Radar Labs (Both situated in the Alola region). According to these researchers, what occurred today in Qamor is a relatively common anomaly in Alola knows as an “Ultra Wormhole”. According to Professor Burnet, who works closely with the Aether Foundation to investigate and record these events, Ultra Wormholes are “Bridges in Space Time” that allows matter to cross from our dimension to a conceptual location known as “Ultra Space”, and vice versa. “Ultra Space,” Professor Burnet explains “Is a theoretical ‘dimension between dimensions’. Not much is known about it now, but via Ultra wormholes object, beings, or even People are able to cross vast distances from other points of Space and Time into our own or other dimensions. It’s very complex and metaphysical, but the best way I could explain it is if you think of our universe and other universes as separate, divided bodies of water. Ultra Space is like a canal system that connects and weaves between all bodies, acting as a sort of web. Where the canals meet a body of water, however, is a gate that keeps everything in and out of that respective body. These gates act as Ultra Wormholes, and it requires an immense amount of energy to open it up, but if you were able to you would have access to the entirety of the canal system and in return access to any other body of water- given you also had the energy capable of open THOSE gates that is”. If this information confuses or even alarms you dear readers, have comfort that you are not alone!  “Of course, this is all just very theoretical at this point” Reassured the Professor. “Our concepts and understanding of Ultra Space might definitely change in the future as we come to understand it and Ultra Holes better. After all, only a handful of people have ever actually travelled through one-“ Professor Burnet cut off here as if catching herself revealing too much information. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said that. I respect my colleague’s privacy, and I wouldn’t want to disclose any classified information”. We respected Professor Burnet’s wishes and avoided further question, but we did ask her if she had any additional information she would like to or was able to share about the situation. “I would say trust the International Police to get this whole situation figured out. They are very reliable and competent from my experiences in Ultra Wormhole accidents in Alola” We thanked the professor for her time and allowed her to discuss the situation and share data further with Professor Leo.

(Pictured: Aether Foundation Branch Chief Faba (left) - Dream Radar Lead Scientist Professor Burnet (middle) - Qamor’s Official Expert on Extraterrestrial and Paranormal Activity Analysis Professor Leo (right) )

It was at this point that Aether Foundation Branch Chief Faba approached our unprepared reporter and began his interview unprompted, below is the transcript of the discussion

Faba: Yes I am now available for an interview; I will graciously answer any questions you have in regards to the Ultra Worm-Hole.

Reporter: I’m sorry? Who Are you?

Faba: Why, I’m Branch Chief Faba. Representative of the Aether Foundation and here in place of President Lusamine. I would have suspected any information would be appreciated, I consider it a selfless act in the name of freedom of circulation of intelligence.

Reporter: O-of course! The Aether foundation! We at Estrella News would absolutely appreciate your input!

Faba: Of course you would, the information I hold is vital to your research, I expect.

Reporter: Uhh… ok. So first I would like to know how closely you at the Aether Foundation work with Professor Burnet in studying these Ultra Wormholes she mentioned.

Faba: Oh of course, the Professor. Unfortunately, she collaborates with other members of our Foundation, including the Mistress herself. I am uncertain of the specifics of her research, but I can discuss my many accomplishments as Branch Chief!

Reporter: Well, what are your duties in the Foundation?

Faba: Oh? I’m sorry, most of my work is very imperative to the organization and confidential, the research I do is not yet ready to be released to the public. Without a doubt my many, many breakthroughs as Branch Chief would shake the scientific community to its core.

Reporter: I’m sorry, but you were the one who brought it up.

Faba: Apology Accepted.

Reporter:… Well, is there ANYTHING you can discuss about your work.

Faba: Yes, I can discuss the nature of Ultra Wormholes that I have discovered under the foundation.

Reporter: (Finally, something informative) Ok Branch Chief* Faba, Professor Burnet explained thoroughly what Ultra Wormholes are and how they function, what can you say about Ultra Wormholes in Alola.

Faba: Yes I overheard your discussion with the Professor, I was disappointed to say the least. I was looking forward to enlightening the reader with my accurate research explaining the nature of this phenomenon. (Sigh), but I suppose there are more reporters I can discuss it with.

Recently, Ultra Wormholes have only made appearances in the controlled environments of our laboratories. They are unfortunately very short lived, and MUCH smaller than the one that appeared over your quaint region.

Reporter: you’ve really been able to recreate them in a lab? That’s impressive, but isn’t it dangerous?

Faba: Your compliment is acknowledged. And to put your worries to rest, we have only had a single incident regarding our synthetic Ultra Wormholes in the entirety that we have produced them in a lab, I consider this an accomplishment! I am however not at liberty to discuss the specifics of this incident, of course.

Reporter: Of course.

Faba: Ultra Wormholes have occurred and appeared frequently throughout Alola’s history, an interesting phenomenon indeed. They even appear in murals and cave paintings by the ancient Alola people, I wonder how they managed when all those creatures came out and destroyed the land with their many battled against the fabled Island Gaurdians.

Reporter: Speaking of creatures coming out of the the Ultra Wormholes, can you discuss anything about them? Should we be worried if one managed to escape and is now wondering around the Qamor region?

Faba: Oh unfortunately the nature of UB’s is one of the confidential information we are researching at the Aether Foundation. Besides, this is really the Mistress’s realm of expertise. I would almost go as far to say she’s even obsessed with these creatures, but of course I won’t because my opinion of her is too high to even suggest such a thing.

Reporter: Of course it is.

Faba: I can discuss, however, that your concern for these creatures will not be needed in the near future of course. Oh ho! One of my most anticipated experiments will come to light soon that will deal with any Ultra-Terrestrial threats!

Reporter:  I’m assuming you can’t discuss it further, so we can move on.

Faba: I’m sorry but that’s all the time I will permit you to this interview.

Reporter:  Wait I still have more questions regarding the Foundation and your president-

Faba: I am a very busy man and there are many other reporters I need to discuss with, of course you understand. I, Branch Chief Faba, am a very irreplaceable and important member of the foundation; I am one of a kind in the entire world! As such, everyone wants a fraction of my time. It would be absurd to allow just one source to have my very crucial information. If you have any further questions regarding my duties as a high ranking administrator, visit my blog and read about my secret to success.

               Branch Chief Faba then left our reporter and into the crowd.

*The Reporter accidentally referred to Branch Chief Faba as “Mr Faba” and, after a lengthy tirade of respecting proper authority ranking, and requested all references of himself to specify his position as Branch Chief

               Unfortunately, we were not able to obtain an interview from Professor Leo at this time, however she announced a press conference later this week discussion her findings and the findings of other scientists and researching she collaborated with on scene. It’s been a very hectic few days, and as of publishing this issue of Estrella News Interpol has yet to come forward to directly address the public. Many of the big named researchers have left with all the information they needed, leaving just a few stragglers in the wake. The Gabbravo police department have informed the public that the blocked off cross section will be reopened within the week, suggesting a gradual but eventual return to normalcy.  This event has left us all shaken, and threat of the mysterious UB and its whereabouts linger over our head. Our humble region in the international spotlight, however, we are a resilient people. When we live in a wonderful world inhabited by Pokémon, some craziness is just to be expected- and in some cases welcomed.

[ddpej]

Hello! Could you explain how you manage your marker stitches without the stitchens on the front of the aida looking slightly off/not as clean as the other stitches, please? Because I stitched a pattern that went zig zag and when I changed direction it sometimes looked off in the front (I frogged the whole leaf I did last year because it looked unclean). Or is this because of 14ct aida and 2ply, if I did it outside of kits with 16 or 18ct and 2ply, would it look better?

(ask refers to the stitch variation shown in this post)

Hi!  This is going to get a bit long, I’m afraid, but hopefully something of it is helpful to you!

Since I can’t actually look at the offending stitches you had, I did some experimenting with counts and plys to see if there was any particular difference.  I grabbed a representative sample of fabrics from 14ct to 22ct, including some looser evenweaves in 18 and 16, and tried plys of 1 and up depending on the counts (1 and 2 for all, 3 for 14ct through 18ct, and even 4 ply on the 14ct).  I also tried a few stitching variations in 14ct with 2 ply, at the end, as stitching technique can affect stitch evenness as well.  All of that testing is shown below the cut in as fine a detail as my camera can manage.  In each test row shown, the sixth stitch is a single marker and the tenth and eleven stitches are double markers.

[Image: the test stitch rows, with marker stitches indicated and fabric count + thread ply labels.]

I do want to note, first of all and more for anyone else reading this, that there is always going to be some variation between stitches.  Usually it’s going to be pretty minor, but fabric is never quite perfectly even and ply thickness varies along each strand even if your stitching itself is flawless.  That sort of thing is really, really hard to avoid and for the most part no one’s going to notice or care in the slightest.  So not every oddball little thing needs to be taken out and redone, necessarily.  Even if you know it’s there, anyone else looking at the piece is going to be seeing the whole big forest rather than a stray vine here or there within it.  Messiness within a mass of stitches tends to vanish within the whole, and a simple backstitch outline can do wonders to hide messiness along the edges of a piece.  And again, truly, not many people even have the experience to identify what seems to the stitcher a blatant mistake.  Perfection is, on the whole, overrated.

(This is a really hard thing to internalize, to be sure.  I used to pull out a lot more stitches than I do now because I couldn’t stand it, and saw everything as a flaw.  Nowadays I tend to fix things on the fly with weird thread tricks/whatever comes to mind, or adjust the pattern to suit if it’s a wrong color/too many stitches issue, and that habit really honestly just came with time and the realization that for me adaptation is faster and easier than frogging for what is effectively the same result.)

Anyway.  My experience, both previously and repeated in these tests, is that it is easier to get clean stitches in general with a thread ply count that suits the fabric count.  22ct can be done with 2 ply for better coverage/bulkier stitches, but 1 ply will be cleaner.  18ct and 16ct do well with 2 ply, in terms of uniformity, and 14ct plays best with either 2 or 3 ply.  This is not to say that you shouldn’t play with plys, by any means!  Varied plys can create some very fun texture and visual effects when used well.  But it’s worth knowing, if uniform stitches are your preference.

Other factors that can affect stitch cleanliness, both in general and with marker stitches in particular, are:

Fabric style – a loose fabric, like some types of evenweave or an Aida that has lost its starch, will allow more variation in stitch appearance than stiffer fabrics.  Marker stitches change the direction of the line of tension in the thread, and if your squares have give to them this might show up more.

Stitch tension – quite tight and quite loose both tend to showcase stitch differences.  With marker stitches, high tension will tug your fabric weave out of line, allowing changes in thread tension direction to be more obvious; low tension won’t affect your fabric but eaves the thread itself loose enough to curve into the line of tension rather than laying straight across each square.  In the bottom row of my 14ct testing, I pulled the left side tightly and kept the right side very loose.

Needle positioning – when inserting a needle from the back through a hole with a horizontal thread already in place (such as with a marker stitch), there are three options.  You can insert the needle inside the horizontal thread, which tends to tuck the top leg of that cross under the bottom leg of the previous one and therefore not look quite right; you can insert the needle straight through the horizontal thread, which splits the ply and almost always makes the corner look messy; or you can insert the needle outside the horizontal thread, which keeps the horizontal threads tight to the square and usually looks cleanest.

Having said all that, I will note that a multitude of stitch direction changes, especially stacked top to bottom as can happen with zigzags and diagonal lines, is more likely to result in messy stitching than just a marker stitch here or there.  The more horizontal threads you have stacked on top of each other on the backside, the more that will show in the stitches themselves.  It’s just the way physics works, I’m afraid – any thread that goes outward from a stitch rather than inward across it is a thread that breaks the square and might cause trouble when another stitch needs to share the corner.  So you may well just be running into that, in which case an adjustment of your technique might be worthwhile for future zigzags.

Specifically, when I have a lot of diagonals or zigzags involved in a project, I often prefer to adjust my stitching so that no outward horizontals are used on the back – only verticals, diagonals, or inward horizontals.  If stitching one by one, as you might do with a variegated floss, it means that in one row the stitches all start from the bottom left, then in the next row the stitches all start from the top right instead.  If stitching down the row and back, as is typical with solid-colored floss, it means that I can cross horizontally back to the right to start a new row, but if I need to go to the left I’ll go vertically instead and then horizontally across the bottom of the new stitch to continue the row.  (It’s a horizontal stitch in the same place as it would have been otherwise, which can make the intricacy a little hard to see at first.  The difference between the two is that going horizontally immediately takes you from one row to the next, pulling the thread diagonally across the hole and therefore muddying the lines for other stitches at that corner, whereas going horizontal after placing the first leg of the new row pulls the thread exactly horizontally across and back up within the row, leaving the corner accessible.)

This method can be a little weird to get used to if you’re only used to doing stitches one way, and does require a little more attention to what you’re doing, but I find that it both keeps the stitches neater and also helps prevent the stitches from warping my fabric if I’m using a high ply for the count.

I hope something in this ramble was useful!  Feel free to poke me if you would like clarification or visuals for anything – words can be hard to translate into sense sometimes. ^_^