#making it just under the wire (local time)!

[pagesofkenna]

Familiar

a short Skyjacks: Courier's Call slice-of-life kittenfic

Everyone has a job aboard the Red Audron, and everyone pitches in.

A breeze blew in the open window, dislodging loose stacks of envelopes and threatening to flip over pages of the logbook. Lizander stopped the pages with a white paw. He slipped the thin envelope from between his teeth into the current page of the book, marking the spot, then heaved the heavy lid of the book shut with a hind leg.

Another soft gust toppled a stack of letters nearby. One or two slid behind a wooden crate, and Lizander jumped down from the desk to go retrieve them. The floor beneath his paws reverberated slightly as footsteps approached, and he had just enough time to duck out of the way before the mailroom door was tossed open with a slam.

“Mail time!!” Cecelia exclaimed. A few more carefully arranged stacks of letters were overturned, but the apprentice didn’t even seem to notice. She stomped into the room, with June, carrying a large box, and Kiran close at her heels.

[read the rest on AO3]

[medlilove]

(Edited to add headshots because tumblr hates detail) I've etched away at this is a lovely few weeks, so click for full res and all the little details, okay? It's my love letter to the journey I've found myself on

This is long-ish, so its under the cut (but worth reading...)

I had been thinking a lot recently about that double feature episode, you know the one? I half remembered it then, when they chased a bunch of alien spies so fast through the solar system they all got thrown back in time. Half the crew went on a little undercover adventure in Toronto in 2024. It was great because they got completely cut off from the Enterprise, so half of them, well mostly Uhura and Spock if I recall correctly, spent their time collecting as many radios as possible and worked on building their own communications. Uhura and Spock were basically taking turns constantly tweaking radios by the window with wires everywhere. Oh yeah, their base of operations was the whole top floor of a worn out old building looking over a big square. They ended up in the really arty/queer part of town full of art galleries and thrift stores.....??

Chapel and Chekov were sent out to those shops to find disguises for everyone. I loved the joke that Chekov was puzzled and slightly alarmed that Christine just knew everyone's clothes sizes and measurements with no explanation. Later on, they ended up getting separated from the rest of the group and getting held up by B story shenanigans, mostly getting lost and running into culture shocks. It was fun to see them having their own adventures and made for a pretty interesting combo. Spock and Uhura spent most of their time with the tech, accidentally listening to the times most popular music while changing frequencies. Jim and Sulu paired off to search for clues, and getting supplies and spent a lot of time talking to the locals setting up for a Pride parade. McCoy, feeling paranoid and irritable that he had practically no equipment, wandered around with Dr Alfred Nahdi, the Botanist, who kept picking random weeds and talking about how extraordinary the little dandelions were. Oh and together they stole a whole medical bag out of an ambulance?? It was pretty funny.  Anyway, the main issue was they couldn’t risk leaving the area because all these alien spies had assimilated into the population and they had to track them all down and bring them back with them so as not to disrupt the timeline or something. They had to track down the aliens while making sure the aliens didn't pick up on who they were or that they were also out of place. They ended up being there for around two whole ass months, I think. The spies were spread out all over and there were about 30 of them, but it ended up being the Botanist, Alfred (Alfie) Nahdi who found the enemy base of operations by complete accident. Alfred, who had spent most of the time studying all the common flowers and weeds that were so ordinary at that time but were extinct in their time, figured out where the aliens' base of operations was because the big plant shop at the end of the square had a few succulents that could not have existed in 2024. It was a big "woah" moment. And there was this whole thing where he had to act like he hadn’t just figured it out because the florist, who was almost certainly a spy, was watching him and McCoy. But soon after, it all went to hell anyway when a fight broke out and Sulu was straight up shot with the aliens' weapon that had bullets made from alien metal. So then Bones had to perform old school surgery on him in their HQ, with only 2024 equipment. Jim, Spock, and Uhura were out fighting and ran into Chapel and Chekov and were able to finish them off, but it got really crazy because there was a Pride parade in the square at the same time so they had to make sure no one noticed them. While Bones was pulling bullets out of Sulu, with the botanist assisting him until Chapel (who had been sent by Jim) appeared and took over. McCoy said something like, “Christine, I’ve never been so glad to see you in my life,” and they sewed him up all old school. And it worked out! But Bones was a mess because he had to do messy surgery with none of his kit, and so much pressure, and more blood than he was used to... Chapel stayed with Sulu, and Bones and Nahdi went to sit on the fire escape stairwell and had a sweet scene of Bones just full of adrenaline, his hands couldn't stop shaking. They sat hand in hand for a while listening to all the people on the streets below. Then Spock, Jim, Uhura, and Chekov appeared at the stairwell and they all had a happy, albeit exhausted reunion. After a day of everyone recovering from all the excitement, Uhura and Spock used some extra tech they got from the aliens and finally made contact with poor Scotty who was up on the Enterprise losing the will to live. Anyway, their outfits were iconic tbh.

I invented this whole thing to draw Dr. Leonard “Bones” McCoy in a sweater. I lost control of the situation. I spent a lovely two weeks etching away at this with the support of my lovely ST server, I love you guys. This ones for you.

[seat-safety-switch]

Have you ever noticed how weird it is that microwaves all cook in roughly the same time? Sure, if you squint, you'll notice that some microwaves will say on their fronts 700 watts, others 1500 watts, but this increased power doesn't make a material difference in your life. You'll still be waiting about two minutes for your corndog to become screechingly hot, an eternity when you're hungry. There's only one notable exception: the giant, intimidating, stainless-steel microwave at your corner convenience store.

You might think that this is easy to fix. Go to the bankruptcy auction for a convenience store, buy one. Have you ever seen a convenience store go bankrupt? They are basically money printers, and any region in which they go under will already have had the microwave picked clean by gangs of near-feral copper thieves. The manufacturers won't talk to you, either: why would they bother with your dumb domestic ass, and your crybaby questions about "what kind of cord does this take," when they could use the same phone call to sell fifty more microwaves to 7-Eleven?

No, it's just like my grandfather used to say: if you want a job done right, you have to half-ass it yourself and then claim victory anyway. I would have to understand how to make a microwave. With the help of my local librarian, I was able to check out some useful books, such as Electronics For The Precocious Nine-Year-Old and its sequel, Advanced Electronics For The Nine-Year-Old Orphan. It takes a village to raise a child, or more accurately, to produce a twenty-five thousand watt, V8-powered microwave that can cook a frozen potato to "atomized" in just over seventeen seconds.

We're going to market some time next year, but in the meantime, you can buy my plans and build one yourself. All you need is an undefended electrical substation near you, some wire cutters, and absolutely no self-preservation instinct. Hey, it's an investment. Think of how much extra time you've been wasting waiting for a breakfast burrito to cook. You could use that time trying to get bail instead.

[hanasnx]

⋆˖⁺‧₊𓆩𓆩 ❝ stranded. ❞ 𓆪𓆪₊‧⁺˖⋆

-ˏˋ꒰ CHOOSE YOUR OWN ADVENTURE - ! ꒱ PART ONE ✩ PART TWO ✩ PART THREE MINORS DNI 18+ SUMMARY: be a part of the story! vote on the poll at the bottom. WARNINGS: your vote affects how the story continues | the winning decision affects how the story ends | f!reader | eventual smut | semi-established relationship | romance | suggestive | eventual conflict.

! ── PREVIOUSLY: You and ANAKIN SKYWALKER are stranded on a seemingly deserted planet. He asks you how to proceed because he trusts your judgement.

You consider his question, rubbing your bottom lip thoughtfully with your finger. The responsibility he’s given you is not one you take lightly, and you phase through the options until you decide the smartest route. “Where’s your communicator?”

Anakin's lips press together as he nods. It’s uncharacteristically submissive of him to relinquish control like that, and part of you wonders if this is his way of calming your nerves caused by the situation. He retrieves the communicator in question from his sea of robes, and when his gloved hands brings it to both of your views, it sparks.

He flinches, protecting his eyes from the device if it sees fit to explode in his hand. Fingers fiddle nimbly with its buttons, and its silence doesn’t bode well for your plans. You approach him, watching the little mechanism sit idly in the palm of his hand. “Can you repair it?” you ask, peering up at him. He doesn’t look at you.

“We’ll have to find out.”

As he works on it, you lose track of time, but the sun does not forgive. It beats down on the two of you as you try to shade yourselves in the minuscule shadow of your totaled ship. He remains in his uniform, and beads of sweat fatly roll down his forehead. That concentrated crease in his brow makes him look older than he actually is, glaring down at the communicator as he pinches wiring together with his meticulous touch. You swallow, mouth dry, and you incline into his direction.

“Anakin, maybe you should shed some layers—“ you begin to suggest, laying a familiar hand on his arm. He tenses under your contact, and perks up at attention to hear someone call out.

“You two look a long way from home.” a gutty and baritone voice leers, and Anakin’s jaw sets. His lightsaber is hidden from view by his robings. “Did’yer ship take a tumble?” The joking tone goes unappreciated as the two of you raise your heads to see a native of the planet. Relief washes over you that you aren't alone, but Anakin does not seem convinced, wary this local is unfriendly. He's seated high up on an animal with flat feet and spindly legs, one you don't recognize at all. Its trunk is stout, and wiggles absently as it disinterestedly awaits its owner to decide on whether or not to pass on. The native wears thin clothes with a strap across his chest, the bag of water sloshing at his side as he swings to a halt against his hip.

"Engine failure." Anakin replies, vague and curt. It's a lie, and one you bite your tongue on correcting. Your eyes meander the large stranger, a flat bedded wagon with heaps of fabrics is hauled by his mount, but you know those veils are just to conceal whatever he's got underneath them. "Is there a town around here?"

The local leans forward on his saddle, propping himself up on the grip with an amused and removed grin. "Naw, not for miles." Out of the corner of your view, Anakin's hand slowly disappears under his robe. "Why don't you climb aboard? I'll take you in. S'long as I get what's left of yer ship."

Anakin glances to you, but ultimately decides he'll work on the communicator during the ride. His saber remains clipped to his belt, hidden. However, his senses aren't dulled. There's something about this stranger that tells him he can't get too comfortable, but this is progress. Regardless if there's a town at all. The two of you collect the emergency supplies from the vessel, and climb aboard the wagon. It sinks into the sand from the extra weight, but when he spurs his mount on, she doesn't have a problem in tugging it.

"Sorry I didn't introduce myself, the name's Drice. S'lucky I came through, followed the smoke trail of your ship. Can smell it on the two of you." You and Anakin exchange eye contact, silently agreeing he'll be talkative the entire trip. "Yep, this nose never lies." His finger raises to tap-tap the side of his nostril. "What were y'all headed for? Before, y'know, the 'engine failure.'" You furrow your brows at the way he quotes the statement, as if he's suspicious Anakin was dishonest. "I could'a taken a look at it if it didn't have such a rough landing. S'lucky I want the parts. I'm a mechanic by trade."

Anakin doesn't respond, instead fishes out the communicator to continue his inspection. Its guts spill out, and he carefully pools it onto his lap. "The Adega system." he replies, again another lie.

Drice emits a noise of confusion. "That's a long way to travel for a ship that size."

"That's likely why we crashed." Anakin responds, and you can hear in his voice that growing annoyance.

The reticence from the back of his vehicle unnerves the local, and he continues to try to muster up some conversation. "You two are real cute together, y'know. A real pair. How long have y'all been together?"

Anakin's gaze flickers to you.

@HANASNX 2024 | do not copy, plagiarize, or steal.

[jovial-thunder]

Pre-alpha Lancer Tactics changelog

(cross-posting the full gif changelog here because folks seemed to like it last time I did)

We're aiming for getting the first public alpha for backers by the end of this month! Carpenter and I scoped out mechanics that can wait until after the alpha (e.g. grappling, hiding) in favor of tying up the hundred loose threads that are needed for something that approaches a playable game. So this is mostly a big ol changelog of an update from doing that.

But I also gave a talent talk at a local Portland Indie Game Squad event about engine architecture! It'll sound familiar if you've been reading these updates; I laid out the basic idea for this talk almost a year ago, back in the June 2023 update.

We've also signed contracts & had a kickoff meeting with our writers to start on the campaigns. While I've enjoyed like a year of engine-work, it'll be so so nice to start getting to tell stories. Data structures don't mean anything beyond how they affect humans & other life.

New Content

Implemented flying as a status; unit counts as +3 spaces above the current ground level and ignores terrain and elevation extra movement costs. Added hover + takeoff/land animations.

Gave deployables the ability to have 3D meshes instead of 2D sprites; we'll probably use this mostly when the deployable in question is climbable.

Related, I fixed a bug where after terrain destruction, all units recheck the ground height under them so they'll move down if the ground is shot out from under them. When the Jerichos do that, they say "oh heck, the ground is taller! I better move up to stand on it!" — not realizing that the taller ground they're seeing came from themselves.

Fixed by locking some units' rendering to the ground level; this means no stacking climbable things, which is a call I'm comfortable making. We ain't making minecraft here (I whisper to myself, gazing at the bottom of my tea mug). 

Block sizes are currently 1x1x0.5 — half as tall as they are wide. Since that was a size I pulled out of nowhere for convenience, we did some art tests for different block heights and camera angles. TLDR that size works great and we're leaving it.

Added Cone AOE pattern, courtesy of an algorithm NMcCoy sent me that guarantees the correct number of tiles are picked at the correct distance from the origin.

pick your aim angle

for each distance step N of your cone, make a list ("ring") of all the cells at that distance from your origin

sort those cells by angular distance from your aim angle, and include the N closest cells in that ring in the cone's area

Here's a gif they made of it in Bitsy:

Units face where you're planning on moving/targeting them.

Got Walking Armory's Shock option working. Added subtle (too subtle, now that I look at it) electricity effect.

Other things we've added but I don't have gifs for or failed to upload. You'll have to trust me. :)

disengage action

overcharge action

Improved Armament core bonus

basic mine explosion fx

explosion fx on character dying

Increase map elevation cap to 10. It's nice but definitely is risky with increasing the voxel space, gonna have to keep an eye on performance.

Added Structured + Stress event and the associated popups. Also added meltdown status (and hidden countdown), but there's not animation for this yet so your guy just abruptly disappears and leaves huge crater.

UI Improvements

Rearranged the portrait maker. Auto-expand the color picker so you don't have to keep clicking into a submenu.

Added topdown camera mode by pressing R for handling getting mechs out of tight spaces.

The action tooltips have been bothering me for a while; they extend up and cover prime play-area real estate in the center of the screen. So I redesigned them to be shorter and have a max height by putting long descriptions in a scrollable box. This sounds simple, but the redesign, pulling in all the correct data for the tags, and wiring up the tooltips took like seven hours. Game dev is hard, yo.

Put the unit inspect popups in lockable tooltips + added a bunch of tooltips to them.

Implemented the rest of Carpenter's cool hex-y action and end turn readout. I'm a big fan of whenever we can make the game look more like a game and less like a website (though he balances out my impulse for that for the sake of legibility).

Added a JANKY talent/frame picker. I swear we have designs for a better one, but sometimes you gotta just get it working. Also seen briefly here are basic level up/down and HASE buttons.

Other no-picture things:

Negated the map-scaling effect that happens when the window resizes to prevent bad pixel scaling of mechs at different resolutions; making the window bigger now just lets you see more play area instead of making things bigger.

WIP Objectives Bullets panel to give the current sitrep info

Wired up a buncha tooltips throughout the character sheet.

Under the Hood

Serialization: can save/load games! This is the payoff for sticking with that engine architecture I've been going on about. I had to add a serialization function to everything in the center layer which took a while, but it was fairly straightforward work with few curveballs.

Finished replacement of the kit/unit/reinforcement group/sitrep pickers with a new standardized system that can pull from stock data and user-saved data.

Updated to Godot 4.2.2; the game (and editor) has been crashing on exit for a LONG time and for the life of me I couldn't track down why, but this minor update in Godot completely fixed the bug. I still have no idea what was happening, but it's so cool to be working in an engine that's this active bugfixing-wise! 

Other Bugfixes

Pulled straight from the internal changelog, no edits for public parseability:

calculate cover for fliers correctly

no overwatch when outside of vertical threat

fixed skirmisher triggering for each attack in an AOE

fixed jumpjets boost-available detection

fixed mines not triggering when you step right on top of them // at a different elevation but still adjacent

weapon mods not a valid target for destruction

made camera pan less jumpy and adjust to the terrain height

better Buff name/desc localization

Fixed compcon planner letting you both boost and attack with one quick action.

Fix displayed movement points not updating

Prevent wrecks from going prone

fix berserkers not moving if they were exactly one tile away

hex mine uses deployer's save target instead of 0

restrict weapon mod selection if you don't have the SP to pay

fix deployable previews not going away

fix impaired not showing up in the unit inspector (its status code is 0 so there was a check that was like "looks like there's no status here")

fix skirmisher letting you move to a tile that should cost two movement if it's only one space away

fix hit percent calculation

fix rangefinder grid shader corner issues (this was like a full day to rewrite the shader to be better)

Teleporting costs the max(spaces traveled, elevation change) instead of always 1

So um, yeah, that's my talk, any questions? (I had a professor once tell us to never end a talk like this, so now of course it's the phrase that first comes to mind whenever I end a talk)

[or-what-you-will]

How To: Phantom Cloak

I've gotten some questions about how I made my phantom cloak, so I thought I'd do a post about it so that others could try it out. Overall, it cost me about 250$ USD plus several hours of labour. Details under the cut!

Note: I am not a professional, nor do I have particularly advanced sewing skills, this was mostly me making things up as I went

I'd never made a cloak before, so I started with a base that I got off of Amazon (about 70$ USD).

Note: prices are listed here in USD for accessibility, but I paid for most things in CAD.

It's a basic 100% polyester cloak, pretty light weight, but full length (54 in/137cm). It's not a full circle cloak, nor is it exactly circle shaped. It's more bell shaped and doesn't lie flat when spread out because of the way it's sewn together over the shoulders.

From there, I went to my local fabric/craft store and got enough velvet to cover the collar and black sewing thread (about 20$ USD).

Note: if you do not already have a basic sewing kit with needles and pins you'll need one of those also.

I pinned the velvet to the collar and sewed it on inside out, along three sides using a back stitch. I did my best to hide my stitches in the collar's existing seam. I left the bottom open, where the collar meets the body of the cloak, for sewing on appliques later.

Note: the collar was really floppy before I put the velvet and the appliques on because the fabric was so light. If you want, you could get some plastic or metal boning/wire to put between the velvet and the original fabric to make the collar more stiff or to allow for custom shaping.

After this, I went searching on etsy for appliques. I eventually settled on nine (about 100$ USD for all 9).

Once I got all the appliques, I laid out the cloak and positioned them all in their places to make sure that I was happy with their placement and everything was symmetrical. Then, I recruited my poor roommate to stand there in the cloak while I pinned them in place to make sure that they fit with the way the fabric fell.

When they were pinned in place, I started sewing them on along the edges, with a few stitches in the middle.

The reason why it's important to leave the bottom of the collar open is because then you can sew the appliques to the velvet more easily without having to sew them to the fabric of the cloak. This allows you to hide your stiches between the velvet and the fabric of the collar and prevents them from catching on things and coming undone.

Once I'd sewed on the collar appliques, I pinned the bottom of the velvet and sewed it closed along the seam where the collar meets the cloak.

I left it like this for a few months, but eventually I decided to add a lining, mostly due to the applique stiches catching on things and because I wanted to add more weight to the cloak. I'd also be going to cons for the first time and I wanted it to look nice in person.

So, I went back to the fabric store, and this time came out with four meters of polyester satin and more thread (about 40$ USD, but the fabric was on sale, so it would have cost me about 100$ USD otherwise). Then I realized I really, really did not want to sew that much fabric entirely by hand. In the end, I borrowed a friend's sewing machine.

Note: you can also rent sewing machines from your library and sometimes community centres depending on where you live.

Adding the lining is essentially the same technique that I used to add the collar, just on a much larger scale.

I found this cloak tutorial really helpful for figuring out the order of operations when putting together the lining. It's also a great tutorial in general for making a cloak from scratch, so please run with it if you'd rather do that.

I used the existing cloak as a pattern for cutting out four panels for the lining. I laid them out on top of each other, marked out the fabric, and cut it out (with the help of a friend because right handed scissors are the root of all evil).

I messed up a little while I was doing it because instead of mirroring the front panels, I cut two of the same side, so make sure to keep sides in mind! It ended up being mostly fine because the fabric was big enough that I could use it for a different panel.

I pinned, then sewed the four panels together with the sewing machine. My seamstress friend gave me the helpful tip of rolling up the sides of the fabric, as it starts to get really long and bulky, to allow it to go through the sewing machine more smoothly.

Once the four panels were together I pinned it to the main cloak, inside out, like the collar, then sewed it along three edges, doing my best to stay along the existing seam of the cloak. I left the edge where the fabric meets the collar open.

After three edges had been sewn, I pulled the fabric through the opening at the collar so it would be the right side out, with the seams on the inside. I then folded in the extra fabric, pinned it, and sewed it shut.

I ended up keeping the long ribbon ties, rather than replacing them with a clasp because I can tie them in front or thread them under my arms and around my back, which allows me to wear the cloak in a similar fashion to how they do in the show.

And that is how I made my cloak!

Thank you for reading, and I hope this is helpful for those of you interested in making your own phantom cloak. If you have questions or if something is unclear, feel free to ask in the comments of the post!

[laurbiek]

HEY! If you're still taking requests, could you write something with tipsy Andrew and him being all amused and clingy and handsy with his lover? 🥺🥺

do you guys know the feeling when its 11:30 on a Sunday and you have class tomorrow morning but your suddenly inspired to start writing again after like 9 months so you have to start immediately even though you should maybe go to bed or study for any of the tests you have this week

anyway here's wonderwall

Now that it was socially acceptable to be out in public again, Andy frequented local bars and pubs with his friends. He would go out with Alex, meet his brother for drinks, sometimes even invite Aisling out into the country to hang out for the night. Sometimes you joined him, sometimes you didn't.

He liked it better when you joined them, getting to watch you relax and laugh at some dumb joke. Watching your blush get deeper and deeper, and peeling off a jacket or a sweater as the heat of the alcohol consumed you.

Occasionally you two would split something more illicit, something rolled or baked that Andrew's brother would obtain for him. Your whole party laughing together at the fire pit in your backyard, talking about ordering food but ever actually doing it.

Tonight was not one of those nights.

Work was getting busy, and you felt too tired for a night out, even if it was just a local pub in the small hamlet you two chose to live in. You knew you were just too wired up, too stressed to meet friends without passing the bad feelings on, without snapping at someone or getting sad-drunk and killing the vibe. So you opted to stay home, watching some bad TV with a large glass of wine, and throwing tennis balls around the house for Elwood to retrieve.

Externally, Andrew didn't mind. He knew everyone needed 'me time', he knew he would have fun anyway. He knew he didn't want to be the kind of couple that were inseparable, that cant exist without the other person, like two stars that orbit each other and ignore the rest.

But sometimes it feels impossible to talk about anything else, sometimes he felt the need to tattoo your name on his forehead just to be able to bring you up in conversation. Love is almost a form of obsession, and for Andrew it can be occasionally difficult to hide.

Especially after a pint or two, and some glasses of whisky if he's being honest.

Andrew reached into his pocket for his keys, feeling around for the sharp metal he hoped and prayed he remembered to bring that night. He heard a slightly more sober Alex lock his car behind him, deciding that he could spend the night in one of the guest rooms instead of slugging it back to Dublin at one in the morning. He finally shoves the key into the lock, tuning it in a way so domestic and familiar it makes his heart leap.

The two trudge into the warm house, and toe their shoes off in the hallway before stomping into the living room with heavy, reckless feet. You tilt your head back on the sectional armrest, seeing them coming closer upside down.

"Hey guys, have enough fun?" you just, Alex flopping down on the other side of the couch, and Andrew leaning down farther than usual to peck you on the lips.

"It was grand love, lots of mischief made", He walks around, sitting in between his fried and his lover, looking up to see some reality TV nonsense playing with the captions on. He turns his body towards yours, leaning his head on his arm and staring down at you like you hung the stars, "I missed you though"

"Andy you were ten minutes away, I don't know how you managed to miss me"

He grabs you by the waist and pulls you closer, almost in his lap. His large hands feel slightly cold as they hold your skin under the borrowed t-shirt you wore to relax in that night. He leans up to kiss your neck, and his facial hair, as always, tickles slightly.

"You must have some kind of spell on me, something sinister and ugly to keep me enamored" he says, voice muffled by your body.

You roll your eyes at Alex, who is barely paying attention to his very whipped friend, instead leaning towards the coffee table to pick at the snacks you brought out for yourself. You share a look of agreement, silently saying 'this guy is a fool'. You grab Andrew's face and pull it up to make eye contact with yourself,

"Yeah I couldn't possibly get this ring without outside help", you say. Andrew makes a light laugh at that, simply breathing out and smiling. You notice his eyes starting to flutter a bit more, obviously getting tired. You pull away from Andrew and get yourself up, "Ok Loverboy, its time for bed, Alex you know where everything is help yourself", he nods and gives a thumbs up as a response, wrist deep in a bag of Cheese and Onion Taytos.

You grab Andrew's hand and pull on it, urging him to get his ass to bed. He groans slightly as he rises, jokingly adding an "Ok mistress" as he grabs your hand back and follows you up the stairs.

Once you both reach your shared bedroom, Andrew sits on the bed and takes his socks off, forgetting what he wanted to do next. He watches as Elwood does his little circles in his dog bed, he thinks that humans should be able to do something similar. You pop out of the attached bathroom, having washed your face and tied your hair up. Andrew reaches his arms out like a child towards you, silently asking for some physical contact. You slip in between them, holding his head against your chest and placing a kiss on top of it. His hands wrap around you tightly. He wishes he could've stayed here all night. You pull away and he makes a complaining groan,

"Calm down we can cuddle all night, let me help you with your hair."

You kneel behind his seated form, becoming just tall enough to gather his hair into a uniform pony and secure it away so he doesn't mess it up during the night. He thoroughly enjoys the feeling of your fingers in his hair, he recalls the feeling of you pulling it tighter, in a different context of course. He smiles slightly at the memory. You kiss the top of his head again, letting him know you were done.

Against his desires, he plods into the bathroom to brush his teeth, accident leaving the balled up socks from earlier on the counter. He, as quickly as he can, puts on something more comfortable, with way fewer buttons, and dramatically flops into bed.

You lay facing each other, first just holding hands, but as the minutes progress he pulls you closer and closer until your legs are wrapped around his hips and his arms are keeping you there, your foreheads are touching. You couldn't possibly be closer if you tried.

"What if we were conjoined and had to be like this forever"

"Andrew I cannot do this right now go to sleep"

"No seriously what if?!"

After a few more tipsy comments from Andrew, and lightly chastising him for his wandering hands, you finally turn over. If he is known for anything other than music, it should be his ability to be the big spoon. He completely envelops you, and you've never felt safer.

His hands wander under your shirt, not in a sexual way, but in a familiar one. He just wants to feel close to you, feel skin on skin like a baby looking for comfort. You can feel his nose poking into the back of your neck, and you're glad his feet are so far away because you just know they're cold.

You relish in the feeling of his touch, how in his most vulnerable and uncaring moments the most he ever wants to do is feel your warmth, know that you're there.

The last thing he remembers is the smell of your shampoo before he falls into sleep.

[angelofchaos001]

Meet the Rivulet! (Splitmind AU)

Reblogs > Likes (Reblogging helps out a lot, even if it doesn't seem like much!)

It's Ruffles time!

Lore under cut, includes pre and post Scugerator

Quick tidbit about her design, is that as I draw more designs, I slowly make these slugcats less cat-like and just go more and more nuts, with the Splitmind AU being very different. Rivulet isn't even furred, but instead has placoid scales and has a more sharkskin feel to her.

Also, something you'll see with more of the AU is that scugerators will have their left eye black with a pupil colored like the iterator inside the scug. The only time this changes is when the iterator takes temporary control (whether willingly or through force), where both eyes become reflective of the iterator.

Moots, Interested, or Ones who I think will be interested

@doodlebug091

@keeper-of-magic

@angeliteonfridgeduty

@stupidscav

@batnip

@riverripplespeaks

@cherry-b0mber

@luxdraconia

@voldkat

@lunas-sketchbook

Pre - Moon

Before Moon placed her consciousness in the paws of a slugcat, Rivulet was just an aquatic beast that lived in Shoreline, mostly near the seafloor of the ocean and only coming up every so often to sunbathe or hunt if her normal prey was scarce. (Splitmind Rivulet has true gills, so she can live underwater. She also still has lungs, don't worry, evolution didn't screw her over too bad)

Rivulet lived a solitary lifestyle, only coming into contact with one other slugcat in their life, who simply came and went. At some point, she did visit the local iterator before their collapse, and was given the Mark of Communication before going back to the life she usually lived.

After the iterator collapsed, Rivulet started collecting some of the scraps that washed into the sea, such as pearls, bits of metal and wiring, and even a rarefaction cell (and a lot more damaged cells too). Eventually, she saw another slugcat traveling to the iterator, and out of curiosity, she followed them to watch as they brought the lifeless puppet back to life. After the other slugcat left, Rivulet dropped down to listen to Moon's stories, and would even stay in the chamber when the rains came since she could still breathe.

Post - Moon

After several cycles of living with the iterator, Rivulet saw another slugcat enter the chamber. After initially being hostile towards them, Moon wanted to investigate after the slugcat drew a pearl from a pouch and handed it to her before speaking to both of them, despite marks not being two-way communication. The creature explained that it was an iterator inside of the slugcat's mind, and it hoped this could be a convoluted way to ascend themselves by binding their own minds to another, more feral creature. The pearl contained the instructions on how to do such.

Without lingering for much longer to answer any questions, the creature then gave a suggestion that, normally, it would prefer to genetically engineer the perfect host for such a task, but in Moon's condition, it could be less stressful on her fragile systems to use what was on-hand.

After reading the pearl, Moon asked Rivulet if this was something she was okay with: An iterator in her mind. Rivulet agreed, having grown fond of Moon's presence, and wanted the best for her. Moon went ahead with the process, transferring her mind to Rivulet's.

With a newfound consciousness alongside her own, Rivulet originally wanted to try ascending straight away, but Moon encouraged her to spend some time exploring and showing her things she'd never seen before. Rivulet began doing just that, and Moon offered insight into things that Rivulet didn't understand. The two meshed perfectly, and in the end, the choice Rivulet made was one she never regretted.

Rivulet also met some of the other scugerators on her travels, namely, a feisty and explosive slugcat that had the same telltale eye, but refused to open up on who or why. The slugcat, Artificer, had two missions: Kill the scavenger cheiftain, and then ascend. Rivulet wanted to help, at least with the ascension, and accompanied Artificer on parts of her journey until finally taking her to the new place the scavengers had set up, Bitter Aerie in the remnants of Moon's structure.

After Artificer had done what she wanted, Rivulet took her to meet echo after echo, though both the echoes and Moon told Rivulet that something was wrong with Artificer, as a carnal desire bound her to this world. Despite this, Rivulet still guided Artificer through the world until they'd reached Subterranean, where the guardians (obviously) attempted to attack Artificer. With Rivulet's speed and a bit of trickery, she was able to sneak Artificer past them and eventually, to the void sea.

Riv watched Artificer go, but shortly after could see the golden shimmers in the water and almost saw the red slugcat being fragmented. Confused and worried, especially after seeing what looked like the slugcat trying to claw her way back to the surface, Rivulet dove in to save her. Despite the pain of the void fluid starting to dissolve her body, Rivulet managed to grab Artificer and pull them both out before either could echo/ascend.

After this, Artificer said she was going to 'make things right', and after the two sheltered together, disappeared into the world. In attempts to find her lost friend, Rivulet found a trio of slugcats that didn't have the telltale eye and instead, seemed like just that: Slugcats. As she talked to them and got to know the three, a pair of siblings and the third being like an adoptive one, she became friends with them as well and tries to visit them as often as she can, since she still roams the world looking for Artificer.

[mtayl0rr]

The Anomaly (Prologue)

Pairing: Miguel O’Hara x f!Original Character Rating: Mature Length: 450 Summary: Nobody gets the upper hand on Spider-Man 2099. Nobody, until a strange anomaly slipped from his grasp. Now, he’ll stop at nothing until he finds her. Warnings: enemies to lovers, eventual smut, cannon typical violence, graphic depictions of violence, Miguel is a bitch but so is she, cursing, angst, etc. trauma Note: this is just my silly little goof while I have free time don’t expect anything spectacular LMAO I just wanna get something out to test the waters before pouring time into a full story

Orange monitors whirred to life as security footage sprawled across the holograms. A web of wires and plastic surrounded the platform that floated above the cold ground. Gray steam danced through the air, the scent leaking through the mask covering Miguel O’Hara’s face. The aroma was oddly calming; another reminder that he was still breathing. As someone who spent his days drowning in work, the air pricking at his lungs was a welcome wake-up call.

His crimson eyes scanned the glitching footage displayed in front of him, searching the screens for her; the anomaly who slipped from his grasp. She was tech savvy, being as she managed to deactivate the tracking device in her day pass. Luckily, her reckless universe hopping caught the attention of other league members. For the last two days, she’s been recovering on Earth-B9402.

Miguel had learned quickly that chasing after her would need to be more calculated than other anomalies. She was slippery, deceitful, and aggravating. He didn’t know her name, her home universe, or her intentions. All he knows is that she hitched a ride to Nueva York, snuck inside of HQ, and ran off with a day pass once she was spotted. All without showing her face.

Every Earth he managed to track her to, she escaped before he even had a chance to catch her. Three days ago he thought he finally cornered her. Her black makeshift suit glided through the dark of the night like a shadow, but he saw her. The only thing that identified her as a Spider-Person was the stringy webs that she used to catapult herself from building to building. He just needed one more moment, one stronger stride so he could sink his fangs into her neck and immobilize her. But all he managed was to pin her arms against the dirty brick of a building, his claws sinking into the warm flesh of her arms before she kicked his crotch and slipped into the night.

Now, he watched her through a camera on Earth-B9402, dressing her wounds. Lyla’s form hovered over the screens, watching Miguel intently. “Do you want me to call their local Spider-man?” She asked, hesitantly fixing her heart shaped glasses.

“No,” grumbled Miguel. “No, not yet.” His eyes were glued to the screen, watching as she used a bucket of dirty rain water and fast food napkins to clean the gashes he left in her forearms. Miguel watched the yellow and black punctures disappear under tan bandages, the anomaly flinching as she tightened them. She may have slipped away, but Miguel weakened her. He slowed her down. She wouldn’t get away again, he would make sure of it. “This one’s mine.”

Chapter 1

[narrans]

My Borrowed Son | 10 | Unwrapped Questions

Chapter Ten | Unwrapped Questions

“Happy birthday Parker! Smile!” Amanda held up her phone and snapped several pictures over and over, not wanting to miss a single moment. The click of the digital shudder seemed to flick the memories from the past six years before Amanda’s eyes. She replayed them in her mind.

She could remember all of it as if it were yesterday.

Finding Parker under the bench abandoned and alone.

His first words.

His trust building as he grew and began to question the world around him.

It seemed like yesterday that she celebrated his first birthday with her where he turned a whopping five years old; at least, that’s where she thought he was age wise. Now he was officially ten years old.

Double digits.

It took everything in her not to break out in a sob as she reminisced. The years had certainly aged him. The minuscule boy no bigger than her thumb was growing up. There was a sense of pride that she had managed to keep him alive and safe all of this time, but also a sense of wonder and fear.

Parker wasn’t two inches tall anymore. He was getting closer to three and a quarter inches, and he would only keep growing from there. He was developing a sense of style and taste in the things he liked. The clothes he wore, which he was beginning to make himself, were more free flowing and flexible while tight in others.

His mind constantly wanted more knowledge. By now, he had read through nearly every book in Amanda’s home and she was renting stacks of books weekly for him from the local library. Parker had also gotten into experimenting recently, which was a huge scare for Amanda.

She had walked by his room one day to find one of the push lights completely disassembled and Parker messing with the wires, connecting them to different elements of the electronic device to figure out how it worked.

That ended up being a discussion about safety which Parker did not enjoy.

The rambunctious boy was also getting into climbing and inventing, which set Amanda completely on edge. Not only was Parker balancing precariously on whatever he could, but he was testing the strength of different items around the house. Once, Amanda found him with a piece of yarn attached to a paper clip which was wrapped around one of the knobs on the bathroom counter.

When she asked him why, he said he didn’t know.

It just felt right.

He had an unexplainable urge to climb and jump and tumble over anything and everything. Try as she might, Amanda couldn’t get him to stop completely. The compromise was that she had an area specifically set up for him to run drills and “play.” It was like a complicated playground with tunnels made from the cardboard tubes from toilet paper or paper towels as well as yarn, toys, and boxes.

Despite his rambunctiousness, Parker also found time for his “quiet” activities, reading and writing in the notebooks Amanda gave him. He was a thoughtful, intuitive child and it really showed in his writing when he dared to share it with his mom.

Now, he was a whole ten years old.

Amanda nearly choked up again as she stared at her son’s face and the little plume of smoke where the candle once stood lit. It was the first candle he had ever been able to blow out by himself.

“Did you get it, mom?” asked Parker as he leaned around his cupcake birthday cake and stood as tall as he could. Amanda had to quickly wipe her eyes with the back of her hand as she nodded.

“Of course I did, sweetie,” she said affectionately. “Now, cake or presents first?”

“Presents please!” Parker cheered as he stepped off of his makeshift stool that he stood on top of to blow out his candle. He darted over to the small, wrapped boxes Amanda had prepared. It was excruciating work, but it was well spent. Parker deserved to have wrapped presents just like any other child after all.

The child bounced on the balls of his feet as he examined the five different packages in front of him. Two of them were about as big as him while the other three were much smaller.

He decided to go with the big ones.

It took him a minute to undo the wrapping as his little fingers fumbled with the paper, but he eventually pulled it back to reveal an MP3 player. It was a very simple model that took AAA batteries, but it held loads of music, which was something Parker frequently enjoyed.

“Oh, thank you momma… but… what is it?” asked Parker. He remembered his manners even when he was confused, which made Amanda chuckle.

“It’s a music player. Now you can play music in your room without asking me. You just flick this right here to turn it on and this is how you switch songs,” Amanda explained as she demonstrated how to use Parker’s new toy.

She knew it was old fashioned technology, but he was still a bit too young in her opinion to have a phone or complete access to the internet. What little access he did have was to watch movies at the end of the night, which was always with Amanda.

“Ohhh! Thank you momma!” Parker said eagerly as he pressed the play button and began listening to the “Happy” song. He moved onto the small packages, which were some more books and new colored pencils, the “world’s smallest video game, and a new board game - chess. It was part of a multipack which Amanda had been rationing out when he achieved something like reading a big book. Now felt like a good time to give him a more complicated game which he could learn over time.

“These are great! Thank you,” smiled Parker as he excitedly went from present to present.

He finally moved onto the last big one, but opening it brought a face of confusion when he found something that looked like a metal rod.

“Momma? What’s this?” Parker asked. He lifted it with a heave and observed the metal ends that clicked together like Legos. Amanda’s smile broadened as her eyes gleamed with excitement.

“Okay, your last big present is… a little bigger than the others. Here,” said Amanda as she got up from the table, making sure she had her camera set to record, as she hurried out of the room and into the back bedroom and emerged with a package that was massive, even for her.

Parker’s eyes widened as he stepped over to the edge of the table and watched as his mom unveiled the final gift. The front of the box read “Snap Circuits,” which already made Parker’s eyes gleam. He enjoyed electronics and figuring out how things worked, and this seemed to be right up his alley.

“Okay, so this right here is an experiment kit. You take pieces, like the one you have over there, and hook them up to a board to understand how electricity and batteries work. If you’re going to be curious, do it safely first,” said Amanda as she slid the box just under Parker. He wasted no time in jumping down into the box to examine all of the parts and pieces.

“Woah! Mom! This is incredible!” Parker said, jaw slackened in awe.

“I thought you’d like it. Now, let’s get it unpacked and get playing with it,” smiled Amanda.

For the next three hours, the two of them clicked and set up different experiments. Amanda did make Parker read most of the instructions out loud, which was frustrating from time to time, but the end result of getting lightbulbs to glow or fans to rocket into the air was absolutely worth it.

It was a great celebration - perfect even.

Still…

There was something deep down that Parker wanted that wasn’t - couldn’t - be wrapped in paper.

~~~^*^*^~~~

Parker, for as long as he could remember, knew he was a little different. He knew he was small for his age, but there was a good reason for it.

Parvi Homunculi Syndrome.

He had it ever since he was a baby. Evidently, it was a rare condition that made him a perfectly sized human, but just significantly smaller than any other human. The condition was so rare that very few people knew about it and, therefore, not a lot of research had been done. Not even the greatest scientists in the world had answers.

There was no cure.

There was no treatment.

Not even online resources had anything significant to say about the condition except that the origin words were from Latin and that it meant “little human.”

It was final.

Parker was always going to be tiny.

He was alright with his size. In fact, he never felt like anything about him was entirely off. The child felt completely normal, but he was told by his mother that his condition kept him fragile, making the outside world a bit more dangerous for him than any other human.

It was like the people who were allergic to sunlight.

Normal, and yet not.

Parker didn’t resent that fact. He enjoyed his time with his mother and loved the time he had to explore, read, and do mostly whatever he wanted.

It was the simple fact that there was no one else like him that made him feel… lonely… from time to time.

The child knew there were kids his age, but he also knew he could never play with them because they wouldn’t know about his condition and not be careful with him. It was a precaution. It was a necessary precaution.

Still…

It didn’t stop him from feeling a bit out of place.

It was a sensation he could never quite get rid of. Everything just felt so big and some of his impulses and thoughts just felt right despite how dangerous they seemed. He remembered an instance with a paper clip and yarn he attached to one another. Parker was tired of asking his mother to lift him to the sink anytime he wanted to play in the sink or if he needed to go to the bathroom. So, he found a solution. He attached a paper clip to some yarn and threw it upward until it caught the knob on the sink drawer.

Was it dangerous to climb it?

Yes. Absolutely.

Did he do it?

Mostly - if his mom hadn’t stopped him.

Parker couldn’t explain how he knew how to climb the rope or why that seemed like the best solution, but he did it anyway.

Another time he was balancing on the edge of the nightstand drawer at the very bottom. His mom told him to be careful, but he still lost his balance and fell toward the ground. Inside of him, something told him how to twist in the air and land safely on his feet - and so he did. His mom fussed and worried over him for a week, but Parker emerged completely unscathed from the incident. He and his mother both were astounded he was alright considering the fall was the equivalent of falling from the roof of a two story building.

There were a million instances just like this, and none of them could be explained.

Nothing stopped Parker from asking questions, but all of them were explained with the condition he had; so, ultimately, he started attributing all of these odd quirks to his genetic condition.

Every once in a while, he felt like he just wanted to be like his mom - normal. But he suspected that others with this condition had the same thoughts and feelings too. Anyone who was deemed a little different probably wanted to feel normal every once in a while, whatever “normal” actually was.

Now that he was ten, Parker felt he had more questions than answers, but not all of them pertained to his instincts. Some of them were about life. There were things he knew, and there were things he didn’t know. And, for the things he didn’t know, sometimes he was afraid to ask. Whether it was natural apprehension for delving into the unknown or because he was afraid to hear the answer, Parker didn’t know.

But, what he did know was that his mom always had a hard time saying “no” to him when it was his birthday.

Now was his one day out of the year where he felt like he could summon the courage to ask some really tough questions.

And this time he was going to do it.

So, after a healthy helping of cake and a movie of his choosing, Parker played with his plate of mostly icing and crumbs as he cleared his throat. His heart was pounding hollowly, but he wouldn’t shy away from his questions today. He had already done so far too many times.

“Um… momma?” asked Parker, gaining his mother’s attention.

“Yes, sweetie?” Amanda asked as she turned off the television and flicked on the nearby lamp.

“Could… um… could I ask you a question? And you not get mad?” Parker asked. Amanda’s body position changed immediately as she faced him, which made his mouth dry.

“Parker, when have I gotten mad when you’ve asked a question? You can always ask me anything and I’ll answer as best as I can. Is something wrong?” His mom’s concern was evident in her signature “mom” tone. It made Parker smile as he heard it. He knew the question came off a bit wrong by asking her not to get mad, but it just sort of slipped out.

“I… I know. I’m okay. You don’t get mad. I just… I just know some questions you… don’t like,” said Parker. His mom’s body stiffened ever so slightly as if she knew the question to come, but she nodded with conviction.

“Parker, you can always ask me anything,” said his mom.

It was enough to get the ball rolling.

“Well… with my… condition… will I get a chance to invite friends over for my birthday?” Parker asked. He knew what the answer would be, but he wanted to ask anyway.

“Parker, I wish I knew the answer to that question. I would love it if you could go out and make some friends like any other kid, but you’re special. Everything here is to help and protect you, sweetie, which I know is hard,” said his mom.

“But, maybe, if we could go to the park together, you can help explain everything and…”

“And kids your age aren’t always as careful as you. They don’t listen as well as you, Parker,” said his mom. Parker drew his legs up to his chest and picked at the lump of icing on his plate.

“Then… could I maybe call friends one day?” he asked. “Like… if you find someone who has a kid who will be careful, and we can play games online or call on the phone and stuff?”

At this suggestion, Amanda perked up.

“Yes, I think I can figure something out. I want you to have friends to play games with. I’ll see what we can do. Yeah? For your birthday, I’ll do this,” suggested Amanda. Parker smiled and nodded vigorously.

“Yeah, yeah! I mean… yes, please,” said Parker. Already, his heart was feeling lighter with the answers he was given.

“Anything else?” asked his mom, her eyes luring out more questions that had been lingering in the corners of the child’s mind.

“Um… I… guess… could… I mean… I love reading, but…” Parker’s next request was a bold one, but it tied into his first desire of meeting other people. He gulped and spat out his desire before he lost his nerve. “I want to go to school.”

His request lingered there for a moment before he saw his mom nodding.

“I know. I’ve seen it for a while now. I know I can only teach you so much, and you probably want to make friends with your classmates too, huh?” asked his mom. Parker nodded sheepishly.

“Yes momma,” he replied.

Amanda sighed, knowing this day would come.

“Alright. I’ll see what I can do. I don’t know about this season, but I’m sure I can get some tests done and have you placed in the fall. Okay? Mind you, it will probably have to be virtual, like how I go to work sometimes. You’ll be able to see and talk to others, but going physically to school might be tricky. Okay?”

It didn’t matter that he had to stay at home. He would get to interact virtually, which was a start.

“Well then, birthday boy, any other questions and requests?”

There was one other thing…

It weighed on Parker, and he wasn’t even sure if he could articulate what he needed or wanted. It was more of the curiosity and the unknown that captured his focus.

“Um… there was… one other thing.”

“Okay. I’m all ears,” said his mom.

“I… well… I was just… wondering… about dad.”

The word left the air feeling charged and static. It took a good thirty seconds for his mom to respond.

“What were you wondering about?”

It was a legitimate question, and Parker honestly didn’t know if he would get this far.

“Um… just… I don’t know. I guess… why he missed my birthday? Why he’s not here? I… see in the shows and movies and stuff that there’s a mom and a dad, and he’s not here,” said Parker. His questions were earnest and meant in innocence and sincerity, which made it all the more bitter for Amanda.

She often left her ex-husband out of all conversation and discussion. Parker had absently asked a few times in the past about him, but now there was a deliberate question about his existence and presence - or lack thereof. Amanda had to take a few deep breaths as she formulated the right words.

She had already thought about these words a while ago, and while she knew Parker would ask her one day about the truth of his size and origin, she didn’t want to shatter his reality here and now.

Not on his birthday.

Maybe not ever.

Everything she said was the truth - but the bitter lying by omission burned her tongue and made her squirm.

“My… husband… he would have been your dad… he left when you were just a baby. He and I… we didn’t get along. We had our arguments and decided it would be best to split - divorce,” explained Amanda as carefully as she could. “I know he would have loved you if he got to know you, Parker, but at the time we made decisions that we thought were best for us, even though that might feel wrong now.”

Parker listened to his mother’s explanation intently. She had never given him so much information all at once.

It still left questions.

Did his dad not love him? Did he not want to try and get to know him?

What did he do wrong?

“Is… is it because of me?” asked Parker. He had asked the question before he had a chance to second guess himself.

Immediately, Amanda leaned over and rested her fingers beside him. Parker wasn’t sure why, but a momentary instinct told him to flinch away at the approaching fingers that he knew and loved. He stood his ground, but the impulse was an odd one. As fast as it came, it went, leaving Parker feeling confused. His mom’s voice brought him back to their conversation.

“Parker, you listen to me. It is not because of you. Do not even think that for a second. We made the best decisions we could in the moment. They may feel wrong now, but we didn’t know that at the time,” said Amanda reassuringly. “You are so loved, Parker. Don’t you forget that.”

Parker looked up into his mother’s features and saw there were tears in her eyes. His eyes started to burn seeing the conviction and passion in his mother’s gaze. He wanted nothing more than to take back his last question.

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to make you sad,” said Parker as he leaned over and hugged his mother’s fingers, practically wrapping his whole body around them.

“No, Parker. You didn’t make me sad. I’m just sorry I can’t give you everything you want and need. I hope you know none of that is because of you,” said Amanda.

“I know. I know. Don’t cry momma,” said Parker over and over again. Ever so carefully, Amanda rotated her hand and scooped up the small child to hold him to her chest. His little fingers grasped at the fibers on her shirt as he turned and faced her. She could hear his little voice apologizing, but she reassured him that there was nothing to apologize for.

In fact, she was surprised things were going as well as this. She always feared these questions when Parker asked. She feared the day if and when he would question who she was to him.

She was his mom.

But not his mother.

She didn’t carry him or birth him, but she was there to nurture and teach him as if she did.

The difference didn’t matter to Amanda because Parker was her son. She would protect him and love him with everything she was. It was sad she didn’t have all of the answers he wanted. He deserved the truth; but how could she tell him what she didn’t know?

All she could do is tell him the truth as best as she could, even as the difficult questions sat poised on the edge ready to strike at any moment. It made her feel anxious and sick, dreading what might not ever come to pass.

Perhaps that day will never come, Amanda prayed as she held Parker closer.

When the two of them had taken a few deep breaths and felt the air clear, Parker asked to go back to playing with his toys. It was still his birthday so, despite it being his bedtime, Amanda allowed him to stay awake and to play with his toys for just a little longer.

It was his birthday after all.

Parker proceeded to build three more constructions from his book before his eyes could no longer be held open. He needed sleep, and his mom knew it. She took him to the bathroom to brush his teeth and a quick bath before the two of them went to sleep.

As Parker drifted off in his bed in his room, he stared up at the edge of his mom’s massive bed and called, “I love you, momma.”

“I love you, Parker. I love you so very much.”

Parker curled into his bed and smiled.

What a fun birthday….

~~~~~^*^*^*^*^~~~~~

Continue

Previous

Beginning

[tegr1dy]

Stan and Kyle had their first kiss in that car, that shitty used car Stan bought from a guy on Craigslist with money he saved from his summer jobs lifeguarding and walking dogs. It broke down on the side of the road with the two of them in it. Neither of them had their licenses, so they weren’t quite sure who to call, but Kenny could give them a jumpstart.

“What if you just, like, bent me over and took me right here,” Stan said. He was outside the car, inspecting it. He knew nothing about cars.

“Huh?” Kyle didn’t find their situation at all sexy. “Like fuck you in the ass against your car? Outside in the cold?”

“Yeah,” he exhaled slowly, staring into the cluttered mess of wires under the hood, not even really trying to make sense of it.

“It would probably hurt. I don’t know.” Elbow perched against the passenger seat window, Kyle held his head and grimaced, but underneath the hand that covered his mouth and cheek, he flushed at the imagery. Of Stan with his pants around his ankles, fully clothed otherwise, and himself ramming into him with enough force to bruise, Stan’s own come dripping down the scratched paint of his beat up car door. “Is that what you want? It to hurt?”

Stan shut the hood and stomped languidly through the weeds back into the driver’s seat, as if to give himself more time to respond. “I don’t know. Maybe,” he admitted, finally. “I just know, like…” He gestured some weird concentric circles with his hands. “Ugh, this is so stupid, but… I just know you’d take care of me after, yknow? Like, you can be as rough as you want, because I know you’ll put me back together at the end of it all. I…”

Stan’s hand rested on the gearshift in a loose grip. Kyle ripped it off and took hold of Stan, weaving their fingers together.

“I just trust you. And its so weird, but I just wanna, like, put myself in situations to feel that trust.”

“Oh, Stan…”

Kyle was hard in his jeans, and he would have felt bad for it if not for Stan being hard too. They had barely even touched each other. The gentle rubs Kyle’s thumb gave Stan’s hand felt like foreplay, like Stan was getting stroked off.

“…I don’t know if tonight is the night for that, but. Um.” Kyle’s mind wandered to where Stan worked at the local pool, the parking lot there where you could see the fireworks on the Fourth of July. Maybe there. “Sometime this summer. If that’s what you want, I’ll give it to you. You know I will.”

Stan smiled. “God, yes, please.”

And they kissed on it.

[kokinu09]

Let Go of the Reins || Chapter 3

~*~

pairing seungmin x fem!reader

genre strangers to lovers, romance, fluff, slight angst later, happy ending, social media, not meant to be, someday

summary  Australia is considered home for two of the eight members. When two tour dates are scheduled for the land down under, the boys can’t help but want to spend a bit more time there to visit family and do a little sightseeing. So how do they convince the company that they need to stay a couple weeks? Filming some SKZ Code episodes.

A local riding school just outside the city with amazing reviews for their skilled instructors and beautiful horses is hosting a very popular kpop group to film their experiences. Y/N knows the group well and she just so happens to be their star working student. 

status ongoing

taglist OPEN

previous | masterlist | next

~*~

The getting ready part was easy. After Olivia spent a little too long on your makeup (and having to run through the barn to get everything prepped in time), you manage to have all 8 of your selected horses for the guys lined up before the film crew arrives. The other dozen or so horses for the crew were your other coworkers’ problems. You got to pick your lineup and you couldn’t be happier with your bunch. 

You finish securing the saddle on Storm’s back, the last one you needed, and shake out your shoulders. The nerves start to sink in as the seconds tick by. 

Storm nickers by your head, giving you a gentle nudge as if to comfort you. You giggle as your hands reach up to pat his neck, equally as comforting towards your equine companion. “Thanks Buddy. I’m ok,” you say with a smile. 

Your smile falters momentarily as you hear footsteps approaching. Swallowing down your nerves, you turn expecting the group of boys but instead, it is a couple of the staff members approaching with a mic and wires in hand. Right, you’ll need to be just as heard as they do. 

“Hello, are you Miss Y/N?” The young woman asks. 

“Yes, that’s me!” You brighten your smile and offer a polite bow. They both seem pleasantly surprised as they happily return the gesture, quickly getting to work mic’ing you up for the shoot.

“The crew should be over shortly.” The man informs nicely before they both bow and head back the way they came. Leaving you with your nerves to stew in your gut until the boys show up. 

Keeping yourself busy is definitely the best way to prevent a downward spiral into anxiety, so you double-check each horse’s equipment to make sure everything is secure and ready for the ride. Even taking the time to give all the horses a little pep talk. Maybe that was more for yourself but who’s to say?

As promised, it isn’t long before you hear the telltale signs that the boys are coming closer. The loud laughs and teasing bickers pulls an uncontrollable smile onto your face, a giddy feeling replaces your apprehension. This whole situation suddenly feels unreal. 

Yesterday, you’d been too worried about making sure they knew the dos and dont’s of safety to process the fact that you were face-to-face with your favorite group. Now, you just can’t believe you’re lucky enough to get to talk to them! Let alone spend the entire afternoon teaching them about a passion of yours, horses and riding! 

You turn just in time to see the same boy who you’d fateful met yesterday running towards you in the most adorable way; arms hanging at his sides, ‘running’ being a loose term, looking more like a happy trot just to get to you a little quicker than the others, and a huge smile spread across his face. And you can’t help but grin back, your excitement to see him just as high as his to see you it seems. 

“Hello again,” he says in a hushed greeting once he’s close enough. 

“Well hello there,” you return with a giggle. “Feeling up for being on the horse rather than underneath it?” 

Your teasing earns a smirk from the menace himself but he doesn’t get the chance to reply as the others finally have caught up. Chan comes up beside him and ruffles his hair, much to his displeasure. “Looks like you beat us here, Seungminnie!” He teases, turning to you without paying any attention to the glare from the younger. “And you must be Y/N! I’m Chan, it’s nice to officially meet you!” He smiles and bows respectfully.

“Yes! It’s nice to meet you too!” You agree, returning his respect. He grins wide at you then turns to the others. 

“Everyone say ‘annyeonghaseyo’ to Y/N-ssi!” He instructs. 

All the boys turn to you with their hands folded in front of them as they bow, saying in unison, “Annyeonghaseyo, Y/N-ssi.” 

A blush spreads across your face, eyes scanning over them bowing towards you while you catch sight of the cameras in the corner of your eye. Way too much attention is directly on you right now. You have to divert. You hastily bow over and over towards them with a loud, nervous laugh.

“Hello! Thank you!” You straighten up as they do and offer a sincere smile. “It’s wonderful to meet all of you,” you tell them, looking at each of them to show how much it really means to you. Another camera pointed at you catches your eye and your shoulders stiffen, nerves returning. “We should probably get started!” 

That sets the other Aussie member bouncing on his heels.

“Yes please! Which one is mine?? I can’t wait to pet them!” Felix’s excitement sends the group into a fit of laughter as they begin teasing the ball of sunshine in a mix of Korean and English. 

With the boys talking and distracting the cameras, you take the opportunity to turn away to act like you’re adjusting Storm’s harness. But actually, you inhale a shaky breath. 

“Hey,” the soft greeting still startles you slightly. You find Seungmin beside you now, one hand gripping the mic on his shirt, the other lifted to pet Storm’s snout. 

“O-oh! Hey,” your chin ducks in embarrassment. Now you’re stuttering? This is a disaster. 

“Don’t let the cameras scare you. You’re doing great,” he says. And when he looks over to meet your eyes, you can see his sincerity. 

You breathe out a sigh, relieved from the show of support. “Right, yeah,” after just a moment’s pause you add, “Thank you.” 

The smile that lights up his face sends a swarm of butterflies fluttering in your stomach. That expression makes it clear why he’s known as a puppy. You can practically see his proverbial tail wagging behind him and you can’t help but think it is absolutely adorable.

”Ah-yah! Seungmin~!” Felix whines, causing your spine to stiffen like you’ve been caught with your hand in the cookie jar. “You’re already petting the horses?! I asked first!” 

Seungmin releases his muffled mic and turns with that teasing smirk of his. “If you weren’t running your mouth, maybe Y/N-ssi would be able to introduce us to them.” He spouts in Korean. 

At the indignant cry from the younger Aussie boy, you wave your hands in front of you. “No, no! It’s alright! You weren’t interrupting anything! We aren’t in a rush!” You quickly assure…also in Korean. 

All the boys freeze to stare at you with wide eyes. The almost eerie silence from them all draws a cold sweat to your skin. 

“You…speak Korean?” Chan asks, his face reflecting the astonishment, almost skepticism, in his voice. 

“Well, I’m still learning… but I’m getting pretty good at understanding,” you say as your shoes become incredibly interesting. 

Suddenly, a different pair of shoes joins in your line of vision. Your wide eyes lift to find the maknae of the group standing there, looking at you with starry eyes, and before he says, “Noona is so cool!” 

A chorus of agreement from Han, Felix, and Changbin sounds behind the youngest causing your face to erupt into the color of a tomato. Chan, bless his soul, is quick to step in, settling the boys down and regaining focus to their task ahead of them for filming. By the way he talks, they’ll probably be editing a lot of that out. Which you’re beyond grateful for.

“Cool. Now, where were we?” Chan offers the stage back over to you. 

“I was just about to introduce you all to your horse partners for the day!” 

A few of the members can’t help their eager squeals as you go on, walking over to the first horse in line. A gorgeous black stallion. 

“Here at Hooves and Harmony Riding Academy, we’ve been very fortunate to raise a wide variety of breeds on the ranch. Some of those are particularly rare, like this boy here!” You explain, mostly for the cameras. “Chan, you’ll be working with Shadow today. He has high energy but is surprisingly patient with his riders!”

The eldest walks up slowly, his face showing his awe for the creature as he takes your place beside him as you move to the next. This stallion has a thicker build with an almost black mane and solid brown coat. His snout being the exception as it looks like he dipped it in white paint. “Lee Know, this is Copper. He’s big but a total sweetheart. I think you’ll work really well with him.” 

Minho’s lips are pouted in the shape of an O as he places a gentle hand on the white muzzle of the horse. You smile to yourself (so far so good!) before walking to the next. Changbin bounces on the balls of his feet in anticipation, eyes locked on the horse he knows is going to be assigned to him. One of the strongest horses you’d been allowed to pick from. His bulkier muscles covered with a beautiful red-toned coat with black tips to his ears and legs to match his black mane. “I can see you’re excited, so Changbin, this is Jersey. He’s our biggest bay boy!” 

The boy can’t help his ecstatic shout and he gets a few panicked looks that he’ll startle the huge animal. “Don’t worry, he’s super tolerant to noises so you shouldn’t have any issues with him,” you assure everyone with confidence. Changbin hurries over with the biggest smile you may have ever seen on him. 

“Y/N-ssi really has thought of everything!” He cheers, patting his horse’s neck as he takes his place.

You try to push down the blush that heats your face while you make your way over to the dark chocolate spotted mare. “This sweet girl’s name is Daisy. She’s a little dramatic at times but she is one of the most reliable of the bunch!” You explain, looking to Hyunjin. “I thought you’d enjoy this fun little fact too! Most people like to refer to horses with this pattern on her coat as ‘paint’ horses.”

Hyunjin’s eyes widen and sparkle. “Because it looks like she’s been splattered with paint!” He beams, immediately befriending the mare with chin scratches that there’s no way he could have known were her favorite.

You giggle, continuing on to the next; an older mare but no less beautiful. Her white coat littered with hundreds of little brown specks. “And this is Freckles! Our resident leopard! She’s the oldest in this group so she’s very laid back and easy to work with.”

Han gives you a skeptical look, knowing by the order you’ve introduced the members to their horses so far that this is his, then glances at Felix. Thinking you’d accidentally mix them up because they’re so close in age that they’re almost twins. You laugh a little at the subtle implication. “Even though her looks would make you think I’d pair her with Felix, I think you’ll have a lot of fun with her today, Han! She has been known to play little tricks on the other horses from time to time.” You say with a mischievous wink.

The rapper’s heart-shaped smile spreads across his face at this news and he greets the mare with hesitant hands at first. That is until Freckles presses her snout into his palms, impatient for attention. 

When you look over to Felix, you can see his excitement already bubbling over the surface. The boy basically vibrating with the biggest eyes and smile. You walk over to the beauty he will be handling for the day. Her cream-colored coat only a few shades darker than her white mane, the longer hairs adorning a slight curl not super common with their other horses. 

“Felix, I’d like to introduce you to Rosie! She is always so poised and calm, not to mention absolutely stunning! I think you two will have a nice relaxing ride together.” Having been the most giddy of them all from the get-go, it doesn’t surprise you when he sprints to take his place beside the elegant steed. 

Only two more. And so far, they’ve all been super happy with your choices of companions for them. But why are your palms sweaty and your heart racing even thinking about telling Seungmin about your choice for him? 

You manage to swallow the lump of fear in your throat and keep moving, avoiding lifting your head his way. Instead, coming up beside the chestnut spotted mare with more white than spots. You reach up and brush the fringe of her mane away from her eyes. ‘It’s her moment in the spotlight, gotta make sure she’s looking her best!’ The internal monologue makes you chuckle under your breath. 

It’s impossible to avoid the inevitable forever though, so you finally look over to Seungmin. His eyes are watching you. Your gaze meets his and it feels like the world is frozen. Or maybe it’s only you. But you also can’t seem to care. 

You don’t know how long you stand there just staring into his warm brown eyes, but the only thing that snaps you out of it is the smirk that tugs at his lips with a soft chuckle. Eyes blinking rapidly, you take a quick glance around to find everyone looking at you curiously. By some miracle, your face doesn’t turn beet red (at least you don’t think so) when you try to play it off with a little cough to clear your throat. 

“Sorry, uh, this next girl is very special to me. Her name is Pearl.” You say with a smile as you pet her soft nose. “She came to the ranch at the same time as my horse Storm did. And they’re best buddies, virtually inseparable! So, by association, we’re virtually inseparable!” The boys all join in with your laugh. “But I would trust this girl if I was riding blindfolded, so I know she will take good care of you.” You turn to smile warmly at her intended rider.

Seungmin steps forward until he is in your space, casually placing his hand on the horse’s neck. You vaguely hear the other members talking but you’re too busy fighting the racing of your heart. The pounding deafening to your own ears and you’re marginally worried that the mic pinned to your chest will pick up on all of it. 

“Thank you for entrusting me with her.” His voice just over a whisper. You let out a giggle. 

“Or I am trusting her with you,” you counter jokingly. “Can’t say you haven’t given me reason to believe you’ll fall off.” He breathes out a laugh, eyes sparkling with mirth and maybe something else you can’t quite place. All you know is that you’d give anything to turn the cameras off and get to talk to him without these extra nerves buzzing in your gut.

“I’ll try not to, but no promises,” he jokes. 

“I’m still going to hold you to it, Puppy Boy.” 

The two of you laugh a little too loudly and catch the attention of Felix next to you. You don’t see the knowing smile on his face before he gives the younger member a light shove, a gentle reminder of where they are and who is around. Both of you seem to sober up as your backs straighten and he offers you an apologetic smile. 

“Let’s move on while the staff are still distracted by my loudmouth brothers,” Seungmin says with a teasing eye roll. 

“Hey, I heard that,” Felix grumbles under his breath. You giggle at the baritone showing in his voice, the first time hearing it. Momentarily you wonder how many times you might be able to aggravate him enough to hear it during the trail ride. But you catalog that in the back of your mind for later. 

Making your way around the singer, with a shy tip of your head, you come to the last of their partners. The stallion growing excited as soon as he sees you approaching, his head bobbing dramatically up and down as a show. His black mane thrashing in the crisp February air. 

“Hey now, Monster! Behave yourself, we have guests!” You scold without any bite. You manage to catch his bridle and settle him down, rubbing a hand along his strong brown neck. He still attempts to wrap around your front to lay his head on your shoulder but you stop him with a laugh. You release the strap and ruffle his bangs, just over the single white spot on his forehead. 

“Last but certainly not least, I.N you will be working with Monster! He is such a jokester and so fun to ride. I think you two will get along really well!” You tell the maknae who looks giddy with his own excitement. 

The youngest trots over and the big brown horse immediately takes a shining to him, tapping his foot happily as he nudges his hand for pets. It feels good that everyone seems happy with the horses you’ve assigned to them. And the horses seem content with their riders, so you take it as your first win of the day!

You move back to the front of the line and untie Storm’s reins, leading into the space the boys had just occupied, where all of them can see you. “Now that we’ve gotten the introductions out of the way, let’s really get started!” You cheer, ready to get them mounted in their saddles and riding so you can all be back from the first trail by lunchtime.

~*~

taglist

@kangaracha @rainfallingfromthesky @puppysmileseungmin @defnotfertilizedtoesw @teenyfinds @bbokari711 @lakoya @keepswingin

[legobiwan]

Mario and Luigi for the drabble, “When I’m with you, I’m home.”

Thanks!

I realized I'm answering this one out of order. Whoops! Anyway, have some pre-Mushroom Kingdom conversations and lore-building as your author reminisces about the New York of the '90s.

~~~~~~

He wonders, sometimes, what their lives would have looked like if they had never left Brooklyn.

Barring a miracle - pretty bleak, in all honesty. Maybe being here, in the Mushroom Kingdom, was the miracle. He remembers the frenzied few days leading up to their disappearance. The previous few months had been a mess of unpaid bills and awful business decisions governed solely by spite and fear. They were probably a few months of missed rent payments away from eviction. They were definitely two days away from getting their kneecaps bashed in by some loan shark’s goons. 

He and Mario had gone for a walk, all the way down to Coney Island, 75th to Stillwell to Bowery, to the decrepit-looking Wonder Wheel and a depressingly empty Nathan’s Hot Dogs. It looked like the last of the hotels, some once-bright vestige of his mother’s era, had finally been condemned, tall wire fencing curling up towards the grey winter sky, a perfunctory guard which did nothing to keep out the local graffiti artists and homeless population. 

Luigi jammed his hands into his jean pockets, shivering. He couldn’t tell if he was freezing or terrified.

“What are we gonna do, Mario? We can’t stay here. If he doesn’t get us, the landlord will. You see how they’re starting to develop all that stuff around 86th Street. It’s going to travel north and we’re already behind two months in rent. We can’t stay in Bensonhurst.” Luigi sighed, little frozen puffs of air floating from his mouth. “I don’t even know if we can stay in Brooklyn at this rate.”

It was a miracle they weren’t out on the streets already. For once, their landlord’s habit of sitting around with a bottle of Thunderbird watching Honeymooners reruns and screaming at “that bum El Duque” to throw more strikes fell to their advantage. Sure, there was no such thing as maintenance in the dilapidated six-floor walk-up. But they were plumbers, tradesmen - a leaky faucet or misbehaving shower wasn’t going to be an issue.

Unfortunately, they weren’t also exterminators. 

Mario took a large bite of his hotdog, mustard splattering on the gum-stained sidewalk. It looked like something they’d hang in one of those trendy galleries that kept popping up in lower Manhattan, down around Houston Street. 

“We’re gonna be fine, Lou,” Mario said between bites, bits of bun falling from his mouth.

“We’re gonna end up homeless.” Or missing our kneecaps. Or worse.

Mario crammed the last of his dinner in his mouth, finishing off the hot dog with a few loud chews. He gave a contented sigh, licking at his greasy fingers before wiping his hands on his pants. “No, we’re not gonna be homeless. I’ve told you a million times, Lou, we could be in a cardboard box under the Van Wyck. When we’re together - “ Mario slung an arm around Luigi’s shoulder, pulling him in tight. “When I’m with you - I’m home. We’re unbeatable. And that means we’ll make it through this.”

Luigi eyed his brother’s yellow-tinged fingers and stained shirt cuff, hoping the impromptu moment of fraternal affection would pass. He could deal with Mario’s sunny optimism, usually. But living in a studio apartment one step up from a garbage dump had apparently encouraged his brother’s disposition towards a more slovenly existence. They might be home when they were together, but it wouldn’t hurt if Mario took a damn vacuum to himself once in a while. 

“Mario, I think this time - ”

“Oh, I get it.” The warm arm around his shoulder disappeared, his brother’s voice hardening. Luigi snapped his head to the side, his heart rocketing into his throat. What did I say this time?  

“It’s the location, isn’t it?” His brother gave him a searching, serious look. He looks just like Dad. He even seemed as if he were towering over Luigi, just like Dad used to, despite Mario being the shortest of the three of them. “You’d prefer a box under the BQE.”

Luigi gaped. “I - what?”

“Nah, nah, okay,” Mario waved his hands. “Let’s talk location. You wanna be by the Belt? Or maybe - “ A sly smile grew under his brother’s burgeoning mustache. “You want to move to Queens.”

“Oh my God,” Luigi groaned, slapping his forehead with his palm, pulling his hand down over his eyes. I’d move to Jersey if it got us out of this mess. “Mario, be serious.”

“I am serious! Your secret’s safe with me, bro. Even if you would betray Brooklyn like that." Luigi felt two steady hands take him by the biceps. “Besides, we’re gonna be okay.”

“Vinny Razzanti’s uncle said we had forty-eight hours,” Luigi groaned between his fingers.

Mario barked out a laugh. “Vinny Razzanti’s uncle couldn’t tell a pizza from a clock if we arranged the pepperonis the right way. The guy’s a dumbass.”

“Yeah, but he’s - “

“No, I ain’t hearing it.” Mario gently guided Luigi’s hands from his face, keeping his fingers wrapped around either wrist as he brought Luigi’s arms to his sides. “Look at me, Lou.”

Luigi swallowed down the wet desperation clawing its way up his throat, opening his eyes to his brother’s concerned, but steely gaze.

“If he comes, he comes. I’ve got a baseball bat next to the mattress and you can - “ Mario waved one of his arms in a broad gesture. “I dunno. Make some kind of exploding gadget or something. You used to want to show off your stuff to Cooper Union, right? Well, think of this as practice, you know, for the application.”

Luigi gave a small shake of his head. I don’t think home pyrotechnics meant to fend off low-level mafia muscle are going to impress the admissions committee. Not that they were going to waste their time with a twenty-one-year-old plumber’s application, anyway. That dream was long gone, buried in Cypress Hills along with their parents. 

“Here’s what we’re gonna do,” Mario’s voice broke through his dreary ruminations as he guided Luigi towards Bowery Street. “We’re gonna walk home, maybe pick up a cannoli on the way. Then we’re gonna check the answering machine. If we’re lucky - and I’m feeling pretty lucky right now - there will be a call from some lady in Borough Park.” His brother’s eyes gleamed. “No, even better, some widower in Carroll Gardens. One of those nice brownstones. She’s going to ask for our help. Clogged drains, backed up shower, toilet’s kablooey.” Mario made a slobbering sound meant to resemble a backed up toilet. Luigi thought he sounded like a dog on downers. “The whole shebang. We’ll say, of course, we can fix this, but we’ll have to charge the emergency rate. You know, business and all that. Three hours later - maybe four - boom! Vinny Razzanti’s uncle is out of the picture and we’ll be on our way to the good life.”

“You make it sound so simple, bro.” Luigi couldn’t quite contain the bite of sarcasm that accompanied that statement. 

As always, his brother took his waspishness in stride. Long strides, in fact, as they hurried past the metal skeletons that made up the Coney Island Train Yard, the whirr of traffic from the Belt Parkway rushing and thumping above them. Luigi felt like at any moment some old, rusted buckle would give way, sending a line of cabs and buses crashing into their heads.

He felt like that most of the time these days, to be honest. 

“It is simple, Luigi. You just gotta think positive. You never know what’s around the corner.” Mario tugged at his sleeve. “Now, come on. If we walk fast enough, we can get to Villbate’s before they close.”

“Alright, alright, you win, Mario. Something’s around the corner and for once, maybe it won’t be a guy with a baseball bat.” No. It won’t be a bat. It’ll be something worse. Like a flamethrower. Luigi was too tired to argue with his brother’s indomitable optimism. “Maybe we’ll get to your widower in Carroll Gardens and find the answers in her bathroom.”

Mario slapped his brother on the back. “That’s the spirit, Lou! Could be a whole new world waiting for us. Now let’s go - there’s a pistachio cannoli with my name on it and I am not missing out.”

“Hey, the pistachio cannolis are mine!”

“Not if you don’t run fast enough!” Mario gave his brother a playful push, taking off down Stillwell Avenue. Luigi watched his brother leap over a pile of trash bags, skittering between two cabs, one of which blared its horn in anger.

“Where you go, I guess I follow,” Luigi muttered to himself, adjusting his cap before taking off in his brother’s direction. And who knew? Maybe something was waiting for them around that corner.

[architectuul]

Salaspils: A Soviet Memorial To Nazi Victims In Latvia

Eighteen kilometres out of Riga, a series of stone giants stand frozen in a forest clearing to mark a place that some would rather forget. 

The forested approach to the Salaspils Memorial.

The road to the Salaspils Memorial Ensemble stops near the rail tracks, and visitors must walk the final stretch – through forests of pine, and birch that in autumn explodes into canopies of red and gold, the sunlight slicing sideways between trunks that shed their crisp white bark like snakeskin. 

The gallery building measuring 100 metres long by 12.5 metres high.

In the clearing beyond stands the Salaspils Memorial Ensemble.

The forest feels alive, almost supernaturally so, making it all the more abrupt to find the path suddenly barred by a looming concrete crossbeam, 100 metres long and more than 12 metres tall. This concrete barrier is a visitor building, an abstract Brutalist gallery that marks the symbolic threshold between life and death. It stands in the place where once there was a guardhouse ringed in barbed wire, the entrance to a former Nazi labour camp that operated for four years here amidst the picturesque Baltic birch. Through the arch, a clearing opens up between the trees; the camp barracks long gone, to be replaced by angular Soviet forms, towering, blocky figures stood as tall as the trees that surround them.

Above the entrance, a Latvian slogan is spelled out on the concrete flank of the gallery “Beyond these gates the land groans”, a line from a poem, written by a former prisoner of this place. 

Part of the original wall of Camp Kurtenhof.

SS-Sturmbannführer Rudolf Lange, who was appointed in 1941 a commander of both the Nazi Security Service and the Security Police for occupied Latvia, that same year proposed the creation of a detention facility in the region. It was named Camp Kurtenhof, from the German name for the town of Salaspils, and located for convenience just off the main rail track between Latvia’s two largest cities: Riga and Daugavpils. It was designated a Police Prison and Labour Correctional Camp.

A symbolic tally etched into the gallery building counts time inside the prison.

Work on the camp began in late 1941, and it was built largely by the hands of Jewish prisoners deported from occupied Germany, Austria and Czechoslovakia. At least a thousand Jews were transported from the Riga Ghetto to join the construction team in January 1942. Offered little in the way of comfort, nutrition or sanitary facilities, they were overworked and many would die to that first harsh Baltic winter.

Symbols of Soviet defiance raised on the grounds of the former camp.

These workers were amongst the only Jews to ever set foot in the Salaspils camp. Unlike the Reich’s concentration camps, which answered to their own central administration in Berlin, the Police Prison Camp at Salaspils was under the direct control of local Security Police Commander Rudolf Lange. Its inmates were political prisoners and Baltic dissidents, expanding in summer 1942 to provide ‘labour correction’ to those caught avoiding work regulations; and from 1943 the camp began taking in Baltic police officers and military personnel convicted in SS courts. The Salaspils camp also operated as an intermediary transit camp for prisoners being transported from Belarus and Russia, to forced labour projects in Germany. A large number of children were imprisoned at the camp too, allegedly in dedicated children’s barracks.

By the later part of 1942 the camp consisted of 15 barracks that between them housed 1,800 prisoners. By summer 1943, there were 30 barracks. Prisoners here were involved in the digging and processing of peat, and according to survivors’ accounts, regardless of its specific ‘Police Prison’ designation, the organisation of work, and treatment of prisoners at Salaspils, was just as brutal as any of the other Nazi camps in the region.

From left to right: Solidarity, The Oath and Red Front.

The official website for the Salaspils Memorial states that, during its years of operation, roughly 23,000 people were imprisoned at the camp. It reports that from May 1942 until September 1944, up to 500 prisoners died of diseases, as many as 150 from exhaustion or brutal punishment regimes, and a further 30 were shot while attempting to escape. The younger prisoners were particularly susceptible to the diseases (such as measles and typhoid fever) that ran rife through the inmate population. It is believed that half the camp’s children died from illness, and after liberation, a mass grave was discovered containing the corpses of 632 children aged 5-9 years old. The Salaspils website suggests that, including the Jewish forced labourers who died during construction, the final death toll of the Salaspils camp stood at more than 3,000 people.

Left: The Unbroken; right: The Mother.

The Salaspils camp was liberated by the Soviets in September 1944. The fences were brought down, the barracks destroyed, but it wasn’t until two decades later that they constructed a grand memorial complex on the site where the camp once stood. A competition was held to select a design for the Salaspils Memorial Ensemble, as it was known, with the winning entry submitted by a team of seven: the architects Gunārs Asaris (who would also create the Monument to the Sailors and Fishermen Lost at Sea, at Liepāja), Oļģerts Ostenbergs, Ivars Strautmanis and Oļegs Zakamennijs, along with the sculptors Levs Bukovskis, Oļegs Skarainis and Jānis Zariņš. The park opened in 1967, and in 1970 its creators would receive the prestigious Lenin Award for their work – in the same ceremony that saw architect Yevgeny Vuchetich awarded for his famous monument at Volgograd: The Motherland Calls.

The opening ceremony was a grand, flower-laden affair, and the Salaspils Memorial Ensemble would go on to be considered one of the most important Soviet memorial sites in the Baltics.

The sculpture called Humiliated.

Today it is not a particularly easy place to visit, and emerging from the trees into the clearing is a sobering moment. The simplicity of these concrete forms invites imagination. Instead of telling you what happened here, this place tries to make you feel it. I found myself reminded of my visit to Auschwitz – a visit I made on a warm summer’s day, birds singing, woodland flowers in bloom. If anything the setting for Salaspils was even more picturesque than that, and I felt a sense of emotional whiplash, after a while, constantly trying to square what I knew about this place with the information my senses were providing me.

The ensemble is built around nine concrete titans (in six installations), who tower over the neat lawns and were said to represent the different types of prisoner kept in the camp. ‘The Unbroken’ lies on his belly, pushing himself up with his last strength. ‘The Mother’ has a look of defiance, standing square to shield the infants that cower by her side. ‘The Humiliated’ kneels, her face partially hidden by an arm raised in a defensive gesture. In the very centre of the lawn, three forms are arranged side-by-side: ‘Solidarity’ shows one prisoner helping another to stand; ‘The Oath’ is a man stood tall stretching his arms into the air; while ‘Red Front’ likely represents a fighter from the paramilitary wing of the German Communist Party – the ‘Rotfrontkämpferbund’ – a group who used the same single-handed fist salute depicted here.

A memorial block where the camp’s gallows once stood.

The Salaspils Memorial features hardly a written word of information but that does not make it a quick place to visit. The monuments that decorate the lawn demand consideration. A single notable script appears on a stone block placed off to the right, between the central figures and the entry gate, marking the location of the former camp gallows. Its inscription in Russian and Latvian reads: “Here humans were executed for being innocent… Here humans were executed for every one of them being a human and loving the Motherland.”

Fragments of the original barrack walls.

At the opposite side of the Road of Death – as the designers named the walking path that circles their concrete giants – a black granite pedestal is designated as the place for laying flowers and memorial wreaths. From somewhere out of sight comes the ticking of a metronome. Intended to suggest life, and the eternal passage of time, the sound is rather like a heartbeat, and lends an uncanny atmosphere to my time amongst the statues.

The old camp buildings may be gone, but here and there, fragments of the outermost walls remain. Some are bare, but others are piled with tributes: plastic angels, Orthodox icons, a selection of sad-looking children’s toys. It feels like an effective memorialisation technique – bulldozing the camp, symbolically destroying its physical legacy, while leaving just enough of its form behind to suggest a historical record of its size and inner geography. Just a year before the Salaspils Memorial opened, the Yugoslav architect Bogdan Bogdanović had accomplished something similar at his Jasenovac Memorial Site, in what is now Croatia: the buildings of the old concentration camp were destroyed, but there, the ground was landscaped into mounds and craters that recorded the location and function of the various different buildings.

Text across the wall of the gallery “Beyond these gates the land groans.”

The only building at Salaspils now is the gallery – entered by an inclined walkway that passes through the length of the imposing concrete arch above the entrance. The space inside is oppressive and claustrophobic, presumably by design. This effect of sensory deprivation allows the visitor time to meditate, perhaps, and process the meaning of the monumental forms outside. When natural light does break through the side walls, it spills in at viewing slots reminiscent of wartime pillboxes. I peer outside, for a panoramic view of the figures on the lawn.

All the while, the sounds of the forest seem amplified as they reverberate though this enclosed space. There is birdsong, the noise of distant dogs barking, and somewhere nearby, where the original tracks cut lines through the trees, the shunting and hissing of cargo trains.

The walkway through the Brutalist gallery building.

The Salaspils Memorial Ensemble, seen from the gallery.

There is something inherently totalitarian about the form of remembrance prescribed by the Salaspils park. The sheer concrete, the lack of information. These twisted human figures tell visitors how they should feel, but the park never provided the tools for a two-way conversation. At Auschwitz visitors are shown piles of shoes, and suitcases, visual triggers designed to encourage an engagement with the numbers. At the National Museum of the Holodomor-Genocide in Kyiv, Ukraine, a similar effect was achieved with grains of corn – arranged in a heaped display where one grain stands for one Ukrainian life lost. Salaspils, in contrast, simply says: these people were punished for loving the Motherland.

Commenting on the Soviet Union’s choice to memorialise Salaspils, Peter Hohenhaus notes how “other, even worse sites of the Holocaust such as Biķernieki received no commemoration at all.” It is perhaps no coincidence though, that the Soviets chose to create such a prestigious memorial over the remains of a camp which had less relation than most to the Jewish Holocaust. (Aside from the construction team, it is reported there were only 12 Jewish prisoners at Salaspils).

Following the war, the Soviet Union severely downplayed the significance of the Holocaust, to present the Soviet citizen, instead, as the chief target of Nazi aggression. Any specific commemoration of the Jewish tragedy was at least discouraged. For example there was a Holocaust memorial built in Minsk, Belarus, named ‘the Pit’; an obelisk on the site where 5,000 prisoners from the nearby Minsk Ghetto were executed by fascists in 1942. Its creators, the stonemason Morduch Sprishen and the poet Haim Maltinsky (who wrote the Yiddish inscription), were both later convicted on charges of Jewish nationalism, and after that, the authorities treated all visitors to the Pit memorial with suspicion. At Babyn Yar meanwhile, a ravine in Kyiv were tens of thousands of Jews were massacred, the victims of the Holocaust are still yet to be recognised with a proper memorial.

The USSR’s post-WWII efforts to ideologically bond its member republics through a shared sense of victimhood, and victory, was felt not least strongly in places like the Baltics – countries who were new Soviet subjects, and uneasy subjects at best. What better place then, for a grand Soviet memorial park, than Salaspils: a police camp that had chiefly housed antifascist Baltic dissidents, and Soviet citizens from Russia and Belarus. It was a place where Latvians and Russians had suffered together, side by side, and of all the dark places left to this region in the wake of Nazi occupation, this was the one whose memorialisation best supported the post-war political narratives of the Soviet Union.

The Salaspils Memorial is recognised as part of the Latvian Culture Canon and in 2017, it was declared a monument of national significance. Despite this recognition however, it doesn’t feel like a place that is cherished, so much as observed. Visitors often report having trouble locating the place, and it hardly seems to be promoted as a tourist destination of note. When compared to videos showing the park’s opening ceremony (crowds of people, neatly trimmed lawns, and the forest pruned back around them), Salaspils today appears somewhat lonely and dishevelled.

Contemporary additions and modifications to the park have seemingly challenged the innate Sovietness of the place. A cemetery for German POWs was added in 2008, adjacent to the main memorial grounds. More recent is the installation of the Salaspils Memorial Exposition. Housed inside the Brutalist gallery building, the collection has been open to visitors since February 2018, and features information and video clips available in Latvian, German, English and Russian.

Tributes left by visitors to the Salaspils Memorial.

Elsewhere around the park, and dotted along the ‘Road of Death,’ new information panels have been installed to give context to the park’s otherwise sparse concrete symbolism. The memorial architecture of the park tells the story of Soviet people who fell victim to the Nazis. It is somewhat jarring then, to read contemporary panels that describe both Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union as “occupying regimes.” This is, of course, how the Latvians officially remember that portion of their history: as a violent occupation by a foreign power that would maintain a political and cultural stranglehold over Latvia for the next 45 years. If it seems strange to foreign visitors that a site as significant as this – and so close to the capital – should feel quiet, hidden away, and poorly advertised, then perhaps this is why: from a Latvian perspective, the Salaspils Memorial might very well feel like a monument built by one trespasser to present themselves as the chief victim of the previous one.

The main gallery space inside the visitors’ building. Below: the staircase inside the inclined viewing gallery.

According to the website, the new exhibition “provides visitors with information based on historical facts and the conclusions of the latest scientific studies,” in an effort to “dispel misconceptions about the Camp and the Memorial.”

Those “misconceptions” presumably include certain claims made in the Russian-language media. Many on that side of the border still believe the former Soviet account, which once stated that over 100,000 people had died at Salaspils (compared to the 3,000 cited today by the Latvians). There were stories, too, that the Nazis drained blood from children here to use in transfusions for German soldiers – though these seem to have since been largely debunked. Nevertheless, news outlets like RuBaltic.ru and Ukraina.ru accuse the park’s Latvian management of downplaying the numbers, rewriting history, and more generally of presenting the Nazi presence in Latvia as having been less harmful than that of the Soviets who liberated this camp. They refer to a new information panel at the Salaspils Memorial, which shows respective death tolls for the periods of Nazi and Soviet occupation; the Soviet number being the larger of the two.

While obviously Latvia can and should be having these conversations, I can’t help but wonder if it isn’t slightly antagonistic (at least, to the ethnic Russians who make up a quarter of Latvia’s population), to have them here; to stand on the symbolic graves of dead Soviets while comparing them to the Nazis.

‘The Humiliated’ is partially hidden now, behind a tree not part of the original design for the memorial.

Memorials should serve a simple task, in theory: they remind us of things that we must not forget. They preserve important stories for those who were not there, and in societal terms, they serve to reclaim – to re-consecrate – ground once bloodied by violence. Danger zones become places of (re)education. But the invisible memory wars that continue to be waged across this quiet lawn in Latvia are anything but simple, and they hint at some of the greater cultural conflicts at large today in the post-Soviet Baltic states.

The last thing I saw before I left was another new, post-Soviet addition to the park. In 2004, a former prisoner at Salaspils named Larry Pik funded the creation of a new monument to the Jewish victims of the camp – the prisoners who built it. Accompanied by the Star of David, an inscription in Hebrew, German and Latvian reads: “To honour the dead and as a warning to the living. In memory of the Jews deported from Germany, Austria and Czechoslovakia, who from December 1941 to June 1942 died from hunger, cold and inhumanity and have found eternal rest in the Salaspils forest.”

Flowers left in memory of the camp’s victims.

The cover of a 1969 commemorative book about Salaspils.

Left: a newspaper announces the Lenin Award given to the Salaspils design team. Right: ‘The Mother’ under construction.

‘The Unbroken,’ under construction, and then completed.

The gate to the Salaspils Memorial (late 1960s).

Visitors queue to enter (late 1960s).

The memorial plaza at Salaspils (1968).

Left: Salaspils in 1975. Right: Cover of the 1985 Salaspils brochure.

The Salaspils Memorial Ensemble in 1970.

–

by Darmon Richter

[adapted with permission from an article at Ex Utopia]

[hometoursandotherstuff]

Walked into my cousin’s house (he’s a firefighter) to find everyone trying to find out what it means when the firemen say, “A Collyer’s Mansion Situation.” No need to look, I knew it referred to the Collyer Brothers of New York City- the code for fire in a hoarder’s house. The picture above is of the police knocking down their door w/an axe. 

It usually means it’s not safe to enter the building. In 1947, it took police 5 hours to plow thru the junk and find the first brother’s body. It took them 3 weeks to find the 2nd brother just 10 feet away, buried under a collapsed junk tunnel.

History’s worst hoarders, the tragic but fascinating tale of the Collyer brothers can speak to anyone with a penchant for collecting or thrifting. How did 2 prominent members of society end up sealing themselves off from the outside world, fiercely reclusive and entombed by over 140 tons of collected items?

Homer and Langley were both educated at Columbia University. Homer had a degree in law and Langley studied engineering and also became an accomplished concert pianist who performed at Carnegie Hall.

They had a normal childhood. They never married or lived on their own, & chose to remain at the family’s Harlem brownstone with their mother. When their parents died, everything was left to them.. 

In 1933, Homer went blind from eye hemorrhages. His younger brother quit his job to care for him full-time, which is when their withdrawal from society began. Langley began keeping years of newspapers so his brother could read them when his sight was restored.

In the midst of the Great Depression, the brothers became increasingly fearful of their own neighborhood, which was shifting from the upper-class area they had known to an area synonymous with poverty and crime.

People became curious, local kids threw rocks at the windows, increasing their paranoia. Langley boarded up the windows, removed the doorbell and wired the doors shut.

Several people attempted to burgle the home, which prompted Langley to construct booby traps and elaborate tunnel systems made of junk all around the house.

Langley ventured out only after midnight for food runs. He would collect countless unwanted and abandoned items on the street that caught his eye along the way.

When Homer became paralyzed due to rheumatism, the brothers refused to seek medical treatment. Even though their father was a Dr., they didn’t trust them. Instead, they decided to use their fathers medical library in the house.

Langley believed his brother’s sight could be restored with a diet high in vitamin C so he fed Homer 100 oranges a week. He adapted a Model T Ford to generate electricity after their power was cut off, along with their water and gas, due to unpaid bills.

When the bank came to evict them, police found Langley in a clearing he had made in the walls of junk. Without a word, he wrote a check for the equivalent of nearly $100,000 today to pay off the mortgage and ordered everyone off the property.

The next time authorities returned, it would be to search for the bodies of the Collyers. To enter the sealed brownstone, an officer broke a window on the second floor and climbed through.

Unable to get past the solid walls of junk, a squad of men began making their way through the debris by throwing out everything blocking their way onto the street. The spectacle drew a crowd of thousands.

After several hours, they found Homer’s body. Medical examiners later determined he had died of starvation and heart disease.

When they couldn’t find Langley, they thought he fled and launched a search. Finally, a workman found his decomposing body. He was buried in one of his 2ft. wide tunnels lined with rusty bed springs and a chest of drawers. He had died of asphyxiation after he accidentally tripped one of the booby traps and was crushed. Police believe that he was bringing food to his brother. 

The house was deemed an unsafe fire hazard and was razed later that month in 1947. Some of their stuff went to museums and the rest was sold at auction.  Since the 1960s, the site of the former Collyer house has been a pocket park, named for them.

messynesschic.com

[sukunasun]

any drafts or thoughts u want an excuse to post ..?

spearheading the 'geto is good at games' campaign until he gets the recognition he deserves. losing one game of street fighter isn't fair evidence when he's literally an all-time taiko no tatsujin great at eighteen. just look at the marks and ridges on his worn-out game-branded drumsticks tucked under his bed, yes he has them for optimal performance. tossed next to the—just as worn—converse chucks. he always manages to score a 'perfect' in DDR, and owes it to the shoes. the staff knows he's here when they hear beethoven virus booming through the speakers, shoulder-length hair pushed back with a metal-wired headband while the group of local kids stand around the console with sparkling eyes, admiring the master himself.

but he doesn't brag. modest and so tight-lipped about it, face cringing the moment you ask about the shiny holographic trophy sitting in his dorm closet. he's busy with pulling your panties off under your skirt, pleated and pressed to perfection as he sinks his fingertips into soft flesh. ask him about anything else, anything but his starcraft II championship trophy.

all the things he could do when left alone with you on a hot summer's day like this but he pouts and sulks over a lost bet. exacerbated by the fact that his best friend won't shut up about it. brings it up every time they pass by the arcade or a mcdonalds. "remember that time you—" gojo doesn't even get to finish his sentence, laughing at the way geto's eye twitches involuntarily.

geto swears he's over it. forget that he still has that same urge to revisit old fighting games, his face scrunched up in concentration as the selection breezes past every character but ryu and his brawny muscles. he doesn't have a reason why, only that it's the one he remembers choosing that very day.

fuck it, he thinks. there are worse things, but the fact that gojo's got his hands on his own ps5 the moment it drops makes his blood boil. ready to snatch the console for himself when the man can barely steer or walk in a straight line. everyone assumes gojo satoru is great at everything, praises him for it, honoured one or whatever. pfft. geto knows effort is exactly what he lacks. "this is so hard!" gojo whines, already bored when he's yet to get past the tutorials of final fantasy vii. because he doesn't have the knack for it, this is where talent or bloodlines won't help, arcade games and their simple mechanics won't do now that he's left to traverse rpgs and action-adventures. it's why he gives the controller over to geto, leaving his hands free to clap and smack his broad back in excitement when he finishes the game in two days.

and he isn't always this competitive. geto likes when there isn't so much of a challenge too, when he can take his time decorating his island with the twins, their inputs are of utmost importance. loves that you sit in his lap as he patiently breezes through different maps in mario kart. feeling your kiss on his cheek as he crosses that checkered finish line in first place.

one kiss turns into two, then three and more. soon after he's found a new challenge in the form of making you come undone as many times as he can. pleasure dom is not a label he gives himself, it's one he has to earn. oh how you feed his ego, he feels so terrible. this isn't about winning, this was about loving you, making you feel good, but he's too selfish of a lover.

arch your back, strike a pose, preferably in a bayonetta costume. he takes his time, he relishes in the feel of leather, pulling the zipper down the middle with his teeth, and tries his best to resist ripping it apart. you've really outdone yourself, so thoughtful. he peels it off your body slowly, sensually. enough of a gentleman to appreciate the finer things, although not as much that he wouldn't pull out before he jerks himself off over your face. rectangular glasses that sit askew now painted with his seed.

loves making you shake and tremble, acting like he's unaware of how expertly his fingers play with you, his touch had been curious the first time, now he inches closer with familiarity, settling into a steady rubbing rhythm over your slickened cunt, teasing your clit each time he skims it before plunging his fingers inside. probing against a spot that has you leaking all over his sheets. it's not stars in your eyes but tears, hot and streaming down your face when he won't stop despite your garbled pleas. how you whine and dig your fingernails into his biceps, a little scared but so very excited, ecstatic even when he pulls out a bad dragon and you swear he's your soulmate.