#solar motel

[dustedmagazine]

Chris Forsyth — Solar Motel (Expanded) (Algorithm Free)

Chris Forsyth marks the ten-year anniversary of his turn from towards rock with this expanded edition of Solar Motel, augmented with two previously unreleased studio tracks and a side-long live WFMU recording of “Paranoid Cat.” The two newly released tracks are a revelation, solidifying and reaffirming Forsyth’s connection to Television (he studied with Richard Lloyd) with cartwheeling guitar riffs and roiling, surging percussion in the epic vein of Marquee Moon.  

Forsyth was just off his 2011 release of Paranoid Cat when he made Solar Motel, stillstruggling for a way to incorporate a palette of influences—Television, Takoma-style fingerpicking, psych and drone—into a coherent aesthetic. Our own Bill Meyer saw him as only partly successful at this on the previous album, calling Paranoid Cat, “an album that is full of good ideas lifted from other people’s work, but he makes such good use of them that it’s easy not to care.”

Solar Motel, Forsyth’s first full-band album, was a big step towards the driving, boogie-ing, rock-leaning long grooves that we have since come to associate with the guitarist. In the notes, he says, “Solar Motel is the first record on which I overtly took rock tropes and twisted them into new shapes, incorporating so many of my interests and influences - the twin-guitar elegance of Television, the sprawl of West Coast psych, the boiled down Rock Minimalism of Rhys Chatham, the abstract tangles of free improv, an undercurrent of ecstatic jazz energy, and the studio textures of Eno/Cale/Roxy ‘70s art rock.… Solar Motel basically set the template for much of what I did for the remainder of that decade.”

The band for Solar Motel included Forsyth, drummer Mike Pride, bassist Peter Kerlin and keyboard player Shawn Edward Hansen, all musicians that Forsyth had worked with previously in various roles and configurations. It was recorded mostly live, though Forsyth put in additional guitar after the fact to build up Television-like layers of interplay. The music took shape in four numbered tracks Solar Motel I through IV.  “Part I” opens with tense, staccato guitar, at first alone, then joined by a second guitar and bass. The groove is insistent, cleanly minimal, and over it, Forsyth improvises warm, fluid arcs of solo guitar, and as it goes, the texture becomes less of a drone and more of a warm, living jam. This becomes a pattern over the next three track, as taut, disciplined motifs blossom into full-band free play. Repetition becomes a launching pad for the wildest swirls of improvisatory ornament, with sweet lyrical mid-range guitar vaulting over motorik grooves.

All that is still there, still striking in the way it marries austere experiment to lighter flaring guitar solo. If you haven’t heard it—or haven’t heard it in a while—all four original tracks remain very much worth a listen. However, it’s the new stuff that you’ll want to spin right away, because these two unreleased tracks take the basic experiment and launch them into richer, more exciting directions.

“Harmonious Dance,” at just under nine minutes, is the expanded release’s best tune. A slow chime of guitar notes hitting turbulence early on in Pride’s swelling drum roll. The notes get bigger, more resonant, more sustained as they go, taking on the burnished glow of Lloyd and Verlaine in tandem (though without the trebly yelp of vocals). “Long Warm Afternoon” starts out with warmth and sustained tones, building shimmering textures of guitar over a steady thump and roll. Both cuts feel less restrained, less tightly disciplined than the original Solar Motel cuts. It’s as if Forsyth had a concept for setting down guardrails and eventually swamping them with sensory data, and it took him a while to implement it fully.

The WFMU recording is fine, too, letting the twitchy glamor of “Paranoid Cat” stretch out, catch fire in a truly insane instrumental freakout and somehow stuff all that back into the bottle for a reprise of the original melody. But if you need a reason to check out this ten years after reissue, I’d look at the two unreleased tracks, where Forsyth and his band hit a groove they’ve been riding ever since.

Jennifer Kelly

[amplifiedwires]

LISTENING JOURNAL 5/14/23

Bill Frisell 's The Guitar Artistry of Bill Frisell (1996). Fascinating deep board look into Bill's guitar playing. He shows all kinds of techniques that he employs. He named dropped Jim Hall many times as a mentor. So of course I had to check him out next.

Then a pivot into a recent Solar Motel Band outing at Union Pool from those taping heroes @nyctaper:

Then one more dive in Fred Frith's vast catalog to sample his 2nd solo album on Ralph Records - Gravity (1980)

[twistersobsessed]

hiya! loved the scott x reader you posted:) i also have a little request for him, it's two ideas i combined together so please feel free to choose one or the other if you don't like them together! one was that reader likes to anonymously leave little presents for scott on his seat in the truck, just snacks or little trinkets from the convenience stores. especially if it's one of those little solar powered dancing figurines that you can mount on the dashboard. the other thought was that reader likes to make bracelets to relax before going to bed in various hotels. first it starts off just making them for the people that she regularly teamed with until she makes so many that she ends up making enough over time for all of them out on the road. when scott finally finds his bracelet on his truck seat he realizes who was leaving all the other presents:) thanks in advance!!

Of Trinkets, Treats, & Bracelets | Scott x Reader

Summary: You show Scott you like him in small ways. Scott shows you he likes you in a big way.

A/N: I love jealous Scott if you can’t tell.

Honestly, Scott had thought maybe it was Javi at first. The little gifts that would be left on his seat in the truck everytime Storm Par stopped at a gas station or truck stop. After all, he and Javi were pretty close, and Javi was a nice guy like that. But when he asked, Javi denied it with a smile. “Nah, that’s not me, man.” “So who?” Scott’s brow furrowed. Javi just smirked.

It was always either one of his favorite snacks, his favorite drinks, or one of those little solar powered figurines you put on the dash. Or his favorite, a pack of gum. He stopped trying to figure out where the gifts were coming from, because Javi sure wasn’t telling him.

It was a Tuesday, and Storm Par was stopped at a truck stop, glaring at Tyler and his crew who had just pulled in. Scott’s attention was stolen from their competition however by you, flouncing up to James, the Storm Par member you drove with most often.

“I made your bracelet,” you beam, outstretching your hand. James smiled and took the bracelet you were offering him. “Aw, thanks, (Name). Now we’re all matching.” “And Javi!” you exclaimed brightly.

You turned your attention to Javi and Scott. Javi held out his hand to accept the offering. “Thank you, (Name),” he grinned. “Yours is coming soon,” you promised Scott with bright eyes. Then you turned away, heading to the convenience store.

Scott watched you go, oblivious to Javi watching him. You bounced, that’s the thing about you, you didn’t walk you practically bounced, towards the store, when you were stopped by Tyler.

Scott’s jaw clenched.

He couldn’t hear what Tyler was saying to you from the distance he was at, but he watched you smile and greet the hillbilly warmly.

“You’re glaring holes into their heads,” Javi commented, and Scott’s attention was torn away. “What? No. Shut up.” He scowled. Javi chuckled. “Whatever you say, man.”

Scott turned back just in time to watch you wave goodbye to Tyler with a grin on your face. He rolled his eyes and turned back to Javi to talk about their plan for the day.

Ten minutes later, it was time to head out, and when Scott opened the passenger side door, Javi was driving, there was a pack of gum and a coke on his seat.

That night, you were curled up in your bed in the motel Storm Par was staying at. You were working on Scott’s bracelet, as you’d promised him. Everyone in Storm Par had a bracelet (Scott had noticed earlier), and Scott’s was the last one. You wanted to take your time with it; Scott was your favorite.

You made it blue, his favorite color. You added the final touches before snuggling into bed, giddy to give it to him tomorrow.

The next day came and you didn’t have a single opportunity to see Scott. He wasn’t at breakfast, and as you usually (unfortunately) were, you weren’t in the same truck today. So when Storm Par stopped at a gas station, you did with the bracelet what you did with everything else you got Scott: left it on his seat.

Scott was in a bad mood today. No particular reason why, he’d just woken up on the wrong side of the motel bed. Javi was avoiding him; Scott didn’t blame him, his bad moods were infamous. Despite getting out of the truck to use the bathroom, Scott didn’t feel like standing outside and socializing, so he went to get back in the truck when he was done.

He stopped in his tracks when he opened the door. On his seat was a bracelet, matching the ones the other Storm Par members wore. The bracelet you’d promised him.

Suddenly, everything clicked. It was you, who always left him his favorite snacks, his favorite gum, his favorite drinks, stupid little tchotchkes. He picked up the bracelet, turning it over in his hand.

His cheeks warmed.

“Hey!” Your cheerful voice suddenly behind him almost made him jump. He turned to face you, face neutrally blank. Your eyes fell to the bracelet he was holding. “I see you got my gift.”

“I did,” Scott confirmed. “And I suppose it’s you who’s been leaving me all the snacks and gum and stuff.” You blushed. “Yeah, I hope that’s not weird or anything.”

“No, it’s…” Scott swallowed. “Sweet.”

You smiled bashfully. “Not creepy?” you joked. Scott shook his head, a smile tugging at his lips. “Well, maybe it’s a little creepy that you know all my favorites.”

You turned your nose up. “I’m observant,” you smirked.

Scott looked like he wanted to say more and you waited, but he was cut off by someone shouting your name. You looked over your shoulder and he looked over you to see… Tyler. He frowned.

“Well, I hope you like the bracelet.” You turned back to him. “I made it with lots of love. We leaving in five?” Scott nodded wordlessly, his eyes tracking you as you ran over to Tyler.

“So you figured it out,” Javi smirked, coming up beside Scott. Scott chomped on his gum. “That she’s the one who’s been leaving me stuff?” Javi caught Scott fiddling with his bracelet. He let out a whistle. “Oh she likes you.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean all of our bracelets are matching to a degree but they’re each personally customized. Your bracelet is like an exact match to hers. How cute.”

Scott hadn’t even noticed. “Doesn’t mean anything,” he mumbled.

Javi rolled his eyes. “Oh come on, Scott. She knows your favorite snacks and drinks, hell, she knows your favorite gum. She goes out of her way to get something for you every time we stop. She doesn’t do that for anyone else, not even me. She made you matching bracelets.”

Scott was glaring daggers at Tyler as he pulled you into a hug. Javi followed his gaze. “She likes you, man. Go do something about it.”

Before Scott could stop himself, he found himself marching over to you and Tyler, fist clenched. “Well howdy, Clipboard,” Tyler greeted, noticing Scott before you did. You turned around, smiling when you saw him. “Scott–”

You were abruptly cut off when Scott stopped in front of you, leaned down, and pressed his lips to yours roughly. Immediately forgetting you had an audience, you melted into the kiss, closing your eyes and resting your hands on Scott’s chest, gripping the material of his shirt.

Scott pulled back after a moment, leaving you stunned. He rested his hand on your waist, pulling you into his side. He squared up to Tyler. “Back off, Owens.”

Tyler grinned, eyes shifting from Scott’s scowl to your shocked face. He raised his hands in surrender and walked away, still with that shit-eating grin.

Scott led you back to Storm Par.

“Well that’s one way to do it,” Javi smirked.

[ggwendolyn]

BF!Leon Kennedy HCS (RE2 & RE4)

BF!RE2Leon who met you at a party before he got his job, being a shy and awkward little guy whose hands were sweaty as he asked you to dance.

BF!RE2Leon who asked you out on a date late that night.

BF!RE2Leon who was mesmerized by your words and personality on your first date.

BF!RE2Leon who remembered everything you ordered on restaurants so he could learn about what you liked and disliked.

BF!RE2Leon who almost cried when you complimented his moles and dimples.

BF!RE2Leon who gifted you a huge flower bouquet after you told him you liked a kind of flower while he was walking you to your house.

BF!RE2Leon whose first kiss with you was on your third date. Poor baby, you were his first kiss! He didn't knew what he was doing, his face was blushed as a cherry.

BF!RE2Leon who had his eyes open as wide as they could once you asked him to be your boyfriend, he obviously accepted.

BF!RE2Leon who was really, really nervous when he invited you to his place.

BF!RE2Leon who was literally drooling over you when you both made out for the first time in his apartment.

BF!RE2Leon who was a blabbering mess when you started to undress, his hands were everywhere, so were his lips.

BF!RE2Leon who sucked on your nipples like his life depended on it, he couldn't help but bury his face between your tits and beg you to squeeze them and press his face onto them.

BF!RE2Leon who is obsessed and addicted to you, you're his priority.

BF!RE2Leon who accidentally mumbled "mommy" while you mounted him, his hips involuntary bucking up and his eyes rolling back.

BF!RE2Leon who moaned and whimpered like a bitch in heat with each time you let your pussy fall down into his cock.

“Nngh— ah, fuck- Please.” He babbled as his hands gripped the blankets, tongue wetting his lips as he moaned softly. “God- You're incredible... Oh, fuck! Fuckmefuckmefuckme.”

BF!RE2Leon who was begging on his knees, pleading for you to sit on his face.

BF!RE2Leon who immediately moaned and slurped your juices like a man starved when you agreed.

BF!RE2Leon who gripped your thighs so he was drowning with your liquids, wanting nothing but be suffocated by your pussy.

BF!RE2Leon who came in his pants TWICE after you started pulling his hair and praising him when you released into his mouth.

BF!RE2Leon who hugged you tight and rested his head on your chest before the intense making out session which ended up in something else.

BF!RE2Leon who asked you to move in with him to his apartment, he just can't live without you.

BF!RE2Leon who is just a little puppy who loves you so much that even a gentle caress from you can make his day better.

BF!RE4Leon who met you at work, you both got paired up for a mission in Los Angeles.

BF!RE4Leon who insisted to get paired with you after your first mission together, justifying it with "she's childish, she can get hurt." but he secretly enjoys your company a little too much.

BF!RE4Leon who blushed after you heard him chuckle to one of your jokes and babbled about it all day.

BF!RE4Leon who doesn't know how to express his feelings.

BF!RE4Leon who confessed to you in the plane way to a dangerous mission, muttering everything and needing to repeat it since you didn't understood what he said.

BF!RE4Leon whose first kiss with you was in that plane, holding your cheeks and hugging you tightly because he didn't knew what could happen in that mission.

BF!RE4Leon who barely tells you that he loves you, but words are not everything. He saved you from a lot of hard situations, he would give you the whole solar system if you asked for it.

BF!RE4Leon who got you a doberman pup after he saw you pet one at street.

BF!RE4Leon who doesn't like going out on dates but secretly loves laying on your stomach while watching some cheap horror movie.

BF!RE4Leon who holds you close when fucking on some random motel room before a mission.

BF!RE4Leon who doesn't moan but sighs heavily and kisses your body.

“Shit... look at what you do to me...” He breathed out, inhaling deeply before exhaling and sucking on the flesh of your breast. “You're so pretty, so beautiful.” He mumbled while caressing your silky skin.

BF!RE4Leon who buys you new lingerie because he ripped off you the ones you had accidentally.

BF!RE4Leon who tugs at your hair and whimpers lowly when you're sucking him off, murmuring praises and patting your head.

BF!RE4Leon who worships your body quietly, not making eye contact because he would blush like crazy if he does.

BF!RE4Leon who pecks your lips or caresses your sides while you cook.

BF!RE4Leon who tends to be very manipulative in telling you not to go to certain missions with him but he only does since he doesn't wants to lose you.

BF!RE4Leon who bought you a ring with your and his initials on it.

BF!RE4Leon who reads the same books as you when you're out with Claire for shopping because he's interested and wants to talk to you about it but it's very shy on doing so.

BF!RE4Leon who buys you the rest of the books of the saga you're reading for your birthday.

BF!RE4Leon who was very shy and awkward when meeting your parents, he wasn't sure what to talk about.

BF!RE4Leon who hums your favorite songs and cuddles with you when you're stressed.

BF!RE4Leon who writes letters for you when going out on missions alone just in case something happens to him.

© ggwendolyn 2023

[timberwind]

Yarragardee Basin, Mangala, 7995 A.D.

------------------------

Accompanying music: You’re On Fire by They Might Be Giants. Summer road trip music of all time, in my opinion.

Here’s a little expository write-up on the history and geography of the worlds shown here. Someday I’ll have more to show of the personal story of these two critters and their travels; until then, a more macro-level description.

------------------------

(most of this info has become outdated as modeling invalidated some original assumptions and I changed my mind on what I wanted here; future art of Mangala will reflect this)

Mangala and its sister world Kahira (visible in the background) are binary planets, orbiting one another in a manner not entirely unlike that of Pluto and Charon in the Solar System. Mangala is a relatively small world - just about twenty percent the mass of the Earth, something like if you took two copies of Mars and smushed them together; without the internal heat to drive a carbonate cycle long term, it had long been a frozen, dusty, and arid place when transhumanity first established a permanent presence in the Tahoka system almost a thousand years ago. Since those early days, terraforming using a Birchian soletta system (a huge but foil-thin Fresnel lens of mirrors, with a secondary focal lens for burning atmospheric gasses out of the regolith) has rendered it shirtsleeve habitable to baseline humans across much of the surface, although the global water inventory remains low* and the air in the “continental” uplands is stratospheric, with only the hardiest lichens establishing a foothold. Most of Mangala’s major metropolitan areas are located in the deep rift valleys and basins, where air pressure is highest.

Kahira on the other hand, a rock almost a fifth the mass of its sister world (a little under the mass of old Mercury), remains only slightly terraformed - surface conditions are persistently cold, with a thin barely-Martian atmosphere. Some of its larger rift valleys and craters have been tented over, aerated, and planted with tall low-gravity forest and grassland, a style of habitat construction dating back to the first Mars colonists almost six thousand years ago. Industrial complexes and buried cities sprawl out across the bare surface of the moon, with huge low-gravity lava tubes seeing extensive urban development.

The Yarragardee Basin, pictured above, is a graben basin in Mangala’s northern hemisphere, notable for the historic industrial city of Tirupati - here we see two road-trippers between cities on the basin’s great plain, taking a break in the long late afternoon of a sunset-day***. Having stopped for a night at a motel near Tirupati’s aerospace complex, they’re now continuing their journey to the city of Redmond-Tonasket, located in the Woronora Valles trench system about two thousand kilometers to the southwest.

* While plenty of water could have been imported from Tahoka’s cometary halo, it was decided not to do so in order to avoid inundating pre-existing cities in the valleys and deep basins. The extremely humid hothouse conditions that come after slamming dismantled ice moons through the stratosphere at over six kilometers a second were also broadly considered unacceptable.

** Smaller worlds have been terraformed in transhuman space, both by worldhouse and more open-air methods, but it’s largely the kind of thing that much more energy-rich systems do as a vanity project. Kahira may someday see blue skies, but likely not for a thousand years at least. (edit, one year later: I actually changed up some of this while simulating this system for stability. I’ll be posting more about this soon.)

*** Mangala and Kahira, being tidally locked to each other such that they always show one another the same face as they orbit their common center of mass, both have days exactly as long as their orbital periods - 403 kiloseconds, or roughly 112 hours. This is for convenience divided into month-weeks comprising four “circadian days” of 100 kiloseconds (~26 hours), with the remaining three kiloseconds added on to the last day of a month-week to keep synchronization.

[katz-chow]

late nights in the middle of June

synopsis: johnny isn't feeling quite well and although it wasn't too too late, the only place he would rather be was at your doorstep. aka Johnny got into a fight with his dad over the phone and Johnny wants your company in the early summer night

warnings: sfw, fluff, gn! *fem if you squint* reader, unknown mutural pinning, platonic, friends to lovers, parental disagreements and infidelity, bad scottish gaelic, and maybe ooc soap?

a/n: this is my first time writing him-well anyone from codmw2, so please be gentle haha

"Ith mo chac (Eat my shit), Pa! I don't fucking care about it anymore, just...fuckin' a, just leave Ma. Steamin' Jesus.." Soap trails off as his hand brushes his growing mohawk back. He hangs up. The sky was growing dimmer, so he assumes it must be getting late. The perks of summer meant longer delays of the sun setting, which also meant that finding comfort in the dark skies also have to be post-poned.

His father was never a good man, but nor was he a particularly bad man. Like every father, Soap tells himself, his own has his ups and downs. He can't hate family right? Except he thinks he can now when one of his cousins had sent him a picture of his father in a small cafe, kissing some gal that certainly wasn't his beautiful mother. Soap can only feel burning rage as he picked up his cell and ringing up his dad within the next beat; what happened next was just in blind fury.

He doesn't remember putting his personal phone on 'do not disturb' as a multitude of texts and miss calls buzzed through it. He doesn't remember opening his barracks door and walking over to the building next. And he definitely doesn't remember you ever looking so kind and warm when you opened the door for him. You smiled, and Soap might as well just have melted in your arms.

"Hey, Johnny, what's up?" you asked, as the towel drying your hair laid over your shoulder. You looked at his face, studying it with your doe eyes. "It's like, 8 and a Friday night, shouldn't you be out and about?"

Soap pulls his gaze from you and looks away to his right, a hand rubbing behind his neck as he sighs nervously. "I just, uh wasn't feeling up for it, 's all."

You drop your wide smile a bit as a look of concern washed over your face, "Are you okay? Are you hurt?"

His eyes darted to you and he shook his hands a bit, signalling that it's nothing like that. "No, Bonnie, 'M alright," He laughs a bit, "Will you let me in?"

"Yeah, for sure," You scooted over a bit behind the door to make room for him to come in, and he did.

The room wasn't big, the size of a small motel room, just like all the others. So he decided to sit on the edge of your made bed, the thin, blue military sheets having been replaced with a surprisingly heavy white duvet instead. "Sorry for intruding on yer night, Lass."

You eased the door to close and locked it with a hefty 'click'. You reached and bent your head down a bit to continue drying your hair as you made your way over to sit in your desk chair across from him. "Wanna tell me why you're left on my doorstep like a lost pup?"

Soap chuckled and sighs a bit as he lowers his gaze with his hands rubbing his knees awkwardly. "I uh...I just had a bit of a...altercation, with my father. Just didn't know what to do."

You plop down your towel on the wooden desk behind you, taking a moment to grab your hair brush and nonchalantly combed your hair as you took in the sight in front of you. soap looked...anxious, awkward even. He looked small and cowering rather than his bright and bubbly self, like as if there was suddenly a solar eclipse as the sun in front of you had dimmed and was covered in a dark night. "Do you want to talk about it? I'm a great listener. Just saying! But we can just mess around and get you distracted."

"I don't want to talk about it." He made up his mind rather quickly as he patted his thigh with his hands. A small, thin smile rested on his face as he looks up at you. "Sorry I just, I don't know. Just wanted to see you, Lass."

A toothy grin played itself on your face. "Let's eat then. Are you hungry?" You stand up to open your cabinet of pre-packaged meals. "I was gonna have some ramen anyway."

He watches you like a hawk as he stands up to lean against the small archway to the "kitchen" area of the room. It really was just stove-oven, cabinets, a sink, and a fridge. It was small, but practical. He looked as you opened the packets and put it into a small pot and settling it on the stove. Then you repeated the process again, settling what he can only assume as his own on the burner neighboring yours. You look up at him and he looks at you. His gaze bore into your eyes, looking pass them and into your soul, and in return he gets to be broken down by your own longing gaze. You pull your watch from him and grin shyly as you pour a drink into two glasses. Handing him one, you didn't dare to look at him as your face burned a subtle pink. "Yours."

"Lass..." He mumbles, barely a whisper to catch your attention. You stop preparing the food and turn off the burners, humming in response.

“What is it, J-" You didn't get to finish as he wraps his arms around your waist, burying his face into the crook of your neck. He was heavy, Hell, you almost fell back. But you didn't. And you didn't pull away either. Sure, Johnny hugged you all the time, whether it be a small side hug when you did a particularly good job or a dab up hug when y'all haven't seen each other in a while. But this was different. He held onto you, like he couldn't breathe without you, like you were his. A pang rang through your heart, it aches as it longs for Johnny to never let go. It aches for him. "It's okay..." You whisper as the palms of your hands rub his back up and down. His breathe shutters against your neck as he pulls away. You wish he didn't.

"Thank you, Lass." He looks at you softer, brightly again. You wanted nothing more than to launch yourself back into his arms, to fill your lungs with his rain-like scent. But you can't, you wouldn't allow yourself to. It was selfish you thought, when he was the one who needed you right now. You're there for him, his anchor for tonight. He was okay, you were okay. And that was okay too.

[saturnine-saturneight]

Oc profile tag

Tagged by @noblebs [here] and @tragedycoded [here], ty!!

I don't want to choose between Nat and Ron, so I'm doing both, haha.

This post's for Nat! Ron's is [here].

Name: Natalie King

Nickname: Nat, various fake names

Kind of being: Human plus

Age: 21

Gender: Bigender

Appearance: White, below average height, built squarely, with broad shoulders and barely any waist. Nat binds most of the time. Their face is round/square-ish, freckled, with upturned green eyes. Their black hair is long and fairly straight. Nat has a nose bridge piercing, a labret, and pierced ear lobes, and prefers gold jewelry for all of them. Sometimes they line their eyes in kajal, but they keep their nails short and blunt and dress pretty masc.

Occupation: Thief, grifter

Family members: Orphan, unsure if they have surviving family. They don't count their adoptive families as family, they were never around long enough.

Pets: None

Best friend: Ron

Describe their room: Nat lives in the car they share with Ron. They don't tend to sleep in it if they can help it, they prefer tents, hotels, motels etc.

Way of speaking: Nat is an alto. They purr and drawl a lot and occasionally dip into vocal fry.

Physical characteristics (posture, gestures, attitude): Deliberately relaxed and loose, with a vague aura of smugness. Nat doesn't fidget very much, their body language is very calm. Tends to tilt their head at people and watch them out of a corner of their eye a lot. They never slouch. Squints. They need glasses.

Items in their back pocket/purse: Nat keeps their knife close by their side. They also carry a field notebook that they sketch and take notes into, as well as their phone and a solar powerbank. They carry their entire life in backpacks and duffel bags, so I won't get into those.

Hobbies: They're a hobby botanist and a voracious reader.

Favorite sports: Sparring and wrestling.

Abilities/Talents/Powers: Good at cold reads and deductions, quick to think up believable lies. Ron has taught them pickpocketing skills, but it's more of a hobby to them.

Relationships (how they are with other people): Nat always has their guard up around others. They fancy themself charming and love good conversation, but they can't help themself and often end up bullying others.

Fears: Personal insignificance, ending up alone.

Faults: Nat is a live wire. Their feelings are hurt easily, and God help the person who hurts them. They're quick to resort to violence, but have next to no interpersonal skills that would help them approach situations in a non-violent way. They're also self-centered and have trouble seeing others as fully formed people with interiority, and let their own preconceptions and world views blind them. When Nat's idea of a situation and its actual reality don't match up, Nat has no real way to react. They're not very mentally flexible.

Good points: On the other hand, Nat is also incredibly perceptive. They're quick to suss out when somebody is lying to them. They're a cockroach of a person, surviving just about any situation and finding opportunities wherever they go. They're also deeply loyal to select people - currently, this is only Ron.

What they want more than anything else: At their core, Nat wants to be loved. Unfortunately, they don't know how to achieve this.

Tagging:

@paeliae-occasionally @rotting-moon-writes @marlowethelibrarian @writingrosesonneptune @davycoquette

@the-golden-comet @gioiaalbanoart @chauceryfairytales

[brokenmusicboxwolfe]

Photo from 2017

If you are lucky enough to be in the path of totality, PLEASE go out and enjoy the show!

If you don’t have eclipse glasses just use the pinhole trick. There are online things telling you how to make something, but it doesn’t have to be fancy. You just need something with a small hole or holes (sheet of paper, colander, leaves on the trees, your fingers, etc) and a surface for the light to shine on (paper, sidewalk, shoe, etc) It’s 75% here, so that’s what I’m doing.

It will absolutely be cool…

but

Don’t let all the folks talking about it being some sort of transcendent experience make you feel disappointed if you just go “Cool!” It’s perfectly fine for it to NOT be a life changing experience!

During 2017 I was Googling as I sat alone in a hotel room** and I came across a shocking little bit of trivia: Not too long before I was born a total solar eclipse had passed over my home town!!!!

A TOTAL ECLIPSE! Over my town!

Every single adult I knew growing up would have been around for it. My parents, who were science nuts and made pinhole projectors for partial eclipses, never mentioned it. My teachers in school, who at least passingly taught about eclipse, never mentioned it. Not one single adult ever mentioned it! People traveled to the area to watch it, yet none of the locals even passingly referenced it to us kids.

So, I don’t think it exactly changed their lives. No shaking of their view of the world. No awesome milestone in their lives. Nothing mystical. On with their lives.

And having seen one myself, what did I think?

“Cool!!! Very, very COOOL!!!! Now how do I get through this traffic….”

I haven’t forgotten. It was wonderful. But I’ve had a lot of natural phenomena that awed me more.***

Great if it changes your life, but don’t count on it or think there is something “wrong” with you for not feeling the way the hype says you should. Just have fun!

**My family has inherited land in the mountains, but no place to stay. My brother rented a cabin for his family and Mom, but he didn’t want me there. I spent the days wandering the mountain alone and then went to whichever hotel I had a place in that night. Was that trip the last time I stayed in a hotel/motel?

***Maybe understanding and predicting it makes it less awesome than the “What the heck???” stuff.

[buckybarnesss]

on fire: a teen wolf novel chapters 10-13 chapters 7-9 here chapters 4-6 here chapters 1-3 here

after a little break i am back with a new installment i'm doing 4 chapters today because this book only has 19 chapters.

once again: kate argent is her own warning.. there's an entire flashback chapter of her and derek when he was a teenager. she explicitly grooms him.

Our intrepid heroes are still in the goddamn woods. We shall never leave. Allison is cold and so Scott snuggles with her to share body heat. Classic trope but I have read many missing persons cases. Hypothermia can happen even when you don’t think it can. 

And we have yet another example of Derek being characterized as kind of a dick. He and Stiles find a campfire as Derek tries to track the scent of the Alpha and/or locate Scott. Stiles is just having a bad time as he’s winded from trying to keep up with Derek. Derek leaves him there. I reject this. No. Derek never left Stiles anywhere like this. Especially not with danger afoot. It very much stands in contrast to Wolf’s Bane when Derek crawls over broken glass and fights Peter, distracting him from Stiles.

The Queen has finally arrived. We finally get some Lydia narration. She also comes with Danny and some random dude Damon. 

It had been kind of annoying Danny hasn’t been involved that much considering he is Jackson’s best friend.

Have I mentioned that I don’t particularly care for how Danny is handled in this book? First you have Stiles assuming they should send Danny to the pay-by-the-hour motel because he’s gay and now Lydia’s narration is stereotyping the poor guy. “Dark-haired, with that cool Hawaiian vibe he had.” Danny was right to leave y'all.

Danny says he doesn’t have Lydia’s phone number which I sincerely doubt. 

I want to throw hands with this line “He gave her a completely non-sexual once over.” It’s giving gay-best friend trope vibes which to be fair was at its height in the 2010s and let’s face it this is how Lydia was often written pre-character development (and even after). Especially in the Sterek fandom. Don’t y’all try to tell me otherwise. I was there, Gandalf. 

There is this little section of Lydia’s I think deserves some commentary. The way this book has a subplot for Allison and Scott revolving around how they want to sleep together and the way Jackson and Lydia think of their relationship, especially their sexual relationship is interesting. Now, I’m no pearl clutching Puritan on this subject but the way that sex is handled in this narrative strikes me as too adult for their age. But this passage makes me change my perspective a little. These are kids acting too adult because they feel pressured in other areas of their lives to be adults without the experience and emotional capacity to do so. That fits in with Teen Wolf’s narrative. 

“Are you going through his stuff?” Danny queried, and she have him her best patronizing look, “Please,” She said, “You must know that I have a drawer here.” Damon looked even more impressed. Very few teenagers could claim the very adult perk of having a drawer containing their belongings at their boy -- or girlfriend’s house. Not that many teenagers had the need. It spoke of changing clothes, spending the night. Adult stuff.  Sex.”

Jackson’s computer wallpaper is Lydia which is sweet but then she says she picked it out herself which is less sweet. 

Jackson’s computer password is fucking Captain. You deserve to be hacked, Jackson.

Now Lydia brought Danny and his hanger on Damon from her house to Jackson’s because they’re looking for a CD Jackson apparently burned for Damon to use to DJ for a party. The 2010s of it all came out and kneed me in the solar plexus. Even Lydia was wondering why Jackson didn’t just make a shared playlist. But she searches through Jackson’s stuff stalling a little so she can snoop. This is all important because we finally get to the actual plot of why Jackson was lured away and missing in the first place. People want to rob the Whittermore’s while they’re out of town. Jackson at this point is still being held at gunpoint over in the preserve. 

The would be robbers -- henceforth referred to as Thing One and Thing Two -- assault Lydia and threaten her demanding to know if there are other people in the house. Lydia truly gets a raw deal no matter what.

Meanwhile, Derek’s left Stiles and is trying to follow the scene of the Alpha. He uses the word “shedding” to refer to how he left Stiles. I cannot impress enough how he would not fucking say that.

Derek’s out of luck though because the scent he comes across is old. He is at the place he found Laura’s body where he has a Moment of Anger before he moves on he picks up on Jackson’s scent. He recalls how he dug his claws into Jackson back in Magic Bullet and feels a tiny bit bad. He finds a half burned article about Jackson and does what I deem a Derek thing to do and that’s pocket it because he’s “keeping tabs on Jackson”. It’s stalking, Derek.

Narration switches back to Stiles and of course he gets weird quickly and Stiles what the fuck? Stiles doing something like this during the later seasons wouldn’t be out of the norm. He’s paranoid, hyper vigilant and suspicious at that point but here? Season 1? Stalker.

“He had tried calling Scott a couple more times, then Allison, then Lydia. He’d had her phone in his possession when he deleted the picture she’d accidentally taken of the Alpha. Of course he’d also inputted her number into his own phone; how stalkerish was that?”

Derek reappears and scares Stiles. Stiles observes “He was kind of sweaty, and he looked glummer than usual.” Stiles refuses to be normal about Derek. 

They have a little tiff except it’s them being worried about the same thing but in opposite directions. 

“Stiles crossed his arms and hunched over, shivering and trying to make himself inconspicuous, in cast the Alpha spotted Derek and decided to attack him. But Derek was a Beta werewolf too, like Scott. Why wasn’t he part of the Alpha’s pack? Maybe he is. Maybe he just hasn’t told us, he thought. “Or maybe it’s some kind of trap,” Derek said, “Something the Argents cooked up.” “You mean that Allison’s in on it?” Stiles asked, sounding incredulous.  Derek slid a glance at him. “Why do you sound so surprised? You know what the Argents are. What they do.``

And so we have arrived. The part of this book I remember the most. The Derek Hale Flashbacks. We go six years into the past. 

This is definitely where the idea of Kate Argent working at Beacon Hills High comes from and it makes a lot of sense. It even works even better given the context of season 2 where the Argents actually infiltrate the school as a tactic. 

Holder puts Derek on the swim team which is funny in retrospect because of how the swim team is important to the story of season 2 but Derek is established in season 3 as having been on the basketball team like Peter.

Holder also does a little world building on werewolf customs and pack dynamics here which the show lacks in detail. The way Holder does it is far more patriarchal than what the Hales actually are in the show. There’s a focus on Derek’s father (unnamed even here), the contest/rivalry between him and his cousin Josh, entrance into manhood and Uncle Peter. 

I am still deeply amused by Holder making the Beast of Gevaudan an ancestor of the Hales when the show took the route of making it far more deeply connected to the Argents.

The deepest of sighs at this : “Unlike Laura, who was popular, he didn’t have any human friends, and he didn’t want any.” I just have the hardest time with isolationist, anti-human Derek. Season 3 Derek called and told Book Derek to fuck himself. Derek had a posse of generic human friends.

Kate preys on Derek while she fills in for the main coach as he’s on paternity leave. Also Kate’s up here just brassily using her actual name.

Like Derek’s about 16 here so I can easily buy him noticing a pretty young woman in close proximity to him but Holder does a good job in making it clear that while Derek’s attracted to Kate superficially her interest in him makes him uncomfortable. Derek’s narration says things like “Flustered, even a little frightened.” and “He practically ran out of the school, looking over his shoulder.”

Holder then parallels Scott and Allison once more which is a, um, choice by describing Kate’s hair in the moonlight and Derek almost wolfing out. 

Apparently Laura and Derek shared a Subaru Forester. Which Hale lesbian bought this?

Now up until this point I’ve mostly avoided talking about Laura and her presence in this book because I was saving it for this scene. Laura Hale is a ghost in the narrative in the show. She’s seen maybe three different times outside of being a corpse. She’s never actually named in any of those short appearances and no one talks about her. Here she’s mentioned several times by Scott, Stiles and Derek. Plus now she’s shown in Derek’s flashbacks. I don’t like her all that much here and I think this might be where some of Laura’s fanon characterization comes from. 

Anyway, Derek and Laura are at a diner together eating hamburgers. Derek drinks Diet Coke. Look, I don’t see him as a Diet Coke drinker but that’s not the point here. Derek mentions Kate and how he thinks she’s so beautiful. Laura has this moment where she seems concerned:

“Is this...woman a student?” Laura asked. “No. She’s the new lifeguard. Ms. Argent.” Mr. Braswell’s replacement.” “School lifeguard?” she said, looking mildly shocked. “A teacher?”

After this though Laura’s characterization takes a nosedive. She refers to Kate as a slut when at this point in time Kate hasn’t really done anything necessarily wrong. Derek only really tells Laura of thinking she’s pretty. Laura’s never even met her.

She goes on to tease Derek about his crush -- the word mateable is used 🤮 -- and Derek shuts down. “Suddenly, he didn’t feel like talking to her about it anymore.”

I hate it here.

The next scene is another flashback I recall vividly. Melissa and baby Scott being abused by Mr. McCall. This fuckface trying to convince Scott that his asthma attack isn’t real and it’s all in his head. I want this man to die. Interesting that later when Rafael McCall is introduced he’s still The Worst.

Catch these hands. “Scott didn’t want him to yell at his mom because Scott had asthma. It wasn’t her fault. It was his, Scott’s.” 

If Melissa McCall had killed him no would have charged her. 

Back in the present we return to Scott and Allison. They’re still cuddling but realize they’re supposed to be looking for Allison’s keys. Her phone rings and they have a mishap which sends Allison down the incline. She takes him with her.

They recover but Allison has now lost her keys and phone. Bad day all around for Ally A.

Scott finds Allison’s phone using his wolf powers but he can’t let her know that so they use his phone to call hers. 

Her ringtone for him is apparently a band called Kids of 88. I had never heard of them so after a quick search their biggest hit was in 2009 My House. Which again -- sex.

Scott went to get her phone but he’s prevented by an invisible barrier. Wolfsbane. He makes up a lie about his leg being hurt because like how else do you explain not being able to touch a bush?

They sit down and Scott’s having thoughts like “Oh I wish Derek were here” so you know it’s not great. Allison talks a little about how she’s close to her parents.

They are fucking kissing again. Stop it. It’s not the time. 

Scott decides to text Stiles and says Stiles knows his username and password. We all know. It’s the ever iconic Allison. Jackson and Scott truly deserve each other.

I forgot Jackson was still being held at gunpoint while all this has been going on.

Jackson makes an attempt to escape but yet another guy is waiting at the Porsche. How many people are there? Two here, Cassie probably and then the two at the house. So 5 people in total it appears. Geez. 

His escape fails and he’s taken hostage. Jackson never has a good time. 

All of Chapter 13 is Kate and Derek. Shall we brace ourselves?

“One by one the other swimmers left, and he’d remained behind, torn between disappointment that she hadn’t done it again, and complete and utter relief that she was staying away from him.” Holder writes young Derek having the instinct to know Kate’s attention isn’t good.

Now Holder does do some interesting bits of worldbuilding but like I said earlier it seems so patriarchal. Surrounding challenges and fighting. His view of humans in the book is one of paternalism. 

Kate is going in for the kill now and I’m crawling up my own spine. She makes herself come across as demure. She’s playing meek and turning the whole thing back on Derek giving him the illusion of choice as she grooms him. She purposefully is coming across as more of a peer than an adult figure with authority. 

“She swirled her fingers in the water. “And this isn’t really my style, you know?” I don’t come onto men like this.” Men. She thought of him as a man. He licked his lips, completely tongue-tied. “I wish you’d say something,” she murmured. “I’m kind of dying about it now. I’m sorry if I misread your intentions. I won’t bother you again.” “I know we’d have to be careful. Outsiders might not understand.”

Excuse me. Earlier Derek mentioned his rival -- his cousin Josh -- apparently Peter’s sister-in-law’s kid. Here he mentions Laura had made out with Josh the previous Wolf Moon. Did Laura make out with their cousin?!?!?!?!?!? There’s no other Josh in this book. Like I get they’re not blood related if Josh is Peter’s sister-in-law’s kid (which lol okay bro) but what is happening here on this day?

Kate wants Derek to come home with her for privacy -- ew. So Derek calls Laura to negotiate. Hence the whole conversation about Laura making out with cousin Josh. Laura says “This is so you can do something slutty.” I deeply dislike this characterization of Laura.

And now we’re in Kate’s narration for the flashbacks. I need a shower after reading her thoughts. God, I hate Kate.

Holder goes into detail about her ideas on werewolves. It’s interesting. There’s competition for rank within the pack, challenges and rituals. I want to do a post specifically about it maybe, but I am offended on Talia Hale’s behalf here. It’s very focused on males. The automatic assumption that the Alpha is Derek’s father.

 I cannot say fuck Kate enough. “Some kids in high school are babies and others are all grown up, ready for the real world. Like you.” The classic manipulation tactic of oh but you’re so mature for your age or oh they’re such an old soul. 

Wishing Kate Argent a go ahead and die.

[kenyizsuartblog]

Merry Christmas with Peter and Doc!

Solar Demigod Doc Ock gallery

Properly, this time!

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to everyone! I wish you all a peaceful and wonderful end of the year!

----

It looked like Doc had already resigned himself to his fate to spend Christmas alone, when Peter found him in the small motel.

At the very least, he looked almost comically surprised when the young man invited him to his and MJ's Christmas Eve. Thankfully, MJ had been very welcoming to the idea, she even encouraged Peter to set out as soon as he could. Doc most certainly didn't know how to thank them for the invitation.

By that time, he was pretty alright with creating and maintaining small harmless balls of light, an already amazing feat considering where he started. He helped around the preparations, his actuators carefully snaking about not to knock over anything. While they decorated the tree with their very own style, Peter couldn't help but smile at how much Doc looked like a strange angel with all that magic and the Christmas light strings on the wall behind his back seemingly forming a vague wing-shape around him. Doc certainly didn't understand what he was chuckling about.

Peter hoped the sight was a good sign for the future.

2023.12.26

[rozcdust]

Kill me, romantically

Pairing: Rindou Haitani x F!Reader

Genre: Enemies to lovers, crack

Word count: 1.4K

Warnings: Canon divergent, ooc, profanity, violence, strangulation, attempted murder, faked suicide, mentioned stalking casual sexism, explicit content, Rindou is a bitch

Mikey hired a new executive, and your clever eyes and sharp tongue make Rindou wish to put your face through a glass table.

Day 4 of Promptober

pt. 1 | pt. 2 | pt. 3

Standing at the corner of the building, leaning on the filthy wall behind him in all too baggy clothes with the hood pulled up and a mask just underneath his mouth, Rindou smoked, waiting on you to appear with your next target.

Utterly infuriated by you, and honestly tired, he decided to follow you and see what the fuck is so great about the way you do your job.

Hell, maybe he’ll even prove to Mikey you’re nothing special and get you fired, though that was mostly his wishful thinking, he knew his boss was too stubborn for his own good.

You walked past, on your way to the hotel, and Rindou didn’t even blink.

He waited until you rounded the corner before throwing the butt of his cigarette on the pavement, stomping it out and starting to follow you.

He knew the room you rented out was in a shady motel with little to no staff and broken security cameras serving just for show, and he knew you rented out every single room available, even if the only room you’ll be using is the one at the end of the hallway to the left.

He thanked God the motel had only a bottom floor.

Standing just out of view, he thanked whatever God was out there for the mere fact that the window was open, even if it was just a sliver, it was enough for him to hear the conversation inside and the sound of the fake, whiny, all too high voice you put on just for show.

You and the man shut the doors behind him, and just as Rindou was starting to light up another cigarette in preparation for a presumably long night, a loud thud and a yelp almost made him drop his cigarette.

He glanced in, and his eyes widened.

The man had you pressed against the wall, both of his hands firmly around your throat, keeping your feet a few centimetres off the ground.

“You don’t think I know who you are?! You’re Sano’s bitch, ain’t ya?” The man’s grin was sadistic, and Rindou could see the way his knuckles turned white as his grip tightened.

He stared with his teeth gritted, unsure if he should go in and help you, your mission be damned, or to let you handle it by yourself.

He hated you, of course, and if you got killed, all of his problems would be solved.

But he was loyal to Bonten, and seeing his fellow member get killed would be anything but.

Cursing, he started taking off his jacket to wrap it around his hand, planning to break the window, but he stopped for a second.

He took a good look at you.

You were gasping, your lips turning blue and your arms trying to push the man away, but there was a calculated look in your eyes.

You were calm, too calm.

Rindou hesitated for just a moment, and that was the moment you needed.

In a swift, well-practised motion, your knee connected with the man’s solar plexus just as your hands hit his wrists, removing his hands from around your neck, the pain in his chest forcing the man to take a step back and curl in.

Bad move.

You were fast, far too fast.

Another kick to his face sent the man to the ground, and Rindou watched in a mix of curiosity and fascination as you crouched down, your fingers tangling in his hair before you forced him to lift his head, and slamming it into the ground.

He was out like a light.

Taking a sharp intake of breath, you rubbed your neck, the movement showcasing more annoyance than actual pain.

“You’re welcome, thought letting you have a dig at a Bonten executive would be nice but you’re pathetic.” Muttering, you shook your head as you stepped over the now unconscious man, opening the doors to the bathroom.

Rindou could hear the sound of water, and taking a better look into the window, he saw you were filling up the tub.

His eyes narrowed.

You allowed the bathtub to continue filling as you carefully picked up the man, carrying him into the water and placing him in all too gently.

Rindou had many questions running circles in his head, presuming none of them will be getting an answer anytime soon, but all of them did when you plugged the hairdryer into the wall.

Stepping on the edge of the tub, you started measuring your position, making it relative to the position of the man.

You dropped the hairdryer in.

Oh.

Your words from a couple of days ago mixed with Mikey’s in his head.

He now understood what Mikey meant when he said you were cleaner, and more meticulous in your job than any of them could be.

He would have never thought to check which way the victim could drop the hairdryer to make it look natural.

Intentional.

Something ugly he didn’t quite like stirred in his gut when you turned to leave, and he saw the necklace of marks a couple of shades too dark for your skin tone starting to form.

He left before you could spot him.

“You’re late.” Rindou growled out as you waltzed into the building, a heavy-looking duffle bag swung over your shoulder as that stupid coat swished around your legs.

Because Mikey and God hated him both, Rindou was assigned as your partner on this mission.

He tried to argue, tried desperately to reason with Mikey, but all he got was a warning look and that was well over enough to shut him up and accept his fate.

It was a supposedly simple meet up with one of the other gangs, and everyone else is attending the meet up, everyone besides you and Rindou.

Because Mikey’s idea of a guardian angel is a sniper on the nearest roof, and that guardian angel apparently needed backup, or so the boss said.

Of course you were a skilled fucking sniper, at least according to your army documents Kokonoi dug up, it would be a shocker if you weren’t, always so precise and clean.

Yet here you were.

Late.

“Oh, cry me a river jackass.” Rolling your eyes as you took a left to the stairwell, forcing him to follow closely behind.

“Couldn’t we have just used the elevator?” Grumbling, he considered pushing you down them, but abandoned the idea when he remembered you just might pull him down with.

“If you want to get stuck in a shitty elevator in an even shittier abandoned building, sure. Take the fucking elevator.” Not even looking behind at him, you continued climbing up the stairs, stopping at the last floor.

Rindou raised an eyebrow.

“Will you be sniping from here? Isn’t it easier on the roof?”

“We will go on the roof in just a second.”

“What are you doing?” He stared in curiosity as you opened the heavy doors leading to the abandoned offices, making a beeline towards the windows.

“Planning.” You took one look at the view below through the windows, and proceeded to open each and every one as wide as possible, allowing the cold November air to clear out some of the smell of dust and mold.

Turning around, you flashed him a mean grin, walking out and up the stairs to the rooftop.

With a heavy sigh and an even heavier heart, he followed.

You locked the rooftop doors as soon as he stepped in, crouching down as you took the duffle bag off, zipping it open and starting to assemble your equipment.

“That is a nice ass rifle.” He let out a whistle, observing your perfectly trained and cold movements as you assembled it in no time, putting your eye to the scope to centre it on the man in the building below.

Tapping the earpiece you had on, you waited on Mikey to respond.

“Y/n, status?”

“Rin and I are in place. I’m ready to shoot whenever you are, boss.”

“Excellent, hold the fire for now.”

Nodding into the empty air, you allowed yourself to plop on the cold ground, pulling out a pack of cigarettes and lighting one up.

Looking at Rin expectantly as you offered him one, he sighed, taking a couple of steps to sit next to you.

This will be a long fucking day, and he already knew it.

🔖Taglist:

@1818cigarettes @nana-phobia @dilf-city @wakasa-wifey @rinsie @kisekihany @missarabellla @bajifairyy @cryszus @r-xochitl @levistiddies @sanzucide @graythecoffeebean @yukihime-mikeys-girl @mukounisuru-gashadokuro @sunahyejin @crybabylisa @yamaguccitadashi @minoozi @trashmemebitch @frogtits1 @sup-zfam @whydohumansss @xashiui @bontens-whore @nqctre @lumi-does-some-stuff @hana-patata @hxked @erza-uzumaki @sh4nn @sisnot @soushswag @kneeapartman @anahryal @reiners-milkbiddies @bontensbabygirl @sleeplessreader @satsuri3su @aretheea @bluerskiees

Requested by: Anon

a/n: Rin??? A simp??? In denial??? Never.

[dustedmagazine]

Danny Paul Grody Duo — Arc of Night (Three Lobed)

Photo by Ian Albert

The guitar-drums duo concept has produced a lot of good music lately, whether in Gunn-Truscinski’s abstract explorations (sometimes augmented with Bill Nace) or Jim White’s percussive conversations with Marisa Anderson. Like these outfits, the Danny Paul Grody Duo often allows the drummer (in this case Rich Douthit of The Drift) to range free form, using percussion as a color and a mood as much as a timekeeper.

Arc of Night follows the similarly titled Arc of Day by about a year, and it’s very similar in texture and vibe, though perhaps a little moodier and introspective.  Once again, the tracks foreground Grody’s lyrical guitar lines but this time, there’s more space for Douthit and other guests are kept to a minimum.  Only two tracks feature artists outside the duo. Trevor Montgomery adds some electric bass to eerie, hovering “Hawk Hill,” while Chuck Johnson joins on pedal steel for the slow-blooming, very nocturnal “Moon Garden.” 

Both of those cuts have their own appeal, but perhaps it makes sense to focus first on unassisted tracks. Grody and Douthit have an undeniable chemistry that comes through best when it’s just the two of them. Consider, for instance, the opening “Last Light,” which unfolds in a free-form, unhurried, unconstrained way. Grody unspools a thoughtful melody, his tone full of force and clarity, but with long meditative pauses between phrases. Into those gaps, Douthit inserts abstracted bits of cymbal shimmer, short drum rolls and unexpected thwacks. Their interaction sounds like a conversation, the guitar proposing, the drums answering with bursts of conciliatory or contradictory energy. There’s a fluidity to the piece, which moves as it will, without the guardrails of obvious time signature.

Later, the two extend their dialogue into a longer form in “Coyote Valley at Dusk.” The guitar licks flurry upwards from a single lingering low note. At first, the percussion simmers a barely audible jangle of bells. Then, in time, a rhythm asserts itself, first in the guitar line, later picked up in a minimalist cadence of cymbal and snare. The piece takes on purpose and propulsion; it sounds a bit like Chris Forsyth’s extended grooves with Solar Motel Band. You can hear the two musicians testing cracks in the repetition, finding ways to make a repeated motif fresh from measure to measure without violating its integrity. The addition of slide (or maybe e-bow?) in the second half infuses ethereal spirituality, turning the music from chug to free flight.

The music is quite beautiful in a somnolent, dusky sort of way. It can fade into the background if you let it, but there are details worth hearing if you take care and listen closely.

Jennifer Kelly

[oldxenomorph]

unmask, night

pairing: nyx/the reaper emperor warnings: gore, sexual content (tentacles, voyeurism, nyx being a soft dom, nyx feeding the emperor gore). 18+ summary: successor to devourment / for @bodysnatch3r

“It will be a very long night for you, Extinction.”

--

Another cycle has come to pass.

(The doors in the Dark Tower are closed. The Oceanview Motel has locked the door with the crimson eye and the door with the upright black triangle.)

Nyx watches as the Emperor closes the distance between her and the wretched man. This room deep within the Ziggurat, ankle-high redness, thick and partially liquid, partially coagulated. A veil separates the goddess from the rest of the room as she lounges on a klinai, its frame made from the black metal of the Old Machines. The thrum of the building amplifies in her space, the sound of the Emperor’s hunger, her stomach opening up to readily welcome the thing that was grown just for her.

The room is humid. The mixture of the dark, heavy air and the Emperor’s presence creates an oppressive atmosphere, it makes the room airless. Extinction towers over the wretched thing, her red eyes and red scars searing through the haze, nuclear fusion burning hydrogen, stars rotting, aging, bloating; she vivisects him, she has already begun to eat him from the inside out, the red light slides inside him. Tentacles emerge from the gore, creating curtains of viscera and sheets of dark red; his variations of drowned flesh and parts pulsate in time with the building’s thrum, weeping fluid into the great pool of red. Nyx’s starlight eyes, the gold color of main sequence stars, pierce through the vapor of innards and parts from countless cycles.

Wet and red coated tentacles curl around the man’s middle, dragging him towards her, gravity trapping him in her presence. Eager to break him open, to slide into his chest cavity, deep into the soft, cramped space between his organs. Inevitable and inescapable.

The Emperor opens her mouth, her black teeth wet with annihilation.

“She eats him because he my gift to her.” The Crawling Chaos says, his voicing coming from the darkness behind the goddess. He leans down, his sharp smile hear her ear. He does not wear one of his many forms, he comes to her in the shape given to him by his parent. “That does not mean you simply have to sit here and watch, O Night.”

Bones crack, the man’s ribcage broken open by the Emperor’s tentacles. Steam rises from the wounds she creates, his insides made hot by their internal heat, organs neatly cradled in the primordial warmth of tissue and fat and muscle. The black tar that leaks and drips from her mouth eats away at him like acid before her teeth sink into the tender meat of his neck. The thing laughs, sick with madness and hatred; wretched and red teeth hissing and refracting from the exposure to the Ziggurat. (The building hates him, it keeps him trapped in here, in this dark, wet, suffocating room.)

The Emperor’s fingers form a fist in his hair, holding him still, pulling him to wherever she needs him so she can eat him the way she wants. The red within him bursts when she sinks her teeth into new areas, when her tentacles push deeper into his writhing guts. She pulls him closer as his ruined voice chants UNMASK, UNMASK, UNMASK as his hands grip her arms, as his nails chip and shatter against her biomechanical exterior.

The man turns his half-eaten face towards the veiled section of the room, looking directly at the pinpoints of starlight. His brown and grey hair dipping into the blood as Extinction pulls him apart. (He taunts the Night, goads her, smiles impossibly wide with soaked red teeth and wild eyes.) Tar grows inside her mouth to match the hunger in her stomach, it oozes, it coats everything within her, prepares her for more. Tentacles wrap around him, holding him tightly as she leans over him, her hands and long talons reaching into his solar plexus, deep into his gut, fingers tightening around his liver, his intestines. She forces him to look at her.

“I wear no mask,” the Emperor says, her voice crushingly deep, cold and all-consuming. The thing’s insides hiss when they make contact with the rings of her authority: the black metal of the Old Machines, the black jade from the Oldest House. (Even in its sickly state, it loves her, it love her. The Hiss metastasizes like a cancer in the Oldest House, and still the building calls out to the Emperor, it yearns to see her face again.) His innards writhe against her the ring of her matrimony, the ancient starless sky opening a hole in his brain.

The Emperor’s mouth fills itself with meat in perpetual motion, writhing and screaming horrors grown between the sections of fat and flesh, things that burst with red and bile when her teeth sink into them. She breaks him open again, her mouth eating its way through to his heart as his head and neck hang, held by tendons and ropes of veins and nerves tangled in his spine.

Watching through the veil, Nyx thinks of all the people and things she would like to see the Emperor break open and eat, and eat, and eat. Her own impatience grows within her, impatience and desire. Churning in dark space between her own organs is the thought of having Extinction all to herself, telling her who she should devour. She imagines the Emperor’s hands, wet and tacky with golden ichor, the flesh and atoms of lesser gods being obliterated in her mouth and stomach during Earth’s final hours.

In the dark of her heart, Nyx imagines the Emperor eating Chronos. When she looks at the thing the Crawling Chaos grew, her starlight eyes replace his image with that of the Titan’s. Perhaps that is her own rage, her own desire for revenge that has sat within her for millennia, a taste for violence that she has always pushed down within her. Nyx looks at the Emperor’s hands and imagines them crackling with violet dark energy as they apply newtons of force to the Titan’s face, caving it in; she envisions her wife’s hands breaking open the rest of his form and reaching into his body to pull out everything within him. She imagines Extinction eating Time, the immensity of her gravity crushing him as she eats and eats and eats.

The Night’s elegant face remains impassive, but her chest rises and falls as she breaths deeply.

Nyarlathotep hums. A sound like a smile within a smile, a laugh within a laugh, whispers within whispers.

“Feed her, O Night. He is here for you to break as well.” As he speaks, multiple sets of his many hands reach around the Night Incarnate. They touch the skulls on her necklace, they settle on the concave curves of her pauldrons, they trace the shape of the bat-like wings that hover near her, they smooth underneath ribbon of lilac silk that levitates around her, they cup around the cluster of stars near her crown. “I have grown such delights in his vessel, things only for the Precious Emperor to eat.”

Nyx watches the Emperor gorge herself on the man. Blood gushes from her mouth as her teeth sever veins and capillaries and arteries, it coats her lowers face, her hands, her tentacles. Blood soaks her neck and her chest, red and wet even in the darkness, drenched in that thick liquid that gives life, that she devours, that spurts every time her teeth sink into him, breaking into him, tearing him apart. Vantablack hair slips from her shoulders. The room grows hotter.

A tightness grows within the Night, desire coils deep within her, a heat in her core and in her gut; a tightness that is almost unbearable, she feels it spread. Nyx looks at the Emperor covered in blood, watches her eat this thing grown specifically for her, and thinks how much she wants to fuck her. The sight awakens the Night’s hunger for Extinction, her wife. Insatiable, unending.

One of Nyarlathotep’s hands reaches around the goddess, long fingers unfurling to gently hold her face by the chin as he leans closer to her. “You should unmask, O Night.” 

Unmask. Unmask. Unmask.

The impassive face Nyx always wears, the role of ancient mother and house overseer that she still plays; she has pushed down eons of cravings because she deemed them a distraction. Nyx watches the Emperor eat, her body and tentacles drenched in red and black, and she desires, she yearns, she lusts. To have the Emperor in her arms, to run her hands through her hair, to possess her completely. The Emperor will do anything for her, she belongs to her, only her.

Nyx rises from the klinai, the Crawling Chaos letting her go, and parts the veil. She is unbothered by the ankle-high blood, uncaring that the hem of her violet dress is now soaked with ancient, fermenting red.

Tentacles emerge from the darkness around her, midnight and full of stars. They wrap around the thing sliding over the Emperor’s oil black ones, taking his ruined body from her, and they tighten. A wave of Nyx’s hand and she summons another klinai, the Ziggurat allowing it to come into existence, metal and royal and violet. In the heavy haze from steam rising from fluid and gore, the Night Incarnate’s eyes of starlight meet the Emperor’s eyes of stellar death. Nyx can see the vibrations in her wife’s eyes, stars on the very brink of being crushed, being eaten; when she observes her pupils more closely, they are black holes and the red brightness around them are accretion disks. Even in the Emperor’s eyes, she devours.

As much Nyx would love to put her hands on her, to hold her face, to kiss her, to claim her, she withholds for now. There is more pleasure to be had feeding her wife, in having her submit herself to her. Tentacles hold the thing in place as the goddess takes out his right eye. Beautiful lavender nails and cold, pale, slender fingers easily sinking into his eye socket. Within a single motion, the Night pulls out the ocular organ, ripping the optic nerve that connects it to his brain.

With the eye in her hand, Nyx approaches the Emperor. A smile forms on her painted violet lips as she places her free hand on the entity’s chest and wordlessly commands her to sit on the klinai. The Emperor does so, without question, her own tentacles wrapping around the legs of the furniture as her great form sits. The thing’s fate is now in the Night’s hands, his annihilation now controlled by she who was the dark at the beginning of everything, she who will be the dark after the end of everything. Nyx slips her hand underneath the Emperor’s chin, holding her as she places the eye at the entity’s lips. “Eat for me, O Extinction.”

The Emperor obeys. Her mouth opens and wet, black tentacles emerge, seeking that which is in her wife’s hand; they seek his eye, they seek everything it contains. Nyx feeds her the way the way one feeds their lover an oyster. She watches with great interest the way the Emperor tentacles wrapping around the small organ, holding it in place, enveloping it with the total absence of light and sound as it is crushed by black teeth. The Emperor eats his eye the way she would eat a star.

Black leaks from the great entity’s mouth, the material mixes with the red, eating the red. Now that she is close to her, Nyx can see how the violet darkness of the earrings the Emperor wears pulsate in time with the viscera around her, darkness that pulses with the event horizon of the black hole in her chest, violet that pulses with an insatiable desire to have the goddess, to kiss her and worship her and obey her and fill her.

“What do you want to eat?” The goddess asks. One of Nyx’s tentacles traces the line of the Emperor’s jaw. She adores the way her wife leans into its touch, wet mouth slightly agape, breathing deeply. Another one of Nyx’s tentacles does the same to the other side of the Emperor’s jaw, until they hold her in place, snaking into her vantablack hair to cradle the base of her skull. A deep sound leaves the Emperor, more black material dripping past her lips; her eyes swarm with pleasure, vibrating, buzzing with noise from the feeling of being touched by the Night. Through her own growing lust, she responds, her voice filling the room.

“His heart. His brain. His liver.”

Three parts of his soul.

The Night hums. “You’ve done all the hard work for me.” Nyx’s tentacles wrap around the Emperor, they slip around her middle, they follow the biomechanical nature of her body, sliding up the valley of technology and darkness that is her sternum. They weave with her own tentacles and pull her arms back, holding them in place, keeping them captive. They slip between her legs, following down the strangeness of her hips and up her powerful thighs, they bring her to a low, dull ache. The Emperor does not resist, rather she readily accepts being held and touched and restrained by her wife’s tentacles, so long as she can eat; her mouth opens, letting out a deep-toned sound and drooling black tar, thick black liquid oozing with hunger and arousal. A smile graces the painted lips of the Night Incarnate as she took in the sight before her. “I get to enjoy watching you eat.”

Tentacles make short work of removing the thing’s liver and splitting it in two pieces, the right and the left. Nyx holds the smaller of the two halves. As the Night feeds the Emperor the liver-meat, black tentacles seek to curl around her slender fingers, desperately wanting to feel them amongst the wet blackness. A soft sound is extracted from the depths of the Emperor’s chest as Nyx pulls her fingers away just as they make contact.

“You may touch me after you have eaten everything,” Nyx says, playful and loving and devious all at once.

“Yes, my goddess,” the Emperor replies.

The Night pulls apart the organ again, fluid and blood gushing from its tissue, raw and fresh. Her hands are now drenched in red, beautiful and pale hands adorned with rings and jewelry now coated in the liquid that once pumped through his body, the material that gave him life. It, too, hisses and refracts and screams against her fingers, against her rings, against her nails. The man’s liver is a thing of hate, malignant, one third of his soul and ripened by the hand of the Crawling Chaos. She feeds the Emperor the offal and watches as it slips into her mouth, as the black tentacles wrap around it and squeeze it as black teeth and gravity pulverize it.

“Good,” she says in a pleased tone, rewarding the great entity with praise as she feeds her another piece, and another, and another. The Emperor obediently eats it all, with great enthusiasm, eager to ingest whatever her wife gives her.

The atmosphere of the room grows headier, heavier, more humid as the Emperor eats the last of the thing’s liver. Nyx’s tentacles continue to indulge themselves in the entity’s biomechanical body, as they maintain that low ache ache within her. Nyx can feel her own desire coil tightly in her gut as the Emperor’s mouth part to let out another sound and another gush of black exits her mouth, down her chin; the entity rocks her hips against her wife’s tentacles, desperate for friction.

“Do not spoil your appetite, my beautiful Emperor,” the goddess softly reprimands.

“Yes, my goddess,” the Emperor’s abyssal voice is deeper, heavier as she stills her hips. A low sound leaves her as Nyx’s tentacles touch her in a particular way, a reward.

It is a wondrous sight, the Great Lord of Extinction so pliant and ready to obey the Night Incarnate. The red in her eyes vibrate with desire, with love. It was just a short time ago that the Emperor was full of violence, brutally breaking the thing open, enjoying his pain and his madness because it pleased her, because that was his ultimate purpose: to feed her, to entertain her, the Crawling Chaos continues his unending existence in various forms because it all comes down to this in the end. Nyx’s eyes study the great entity and her state of being; she wonders if her wife planned this, to have his three-part soul fed to her, to bring her into this ritual because she once expressed that she wanted to watch.

Nyx is part of this now. The Emperor wants her to be part of this. Nyx wants to be part of this from now on.

(Nyarlathotep is pleased by this development.)

The brain is removed and spare tendrils of darkness emerge to help the goddess break apart the hemispheres and the other parts at its base. They separate each lobe of each side, while Nyx goddess gently holds the Emperor’s jaw as she feeds her the cerebellum. Underneath her fingertips, she can feel the structure underneath her wife’s skin move, opening to allow black tentacles to emerge and help Nyx bring it into her mouth, all while obeying her command to refrain from touching her. The Night continues to wear her smile as her hand leaves the Emperor’s face.

Lobe by lobe, Nyx feeds the Emperor the thing’s brain. The goddess watches the entity savor the annihilation of the second part of the thing’s soul, brain-flesh ripened by the Dark Tower.

“You’re doing so well, my beautiful Emperor.” Nyx’s ethereal voice, old as the universe, rewards her wife, her praise causes thick, viscous black tar to ooze from the entity’s mouth again. One set of her endless tentacles carefully remove the thing’s heart, the other set continues to touch the Emperor. They both slide into dark spaces, one sinks into an awaiting chest cavity to obtain that fist-sized red price, one sinks into Extinction, opening her up for the Night Incarnate, preparing her for what is to come after the ritual. Nyx controls the Emperor’s arousal, raising the dull ache of desire to a heated lust, intensified by the humidity of the room, sustained by anticipation. Deep within her, Nyx feels the same. There is a exhilaration to it all, of being in control, of feeding the Emperor, of watching her devour, of being the one who makes her ache, of being her obsession, her love.

(I know what you are, Eternal Night. You are just as greedy as she is, the thing laughs. Greedy, greedy, greedy. I know you let your mind wander, I know you think of her more than you think of your children. I know how you want her, how you dominant her, how you claim her. There is a sickness in his laugh, a madness, crimson and echoing across cycles and worlds. Show your Reaper Queen just how possessive you are. I am the ritual to lead you on. Unmask, Night.)

The Night Incarnate holds the thing’s heart in both her hands. It is smaller than her own heart, fitting neatly in her palms. Slowly beating, the last third of his soul. The heart remembers, it is a container. Once it is devoured by the Emperor, the ritual will end and the cycle will begin again. It is one of many ways Extinction maintains the universe, across and beyond space and time. Nyx looks down at the Emperor, her smile unmoving, her face keeping its serene expression even while her desire grows, tight and condensed and hot like the core of a star.

“You serve me, O Reaper Emperor. Tell me how you worship me.”

The Emperor answers without hesitation, her abyssal voice made deeper by her current state. “Everything I devour is for you, O Night. I eat whatever you want me to eat.” Her eyes are full of bliss, the joy of submission to the Night Incarnate, her wife. “I will annihilate whatever you want me to annihilate. I exist for your pleasure, I exist to bring you pleasure. I am yours, completely. You are mine, O Night. My Empress, my goddess.”

She says all the words Nyx loves to hear. Devotion, submission. Extinction gives herself to the Night Incarnate; her mouth is open and expecting, drooling, even as she adjusts her hips to allow Nyx’s tentacles to sink deeper into her. The violet smile the goddess wears grows a little wider, displaying her approval, her pride, her own joy in her work.

A soft hum leaves Nyx as she moves closer to the Emperor. “You are exquisite when you are like this, my love.” One of her hands reaches towards the entity, tracing the line of her jaw until her fingers hold her by the chin once again. “Open for me, Extinction. Eat for me.”

The Emperor opens her mouth and wet black tentacles emerge again, gripping and wrapping around the heart, bringing it to her. Her dark material floods the organ, turning it from life’s red to oil black, the gravity of her darkness already crushing it as it passes the event horizon. Her black teeth sink into the flesh, drinking the blood the floods her mouth, even if some of it spills onto her chest. Nyx guides her jaw, helps her devour the organ, commands her when to open her mouth wider and when to apply pressure, pulverize. The Emperor’s tentacles twist themselves around Nyx’s, the one that restrain her; they twist and tighten as the Emperor leans forward, closer to her wife, so she could easily consume the heart, leaning forward in hot, aching want. Starlight eyes watch her, fixating in the black tentacles from her mouth that pull the organ into her mouth, little by little as she eats and eats and eats.

And then the heart is no more.

Cold, beautiful hands made red by lovingly feeding her wife, cup the Emperor’s face. Nyx’s amethyst lips claim the entity’s pitch black ones in a deep and hungry kiss, a yearning to finally have her turn at devouring her after spending all this time watching her, feeding her, preparing her.

“Such a beautiful, perfect wife, and all for me,” Nyx says, enjoying the way the Emperor melts into her touch from the praise. She commands her tentacles to remove her dress and ornamentation, the Ziggurat doing away with the silks and jewelry to the same place she shares her clothes with the Emperor’s. Even her stephane is gone, allowing her midnight black hair to fall to its actual length. The goddess runs her hand through the Emperor’s beautiful, long, vantablack hair and pulls her closer, finally granting her permission to touch her, gently releasing her from her tentacles. “You’ve been very good. And you’ve eaten everything.”

The Emperor’s hands immediately filled themselves with the soft flesh of Nyx’s thighs as she worships her wife’s body. Black lips leave the black and red imprints of lipstick and blood on Nyx’s thighs, on her stomach. Slender fingers sink into the Emperor’s hair, cradling the back of her head, guiding her to where Nyx wants to feel her mouth; pulling her up so she could leave her markings all over her breasts, all over her neck. The Night’s tentacles coax out the entity’s arousal, lovingly continue to sustain its ache, their attention eliciting low sounds, black and scarred lips agape against’s the goddess’s skin as she feels herself throb. “My Nyx…..” Abyssal, teeth-rattling machine baritone. Nyx loves that sound more than anything, especially when its her name in her wife’s mouth, her name being caressed and stretched by the black tentacles in the mouth of Extinction.

Nyx gently pushes the Emperor down on the klinai as she crawls on top of her, straddling her. The entity aches between her legs, desperate, needy, lost in her own lust for the goddess, her own fullness from devouring the Crawling’s Chaos’s gift. Nyx’s tentacles continue to touch her, they go where her hands cannot. The goddess looks down at the Emperor, her hands moving up the biomechanical exterior of her wife’s chest, following every texture and ridge wet with blood and black tar. A soft sound escapes her as her wife’s hands fill themselves with her hips, moving at the same time and rate as her own hands, long and spidery fingers and sharp talons greedily running over her curves, indulging themselves in all her softness.

“It will be a very long night for you, Extinction,” the Eternal Night says, her ethereal voice heavy and sultry and punctuated by the sound she makes as she takes in all of the Emperor’s arousal.

(The ritual is complete. The corpse of the thing laughs as the variations of himself pull him down. The doors are open. A new cycle begins and the daylight does not come.)

[luxwing]

The solar eclipse is gonna happen on the 8th (also happens to be my mom's birthday) and people are already coming in from out of town and it's gonna be really funny because they're predicting it's gonna be completely overcast during the eclipse lol

Like our town is one of the ones in the totality line and is the second (or third?) smallest town on it and we have a total of two motels and one hotel (if you can call it that) and theyve been booked solid for these two weeks since like January. These people are gonna be bored as fuck for the next week. I've lived here for almost three decades and I've never been not bored. The only stores that are still open in the "historic downtown" are the Dollar General, a shitty antique store and the hookah store with the Cheech and Chong gnomes in the window. Closest thing we have to a restaurant is Whataburger.

I saw a family pulled over on the side of the road yesterday all crowded around a tiny patch of Bluebonnets taking pictures, which was just really funny to me because around the corner was an entire field of them and I'm like oh boy when they drive another mile they're gonna lose their fucking minds.

I guess if they get excited about wildflowers then they might not be so bored after all. Just hope they watch the roads while they're driving. 🫣

[hellaciousfaith]

🎶Where are you tonight? I don't seem to know you No I'm not all right Where are you tonight? And my heart is nearly gone There's not much left to offer If I could somehow know I could stop the burning down🎶

The motel room radio is getting firmly shut off for the night. He thought a bit of music would help fill the void and pass the time while he took stock of his inventory, but fate apparently had other ideas.

Thankfully, he and Mephisto seemed to be on the same page - at least for now, but Shiro would be eternally grateful for their synchronicity in this moment. ¥20,000 was a good start at things, although Shiro would hold onto it for as long as possible, saving Mephisto's money for emergencies and using whatever he could pickpocket in the city as a way of getting by on the daily.

There was also an abundance of gear and supplies for a single person to get by in the woods, including - but not limited to - a single person tent, a hot pink sleeping bag with a matching fluffy pillow, enough MREs to last Shiro at least three months, a camping stove with six canisters of fuel, a solar powered lamp and flashlight, and some reading materials.

A seemingly generous starting kit from the scrooge known as Mephisto, but they are the absolute necessities to successfully disappear on Sakurajima too. So, no need was left unaccounted for, but no generosity had been gifted either. Not even the books could be seen as such because Shiro needed the distractions and the mental fortitude to fight back on Satan's probings, whenever they came. Sitting alone in the woods for days on end was how men broke, thus allowing devils to move in on their hearts. Reading would keep him strong though, distracted from his loneliness.

Fuck. He was going to be so lonely out there. He was going to miss his son, his friends...

This was for the best though. If Satan was going to use him against them, after already ruining so much already, then Shiro needed to take this bomb within himself and get as far away from them as possible. Mere distance wasn't enough, and Time helped with that.

"Forgive me, Rin."

[bosseladytv]

Looking for some Residential Rental lots to download?

I've got lots of lots!

Garden Essence Trailer Park in Willow Creek

Slipshod Mesquite Trailer Park in Oasis Springs

The Solar Flare Apartments in Oasis Springs

Rattlesnake Juice Motel in Oasis Springs

Mazanita Terrace Apartments in San Sequoia

Vacuous Green Homes in Del Sol Valley

Upland Place Elder Home in Del Sol Valley

Spring Steppes and Mossy Lane in Britechester

Town Square Terrace in Copperdale

The Old Quarter Inn in Windenburg

The Narwhal Arms Boarding House in Windenburg

Quad Manor Boarding House in Windenburg

Homeless Shelter (Waterside Warble lot) in San Myshuno