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whump wheel,,,, tempting

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it is raining so i am thinking about. flash floods in the zones that dry up just as quickly

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NEVER LET THEM TAKE YOU ALIVE

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Aphex Twin’s studio

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  His response comes as a light startle, successfully drawing her attention down from the door and thoughts of what was beyond to find him steady on. Survival and then secrets, in that order. Don’t-gripe-with-me style. She can’t help but wonder if that’s the way it’d been trained into him, or if maybe the emphasis was a little different, coming from the Crown. And it …leaves her, still, with her question. What do I do?

  Treat it like training? Like the trials for field? Or like the house she endured? That had certainly been survival… but the cost of it had been so high. So much silence and stillness. The kind that had to buckle now and then, or she would have ceased to be anything at all. Her cuffs rattle as she continues to fidget. She’s not sure she can do silence anymore. Not if she wants to come out of the other side of survival as someone that being alive means anything to.

  Now, how to ask all of this without asking? Without shoving a wrench in the workings of his process for getting through this? The last thing she needs is to feel like a pebble in his shoe, here. In this. Though, in fact-

  “If you leave me here I won’t. Be able to.” Survive, that is. A lot she can do, a lot she can take. Silence isn’t one of them anymore, maybe, but that has workarounds. Alone does not. “So if that... That goes both ways, yeah? You live. First.” Whatever else, secrets or whatever he thought he had to do as lieutenant. That could come second. It needed to come second. “‘Cause they’re gonna come for me.” There’s no question of that in her mind. “And when they do...” nothing she does in the effort of survival is going to matter if he gets himself killed trying to avoid the unavoidable.

  So. Maybe a little bit of pebbling could be warranted, if that's what that I'm-here-on-purpose-I've-got-Arrangements streak and this I'm-So-Serious-Right-Now look he's giving her are getting at. Her whisper pushes toward a real voice- “Don't leave me here.”

Had he felt more energized, he might've had a feral grin in response. Something to suggest he is scary, and larger than life in the way some seem to think he is. Instead, all Richie has to offer is a tired smile that pulls at old scar tissue. "I might've been something of a handful already." Snapping at hands and throats, and after the hell he'd wrought in them just bringing him down to get him to whatever secondary location they're in now, he's certainly made an impression.

He has plenty of training, and a more-than-healthy dose of unhinged to carry him through.

But she doesn't.

He doesn't say that this is why analysts and the like aren't meant to be brought into the field, but the thought does cross his mind. She'd have washed out of SERE, probably. She's made a lot of progress in learning to adjust to her new circumstances, and bend and reshape as best she can where he points, but he's also been careful to mind her limits. Here, like this? He's not so sure how long she can bend before she breaks, and how neatly she can break before she shatters.

"Your primary goal is survival," he tells her, blunt and solemn, eye-to-eye. "The Crown's preference would be for you not to divulge intelligence." Understatement, perhaps. He'll cover her however he can. "But that's your secondary goal. You live, first. Understand?"

Being of a mind to protect her puts an odd twist on getting them both through this. He has to consider a selflessness to his method of survival, in prioritizing keeping her out of the worst of whatever the next 72-hours holds.

He'll have to figure out quick if a strong, silent holdout will be more effective in keeping attention on him, or if he'll have to try at something different.

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I just think everyone who cares about her should extend a gesture of rly soft physical affection to her at one point or another just because there's always a 50/50 she trips on it ok ty goodnight

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open.

Oh, oh- she sits up with a sharp gasp, eyes egregiously wide. She touches the tip of her finger to the end of her nose and— “Nose goes!!” She breaks into a wide smile, tongue pinched between her teeth as she giggles her way through.

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  Tech's eyes stay sharp, but her mouth is shut for the moment. Her expression takes a nosedive from decided dislike into its more typical ambiguity. Shifting and changing. Whiskey Runners sounds at least a little familiar, but it's hard to place. Could be as little as hearing it said once. Could be as much as a connection of a connection, or a tie through the eye all nailed down and nested in. The ambiguity of it is the only thing that stops her from laughing outright at the name "Aquamarine Starlight."

(The list rolls through the back of her mind: It sounds like a light bulb brand. Cheap drugs. A shitty drink that didn't actually have any alcohol in it, though it pretended to. The name of a hunk of rock dunked in cheap dye that Tommy'd sell you on the claim that it could manifest dreams. Ugly lingerie. One of those dolls the little shop in the mid city used to make, with the frilly dresses and fluffy hair-do's and empty heads. Glass polish. A toilet cleaner— –)

  “Ah!” Discovery! “F'ya wanted to come play, little Love, all ya had to do was ask.” This comes from the tallest of their trio as he makes a little tent, dropping into a lean to lay his arms over both Tech and the blonde's shoulders in a much softer version of a defensive stance. He directs his next word at Aqua in particular. “I'd start with that instead of rollin' out swingin' strays, next time.” He gives a little nod of his head to his left, the arm Tech is under, then snaps his teeth together. Don't antagonize the kitty cat, she bites. Tech shoulders him, but doesn't duck his arm.

  “You should do more'f your own talking.” Tech advises Synth, leaving the rest of her thoughts on the matter in the final little head to toe glance she gives Aquamarine Starlight (--toothpaste with a whitening agent.) Then she stops looking at her at all, focusing on Synth. “I don't mind you lookin' around this one but I wouldn't go digging around any of the others without callin' out ahead or something. Lotta reasons not to let everybody close. And- hey. You break my setup I break your fingers, yeah? Eyes only.”

  “Oh,” the blonde, sheepish, says “she means that...”

Aqua’s grin grows and twists as Tech speaks, and she focuses on her breathing to keep the desire to turn violent suppressed. They need the help, if Whiskey Flats is gonna keep up with the times. Coyote and North hadn’t been interested, but Sin saw the necessity.

Aqua’s arm drops from Synth’s shoulders as she takes a half-step forward, positioning herself slightly in front of Synth. Defensive. “Aquamarine Starlight,” she introduces, somehow both peace offering and challenge in one. She tips her head to Synth. “Synthetic Love. We’re part’a th’Whiskey Runners.”

“She’s sec-”

“It’s fine, Synth,” Aqua interrupts. “Crew went through a… rearrangement of priorities, recently. Didn’t even know there was a network to get in on until a couple years ago, when Synth joined us. Woulda helped out if we knew, not that we had any techheads ‘til Synth.” Actually, it would’ve been a fight trying to get North to agree to let them help with the network, if they’d known.

Synth’s hands curl under their chin, face still cherry-red. “An’ like y’said, there ain’t a lotta supplies. I done the best I could with what I could scare t’gether, an’ it’s only thanks t’the network that we can get what we do.” They inhale, deep and shaky, trying to scare together enough courage. In a rush, “Was hopin’ I could get a peek at some’a the rigs, see if there ain’t a better way t’set up ours t’get a better signal ‘r range.” Probably expended all of their courage for the year. Voice going small, “But if not, that’s fine too.” They bite down on a thumb knuckle, afraid to meet anyone’s eyes.

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beginning to understand the appeal of actually playing the sims (instead of just building) via getting to see my blorbos hang out, actually

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what if u sent a 🎨 and i doodled ur character. super scribbly like, maybe vibes like (this) or (this).

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smth smth my thoughts are with this blog but just not in a way that's interesting to u. anyway this one's for 2015(?ish?) me. congrats kid ur still very unwell abt them.

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i fear i immediately want to change the helmet design i literally Just designed because. cat face visor.

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trying to present simple concepts that work best with a casual/unplanned atmosphere in a polished illustration

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smth smth killjoys and their very important self chosen names that actually they do not use except in formal situations. as if they are the extra long name of monarchy. this is layered but it's so motherfucking hard to explain why.

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Tech + Style

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  There are benefits to sharing a sometimes-home with one of the desert's jockey's. Namely, the with the right tools and know how, the option to piggy-back on the massive reach of their broadcasting equipment, without sticking her foot in the actual broadcast.

  Tech's using this particular benefit to put life into the small army of radios, transmitters, etcetera that fill her shelves. All of them tuned differently. Tuned into channels broadcasting — even if not all of them broadcast anything specific. She can tell the difference. Between the truly empty static and the buzz of a channel waiting to speak. And most of hers aren't speaking, just weaving a net of would-be live air.

  This is where the new names most often appear. Where people untangle themselves, separate from the fraying edges of the city's weave. Reach out for anybody out there. She likes to keep ears on it.

  And, yeah, it keeps the silence from crushing in around her. But that's sort of a given.

  The sudden bump makes her jump, leaping out of her white noise lullaby like that. A few twists and focuses, and she brings that one up, the others down. Her reward: a new voice. She holds in...most of her giggle as she flips an easy switch to send hers back:

“Nobody here but us static mites, an' we're excellent secret keepers.”

There's static, and there's wind, and that's about all you get. Too much open airtime; not enough voices to fill it. Pan down over a low-sitting building, half covered in brush, one wind turbine on top that spins lazily where it stretches toward the sun. Move the camera to a busted window. No glass, not after so many years, but there's a faded cloth for a curtain, and a gust of wind blowing it up.

The camera enters. The inhabitant here went to significant efforts to sweep the dirt off every given surface, from the floor to the desk to the empty supply racks lining one wall. There isn't much by way of decoration - not yet.

A pop of static - electrical, not aural. A loud thump, and a pained groan, as the new owner's head thunks up into the underside of the long desk opposite the front door. The sole string of lights plugged in and strung over the edge of the desk casts flickering rainbow lights for an instant, and then die again. He fiddles with the transmitter dial by his knee. Echoing off crumbling concrete, a disused, rasping voice:

"If you heard that, no, you didn't."

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sry to rb this again but actually the final version of this tho

you know that song that goes like

and i was far too scared to hit him // but i would hit him in a heartbeat now