#APF stuff

[ariwritessometimes]

Hey! I have been reading your series “a peculiar fellowship” and I absolutely love it. It is so well written and I love the plot! Please tell me that it will be continued!

Thank you so much! I do hope to continue it at some point, however I am moving my works exclusively to Ao3, due to both low interaction on tumblr and the fact that desktop tumblr (where I publish fics from) has become increasingly difficult for me to use due to all the changes staff has been making.

I'll still be here to answer asks, but my updates will be Ao3 update links rather than posting the chapters to tumblr.

I've been quite busy doing some long-term substitute work while I work on my teaching certification, but as soon as those two things have been accomplished and wrapped up, I should have more time for writing :) Thanks for reading!

[thegreatyin]

my copy paste button HATES ME for no reason today but 6 on the duo ask meme for goose and the ‘gel

6 - Do they have any shared interests/hobbies? Do they ever do these hobbies together?

They don't actually have many shared hobbies! They're generally troublemakers together, but that's less of a hobby and more of just... something they generally do as friends and QPPs.

That being said, they do share their hobbies together. Particularly in Betel's case. Their hobby of playful sparring is Rigel's favorite thing in the universe (because his spouse gets to beat him up)

[nebblesmakesthings]

Artfight attack of Rigel for @thegreatyin!!!

[erinmcsave]

Might be a good time to rec this book

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/34814047-no-is-not-enough

[bulletbilltime]

Ooh delicious food thank you thank you!!

I definitely adore the interpretation of it being about Max idolizing Chloe; makes sense since she's given everything up for Chloe's sake. I also love that imagery of her being Chloe's jailor since she's keeping her alive so she can save her.

Love the part about Max loving Rachel bc of what she means to Chloe. Even the amberfield is tainted with pricefield lmaoo

(Also yeah I assumed spiracle was about spirals too lowkey dfhdskjhjds That's a cool fact tho, didn't know what spiracles were and yeah that actually kinda fits Chloe in a way!)

My own interpretation of the song is basically about Rachel. Looking at Max and just wanting to know every little single part of that strange, unusual thing that fell into her life and threw it all out of order. The lines about "wanting the parts that she only shows to mirrors" are just so deeply Rachel coded, and it's absolutely what motivated her to take her journal.

She sees herself as Max's jailor bc her obsession with the mystery means she has no intention of letting Max leave, and she's gonna do everything to keep her still while she puzzles her out. But she also loves her bc she wants to help her, to make her better, to take off the weight of the world that she clearly keeps on her shoulders.

And then "Your hands on my insides, your fingertips crawling" could be Rachel almost yearning for Max, strange aberration that she is, to dig into her in the same way she does with Max. Perhaps being tired of putting up masks with everyone, even sometimes Chloe to a degree. And maybe Max does. Since she knows things about her that don't make any sense.

That sentiment could also extend to Chloe tbh; "I love you butterfly I love you sailor" could be her extending that desire of knowing fully to both Chloe and Max. Max who has raging ocean waves behind her eyes. Chloe who yearns to be free and fly away from this town. The sailor and the butterfly.

One part I'm not sure I fully understand tho and would love to hear you elaborate on: Rachel's "i want to see the depth of your sickness; i want you to hold it to my throat like the weapon you've made it into". Like, I interpret it similarly to the fingertips line where she wants to be dug into like she does with Max, but it has a much more self-destructive angle that I don't think I've really seen with your take of Rachel so far? It could make sense given how she feels she's betrayed Chloe in the past though and wants someone to hold her to the fire she's made. Or maybe she wants Max to be mad at HER for what she's done.

Also I started getting into the namesake song of polluted marrow (Spiracle by Flower Face) and it's so good... I wanna give you the green light to ramble about how you think this song relates to the fic/the characters/etc bc I'm very curious to hear how it inspired you 😊

[cracks knuckles] Okay so,

for starters this AU is kinda old. i think i started toying w the general idea in 2016ish, and the want to write it got hardcore resurrected when i decided to watch an lis1 playthrough for the first time in fucking ages last year. i happened to find Spiracle recently after finishing up so there was already like a 60% chance i'd start associating it w lis through just that, but then i was smacked in the face specifically by this last line

so hard that i was immediately like Oh God I Need To Write That Timelooper Max AU Right The Fuck Now. (like seriously. "i want you butterfly, i want you sailor." what am i supposed to Do after hearing that if not wail over pricefield)

as a whole for me the song is about The Devotion (tm) and how Max loves every last little part of Chloe, good or bad, for better or worse, so goddamn much that she's willing to put herself through all this fucking bullshit several times over. Yearning On A Cosmic Scale kind of vibes.

but then after a few listens i Realized. that some of these lines are really good for Rachel + the admittedly unhinged amberfield dynamic i have brewing. imo Max is definitely not immune to the whole putting the idea of Rachel on a pedestal problem, but she does it Different than everyone else bc her image of Rachel is informed mostly by how important she was to Chloe. which is to say i read some of these lines in an "and i want you, too. i want every part of her and you're a part of her," sort of way.

also this one line is very Max @ both of them

and to bring it back to that last bit again, i feel like the butterfly/sailor line is pretty self-explanatory but "i am your lover, and i am your jailor," to me is the crux of all those conflicting gnarly gay timelooper feelings. no one loves you like me, no one hurts you like me. i'm saving us, i'm keeping us trapped here. i'm the one who pulls you from your grave, i'm the one who throws the first shovel of dirt onto your coffin. i'm your lover, i'm your jailor.

also! even the title easily lends itself to lis imagery bc A) english is stupid and there are too many words that look the damn same so i think of spirals every time i see it. and more concretely, B) spiracles are little holes in an insect's body that they use to get oxygen and ofc,, both butterflies And the chrysalis itself have them. i'm mentally unwell about this actually. truly i wasn't aware i could be emotionally damaged by looking up caterpillar facts but that's what writing does to you i guess.

and lastly i picked out 'polluted marrow' as a title for the whole AU because

could be Any Of Them.

for Max it's "i'll still want you if you're nothing; i'll still want you if your insides are rotting." for Chloe it's "i want to know what's hurting you; i want to take it away." for Rachel it's "i want to see the depth of your sickness; i want you to hold it to my throat like the weapon you've made it into."

[worldrevoked]

okay using notebookml and giving it both communist essays and apf makes it say interesting stuff sometimes. like this is a dogshit podcast generator and it's trained on liberalism, but it's funny sometimes. i want to see the socialist ai that china is making...

[milfstalin]

idk i guess i could just name it after the comic which i normally do when i bring them up i.e. "russia wr" to distinguish from russia hetalia or russia countryhumans or russia irl, but the comic is a crossover so there's sburb and stuff that doesn't really gel with having a "pure"/no-sburb au which is also a context that i have sometimes. of course i could also call it countryhetalias but that shares an acronym with countryhumans so no. or i could just call it countryclays since that is a play on countryballs but replace balls with clays since. well they arent humans and they arent balls they're clays. also i think #cc collides with a bunch of other stuff. other name ideas is stagverse, named after me of course, or anthropolitical fiction ( @mithrifer i think you said it first) which is ap for short. anthropol. anpol. okay anpol isnt a name that collides with anything else. or anpolfic. get really into the contractions. apfic? what's a good tag that isn't a pain to tag on mobile. #apf which is scarily close to axis powers hetalia #aph but f is one letter separated anyways the G is there. or i just tag it #ap instead. wait #ap is also american psycho. and #apf doesnt appear to collide with any fandoms.

[jmflowers]

Please dedicate to @lacallemojada

For APF, who underestimates how cute I can make disgusting things. And for Ducks, who humoured me and my ridiculous ideas.

Solemates

One of her socks goes missing the day after she wins gold.

Maya doesn’t notice right away, not until she’s packing her bags to leave the athlete’s village. Not until there’s only one sweaty, blood-covered sock in her pile of dirty clothes.

She looks for it, at first, because she isn’t really thinking about that. Isn’t thinking about anything except how her father probably wants to frame them, wants to hang them above the mantle in the living room as a testament to what a Bishop is capable of.

What a Bishop can win.

What a Bishop can overcome.

She gives up, after a while, when it’s clear there’s no sock to be found. Instead, she shoves her sports bras and her leggings and her training gear into her duffel bag, ignoring the sharp stench of sweat laced into the fabric.

Ignoring the sharp pinch of her ankle in the bandage wrapped around it.

When she steps out of her room for the last time, gold medal hanging heavily around her neck, she doesn’t look back. Doesn’t think too hard about the missing sock.

Doesn’t think at all about dropping the other one in the trash.

~

Carina’s living in Milan when it arrives.

Actually, living in is a generous term. She’s more gravitating, lugging herself between hotel rooms and friends’ couches with only a suitcase to her name.

It hurts too much to put down roots, still.

And she’s not really thinking about what anything means, when it shows up on the bathroom floor. Isn’t thinking anything beyond the grief sticking in her bones.

Or maybe that she should really find better accommodations if the cleaning staff would miss a disgusting, sweaty, bloody sock on the bathroom floor.

But then it does come rushing back, all at once. Her mother’s voice, soft and familiar and comforting, weaving a tale of soulmates and eternity and meant to be.

She isn’t expecting it, when it arrives. Has given up expecting that such a thing is even meant for someone such as her. But she doesn’t deny it, when it appears.

It’s too hard to ignore when it smells so bad.  

~

Her bra goes missing a couple months later, when she’s settled back into the spare room at Gabriella’s. And that Carina does notice right away, because she’d washed it and hung it in the bathroom with the intention of wearing it and the whole draw of moving back in with Gabri is that she doesn’t touch her stuff and –

Gabriella stares at her like she has grown an extra head when she asks. “Why would I take your bra?” she mutters, strolling past into the kitchen, “It wouldn’t fit me.”

She remembers again, then; remembers the sock wrapped in a plastic bag to hide its smell, shoved into the very bottom of her suitcase. It feels unfair, just a little, to know that someone, somewhere in the world, has gotten her nice bra and in return she’s received their disgusting sock.

Their bloody, sweaty, stinky sock.

At least her bra was clean.

~

Maya finds it in her pack while she’s sorting through her things on a hostel bed in Nepal.

She pales instantly, shoving it into the open pocket to hide it from her bunk mate. Shakti has been too intrigued by everything Maya has done in the last few days they’ve been together – from brushing her hair to doing sit ups on the floor.

Shakti doesn’t need to see the rather lacey bralette that’s somehow magically appeared in Maya’s pack.

Unless Shakti is the one…

No, Maya thinks instantly, there’s no way. It must’ve been one of the other girls, one of the other many people she’s crossed paths with in the last week of her travels.

A funny joke.

The fabric is soft beneath her fingers, despite the lace. Warm, almost.

And tiny; far too small to fit her own breasts.

She keeps it without much more thought, wondering if maybe she’ll cross paths with the girl who put it there. Wondering if maybe she’ll get a bit of practice removing it from the body it belongs to.

She doesn’t think about what the appearance of an undergarment is supposed to mean.

~

Andy gushes about it years later, grinning over a shot glass on her front porch.

She’d found her sock as a child, tucked beneath the covers of her bed. She thinks it belongs to Ryan, Maya knows, thinks the flirty glances they’ve been sharing across the front lawns of their parents’ houses mean they’re meant to be.

It all sounds ridiculous to Maya, though. Too far-fetched to be true.

Even if Vic has found one, too. An undershirt, stained with sweat, buried in the bottom of her gym bag while she was at the academy.  

“I bet that means he’s in really good shape,” Andy suggests, smirking salaciously.

“What about you, Bishop?” Vic asks, handing over another shot of vodka.

Maya laughs, throwing it back quickly, drinking away the memory of soft lace beneath her fingers. “Monogamy is for the weak,” she declares loudly, eyes shifting to Andy’s face and the sharp fall of her smile. “Or the very, very dedicated.”

“Not quite monogamy,” Vic challenges, glancing off towards the approaching form of Ryan.

“Yeah,” Andy whispers, “It’s soulmates.”

~

She doesn’t think about it, when Maya’s warm hand slides into her own, a drink and a story hovering between them. Doesn’t think about it when they talk on the phone, or over dinner, or beneath the covers of Maya’s bed.

Carina doesn’t even think about it when Maya shows her the gold medal for the first time, her fingers soft and her kisses softer.

In fact, she forgets about it at all until she shoves her hand into the bottom drawer of her dresser, searching for the last of her things to pack, and lands on the plastic bag instead.

She knows what’s inside without looking. Remembers the sweat stains and the blood and the smell. It’s ridiculous, to have hauled it along with her for all these years.

Ridiculous, that she drops it into the box alongside the rest of her clothes, destined for their new home with Maya.

~

Carina is very good at packing, Maya finds, but less so at unpacking.

Her boxes of things litter every surface of their newly-shared apartment, the only indication of Carina’s organization the carefully written labels stating that they are, at least, in the right rooms. Like the box of toiletries in the corner of the bathroom.

Or the one that’s taken up residence on top of the dresser instead of in it.

Maya starts there, carefully extracting articles of clothing Carina has deemed okay to be folded. Her other things – the nicer things – have already been hung safely in the bedroom closet, Maya’s own collection of rarely-worn dresses and jackets relegated down the hall to the living room.

She stops when she reaches the bottom, confused by the plastic bag nestled amidst Carina’s intimates. It smells a bit, even though it’s been carefully wrapped up, completely out of place within the gentle scent of Carina’s laundry detergent.

“Carina?” she calls before she can think better of it, before she can even really register what it might be, “Is this yours?”

“Oh,” Carina murmurs when she appears in the doorway, a spatula still in her hands. She lowers it slowly, considering.

“Is this yours?” Maya asks again.

Carina frowns. “Sort of,” she nods, “It’s my… sock.”

“Oh,” Maya repeats, glancing down at it in her hands, “Oh.”

“You can throw it out,” Carina suggests, turning back towards the kitchen, “I don’t need it.”

“Hey, wait,” Maya calls after her, following, still clutching the offending object tightly. “How long have you had this?”

Carina shrugs, suddenly indifferent as she resumes unpacking her kitchen boxes, carefully arranging items in drawers. She’s good at it, now that she’s trying to deflect.

“You don’t even want to open it?” Maya offers. “One last time?”

Carina shakes her head. “I don’t need to.” She looks up, smiling softly, effortlessly yanking the breath from Maya’s lungs when she promises, “I love you, Maya.”

“Besides,” she adds on as an afterthought, waving her hand between them as though dismissing it, “It’s stinky and sweaty and covered with blood. I should’ve thrown it out years ago.”

“Now I have to see it,” Maya laughs, grabbing hold of Carina’s wrist to pull her closer.

“It doesn’t change anything,” Carina argues, tipping into Maya’s arms, “I am still choosing you, bambina.”

“But what if we’re sole mates,” Maya chuckles anyways, teasing even as Carina’s words send a flood of butterflies through her stomach. “What if it’s my sock inside this bag?”

“If it is,” Carina whispers, nuzzling closer, “I’d like my own sock drawer, because yours are very gross.”

She unwraps it slowly, both of them recoiling slightly as the years-old sweat reaches their noses. It’s plain looking, beneath the blood stains; simple.

Except for the Team USA logo on the toes.

“Oh,” Maya mumbles.

She steps away, slowly at first and then quickly, her feet picking up speed as her mind does. She dashes towards the living room closet, reaching on her tiptoes for the box tucked into a corner on the shelf.

She should’ve known, she thinks. Should’ve considered, that first night. The first time she pulled lace up and away from Carina’s body. The first time Carina’s array of bras appeared along the top of the shower door, hung to dry.

The first time her fingers felt the warmth of soft fabric beneath them.

Maya opens the box slowly, uncovering the bralette she’s kept for all these years.

“Oh,” Carina echoes when she turns. “Oh.”

“My sock,” Maya whispers, stumbling back across the room to Carina’s side, feeling the pull of her like gravity. “My Olympic Gold Medal sock.”

“Now I definitely want my own drawer,” Carina declares, dipping low to capture Maya’s mouth with her own, ��And my favourite bra back.”

[anna-neko]

aight @sol-draws-sometimes, I'm just gonna slap a bunch of words here before forget We gonna be keyboard smashing back and forth a bit

so yeah.. Jackrum is most complex on the genre spectrum, every nuance and then some

A big strong farm girl went to war; she buried that metaphorical part of herself with William's corpse but clearly she didn't remain in the Army because of big He ambitions. She saw other girls (many, obv far too many) scrambling to enlist for So Many Desperate Reasons & decided to stay in his position to help them. Just like all the rest (all the girls in the squad) she isn't here for reason as basic as "i wanna be a guy" like... not in that way

but but but but, remember all those times Sarge says "upon my oath, I am not a swearing man" (or violent, or shouty, or other adjective) Technically always a true line, innit.

If pressed to fill out a form post-war sarge would probly scribble down "Abomination Unto Nuggan" and leave it at that

ALSO WHILE IM HERE isn't it interesting how Shufti is other side of that coin!??!?! So similar yet opposite to Jackrum Girl followed guy into war, guy she thought loved her..... and it turned out terrible, but at least in her case she could proudly leave the Army, have a child, get a widow's pension and even found another guy who def seems to care about her

ANYWAY, while my book [HarperCollins ebook] does keep the final Sarge kitchen line with the "around her", when Polly is meeting new potential recruits she does say "Oh, you can join as men if you want. You get better swearwords" ... maybe it was just your audiobook gettin a bit too snip-happy with the abridging?

Because the rest of the pronouns game was on point! Especially keeping it "he" with Maladict after everyone else admits to being girls BUT MAL TECHNICALLY HASN'T YET (and won't until what, almost the end??? when they've met Angua!! Pages and pages after it's been obvious)

Lofty & Tonker have no use for men, clearly. but also... like... after the Magdalene Laundry Bad Girls School.... i may be in minority here, dont see them as gay either. Clutching at each other as found-family sisters, absolutely! Manic violent revenge-and-retribution seeking sisters

ditto for Wazzer. She's such a good pious girl, she's got too much of the Dutchess in her head to notice anything else

and now that this is done and you'd like to find ALL the literary in-jokes: https://www.lspace.org/books/apf/monstrous-regiment.html Stuff like very specific War references, or Songs parodies

All the lil oral puns & footnotes is why Sir pTerry in audiobook format is most impossible for me. I need to be flipping pages following all those lil asterisks (and repeating a line to myself for ages trying to figure out WTF the joke is. "the day is A Great Big Fish" haunted me for months!!)

PS: what font changes?

[theomenroom]

AO3 tag game from @incomprehensiblelentils over a month ago (sorry lol)

How many works do you have on AO3? An even dozen

What’s your total AO3 word count? 19,787

What fandoms do you write for? Life is Strange and Mass Effect are my number 1 and number 2

What are your top 5 fics by kudos? Chenrich prompt fill, Pricefield metaphor-peeled-back titled with the single best sentence I've ever written, Heavy Max Angst, Normandy Card Game Night ft Shiara, and APF featuring Rachel claiming to be straight

Do you respond to comments? Generally, yes

What is the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending? Probably The Top Five People Rachel Amber Hates, although my aforementioned heavy Max angst fic is similarly angsty it just front-loads it. The only reason I haven't tried to do something similarly angsty about Chloe is because the game already did that when she tries to convince Max to use the photo at the lighthouse

What’s the fic you wrote with the happiest ending? It's gonna be one of A Love Like Theirs or Maybe the Real Storm Was the Friends We Made Along the Way. The stuff I write is more vignettes than complete stories, but they end on high notes.

Do you get hate on fics? So far no

Do you write smut? If so, what kind? Nothing I've felt good enough about to publish. F/F, of course.

Do you write crossovers? What’s the craziest one you’ve written? Write them? not yet. Plan them in detail? oh hell yeah I have this epic Mass Effect/BattleTech crossover in my head

Have you ever had a fic stolen? Nope

Have you ever had a fic translated? Not yet

Have you ever co-written a fic before? Nope, but I might be open to

What’s a WIP you want to finish but doubt you ever will? I swear someday I'll return to my alt timeline chasefield/pricefield poly fic; I know what needs to happen in it.

What are your writing strengths? I have a clear vision in my mind's eye about how things happen. I also put a lot of effort into my character voices.

What are your writing weaknesses? My entire posted fic history is trying to get better at characterization and emotions lol

Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language in fic? Haven't tried it. I'd definitely want to get that beta'd if not cowritten by someone who speaks the language natively.

First fandom you wrote for? Aaaages ago I wrote for FF8. I also used star wars characters in things I wrote when I was, like, four, does that count?

Favorite fic you’ve written? Why not ask me my favorite child while you're at it?

Anyway I've been letting this sit wayyyy too long so I'm not gonna tag anyone in particular; if you want to do this pretend I tagged you lol

[kotodama-catalogue]

i've been on a linux adventure recently —

one day i woke up and thought, "today is the day", and began working through the linux from scratch handbook. it turns out that most people do not in fact do this on bare metal because compiling everything yourself and just punting on package management does not provide for a workable system. at least, not as a daily driver. (this guy tried writing a debian from scratch where step 1 is getting apt going, but apparently it is not just outdated, but incorrect even at the version specified).

you're supposed to just do this in a virtual machine and treat it like a learning exercise. i did not do this, and spent twelve hours compiling all the packages and walking circular dependency trees basically trying to slowly divorce yourself from the host system's toolchain.

in the process it's very clear how "down in the dirt" linux as a whole is; nothing is made for each other, all the packages are just picked up from here and there, sometimes the maintainer doesn't update their domain and pkg-conf is just Gone so you have to dig it out of the gentoo repo. i kind of love it. it feels organic, it feels natural. of course this emerged. of course it all kinda works, of course it all fails easily.

it's a lot like the human body. that is, say you have a really nicely integrated distro. they probably have like fifty different upstreams, and teams that are making extensions or monkey patching the upstream as they go to slowly hone these disparate things into stuff that vaguely resembles each other. you introduce redundancies and reliability checks. you try to migrate to stuff that will enforce this (Ubuntu enforces Wayland by default; Fedora defaults you to btrfs; downstream distributions then in turn undo some of these like how Pop! OS goes back to X11).

you keep reinforcing against common failures with subsequent processes that can watch for those failures and prevent them, provide fallbacks, self-heal if possible.

and then in turn for everything else you isolate its ability to even impact the core system. ideally you're immutable — say, vanilla os, or some people use nix or fedora silverblue. but most of the time there's just a hybrid approach where we sandbox as much as we can. steam os completely replaces the OS every update and keeps the home folder. chromebooks do likewise. macos has been doing this since i think el capitan? and apfs is intended to have a less hacked-in way of providing for a core system partition that nothing else can touch.

that whole thing is really beautiful, i think — have BSDs replicated this? i don't know; i have never used one very seriously. it felt like they intended to start from scratch with a monolithic basis, but it feels like i'm in the early 2000s again when i try to debug a bsd system and look for documentation.

anyway, so after twelve hours i fumbled a very basic thing. that is, i assumed, why not? i will use UEFI, but i had already partitioned as if i was doing an MBR. so i tried to add a UEFI partition and inadvertently, in trying to unmount and safely perform this operation, rebooted into a system that was freaking out because there was no UEFI partition. it kept reboot cycling into a wifi recovery agent and occasionally realising there was a USB attached.

i moved to arch and performed the entire install in like less than an hour. but damn it, now i'm frustrated. i wanted to see this through. today i decided to move to fedora to better have an overarching experience for this specific hardware (the auto-rotation and on screen keyboard support is amazing on gnome 44) and then try to throw all this into a Box and do it again. but given so much of this was tedious, i would probably just ... automate it. but aren't we getting too close to just a distro?

[ariwritessometimes]

I came across A Peculiar Fellowship and it is amazing! I am now reading other of your works! I love your it so much ♡

Thank you so much! I hope to be able to put out a new part soon :)

[thegreatyin]

the duality of his radiance general sirius majoris

[anoriginalderivative]

I DID IT! i followed a recipe close enough that i can share it with people. i’m extremely satisfied with how this came out!

Vegan Rhubarb Cake

it’s a yellow cake that i added rhubarb to! i’ll put the recipe information in the read more!

so i used this recipe and adjusted it to be vegan

1/2 cup of vegan butter alternative (i used melt butter sticks, but you could probably use shortening or any other vegan butter)

1 1/2 cups of sugar (plus a little extra for garnish)

~1 cup of aquafaba (the night before you make this cake make something with canned chickpeas and save the bean water, that’s aquafaba! it’s a 1 to 1 substitute i can’t believe how long i was throwing out aquafaba)

2 1/4 cup apf

lil bit of salt

3 1/3 teaspoons of baking powder

1 1/4 cup unsweetened plain soy milk (this is what i used, you could probably use a sweetened milk alternative, i just don’t like baking with flavored milk)

lil bit of vanilla

about two cups of rhubarb

other than substituting some ingredients i followed the recipe and it turned out really good! i will say, the consistency of the mixture after you add the butter, sugar, and aquafaba is a little funky (aqueous) but once you add the rest of the ingredients the batter looks like any other cake batter you’ve ever seen.

after you’ve got your yellow cake in the greased and floured cake pan, sprinkle the rhubarb over the top (or make shapes and stuff! don’t let me tell you how to express yourself!) and then stick it in the oven.

i found that my cakes (i split the batter between two ~9in pyrex baking dishes) took a little over 35 minutes in the oven, which is a little longer than what the recipe calls for, so it’s possible that had something to do with the substitutions ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

immediately after taking the cakes out i sprinkled them with a little sugar (because it’s pretty)

the recipe recommends removing the cakes from the pan after cooling. i don’t think i’ll be able to get mine out, even after greasing and flouring the pan, so i would recommend using parchment paper on the bottom if you really want to take the cakes out of whatever you bake them in.

[doomedandstoned]

UK Sludge Duo WALL Drop Biting Single Ahead of Debut Full-Length

~Doomed & Stoned Debuts~

By Billy Goate

Heavy instrumental two-piece WALL are back, featuring Desert Storm members and brothers Ryan & Elliot Cole.

Today, we reveal the first single "Masking My Contempt" from the upcoming record 'Brick by Brick' (2024), which will be their first full-length and has been a couple years in the making following a pair of well-received EPs.

Says drummer Elliot Cole:

The song "Masking My Contempt" starts with a sample from an amusing scene that is taken from a film we like called American Beauty. The scene is where Lester Burnham blackmails his boss for over a year's salary. We have said for years that it would make a cool intro to a song, and to kick in with a big groovy riff after it.

The title of the song is clearly taken from the sample, and the rest of the track was built around that first riff. "Masking my Contempt" switches between a 6/8 and 4/4 time signature. There are only three riffs in the whole song, and some bluesy slide guitar overdubbed. It's short and sweet and what we set out to achieve with this first single.

The song opens strong with funky metal edge ala Rage Against The Machine, featuring buzzsaw guitar tone, grungy interludes, and an injection of sassy Southern blues guitar. The low-end really rumbles, too. It'll shake the ground you stand on. "Masking My Contempt" is all too short at 2:26, but nonetheless sweet. It'll leave you with a good feel for Wall's dynamo, and wanting more.

Wall's new album Brick By Brick (13 tracks in all) releases on August 30th via APF Records and will feature a cover of "Electric Funeral" by Black Sabbath and Karma To Burn's "Nineteen." See the guys live at New Cross Inn on 08.09.24.

Give ear...

SOME BUZZ

WALL - An instrumental 2-piece heavy fucking riff machine, built brick by brick & riff by riff by twin brothers and Desert Storm members Ryan & Elliot Cole.

Released on 30th August via APF Records (Desert Storm, Video Nasties, Barbarian Hermit), their debut album ‘Brick by Brick’ is overflowing with unashamed Iommi-worshiping, instrumental, sludge/doom metal. With the band taking inspiration from the first 6 Black Sabbath albums as well as being influenced by the undisputed kings of instrumental stoner rock, the much missed Karma To Burn, drummer Elliot Cole comments on some of the other artists they were listening to at the time while writing the album:

“Torche, High on Fire, Elephant Tree, and The Sword were on heavy rotation a lot. I also was listening to a fair bit of Power Trip at the time too. But as well as the rock/metal stuff, we were listening to Godspeed You! Black Emperor and Radiohead which helped in a way with some of the more spacey & ambient sections on the album.”

Like many recent projects WALL was born during lockdown with the two brothers living together in a small flat. With both of them furloughed, this left the duo with little else to do but write music to distract themselves from the boredom of being stuck at home.

Ryan wrote riffs on an unplugged Gibson SG, whilst Elliot tapped out the drum rhythms on his lap. The first time the twins heard how the songs would sound properly was when they were in the studio tracking their initial first two EPs, as they couldn't arrange a proper rehearsal due to restrictions.

While originally starting out as a side project, WALL began to evolve into a more serious proposition following shows at Bloodstock Open Air, Desertfest London, Masters of the Riff alongside shows with Discharge, Will Haven and European dates in Germany, Czech Rep & Slovakia.

Now following these shows and two EPs on APF Records, the next step for WALL is the release of their debut album 'Brick By Brick'. Recorded at Shonk studios / Warehouse Studios - Oxford, by Jimmy 'Evil' Hetherington & mastered by Tim Turan at Turan Audio, ‘Brick By Brick’ is essential listening for any fan of slow, crushing riffs.

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[whimsicalcotton]

I feel like I've got a brand to maintain so 30 and 1 for the otp ask game

and i am maintaining my brand by once again taking the opportunity to ramble semi-coherently about apf. which is sort of like answering for three ships at once and may be cheating a little but Fuck It We Ball

1: Who most initiates PDA?

amberprice initiate most of it but specifically Rachel. Chloe will do stuff like an arm around the shoulder or hair ruffling, but Rachel's the one who usually starts the hand holding & little kisses & flirty touches (see also: dramatically draping herself over one or both of them like a cat demanding attention)

30: What is their favorite place to kiss the other? (Cheek, hand, closed eyelid, neck, nose, etc.)

Chloe likes to kiss Rachel on her scarred arm (if she's feeling especially sappy, which happens far more often than she would ever admit) or on the star tattoo/inner wrist, and she likes to kiss Max on the nose/cheeks bc those freckles Do Things to her.

Rachel likes to kiss Chloe on the throat/neck bc she's gay af and hella dramatic and kind of gets a power trip on feeling Chloe's pulse under her teeth, and she likes to kiss Max on the cheek because even though it's such a small innocent gesture Max always goes tomato red and starts stammering and blushing a bunch and Rachel never gets enough of it.

Max likes to kiss them both on the hands/fingers (something something symbol of devotion something something brave little knight and her two adoring princesses) but i think she'd also be a fan of giving back/shoulder kisses should the opportunity ever arise