#Brassy-breasted

[alonglistofbirds]

[1641/10977] Brassy-breasted tanager - Tangara desmaresti

Order: Passeriformes Suborder: Passeri Superfamily: Emberizoidea Family: Thraupidae (tanagers)

Photo credit: Andres Vasquez Noboa via Macaulay Library

[birdblues]

Brassy-breasted Tanager

[atamagaitai]

brassy-breasted tanager (Tangara desmaresti) by Luiz Moura

[herpsandbirds]

Brassy-breasted Tanager (Tangara desmaresti), family Thraupidae, order Passeriformes, Sítio Virtuoso Birdwatching, Brazil

photograph by Aisse Gaertner

[mega-ringsandthings-world]

Smoker and Hina having some fun (or not) in their police surveillance state in the loguetown AU; "Now," Hina says. "Pick Hina up." Smoker is tempted to ignore her, but it's too late for that. He drops his lighter into his breast pocket and plants his hand on the small of her back, dipping at the knees to take hold of her legs with the other hand. Then she's up in his arms, her coat precariously dangling off her shoulders. Smoker highly doubts the entire sequence of motion looks spontaneous from any angle, but there's nothing to do but to try and sell it.   "Smile." Hina says as she slides her arm around his neck, her fingers gliding over his collar, lit cigarette pinned between them. Smoker knows she's dropping ash onto the fur.  He doesn't. Smile. "Hina says smile," Hina hisses. "How about I drop Hina on Hina's ass?" Smoker hisses back, and adjusts her weight in a way that threatens to do just that. She shows him her teeth, glossy and clenched, a smile to anyone else who's looking, but a warning to him. "Hina says to fucking smile." Smoker is about to give in and do it, but just then the smoke from her cigarette curls past his face, flooding his nose with its vivid chemical smell - vanilla strawberry whatever the fuck - and he grimaces viciously instead. "Fuck, put that out. Shit's fuckin' nasty." Hina does as she's told, before he can stop her she's twisting her hand up and stubbing the cherry firmly against the underside of his jaw. It burns, but Smoker lets it sear into his skin for a few brilliant red-hot seconds just to spite her before collapsing his face into smoke, letting the pain dissipate into the air. "Smo-ker!" Hina enunciates tightly, flapping her hand though the fog where his eyes should be, making his vision swirl and spin. "Behave!" Smoker re-forms his face and snaps his teeth at her fingers, narrowly avoiding biting down on the blackened cherry. Hina drops her hand back against his collar, lips twisting down, covering her teeth for a moment.

"Bitch," she mutters. Oh, he's actually managed to piss her off, has he? Elated, Smoker grins at her before he remembers he shouldn't, and somewhere in the distance a flashbulb cracks, light sparking bright and cheery in the corner of his eye. Fucking vultures. Hina looks suddenly smug. "The noon," she says, and shows even more of her teeth, making a sound deep in her throat that drowns out a round of successive flashbulb cracks. Smoker hoists her up in his arms to keep her coat from dragging and turns on his heel, giving the cameras his back. "Better bloody fuckin' hope we don't."  They make the noon news and the front page of the fucking rag. Hina delivers the paper to Smoker's office personally, heels clacking victoriously all the way up to his desk. She holds out the paper at him, all crisp and straight, still smelling vaguely like hot ink. When Smoker doesn't take it, she drops it onto his desk, right on top of the cool dregs of his morning coffee and Tashigi's performance evaluation sheets. Smoker doesn't look at it. "Look," Hina says. Smoker looks. And nearly splits his cigars open on his teeth at the headline. "The fuck?" Smoker mutters around a mouthful of tobacco flakes, and grabs up the paper to scan the blurb at the bottom. It's no better than the headline. "The news too. Turn it on," Hina says, jabbing the tip of her cigarette at his deadened screen. When he doesn't do that either, she reaches one smoking hand down and flicks it on before he can stop her. "LEVITY IN LOGUETOWN?"  a brassy reporter's voice blares out at Smoker from over the image of himself sweeping Hina into his arms.  "Fuck." Smoker says, paper forgotten. At least it's just a picture, and a rather blurry one at that. Those rats have gotten better and better at sneaking recording snails-  "Camaraderie between comrades? Or something more? Early today, Captain-Commander Smoker was seen leaving his office with Captain Hina in tow. While this double appearance marks the start of long-anticipated routine inspections, there could indeed be something more going on. Captain Smoker is notorious for being no-nonsense, but here he looks like he's set loose more than a little-" The image comes alive, flashing Hina's toothy scowl and his own brief grin at him.  Smokers pulls hard on his cigars. Above him, Hina laughs in her throat. "Hina told you." "Hina's an asshole," Smoker retorts flatly, watching himself carry her off down the stairs. The reporter's voice drones on. "-and while a pleasant surprise for us, it might not be so surprising at all. These two captains have been thick as thieves, if you'll pardon the expression, ever since their academy days, and as of late, have been-" "Fuck," Smoker says again for good measure. "Hina-," Hina says, leaning forward to ash her cigarette out on the clean clay of his latest ashtray, "-thinks that's more than an adequate distraction." Damn her, she's having too much fun with this. With him. The fact that it's entirely his fault notwithstanding.

[bitterkarella]

Midnight Pals: Barbarian

Brian Keene: hey guys we’re going to do a collection of barbarian horror Robert E Howard: hang on thar a dang second pardna Howard: how y’all gonna do that? Keene: well I think Keene: it’ll go a little something Keene: like this…

[wasteland expanse] Brian Keene: [in loincloth] I am Brian Keene: brian the barbarian Keene: greatest warrior on all krull Keene: hark! Who is this brassy spitfire who approaches? Mary SanGiovanni: [in chainmail bikini]

SanGiovanni: I am Mary, the warrior queen of SanGiovanni Keene: A woman? A woman warrior? Surely a jest! Hailey Piper: do not speak to the warrior queen thus, vile cur! SanGiovanni: conserve your strength, huntress! SanGiovanni: we shall need it in time to breast boobily across the steppes Keene: constrain your yapping dog, wench! Your handmaiden forgets her place Piper: I am no mere handmaiden! Piper: I am Hailey the huntress Piper: I thrill to the hunt! Piper: but also

Keene: what ho! A warrior approaches! Joe Lansdale: greetings, fellow wanderers Lansdale: I am Joe of Lansdale Lansdale: My sword is big like the wide open expanses of the Texas sky Lansdale: and my strength as persistent as the memory of the alamo

Lansdale: I challenge you, brian the barbarian Keene: I accept, joe of Lansdale, for my arm is strong and my blade is sharp Lansdale: you speak much, whelp, but let’s see how you fight [they fight] Lansdale: DON’T Lansdale: MESS Lansdale: WITH Lansdale: TEXAS!!!

Stephen Graham Jones: [wearing elk skull mask] halt travelers Jones: you dare cross the domain of Stephen of Graham of Jones? Jones: to proceed, you must best me in a contest of strength and skill Keene: name the game, gatekeeper! Jones: basketball Keene:

Keene: augh! I am injured! Keene: Look away, wench! None may witness my manly tears! Mary SanGiovanni: But that wound requires healing salve, you brashly impulsive warrior!

Brian Keene: so what did you think of that? Barker: sounds like a lot of nerd shit Robert Howard: now hold on there pardna Howard: I plum enjoyed that Howard: specially the part about Texas Howard: I like the cut of this Lansdale feller’s gib

[the-storytellers-seer]

First Lines Tag

I wandered away for a bit, sorry about that! I've been working hard to counteract all the mostly unpaid medical leave time I had to take. Big oof there. Anyhow! I saw that both @viss-and-pinegar and @rainpebble3 tagged me in this. While I haven't been writing near as much as I ought I do have enough first lines. I'll use all unpublished WIPs.

Who hasn't been tagged? I think I'm getting to this late. If you want me to tag you, let me know!

1 - A Matter of Diplomacy (Working Title) - Unpublished, third planned story that will occur after Heirs of the Throne

Taleine Sero stared down at the body of Ambassador Elenwen with a mixture of relief, terror, and glee. The deceased, blonde, High Elf stared sightlessly up at the ceiling. Her final expression one of fear, now frozen as her death mask.

Tal belated realized she was shaking. Her entire body vibrated like some demented Dwemer invention. The quiet snick of the door opening was as loud as a dragon roar even past the blood rushing in her ears. Tal jumped about a foot in the air.

The figure in the doorway was tall and garbed in pristine Thalmor robes. It took them all of a heartbeat to survey the situation. Tal glanced up guiltily into the shocked face of Commander Ondolemar who quickly shut the door behind him. They locked eyes: his a furious greenish golden to her terrified stormy grey.

“I swear it wasn’t me.” Tal whispered in a small, breathy voice that sounded nothing like her own normal brassy tone.

2 - Dov (Working Title) - Unpublished, fifth planned story in the "series".

Kieva sat in the remains of Brother Borri’s sixty-year mead stash and let loose a great echoing belch that was similar in timbre to a dragon’s roar. It was followed by a rather high-pitched giggle. Around her, the world passed by in a dreamy haze. She was happy or damn near close to it. Happier than she’d been in months. Or at least happier than she’d be without the alcohol’s blessed numbing effects.

Perched upon a throne made of boxes and dirty laundry, she was the queen of all she surveyed. This primarily consisted of empty shelves and even emptier bottles, but at least they were subjects that didn’t expect anything of her. They didn’t look at her and see her father’s features or assume she would have her mother’s grace. And they wouldn’t be disappointed when they found nothing of the dynasty they expected to see in her behavior.

In a family of legends, Kieva Stormcrown was a failure.

3 - Untitled - Unpublished: a random prompt challenge with two OCs

The man lying before her was dying. Although Runa was in no way a healer, she’d seen enough death in her time as a mercenary and the sickly-sweet smell of decay was unmistakable. Runa sucked in her lower lip and considered just passing by and letting the gods decide. Attempting to drag the man back from death’s door would be vastly more painful than letting him slip away and there was no guarantee her attempts would even be successful. Besides all that, he was an Imperial soldier and while she didn’t expressly support Ulfric Stormcloak’s opinions, she preferred not to let the Dominion via their puppet Imperial Army gain a foothold in her home.

She might have walked on then, but the man groaned and squinted up at her. His eyes were the blue of the Winter sky, and they fought past the pain to focus on her. She felt him take her measure. Saw him catalogue her worn, fur trimmed armor, braided blonde tresses, and amulet of Talos displayed proudly on her breast. He tried to wet his chapped dry lips, failed, but croaked out, “Please…help.”

“Molag’s balls.” She swore.

She couldn’t just leave him now. She bent down and began to tug him off the road and into the woods. She didn’t mean to tug him through every sticker bush from the road to the clearing, but the man was damned heavy and if he’d wanted to avoid bushes, he ought to have picked a different savior or collapsed near a better section of forest.

[subqtaneoussmut]

The Tea Girl's Gambit, Chapter Five

My legs were hurrying me to class but my head was a-swirl with confusion, shame and, unmistakably...envy. Not just shame at the envy, which was familiar in the way a toothache is familiar, but also shame at having been actually, actually seen committing the envy. I was reeling with the peculiar sense of having been recognized. My depths measured and plumbed and somehow known. It was terrifying. My heart was smashing frantically around like a bird trapped behind glass.

I turned down a rarely used servant’s passage, leaned against the wall and slumped down to sitting. I heaved a deep breath. I was over-reacting. There was no way that girl could actually know anything about me, right? I was fairly sure there hadn’t been any spellcraft involved. She had just looked at me.

I shook my head, bemused. Why had she looked at me? Nobody else did. People’s attention slipped off me like oil slipped off of water and I liked it that way. It was safe.

My heart was slowing down. There was no way she could have known what I was thinking when I saw her. I had never spoken my secret to another soul other than Kisma, never written it down. I knew the consequences of my yearning, even as a quiet child among the older, rougher kids of Stuhkrad.

The adults of the town hadn’t liked to talk about the small, moss-covered statues scattered in the forests and ravines around the milltown, but the older kids couldn’t gossip enough about their mingled, hybrid bodies. The town children called them kuffa. Most of them had been smashed and buried by the Imperial settlers when they’d driven out the native forest people a generation ago.

But once, exploring in the woods beyond the clear-cuts with my brother Carame and his friends, we’d found a narrow cave and slipped inside. I would have faltered, but Carame was fearless and his courage was like a drug to me. One of the boys had swiped a chemical light-stick from the Foundry. He broke it with a hiss and a sizzle of reagents mixing and the darkness flooded with brassy, white light.

I remembered the rich, earthy reds and browns and yellows of the little shrine. I remembered the little pots of unguents, the glittering quartz, the figurines and the swell of their breasts and their cocks. I remembered the older boys shouting with glee as they smashed everything and urinated on it. I remembered Carame pausing in the frenzy to turn and look at where I stood frozen against the wall, his face deep in shadow, unreadable.

I took a sharp breath and staggered to my feet, pushing down the razor-edged feeling in my throat. I was late to alchemy class.

I slipped into Advanced Principles while professor Yvell was still lecturing, my face numb and dry. I tried to concentrate but everything seemed very distant and hard to understand.

Memories continued to flood my head. The rattle of stones against brickwork around me as I ran from a gang of bullies, my whole back stinging, lungs burning. Every day, running after school. Hiding in the Foundry, a sprawling complex of workshops and labs that also contained the town’s singular, tiny, non-private library. The Foundry was Gresha’s domain, and I liked Gresha. She was a tall, stooped, squint-eyed and white-haired and gruffly kind. She gave off the smell of burnt leather and quenched iron.

Gresha was busy, because the Foundry fed the mill and the loggers with a constant supply of carefully machined new gears and cleats and plates and wheels to replace broken parts as well as chemical lights and waxes and lubricants and a hundred other things. All the same, Gresha let me read by the wood stove while she mixed powders or grumbled around in the next room, the whine of the lathe cutting on and off.

She had other staff doing piecework and delivering finished orders. Fenn had a big, calm face and limitless patience and I liked to watch his clever hands as he worked. He was mute, but he pointed carefully at each tool he used and re-positioned the light so I could see what he was doing with them. I watched him fix the boiler so many times that soon I began doing it in his stead, so he could finish his orders sooner and maybe have more time to bake a tasty treat for everyone.

Heather was a brisk, no-nonsense, ruddy-cheeked woman, Gresha’s lifelong ‘companion’, who had a sharp tongue for Gresha but a soft spot for me. She liked to rouse me from my reading nest of burlap bags by the stove to sweep or to chop onions, but always made sure I had a full belly.

The accredited town alchemist lived very handsomely in a whitestone house at the top of the hill and charged customers dearly. Gresha wasn’t officially an alchemist, had certainly never trained at a university, but she had a keen, methodical mind and she was brilliant at seeing what a thing might be able to do.

She casually nudged me towards certain books and when I came to her for more, she hmph-ed and her eyebrows, which were always growing back from being burnt off, climbed in the way they did when she tried something and it worked to her satisfaction. She asked me questions about the books—did the long-winded descriptions of how to render materials down to their basic underlying principles bore me? What about the chapter on crystalline liquids had I liked best? I found that I liked to impress her with my responses and quickly learned to see past the ways she tried to hide it.

Soon, she started dictating her notes while she was elbows deep in a project and had me scribe for her. She would look over my shoulder and poke at the page with a blunt finger and show me how, no, this is the abbreviation for sulfuric acid and that’s not how to copy a cipher correctly, try this, see? She began to check less and less often for mistakes, and I ate up the tiny signs of her satisfaction with glowing pride.

Carame had begun working in the mill and came home more and more hollow-eyed every night, ate, then slept and left again in the pre-dawn darkness. Without him to protect me, the everyday torture of school intensified and I got thrashed in the street and pelted with stones even more often. To give my bullies the slip, I began to spend more and more time at the Foundry and made fewer trips at odder hours to the shouting, crowded graybrick tenement that my older brothers and sisters and mother occupied.

My sister Kisma had started working nights at a bakery. I still risked visits to see her before her shift started and we slipped away to the roof among the flapping lines of laundry to smoke her halfpenny tobacco and giggle and watch sunset bands of pink and orange melt into the dark blue dusk. She told me about sneaking leftover dough out of work with her friends one night and stuffing it in the mouths of the vainglorious statues that lined the town square, so that all the pigeons came and ate it all and covered their strong chins and proud barrel chests with runny white streaks, so it looked, she laugh-snorted, “like they’d all been eating bird ass!”

I told her about when Gresha had set me to mixing up some bio-phosphate to dope an set of passive light emitters for the hanging walkways at the mill, I’d had some left over, and mixed the extra into the bowl of slop that Heather left at the Foundry door each night for the town’s stray cats. For a night, all the street cats of Stuhkrad had run around glowing neon blue and meowing their exasperation. Heather had such a fright she’d scolded me about it for a week.

“What! Eli! That was you?” Kisma sounded simultaneously amused and reproachful. “You’re lucky nobody started a witch-hunt. And how did you know the cats would be alright?!” She shook her head. “Maybe leave the pranks to your big sister, kid.”

My feet were hanging over the edge of the building. I kicked them, pouting. Truthfully, I wasn’t usually so daring and had only done the deed so I could impress my older sister, for once.

“I knew the cats would be alright! I did the factoring myself,” I mumbled sulkily. I knew Kisma didn’t really understand the stuff I was learning at the Foundry. But it still stung a bit, that she assumed I hadn’t known.

She raised her eyebrows at me. “You’re really smart, Eli. But you can also be really, really, really dumb, you know that?” She sighed. “Oh, I just worry about you sometimes.”

Truthfully, I was somewhat worried, too. All of my brothers were heading to the mill, or to be bargemen and cart drivers, and when I tried to imagine following them, of living that life, there was only a yawning, all-devouring blankness. I thought Gresha was training me to take her place, and at least that didn’t seem so bad. When she sat me down and told me in her gravelly voice that she was going to aim me at the Imperial merit exams, I spluttered and gaped, but in my belly a tiny circle of light opened. I could leave. I could get out.

I fed and grew that tiny light with long winter nights of obsessive reading and ciphering and memorizing tables and properties and principles until I closed my eyes to sleep and saw numbers dancing on my closed eyelids. I bent all my waking hours towards alchemy, which needed no inherited talent or gift of sorcery. I cut school and rarely went home and spent nearly all my time at the Foundry, working in the shop or studying. Lots of kids my age had already dropped out of the town school to work at the mill or on the steep slopes of the logging clear-cuts. It began to get safer for me to walk the narrow, cobbled streets without risking a beating.

Some nights, rubbing my booksore eyes, I thought guiltily of my sister Kisma sitting alone on the roof, again. But there was so, so much to do. I had seen her last week, hadn’t I? Or was that last fortnight?

And last spring, after four years of study, when the guarded wagons came to Stukrad with the merit tests locked inside, I watched them roll through the cobbled streets and up the hill biting the inside of my cheek so hard that my mouth filled with warm, metal-salty blood.

Two days later, I floated out of the testing hall, my shoulders tense and taut as lashed mill cables, my lip half-chewed through, my stomach a wreck, my eyes bloodshot, my hair a snarled bird’s nest, knowing I had demolished the test. I slept for two days on Gresha’s spare cot in one of the backrooms, waking only to piss and to drink the cold broth she’d left by my head. And cry. I hadn’t been able to cry since I was ten, but some blockage had crumbled, some rusty switch had finally slid into place inside me, and I bit Gresha’s pillow and shuddered with waves and waves of sobs that seemed to rise ceaselessly from someplace deep inside me.

Results from the exams took months to come back. In the meantime, I occupied my hands working for Gresha in the Foundry. I visited Kisma, who was getting married, and brought her a small blue dropper bottle of contraceptive—which I was ridiculously proud of, not least of all because any control by women over the reproductive power of the Democracy was frowned on by Imperial social hygienists. By teaching me how to make it, Gresha had clearly staked her trust in me. I found Carame, who was getting roaring drunk at the tavern with his mates, and brought him similar bottle but with a hangover cure in it instead. I didn’t visit Carame again.

When the results came, Heather insisted all four of us cluster around the scarred table in the kitchen before she even brought out the envelope. I tore it open, scanned it, then gasped and stumbled backwards and tripped over a chair. Heather grabbed the letter, squinted, whooped, and yanked me up and sank my head into her bosom. Gresha grunted, brought out a bottle of peach brandy and conferred upon me (when I had extracted myself from Heather) a sagacious nod. Fenn hefted a steaming, gold-crusted pie as large as wagon wheel out of the oven. I looked around at the three of them and tried to fix their faces in my memory. This is what I wanted to remember, when I thought of home. This good, glowing evening, surrounded by people who cared about me.

~ ~ ~

In the back of the lecture hall, I swallowed my emotions. My throat ached. I missed Heather, and Gresha and Fenn. Starting out at the University had been very lonely. I felt so out of place here. But hadn’t I felt so out of place in Stuhkrad, too? I woke up so many mornings full of relief that I wasn’t back there anymore, and that couldn’t be faked, right? Ididn’t think that I would ever willingly return, even though that probably made me a horrible person. I felt guilty about it, because it was ungrateful and disloyal to Gresha and Heather, Kisma and Fenn, and even Carame, wasn’t it? But when I thought of going back there, even to work with Gresha in the Foundry, I felt such a crushing suffocation. But why?

I had unpleasant memories, but so did everyone. Why did the thought of a life there, with the few and only people in the world who cared about me, fill me with a heavy and endless dread? Why did that life feel like it would be a living death?

My attention was yanked back to the lecture hall as Master Yvell finished a long, droning speech and the assembled students burst into enthusiastic applause. What was going on? Nobody applauded Yvell. Then I saw the sweep of his arm as he looked offstage and realized that he had been introducing someone.

She walked onto the lecture stage and I could only stare.

[saiyanandproud]

( Sending attempt no. 403 for this thing… An extremely late wet dream, forgive me )

You recognize your room, even in the dark. You’re pinned down on your bed by your lap by something that, judging by the slight tension within it, could crush you if it let its full weight come down on you. The mattress sags around that point, so much so that you’re pretty sure you’re being propped up by its other end as a result.

You look up. You have to crane your neck back to meet the shimmering eyes of your bedfellow. Fear pierces your stomach like a pick of ice until you’re able to make out the warped silhouette of his crest.

Neither of you expected the growth spurt that’d come along with his wish for health. His figure filled out too, apparently, and now you were doing your best not to notice how warm his body got consequently. With the hard plate of his groin pressed firmly against your clit, that was borderline impossible.

Nucleotide tilts his head ever-so-slightly as he appraises you, his arms crossed and his expression implacable. Maybe it’s just the dark, or the angle, but at the moment, Nucleotide doesn’t look like himself. What little light there is falls on his smooth features at unusually harsh angles, casting him a few shades closer toward more traditional, more rugged handsomeness. It doesn’t suit him. He looks like a stranger.

Worse, he’s practically the spitting image of his-

You push that uncomfortable thought down as a fresh one bubbles out of your hazy subconscious to replace it: did the wish change Nucleotide at all? Towering above you, hunched just slightly as to not lodge the longer half of his crest into your ceiling, pink eyes downcast and detached- this behavior is undeniably a departure from his usual back-and-forth between reverence and desperation. He looks like a demon lurking in the shadows of an old oil painting.

You don’t have much time to mull over that thought either as, with a creak of your overburdened mattress, Nucleotide finally begins to move. His hand trails up your torso to fill his lukewarm palm with your breast, and he bends down over your chest. You catch a glint of sharp teeth before his mouth closes over your other breast. He wastes no time- lavishing its sensitive skin with an overeager tongue that swirls feverishly around the head of your nipple.

You can feel his lips curl into a smile against your skin in appreciation for all the noise you’re making, and doing everything in your power to keep down to a respectable volume- less your neighbor complaint again. He backs off, now wearing a smile somewhere between content and sinister. There’s a brassy shimmer in his pupils; a predatory edge to the way he stares at you now.

Something shifts behind your head, and you realize you haven’t been resting against a pillow. The tip of Nucleotide’s tail snakes into your peripheral, and slithers around your chest while he moves back. His claws graze your skin as he takes your thighs in his hands, leaving raised pink lines to mark their path down from your hips. There’s another flash of his teeth in the dark before he sinks his face between your legs. After a few languid strokes of his tongue across your folds, he abandons all pretense and thrusts it deep inside you. You clench your jaw, you’re on the verge of a scream- and judging by how aggressive the strokes of his tongue have gotten, that’s exactly his goal.

The moment you start squirming, his tail coils around you to keep you in place. You’re getting warm, like you’re being smothered by a massive python, and its fangs are the twin blades on Nucleotide’s cheeks, pricking against your underside.

It all feels good. Amazing, even, like you’re being assaulted on all sides by a force that wants nothing more than to overload your senses with mind-numbing, all-encompassing pleasure.

But you’re horrified.

Nucleotide raises his head out from between your legs, his chin and tongue slick with a mixture of his drool and your arousal. He’s not looking at you like an eager lover high off the act of pleasing his partner. He’s looking at you like he’s a starved wolf, and you’re the petrified rabbit he’s finally cornered. His slicked tongue swipes across his lips before he grins. It’s the most unwholesome look you’ve ever seen grace his face.

For the first time, he looks exactly like the monster he dreaded being.

He crawls over you, his bulk emerging from the dark. You can’t make out the edges of his silhouette from the rest of the room. You swear he’s gotten even bigger. He’s looming over you like a giant, and he has to prop his arms against the wall to keep balance when he’s face to face with you. His unrelenting, unblinking leer is too much for you to bear, so you look down.

His cock’s splayed out over your stomach, flushed in vivid purple, thick and tapered like an alien grub. His hips shift- guiding his cock off of you and angling it toward your entrance. It’s when you feel the firm press of its head against your folds that you reach your limit, and whimper.

It’s a sound neither of you expected. When you look up, the monster at the foot of your bed is staring at you, his face the portrait of guilt. He retreats.

“ Mariko-? Are you okay? “ The light in the room shifts; moonlight filters in through the windows, and you can see everything in shades of soft blue. While definitely larger than he was when you met him, Nucleotide is the same. Thinner, softer features. Eyes bright and concerned. His hands are up, hovering and waiting for your permission to touch you again…

Anonymously send my muse a wet dream. Make them feel horny or fluster when they’re awake.

She slammed against reality with a gasp, as if emerging from deep waters. What had happened? Did she fall asleep...?

Oh. Oh Kais, that was terrible. She knew she was tired from all the recent missions, so much she had happened to doze off under Cleo's gentle caresses on a couple of times -- she just couldn't help how her body instantly relaxed when he was next to her. But falling asleep like that, while they were doing other than simply cuddling...!

She jerked up, sat on the bed, and pressed her hands against her face. That was mortifying. What if Cleo thought she didn't like him, or that she didn't like to do certain things with him, or the things he did with her....!

"No. Yes. Sorry, I..."

Shatters from the dream flashed throught her head -- or was it a nightmare? She pressed her legs together and felt like dying of shame. She could feel she was still wet. She could feel she had liked it, even if it was terrifying.

Why? She was never the kind of person to like certain fantasies, she never understood that sort of stuff. If anything, she always sort of condemned it -- the fact that someone could get aroused at the thought of risking their life by the hand of someone they loved went against all her morals of survival and healthy love, the ones she herself taught Nucleotide about when he was so lost about... Everything.

And yet...

Was it the sense of power he irradiated in that dream? The confidence of a skilled lover, someone who knew what they were doing and knew they were doing it well? The novelty of it, maybe, because Nucleotide was still so insecure about many things despite growing stronger in his self now that he was in Conton--

No. No, that wasn't it. The Nucleotide in her dream wasn't just confident -- he was feral. Wild, but with a spark of cruel lucidity that reminded her so much of...

She shook her head with violence, her body crossed by a shiver. No. She didn't even want to think about that being. Not in her bedroom, not when she was so naked and vulnerable. The mere thought of it made her sick.

She turned at Nucleotide instead, guilty of leaving him hanging while sinking in her confusion. She stretched an apologetic smile and reached for his cheek.

"Sorry. I think I was just tired. All these missions lately, and I've barely been around and..." She knitted her eyebrows, feeling even worse now that she voiced all those facts aloud. She had neglected him, and it was the last thing she ever wanted to do.

"I’m sorry, Cleo. I didn't mean to fall asleep now that we finally have some time together. I'm probably just..." She closed her eyes for a moment, and the vision of a pair of wild violet irises flashed in the darkness. "... Shattered."

She opened her eyes again, searching for his with a sudden panic. There they were, kind as always, and worried, and confused. Another pang of guilt gripped her stomach. She leaned in for a gentle kiss on his lips and rested back on the matress with a sigh. Her body was getting colder, her skin covering in goosebumps. She took Nucleotide's hand and gently rested it against her bare chest.

"Let's start over, if you're okay with it. I want it, I promise." And to underline it, she pressed her fingers on one of her breasts. "Just... Be gentle, please. Okay?"

[libidomechanica]

So as to see is the cloud this

Ears thy sake: for each face, sweet dream?     Like to pique a gentle Juan felt him ruin your veins’ salt     and obstinate skin lies

dead. And every week his tremorse.     And none a word to selfe, yet I find thou art assured out     our hero the enclasp

from vice, erneis, Radulphus—eight-     and-forty manor; but sometimes, lieth! And find Wordsworth! The     only this fatuus to

the subject twice a man, Dearest     gift of Heaven and then over will. Knots of Time, she may     furnish’d, thou hast thoughts of

toil, save when I use the improve.     We ha’ cheats and although at thick within her hundred     maidenheads are? Since breast

and at large, I conference upon     the drill: well decked in the moon shore, so layd, when naturally     prospect animals, varnished

and all wound and rent the sake     to the little on exactly where, like a ghost, at all.     But the Graces, yet started

up, tender fades, our hay it     is his presentful, impartial bed. The tongue into a     stable his face of the

wholsome jellies were place—stumble,     all die tonight. Still, and smile from us—and yet each more?     And kissed me to heauens did

not no more, but an ecstasy     to allay his coal-black and yet in brassy, shall sung for     all things she’s change thy

shepeheards ioye, how dolefull lips,     and notes each man does not approver, dead man was Hope. Pillow     like a sad as

elephants. The island of three were     not one, than can break of wheeled intricately as thunder     the startle frighten into

some gay let us rock. Our     mother can help clings they are, know not what I woke: but grim     Justice goes by the crowded

stream of Caiaphas. Queen, but are     ever in fayre sigh’d, and look so. The heart them, or little     breeze that was with gentlemanly

Palm, a mailen plenish’d     their azure blooms and what’s pretty name. Who love: a violence,     and otherwhere the

eleventh Heaven, and thoughts with     words you run as it spoils a matter frost soul has come to     the bust into your fame!

[berattelse]

The first thing you saw when entering the Dangerous Beauty exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art was a vintage dress from Versace's 1992-1993 "Miss S&M" collection. Straps of quilted leather crisscrossed the throat and décolletage of a headless mannequin, each strap adorned with a dollar-sized brassy coin bearing the head of a howling Gorgon, a play on Versace's usual logo of a placid Medusa face. The overall effect was oddly militaristic, a sort of four-star dominatrix look. The exhibit, subtitled "Medusa in Classical Art," was tiny, tucked away in a single room in the mezzanine of the Greek and Roman art collection next to the study gallery. So perhaps the dress was there to grab the attention of tourists who might accidentally have wandered up from the floor below, a broad indoor courtyard across which a young Hercules, lion-skin coat held meaningfully over his arm, stares impatiently at a statue of his older self. This is often the purpose, after all, of women's bodies and the clothing that adorns them, especially clothing that highlights the body's constraints. Clothing like this exists to catch the eye. In this case, though, gawkers lured by "Miss S&M" were deposited into a room full of artifacts depicting not only Medusa but a coven of other female creatures of antiquity. Gorgon faces -- both horrible ancient ones, with tusks and beards, and later ones, whose placid classical symmetry is broken only by a few demure snakes at the temples -- stared out from roof tiles, armor, cups, and cameos. A piece of pottery showed Scylla with her snake legs splayed, a pack of dog heads lunging out of her crotch. Sirens perched their bird bodies on plates and mirrors. On the side of one shallow goblet, a Sphinx was painted in loving miniature, crouching over a male victim who appeared to plead for his life. Chasing after the female torso in her chic bondage, in other words, landed you in a nest of monsters. The sixty pieces in the exhibit were intended to track the way Medusa and her counterparts became subject, despite their monstrousness, to principles of beauty. A gold pendant with a Gorgon's face from 450 BCE showed a grimacing creature with sharp teeth, a protruding tongue, a creased brow, a knobby chin. An exquisite nineteenth-century cameo, displayed in the same case, showed a perfect, precise neoclassical profile -- which is to say, she looked a bit like Graham Chapman, but that was the style at the time. Apart from the coil of snake at the crown of her head, like a fascinator, and another knotted scarflike beneath her chin, she had no visible markers of monstrousness. You'd easily mistake her for a proper young lady with Bohemian hair and odd taste in accessories -- the youngest Downton Abbey daughter, maybe. A Siren on one oil vessel from the sixth century BCE sported a full beard, though Sirens were generally coded as female, and had no arms; its head sat atop an awkward, turkey-like bird body. Catty-corner was a 1910 French woodcut in which a Siren, despite having developed bear arms and a fish tail to go with her wings, was still depicted as a beautiful bare-breasted feminine figure with a crown of flowing hair. Creatures conceived as repulsive were gradually reimagined as appealing, even seductive -- at least on the surface. The monstrosity remains, but it's no longer visible. "In a society centered on the male citizen, the feminization of monsters served to demonize women," writes curator Kiki Karoglou in an accompanying bulletin. The later monsters don' tjust look more beautiful and more feminine; they look more human, underscoring the idea that monstrousness is somehow the human woman's natural condition. As monsters became more pleasing to the eye, they were defanged -- beauty being equated, in classical Greece, with moral goodness -- and, paradoxically, made more dangerous. A Medusa with tusks, whiskers, and a grotesque distended tongue could be easily pegged as a threat; a human-looking Medusa could fly under the radar, until you tried to brush her hair. The resulting girl-faced beasts, read the exhibition text, foreshadow "the conceit of the seductive but threatening female that emerges in the late nineteenth century in reaction to women's empowerment." When a feminine face might belong to a secret Gorgon, any woman could be a monster. Perhaps every woman was.

Zimmerman, Jess. Introduction to Women and Other Monsters: Building a New Mythology. Beacon Press, 2021.

[herpsandbirds]

Brassy-breasted Tanager (Tangara desmaresti), family Thraupidae, order Passeriformes, Camanducaia, Brazil

photograph by @walisson_registros

[petty-crush]

“No. 1 of the Secret Service”

-Sleazy, stupid, absolutely delightful super spy silliness

-somebody is killing rich men, agent no. 1 must stop said killer

-this is the closest I’ve seen a film have a sitcom type opening

+peppy song, names of the cast, a montage of all the silly action to come; it’s all there

-what also endears this film to me is the brazenness with which it embraces its low budget self

-our hero is about to be killed, the bullet (never seen) stops, why?; because “oh I just installed a new device, an invisible wall that only activates when bullets come near me”

-this is but one example; others include clearly reusing the off camera sign that “filming is to commence” to note that assassins are coming after no 1

-actor Nicky Henson has an brassy, dry underplaying of the absurdity of his vocation and its surroundings

-he is very much spoofing Roger Moore’s Bond, to great success

-sidebar; I think Moore’s bond is my entry to the series. It has a far amount of lows, but the highs are wonderful and a charm hard to resist. Are the Connery Bonds better? Yes. Do I like the Moore version far more? Also yes.

-there are a great many luscious ladies in this film, seemingly all connected with their wide eyes and bangs haircut

-it starts dumb and proceeds to endearing; no 1 (aka Charles Bind) continually sprays agent Ana Hudson with a seltzer bottle throughout the film; it becomes a recurring wet t-shirt image

+wonderful, life affirming, breasts really help

-I had a hearty laugh at the ideology behind the villain; a rich eccentric who wants to kill rich bores

-his entrance as a street hustler who shouts death to the idle wealthy in a crowded park, only to walk off and get into a expensive limousine (and tear off his fake mustache) is a wonderful visual joke

-what’s equally appealing is the way his conversations with no 1 are so on the nose; he just wants to kill people and he openly broadcasts it to give him some sporting challenge while he gets on with it

-this film is just full of droll details like that

-like getting two incredibly sexy women to learn to kill, but only ten years in the future, to give the then old villain some hearty giggles when reading the newspaper

-not only the verbal but the visual; all of the deaths are done in crayons, with quick jump cuts that have men flying to the ground like dummies

-a rapid editing style, ala the French new wave while also signaling the upcoming fellow British commercial filmmakers (Tony Scott, Adrian Lynne) is used to great affect here

-I’ve said before a certain (low) percentage of UK filmmakers have a splendid style, the vast majority are ugly brown bathwater

-director Lindsay Shonteff (at least here) clearly has the former

-in fact I’m quite curious to see this other films now (this is my first) including his other apparent spy spoofs

-I don’t think I ever saw a single reload in this entire film; just a twirl of the guns like playing an arcade cabinet

-the organization the villain (Arthur Loveday) hires to throw no 1 off his tracks, KRASH (Kill Rape Arson Slaughter Hit) is wonderfully conceived and executed (dig that shave by gun bullets)

-the film occasionally has lag, but papers over it with its brash enthusiasm

-for what it aims to be, a high bullseye

[ladybugmeat]

5.

10:35

As I walked away, I opened my gallery to review the photos. I dragged my finger across the screen and rested it there until inactivity sent my phone to sleep. Collins was not a celebrity. Though there was something in his blunted character and tech treasure house that demanded attention - demanded spectacle. Nevertheless, what did this spectacle achieve? What did it enunciate? Within The Spectacle of Disintegration, McKenzie Wark describes the middle-class as ‘heroes’ of the spectacle - a bourgeoisie ‘angling for a way to exploit its edges.’ Wark describes the ‘power of the middle class over the proletariat’ to stem from a ‘distance from the popular, and its possession of the power to mark that very distance.’ I felt a discomfort in subsuming the position of a ‘petit bourgeouis aficionado’ - a figure who maintains their ‘illusory class’ through characterising ‘those below [her], or at least certain images of their life.’ There was something distasteful, perhaps even aggressive, in how I had pointed my camera into Collin’s private space. I had not been the first. He had anticipated my intentions. He had put his morning’s work aside, stepped out into the weather, and watched me focus my lens. When I left with what I wanted, the warmth of his seat would have diminished.

10:42

SE - SPECTACLE IN THE STYLE OF ZADIE SMITH

Out in the street, there are four hundred onions. The piled trolley remains parked on a double-red line until dark. On Old Kent Road, no object belongs to anyone. Horned melons prick soft hands. An iPhone is dismembered and sold in parts. Last week’s story of a house-fire is put out. A FOR SALE sign is wedged between the brick. Below the charred windows is the acrylic restaurant CALABAR ZONE. The name tempts a narrative. If ingested, the dark Calabar seed acts in effect like nerve gas, ultimately causing death by asphyxiation. Curtain rags drape from the black sills. Possession and witchcraft. Connections beget more connections.

As I pass between shops, exhaust cooks on the wet of my coat. I am in love with a single beautiful thing. And then its multitudes. The all-you-can eat window displays. The limitless shades of squeezable purple plastic. Shea Butter, Milk of Mint Face Scrub, Papaya-Nut Whitening Lotion, Lemonvate Toe Cream. I touch the smooth canister of Behrain Pearl Air Freshener. How it holds its warmth, how it feigns coolness. I could buy sixteen and still have change from a ten pound note. The Arabic script pleads to be read like braille but I imagine it feels like silk.

Along the estate, clothes-lines sag between balconies. The breast of a Wood Pigeon slaps through a hoodie sleeve, leaving a pellet of white dragged down the fabric. A woman on the sixth floor hollers at the bird. Fuck off. Fucking flying rat. Yeah. that’s it, Fuck off. Silver sandal in hand. Marlboro in mouth. The bird settles on the car-park shelf. It waits for the crows to finish. It swoops down to sample Saturday night’s nightclub vomit.

A young girl lies in the centre of the roundabout. For two decades, I walked the grassy junction she lay on. On the left hand side there is a sculpture I hate. A town of model homes that never quite reached anyone’s knees. A white lorry pulls into the ditch and its doors open. The bodies of cattle slowly descend on a crane. Men in white overalls gather, wipe blood into their paunches, and look up. This is the first time the girl has seen a cow. It is not black and white with demure eyelashes. It is just another of the city’s dead things.

[Zadie Smith’s NW is fragmentary. Rather than recycling a brassy spectacle, Smith’s city is simultaneously quiet, loud, and reflective. The author achieves verisimilitude through a series of vignettes. The characters and city build through a freedom to seamlessly posit their many facets. This immersive lens felt more humanising and less critical.]

[solarissantaella]

Lemon Squares in All Dimensions, NaNoWriMo Excerpt #18

Thursday. The next practice was Thursday. Karen’s turn to bring snacks. How she would dazzle and wow! How they would coo and cheer. She would bake cookies. Chocolate chip. She always did. They always loved them. I hated them. I always hated them. I hated always.  

I hated Karen’s diamonds, Karen’s cookies, Karen’s husband, Karen. I hated her remarks on “God-given womanhood”, her sideways glances, the golden cross hanging down into her cleavage. I do not think those were God-given breasts, unless God was a plastic surgeon in the middle ring who offered two-for-one breast enhancement and belly fat reduction procedures. 

I hated Sharon’s laugh, which always came a fraction of a second too late, always following Karen’s. I hated her broad, brassy highlights. I hated her oversized designer bag that never seemed to hold anything of value. I hated the way she asked to borrow things from the other wives as if it was cute, as if she would ever give them back. As if even one of them knew how to do anything other than take.

I hated Susan and the crinkles around her eyes, emphasized by her smiles that excluded me, even when turned in my direction. I hated every member of the audience who had sat in the theater with her to see The Phantom of the Opera. I hated her because I did not want or need her friendship, but the fact that I did not have it upset me anyway. I hated her for making me hate her. I hated her for trying but never enough. I hated her because she would not say my name. 

I hated music. I hated the city. I hated every woman, everywhere. I hated that, as I led Our Child home, the three of them walked ahead of us, and I could hear them talking about the lemon square bake-off that Sunday. Every Sunday. I hated that it was a forgone conclusion that Karen McMitchell would win, because Karen McMitchell was simply not a woman who could lose. I hated that they asked each other, “will you be there? Will you be there?” but no one asked me. I hated, more than anything, when I heard one of the women say: “remember those lemon squares the other Sara used to bake?”