#I am once more ruminating on his life and his world

[outeremissary]

!! (a surprise for you :))

A surprise indeed, haha. As usual, this was how I discovered I had posted something. This was uhh. Not my most prepared night for it.

Hmm... I guess this will just be random rambling, and I don't have any nice, new art for this, so it's going to all be old art that's mostly not colored (lot of it is years old and I hadn't uhhh figured out the color thing). Anyway, Caina Lilindel, the ghost who haunts this blog and I am geased to have as my pfp forever.

First the meta notes: Caina was a grugach (mechanically wood elf- the UA for grugach hadn't been released yet) rogue inquisitive I played in a Curse of Strahd game that ran from 2017 to 2020. He was loosely based on a side character from an abandoned project I worked on periodically during my first year of university (which was then loosely inspired by something in VtM, but that's not important), and I made him as a quick, edgy character who I wouldn't mind dying because the DM was very adamant that the first area was a meat grinder and we might TPK. He survived though, and I was left to play my joke concept straight. And then I got really into that. Really, really into that.

Caina was a secretive exile who had been wandering the world alone for almost three decades at the start of the game. He was sharp-tongued and abrasive, never willing to help anyone for free. He hated risk but easily plunged into recklessness at the behest of emotions he made only the barest efforts to keep in check. He was always pushing away those who might befriend him, and every time someone responded to his vulnerability with kindness he recoiled as if they could burn him- or as if he would burn them. He hated being touched but yearned for intimacy. He killed without a second thought but argued passionately against dealing out further death. He was an absolutely wretched liar on the occasion he tried, and in moments of peace he was an excellent cook and unfailingly kind to children. His primary hobbies were card games and reading unimaginably trashy novels- he was the only member of the party who recognized van Richten, and that was because he was a longtime fan of a horribly prolific series of pulp thrillers based on van Richten's adventures. He had a way of following those he respected or cared about as if starstruck- he never knew what to do with his feelings. And despite his own tendency to break his word or bail on things he could never recover from anything he felt was betrayal. I always loved the combination of vulnerability and prickliness.

(backstory summary that got ahead of me ahead. and this. isn't even everything.)

Caina was born in a small semi-nomadic community in a hilly land and lived his early life without ever straying from his home. Life moved slowly and quietly there, the circular turning of seasons the only visible mark of the gentle passage of time in a community of near immortals. He was one of very few children and the spacing between the youths of the community was easily such that a child could be the only in their age group all their young life until reaching the more even ground of adulthood. But Caina was fortunate. There was another child his age in his home: a boy born the very same year as him, timing so close that the two were often called twins. That boy was Avél, Caina's best friend, constant companion, and the first person to lose his life at Caina's hands.

Caina was a quiet, diligent child who always went along with everything his more outgoing friend wanted to do. From a young age they shared the same dreams of adventure and tale-worthy glory far from home- although Caina would never be able to say if heroic legends had always set his heart racing or if this dream too was simply following Avél. He was known as a sweet child, one constantly fretted over and sheltered by his mother, who feared for a son who had been born sickly, and his grandmother (the family matriarch), who was intent on raising an eldest son who would be useful to his family. He would have duties when he aged, his grandmother knew: to his parents, to his grandparents, to his cousins, and if the Most Revered was good, to a sister who could pass down the name of the family to another generation. It wasn't for eldest sons or only sons to stuff their heads full of fairy tales and stray.

In contrast to quiet Caina, Avél was a troublemaker and a free spirit. He was never one to be confined by a rule if he could challenge it, and as a second son with no sister who would one day rely on him to keep the house for her, Avél's life had a certain openness to it. His tricks and disappearances were met with gentle scolding but never with restriction. He could imagine any future ahead of him, could dream of danger and distant lands, of anything in the world he desired. Anything he wished for might be his. And what he wished for was to be taken under the wing of the gruff old huntress Siyir. Siyir had been further afield than any of the others who wore the title of ranger. She had gone well beyond simply charting the movements of the community or passing messages between the pockets of the grugach people or brokering trade deals. Siyir had slain a griffin. She had descended into human lands, had seen mountains that spat fire and waters that spanned the horizon. She was Avél's vision: a legend who had stepped through campfire flames to stand in the mundane material world. And of course, this meant that Caina worshiped her too.

So the stage of life was set. Two boys, near opposites in every way, but each the other's closest confidante and the mirror of his own experiences- or perhaps less a mirror than a shadow and the bright thing that cast it. Avél pulled Caina out of his shell and into new experiences. He supplied dreams enough for two and invented adventures to match. There was an awe that Avél inspired in Caina. He wanted to nurture passion that could match his friend's to more truly inhabit their shared dreams. He wanted skills to match Avél's natural athleticism and way with words. It gave him a hunger to keep up, to learn, to know, to show that he too was equal. But nothing he did ever seemed to bring the two of them even. His boldness crumpled under caution, his hesitance and appeals to the wisdom of elders earning him affectionate teasing as a stick in the mud. He could never run as fast or far as Avél or climb as high or win tussles between them without tricks that brought out whines of "no fair! do it right!" The skills Caina learned alone bored Avél. Cooking was dull and far beneath a legend, Avél insisted. Wayfinding was useful but too much work- Caina was the smart one, so he could take care of it, couldn't he? And the runes of a seldom used writing system (taught to Caina by the community's shaman) were entertaining only for an afternoon or two- he laughed when Caina asked later if he'd been practicing them, and Caina's ears burned with shame for finding them so fascinating in the first place.

With age came a sharper sense of the distance between them. Avél was the golden child of the community, Caina his keeper. When Avél broke his arm falling out of a tree on a forbidden excursion it was worth a day's scolding that quickly melted into doting and repetition of the grand tale of his adventure for months, while Caina was reprimanded for allowing Avél to hurt himself and then quickly forgotten as more than a timid accessory to Avél. Siyir took interest in Avél, but Caina quickly realized had little in him: she hardly acknowledged Caina when she spoke to the two of them together, and she had a way of only offering things when Caina wasn't around. And Avél, for his part, hardly seemed to protest surprise hunting trips at dawn or archery advice when Caina was unavailable. He always shared what he learned afterwards, but no matter how many times Caina asked for Avél to bring him along the next time there was always an excuse when that next time came around. Suspicion set in that his friend was hoarding time with the huntress to himself. And when the changes of puberty began Avél grew taller and filled out better. His features emerged from teen acne as defined and handsome, new edges to his face only making the soft twinkle in his eyes seem brighter and the creases of his smile kinder. Caina stayed spindly and awkward. It was painfully clear that strength would never come to him naturally, and without it a slight edge of grace didn't feel like much. He began to distance himself from Avél to have time to hone skills his friend had and he felt he lacked. But it was never enough to do more than keep up. Just to keep up, and hope desperately that Avél's aimless talent would one day lose to training.

And then Caina's mother gave birth to a daughter, and Caina was too old to miss the meaning of the event. The first brother's duty was to his sister- to be a part of her household more constant than a partner, for those were fluid and often changed over the long turning of the decades, and more vigorous than a mother, who would one day be claimed by the years. To share in her generation and her legacy. Caina would go from a childhood sidekick to Avél to a supporting character in the tale of Cailo. There would be no breath for his own story, his own adventures. Like that he added Avél's freedom to the endless list of envies.

Yet Avél, in his careless optimistic way, never acknowledged the change. They still had the same dreams, the same loves, the same life. Even as Avél spent more time with Siyir as Caina helped care for his baby sister Avél danced around it. Any time the future was questioned Avél suddenly had a new story that needed telling immediately or somewhere to go or something that needed doing. And sometimes he simply laughed and pushed it away.

In the midst of this stormy sea of adolescence, Siyir decided to take an apprentice.

The decision wasn't an announcement, but a challenge. The ranger let it be known to all of the youths that she would take on whichever best passed a series of tests she set. Worth, she said, was the only way to decide who was fit to carry a legacy like hers. And that worth superseded all else: she would take her chosen apprentice and no other, and it was known without ever being said that likewise nothing could take her chosen from her.

Worth.

Worth.

Caina knew all her skills secondhand, but had practiced them to the best perfection he could imagine. He knew the one who would ultimately be the only true competitor inside and out. Siyir had never seen him, but he could make her. He would show her that he was worthy.

He matched Avél in every test. He could shoot, he could hunt, he could track, he could pitch a camp of his own. He was still Avél's superior when it came to navigation, even if his friend had improved. The few other challengers quickly proved half-hearted and dropped out. It was only Caina and Avél, just like it had always been.

The night before Siyir's last test, Caina returned home late. He had gone out to gather herbs for the shaman, Galen, and been sidetracked by the urge to practice one last thing. When he passed by Siyir's dwelling, he caught the sound of a familiar voice that gave him pause: his grandmother was in Siyir's home.

He crept closer, and the conversation became clearer. His grandmother was asking what she was meant to do if Caina won the contest. Who would be there for Cailo? Was their family simply to dwindle, plagued by foolish wanderlust and misfortune? Caina could hear in his mind Siyir's counterargument: that many daughters grew up alone, that Cailo didn't want for cousins who could help her, that their father was still with them and far from old. That one son was an acceptable concession for a woman who had once shot a griffin from the sky. That maybe Cailo didn't want her legacy either.

But Siyir said none of those things.

"Avél is my apprentice." It wasn't her usual brusque tone. It was a reassurance, a gentle correction. "I just couldn't let it get to the boy's fool head by letting him have that without a little fight."

Every semblance of hope evaporated. He hardly remembered the rest of the night- only the listless dreams that tore at him whenever he tried to rest. He was trapped in a haze.

He was still in that haze when he rose before dawn and found Avél.

They walked out and away from the early spring camp, Avél chattering all the way and glancing over here and there at Caina with something that sometimes looked like relief and other times looked like guilt. Caina was quiet for the most part. He smiled and nodded and urged Avél on. Once or twice he laughed. It was so easy to slip into familiar patterns while following familiar paths. By the time they reached the cliff over the falls, the light made it clear that despite the lingering morning mist dawn was well behind them.

Many years before, a lone long-branched pine growing at the edge of the falls had fallen. The reason was unknown- no one had been around to see it go- but now it lingered in death as persistently as it had in life, laying its lattice of branches out across the open air to form a precarious bridge from one side of the gorge to the other. Mist from the falls left it permanently slick, and between the spring rains and the snowmelt still trickling down the surging falls had crept in precariously close.

When they were younger, they had often talked about crossing it. Avél had take a few steps out, falls plunging down on one side and open air on the other, and Caina managed a half step before begging Avél to come back. "Next time I'll do it," Avél always laughed.

"What do you say- for old time's sake?"

To hear the proposal come from Caina stopped Avél dead. His laughter wasn't the familiar bell of joy. It cracked at the edges- nerves, perhaps, or surprise.

"As if I could say no."

And Avél stepped forward, hesitating a moment at the edge. His eyes flicked to Caina and his mouth hardened into a thin smile. He took his first step onto the trunk. A few steps later, Caina followed.

Looking back, Caina was never sure what he had wanted from that morning. It was like a dream, the roaring falls eating the sound of the world around them and the mists swallowing everything outside that tiny expanse and the figure of his friend.

Somewhere near the center, Avél stopped. He turned and shouted something. Caina read the words on his lips: Let's go back.

Avél was moving his feet, trying to reposition to walk back, when the dreadful inevitable happened. In the blink of an eye he had gone from upright to clinging to one of the branches jutting out from the edge of the trunk below. There was no thought when Caina rushed forward recklessly, bracing himself against one of the more solid branches as he grabbed a slick hand just in time as his beloved friend's support cracked and fell away, useless. Avel dangled at Caina's mercy, clinging with both hands onto Caina's arm as he struggled to find a foothold to pull himself up.

In this moment of nightmare, lucidity returned.

Caina would never be able to say why he brought his friend to the falls. He didn't know why he challenged him at their stupidest, most dangerous childhood game. He didn't know why he followed so close, never allowing Avél the space to turn around. All coincidence. All error. None of it conscious. None of it him.

But he could never forget the moment he chose to let go.

If Avél screamed, Caina never heard. The falls swallowed the sound greedily. In the constant roar of white noise, it seemed like Avél was as silent as a shadow, and when he disappeared into the mist below he became every bit as transient.

There were searches, of course. There was weeping. And finally there was blame. Caina hadn't planned the crime, and only began to hide it too late. Put before the gods in all of Galen's power, he cracked. He had believed like a fool that he had hated Avél. Now as its target he understood what true hate was. Yet for all that, there wasn't heart in a community that couldn't remember ever having an execution to kill another so soon after their loss. No one could remember the curse ever being used either, but Galen knew it all the same.

It was with nothing but the clothes on his back and a new fear of death that Caina left the home he had been cast out of. The brand of defilement burned on his hand, the angry red scar weeks from true healing. Cast out from his home, from all kin, from the sight of the gods themselves, who had sealed his exile with the cursed brand. The legend he had made for himself was one of misery. And beyond its edge, only wandering without rest- always running from the guilt carved into skin and soul.

[misskattylashes]

Alex post 2018 – some ruminations

I have been doing some thinking about the change in Alex from pre TBHC to post TBHC and I have come up with the following ruminations;

Yesterday (1 October) two things happened. The audiobook of The Unfinished Harauld Hughes by Richard Ayoade was released, and Louise posted a very awkward photo of herself and Alex, with some weird reference to an anniversary that makes no sense (but I’m not going to speculate about that). Alex provided the music for the audiobook of Harauld Hughes, and yet I don’t know one person who has listened to it, instead what are we all talking about? (me included) The photo of him and Louise.

I was there from the beginning when little Alex was being hailed as this wonderkid, a little Yorkshire tyke who wrote like Alan Bennet or Jarvis Cocker. The word ‘genius’ was banded about often. Even in the subsequent years, with all the high profile ‘romances’, the speculation about Milex, and all his image changes, people still spoke about what a great musical talent he was, but it all seemed to stop at AM5.

I’m not going to talk about TLSP because that is an equal endeavour with Miles, this is focusing purely on AM.

It was as though Tranquillity Base Hotel and Casino was like Alex finally dropping all the pretence and revealing to the world exactly what kind of genius he was….and no one liked it. From then on something in him changed. We get dramas in the press about him being a love cheat, whereas up until then he had been portrayed as a romantic who went from monogamous relationship to monogamous relationship. Suddenly he becomes this lothario, breaking hearts and causing lots of fans to become more invested in his love life than his musical output.

By the time of The Car, he had practically given up. We get a handful of studio interviews and some written pieces, and that was it. Until it has got to the point that nowadays Matt is the group’s mouthpiece. Alex can’t be bothered at all. He seems more interested in taking part in awkward pap walks and photoshoots with Louise, than he does promoting his own music. How lovely it would have been when AM was voted one of the greatest albums of all time, to hear him reflecting on it. He didn’t have to give away his secrets about subject matter, but he could have spoken about the recording process and what was happening with the other boys at the time. But nada. Matt had to do it.

It is like Alex has become his own self-fulfilling prophecy. The fans didn’t like TBHC (‘puncturing your bubble of relatability with your horrible new sound’) and it wounded him deeply, so he’s giving them little in return except things to gossip about. Let’s face facts, lots of stars have messy love-lives, but they also have high court injunctions in place that stop anyone talking about it. Even Taylor, if she’d had the threat of the law coming down on her, wouldn’t be able talk about Alex. But she’s allowed to and fuels the flames of interest in his love-life rather than his talent. Then of course we have Louise and her strange behaviour, and their weird relationship, which once again fuels speculation. Again, she could be instructed not to interact with fans, but she is allowed to come after them, creating controversy, which Alex becomes involved in without saying a word, but he gets tainted with her brush.

I always thought his troubled 2018 was down to problems with his relationship with Miles, but after a little digging around and finding stuff out, him and Miles were perfectly okay by 2018. I think their troubles were in 2017 after the intensity of EYCTE, but those two can’t stay apart for long, and that wasn’t the problem. The problem was that TBHC was the first album where Alex finally bared his soul, his ‘this is me’ moment and when people rejected it, he was hurt. Let’s not forget that Alex doesn’t know anything but being famous. AM is his world, and it’s like he loses perspective. Yes, people don’t like the new material and the direction the band is going in, and yes, probably half of the people who went to see them on tour went to scream at him, but none of that matters. Time is going to move and so are the AM fanbase. I am sure both TBHC and The Car got them new, different fans who aren’t interested in heartthrob Alex and his messed up life, but instead the beautiful music he makes and his genius with words, which is still the same as it was when he was 19.

I have a sneaky feeling AM8 will be AM5 mark ii, purely to please the fans, which is a shame because AM5 suited the time and space it was in, but not now. He should be able to make the sort of music he wants to, either solo, with Miles or AM.

Anyway, they are just the ruminations from my flu-riddled brain. In a nutshell, after TBHC Alex lost sight of himself and to quote his own lyrics, I would quite like to grab both shoulders and shake him and tell him to snap out of it.

[tropes-and-tales]

The Softest in the World

Day 15:  Fingering (Dave York x F!Reader)

(For the 2023 Kinktober event found here! Is it April? Yes. Am I that far behind in posting that it's April and I'm still working through Kinktober requests? Also yes.) 

CW:  Smut (Fingering; talk of masturbation; oblique talk of vague future sex acts); 18+ only.

Word Count:  4102

AN:  This is a sequel to this, and it was requested for Kinktober by an anon!

AN2: Never edited, never beta'ed. I live and die by my slopping typing.

The first Christmas without Carol goes far better for Dave than he ever thought it would.  Of course he misses his wife, nearly a year out from her sudden death.  Molly and Alice miss their mother too.  But the immediate grief—that sharp, cutting pain that left them breathless and stunned—has faded into a more mellow sorrow.  Ever-present, but it doesn’t take Dave out at the knees anymore.

He knows he owes much of his family’s collective healing to you, the nanny he hired months after Carol died.  You’re the one who stepped in and took charge of their lives.  You never tried to replace Carol, but you’ve managed their day-to-day moments and their larger healing.

This first Christmas was your idea too.  A month in Vermont, away from the family home where memories may have been too thick and pressing to allow for any joy.  It had proved out to be a great idea too:  long days sledding and snow-shoeing and building snow forts leave the girls exhausted by evening, too tired to ruminate about their missing mother.

And it allows Dave more time with you.

Usually you only live at the York home when he’s traveling.  You handle their lives at home—drive the girls to and from school, to and from activities.  You handle the maid who comes in twice a week to clean.  You keep the refrigerator full, get the girls bathed and put to bed with a story and a hug each night.  But Dave is never there to see it—when he returns home from his work trips, you leave for your own apartment.

This month in Vermont?  You sleep in the room just down the hallway from him.  You share a bathroom with him, leave behind the scent of your shampoo and soap after you shower.  He hears you each night when you, like clockwork, pad out into the kitchen for a glass of water that you gulp down until you’re breathless.

More than all of that, he has front row seats to how you care for his girls.  You’re tough but fair.  You cut them plenty of slack, grieving as they are, but you don’t allow them to run roughshod over you.  You play with them, you teach them, and you genuinely seem to love them…and they genuinely love you as well.

Him, though?  Dave can’t seem to get a bead on you when it comes to him.  Your ease with the girls disappears the moment the two of you are alone.  You can’t always meet his eye line.  You flinch away from him if he brushes against you.  Sometimes he wonders if you can sense his former double life—if you have some preternatural prey response to being so close to a predator.  But more than once, he’s caught you watching him on the sly.  He’s noticed your heavy-lidded eyes, the way you pull your lower lip between your teeth.

When he cornered you in the hallway a few days earlier, he definitely noticed how your breathing quickened.

Maybe you can sense his killer nature, but Dave would also guess that you are attracted to him.  And knowing what he does of your character, you probably feel conflicted about that.  Guilty.  Maybe even a cliché, the nanny falling for the widowed father of her charges.

If Dave has taken one lesson from Carol’s death, though, it’s this:  life is short, and life can end in a blink.  Why not live while you can?

-----

The day before Christmas is spent in a nearby town.  You plan it, of course, and you layer in fun stuff with all the errands you have to run and make it a family affair.  You take the girls ice skating at a nearby pond.  Dave stands along the rink’s edge and watches you take lazy circles on the ice, Molly’s and Alice’s mittened hands firmly in yours until they get comfortable on their own.  Then you skate over to him, and the two of you watch in silence.

Then there’s hot chocolate at a nearby café, last minute presents for the stockings, and the grocery store.  You return to the cabin laden with bags, and the evening flies by.  You and the girls make flat breads for dinner, and afterwards, you put on a Christmas movie while the girls put the finishing touches on the tree Dave bought earlier in the month.

Dave helps the girls with their evening baths.  He gets them tucked into bed, reads them a story.  He presses a kiss to each of their foreheads, and they are out like a light before he’s even quietly clicking their bedroom door shut behind him.

As he’s been tending to his daughters, you’ve tidied up in the kitchen and living room, and now you’re pulling the wrapped gifts from their hiding spot in the hallway closet to arrange them under the tree.

At the sound of his footfall, you glance up and offer him a smile.

“They out already?” you ask.

Dave chuckles.  “Before I even left the room.”

You smile, brush the back of your hand across your forehead, miming hard work.  “It’s exhausting work, trying to exhaust them.”

“And you manage to do it every time.”  He joins you near the tree, kneels down beside you.

“Sometimes I make them run laps at home,” you reply with a laugh, and maybe you don’t notice your casual use of the word home, but Dave notices.

Dave notices everything.

He noticed, for example, how you stood by him at the skating rink, perfect posture and a tension radiating off of you when Dave moved close enough for his coat to brush against yours.  He noticed the way you ducked your head at the café, how you pretended not to hear the women who sat nearby and remarked on the lovely little family that you, Dave, and the girls made.

He notices now how you lean away from him just a fraction, how you start when his fingers touch yours each time he hands you a wrapped gift to place.  He notices that you won’t look at him, that you keep your gaze carefully fixed on the presents or the tree.  He crowds you closer, plays dumb about it, and he notices when the pink tip of your tongue darts out and licks a wet line along your lower lip. 

Part of Dave—the dark part of him, the predator in him—wants to grip your face between his hand and force you to look at him.  He wants to hold your gaze until it’s too much for you; he wants to stare at you until you squirm and beg him to let you go.  And then he wants to not let you go, your begging futile—he wants to hold you tighter and lean in and draw his own tongue along that bitable lower lip of yours.

He keeps that part of him at bay.  He knows he has to go slow.  Slow movements.  You freeze around him, but if he comes on too strong or too fast, you’ll bolt.  He needs to quiet that prey instinct, make you feel safe.  Alleviate your guilt, if you have any, at being attracted to a widower.

So Dave decides to seduce you instead. 

When you reach for the next gift, he instead grasps your wrist lightly.  He can feel your pulse against his grip, and he hears the breath you draw in.  He holds you like that until you have the courage to look at him, and he smiles at you to put you at ease.

“I’ll finish up,” he tells you, his voice low.  “Why don’t you go get a bottle of wine and some glasses?  We can have a drink on the couch.”

You hesitate…then nod.  It shouldn’t be a turn-on, but Dave loves the hesitancy, then the obedient way you stand up and do exactly as he says.  It’s not hard for him to imagine other things he could order you to do, the same uncertainty before you obey him.

-----

The wine is Moscato-adjacent.  It’s one of those local vintages made with fruits other than grapes, and far too sweet for Dave’s taste, but you had picked it out at the grocery store, so he sips it carefully and hides his winces when the cloying sweetness burns against the back of his throat.

You?  You nearly gulp it down, and he realizes how nervous you are to be here:  alone on a couch beside him, the room dark except for the lit-up Christmas tree and the crackling fire in the fireplace.  It’s romantic, but you’re his employee, and he swears he can feel you flailing out of your depths to find yourself in this moment.

“Easy,” he says.  He stills your hand when you reach for the bottle.  You’ve bolted down the first glass so fast, and Dave doesn’t want you drunk.  He doesn’t even want you tipsy.  He wants just the barest bit of your nerves soothed, but he wants you fully in control of yourself. 

He wants you to be completely, stone sober when you beg him.

“Slow down,” he continues.  “You don’t want to overdo it.”

You laugh, a nervous giggle that spills out of your mouth, and you start to say, “I just…” but you trail off, don’t finish the sentence. 

What were you going to say, Dave wonders?

I just am nervous.

I just think this is too much.

I just think it’s wrong.  It’s too soon.  It’s too complicated.  It’s too unseemly.  What will people think, if anyone ever finds out?

“It’s okay.”  He says it soothingly.  He eases your empty glass out of your other hand, and he sets it down along with his own mostly-full glass, but he does it with one hand—his other, he keeps wrapped around your wrist, unwilling to break his hold on you.

“Mr. York…”  You start, and he hears the nerves in your voice.  He hears the wobble in your words, the faint tremor, but he also swears he can hear desire too—a huskiness to your voice, the slightest rough edge.  And you squirm in your seat, just a bit, but you don’t try to pull away from him.

“Mister York?  Since when did I become Mister?”  It shouldn’t be so hot, you calling him that, formal with the tremble in your words, but then you breathe out his first name—Dave—and you draw it out, and that’s even hotter.

His hand on your wrist, he pulls you to him, tugs your upper body towards him, and you let him.  You go willingly, but your eyes widen.  In shock?  Fear?  Lust?

“Tell me you want this,” he murmurs, his face inches from yours.  “If you don’t, say so now, and we’ll forget it ever happened.”

The tip of your tongue darts out, licks nervously against your lower lip.  “It’s just…”  You take a breath, try again.  “It’s just complicated.”

“That’s not a yes or a no, baby.”

You huff and offer him a tremulous smile at his use of a nickname, so he adds, “it’s a simple question.”

You hesitate, and Dave wonders if you’re really conflicted about it.  If you’re weighing how your life will change depending on how you answer…

…or if you just don’t want to seem eager, because you nod, then whisper “yes, I do want this,” and when he bridges the remaining distance between you, you’re right there, ready and eager to slot your mouth over his, to part your lips to his searching tongue, to cup his stubbled face with your free hand.

-----

Other men might take you then and there.  They might claim you right on the couch, in front of a dying fire and a Christmas tree sparkling with lights.  They might rush it, make it some sweaty, sad fumble, then parting to each slink to separate bedrooms.

Dave York has always enjoyed the long game.  If he were a game hunter, he would enjoy it better to sit in a tree stand for hours before dawn.  He would relish the cool planning, the stalking, the calculating and recalibrating as needed.

Dave York doesn’t fuck you just yet.  He wants to give you a taste, just a morsel, because he wants you slavering for it.  He wants you looking at him with those wide eyes, that lower lip caught between your teeth, as you beg him for more.

So this night, he only pushes you gently back against the couch as he kisses you.  He lowers himself onto you—lets you feel the weight and heft of his body against yours, lets you feel how he can press you into the couch with his weight.  He lets you feel the length of his growing erection where it presses against your hip, and each little whimper makes him harder.

He kisses you deeply—tastes the glass of Moscato you gulped down, tastes the sweetness of you beyond the tart, sweet wine.  He slides his tongue against yours, licks the inside of your mouth, and he smiles inwardly when you shyly try to do the same.  You are mostly led by him but there’s little movements—your tongue pressing back against his, say, or the upward press of your hips as you search for friction—where you try to lead too.

He braces himself with one hand, which allows the other to roam free.  He cups your flushed face, feels the heat of your blushing.  He draws his hand down, traces a path down your neck, circles his palm there, feels how much he can fit in the span of one palm.  Not because he likes choking—he’s never been into breathplay or anything so risky, but he does like the tame feel of his hand partially around your neck with the feel of your pulse and the ragged breaths you pull in.

Then lower.  He grasps the softness of your breast, and even through the sweater and bra, he can feel your pebbled nipple.  He brushes the pad of his thumb over it, back and forth, and it makes your hips lift up again…and then you groan when you find nothing to meet you, no friction and no touch.

“Be patient,” he whispers in your ear.  He nips at your lobe, darts his tongue against the whorl of your ear, and you whimper at the sensation of his hot breath fanning over you.

He moves his free hand lower still.  He finds the hem of your sweater, snakes his hand under it.  Then he finds the waistband of your leggings.  He sends up a silent prayer that he gets to live in a time and place where leggings are a thing—no tricky buttons or zippers, just an elastic waistband so easy to slip his hand under, and he cups your mound through the soft cotton of your panties.  Dave chuckles near your ear, then lifts his head to look at you because you’re already wet there, the damp cotton cleaving to you as he skates his fingers over you.

“Bad girl,” he whispers.  “Getting wet for your boss.”

He’s watching you as he says it, and he sees the flash of hurt that crosses your face before your pupils get wider and your lips part, as you breathe out a heavy breath.  You’re such a good girl; Dave obviously vetted you before ever letting you into his girls’ lives.  Straight A student, honors, full ride in college.  Not even a speeding ticket in your history.  He bets you’ve never been called bad, never been a bad girl, and it seems to hurt you for a beat before you embrace this tamest step outside of your erotic comfort zone.

Dave has so many more steps he wants to lead you on.  He wants to take your hand in his and lead you into darker, deeper waters.  He imagines spanking you, binding you, blindfolding you.  He imagines twisting your innate desire to please into something sensual; he imagines training you to greet him on your knees.  He imagines rewarding you, calling you a good girl instead, fucking you senseless until you are left overstimulated and weeping, ruined for any other cock but his.

“Is this just from right now?” he continues, and he strokes you through your soaked panties, feels how they are molded to your folds and cleft.  “Or have you been thinking about this?”

“I don’t—”

“Tell me.”  He pinches you lightly—not enough to hurt, but the sensation pulls a gasp from you, and your hand flies up to grasp his bicep where his bracing arm is near your head.  “Tell me why you’re so wet.”

“I’ve been thinking about this.”  It comes out a whisper, barely audible.  Tinged in shame, and that’s the first thing Dave will burn out of you.  Guilt.  Shame.  He’ll break you down and tear those useless emotions out of you.

“When?”  Another light pinch, another gasp.  Your hand grips his arm harder, and Dave will see dusty little bruises there in the morning.

“Since….ah, since a while.”  Another pinch, and you add, “over the summer.”

The summer.  When Dave was around more due to his busy period at work dying off.  When Dave ran each morning and returned home to find you cleaning up the breakfast mess, when he shed his sweaty shirt and walked through the house on his way to shower.  When he pretended not to notice the way your eyes followed him each step, and when he pretended like he needed a glass of cold water, shirtless, that he drank down in your eye line.

Bad girl indeed.

“You touch yourself to the thought of me?”  Here he moves his hand, shifts it to slip under the lacy band of your panties, and he’s delighted to feel a strip of damp curls there, happy that you haven’t shaved or waxed yourself bare.  He drags his fingers through them, then finds your clit, slick and swollen, and he touches you lightly there.  Strums you with his thumb and chuckles at the keening whine that tears out of your throat.

“Answer me.  You touch yourself, thinking about me?”

“….yes.”

“Like this?”

“S-sometimes.”

“Not every time?”

You fix him with a pleading look, but you’re barely able to hold his gaze for long.  When he brushes his lips over your cheekbone, he can feel how hot your face is.  This is a challenge to you, possibly humiliating, but also arousing because you continue to lift your hips, chasing the touch you’re desperate for.  Such a soft little thing, the softest in the world, and yet you’ve been touching yourself to the thought of him.

Dave stills his hand, and he chuckles again at the groan of disappointment you make.  “Tell me or I stop.”

You swallow, nod.  “Sometimes I…I have a vi…a vibrator.”

He can imagine it; a sad little tucked-away piece of silicone or plastic.  You probably pull it out in the darkness of your room, ashamed at pleasuring yourself.  You probably bury it under your socks and blush when your hand brushes against it when you’re putting laundry away.

He hums, considers the mental image that rises to his mind.  Your legs spread under the covers, running the toy over your clit, maybe pushing it inside you.  Imagining it was him instead.

Not that different from the times he’s gripped his own cock, stroked himself in the shower or in his room and pretended it was you instead of his hand.

Dave could demand to know your fantasies.  He could make you tell him what scenarios you’ve used to get off to him.  Him bending you over the kitchen counter?  Him fucking you in the shower?  Him sneaking into your bedroom at night, sliding under the covers and slipping his already-hard cock into your tight little pussy?  He could make you blush harder and demand to know these things, but he wants to take this slow, so he kisses you instead, murmurs his thanks, calls you a good girl for answering his questions, and when your face lights up at the praise, Dave pushes one thick finger into you and draws the sweetest, throatiest groan from you.

Other men might take you then and there, but Dave only finger-fucks you.  He goes so slow, eases it out, pushes it back in so you feel every goddamned bit of him entering you.  He keeps his thumb firm on your clit, and just the pressure makes you whimper each time he presses a little harder.

He adds a second finger and feels the delicious stretch as your pussy cedes to him.  You’re unbelievably warm, slick, and your pussy twitches and pulses around him each time he breeches the confines of your body.  It’s tight, but you’re nervous, and each bit of praise—good girl, such a good fucking girl for me, just relax and let me make you feel good, baby—makes you unclench a bit more.  You relax, and you find the rhythm that he fingers you, and you lift your hips to meet his fingers.

When he adds a third finger, you hiss at the thickness of it, the tight fit.  He stills, watches your face for any pain, and when he doesn’t see any, he continues.

Three fingers is a good start to preparing you for his cock, he thinks.  He imagines the feel of pushing into you, mounting you, and he imagines your fingers digging into his shoulders as he bottoms out in you.

In due time.  Now he fingers you, he scissors his fingers inside you and feels the answering throb in his erection each time you whine or whimper or groan, the sweetest symphony of sounds he’s able to pull from you.  When he starts circling your clit with his thumb, when he crooks his fingers inside you, pressing gently until he finds the spot that makes you gasp out his name, but you call him Mister York again, and it unlocks something inside him, the power you’re letting him have over you.  He dips his head and sinks his teeth into the side of your neck, right at the pulse point, and you gasp again.  Your other hand flies up and cradles the back of his head, and you twist your fingers through his hair, but you don’t pull him away—you hold him there, and he licks against the dimpled marks he’s left in your skin, he breathes against the wet line on your neck, and he’ll see a lurid bruise there in the morning too that will make him instantly hard.

“You’re going to come for me,” he growls against your neck.  “You’re going to be a good girl and come when I tell you.”

And his mind boggles at the possibilities with you because you do exactly as he says.  You nod at his order, and you press your hips in time to his searching fingers, and he feels when your orgasm approaches because you lose much of your embarrassment.  You swear in a hoarse whisper against his head—oh fuck, D-Dave, fuck fuck fuck, I’m close, I’m gonna, oh, don’t stop—and you spread your legs wider to make room for his hand, and the lurid sound of his hand working against your wetness doesn’t seem to even register to you.  The entire living room smells like sex and you don’t care, and when you gasp and buck your hips up into his hand, he feels your orgasm break around you:  the pulse of your cunt gripping his fingers, the hot slick of cum that coats his hand, the way your body shakes under his.

He fingers you through it.  He draws out your pleasure until you shove at him lightly, tell him it’s too much, and he stops.  He feels the tension of your orgasm—the arching body, the trembling—leave you, and you lay underneath him, sated and heavy with your release.

Dave draws his hand out from under your clothing, and he straightens the hem of your sweater where it rode up a bit.  Then he fixes you with an unblinking stare and lifts his hand to his mouth, and he smiles at your shocked expression as he licks his fingers clean.  Then, with the taste of you on his lips, he lowers his head and kisses you again—deep and slow, so you can taste yourself too.

“Good girl,” he tells you when he breaks the kiss.  “You’re going to be such a good girl for me.”

[shoyosh]

i love you like the sun. h.s

general audiences | hinata / reader | 2.4k words — post-timeskip, childhood friends, reader is a university student, reader's mother owns a bakery, reunion :), sun/moon motifs perchance, not proofread! — read on SqWA

summary: while consumed in a blind race against the world, a comfortable beam of light returned to your life to guide your path forward.

author's note: for the fellow hinata stans out there shoveling through life, i suppose this is what a character like hinata would want to remind us :) happy belated birthday hinata... sob, sob. this is so late lol. title taken from the moon will sing by the crane wives (youtube).

Your short trip to the convenience store for a midnight snack is a growing nightmare as the machine rejects your payment. You don't have cash so on your second try, you close your eyes and wish for the best.

You're hungry and tired, the worse combination to deal with the pathetic 'loading…' screen. It's the ultimate test of patience as seconds tick by, and you're about to lose it…

Beep!

You sigh, reining your head from dropping on the counter top. The tech menace flaunts a large, bold 'ERROR!' It proceeds to shut down. While it feasted on your fear and patience, you got the short end of the stick. Seems like you'll be starting your all-nighter with an empty stomach.

Ding! The store bell rings. A customer has entered just in time to see your plight. What a happening night of unfortunate circumstances.

"I am so sorry for the trouble," you mutter, grabbing your item off the counter. The cashier takes a marker from a drawer underneath, swirls to the cabinet behind for a piece of paper, and writes "Cash Only" before finding a metal stand to prop the notice. Then, he calls the next customer.

It's just a fluffy, yellow, and warm melon bread. You can survive this deepening lonely night without it as you've done before.

This convenience store has served you diligently since your youth. Today is an outlier, not the end of the world. You're low on energy hence you shouldn't waste it on strong emotions, especially not tears.

You shake your head and leave the queue to place your item back on the shelf.

"Wait! I'll pay for you!" a voice says. Your eyes brighten. Who is this stranger whom you owe? Your saviour who will help you plough through this empty, blue and bleak night?

When you spin around, you stare straight at the sun.

Short yet tousled orange hair, tanned skin, and intense brown eyes. The man in front of you is more happy than surprised to see you.

"Hinata-san?" You sputter, pointing at him as he points back at you with a complementary wide grin. He seems to want to say your name but a question leaps from your tightening throat: "You're back in Japan?"

Just as he's about to reply, the cashier coughs and Hinata returns his attention to paying. He shares he wants to pay for your item, so you hand it to the cashier for another round of scanning. You also use the opportunity of his back against you to wipe any stray water at the corner of your eye.

Once he makes the purchase, both of you walk out of the convenience store. Warm summer air blows on your face the moment the glass doors slide open.

"What are you doing awake at this time?" Hinata asks while you're preoccupied with opening the plastic of your anticipated snack. It seems he did not buy anything.

"I should say the same for you!" Your mouth is filled with bread, muffling your pronunciation but unable to cushion the excitement in your voice. "Did you not tell anyone you are back?"

"Only my family knows for now." Hinata watches you carefully as you chow your mini-meal. "I landed a few hours ago and will be leaving in a few days. I don't think I have time to catch up with everyone... This trip was unplanned."

You press your lips together at the thought he didn't contact you for something as big as his a return.

Only after rumination, ensuring none of the hurt spills, do you speak.

"It's been so long since we last saw each other."

"I'm back to celebrate my birthday with my family. I believe the last we saw each other was on my birthday too."

You cough to readjust a lump of chewed bread that almost went down wrongly.

Birthday?

You tilt your phone's screen to see the date.

21st June.

Memories of a near distant past return, rearing you speechless as it plays in front of you like a film.

You remember Hinata, on his way to celebrate his last birthday as a high school student, riding his bicycle to your mother's neighbourhood bakery; You rejecting his invitation to go out so you can study for an upcoming test; The impromptu picnic at the park disrupted by your silent outburst; Him calmly convincing you to rest, not cram your head with revision.

"How embarrassing…" you mutter, wrestling with a sudden and strong desire to run to your apartment and never see the light of day. "I wish you'd forget that. I know I did."

"How can I forget! You were so stressed and I was so worried. But you did sleep and texted me the next day that you were feeling better. You were the top scorer for your test too! Isn't that the best birthday present?"

Your face heats up. Surely it is the summer night that is causing such a reaction. Did he know the effect he had on people? Shining smile and all. Does he know what effect he has on you? How unwavering it is despite the time and distance apart.

"I'm full," you declare, passing him your half-bitten melon bread. He didn't say it but you know he probably wants a bite of it too. It is his favourite. "You haven't tasted this in a while right? They don't sell this in Brazil, do they?"

"It's not as delicious." He takes the food, fingers brushing yours. You try to keep your hands to your side as naturally as possible, as if contact with his skin didn't inject a thousand chills into your system, blood rushing to your face.

"Why are awake at this hour though?" He asks.

"I'm just hungry." You shrug.

He chows down the melon bread. Then, he narrows his eyes.

"You wouldn't be if you were asleep though…"

"Obviously," you tease, trying to steer the conversation away from your tendency to sleep late. "Now it's your turn to share what you're doing here."

The convenience store is far behind as you and Hinata stroll down the street at a familiar leisurely pace. You walked this path with him every day up till high school, when he went to a school beyond the mountains, Karasuno. You didn't stay in the neighbourhood either. You were awarded a scholarship for a school in the city.

It pained you to realise how far apart you were from your best friend then. But he was always nearby. Although infrequent throughout high school, he would peer through the glass windows of the bakery looking for you. Sometimes you'll visit his house for dinner when your mother had deliveries out of town. Moments you spent with him were sun-drenched. Without him, you easily receded into long, gloomy nights of revising. There was no other option if you wanted to hold your scholarship among a pool of talented people. You even decided against staying at the University dorms to have his shade of orange in your life.

You can't say you took the news of him traveling to Brazil well.

It was easy to drown in the deep blues of the night since. Burning your memories in exchange for output, so there were less things to painfully hold on to.

"I'm still following Brazil's clock." Hinata laughs, then points at the moon but you look at him. "It's bright in Brazil. I would be at the beach hitting some drills."

As you pass the lamplight, you observe his new physique. He has an uneven tan around his shoulders and thighs that are larger and more formed. You try to tear your eyes away from it, but they linger even as both of you enter a shadowed area of the road. If you knew you would bump into him, you would wear something presentable. You are in your loose pajamas, and unlike Hinata who is in a sleeveless top and sports shorts, you aren't prepared for the warm weather. The trip to the convenience store was supposed to be quick.

"Let's drop by my place, if you don't mind," you offer.

"Sure! I was planning to walk you back anyways, and there's nothing to do at home."

"Do you not have plans for your birthday?"

"Not until tomorrow." He shakes his head and hesitates. He glances at you innocently which signals he's far from innocent but your desire to question him is swept away with his large sigh. "The cake my parents bought will only come then."

"It's a custom cake? I can't think of any other reason why it can't be fulfilled on the day of the—wait… My mum was busy making an order for a special cake, and she said it was something I'll look forward to… Is that your cake?"

Hinata rubs the back of his head as he looks at everything but you, eyes frantically jumping from lamppost to the ground to the roof of houses.

"I…" He pouts like a dog with its tail between its legs. "My return was supposed to be a surprise…" His voice tapers to a whisper, but Hinata has the lungs of a beast. He roars the next few words. "I was supposed to send you a surprise invite to my birthday party tomorrow, but I really wanted to see you!"

You stand at the sidewalk, limbs limp and eyes wide. If you were still eating, you would have dropped your snack.

He wanted… to see you?

But you have more important things to stress about!

Tomorrow? After your all-nighter to finish your work, you'll crash! You might need a drink for that extra energy boost throughout the night…

"Is something wrong?" Hinata asks, his eyes now steadily on you. "I heard from your mum you have been working hard. That's why your replies are so sparse, isn't it?"

"I wasn't… ignoring you," you mumble, remembering how he'll send you a text and you'll reply a month later. "Yeah, things have been getting really busy."

He crosses his arms, puffing his chest out.

"I knew you'd be at the convenience store."

"Eh?" A second blow of surprise. Maybe you've overworked yourself. This is a dream, isn't it? You pinch your cheeks and flinch at the pain.

"You haven't changed, have you? Do I need to be here to take care of you?" He leans, eyes sharp and focused, as if you'll be able to see yourself through his irises. You'll never know in the dimness, but it does feel he's caged you in his sight.

"E-Eh!!" You stumble back, chains of embarrassment are latched on your shoulders and calling you to the floor. "Please don't say such stuff so abruptly. I can't take it."

Hinata chortles, filling your chest with a warmth that coddles your heart battered by his absence. You missed this laugh of his. An aunty turns on the lights in her room and opens her window to scold both of you, and her incessant insults about being lovesick birds causes that feeling to climb to your face.

After apologising, the short distance to your house is awkward, but he invites himself in like old times once he's reached, as if the summer he left was a fever dream.

"Sorry, everything is all over the place," you warn as you flick your room's lights on. Stacks of books overflow from your shelf while stationary and miscellaneous items sprawl on your desk, your laptop the epicentre of the mess. You dump yourself in your chair and instinctively start working as Hinata makes himself comfortable sitting at the edge of your bed. But it's not enough to please him as he gets up and observes over your shoulder.

"That's a lot of words."

"It's a report I've got to finish by tomorrow." Your fingers fly across the keyboard. Seconds later, they are deleted. "It's a pain in the ass."

Hinata giggles. "I've never heard you say that."

"Everyone says worse stuff in University. It really wrings you dry." You get up to pull a stool from under your bed for him to sit on. His name written in cheap red marker across the seat is faded and smeared.

"Have you been living like this? Your bed feels almost new while your chair looks worn." His fingers ghost over some scratch marks on the backrest.

Do I need to be here to take care of you?

"It feels like I don't really have a choice."

"Well, since neither of us can sleep, let's go through this night together."

With Hinata's presence, the night is less blue.

When you wake, it is late morning. Your alarm has been ringing for hours, and you turn to your side after shutting it off. With your head resting on your soft pillow, blanket over your figure, and the air conditioning gently buzzing to cool your room to a comfortable temperature, it’s the perfect equation for staying in bed. However, hazy memories of your report jolts you to your feet.

What happened last night? Where did you stop? Where's Hinata? You dash towards your screen—

There is a post-it-note at the corner with a message written in neat yet uneven handwriting.

You check your phone out of habit, surprised to find a notification. Hinata sent a text.

I went back home to sleep. You worked hard so I tucked you in bed ☆～（ゝ。∂）Hope to see you at the party tomorrow!

Another attack of summer—your face warms and you hide behind your hands. He tucked you in bed? That's so embarrassing. How are you going to face him during the party?

Once again, his words repeat in your mind.

Do I need to be here to take care of you?

If you can be selfish, the answer is yes.

But you know better than that. The sun is a distant star that shines out of reach.

You try to ignore the clock and its ticking numbers, and once your anxiousness surrenders to a calm, you pester your mother downstairs to make your favourite childhood drink. Her not-so-special spciality: hot chocolate. You haven't drank it in years. Taking the cup up, you settle in your chair and do some stretches.

You close your eyes facing your window. The sun's rays seep through your eyelids, a splash of unforgettable orange paints your view.

Even if Hinata can't be with you as often as you'll like, you'll always have traces of him to guide you through the endless night.

You take a deep, big breath and read the reminder he left on your laptop.

Take it easy.

author's note: this story was inspired by this video by lessons from anime (youtube). started this fic on 24th june and tried to finish it before the month ended only to fail, but i picked myself up and somehow managed to squeeze this out. thanks for making it until the end! till my next hq fanfic :)

[feartoxinjelloshot]

honestly i am not a fan of how this drawing turned out BUT i did invest some time into it so i would be amiss not to post it for posterity if nothing else.

context:

so, i spent a long time ruminating on what to do with the league of assassins in my au. obviously, a lot of the canon material concerning it is staggeringly racist, not to mention just kind of stupid overall, so i knew that i wanted most of it to go out the window off the bat. at the same time there were certain aspects of it that i knew i wanted to retain - the immortality, the lazarus pits, talia's original antihero stuff, damian being a weird little knife child, etc - so eventually i decided that the "league of assassins" as it were doesn't really exist; ra's has simply operated im plain view for long enough that people who were paying enough attention went "hey, what the hell, he has a guy lined up for everything, surely he's running some kind of secret evil shadow organization?" he's not. he's really not. he's just been alive long enough that he has a lot of personal favors owed to him at this point. his actual "organization" is like, at maximum three people who owe him life debts at any given time. he's also not really evil per say. he's just really weird.

what ra's is actually doing (amidst some good old garden variety ecoterrorism - if ivy can do it so can he, and it was a core aspect of his motivation for several decades) is acting upon the pathological obsession he has with the lazarus pits. the lazarus pits in my au are a mix of the birth of the demon and BTAS lore surrounding them: they are natural deposits that must be manually dug out from underground wellsprings to be used, but they are also deeply connected to earthly magnetism and can be located via complex leylines and other ambiguously supernatural means. ra's, from his first discovery of them, has been dedicated to obsessively cataloguing and "deciphering" what he perceives to be the grand mystery of the natural world we live in, and that once he "solves" it, he can show the truth to others and the planet will be transformed into a paradise. (you may note this is not dissimilar to the riddler's pathos concerning patterns - more on that point later probably). this also has ties to his mortal occupation as a physician. he has a strong lingering investment in finding new ways to cure ills, and sees death as the ultimate ill, and therefore he wants to find a way to universally cure death.

now, a lot of this is directly informed by his backstory from birth of the demon, which happens to also contain the sole appearance of the other character in this image, Huwe (we aren't given another name for him to my memory, so i'm forced to assume that's his only one). huwe was an enemy-turned-ally of ra's who eventually became immortal alongside him up until the mid 1800(???)s, where they had a fight that ended in ra's killing huwe by stabbing him with a fire poker. i thought the dynamic between them was really interesting and underutilized in that comic so i decided to bring it back - it goes pretty differently in my au but i have not worked out the specifics to any degree of clarity yet so i will leave that for another post.

there is also more going on with talia and damian in this au, but this is getting long and they aren't even in this post so ill give the cliffnotes version: talia was raised to be more or less a 'warden' of the lazarus pits and she is immortal like ra's, albeit much younger chronologically. she has a vested desire to lead a "normal" life and live and die as a mortal. after having damian, who is ostensibly supposed to be her successor, she sends him away to live with bruce as a form of achieving her dream vicariously through him - as long as he remains mortal and lives as he wishes to, away from the inherited responsibility of the pits, she can bear the weight of it knowing he's out there somewhere. ra's's side of this is a whole other thing about immortal loneliness and his family being the only ones who he can relate to at all after all that he's done and a weird amount of parallels to the joker of all people but this is getting WAY TOO LONG.

TL;DR ra's (long hair) is a strange immortal doctor and the other guy is huwe, his totally-not-gay-and-also-immortal friend.

[fateandloveentwined]

Characterising Valjean: masks and struggles

Okay, so jvj's sudden intense self-deprecation towards the end of part five has always eluded me. Like, where did that come from? Hadn’t he already turned over a new leaf with the bishop and with Cosette?

Les mis has many themes, but if we cast aside all the themes focusing on french insurgencies and her people, abstract grace and love and Progress, at the heart of the brick we find her characters, and to look at Valjean, perhaps there are two things that explain his abject self-deprecation and wretchedness/misery which were so pivotal to his last chapters in the book and central to his overarching character.

below has absolutely no regard for spoilers proceed with caution lol thanks

I. Masks and veneers.

It is my sorry fate that, only ever able to command respect that is fraudulently obtained, that respect humiliates me and inwardly oppresses me, and if I’m to have any self-respect others must despise me.

cough erik poto

As stated patently in his final ruminations, JVJ never considered himself successful. Everything he did which he was respected and lauded for, it was attributed to disguised versions of himself, Monsieur Madeleine and Fauchelevent. As valjean he never achieved anything of worth, he was terrified in his first days in paris hiding from javert's pursuit and finding the convent, he never felt anything of worth as valjean but a criminal and convict pursued for the entirety of his life.

Throughout the book, he lived a struggle between accepting valjean and donning another disguise that would be some other benevolent man: the extensive deliberations on his way to Arras (who am I?), his timidity after Cosette's marriage in which he deemed his work done — either he is to don a new identity or resume the one he hid away for the many past years; towards the end, as Cosette and Marius were increasingly besotted with each other, he withdrew, letting Javert arrest him again under conditions — he resigned to the resumption of his fugitive identity.

In all these years, his convicted past self loomed over him unfailingly, especially considering his canonical rearrest after Fantine’s death — in spite of all the good he did in the world he was never, in essence, a free man of his mind.

Which brings us to our second point.

II. Jacob's wrestle

The terrible struggle of old, of which we have already seen several phases, began once more. Jacob wrestled with the angel for only one night. Alas! how many times have we seen Jean Valjean forced to grapple with his conscience in the dark, and struggling frantically against it!

The bring him home reprise in the finale is SO poignant, even more so than the original number because of what it truly meant to Valjean in the book. The musical "redeemed" many characters by painting them in a better light: Javert, with his misguided understanding of religion vs. reading the law as bible; Eponine, with her scream saving jvj's household at Rue Plumet. As for jvj, his many wrestles with faith were downplayed for the sake of simplification, going as far as to him praying earnestly for Marius’ life at the barricades in the musical when in the book, let’s face it, he was physically saving Marius but in his mind he probably didn't understand why he was doing something so foolish.

Predestined fates do not all follow a direct route. They do not run straight before the one who is predestined. They have dead ends, blind alleys, obscure turnings, daunting crossroads offering several alternative routes.

And so with the musical where all these mental struggles were downplayed, in the book he wrestled with the faith he has chosen, first during his torturously slow tread to Arras (who am I?), his ruminations on Marius (akin to heart full of love reprise), and his final confession to Marius — so many times had he struggled; there's the idea that God redeemed him through the bishop, and he did good as a man — yet still why had his life been so tortured and full of agony? At first I questioned the use of the title “the miserables/the wretched” — for les amis de l’ABC, the destitute people of the republic, I could see their wretchedness, but for Valjean — as the main character, why was the title so unfitting of the main character? But no. Internally he was wretched, he was pitiable and miserable, and in the aura of his bring him home we forget about his moments of wrath flung out about his faith and life philosophy, blunt anger at the injustice not of the world but of how his life had been — unredeemed, in spite of; the arrant, incomprehensible fear of being pursued and hunted, the resignation to his fate at the very end: moments at the sewers, before javert and before the loving newlyweds.

As such so profound it is, towards his final moments in the musical he reprises “God on high” and prays to bring himself home, he yields to the things in life he doesn’t like and defers to God’s judgement, the faith he has followed on and the bargain he has made so many long years ago — it was not at Arras that his soul truly belonged to God, it was at these final moments where he prays that he has lived his faith through — and that was when I felt jvj’s character fully unravelled.

It was a starless night and extremely dark. No doubt, in the shadows, some immense angel stood with wings outspread, awaiting his soul.

---

oops this has gone on for way too long but i was itching to dissect jvj and have put it off for so long since reading the book i just had to do it for myself anyway.

Also living for all the nonexistent COMC Edmond Dantes and JVJ crossovers because discounting the timeline they share too many similarities in knowledge acquisition imprisonment and faith and pretences to not have met and had many an interesting tete-a-tete.

*quotes taken from christine donougher's translation. explains my tendency to use wretched over miserable lol.

[theportuguesewolf]

AMERICAN PAIN

Umberto Eco once said (and I'm quoting from memory): North Americans are the only people who can worship Snow-White and Jaws with the same fervour. 

Yesterday, at the Moonspell Q&A, I got many questions about returning to the US and tour. Please take this with a pinch of salt, yet we have a private joke running in the band which is that all our North-American fans can fit in a plane and should come to Europe where they could see us properly, with a show based in more than mere energy of surviving through the night.

When we are at odds with life in America and read these "come to America" comments ,we, jokingly, add: Come to the US so we won't show up.

Last tour alongside Eleine and Oceans of Slumber wasn't fun for me. The venues were kinda empty, the streets were dirty and dangerous and the motivation simply wasn't there. Sure, we can still deliver the goods; naturally I can still have fun with the many things 'Merica has to offer from the amazing landscapes, to crazy Vegas, and libraries, bookshops, and street food and I will for sure miss it ( I already do) but I can't see at the moment taking another trip to the States and loosing money and time and being very depressed again, about it all.

Last night, I told you a little of my unfortunate encounter with a "gang" in NY in the hotel we're staying prior to our return trip to Portugal but the shortage of time made me default on some details and I'd like to share it more completely, if you don't mind:

I was minding my own business and ruminating about the past month on the road, while keeping an eye on our gear , when I was approached by a black young man who asked me, rather rudely, for my phone number which I promptly refused to give him.

Used, so it seems, to get his way around things and people, he immediately started to be aggravated, while I tried to explain to him, to no effect, what was I doing there and that I was okay in giving him the number of our bus driver as he "needed" to have all the phone numbers of the proprietors of the vehicles parked in the hotel lot.  Fair enough.

But, seeing the way this young man escalated things on his own, no more explanations could I offer and he just started to act out on the parking lot and shouting threats at me. I went to the reception to call security and indeed there was a "guard" there, who tried to approach this angry person nicely, but the die was cast. I went to him myself (again) and tried to reason with him and even offered an apology because we were, definitely, lost in translation, but he started to offend me, calling all the names in the book that I shan't repeat here.

He added: "You'll get what you deserve" and in 10 minutes time, a van parked near the hotel reception and a Gang of four black individuals came out of the car, while the previous guy was shouting at me, constantly, that he wanted to see what I was going to do now.

I am a father, a husband, a singer, a writer, an entrepreneur but , above all, I am a simple man. And it was a simple man that I went to the gang "leader" and explained him who I was, where I came from, what happened, what could happened if they attacked me (they did have masks on and their hands in their pockets meant guns) because I was a Portuguese citizen and while his little brother kept screaming threats and improperares and my band watched in panic, I could reach out to the gang leader which not only told off his brother but also shook my hand, telling me words I will never forget: "Have a blessed day, brother." And we both went to our homes.

I could now stop to observe a lot what's happening to one of the most beautiful and spectacular countries in the world: the 70.000 people who died of drug abuse; the tent cities all over the place; the misery and the chaos but I won't go any further. 

I just wish to extend an olive branch to the people who almost attacked me, and yes, we are brothers and maybe victims of a cruel, money-oriented world, a world without a shred of value to show for.

Also, I want to embrace all the Moonspell North-American and Canadian fans and ask them for their empathy and forgiveness, while I offer, hereby, my best explanation of why I dread the thought of another tour in the States.

I never went public with this but I felt it was the time, so we can keep watching for ourselves and respect one another as I respected that gang leader and he respected me back. 

Goth help America, happy holidays y'all, don't forget to follow my new blog for more of this and that.

[xerith-42]

~cha cha slides into the room~

May I ask about some shadow knight angst or shadow king angst ?????? Also thanks for sharing your OC you’re very passionate about them and it’s good to see writers happy about their creations.

~Cha cha slides out of the room~

First off, I'm so glad you enjoyed my endless ramblings about her. I am so passionate about this character I forgot I made her an entire pin board that's fokin massive, so feel free to breeze through that if it's to your liking.

Now for some Shadow Knight angst... [friendly reminder I am not a mental health expert, most of what I touch upon in this post comes from wikipedia deep dives and personal experiences. DO NOT take any of what I say here as professional advice or diagnoses, I am literally just a freakazoid on the internet]

Something I've definitely ruminated on but never made a coherent post about is how shadow knights probably struggle a LOT with derealization/depersonalization. I mean, both of them are potential symptoms one might experience after prolonged trauma, stress, or anxiety like say being dragged into literal hell and raised into undeath and then forced to kill that which you love most. Furthermore, if Gene fucked with their memories at all then they have even more doubts. And on top of all of that the time distortion from the Nether makes it even harder to know what's real or not. How can you be sure of what's real and what isn't if you don't even know how long you've been gone from the overworld?

I imagine Vincent and Gene struggle with it the most. Both of them have been very direct puppets for the Shadow King, Gene especially, and likely struggle with the feeling of their body not being their own. Sometimes Gene is feeling perfectly fine, just his usual self, but then something... changes. He isn't sure what or why, but the world is blurry and he can't feel his own breathing and his body feels limp but he can see it still moving. He keeps speaking but his voice doesn't sound like his own, at least internally.

Vincent learned to deal with this... problem on his own. He says he's been alive for 100 years, but even he's unsure of that number. He's been around for a long time, and sometimes the things he says aren't true to the time he's in anymore. Technology and understanding changes, and while he can keep up with it sometimes, other times he can't. He'll ask about the latest news from O'Khasis and have to come to terms with the fact that the head family he once knew no longer exists, only survived by their descendants he doesn't know. It sometimes feels like he came from a completely different time and place. He's pretty sure he didn't jump timelines/realities, but he can never know for sure. Not when everything is so... off.

While someone might call it "spacing out", Laurance is in fact having a completely silent mental breakdown about his lack of control over his own life. This goes double if I smack him with the headcanon that he's Xavier's reincarnation and therefore also gets his memories sometimes. It's not that Laurance is just spacing out or his head is up in the clouds, he's literally questioning whether he even belongs in his own body because it doesn't feel like his own anymore. These scars aren't his, his hands are shakier than they used to be, and he can't even tell if his wants and desires are his own because who knows what's the Calling, what's Xavier, and what's his own memories.

Sasha gets a glimpse at how Meteli has changed since the last time she was there and it's all wrong. None of the buildings she remembers are there, none of the guards she once knew remain, even Cadenza looks different. It makes her wonder if she ever lived there in the first place. If the Meteli she remembers was even a real location at all, or something Gene or The Shadow King put into her head. And if she isn't from Meteli, where is she from? Is she even from anywhere? Is she even of this world? Did she even have a life before becoming a Shadow Knight? The only thing that tethers her to reality is Kenmur, but he'd rather forget she existed. Maybe she shouldn't exist.

Zenix can't even remember when or how he answered his calling. He can't remember who he killed or why. He can't remember the life he had before he met Garroth and moved to Phoenix Drop. Did he even have a life before he met Garroth? Did he even have a life before becoming a shadow knight? Is he even a full shadow knight? There's a blood lust that's ever present in his person, but he can't tell if it's his own or someone else's. Is this blood lust the calling? Or Gene's? Or the Shadow King's? Or maybe he's always been a bad person who wanted to do bad things and was just looking for an excuse. It's this kind of spiral that eventually pushes Zenix to rebel. He doesn't know who he was, or even who he is, just who he wants to be. That's the closest thing to sanity that he can hold onto.

That's all I got. For now...

~Cha cha slides out but I trip over my own feet and eat shit in the doorway~

[rosewolfs-world]

Colourful (Pt 5)

Young Toshinori Yagi x Female OC

Warnings: swearing, hospitalization due to hero work

Part 5: Build up & Break

Year 4

💡 Time was a funny thing. Hinata was now in the last year of her nursing degree, getting ready for her medical doctorate. Over the past four years, she liked to think she’d gotten a good handle on life. Classes, friends, working with Toshinori-san and the local hospital. It was busy, but at long last, she’d found some stable ground. That is until—

☀️ Times were a’changing. He was beginning to wonder if he should reach out to Gran Torino. Surely enough time had passed by now. Surely he could go home…right? Hell, his friends even encouraged it.

 David: “Hell yea, man! Once you make it to number one you can go anywhere you like!” 

Hinata-chan: “Back to Japan? Well…if that’s your dream then I’m sure you can make it happen!”

💡 After that, the world spun on. One by one, Hinata’s roommates and friends were moving on with their lives. Toshinori was leaving. Old friends were going off, getting married, and some were even having kids! In their twenties! The thought alone was baffling to Hinata. She still had so much schooling left for her doctorate—and the idea of diving into that alone—What the hell am I doing?

☀️It was hard to believe that four years had already passed since he left home. He wondered how Gran Torino was doing, on his own back in Mustafar—wondered if his Master could see him, somehow. Suppose she would have known anything about Hinata or--if she was proud of him, wherever she was. Get it together, All Might. Toshinori shook himself. You’re almost number one. Focus on that.

💡 “I’ll be fine, Zoe. You and David go have fun at your parents' house--beach house, whatever. Just enjoy spring break with your family, alright? --Alright, I got my hands full and I still gotta get the door, so--yea, yea, Happy Easter Zoe, take care.” As soon as she hung up the phone, Hinata nearly squawked in surprise when the weight of her groceries was suddenly whisked away from her. One glimpse of familiar blue eyes and she knew exactly what had happened. “Fucking hell, Toshinori-san, you scared me! You don’t have to carry those, what are you--?”

☀️ “Hehe, sorry Hinata-chan. It wasn’t my intention to frighten you, I just, er--” Okay, he was willing to admit it. He royally sucked at focusing on the things he should be focusing on. Instead of staying alert on patrol, he’d found himself ruminating about...a lot of things. Passing by the university apartments he’d recognized the head of curly hair on the phone, her arms laden with bags. He found himself leaping forward to help without thinking. Acting is more valuable than thinking anyhow, he supposed. “Just wanted to lend a helping hand, if I could.” he smiled. 

💡 Something was up, she could just tell. Toshinori was wearing his hero smile more than usual lately; which was saying something. He’d been wearing it an awful lot before he revealed his plans to return to Japan. He never said how soon he would leave...maybe that’s what’s bothering him. Should I really dare to ask?  “Well,” Hinata hummed, “Since you’re here, you wanna stay for dinner? I made way too many ramen noodles earlier today, so I needed more ingredients and--”

☀️ Toshinori paused. Here in America, he was constantly bombarded with images of happy families gathering around a given holiday, smiles all around. Sometimes he wondered what Shimura Nana’s family would be doing right now if she were alive. Suppose she hadn’t sacrificed their relationship for the sake of heroism.  He shook himself internally. If he followed those thoughts much further he would lose his smile. That’s the last thing Nana would want for him...and Hinata too, comes to think of it. “Sure!” He beamed. “I’d be delighted.”

💡 Together they sorted the groceries and finished up dinner. In those moments Hinata felt the distinctly warm tingle of deja-vu trickling down her spine. Toshinori-san was as frantic an eater as he always was.  Broth splattered his wrists and collar as he scarfed everything down. The memory squeezed at her sternum, crumpling her nerves into a tight, yearning knot. Hinata bit her lip. “Toshinori-san--” he immediately glanced over at her address. “I know you want to go home sometime soon, but--I’ve honestly been wondering why. Am I allowed to ask that?” Toshinori looked back at his empty bowl, carefully considering before--

☀️ He finally told her. He finally talked to her about...everything. She already knew about Gran Torino (Because he was basically her favourite hero and Toshinori couldn’t resist showing off a *little*). But then he told her why he knew Gran Torino. About Shimura Nana, his master, and how she’d died. Why he wanted to go back... Even years after the fact, the memories still hurt. And Hinata, bless her—

💡Revenge, for Shimura Nana...There was no denying it. She let her emotions get the best of her. Shimura...so that’s why he wanted to know me. If she had been smart, when Toshinori bore his whole story to her, she would have screamed or cried or pushed him away. Instead, she held him close and said: “I’m sorry, Toshinori-san--'' I'm sorry I can’t be who you want me to be. “--Us Shimuras are a dime a dozen back home. But it’s alright--if your master was as amazing as you say she was, I’m sure she’s already proud of you.” Just as proud as I was. “ Whatever you choose going forward, I’m sure that’ll never change.”

☀️ Her soft words prompted him to look at her. His heart stumbled in his chest at the sight of her --I didn’t realize she was so close! “Th-thank you, Hinata-chan,” he stammered. This was one of the rare occasions where she had her hair down. The inky black waves framed her round face beautifully; the smattering of freckles over her cheeks like paint-splattered stars. He’d never noticed before how the freckles lined her upper lip as well...Toshinori immediately forced his gaze upward again. Her eyes were locked on him.  But they shouldn’t have been glimmering so much, he could hardly see their golden colour anymore. Wait, is she--?

💡 Hinata quickly turned away. Nope, not here. Nope. Not crying. Not in front of Toshinori. Hell no. Collecting both their bowls, she set about doing the dishes--leaving Toshinori stunned and confused on her living room sofa. Dammit. The ceramic clattered abruptly in the steel sink. She didn’t flinch. Dammit, dammit, dammit--Wooden utensils, cast iron pots and pans all clacking together. Hinata’s eyes fluttered persistently. God damn it, why?! Why me, why now...Why him? The sound of running water was just enough to smother her sniffles and silent tears. 

☀️ Something was wrong. He could just tell. In the weeks after his...admission (he honestly couldn’t think of what else to call it) it was as if Hinata had vanished. Not in the way one would expect, she still answered his texts and patched up his wounds. But in the midst of their everyday routine--something was lost. Her friendly voice was brittle. Her smiles felt hollow. The sight tugged at something in his chest, though it felt more like tearing fabric. She was there, but she wasn’t really...There. He didn’t know what to do about it. Or why it hurt so much.

💡 God damn it, why can’t I focus?! Hinata’s head fell to her desk with a dull thud. It was a stupid question. She already knew the answer. It was always there; in her life, in her mind, it’d become commonplace by now. If anything, she actually needed to stop thinking about that shit.  But somehow it seemed lately like her sensitivity to it—to him—had been turned up a thousand notches. Her eyes stung all over again just thinking about his smile. --Fucking hell, why do I do this to myself?

☀️ Okay, that was a lie. He knew. Perhaps he always knew, somewhere inside. But subconsciously knowing and consciously acknowledging something were two very different things. Actually, there was an internal sense of relief, in finding the words for what he felt. The problem was trying to express himself to her. Every time she greeted him, he lost his words. By the time he opened his mouth, her smile was turned to someone else. He didn’t know what to do. How to convince her to stop--to look at him and really listen--as she had before. If I could just tell her, maybe...

💡 “You’re in love with him, aren’t you?” 

“No, Zoe, I’m not.”

 “Yea, you are!”

 “No, I’m not.”

 “Hina, come on--” 

“No, I didn’t let you drag me to some bar just for an interrogation. Are we gonna drink, or not?”

☀️ The more he kept his words to himself, the more they filled his mind--swirling around with all the unanswered questions and half-baked reasons he couldn’t understand. She’d told him stories about her family; how so many of them had become heroes, travelled the world...lost their lives. Toshinori paused. He knew what the life of a hero was like, so many hours away from home, throwing himself into danger for the safety of others. Hinata knew it, too, she understood his lifestyle better than almost anyone else he’d ever met. But despite the risk, she’d never shied away before. What changed? What can I do--A thunderous rumble rolled through the air. 

💡It’s hopeless. She knows she’s a lost cause; at this point, she’s just being stubborn. More like quaking in her boots, or shoving shaky hands in her pockets. She knows what’s going on inside her head. There’s only one reason why her stomach would be twisted in this many knots. Or why her pulse constantly flutters at the sight of that smile. She knows. But all the same, seeing the news in a window display, her nerves are validated in the worst way possible. Just when she starts to think she’s falling in love with him--villains decide to set the world on fire. 

☀️Toshinori ended up in a critical condition in the hospital--fading in and out of being like a ghost. Sometimes he heard the muttering of voices. The beeping of machines. He couldn’t open his eyes. Couldn’t see a thing. Everything smelled sterile, along with the pungent citrus sting of window cleaner. But there were quiet moments, too. Tendrils of gold would bloom into his empty world, rousing him from slumber. Warmth like an unfurling sunbeam would spread from wherever she touched. He knew the feeling of her quirk just as well as his own. He would feel a cool hand pressed to his, or hear a soft voice murmuring to him from his bedside. Hinata...you’re here.

💡 It felt so strange, whispering stories to his lifeless body. “A few years ago, there was an incident, an oil rig, off the coast. My aunt was among the heroes trying to rescue the stranded workers. They got the civilians out, but she--she didn’t make it. The day you and I met, I’d just returned from her wake--can’t call it a funeral if they never found her body.” Her grip tightened as she rested her head on their joined hands. “I never wanted to do that again, wakes, funerals, always being left behind. I'm sick of it. I can’t do it, Toshinori. I can’t lose someone again.”Please don’t leave me...

☀️Little did she know, he could hear her. Every word. He tried to move, tried to speak. Tried to channel all his strength into just that one hand. I won’t go. Don’t give up. But he couldn’t move. He could barely draw his breath. Dammit. Pathetic.

💡 One day, Hinata took a deep breath. No more. She stood from her seat in the hospital room. After already losing so many loved ones to heroics, she knew. --If she let herself fall for Toshinori and he disappeared, she would break completely. Not a chance. It was impossible to ignore. Shit like this happens to heroes all the time, death, disappearances and worse. If she couldn’t handle the risk, then she shouldn’t try. It was like that American saying, ‘if you can’t take the heat, get the hell out of the kitchen’. Hinata cast one last glance over her shoulder. There lay Toshinori, lifeless, mummified beyond recognition.  No more. She swallowed the lump in her throat—time to move on.

☀️He hated hospitals. This incident did nothing to change that. Through his weeks of gruelling recovery, the brightest part of his day was always her. She visited him every day--sometimes in scrubs, sometimes in civvies, but always with bouncing curls and sparkling eyes. When he was finally allowed to check out of the hospital, she was beside him. She held up most of the conversation while he concentrated on walking--that is until a particular phrase caught his ear--

 “What was that?”

 Hinata paused. “I met someone,” she tells him. 

“You-you did?”

 “Yea, uhm, Zoe dragged me out to some bar a couple of months ago before you got hurt, and I, uh, that’s where I met Jason. He’s picking us up today and--and he’s been a big help. God knows I’ve been a frustrated mess through this whole thing and--”

 “Are you happy with him?”

 “Huh?”

 “Are you happy?”

 After a moment’s consideration, she smiles. “Hai! All the more now that you’re back, Toshinori-san.” 

Toshinori smiled but said nothing.

[helloimjennsco]

do you have any random alien Stede facts you can share that won't be spoiler? I really like the au and want to know more.

Ahhh thank you so much!! 😍

I am THIS CLOSE to finishing up chapter 9, if I can get my brain to cooperate and get life to stop life-ing long enough to finally wrap things up. In the meantime, here are a few fun(?) alien!Stede facts from my notes and/or brain!

(The following facts pertain to my fic The Wondrous Journey of Stede Bonnet, Human Pirate Captain, a canon-adjacent OFMD AU which begs the question, "What if Stede Bonnet were secretly an alien the entire time?" It's mostly very funny, but also features a fair amount of identity crises and ruminating about the inherent complications of human relationships because overthinking things is my passion. 💀 If that sounds interesting to you, follow that link!)

While the being currently known as Stede Bonnet doesn't have a 'name' of his own, he DOES have a sort of unique intergalactic ID number for situations (like official documents) where more specific identification is important. His is ZX 00916424 SRG-8 (pronounced: 'Zed Ex Double-Oh Nine' with the rest as you'd expect it.) The only mention of this so far is in the title of a mini-podfic of alien!Stede's humble fuckery suggestion from chapter 7 that the talented just_a_perfect_day did for Halloween last year!

Much like the human Stede Bonnet, alien!Stede hated the parties on his own world. Granted, most of the 'parties' were more glad-handing celebrations of recent conquests or exciting new discoveries, which meant they were usually pretty shitty parties to begin with. But without fail, he'd always end up cornered by the most boring blowhard at the party who could simply NOT stop bragging to him about their role in the recent whatever-it-was-they-were-celebrating. (His friend always used to tell him that he was far too accommodating and that he should simply walk away from them if they're being boring, but he didn't want to come off as rude—or worse, insufficiently enthused about conquest.)

While there are no flowers on his homeworld, the geology of the planet results in some extremely cool rocks sometimes farther out from the city. On the rare occasions he got to go to leave the city, he DEFINITELY snuck home a favorite rock every time. He keeps his collection of cool rocks tucked away in the auxiliary wardrobe inside of a little metal box. Maybe one day he'll show them to Ed?

It was mentioned in chapter 4 that delivering the intimidating invader speeches was one of the only things he actually liked about his previous occupation and that he thought he was pretty good at them. This is, in fact, an understatement—he is actually so good at them that he's developed a bit of a reputation for it. (Not many others from his world bother to talk much at all during the invasion process, let alone deliver full-on villain speeches.) Unfortunately for him, no one has bothered to inform him of this, so he remains unaware that his 'intimidating invader speeches' are such a hot topic of conversation in certain intergalactic circles.

Alien!Stede's father is not actually his 'father' in the biological sense. Nearly all of the planet's young are bioengineered in labs in order to cherry pick the most optimal genetic traits for the role to which they are most likely to be assigned—based on current and projected levels of supply and demand—and then raised and educated communally until they're old enough to be assigned to their respective roles. His 'father' is more of a caregiver/mentor who was assigned to him once he was officially designated as Invader Class. (Have you read The Giver? With the whole 'coming of age job assignment' ceremony at the beginning? Kind of like that, except if Jonas actually went to live with The Giver afterwards.)

Like the rest of the people on his homeworld, alien!Stede in his natural form has three little curved indentions on either side of his head. When he's feeling especially strong emotions (happy, angry, etc.) little frilly ridges sprout up from each of the curves. Objectively, it's adorable—however, because most other beings in the universe usually only see this happen when his people are engaging in gruesome acts of violence, 'adorable' is not usually the first adjective that comes to mind when the little frilly ridges make their appearance.

Thank you so much for reading and for asking fun questions like these!! I hope these lil bits of trivia have been fun!! 💜💜💜

[fates-theysband]

won't you stay with me, my darling?

FALSE ALARM I AM BACK BABY!!!

anyway uh. this is the thing ive been working on for two damb weeks. anyway herein lies uno reverse cards, getting dunked on by one's work buddies, and a. uh. um. [turns and runs out of the room]

--

The setting sun came as a relief. Fate’s office was quiet for the first time all day–all meetings with management concluded, all calls returned, all profiles received, reviewed, and filed away. The only thing he had left to do was wait for one brief meeting that could very well be hours away. Plenty of time to think, and nothing to interrupt him.

All the better, because while his office may have been quiet (save for the occasional soft rustling of Lady Pawdington adjusting her position on his lap) his mind was not. He was all at once paralyzed with indecision, sick with dread, vibrating with anxiety, and yet giddy with excitement. It was all too much, and he considered fabricating an excuse to leave early, to retire to his quarters and at least agonize about this in a more comfortable setting.

“No,” he murmured under his breath as he recalled what sight awaited him there, resting his forehead against one hand and using the other to gently scratch Lady’s head. He’d worry the velvet right off that little box on his bedside table if he spent another night turning it over in his hands, pondering the right time or if he even should.

Maybe he’d discuss it with someone else once this last meeting was finished. He just had to wait for–

“Uh, Fate?”

The sudden sound snapped him out of his ruminations, and he looked up at the source. A small figure in an oversized robe, with cat ears and gleaming yellow eyes. Spawn #89. Rico Chatte.

“Forgive me,” Fate responded, sitting up straighter in his desk and attempting to compose himself. “I didn’t expect you to arrive quite so early. Let’s go over your conduct for today.”

“Uhhhhh-huh,” they responded, raising an eyebrow suspiciously but pressing no further. “Sure. Let’s hear it.”

He rifled through the stack of profiles he’d left on his desk for this meeting. As usual, the correct ratio of life to death, although, as expected if not appreciated, they’d completely ignored everything else he’d asked of them for this batch. But that wasn’t a cause for termination, and he was in no mood to nettle them for it tonight, so he let it slide. “As I’ve come to expect from you, everything is in order. Nothing else to really say, so, unless you have any questions for me, I believe we can conclude this meeting.”

There was a silence as the two parties stared each other down, Fate silently willing Rico to leave as they seemed to be attempting to puzzle something out. The whole scene put him in mind of the moment right before a duel, that long few seconds before both opponents draw their weapons and attack.

“Okay, spill it. You’re acting weirder than usual. What’s going on?” Rico’s question pierced the silence like a hole punch, and their tone poked just as many holes in what Fate had thought was a perfect facade of nonchalance.

The keeper of world order scoffed dismissively at the feline reaper’s accusation. “Don’t be silly. There’s nothing going on. I’m simply…pondering something. Nothing you need to worry about.” Silently, he cursed himself for the slight hesitation.

“Are you kidding me?” Rico leaned forward, resting one hand on Fate’s desk and regarding him with narrowed eyes and alert ears. “The entire time I’ve worked here, the main thing I have ever needed to worry about is you pondering things. If you are pondering something, I need to know what it is as soon as possible for my own mental health.”

“The dilemma currently troubling me is not one I would consider it appropriate to ask an employee’s advice on,” Fate responded, more sharply than he intended. He cleared his throat, taking a breath to compose himself. “I apologize for the outburst. It’s a…personal matter, is all. Not to worry, I’ll figure it out on my own time. See you tomorrow.”

Rico made no move to leave, although their expression changed from accusatory to confused. “A ‘personal matter’? What, are you and Charlie having relationship issues or something? They make it seem like everything’s fine, but…”

“That is none of your business,” Fate hurriedly cut Rico off before they could say anything further. Of all the people in the Office for his beloved to have as a close friend… “And, actually, it’s quite the opposite,” he added, quietly, glancing aside and feeling his face warm slightly.

“‘Quite the opposite’, huh?” Rico said, looking (appropriately) like the cat that ate the canary. “Thinking of taking a big step?”

There was no denying it now. Fate sighed and turned back to face his subordinate. “If you breathe a word of this, especially to Charlemagne, the consequences will be dire,” he warned.

“Yeah, yeah, my lips are sealed, I’ve kept a lid on juicier stuff than this,” Rico waved away the warning, rolling their eyes. “Let’s hear it.”

“Lately I have been wondering if I should…” he paused to swallow, trying not to choke on what came next. “...ask them to marry me.”

The silence descended on the room again, both parties seeming in deep contemplation. The reaper spoke first once again. “Honestly, I think you should go for it.”

The encouragement came as a pleasant surprise. “Is that so?” Fate responded.

“Yeah,” Rico confirmed. “They talk about you like you hung the moon. It drives me nuts. I can’t mention you in conversation around them without hearing about this or that sooooo cute and charming thing you did last time they saw you.”

Fate turned bright red at that revelation. “I…I had no idea they spoke of me that way.”

“They do. Frequently. I’d put a lot of darksouls on them saying yes if you popped the question. And I have.”

“It heartens me to hear that. I appreciate the encouragement. Although I do wish to warn you that office betting pools are against–”

Rico cut him off as they began backing away from his desk toward the door. “Hey, won’t do it again, I think you letting this one slide is a fair trade, I’ll get out of your hair now, go get ‘em, tiger!” They gave a final thumbs up before slipping through the door entirely, closing it behind them and leaving Fate alone in his office.

He glanced down at Lady Pawdington, who was in turn looking curiously up at him, and ran a hand over her head once again. Now if only he could think of a good place…

–

Inventory day at the Emporium was usually a lively occasion, or at least as lively as that dusty old hall could get. But today Charlie wasn’t much in the mood for banter. Too much to think about. Instead they contented themself with the calming rhythm of unpacking and repacking desk widgets, outfits, and visages into storage boxes, only faintly noticing the sounds of their employer softly humming and jotting down names and quantities.

The thoughts were burning a hole in their mind. They were itching to tell someone, but if this somehow got back to him…well, it probably wouldn’t be a disaster, but it’d definitely take the wind out of their sails (heh) to know the surprise was spoiled. And as much as they wanted to tell everyone lest they explode from having to keep their anticipation inside, there was another part that wanted to keep this fully secret, to give nobody else the satisfaction of knowing. All the same, though…a bit of advice would not go amiss. This was not something they could afford to mess up.

They decided to chance it. “Hey, Mortimer?” they asked, glancing over at the skeletal pirate sitting a few paces away. “Can I ask you kind of a weird question?”

“I’d be disappointed if ye were to ask me a normal one!” Mortimer quipped in response. “Fire away.”

“So, you’re pretty worldly, right? Lot of life experience? Probably have seen just about everything?” Charlie began, twisting in their seat so the two were facing each other.

Mortimer buffed their nails (or where their nails would be, if they still had flesh) on their shirt in mock dismissiveness. “Not to toot me own horn, of course, but aye, you could say ol’ Mortimer’s weathered just about every storm there is.”

“Good, good. I’ve got a little hypothetical for you,” Charlie continued, entwining their fingers and resting their chin on them. “So, let’s say, for the sake of argument, you have this friend. And your friend has been…courting someone for a long time.”

“Aye,” Mortimer responded, sitting forward on their stool. “Don’t suppose me friend and their love interest correspond to anybody I’d know in real life, do they?” Skeletons weren’t the most expressive bunch, and yet it was somehow clear they were smirking knowingly.

“You can think that, if it helps you contextualize it,” Charlie responded with a shrug. “The point is, your friend comes to you one day with a dilemma. They would like to propose to their beloved, but they aren’t sure about a few things.”

“Well,” Mortimer put a hand to their chin in thought. “I’ve received me fair share of marriage proposals, and given a few of ‘em, so I’m happy to give ye–er, sorry, this hypothetical friend yer askin’ on behalf of –some nuggets of wisdom.”

“Great! So they’re not overly worried about the possibility of being rejected–it’d hurt for sure, but no need to count their chickens in either direction here. But I don’t–THEY don’t,” Charlie hurriedly corrected themself, “have much experience with this sort of thing. They’ve only really seen it in stories. They don’t really have the time or resources for anything big or showy, but…would it really be enough to just drop to one knee and ask?”

Mortimer seemed to ponder for a moment, before answering, “If I know the captain–and I’d say I do, I did plunder their wardrobe, after all–they’d probably rather ye do that than make a big show of it. I can picture the old sea dog keelin’ over on the spot if ye so much as asked ‘em in public!” They punctuated the statement with a guffaw.

Charlie couldn’t help but laugh in response. “You’re probably right. Wouldn’t be much of an occasion if that happened,” they joked. “I’m just nervous, I guess. You probably understand how it is.”

“Aye, that I do,” Mortimer replied. “But with the way they are around ye…well, I’ve been thinkin’ about what I’d say in me speech at yer reception for a long time.”

“Awfully presumptuous of you,” Charlie said with a shake of the head and a small chuckle. 

“Ol’ Mortimer can always tell which way the wind’s gonna blow,” the quartermaster boasted.

“I guess so.” More quietly, they continued, “You’re not gonna tell anybody, are you?”

“Nay, never,” Mortimer responded. “But I’d better get to hear how they reacted.”

“You’ll be the first to know. Swear to it.”

–

The silence in the top-floor office almost seemed to hum with anticipatory energy. Or, the sole being occupying it mused to himself, perhaps that was just projection, an attempt to reduce the weight on his mind by unfurling it and laying it across the entire room.

He’d made special preparations for tonight–no chance anyone could interrupt, no chance anything could interfere. Just him, his beloved, and the view from his office window–the night sky combined with the lights from Cosmopolis City below looked uniquely stunning tonight. Hopefully it was a romantic enough setting to warrant a proposal–anything else he could think of had felt too contrived, too obvious, too much. 

Fate glanced uneasily from the window to the clock on the wall. Charlie should be arriving any moment now. They’d reacted unexpectedly when he’d asked them to meet him in his office after they finished their shift–they seemed to noticeably relax, as though something had been worrying them and he’d just given them carte blanche to forget it entirely. Then they’d said, “I’ll see you then. Can’t wait,” kissed him, and headed back into the Emporium. That had only been a few hours ago, but it felt so long ago, and the sentiment they’d expressed–can’t wait–was one he shared.

Faintly, from the small entryway just outside his office, he heard the unmistakable ding of the elevator pull him back into the moment. Adjusting the box in his pocket one more time for good measure, he took a deep breath and then strode toward the door.

–

The elevator whirred toward the top of the building, announcing with faint tones every floor it passed. Charlie still retained their floor visibility clearance, despite everything, and they wished more fervently than ever before that they hadn’t. The building was far too tall, the wait far too agonizing. It was by no means uncommon for Fate to ask them to meet him in his office once they finished their shift, but the way he’d carried himself…they’d seen him that nervous exactly once before, and it was when the two of them met for their first date.

The memory brought a smile to their face. He’d been a little late–only by a few minutes, although he’d apologized profusely nonetheless and was clearly distressed that he hadn’t been able to make the exact time. They’d wasted no time forgiving him, their worries that he would stand them up or that they’d misinterpreted his intentions fading away. They could tell whatever worries he’d had were quelled in that moment too, and the only memory of that night they treasured more than the sight of his brow unfurrowing and his lips slowly curling into a subtle smile was the goodbye.

The two of them had been standing in the elevator outside the Emporium, preparing to go their separate ways for the night. Fate was asking, with a level of verbosity typical of one who hadn’t had much experience navigating romance, if they’d like to go out with him again sometime, and Charlie, still giddy about even getting to go out with him this time, had cut him off with an impulsive kiss and a delighted “Yes!!!”

The slight jolt of the elevator halting, followed by the whir of the opening doors, cut off the reminiscing. They patted the ring box in their pocket (logically, they knew it hadn’t gone anywhere, but with how many different trains of thought they had chugging in different directions, it felt important to ensure that they hadn’t forgotten the thing entirely), and made their way toward the door. They knocked once, heard Fate respond “come in” from the other side, and pulled the door open.

There he was, standing on the other side, hands behind his back, wearing a nervous smile. The moonlight shining through the windows illuminated him beautifully, and as he extended his hand to take theirs, Charlie found themself reminded of a romance novel. Two lovers, alone under a beautiful night sky, about to pledge their eternal devotion to one another.

Or, well, they hoped that last part was true and not just wishful thinking.

Fate pressed a kiss to their hand. “Good evening, my love,” he said, in that gentle tone they could only hope he reserved for them alone. “It’s wonderful to see you.”

“I could say the same for you,” Charlie replied, feeling their face warm and chuckling shyly. “Nobody better to spend such a beautiful night with. Although…the night sky’s not exactly the most beautiful thing I see right now,” they teased.

It never failed. Fate blushed harder than Charlie had ever seen before and his composure, while not completely gone, was clearly shaken. “Well…it’s interesting that you should mention the night sky,” he murmured, and though his glasses still concealed his eyes it was clear he was having trouble looking at them. “I thought it might create a…a suitable atmosphere.”

Charlie raised an eyebrow. Surely he wasn’t also…they asked, “A suitable atmosphere for what?”

“There is…something I need to ask you. Something I have wanted to ask you for quite a long time.” He released their hand and reached into his pocket.

The anticipation was killing them. “And that is?” 

The silence as Fate lowered himself to one knee was as agonizing as it was brief. Charlie watched with a quiet excitement threatening to burst forth prematurely as he revealed what was in his hands: a small velvet box, which he opened to reveal a ring.

“Charlemagne, will you marry me?”

The excitement, no longer premature, burst forth immediately. Through delighted giggles, Charlie answered, “I’m sorry, I’m not laughing at you, I just have something to show you. You’re not going to believe this,” and fumbled in their pocket for a moment, pulling out their own ring box. Popping it open, they continued, “Fate, will you marry me?”

The two of them remained like that for a moment, staring at each other, in awe at what had just happened. Fate spoke first. “I…believe we both have our answers, don’t we?” He rose to his feet, and Charlie wasted no time throwing themself into his arms, nearly knocking the both of them to the floor.

“I love you,” they sobbed joyfully, burying their face in his chest and squeezing him tighter, desperate to get as close as they possibly could. “I’m so glad you’re mine.”

Softly, Fate replied, “And I love you. Eternity is a long time, but I can think of no one better to have by my side throughout it.”

Charlie broke the embrace, pulling back just enough to reach up and pull Fate into a kiss. Eternity may be a long time, but they could happily spend all of it in this moment.

[socially-awkward-skeleton]

BG3 WIP Snippet - MoonWeaver

The lake’s waves lapped at the shore of the camp, fresh water meeting the land in gentle, yet fleeting embraces. Fire crackling, its last dying orange embers fading around blackened logs flaked with white ash while fireflies danced in the dark as black as pitch, mingling in a waltz amongst the wisps of smoke that drifted up from where Tem sat with a makeshift poker. She’d taken the second watch that night, and while Astarion still prowled in the dark on the outskirts of the camp looking for a meal, the others slept in their tents, surrounded by whatever comforts that reminded them of home they had managed to find along their journey. In all this time Tem had never built her tent, instead choosing to sleep out in the elements. She had no need for a bed, nor four walls or a ceiling above her, preferring to be cradled in a blanket of stars and washed in the cool glow of the moon upon her skin, to be made one with the earth, and the boundless bits of life that sprang from it – she didn’t need protection from it, she was a part of it. 

It should have been lonely sitting out there – to most others it would be – but for Tem it was the life she’d always wanted. She’d never been much for people, nature had always seemed to have a much more profound hold over her heart right from the moment she could look up at the sky and know there was more beyond the walls that held her in Evereska. Journeying, adventure, curiosity always nipping at her heels and pushing her forward, onward to greater things (even if that did include the tadpole that swam inside her head). Her parents had always warned her there was only peril beyond the carefully protected borders of her home in the Heartlands, but there was danger in everything that went outside the scope of what her parents understood – even she was considered dangerous. Born to two artisans, she was granted the gift of magic from her fey ancestry, and like her elven brethren, she wanted to explore and understand more of the world she’d been born into. It started with sneaking into the holes in the walls and the alcoves of Evereska that everyone else ignored, and then once she’d charted every bit of the city, she started climbing its walls finding forests, mountains, lakes, streams, and rivers outside it. Glorious wonders of natural beauty that her parents could only hope to one day paint, and she was able to see it all with her own two eyes. One day she reached a point where she just never went back, there was nothing left for her inside the walls, there was only more beyond. 

She sighed and poked at the fire, not noticing the quiet footsteps that approached from behind and stopped at her side. 

Gale took a deep breath, inhaling the night into his lungs and then sat down beside her on the bedroll, forcing himself to keep some distance, the wind blowing in between them. “It truly is a wonderful night for contemplation, is it not?”

Smiling softly, the tips of her ears wiggled. “You’re supposed to be sleeping.”

“I am, but when one’s mind is full of ruminations it's difficult to merely rest their head upon a pillow and drift off.”

Turquoise eyes drifted sideways, the golden flecks in her eyes glowing with the flickering amber flame in front of her. “What’s on your mind?”

He pulled his knees back to rest against his chest, his arms circling them tightly as he looked up at the moon showering them in its celestial spotlight. “When you kissed me –”

Tem turned her head quickly to look at him, loose tendrils of platinum hair caught in a draft of wind, dancing around her shoulders. “You mean when I imagined kissing you.”

“Yes…well…in the Weave –” He jutted his pointer finger up into the air and shook it slightly. “ – even the imagined feels real.”

She quirked her brow, and muttered under her breath, half hoping he wouldn’t hear. “I imagine it wasn’t anywhere as good as what you had with a goddess.”

She knew it was childish to think such things, let alone to say them aloud and lash out at him, but it didn’t help that he seemed to want to constantly remind her of what he had with a deity when she’d never even had the time for love in her life before. How was she ever supposed to live up to Mystra? She was no sorceress or wizard, he made that abundantly clear when they’d first met. She was a simple druid, nothing more.  

“Ah, see, that’s why I came over.” He shifted closer to her, and pressed his hand on top of hers. “A dream of what a kiss from you might be like is one thing.” He lowered his voice and spoke in a honeyed tone, “I’d very much like to know how the real thing would feel.”

Tem was quick to pull her hand away from under his and place it in her lap, still feeling the ghost of his warmth upon her skin. “Don’t do that.”

“Do what?”

“Toy with me,” she said softly.

His shoulders slumped and his face fell. “I’m not.”

She wanted to believe him, she truly did, but the more she thought about what had happened between them in the Weave, the more she realized it was better to nip it in the bud. Whatever they felt was because they were near death, chasing some last bit of intimacy and connection before they’d fall prey to the creature that had burrowed itself behind their eyes and lay dormant, waiting to strike. 

“I spend more time with the trees and under the sky. I don’t know the things that you do. We’re from different worlds. All we have in common is this creature that resides inside our heads. What I did – I shouldn’t have.”

Cupping the pale blue skin of her cheek in his large hand – kept soft and neatly manicured having only known the toil of casting spells and flipping the pages of his leather bound tomes – Gale brushed his fingers through her silky hair and gazed into her eyes and she was nearly swallowed up in how deep and dark his own could be.“You absolutely should have. I’m glad you did.”

[denimbex1986]

'It was the early hours of 16 July 1945, and Robert Oppenheimer was waiting in a control bunker for a moment that would change the world. Around 10km (6 miles) away, the world's first atomic bomb test, codenamed "Trinity", was set to proceed in the pale sands of the Jornada del Muerto desert, in New Mexico.

Oppenheimer was a picture of nervous exhaustion. He was always slender, but after three years as director of "Project Y", the scientific arm of the "Manhattan Engineer District" that had designed and built the bomb, his weight had dropped to just over 52kg (115lbs). At 5ft 10in (178cm), this made him extremely thin. He'd slept only four hours that night, kept awake by anxiety and his smoker's cough.

That day in 1945 is one of several pivotal moments in Oppenheimer's life described by the historians Kai Bird and Martin J Sherwin in their 2005 biography American Prometheus, which provided the basis for the new movie biopic Oppenheimer, released 21 July in the US.

In the final minutes of the countdown, as Bird and Sherwin report, an army general observed Oppenheimer's mood at close-quarters: "Dr. Oppenheimer... grew tenser as the last seconds ticked off. He scarcely breathed..."

The explosion, when it came, outshone the Sun. With a force matching 21 kilotonnes of TNT, the detonation was the largest ever seen. It created a shockwave that was felt 160km (100 miles) away. As the roar engulfed the landscape and the mushroom cloud rose in the sky, Oppenheimer's expression relaxed into one of "tremendous relief". Minutes later, Oppenheimer's friend and colleague Isidor Rabi caught sight of him from a distance: "I’ll never forget his walk; I’ll never forget the way he stepped out of the car... his walk was like High Noon... this kind of strut. He had done it."

In interviews conducted in the 1960s, Oppenheimer added a layer of gravitas to his reaction, claiming that, in the moments after the detonation, a line from the Hindu scripture, the Bhagavad Gita, had come into his mind: "Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds."

In the following days, his friends reported he seemed increasingly depressed. "Robert got very still and ruminative during that two-week period," one recalled, "because he knew what was about to happen." One morning he was heard lamenting (in condescending terms) the imminent fate of the Japanese: "Those poor little people, those poor little people." But only days later, he was once again nervous, focussed, exacting.

In a meeting with his military counterparts, he seemed to have forgotten all about the "poor little people". According to Bird and Sherwin, he was instead fixated on the importance of the right conditions for the bomb drop: "Of course, they must not drop it in rain or fog… Don’t let them detonate it too high. The figure fixed on is just right. Don’t let it go up [higher] or the target won’t get as much damage." When he announced the successful bombing of Hiroshima to a crowd of his colleagues less than a month after Trinity, one onlooker noticed the way Oppenheimer "clasped and pumped his hand over his head like a victorious prizefighter". The applause "practically raised the roof".

Oppenheimer was the emotional and intellectual heart of the Manhattan Project: more than any other single person he had made the bomb a reality. Jeremy Bernstein, who worked with him after the war, was convinced that nobody else could have done it. As he wrote in his 2004 biography, A Portrait of an Enigma, "If Oppenheimer had not been the director at Los Alamos, I am persuaded that, for better or worse, the Second World War would have ended... without the use of nuclear weapons."

The variety of Oppenheimer's reported reactions as he witnessed the fruition of his labours, not to mention the pace with which he moved through them, might seem bewildering. The combination of nervous fragility, ambition, grandiosity and morbid gloom are hard to square in a single person, especially one so instrumental in the very project provoking these responses.

Bird and Sherwin also call Oppenheimer an "enigma": "A theoretical physicist who displayed the charismatic qualities of a great leader, an aesthete who cultivated ambiguities." A scientist, but also, as another friend once described him "a first-class manipulator of the imagination".

By Bird and Sherwin's account, the contradictions in Oppenheimer's character – the qualities that have left both friends and biographers at a loss to explain him – seem to have been present from his earliest years. Born in New York City in 1904, Oppenheimer was the child of first-generation German Jewish immigrants who had become wealthy through the textiles trade. The family home was a large apartment on the Upper West Side with three maids, a chauffeur, and European art on the walls.

Despite this luxurious upbringing, Oppenheimer was recalled as unspoiled and generous by childhood friends. A school friend, Jane Didisheim, remembered him as someone who "blushed extraordinarily easily", who was "very frail, very pink-cheeked, very shy...", but also "very brilliant". "Very quickly everybody admitted that he was different from all the others and superior," she said.

By the age of nine, he was reading philosophy in Greek and Latin, and was obsessed with mineralogy – roaming Central Park and writing letters to the New York Mineralogical Club about what he found. His letters were so competent that the Club mistook him for an adult and invited him to make a presentation. This intellectual nature contributed to a degree of solitude in the young Oppenheimer, write Bird and Sherwin. "He was usually preoccupied with whatever he was doing or thinking," recalled a friend. He was uninterested in conforming to gender expectations – taking no interest in sports or the "rough and tumble of his age-group" as his cousin put it; "He was often teased and ridiculed for not being like other fellows." But his parents were convinced of his genius.

"I repaid my parents’ confidence in me by developing an unpleasant ego," Oppenheimer later commented, "which I am sure must have affronted both children and adults who were unfortunate enough to come into contact with me." "It’s no fun," he once told another friend, "to turn the pages of a book and say, 'yes, yes, of course, I know that'."

When he left home to study chemistry at Harvard University, the fragility of Oppenheimer's psychological make-up was exposed: his brittle arrogance and thinly-masked sensitivity appearing to serve him poorly. In a letter from 1923, published in a 1980 collection edited by Alice Kimbal Smith and Charles Weiner, he wrote: "I labour and write innumerable theses, notes, poems, stories and junk… I make stenches in three different labs…I serve tea and talk learnedly to a few lost souls, go off for the weekend to distill low grade energy into laughter and exhaustion, read Greek, commit faux pas, search my desk for letters, and wish I were dead. Voila."

Subsequent letters collated by Smith and Weiner reveal that the problems continued through his post-graduate studies, in Cambridge, England. His tutor insisted on applied laboratory work, one of Oppenheimer's weaknesses. "I am having a pretty bad time," he wrote in 1925. "The lab work is a terrible bore, and I am so bad at it that it is impossible to feel that I am learning anything." Later that year, Oppenheimer's intensity led him close to disaster when he deliberately left an apple, poisoned with laboratory chemicals, on his tutor's desk. His friends later speculated he could have been driven by envy and feelings of inadequacy. The tutor didn't eat the apple but Oppenheimer's place at Cambridge was threatened and he kept it only on condition that he see a psychiatrist. The psychiatrist diagnosed psychosis but then wrote him off, saying that treatment would do no good.

Recalling that period, Oppenheimer would later report that he seriously contemplated suicide over the Christmas holidays. The following year, during a visit to Paris, his close friend Francis Fergusson told him he had proposed to his girlfriend. Oppenheimer responded by attempting to strangle him: "He jumped on me from behind with a trunk strap," Fergusson recalled, "and wound it around my neck... I managed to pull aside and he fell on the ground weeping."

It seems that where psychiatry failed Oppenheimer, literature came to the rescue. According to Bird and Sherwin, he read Marcel Proust's A La Recherché du Temps Perdu while on a walking holiday in Corsica, finding in it some reflection of his own state of mind that reassured him and opened a window on a more compassionate mode of being. He learned by heart a passage from the book about "indifference to the sufferings one causes", being "the terrible and permanent form of cruelty". The question of attitude towards suffering would remain an abiding interest, guiding Oppenheimer's interest in spiritual and philosophical texts throughout his life and eventually playing a significant role in the work that would define his reputation. A comment he made to his friends on this same holiday seems prophetic: "The kind of person that I admire most would be one who becomes extraordinarily good at doing a lot of things but still maintains a tear-stained countenance."

He returned to England in lighter spirits, feeling "much kinder and more tolerant", as he later recalled. Early in 1926, he met the director of the Institute of Theoretical Physics at the University of Göttingen in Germany, who quickly became convinced of Oppenheimer's talents as a theoretician, inviting him to study there. According to Smith and Weiner, he later described 1926 as the year of his "coming into physics". It would prove a turning point. He obtained his PhD and a postdoctoral fellowship in the year to follow. He also became part of a community that was driving the development of theoretical physics, meeting scientists who would become life-long friends. Many would ultimately join Oppenheimer at Los Alamos.

Returning to the US, Oppenheimer spent a few months at Harvard before moving to pursue his physics career in California. The tone of his letters from this period reflect a steadier, more generous cast of mind. He wrote to his younger brother about romance, and his ongoing interest in the arts.

At the University of California in Berkeley, he worked closely with experimentalists, interpreting their results on cosmic rays and nuclear disintegration. He later described finding himself "the only one who understood what this was all about". The department he eventually created stemmed, he said, from the need to communicate about the theory he loved: "Explaining first to faculty, staff, and colleagues and then to anyone who would listen ... what had been learned, what the unsolved problems were." He described himself as a "difficult" teacher at first but it was through this role that Oppenheimer honed the charisma and social presence that would carry him during his time at Project Y. Quoted by Smith and Weiner, one colleague recalled how his students "emulated him as best they could. They copied his gestures, his mannerisms, his intonations. He truly influenced their lives."

During the early 1930s, as he strengthened his academic career, Oppenheimer continued to moonlight in the humanities. It was during this period that he discovered the Hindu scriptures, learning Sanskrit in order to read the untranslated Bhagavad Gita – the text from which he later drew the famous '"Now I am become Death" quotation. It seems his interest was not just intellectual, but represented a continuation of the self-prescribed bibliotherapy that had begun with Proust in his 20s. The Bhagavad Gita, a story centred on the war between two arms of an aristocratic family, gave Oppenheimer a philosophical underpinning that was directly applicable to the moral ambiguity he confronted at Project Y. It emphasised ideas of duty, fate and detachment from outcome, emphasising that fear of consequences cannot be used as justification for inaction. In a letter to his brother from 1932, Oppenheimer specifically references the Gita and then names war as one circumstance that might offer the opportunity to put such a philosophy into practice:

"I believe that through discipline... we can achieve serenity... I believe that through discipline we learn to preserve what is essential to our happiness in more and more adverse circumstances... Therefore I think that all things which evoke discipline: study, and our duties to men and to the commonwealth, war... ought to be greeted by us with profound gratitude; for only through them can we attain to the least detachment; and only so can we know peace."

In the mid 1930s, Oppenheimer also met Jean Tatlock, a psychiatrist and physician with whom he fell in love. By Bird and Sherwin's account, Tatlock's complexity of character equalled Oppenheimer's. She was widely read and driven by a social conscience. She was described by a childhood friend as "touched with greatness". Oppenheimer proposed to Tatlock more than once but she turned him down. She is credited with introducing him to radical politics and to the poetry of John Donne. The pair continued to see each other occasionally after Oppenheimer married the biologist Katherine "Kitty" Harrison in 1940. Kitty was to join Oppenheimer at Project Y, where she worked as a phlebotomist, researching the dangers of radiation.

In 1939, physicists were far more concerned about the nuclear threat than politicians were and it was a letter from Albert Einstein that first brought the matter to the attention of senior leaders in the US government. The reaction was slow, but alarm continued to circulate in the scientific community and eventually the president was persuaded to act. As one of the preeminent physicists in the country, Oppenheimer was one of several scientists appointed to begin looking more seriously into the potential for nuclear weapons. By September 1942, partly thanks to Oppenheimer's team, it was clear that a bomb was possible and concrete plans for its development started to take shape. According to Bird and Sherwin, when he heard that his name was being floated as a leader for this endeavour, Oppenheimer began his own preparations. "I’m cutting off every communist connection," he said to a friend at the time. "For if I don’t, the government will find it difficult to use me. I don’t want to let anything interfere with my usefulness to the nation."

Einstein would later say: "The trouble with Oppenheimer is that he loves [something that] doesn’t love him – the United States government." His patriotism and desire to please clearly played a role in his recruitment. General Leslie Groves, the military leader of the Manhattan Engineer District, was the person responsible for finding a scientific director for the bomb project. According to a 2002 biography, Racing for the Bomb, when Groves proposed Oppenheimer as scientific lead, he met with opposition. Oppenheimer's "extreme liberal background" was a concern. But as well as noting his talent and his existing knowledge of the science, Groves also pointed out his "overweening ambition". The Manhattan Project's chief of security also noticed this: "I became convinced that not only was he loyal, but that he would let nothing interfere with the successful accomplishment of his task and thus his place in scientific history."

In the 1988 book The Making of the Atomic Bomb, Oppenheimer's friend Isidor Rabi is quoted as saying he thought it "a most improbable appointment", but later conceded it had been "a real stroke of genius on the part of General Groves".

At Los Alamos, Oppenheimer applied his contrarian, interdisciplinary convictions as much as anywhere. In his 1979 autobiography, What Little I Remember, the Austrian-born physicist Otto Frisch recalled that Oppenheimer had recruited not only the scientists required but also "a painter, a philosopher and a few other unlikely characters; he felt that a civilised community would be incomplete without them".

After the war, Oppenheimer's attitude seemed to change . He described nuclear weapons as instruments "of aggression, of surprise, and of terror" and the weapons industry as "the devil's work". At a meeting in October 1945, he famously told President Truman: "I feel I have blood on my hands." The President later said: "I told him the blood was on my hands – to let me worry about that."

The exchange is an arresting echo of one described in Oppenheimer's beloved Bhagavad Gita, between Prince Arjuna and the god Krishna. Arjuna refuses to fight because he believes he will be responsible for the murder of his fellows, but Krishna takes away the burden: "View in me the active slayer of these men... Arise, on fame, on victory, on kingly joys intent! They are already slain by me; be you the instrument."

During the development of the bomb, Oppenheimer had used a similar argument to assuage his own and his colleagues' ethical hesitations. He told them that, as scientists, they were not responsible for decisions about how the weapon should be used – only for doing their job. The blood, if there was any, would be on the hands of the politicians. However, it seems that once the deed was done, Oppenheimer's confidence in this position was shaken. As Bird and Sherwin relate, in his role at the Atomic Energy Commission during the post-war period, he argued against the development of further weapons, including the more powerful hydrogen bomb, which his work had paved the way for.

These efforts resulted in Oppenheimer being investigated by the US government in 1954 and having his security clearance stripped, marking the end of his involvement with policy work. The academic community came to his defence. Writing for The New Republic in 1955, the philosopher Bertrand Russell commented that the "investigation made it undeniable that he has committed mistakes, one of them from a security point of view rather grave. But there was no evidence of disloyalty or of anything that could be considered treasonable... The scientists were caught in a tragic dilemma."

In 1963, the US government presented him with the Enrico Fermi Award as a gesture of political rehabilitation, but it wasn't until 2022, 55 years after his death, that the US government overturned its 1954 decision to strip his clearance, and affirmed Oppenheimer's loyalty.

Throughout the last decades of Oppenheimer's life, he maintained parallel expressions of pride at the technical achievement of the bomb and guilt at its effects. A note of resignation also entered his commentary, with him saying more than once that the bomb had simply been inevitable. He spent the last 20 years of his life as director of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey, working alongside Einstein and other physicists.

As at Los Alamos, he made a point of promoting interdisciplinary work and emphasised in his speeches the belief that science needed the humanities in order to better understand its own implications, write Bird and Sherwin. To this end, he recruited a raft of non-scientists including classicists, poets, and psychologists.

He later came to consider atomic energy as a problem that outstripped the intellectual tools of its time, as, in President Truman's words, "a new force too revolutionary to consider in the framework of old ideas". In a speech made in 1965, later published in the 1984 collection Uncommon Sense, he said "I have heard from some of the great men of our time that when they found something startling, they knew it was good, because they were afraid". When talking about moments of unsettling scientific discovery, he was fond of quoting the poet John Donne: "Tis all in pieces, all coherence gone."

John Keats, another poet Oppenheimer enjoyed, coined the phrase "negative capability" to describe a common quality in the people he admired: "that is, when a man is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason." It seems as though it was something of this that the philosopher Russell was getting at when he wrote of Oppenheimer's "inability to see things simply, an inability which is not surprising in one possessed of a complex and delicate mental apparatus." In describing Oppenheimer's contradictions, his mutability, his continual running between poetry and science, his habit of defying simple description, perhaps we are identifying the very qualities that made him capable of pursuing the creation of the bomb.

Even in the midst of this great and terrible pursuit, Oppenheimer kept alive the "tear stained countenance" he had foretold in his 20s. The name of the "Trinity" test is thought to have come from the John Donne poem Batter my heart, three-person'd God: "That I may rise and stand, o'erthrow me, and bend/Your force to break, blow, burn, and make me new." Jean Tatlock, who had introduced him to Donne, and with whom he is thought by some to have remained in love, had committed suicide the year before the test. The bomb project was marked everywhere by Oppenheimer's imagination, and by his sense of romance and tragedy. Perhaps it was overweening ambition that General Groves identified when he interviewed Oppenheimer for the job at Project Y, or perhaps it was his ability to adopt, for the time required, the idea of overweening ambition. As much as it was the result of research, the bomb was the product of Oppenheimer's ability and willingness to imagine himself as the kind of a person that could make it happen.

A chain smoker since adolescence, Oppenheimer suffered bouts of tuberculosis during his life. He died of throat cancer in 1967, at the age of 62. Two years before his death, in a rare moment of simplicity, he drew a distinction that marked out the practice of science from that of poetry. Unlike poetry, he said, "science is the business of learning not to make the same mistake again".'

[speciosuspoematis]

@elpiforos asked: "is this worth it, to you?" daithi's eyes linger on where his fingers play idly with cyvel's. he knows his answer even before he has uttered it - but is it the truth? does he men it, truly mean it, or does he feel obligation to stay at this point? a lump forms in daithi's throat. how he wishes he could be different. not for his own sake, but for cyvel's. his gentle heart is too delicate in daithi's blood- and tear-stained hands.

"all of this. me being... me. would it not be easier to find a nice ishgardian boy, instead? someone without a heavy title and weight on his shoulders. someone without... " baggage, he wants to say, but he knows that cyvel carries just as heavy a burden. daithi bites his lower lip. how he misses when life was simple. finally, he looks up, and whispers, "am... i really worth all this?"

He stands, cloaked in silence, his eyes - too - trained on where their fingers gently intertwine: Daithi's own gingerly moving betwixt them, skin softly brushing skin. He watches, as if mesmerised, for some few moments - the words uttered so only they could hear not lost by long ears, but instead ruminated upon, heart growing heavier by the moment, sinking into the acidic depths of his stomach where it ached endlessly.

"Do... You not think so?" Finally does Cyvel break his silence, though neither his solemn expression nor saddened gaze lift upward. The question had struck him rather hard, it would seem and each statement that followed only seemed to rub salt in the wound caused.

His father had once asked him a similar question with regards to his poetry, to how he lived, to how he shamed the family and it's legacy by not going to war. Was it worth it? Had it been worth the woes he had suffered, had it been worth the grief, the shame, the terrible treatment? Just for what some would call useless words upon paper?

But this was different, and the more he lingered on the thoughts of it, the more he felt his chest tighten.

"It is always worth it, to me. You are always worth it." He breaks his ongoing silence once more, shuddered breath following afterward in an attempt to battle back the upset that rose to eyes and wrapped around his throat.

"I am no stranger to difficulty and struggle... And you would be hard pressed to find any without much the same 'pon their shoulders. The world... Is not kind, and to shy away from the most precious of things because of fear of it is... Terribly solemn. A tragedy. " Thickly does he swallow, the tone of his voice lowered to scarce above a whisper.

Cyvel gently removes his fingers from Daithi's grasp, raising them to so gingerly cup either side of his face - thumbs stroking across cheeks a single time ere his sorrowful eyes turned fond and he leans, forward just enough to press their foreheads.

"You are worth more to me than the very stars in the heavens, and with them as my only witness do I vow to always adore you, through any and all arduous struggles and crippling woes. You are a far brighter light to me than they have ever been... And the very idea of losing you instills within me a fear and a grief I cannot explain. But I know it would be my ruin... " .

[khaosophist]

I should befriend that mindflayer...He came to me with respect,and in my abysmal self-confidence, told him I was no scholar. While I had access to the archives before the guild priest. It was wonderful to finally feel like I was a step ahead. I still remember all the promises that priest made to me, and broke...The look on his face when he saw me there transcribing...

I was obsessed with dark elves. So I copied down the map of Nasgaroth, the region they come from. I listed each province. I was all proud I had gotten that knowledge in person. But then, I go to this section that's like a daycare for the LARP, and, carved in wood, is a map of Nasgaroth, the names of provinces written in pencil, worn out by time. The Black River, now seems a black sea. The map I copied was an Imperial Map. The one I saw here, was something else, hidden behind the mundane. Suddenly, everything I worked for was put into doubt. In that doubt I weaved the Idea of Ancient Nasgaroth. Once a great center of the planes in the times before stars were born, where the only light came from the souls of those that took their place in the darkness, and the chaos they weaved. I painted, the process itself like a history unfolding before me, as I saw Auroreal titans create the world through the colours of their souls. They calcified, and through aeons became weeping statues, black ichor falling, and falling, until the world was drowned. With time the Ichor recessed, and corpses became the continent. The chaos roared around the world, and radiated into the flesh of fossilized titans. Life arose. Chaos elves. The city of Zaetch eventually arose, and the Gate crackled to life, and the darkness was now enlightened by the light of chaos. Myriads of species, Star dwellers too, came to trade, and share knowledge. Darkness, blood, and chaos danced to the tune of oblivion. Until the proto-humans gave birth to the sun God. A hateful light for anything inhuman. A tyrannical order. But many prefer order over their own will.

Natives of ancient Nasgaroth survived by fleeing to the onyx mountains of Aman. In the darkness, robbed of Chaos, eradicated by the hegemony of humanity, Chaos began to be forgotten, reduced to disorder, rebellion, foolishness, and narcissism. In ruminations bereft of the primordial soul, chaos elves became dark elves. The corpses drifted. The black sea, becoming a black River. Zaetch almost Forgotten. But, I remember. Chaos has consumed us, and changed us, and revealed this to me through coincidence. But I suspect I'm Barmy.

Speaking of, I had looked for the queen of Nasgaroth, ironically finding that the orphans knew where she dwelt.

I want to thank the orphans for letting me bring them dry wood. I want to thank them for their hospitality even if I'm anything but straightforward. I want to thank them for accepting the motto of the moment we coined: "No Gods, No masters, nor parents!" In french it sounded better "Ni Dieu Ni Maitre, Ni parents!"

I'm also an orphan, something they made me realise. I still have the braid I made.

I hope Sinestra found a story that was more than what the empire made her believe was possible. What are the odds an abomination like me meets the imperial treasurer?

I want to thank Talios for sharing his beliefs about me. The first, that the art exhibits would not have happened if I hadn't posted my art throughout Bicolline a few years prior. Second, one that I don't believe in, is that I am famous in my own way.

I want to thank Carcajou, and the other guy that was with him, for believing in my name, and accepting my gift of a painting.

I want to thank the children for believing in me.

I want to thank coincidence for those full leather "merlin boots" that go up to my calfs. Because I bought them at Merlin's plumoir at $10 dollars, after I saw basic moccasins for $250, of which the maker responded to me after I told them it was over budget: "What did you expect? It's real leather! " Well fucking sorry for being poor, fuck. It was heartbreaking.

I want to thank the people that saw me carry my tower shield full of dry wood for the orphans and helped me.

I want to thank those two weird dudes that came to see me as I was taking wood for the guild fire and asked for something. I only remember a bit, the first question I answered that I served no god, and after they offered money, I told them money was meaningless to me. Man, what WAS that about?

Thank you for the friendship that pizza maker showed me.

I hope someone missed me.

I am Khaonon Chaosheart. Sometimes I feel chosen by chaos, sometimes I don't. But that's how it goes.

Azerath Metrion Zynthos? Lol.

All stars are chaos. (Except the sun God, he's a douche) Also, this is Bag, my goblin homey.

[doomandgloomfromthetomb]

Ryan Davis and the Roadhouse Band - Tubby's, Kingston, New York, December 9, 2023

I mentioned that recent Uncut issue with the great On The Beach spread ... if you pick it up, you'll also get to read my full-page review of Ryan Davis and the Roadhouse Band's Dancing On The Edge, which emerged as a late-breaking 2023 fave. Feels like a total classic, pretty much everyone I play it for falls in love.

Here's the kick-off to my Aquarium Drunkard compadre Chad Depasquale's rave: Ryan Davis is tipping his beer to a world in moral and constitutional decline. Ruminating shortcomings, both inward and out, that seem to have settled into the standard, the Louisville-based journeyman defiantly declares he and his crew “the new vigilantes of the two-drink minimum” on “Free from the Guillotine,” the dryly pugnacious opener to Ryan Davis & the Roadhouse Band’s Dancing on the Edge, the latest and perhaps greatest notch in the storied songwriter’s belt.

Just in time, NYC Taper (which might want to consider renaming itself Kingston Taper) popped up with a very nice Eric PH tape of Davis and the Roadhouse Band at Tubby's. The gang sounds magnificent here, plenty of energy, plenty of style, pleasingly loose.

And hey, my Uncut review had a very brief Q&A with Ryan, chopped down considerably. Below, check it out in all its, er, uncut glory.

You seem to have mastered the art of the "long song" — the tunes on the new record sprawl, but they keep listeners hanging on every word. What's the secret? Did you have any songwriters who also go long in mind? Did you set out to write "epics" or did that just happen? What's it like playing these tunes live? 

I wouldn't say I've mastered anything, but yea I've learned to comfortably inhabit a song of substantial length. It's not something I ever set out to do. In fact, every time I sit down to start writing new songs, I consciously tell myself that I will make a concerted effort to be more direct, to write more impactfully without dragging the listener through such winding trenches. But here we are now discussing my 7-song 2xLP and further into the trenches we appear to be going. I've come to accept that maybe that's where I flourish, in some ways? A better songwriter than myself could derive a similar vehemence with far fewer words. But I do what I can within the space I know how to carve out for myself.

I don't feel strongly enough about this to warrant saying it out loud, but it's possible that Van Morrison or more likely Dylan or less likely Springsteen could be some deeply seeded points of reference and/or permission for the long song thing. Like in a strictly embryonic way. Not in terms of craft or studied approach, just things that were soaked into my brain by a certain age. Playing the songs live, in their current state (I'm on tour with a full-band as we speak) has been infinitely less punishing than I may have once envisioned it would be, specifically in regards to that. I'm pleasantly surprised every night by the time we finish playing Flashes of Orange that I somehow never feel buried beneath it or praying for an early exit from its brakeless 10 minutes of lyrical shelling. But I also think that's just a testament to how much I love playing these specific songs with this specific group of friends.

In the liners, it says you were taking a hiatus from writing "song songs" – was that a healthy thing to do? Why do you think inspiration took hold again? Do you have a particular favorite song on the new record, where it all came together? 

It was an imperative thing to do. I started writing songs for what became the first State Champion demo in summer of 2005. I was living abroad as a college student, shy and alone, far from home and without much reason to be there. I had just turned 20. I wrote and toured those kinds of songs for the next 14 years. I put so much of my life and identity into it, and I owe a lot of who I am to that work and those experiences, but I ultimately felt like I reached a point of terminal velocity with the completion of ‘Send Flowers’. I'm incredibly proud of that record, we all pulled a lot out of ourselves in order to make it, but it felt like an organic and necessary end to that phase of my life. It isn't entirely easy to talk about or explain. I just knew it was time to take a break from putting my mind through the endless song cycle, without really knowing what would fill its void. I started spending most of my time making experimental electronic tracks at home, just learning everything I could about 4-track recording, exploring new instruments, making freeform improvisational compositions with friends, while simultaneously returning to a disciplined visual art practice for the first time in well over a decade. Not only were these processes filling the songwriting void satisfactorily but they were also starting to shape me into a new and better version of myself, a re-wired or at least a re-prioritized version. For the first time in my adult life, I wasn't thinking about touring or promoting or even any sense of "community” whatsoever. I just wanted to *make* new things. Almost obsessively. And the more I sharpened those instinctual tools, the more I slowly started circling back toward the unexpected desire to return to "song" form with a clear and conditioned mind. It certainly didn't come easy. It was painful, actually. There was months if not years of struggle and self-doubt, of giving up and eventually trying again, but once I finally positioned myself to fully re-enter into that mode, I wrote the song "Bluebirds in a Fight." After that, I was like "ok, I think I understand how to do this again." Much of the battle was getting to that moment, but from there I was able to have some fun with writing the rest of it.

You're kind of a Louisville hometown hero — what is the music community like there these days? Who are your favorite local artists/bands/etc?

I think any kind of "hometown hero" attitude that could be applied to me, if that's even an accurate suggestion, would be based on my years of organizing a beloved music festival in Louisville, KY called Cropped Out (2010-2018). I can objectively say that it was a really special, magical, life-affirming thing that people truly cared about, but I'm not sure that can be said about most of the other things I've done throughout the bulk of my life spent there. I will say, however, that the Roadhouse Band show in Louisville on this tour (which was essentially the record release party) felt different. It was so fun and convivial and emotionally charged. The room felt full of love in a way that I wasn't expecting nor had necessarily felt before. Perhaps due in part to some sort of post-Covid communal/subcultural alchemy, you know. I essentially hadn't played songs in front of people there since 2019. So the overwhelmingly positive reception to the new record was not taken for granted.

It's an interesting place, Louisville... Endlessly frustrating, in a multitude of ways, especially as a person who tried very hard to "make things happen" there for so much of my life. It ebbs and flows between feeling electrified and stagnant, but even at its sleepiest there are so many brilliant, talented, strange, inspiring aliens who inhabit it. Even now in my peak years of introversion, I can appreciate that about it and inevitably feed off it in incalculable ways. If it weren't for Sapat alone, my musical trajectory would be different and likely lesser. All the bands born out of that band, all the freaks I've met through just surrounding myself with those people since moving back home from Chicago back in the late '00s, not to mention the actual music and all of its various modes of creation. They somehow continue to be a perennial source of joy, wonder, discovery.