#I've been either super hard at work on work projects

[bcdrawsandwrites]

[ID: A Team Fortress 2 fanfic banner in the style of the game’s achievement icons. Pyro and Spy's hands, holding a lighter and a cigarette respectively, are shown on a dark gray background. Their hands and the flame on the lighter are orange, while the lighter and cigarette are a mix of yellow-white and dark gray. The lighter is lighting Spy's cigarette. On the left of the banner is the chapter’s title in yellow-white, reading “CHAPTER NINE: GOT A LIGHT?” /end ID]

Flickering

Fandom: Team Fortress 2 Rating: K+ Genre: Hurt/Comfort, Friendship Characters: Spy, Pyro, Sniper, various other mercs Warnings: General references to trauma, panic attacks, TF2-typical violence Fic Description: After the events of the comics, the mercs try to go back to how things were, but it’s never that easy.

Spy can see his teammates going through their own struggles… but something seems to be very, very wrong with Pyro in particular.

And since no one else seems to be doing anything about this, Spy makes it his mission to get to the bottom of what is troubling Pyro. For no particular reason.

Beta Readers: @mechmolar, @gonturan0, @junuve

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Chapter 9: Got a Light? Summary: In which Pyro lends a borrowed lighter.

---~~~---

Another day, another pointless battle.

Spy was still getting paid, and he'd actually gone home the previous night to sleep in his own bed for once, so he couldn't complain.

This match was a simple payload, and they were defending against the BLU team. Everyone was getting ready in spawn, including Spy, who was sharpening his butterfly knife. Sniper, as well, was off in a corner sharpening his blade, though Spy couldn't tell where his eyes were looking due to his sunglasses, and he looked away from him, casting a glance instead at Medic and Heavy. Amusingly, Archimedes was perched on one of Heavy's fingers, cocking his head at the merc, who laughed in response. Demo and Soldier were preparing their sticky- and rocket-launchers respectively, while Engineer was running Pyro through some strategy he had planned. Pyro was nodding along, paying attention, it seemed.

When Engineer finished talking and went to select a wrench, Spy approached Pyro. "Starting to feel better, are we?"

Pyro looked up, startled, but slowly nodded.

"Good. Perhaps this match may yield more color for you."

It had no response for this, only watching Spy as he moved to the starting gate. Spy paid the Pyro no mind—he would like to concentrate more on the match, for once. He might check on it once or twice, but it usually did well enough in the matches without his help.

Once the gates opened, Spy hurried out toward the BLU team's base. He activated his Cloak and Dagger as he waited for the other team's gates to open, and listened, hoping to catch any sort of planning from the opposite team. Unfortunately, all he could hear was the sounds of whooping and laughter as the other team wasted time. The rest of his team got into position, waiting to ambush the BLU team when the gates opened.

When they finally did, Spy rushed forward and de-cloaked, backstabbing a soldier before he got the chance to turn around. There was then a soft click behind him—one he was all too familiar with, and that made him strain to run faster. Not fast enough, unfortunately, as the sound of a blast preceded an intense heat on his back. "Fire, fire, fire!" he screamed, bolting for the small stream just outside the BLU base, but his own Pyro reached him first, sending an air blast that wiped out the flames instantly. He gave Pyro a grateful nod, though all he could think was that someone had better swiftly kill him before the match was over so the respawn would fix his suit.

He was so consumed with this thought that he nearly missed when Pyro nodded back with the tiniest hum of acknowledgement. It only registered when Pyro ran past him to air blast the respawned soldier's rocket back into the enemy base.

Spy left the Pyro to it, heading for the payload but making a quick detour to hide and disguise himself first.

"Oy, lad," came a voice, and he realized Demo was nearby, readying to launch himself. "I didn't know ye were capable of smilin' with that fancy suit a' yours burnt to a crisp."

"Merely thinking of the revenge I'm plotting on the freak that set me aflame," Spy lied, whipping out his disguise kit. He selected the soldier that Pyro had taken out as he would be stuck in spawn for a while longer, and hurried back out into the fray.

The match progressed as usual. In a mixed blessing, Spy got his wish, and was taken out by a sniper. That was about the only good thing that could be said for the time being, as the BLU team was approaching the third checkpoint, inching even closer to their base.

Spotting Engineer struggling to haul his toolbox ahead of the BLU team, Spy whipped behind cover, turned invisible, and crept into the tunnel and behind the enemy, backstabbing the heavy that had nearly taken out the Engineer.

"Much obliged," Engineer panted as he rushed out of the tunnel. In a matter of moments he had the sentry up, and it mowed down the BLUs that were making their way out.

For once, the battleground was quiet—or quieter than usual. Spy crept behind cover again, waiting for the other team to rear their ugly heads, and watching for any signs of the enemy spy. The others were watching as well, Engineer occasionally swinging at the air in case the spy neared his sentry, Scout holding his bat at the ready, Medic preparing his ubercharge near Heavy.

The silence went on for what felt like longer than it should have, and the mercs couldn't help but exchange a few baffled glances. It was Scout who broke the relative silence:

"Well, where are they? They give up, or—?"

As though in response, a distant, wild scream echoed through the tunnel.

"Guess we scared 'em," Soldier said, leaning back with a toothy grin.

Spy, however, cast a look around the battlefield, taking note of their teammates. He did a quick headcount; the only ones he couldn't spot were Sniper—who was likely in a nest somewhere—and Pyro.

Before he could think on that further, there was another shout from the tunnel, which preceded the scream of a rocket that Scout narrowly dodged. Spy's heart hammered as adrenaline filled his veins, and he went invisible, bolting out of his hiding spot to creep behind the oncoming enemy lines. Several BLUs were scrambling out of the tunnel, directly into the sentry fire. Only the last two—a scout and a demo—balked before coming in range of the sentry. Spy had his sights on the demo, but paused when they looked back before looking at the tunnel's exit again.

"That sentry's gonna cream us, but I ain't goin' back there," the scout said with a shudder.

"It's dead now, lad," the demo replied, though his voice trembled.

"You sure? After that, I ain't gonna be surprised if it rises from the dead and—"

"Don't say that!"

Spy frowned—they seemed to be talking about Pyro. It must have really been throwing its all into the fight—more so than it had prior, somehow.

"Listen, lad," the demo continued, "I don't want to die like that again to that—"

"Then die like this to my knife," Spy whispered, decloaking behind the demo and backstabbing him.

"WOAH!" the scout cried, reeling back, and Spy backed up, whipping out his gun. For a brief moment he hesitated—the outfit was a blue mirror to their own Scout, but that was the same for all of them. This wasn't his Scout, this wasn't—

The scout's bat came down, knocking the gun out of his hand. But just as the young man drew the weapon back with a smug chuckle, an arrow shot through his skull, sending him careening to the ground.

Letting out a breath, Spy scrambled for his weapon and grit his teeth. Foolish.

While he'd been distracted with the demo and scout, the enemy spy had managed to sap their sentry, and the enemy heavy had survived the previous fire, taking out Engineer. Spy went invisible just as the BLU pyro swung around the corner. He narrowly dodged the flames, only for a jar to shatter on his back, shorting out his watch. "Oh, for—" was all he managed to get out before a rocket slammed into him, splattering his reeking remains on the side of the tunnel.

When Spy came out of respawn, the first thing that came to him was relief at no longer being covered in jarate. His second was the realization that he was not alone.

"...right? You're all right now, Smokey."

Engineer and Pyro were standing near one of the spawn exits. Engineer had a hand reaching out to Pyro, but he came short of touching it. Meanwhile, Pyro's head was lowered, but it was shaking itself before straightening.

"All right, there you go. Get on out there!"

Pyro nodded, hurrying out the door, while Engineer hung back, scratching his head. When Spy approached him, the Engineer looked back, and Spy raised an eyebrow pointedly.

Engineer sighed. "When I respawned here, it was freaking out. Dunno how long it had been there."

"Was it having an... episode of some sort?"

"Think so. It was sittin' there and breathin' real hard, clawin' at its throat."

So it hadn't just been fighting harder than normal. Something must have set off one of its episodes, which obviously freaked the BLUs out. "Well, it's fine now, but I'm not so sure about us. Let's move." With that, Spy hurried out of spawn, the Engineer at his heels.

Upon arriving at the cart, however, he found the tides of the battle had turned once again as the rest of the team was successfully pushing the BLUs—and their cart—back. It didn't take eleven pointless PHDs to see why.

"I'll be," Engineer murmured as he came to a stop beside Spy.

Pyro was charging at the BLUs, who were fleeing before its pilot light was even lit.

With a snort, Spy skirted around the edge of the battlefield, scoping out another hiding spot for the time being. Perhaps they weren't doing so badly after all.

Both teams continued to trade blows for a while, but the BLUs were hindered by their focus on Pyro, only making a true push once it was taken out again. Unfortunately this didn't last much longer, and the enemy team seemed to eventually lose its fear of the Pyro as the match continued as normal.

It was a good while before the RED barely came out the victor. The humiliation round was a great deal shorter than usual, fortunately, as their foes bolted the second their time was up. Spy managed to pick off the enemy pyro, much to his satisfaction, while Demo let out a whoop at blasting the heavy to bits. The rest fled in terror, barely escaping Pyro, who chased them through the tunnel before turning back.

Everyone returned to their base, tired but more-or-less happy. There was no noisy party tonight, though Demo did buy drinks as usual. When he shoved a bottle at Spy, however, Spy held up a hand in protest. "I don't plan on crashing my car on the way home," he said.

Demo waved him off. "Ah, drivin' sober's for the weak," he spat, before offering a bottle to Engineer.

Rolling his eyes, Spy moved past them and toward the barracks. He stepped into his room, scanned it, then nodded—nothing here he needed to bring home. He hadn't been in his smoking room today, so there was nothing that needed checking there. While there was technically nothing preventing him from leaving, he found himself heading into the lounge regardless. A baseball game flickered on the TV set, which Scout and Soldier watched animatedly. Demo, Sniper, and Engineer were drinking together on the couch, while Heavy and Medic sat on opposite sides of the room, which baffled Spy until he heard Medic make an odd cooing noise at his pigeon. Archimedes perked up and took off, zipping across the room over to Heavy, who held out his finger for him to land on. The bird looked at him expectantly before flying back over to Medic, and looping back and forth a few times until Heavy followed him across the room.

"Hey, could you get your freakin' bird out of the way?" Scout took off his cap to examine it for a second; it was clean, but he shot a glare at Heavy and Medic anyway. "Some of us are tryin' to watch the game!"

"No," Medic said simply, and smiled as Heavy approached. "Good work, Archimedes." He offered the bird a small handful of seeds, which Archimedes pecked at greedily. "Now, again!"

Heavy returned to his seat with a laugh, and their little game started over.

Spy watched a moment longer before realizing that Pyro was nowhere to be found. Frowning, he passed through the lounge and headed for the base's exit, only to pause when he realized he was being followed. He didn't need to look back to know whom it was. "What is it now, bushman?"

Sniper drew closer, though Spy refused to look at him. "You choked out there."

An image of the BLU scout flashed through his mind. "I don't know what you're talking about," he said, and resumed walking.

“I think you do.”

“And what would you know about that?”

Behind him, Sniper sputtered before letting out a growl, blurting out, "It happens every time I step in water."

Spy paused.

"My heart starts hammerin' and it's like—it's like I'm there again, in that bloody bunker, waitin' to be blasted in the chest and not wake up in respawn."

Something the Medic had said came to mind. "Shellshock."

"Yeah." Sniper went quiet for a moment. "I'm not the only one."

"Obviously not. Why are you wasting my time with this?"

"...Look, mate." Sniper inched closer, his voice lowering. "You weren't alone in that hallway, back in that robot base."

Spy's eyes widened. His lungs inhaled the fumes from the burning robots, and his breath caught in his throat.

"You're not the only one who saw Scout—"

Something bolted down his spine, his face felt hot, and he whirled around before he could stop himself. "You leave Jeremy out of this!"

Sniper stepped back, holding his hands up.

It took Spy a moment to realize he'd shouted. His head was burning and his breathing was heavy, and Sniper was staring at him, his expression unreadable behind those stupid, tacky—

He whirled around, and stormed out of the base, nearly missing when Scout poked his head around the corner. "Yo, someone talkin' about me?"

As he stepped out onto the porch—which had been rebuilt after the bread monster incident—the warm twilight greeted him, practically scalding against what little skin he had exposed. Letting out a hissing breath, he leaned against the wooden railing, staring down past the tracks below. His breathing still came heavily as he thought of multiple ways he could kill the Sniper—planting a knife into his back, shooting him in the head, knocking him out of one of his stupid sniper nests...

The acrid smoke from the robots was still filling his lungs, and he longed to exchange it for a different kind of smoke. The next thing he knew, he had pulled out a cigarette, and his hand once again tried to grab a lighter that was not there. Stupid—he had more of them at home, but he kept forgetting—how could he forget, he smoked every day, how could he do this—how could he choke out on the—

A soft hum shattered through his frantic thoughts, and he jumped, nearly dropping the cigarette into the gorge below. But the following familiar click made him realize what was being offered, and he held out his cigarette gratefully.

At his side, the Pyro held out the lighter.

Spy stared at it before lighting his cigarette, and took a long drag. The familiar taste and burn eased his racing mind, and he held it in for a moment before breathing it out. "Merci," he sighed.

Pyro nodded.

After waiting for his racing heart to calm a bit more, Spy looked back at the Pyro, then examined the deck. A few chairs sat out here, and the floor was littered with ashes. "Is this where you've been hiding out?"

Again, Pyro nodded.

"I see. Not so bad now, since it's stopped smelling like spoiled bread," Spy remarked. Though now that he thought about it, it did have another odd smell around here, aside from the toxic waste barrels below. "And what have you been up to?"

Pyro whipped out a wooden kebab stick that it had evidently swiped from the kitchen, flicked open its lighter, and set the stick aflame. It gave off a distinct cedar odor. Ah, that explained the smell.

"Yes, fascinating," he muttered. Though he had to admit, it was oddly hypnotic watching the fire slowly eat away at the wood. But he shook himself. "Pyro, during our match today..."

Looking up, the Pyro stared directly into his eyes. It tilted its head very slightly to the right.

"Did something... happen? I couldn't help but notice you seemed... distressed when you came out of respawn."

Pyro continued to stare. Without looking away, it snapped the still-burning stick in half, dropped it, and whirled back around to face the railing.

"Merde!" Spy hissed, stamping out the fire before the deck was set ablaze. "Fine! I'm sorry I asked."

If the Pyro heard him, it didn't acknowledge it; it only stared out at the tracks below, the same as Spy had done earlier. Its hands held the railing in a tight grip.

Spy sighed. "You could have indicated you didn't wish to discuss—" He cut himself off, realizing abruptly what this whole conversation was sounding like. Imagining himself stabbing his knife straight through Sniper's stupid sunglasses, he turned away.

A shaky hum made him pause.

Looking back, he saw Pyro looking over its shoulder, back toward him.

Frowning, Spy approached the Pyro again, standing beside it. "You do wish to discuss it, then?" he ventured.

Pyro looked back down at the tracks, but did not protest.

"Something happened, then." Obviously. He pulled his cigarette away for a moment, breathing out a stream of smoke. "Was it something the BLU team did?"

Pyro nodded, then shook its head.

Spy sighed. "I see." He didn't, but he thought it over for a moment. "It was not... solely what the BLU team did. There were other factors?"

Pyro nodded.

Okay, they were getting somewhere. Not very far, but it was something. "Are you able to articulate what it was?"

This time it tilted its head one way, then the other. Uncertain, then.

"Whatever you did gave them quite the scare," he remarked, trying to keep some levity in his voice.

To his surprise, the Pyro shivered in response.

"You were scared, too?" he guessed.

Pyro nodded, then balled its hands into fists, pounding them against the railing.

"Scared and angry." When Pyro nodded, Spy hummed. It made sense, he supposed, based on what he'd seen. If Pyro was scared and angry, like a caged animal, it would follow that it would be savage enough to terrify the enemy team. "Well, you're no longer scared and angry, are you?"

Pyro tipped its head.

"You made something positive of it, no? You were quite effective against the BLU team today."

Sighing, it shook its head, and turned away.

So much for that route. Spy dropped his cigarette butt to the ground, lightly stomped on it, and kicked it off the porch. "Well, whatever caused your episode, I suppose we can hope it won't happen again." When the Pyro did not respond, he turned to leave, only to pause. "Have you had any luck with your colors, lately?"

Pyro made no further noise or gesture, so Spy sighed and began making his way back into the base. There wasn't much else to be gained from hanging around here.

As he was stepping back through the door, however, he heard a soft hum from behind him, and stiffened when someone grabbed his wrist. "What?!" he cried, and turned to see the Pyro shoving some crumpled-up sheet into his hand. This accomplished, it let him go, and he yanked his hand away. "...Merci," he grumbled, and stared down at the paper. Perhaps it wanted him to throw the scrap away for it. Snorting, he stormed out through the door, shoving the paper into a pocket, his thoughts only on returning home.

Spy headed out to his car in the darkening lot and entered it, prepared to leave the base for the night. But, feeling the paper in his pocket, he frowned, realizing he hadn't tossed it as he was heading out. Though... come to think of it, why had Pyro not simply burnt it itself, if it wanted it disposed of? Brow furrowed, he pulled out the paper again and, after a moment of hesitation, smoothed it out.

It was a transparent scrap of tracing paper that had been ripped off of a larger sheet, and it was covered in crayon scrawls. After a moment, Spy recognized it as something Pyro had drawn a few days ago—a lineup of the mercs. In spite of the childish medium, it was well-drawn, with each of the mercenaries being broken down into comprehensive shapes and simple colors—more triangular and pointy shapes for the Sniper, boxy shapes for the Heavy, rounder shapes for the Engineer, and so on. Even he himself was depicted with pointier shapes, though not in an unflattering way. But something struck him, and he squinted at the drawing in the dim light before punching on an overhead light switch.

The mercenaries were all rendered in color, but for most of them, it was not their standard colors. Engineer seemed the exception to this, being rendered with the most accurate colors to how he appeared in real life—or as close as crayons could get, anyway. Soldier was fairly bright as well, though with tinges of gray on him. Further down the line, some of them appeared with more colors than others. Sniper especially seemed mostly gray, but then... at the very end of the lineup, Spy stared at the drawing of Pyro and himself.

Both of them had been rendered in nothing but shades of black and gray.

[kedreeva]

Okay so, I don't think I've spoken of the saga here yet but! Gather round. I shall tell you a long story about the bird I just acquired and why she is VERY IMPORTANT.

At the beginning of last fall, I started looking into quail genetics a little more, because I got tired of not being able to sex my Celadon quail by their feathers. Originally I thought I could kill 2 birds (ok maybe more) with 1 stone and order nice jumbo wild type (which MANY places advertised as wild type jumbo) hatching eggs, and this would help me put some size on the Celadons (jumbo) while also making them feather sexable (wild type). Perfect!

But then I come to find out that pretty much all jumbo lines are jumbo BROWNS, as in they all have the sex linked brown (SLB) gene. So, I was a little confused and a LOT annoyed because I wanted to work specifically with the wild type color/pattern. No mutations just straight, plain wild type.

And EVERYWHERE I looked - major production hatcheries, private breeders through websites, Facebook groups, local swaps, craigslist, e v e r y w h e r e -

People ONLY had SLB.

This spring I came across a video showing about the differences between SLB and wild type and I figured if the person who made it can tell, maybe she will have some. So I looked her up (not in a stalker way, her farm name was stamped on the video and took me to the website), and what luck! She was in Michigan! Upper Michigan, so still a hike, but not California, y'know?

So I shot her an email and explained that I was looking for WT and that her site said she bred them and that people could do local pickup. She responded yeah she's totally got a bunch! And I said great, I'm also in Michigan, albeit far away, but I don't mind driving 7+ hours each way, because I really need actual, trusted WT for sure birds for my celadon project, can I come pick them up?

Cue the most frankly bizarre email chain in my short life. As soon as I mentioned that I was going to drive, or perhaps that I had a genetics plan in place, she got super sketchy and started saying how she hadn't really paid as close attention to SLB vs. WT, that it mattered less than she thought it would when she started, that I shouldn't focus on that either, and also that "fawn celadon is practically unheard of" in the hobby and "you should focus on a clean Tibetan because it's hard to find without roux in it) implying that I should concentrate on those things instead. And concluded by telling me if I really want WT, to contact this other person (why happens to be someone I can't stand). It all sounded VERY much like she didn't have wild type males, after all, and had thought I didn't know the difference so it wouldn't actually matter. But, it does. It actually matters a lot to me.

So I messaged back to say, well, I don't want to do any of those things, I specifically want to work with this set of genetics and you said you have them so I shouldn't have to go to anyone else??

And then she went radio silent for a week. I kind of figured I'd called a bluff, and that she was one of dozens of people I'd contacted who'd said they had WT only to find out they had SLB. I get that it's difficult to see the difference, but this particular person was the president of the American Coturnix Breeders Association or whatever (found out it's actually just a club formed by her and her friends a year ago, so not as impressive as it sounds, considering they don't actually DO anything- no putting on shows, no newsletters, no certifications, no public breeder directory, no finished SOP, nada), so I kind of expected she should know what she's talking about, if anyone does.

Eventually, after a week, she responded that she had been judging at a county fair, but she had a few heterozygous males (WT het roux, which is fine) and she could set a hatch for me for more if I wanted to come at the end of the month, but she's in WI now, not MI. I said sure, since where she was in WI was actually closer than where she'd been in the UP, and we arranged date/time.

The day of, my neighbor friend, Jude, comes with me for company/keeping me awake through the 15 hours driving round trip. It's a pleasant enough drive. We arrived at a cutesy little house on the edge of town that looks like anyone's house in a neighborhood, with a spacious lawn. The person meets us and takes me around the side of the house to a 6x6x1.5 or so chicken tractor, where she's got some male coturnix. She pulls the available males for me to look through and... fam, they ALL looked SLB, to me.

Now, she swore to me up and down that they couldn't be anything except WT het for roux, because of the way she is breeding them. But I've put these birds next to my SLB males and if I didn't have my males banded, I would not ever have told the difference between them. I still picked up 4 of them, because I will give it a go- worst case, I can produce plain Roux hens/plain Roux males for use in breeding later, best case they do actually produce WT hens and they just LOOK SLB and I have to figure out what the differences are. I don't want to leave without seeing her hens, which she has told me are all WT (which is why the males HAVE to be het for it), and she takes me back. Now the hens, the hens are easy to see the difference. White bellies first of all, but the chest feathers are also wildly different! The shafts are white, the dot around the shaft is dark, ringed in red, ringed in white. On an SLB, the shafts aren't white, it's just a black dot surrounded in a red feather, and the belly is all red/buff/cream, not white.

This is what an SLB hen looks like:

So I take a nice long look to memorize the color, and thank her for showing me and meeting, and we head back home.

I do fecals when I get home because all of the males are VERY thin, no meat on them at all, and since she said she'd been feeding Purina (garbage for fowl feeds), I figured that was why, but no- HUGE coccidia loads in all of them. So I treated them and got them on a better feed. They immediately began putting on meat, and they're find now.

The rest of this summer, I have spent going to local bird swaps and inspecting all of the quail I could find, hoping to find one (1) actual wild-type phenotype bird. Hundreds and hundreds of birds, I have pawed through them all, being super obnoxious to the owners I'm sure, holding and inspecting males. I found ONE suspected WT male (and this is a HUGE "suspected," he could very well be SLB with low red expression). I compared him when I got home and I'm doubting myself still, so I don't know if I will ever actually pair him with the SLB hens or if I'll just wait til I have a roux set.

Regardless, it's been a dry season for getting what I want. It's been a dry YEAR. Yesterday was another swap and more hundreds of quail and me pawing through all of them.

Until.

My eyes landed upon.... her.

If you've only lived in an area that has american crows and not ravens, you find yourself wondering if crows are ravens. You see a big crow and you think wow! maybe that is a raven! It could be a crow, but it's seems bigger so maybe it's a raven. But, if you take a trip to a place with ravens, and you see one for the first time, you realize that there is no question, when you see a raven. When you see a raven in person, there's no question and not only is there no question, you wonder how you could ever have thought a crow was a raven. It's laughable, while looking at the raven.

That's how finding this bird felt. I'd been picking up every SLB hen and going maybe this is actually WT? It could be SLB but maybe it's WT? But the second I laid eyes on her in the middle of a pack of SLB with some mixed colors, I knew I was looking at WT hen, and I can't imagine how I ever thought maybe an SLB hen was WT.

Here's a better photo of her chest and belly (she's beat UP from her previous home, the back of her head and most of her rump are plucked clean from males). You can see the white shafts and the white belly.

And some other pics of her, showing the grey-brown on her side and back- VERY different than the SLB hens

I can't express how stoked I am about this bird. This is the first time after a LOT of effort and time, that I have felt confident I am holding the bird I want.

She's also the indicator that I have a LOT of work ahead of me.

My end goal is to have birds that look like her, weigh 12-14oz, and lay large, blue eggs. I have birds that lay large, blue eggs, I have birds that weigh 12-14oz live weigh, and now I have at least 1 bird that looks like her, which means I can make more that look like her. The first step is cleaning the color mutations out of the celadon line without losing the celadon eggs. This is going to be a bit of a nightmare, BUT, I have a friend helping me out with getting a few celadons that are either WT or SLB (I'm guessing SLB all things considered) to start the work with. I will work over the winter to get a few more actual WT birds here, and to start crossing out the celadons with the SLB jumbos to clean out the other feather color mutations. Once I'm down to just SLB and celadon for mutations, I can clean the SLB out with the WT and roux lines.

This project will likely take me a good 2 years, maybe 3, to complete and then test breed to ensure I haven't lost the celadon gene and I don't have any hidden recessives lingering about. But just having the fucking materials to do it all on hand now is a huge step forward from where I was when I decided to start the project.

[rebouks]

Forever In Between - Invictus

Robin appears to have stumbled into a rather nightmarish situation and it’s up to you to ensure he makes it out alive. If he dies-.. well, maybe that’s it, or maybe he just wakes up, or maybe he won’t die at all?! Probably best not to find out the hard way though, right?

Invictus is a multiple-choice Halloween special based on Until Dawn, various other classic horror games, a teensy bit (read: a lot) of brain rot, and an overactive imagination; mine or Robin’s, you decide.

I know that creepy, slightly gory things aren't for everyone so below is a list of potential trigger warnings and if you want to sit this one out you can block the tag "fib invictus" and we'll pick up where we left off storywise in November! 🖤🧡

creepy dolls, various monsters, weapons, blood, death, murder, corpses, fighting, injuries, needles, electrocution, experimentation (not the good kind) and general peril!

As a side warning: I will be continuing with regular previous/next links as it's still technically part of the story, though I will provide a link to skip past it all when the time comes, so look out for that when normal posts resume! My usual mon-fri schedule will probs go out the window too as some posts will have votes that last a day so I'll either take the day between those off or post later than usual idk we'll see what happens 🤸‍♀️

Last but not least I'd like to give some shout outs to those that've helped me during this process 🖤

Props to @softpine for some of the Until Dawn assets used and for inspo from this post! 🧡

To @sirianasims for helping me find ridiculous amounts of disgusting, amazing cc and generally spit balling ideas with me from the very start 🤸‍♀️

A big thank you to @zosa95 for being my beta reader, listening to me witter about this project since fkin forever ago and sharing my excitement 🤗

Thanks to everyone in the story server for putting up with numerous out of context screenies and for enduring my whinging about how tired I've been recently skdjsk.. particularly @lynzishell @hannahssimblr @madebycoffee @daniigh0ul and @sirianasims for consistently cheering me on when I was pooped 💩

Okok last LAST but not least, some rambling.. I've been busy with this project in the background since the end of July and keeping up with regular story nonsense whilst working on this and adulting in between was NOT it 😅 (if you noticed my regular posts lacking in their usual vibrancy no u didn't.. but ur also right cos i've had to be super lazy with it recently to keep up with two things at once, so SORRY! fkjfk)

Anyway, hopefully it's worth it, I had a lot of fun making this special and I'm pretty proud of it so I hope everyone enjoys our October shenanigans this year! Maybe I'll find some time to make some gifts for simblreen but I'm not promising anything cos I'm eepy.. maybe my gift this year is just danger and violence instead ehehe 👻🔪

[kaelie-quill]

Writeblr Intro

This feels super awkward to do but I'm putting myself out there for better or worse, so! I go by Kaelie on here, I am 22, Queer, and go by she/her pronouns. I've been on writeblr on and off since I was maybe fifteen but haven't touched it in four years. I am now 22 and for most of those four years I have been plagued by my current WIP, currently called Project Genesis. I've only just recently forced myself to really sit and try to get it out of my head.

I'm kind of ashamed to admit that the only book I ever finished was a warrior cats fan fiction I wrote when I was twelve (It was like forty chapters, I wrote it by hand in a notebook and I let someone take it home and read it one time and it haunts me) Everything since then has either been abandoned and never even made it out of the planning stage.

For the last four years I've been super stressed and in a super bad mental state and had no time to truly sit and try to write anything and if I did I thought it was absolute trash and it kinda made me hate writing. I even stopped reading despite being obsessed with books from the moment I could read, but in the last year and a half I have rediscovered my love for reading and now I want to try writing again.

Project Genesis is meant to be a multi-book high fantasy series with horror elements (maybe, I've not read many horror books and have little experience writing it. Any tips on writing horror, or good horror books to read would be much appreciated) It's got alternating POVs, basically everybody is queer, lots of religious imagery (maybe only if you squint, but I swear sometimes I feel like I'm just ripping off the Bible)

Despite existing for almost for almost four years its hard to describe what it's actually about? The first book at least is a dual POV about one character denying and running from their destiny to avoid becoming a sacrificial lamb, and another character trying to carve out a destiny for himself when he's not meant to have one (not in a 'he's supposed to be dead' way but in a 'you're life isn't supposed to have any affect on the world' kinda way)

It is currently in early planning stages, I'm working on a zero draft and outline before really hunkering down to try a first draft. I don't know how this is gonna go as far as like updates? I'm really just kinda using this as motivation, like if I talk about and say I'm doing it I can keep myself accountable and not just drift away from this like so many others. I expect it to all be horrible but so long as it's something I can go back and make it better. Thanks for reading! 👋🏻

[maxwell-grant]

The Penguin Ep3 - "Bliss" Breakdown

oh

(Episode 1) (Episode 2)

So that's what Victor's image in the credits was meant to represent the whole time. A still of him inside the last memory he has of his home, his perspective on the window before it all went to shit.

I get that it might have been obvious the opening was a flashback given the election was still ongoing and given we get to see Vic's friend, the one who was shot by Sofia, still alive, but they also peppered enough bits that hade me fully convinced we were just watching Victor's present life when he was out of earshot from Oz. The bombs were a genuine shocker.

Credit to @davidmann95 for pointing out that the rooftop pebbles are Victor's equivalent of the Crime Alley pearls, an extremely important detail to add to the other Batman parallels Victor's gonna be shown having in this episode.

I'm loving a lot of the choices that go into Oz's outfits and specifically what kind of outfits he wears around specific characters, the whole chameleon thing he's got going personality-wise reflective in his choice of wear, and I like how this extends to the people around him and his choice of vehicle and base and everything. He may not wear fine suits everywhere and for all occasions, but this is very much a Penguin concerned about fashion particularities and branding and ways to dress up himself and the people acting in his behalf.

This scene where Oz pays Victor is funny, but it importantly sets up an element that's gonna come into play regarding their relationship by the end of the episode, that is how hard Oz projects on Victor and how much of his insecurity and need for affection comes through in his attempts to deal with the kid. Two episodes in after all the shit Victor's done for Oz and it's the first time we're seeing Oz talk about giving him a salary. It's not an unusual comedy beat, sadly not a real life one either, but the thing is, Oz is not a cheapskate, far from it. Across the last two episodes, he's been very quick to fork over cash to smooth over negotiations, and he's more than happy to pay the kid and praise him for demanding double (even if he shuts down the idea), it just genuinely never occurred to him until the moment that, right, the kid whose job is driving me around and burying bodies and putting his neck on the line for me needs a paycheck, of course, he's gonna get a nice thousand per week because I'm a good boss who does that kind of thing.

Nice little reminder of the class disparity element of the show, in how Sofia looks at Oz's set-up and dismisses as tacky garbage, while Graciela calls it bougie and thinks Victor's basically set if his boss is letting him crash in a place like that. Also illustrated in the money scene earlier, because from what I've researched, a thousand per week is an average salary for a driver in New Jersey (which is where this Gotham is located), and despite Oz calling it a start, Victor's already shocked at how much money Oz is paying per week. Just these totally different conceptions of what money and good living entail across the board for our characters. SPEAKING OF totally different standards,

So it turns out that Sofia has been planning her own meteoric ascension into ruler of Gotham for about as long as Oz, and more effectively at that, and if there's anything this episode will establish for sure about her, it's that Sofia Falcone is an actual supervillain the way Oz is still some ways from being. Alberto's shipment wasn't the ticket for the two of them, just for Oz, and Sofia just needed him to drive her around and open the door once more.

Oz the whole time basically happy with running a club and pushing dope out of a warehouse to the point of crying to her in the end that it was the best thing that ever happened to him, while Sofia here casually unveils a Gus Fring hidden meth lab with a mushroom forest full of Arkham Super Drugs and another Batman Villain working out in the backroom to produce them. Oz spent the last years ass kissing and spinning plates and seizing his own little levers of power all over Gotham, while Sofia was enduring soul-redefining torment entrenched inside the Supervillain Factory of the world where she would discover and pillage the tool that would let her conquer the city in one swoop.

A tool that she debuts before the underworld with an intimidating yet casual speech, above the city writhing before her and falling by the minute into her grasp, before casually leaving and telling her grunt to wrap up negotiations for her. The Riddler showed Gotham what a supervillain is and can do, a call to the maladjusted victims and freaks everywhere to grab their masks and bombs and get in the action because this is how the world works now that Batman exists, but Sofia here shows us not just a different way the rot spreads across the city, not just a way in which Arkham can become the other force filling in the power vacuum, but that being a supervillain is also a business model every respectable criminal in the city is gonna have to get on board with real fucking quick.

I love/hate that we get to have a few scenes of Sofia and Oz working together and how good they are, glad they could at least give us those before everything gets turbofucked forever further.

I definitely encourage you to keep up with the Penguin podcast, and particularly the latest episode where they talk with Rhenzy Feliz and fluency consultant Marc Winski, where they go over the thought and care that went into depicting Victor's stutter and incorporating it into the character and show, it's a very insightful conversation.

Oz's empathy for people with disabilities shows up in him complaining at the waiter for speaking over Victor, and later in their scene with Johnny Viti when he berates him for calling her a psycho, and is consistent with lots of other little moments where it's come up. I like that this is a consistent thing with Oz, and not just one of the things he does for show - even when he's complaining about Sofia to Victor, he never disparages her based on mental illness, he calls her uptight and elusive and a problem he wants off his back, but he never insults her the way all the other mobsters do.

Even in the bathroom scene by the end of the episode, where he does lose his patience and rushes Victor to explain himself, only happens after they've reached a boiling point. I do think it's important, for his character and role, that Oz maintains some important principles, even if they are still self-serving.

Again, love how the show knows just when to drop the Penguin name to maximize hurt on Oz.

What a fucking show Farrell and Miloti and Feliz give us in this episode.

I said back when the trailers dropped that Sofia Falcone looked like she was going to be the prestige crime drama protagonist that this show would have if it wasn't about The Penguin, and that's the vibe you get out of these two together. She is the tormented HBO leading lady and he is the charismatic side character, he is her driver with a wacky voice and face that bites it tragically to motivate her revenge / bites it after the reveal of how he backstabbed her. Which is exactly where the Falcones liked him, that funny guy in a supporting role who drives them around and runs their club and digs up their graves, and it's partially how their last scene in the episode plays out.

"Yeah I know I ruined your entire life and led to irreparable damage to your mind and sanity and reputation and all that, but I really wanted a little piece of the action as a nightclub owner, is that so bad?" is a confession that Oz only survives because he's the main character. In any other show, him bearing the depths of his embarassing pathetic soul to Sofia like that would be the last thing he does before dying, tragically or cathartically.

But to his credit, it worked. Sofia actually sheds a tear for him. It's the first time Oz has seemed genuinely honest with her, and more importantly, it's the first time anyone has been honest with Sofia ever since she got back from Arkham. She really has no one else she can possibly trust but the least trustworthy person on the planet. Who on Earth could possibly be willing to make an ass of themselves before her like that if they weren't being truthful?

Lauren LeFranc: You know, I think Oz is a bit of a walking contradiction and I think he deeply believes what he believes in that moment. I think he genuinely feels that way. Also understands the benefit of her being on his side at the same time. Right? Like, if she doesn't believe in him, their operation currently goes to hell. Not to say that he's playing that up, I think that is a moment of genuine emotion from him. But I also think for a man like him, he's not quite sure where it begins and ends. He doesn't believe that it's bullshit. That doesn't mean that it's not. Like, I don't know if he can even identify it or if, honestly, if Oz takes the time to unpack that. He's not a guy who's like, "Hmm, let me think about my actions today.", you know? - The Penguin Podcast: Episode 3

I'm extremely curious as to what the Sofia-Oz dynamic is gonna look like in the rearview. Does he have enough of a lid on his temper to fake that masterfully being offended on Sofia's behalf while playing her attack dog? Does he genuinely regret that she got sent to Arkham over whatever he did? I think this and the ending scene go a long way in pending towards either way and that's interesting to me. Even if 90% of what he says is bullshit there's some of that regret / kinship that feels genuine

I am very curious to see what becomes of Eve and what more will we learn about her. She seems to be Oz's second-in-command when it comes to businesses he does with her and the girls, and I like that the girls and Victor form a personal squad for Oz (and crucially, he's promising all of them a bigger slice of the pie when he becomes a big shot, and just as crucially, all of them have massive targets on their back right now).

It is genuinely funny how appalled and offended Oz is, at the idea that maybe the kid he roped into this with a gun to the head only stuck around out of fear, not because the kid thinks he's a great guy giving him a chance. I call him the Michael Scott of crime and I mean it. But like most funny things about the Penguin it also has something sad and lonely and pathetic and human about it, the ever present disconnect between the gentleman he wants to be and the thug he acts like.

Like with the salary thing, it just did not cross his head at any moment prior to this, not when he threatened to kill the people he cared about or openly argued with Vic whether to shoot him and stuff him in a trunk, not when threatening to gut him like a fish for messing up or spilling his secrets or telling him to lie with corpses, that Vic was sincerely scared of him and his power and did not leave because he feared this known gangster would do exactly what he said he was going to do. To Oz, doing those things to "his guy" now would be unthinkable, but the question that Vic wanted to leave never even popped in his mind.

And it makes him genuinely upset. That scene at the bar, where he is fully alone, sad and tired with his drink, tired from all the plates he's had to spin and all the indignities he's endured and still endures, tired from all the hats he's had to wear, and sad because the only person so far he's been able to let down his guard around, the one person with whom he could at least wear a hat he liked just bailed on him.

Of course he'd never kill Vic for just wanting to leave, once he realizes that this is actually a factor in how Victor views him and obviously he'd be a bad boss if he did that. Of course he gets angry at Victor for wanting to throw away an opportunity given to him that Oz would have (and probably has) killed for, he's giving Victor the kind of help he desperately wishes he got and he's gonna throw it away? Of course he gets shocked at being reminded Victor is a guy with needs, a guy that Oz holds lethal power over, and not just a kid version of Oz that he can live out his Rex Calabrese fantasy by helping out and mentoring. And of course, none of the cruel and hurtful things he says to Victor before he leaves would sting if there wasn't just enough of a bitter truth to them, or at least, enough of it to stick with Victor.

What an excellent scene Victor's panic attack was, totally get why it was the editor's favorite

I was waiting for a Victor-centric episode and was not dissappointed, this is the episode where he first comes on his own as a character and we see how crucially important he is to the show, the from-the-bottom ground floor perspective on everything that Reeves and LeFranc have repeteadly defined the project around. I love getting to see such an on-the-ground perspective of how fucking monstrous Riddler's plan was, and the kind of lives it ruined. This poor kid thrust headfirst into a Batman/Robin origin story and situation.

It's like Feliz said in the podcast, the end of the episode is the first time we've ever seen Victor, and maybe the first time Victor's ever seen himself, outside of survival mode, outside of simply living to try and get to next hour and do what his parents/Oz tell him to, which is a painfully real state to be in for anyone who's dealt with poverty growing up or is dealing with poverty right now. It's the first time he really has an opportunity to decide on his own what he's going to do on his own. As much as we may know he's making a doomed choice, that he really should just hop on the first bus out of Gotham and join his girlfriend in the sun, well, he's a Batman character, he doesn't get to do that.

Victor wants to live his life and protect himself and the people he loves and make good choices and be a good person, but on a deep fundamental level, he just wants his family back, he wants his dad back, he wants to do right by them more so than by himself, even if that means doing things they would find detestable. Like the son of a doctor, a son who now chooses to inflict violence every night if it means he can avenge their memory, here we have the son of a nurse presented with a choice: He gets to honor the intentions of his parents by dying as a well-meaning decent nobody like they did, or he gets to make up for the shame of how they died by living a good life, one which was denied to them, by surviving and thriving as a criminal. He gets to honor their ideals, or get back at the shameful cruel reality of how they died, but he cannot do both. So he makes his choice.

Oz, in this episode, burns nearly every single bridge he has: with the Falcone family, with the Maronis, and with Sofia, and he even does it with Victor. If Victor hadn't come back, Oz would have died on that parking lot, and still Oz is ecstatic that his guy's come back, because all he wants is for someone to like him enough to stick around with him. Victor is not so sure he's not in for a horrible time now, but in his own way, he also burned his bridges, and he also got what he wanted.

Okay Vic, you wanted dad to not take shit from others and shoot for a better life, you got a dad who will teach you to do just that. You wanted to pal around with small-time criminals you were friends with even if your parents insisted otherwise, well, the king of hoodlums is the only guy you have left in your life now.

You have committed yourself body and soul to a dangerous life within the city you love, spurred on by the tragic injustice that took your parents in an event that destroyed your entire world? Great, welcome to Gotham, here's even a new name you get out of it.

[childrenofcain-if]

Hello, Axel, I'm a big fan of all your works and have been following you since the first blog you had of What Lovely Bones. I'm super excited about this new book and it really looks like you've found your niche and moved along with it so far.

I've always felt that you were a great writer and you've only gotten better over the years, I sometimes feel like a proud sibling because I've been here since you were nineteen and you're now twenty one, if I'm not mistaken 😅

Ok I'm rambling now so let me get to what I wanted to ask: how does your writing process go and do you have a schedule to work with. I really don't want you to feel burnt out over things in the future like you did with your other projects

wow, we have an og here, it seems. glad to have you onboard for what’s been like 3 years now (i think)!

i wouldn’t say that i have a particular ‘niche’ when it comes to genres and whatnot, but it’s not very surprising to see the assumptions either. i���ve been decently motivated to write this story and have been very productive without burning myself out so no writer’s block on the horizon yet, but i won’t jinx myself.

i don’t think i have a specific writing schedule, to answer your questions. my creative juices flow freely sometimes or just remain stagnant the other times. i do write my ideas down when they come to me so i won’t forget about them later. but i’ve also learned that you just can’t force yourself to write when your brain is running low on motivation or ideas.

it’s a five-step process for me when i do decide to write:

review the notes which includes the ideas i previously jotted down sporadically.

adjust them to how it might fit onto the scenes that i’m writing.

connect the ideas and assign characters, choices, and ultimately the consequences of said choices.

talk to myself for the dialogues and note them down as well, laughing to myself like an escapee from a psych ward and patting myself on the back for particularly witty one-liners.

black out while typing and later gain consciousness with a terrible back pain, hands cramping up, and at least 5-10k word count per writing session.

a lot of these ideas will never see the light of the day—e.g.: MC getting hit by a hockey stick so hard that they get a concussion and can’t hear out of their right ear—but they do serve as a runway for other ideas to take off.

if i had any advice to give writers, it’s to just. write. it. down. maybe you think it’s irrelevant/weird when the ideas first come to you, but by that point you already have the foundations ready. all you have to do now is to adjust it and build up on it.

[monbons]

Stitch Sunday

I've been back at work for a week and am already exhausted. The beginning of the year is always brutal (this one more so because I am training a new teaching partner), so time for anything outside of school is hard to come by. BUT! I was determined to finish BunBaz, so may I present ...

No Trauma Bun Baz!

Ready for the fall season, this bun is rocking his favorite sleeveless tee in the pumpkin patch. He was sipping on a pumpkin mocha breve earlier, but the photographer didn't capture the moment. He might play some pick up footie later, although Uggs aren't the best footwear...

After a long day of taking perfectly posed pictures for his Holiday cards, BunBaz heads home and is ready for bed. He loves his striped and collared PJs (only the best for this bun!) and his Paddington keeps him company all night long.

In all seriousness, I had a blast making this bun for the lovely @bookish-bogwitch. (If you missed my earlier post about him, he speaks!) I made the witchy tee based on inspiration pics Em sent over. All other clothing and accessories are American Girl Doll cast-offs, either repurposed or tailored to fit.

In other doll factory news, Rainbow posted the SnowBaz worry dolls I gifted her at the Slow Dance signing (last slide). I know the real artists in this fandom get reblogged and reposted all the time, but this literally made me cry when I saw it! Especially because these little guys were the first set of dolls I ever made in early-May. It blows my mind how far I've come in just a few months.

I hope to keep getting better and tackling more complex projects in the months to come. This fall alone I will be keeping busy with a possible COTTA collaboration with the amazing @iamamythologicalcreature. The idea, if it pans out, is super cool! I also submitted a doll concept for CORB and am excited for whoever my fic partner happens to be!

On that fandom high note, I am bidding you all temporary farewell since I plan to disappear through mid-September at least. Students can smell weakness, so I'm going to devote my time to planning kick-ass lessons and breaking 15-year-old spirits. Please keep tagging me so that I remember I once had a life.

Until next we meet, hellos and high-fives from the doll factory. 💖

@thewholelemon, @emeryhall, @raenestee, @roomwithanopenfire, @cutestkilla

@artsyunderstudy, @aristocratic-otter, @arthurkko, @best--dress, @brilla-brilla-estrellita

@rimeswithpurple, @run-for-chamo-miles, @supercutedinosaurs, @whatevertheweather, @mooncello

@shrekgogurt, @you-remind-me-of-the-babe, @youarenevertooold, @talentpiper11, @larkral

@beastmonstertitan, @drowninginships, @valeffelees, @noblecorgi, @rbkzz

@thehoneyedhufflepuff, @messofthejess, @orange-peony, @blackberrysummerblog, @letraspal

@facewithoutheart, @ic3-que3n, @skeedelvee, @fiend-for-culture, @hushed-chorus

@martsonmars, @katatsumuli, @comesitintheclover, @stitchyqueer, @alexalexinii

@erzbethluna, @palimpsessed, @ileadacharmedlife, @theimpossibledemon

[lowkeyrobin]

helloo could you do mcyt's (preferably tommy, tubbo, freddie, and max but you can add whoever else!!) having to take care of the reader because they got their wisdom teeth out and their all delusional and out of it from the drugs 😭😭 have a good day!

omg YES OF CORURSE !!!! ; this sis so cute also sorry if this is like dumb cause I've never gotten wisdom teeth removed but I have gotten a cavity removed if that counts idk ; also it's 1am and I've been working on a double wattpad special project all day and I'm just like brainrotted LMFAOOOO ; anyways I'm super happy to get that like worked on and also do these reqs cause irs been like over a month atp I'm sorry

MCYT ; wisdom teeth removal

includes ; tommyinnit, ranboo, badlinu & maxggs

warnings ; language, substances (laughing gas), me not really knowing how this works ig

masterlist

TOMMYINNIT

absolutely cackling everytime you speak

"I wanna listen to gay music, tom" you whine

"what is gay music?!??!"

"CHAPPELL ROAN"

"WHY ARE WE YELLING"

offers to get you yogurt on the way home

"pretzel"

"i know the soft pretzel addiction is tough, but they're too hard for you right now"

"what the fuck, mate"

you proceed to only say mate for an hour cause it doesn't sound like a real word anymore

pain in the ass

good for content!

his first video to reach 1m views in months LMAOOOO

RANBOO

has to get the whole crew in to help you

like whole crew as in harry, molly, tommy, and jack

"stand up in 1, 2, 3-"

you crash immediately to the floor

"i don't think that's standing"

"i don't think so either, harry"

literally loads you up on milkshakes

feels so bad about how you're complaining about being uncomfortable but he can't do anything so... suffer ig

he's just nodding along to the dumb shit you say

very embarrassing to be on the public bus though

everyone's quietly giggling trying to not laugh up a storm as you mumble about harry and something about vapes

you might as well be on crack

FREDDIE BADLINU

literally like teaching an infant how to walk

baby gloves are on, asks the dental surgeon what he needs to do and writes it down

constant hugs cause you ask for them every 3 seconds

actually laughing like hell when you say something weird/dumb

just hands you your earbuds and let's you play music if it helps the woozyness at all

"listen to megan with meeeee"

"okay, well I need an earbud, pal"

"oh, yeah"

takes a picture of your swollen mouth while you're taking a nap on his shoulder on the bus

"I'm convinced this is what raising a toddler is like"

"I'm a cool toddler though, right? cause I'm awesome and cool and awesome, right?"

"yup"

MAXGGS

you actually confuse him for tubbo and it was over (he was streaming w tubbo for tubbothon)

"okay, bye. get home safe-"

"mAx-" voice cracks are insane what

was worried that they performed surgery on your vocal chords while they had you out

nah your jaw wasn't used to being so strained for so long

loads you up with milkshakes and ice cream

you're mostly only getting around on his back cause you're too woozy

like taking care of a drunk person

"i have to change the towel-"

"what towel?"

"the towel in your mouth, y/n"

"THERES A TOWEL IN MY MOUTH?'

he's literally never laughed so much in his life

made a joke about being pro getting high on laughing gas

"whatever makes you happy, gang"

[callmearcturus]

@vmprsm replied to your post “Raw MKV rip of Mission Impossible: Fallout:...”:

Theoretically, if one wanted their own copies of the MI movies safely on a hard drive....where would one go?

​I mean, there is a site where you can acquire a lot of movies via torrent. I tend to use (rot13) 1337k.gb and I got a heavily discounted Windscribe VPN subscription that I use on almost all of my devices.

But my thing is that... I want commentary reels and special features, and sometimes you'll download a movie but the fucking subtitles are either bad or they become desynced over time and I haaaaate it.

So I've been gathering bits and pieces over the past year to get a Plex system going in my house and it works like a fucking DREAM. But it requires some investment. If you just want to have a few local copies of your favorite movies, this is way overkill. But me, I am canceling all of my family's streaming services and pivoting to our Plex.

So what I have for actually getting the files:

I don't have this model but it's similar to this, a Pioneer External Blu-ray Reader. It sits on a little shelf and is connected to my PC by a USB cable. (I think I got mine for around 68 bucks so you can wait for a sale.)

I use MakeMKV which will rip the big honking raw files from a Blu-ray and leave them as matroshka (.mkv) files.

Because these raw files are ENORMOUS, I compress them in Handbrake. Handbrake is wildly powerful, can convert file formats and make them super small. I have my Handbrake set up special to dump all the non-English language subtitles and audio tracks to save space.

(SUPER BONUS TIP FOR HANDBRAKE: If you have a dedicated GPU, you can give Handbrake permission to use it, and it'll compress shit literally 10x faster, love it.)

At the moment, I am using a Western Digital portable 5TB external harddrive because it was one sale and I couldn't beat the price. Eventually, I want to upgrade to two 10TB HDDs so I can keep a full backup of everything I'm ripping. Because this is a bit of a time and energy commitment and I don't wanna lose all my progress here!

At first I was running Plex off my desktop PC and that worked totally fine, but my family hates having to touch my desktop to wake it up every time, so I very recently grabbed one of these guys:

This is a Beelink Mini PC S12 Pro. It is small enough to fit in my hand but it is a speedy little demon that runs Windows 11. (And eventually I am gonna use it to firewall out ads from our entire home network, I'm pumped for that project but ANYWAY.)

The upside of these mini boys is that instead of being a hefty workhorse like my main computer, this is small and has a low-power draw.

So I moved my Plex Media Server to the mini PC, plugged in my 5TB drive of movies, and now everyone in the house can easily stream anything I have added to the library.

This is what it looks like, if you're curious. Any device in the house that runs Plex and is signed in can select any movie or TV show I have and just watch it like it was Netflix or something.

A month ago, I has like.... 65 movies? Now I'm ripping a few and we're gonna break 100 soon.

"But Arc, where do you get so many blurays!"

My local library.

When I lived in Broward County, FL, I had an extravagantly wonderful library system. Tax dollars at fucking WORK, y'all. Now I live in Georgia and the library system is not nearly as good, but I have still gotten my hands on a frankly ridiculous amount of blurays. Every week I'm picking up 3 to 10 movies or shows, taking them home, making good copies, and returning them.

All of this is an investment and it is work. But as someone who built my computer, built my keyboard, cracked my 3DS and PS Vita-- this is fun to me! This is what I love to do. And through doing it, I've seen more movies in the past year than the last ten years put together.

So yeah, I can't recommend this to everyone, but if you wanna get out of your subscriptions and to just have high quality shit on demand, this is what I'm doing.

Cannot stress this enough tho, if this seems interesting to you: wait for sales. All the components here go on steep sale if you wait patiently. Take your time assembling the parts and keep in mind that shit is modular, you can upgrade parts later.

[frickinsleepdeprived]

NSFW Tomioka headcanons

Ah yes, I finally gave into temptation... lord forgive me 😅 either way I hope you guys enjoy these headcanons, ya nasties LMAO

***MINORS DO NOT INTERACT. INTERACTING = BLOCKED ACCOUNT***

...

Giyuu is, as we all know, reserved and definitely very quiet

However, when you get him alone, a more tender side comes out in him... Unless he's had a hard day or is severely backed up

So you notice this and you ask him what's wrong he just. Pins you to a wall and looks down at you not menacingly but definitely with a look that says "Tonight you're mine and I'll make sure everyone knows it."

Oh yeah, Giyuu has this thing where he likes to make you scream his name to the point where it's almost embarrassing.

He's definitely a switch. I can see him being dominant when he's pent up and just needs to let it out somehow, but when you guys are just having casual sex or even making love he'll definitely be more on the submissive side. Be it giving into your bidding or just wanting to be taken care of

But obviously if you requested the opposite when having casual sex or making love he's more than happy to do so.

He loves giving oral, just the sight of you squirming and writhing from pleasure as he licks your clit is just top teir to him

But when you're giving him head it's almost as if he just completely melts at your touch, and you can't help but bask in the power it gives you

His favorite position is anything that requires him to stare down at you. Be it missionary, laying on your side, or even during morning sex when you're laying down with him, facing him of course.

He feels like it just adds a lot more intimacy whenever he gets to stare at your face making little moans and mewls of ecstasy.

Usually, he prefers morning sex, especially on rainy mornings when you guys can't train. Besides, it's scientifically proven that an hour of sex equals out to about thirty calories that get burned. So good for you guys!

However another time when he prefers having sex is about a day after he gets home from a mission. He takes the day he gets home to relax with you, then he'll take the next day to get whatever aggression he needs to let out get out of his system.

He doesn't like rough sex, simply because he doesn't want to hurt you in any way.

The only time you guys have rough sex is when you're begging for it. I mean like pleading, begging, mascara running kind of begging. He thinks it's really hot lol

He wouldn't try any kind of potentially dangerous kinks (such as knife play) BUT, I have a sneaking suspicion he's really into those wax candles that are specifically made for BDSM/kinks. He'd obviously be super careful of course, and would ask you about ten times over if you're really sure you want to try.

Overall: Giyuu is really respectful when it comes to sex and frankly he's also super wholesome with it too half the time. But the other half is reserved for special ocassions or when you've been especially naughty

......

I feel.

So fucking WEIRD AFTER THAT-

But n e wayyyyssssss feel free to leave requests for this kind of content, I need to get familiar with it before I post a project I've been working on. I hope you guys enjoyed the first of the NSFW headcanons. Let me know who you want to see next!

***As a reminder, Minors please do NOT interact with this post***

[oidheadh-con-culainn]

Could you recommend some good resources on accurate depiction of parchment in the medieval period? I feel like most people interested in medieval studies have a basic understanding of what it is and how it’s made, but you seem more well-versed than most on its tactile properties and regular use cases. Where can others acquire this knowledge?

most of what i've learned about manuscripts and book history has been either during my degrees or from work (i have worked in various libraries including with special collections, although mostly with early printed books and later paper manuscripts in that capacity). and in terms of what it's like to interact with, i have learned this mostly from interacting with it, but if you don't have a library or museum near you that will enable you to do this, it's a bit harder. this makes it hard to give recommendations although there are lots of very good books out there about books and manuscript history

(there's one i read early on in my journeys with palaeography etc that went into loads of detail about different writing surfaces including wood and wax tablets and so on, but i cannot remember the title and past me did NOT write it down which was really unhelpful. if i remember it i'll post about it)

there are also a ton of online resources about manuscripts though. lots of museums have online guides to manuscript production, parchment, writing through history. there's lots of codicology stuff out there. so it's not like you have to learn it in a formal environment -- that's just where i learned it and therefore mostly from lectures rather than shareable resources

but to understand parchment specifically i think understanding the process of making it is a crucial step to understanding why it is the way it is (and why it's not paper). here's a couple of youtube videos that give an overview

this is a more detailed video about a project that got people to make parchment themselves which is just kinda interesting (haven't watched it all the way through but am watching parts):

once you understand how parchment is made and the resources that go into it, i think it's easier to understand why it probably wouldn't be used for ephemera and scraps, and that helps you think about situations where people might use something else -- e.g. a wax tablet to take hasty notes, send messages that don't need to be permanent, send messages that are emphatically not permanent (your recipient can melt it and hide the note), etc -- as well as beginning to rethink the modern world's reliance on the written word in general and consider how oral messages and other non-written communication might have been used

as for the tactile side of things, as i said in a previous post, if you can't touch book parchment, go find your local irish musicians and see if the bodhrán player will let you handle their drum (or good quality orchestral timpani will do too! but with a bigger drum it's harder to feel both sides of the skin). drumskins made of goatskin are very similar on a tactile level to parchment, just a little thicker and not processed to quite the same level as a writing surface. it helps you stop thinking of them as super fragile once you realise people are whacking them with a stick regularly, and you can learn about the difference between the hair side and the flesh side of the skin and stuff and see the way the hair leaves traces in the skin and so on. this helps with the tactile understanding

(the cheaper the bodhran, the rougher the reverse side will be even if the front is still nice and smooth, which also makes you realise the difference between high quality books where you can barely tell which side of the page is the hair side, and low quality ones where they're not fully treated, there's still hair, whatever)

i talked to a conservator lately who told me the way he got into book conservation was via musical instrument repair -- they are more similar than you would think -- and i know trad musicians scattered far and wide enough to be reasonably confident that even if you're in an area with no touchable medieval manuscripts, you can probably at some point find a drummer who will let you play with their bodhrán in exchange for a pint or something, lol

but in the mean time there's lots of cool videos about there about parchment making which i do think is a crucial step to understanding it as a writing surface! and i will see if i can remember the names of any of the books i've read...

[copperbadge]

Hi Sam! Recently diagnosed midlife ADHDer here. First, thanks for talking about your ADHD & sharing what you’re figuring out. It’s super helpful to someone on a similar trajectory.

I just saw a reference to your photo books for the first time & it seems like a great way to help with memory issues that come with ADHD (like I know I did [x thing] but when?). Could you talk a little about the process of collecting photos & such all year & then how you create one?

Thank you!

Ey, happy to have helped! Congrats and sympathies on your diagnosis. And honestly it's good for me too, talking all this out, it helps me get my thoughts in order. I often namedrop you guys to Therapist, you are "my readers" :D

The process of putting the photobooks together is...well, it's a lot, so this is going to be a super high-level overview, but basically yeah I wanted to have records of where I'd been and what I'd been doing that were more concrete than just digital photos on a hard drive or a cloud. But I didn't really want to just print the digital photos and put them in a box, either, so I started making photobooks. Usually I go through Walgreens or Shutterfly for printing, whichever has the good coupons when I'm working on it.

So, here's the weird, kind of obsessive part: a huge help in making a yearly photobook, for me, is the fact that I take my photos off my phone at the end of every month. I have some that live on the phone -- my growing collection of photos of my niece, a selection of photos from my Europe trip, some memes -- but those live in their own folders. The main camera roll gets downloaded every month, and I put them all in a file labeled with the month and year (2023-01, 2023-02, etc). It's a recurring task in my to-do list, that I offload the photos on the last Saturday of each month. You don't necessarily have to do it this way, though -- it's just what works best for me, and I encourage people to find a way to do things that will actually be functional for them.

Across the course of the year, although really moreso in October and November, I go through the photos and remove any I absolutely know I don't want to keep. Once I've done that, I save a copy of the whole year's worth of photos to my digital archive, and I take another copy and label it "FOR PHOTOBOOK" which allows me to do more culling of them than I otherwise would, because I know anything I delete is still in my archive. And this all has the advantage of me knowing that the photos in my archive are at least SOMEWHAT organized.

So I go through all the year's photos in the For Photobook file, month by month, sort them into folders by event (so there's, like, 01-Polar Vortex, or 04-Europe, or 09-Birthday) and clear out all but the photos I know I want most. My photobooks are generally longer than the default length they give you at most sites, so I usually do have to add a few pages (they're like $1/page or something) but not too many. Often these days I have some stuff that's events, like the Europe trip, and then some stuff that's just like....a folder of funny shit I saw in Chicago, or a folder of all the food I photographed that I want to save. The cats generally get their own four-page spread at the back. :D

In 2020, I will say, there were only two themes: CATS and COVID. I alternated pages.

Anyway, once I've got the photos sorted, and deleted any I don't want to include, I get on Shutterfly or Walgreens Photo and start up a new photobook project. I upload the first folder of photos, place them on the page with suitable captions, then upload the second folder of photos, etc etc, until all the photos are uploaded and placed in the book. I don't caption extensively -- often it'll just be a page that'll say like "TEXAS IN JULY!" and all the photos from that trip. But it definitely does help me keep track of what I was up to. And it's kind of soothing to review the year and see all the stuff I accomplished.

So that's the bare bones -- by all means feel free to ask questions, although if you guys wouldn't mind asking in comments or reblogs if possible, that should keep the discussion contained as necessary. :)

[roomwithanopenfire]

Six Sentence/ Stitch Sunday

Happy Sunday everyone!! Thanks for the tags @monbons and @rimeswithpurple!

I've been super busy this week but have managed to do a tiny bit of writing/editing this weekend. I'm working more my COBB, going back and cleaning up the first chapter for the posting date as it creeps closer and closer.

Here's actually six sentences from the beginning of that chapter:

I don’t normally follow cute boys I meet in coffee shops home, but there was something about Simon. He literally ran into my table, knocking my coffee all over my school notes and only barely missing my laptop—I should have thought he was an imbecile.  But he was cute. That was hard to deny. I looked up over the soggy mess that was my notebook to find a golden haired boy with a sheepish smile. He insisted on buying me a new coffee and a sandwich and then we ended up talking.

I promise you this is only a meet-cute and nothing terrible will happen to them. Absolutely zero angst, you know me. All fluff. Only happiness. Would I lie to you?

I also did some crocheting this weekend. I decided to try doing some tapestry crochet again, which I've only done once before but I had so much fun doing it last time so I figured I'd try it again! I've discovered that the only two things I like crocheting are blankets and tapestry crochets. Any other projects I either haven't finished or didn't have as much fun making.

But this is not to say I am good at tapestry crochet. I adapted a pattern I found online to match the colors I have, and I'm not super happy with all the colors turned out, but I wasn't going to buy new yarn for this.

Here's the adapted pattern, an in progress photo of the back, the completed front, and the completed back:

The edges are SO wonky because I am very beginner at tapestry crochet and my tension becomes so tight when I'm changing colors. But I had fun making it so I'm counting it a win!

Tags and Hellos!

@alexalexinii @angelsfalling16 @arthurkko @artsyunderstudy @beastmonstertitan

@blackberrysummerblog @bookish-bogwitch @brendughh @brilla-brilla-estrellita @cutestkilla

@drowninginships @emeryhall @facewithoutheart @fiend-for-culture @hertragedyconnoisseur

@horsesarenotdeer @hushed-chorus @iamamythologicalcreature @larkral

@m1ndwinder @noblecorgi @onepintobean @prettygoododds @raenestee

@rbkzz @run-for-chamo-miles @shrekgogurt @skeedelvee @supercutedinosaurs

@talentpiper11 @thewholelemon @valeffelees @you-remind-me-of-the-babe

[olderthannetfic]

This might be an odd or personal question, but could I ask how you started knitting and where you started as a beginner? Or what would you recommend? I’ve tried to join clubs and groups irl, but there’s so much drama and gossiping. When I said I didn’t want to take part in that aspect, they started ostracizing and gossiping about me. Any websites, yt channels or books you’d recommend for a beginner?

--

Haha.

My friend, this does not even register on the scale of deeply personal or odd questions people have sent me.

I've been trying to remember exactly how I started and why (like, even before this ask). I think it was on a family vacation to Scotland the summer before I started college. That would have been in 1999.

I taught myself from one of those awful 90s pamphlets with the line drawings. They're a nightmare compared to being able to see someone do the motions in person or even in a video. I had some awful plastic needles and no guidance on yarn and just knit with what I found at some shop there. Do not recommend!

I achieved what I wanted during college, which was to make a nice cable-knit sweater that I still wear, and then I got frustrated with crappy acrylic yarn and drifted away from knitting until a year or so ago.

The fact is, I basically didn't do beginner projects. I moved straight from making one rectangle to making grandiose sweaters or whatever else struck my fancy. (But if you want to know, I was using Viking Patterns for Knitting and a bunch of Alice Starmore books, all of which you can still buy.) I know plenty of people who did it this way, but you certainly don't have to.

And you definitely don't need to learn from a terrible 90s printed pamphlet!

Luckily, nowadays, you can find a tutorial on just about anything on Youtube. I enjoy watching the technical and historical types discuss quirks of knitting you might not think of without years of practice or research.

Roxanne Richardson is great, for example.

Look for somebody old, not wearing a lot of makeup, and not talking about their indie dyeing/yarn business and you'll avoid most of the clowns who learned to knit five minutes ago and now want to be knitfluencers.

When I want a super simple technique tutorial, I usually end up looking at either Nimble Needles or VeryPink Knits. I find her super annoying, but her tutorials are spot-on. Norman's voice is much more soothing and I just enjoy his presence more, but both of them have good ultra close-up shots of what they're doing (which lots of vloggers don't because it requires special equipment).

I'd just figure out what kind of finished products you want to use knitting for and then find patterns and tutorials geared towards those.

Cables are relatively easy. Stranded colorwork requires a fair amount of physical coordination and some people find it rather difficult at first.

Circular needles are far more popular than traditional straight ones for people starting today.

Cotton yarn is relatively less nice to knit with than wool for most people, but it tends to be the natural fiber available at a low price point from major retailers.

Picking up general tips like that by watching various youtubers will help you pick a project that won't be too painful to work on.

People who naturally knit loosely should consider grippy bamboo or wooden needles. People who naturally knit tightly should consider slippery metal ones.

My biggest piece of advice is that you're usually better off with something "hard" that you actually like rather than a "practice" project you don't care about, at least after you've made like one rectangle to practice doing a knit stitch at all.

--

Finding community can be hard, and yes, some crafting hobbies are infested with drama.

But if you just want to know how to knit, you're way better off with some video tutorials and a nice pattern you like.

[monstersinthecosmos]

but now the cosmos crawls with monsters

KACY. 30s. She/They.

This blog contains adult content, please do not follow if you are a minor.

hi friends! I'm Kacy, I write fanfiction! I like ducks and heavy metal! I mostly use this space to talk about The Vampire Chronicles, but I also like Sheith, and horror films, and kink theory! I am an asexual porn writer and I'm obsessed with Marius!

LINKS

AO3 - I am monstersinthecosmos on AO3, I write porn about VC, Sheith, and sometimes YOI!

Bsky - kacycarr on bsky - you will find mostly Sheithing here!

Ko-Fi - feel free to buy me a coffee if you like my fics! I have some fics available for purchase in digital download and paperback! I will also invite you to check out projects I created & co-mod called @vamptember (vampire prompts during the month of September!) and @priapus-at-the-gate (the VC Kink Meme!) VC STUFF!

I mostly use this space to talk about VC since the fandom is either dead or toxic as fuck on other platforms. I've been into VC since like THE YEAR 2000 LOL. I had fics that got taken down in the FFnet purge! Ancient! Marius is my favorite character and I'm more partial to Marius subplots/timelines. I'm also really into the Devil's Minion and Trinity Gate! I'm super into whatever the fuck was going on with Marius & Daniel! I could talk about Armand all fucking day! Pandora is my hero! Please expect posts about these things! I didn't love the AMC adaptation so I don't talk about it very often, because I try to focus on stuff I enjoy. ♡ TAGS

#stuff i wrote - IT'S FOR STUFF I WROTE. contains fics and discussion of fics. if they're very short they might only be on Tumblr and not on AO3.

#deep ass thoughts about vampires - my meta tag, sorry I came up with the name while I was stoned back in 2016 and I'm too lazy to change it :)

#trauma hole theory - if you want even DEEPER ass thoughts about vampires, this is where I park thoughts related to "do vampires have neuroplasticity?" and "would therapy even work on them?" #asexual vc - I don't really shut the fuck up about vampires being asexual so if you wanna hear about it CLICK HERE

#simple italian perv - MISC SMUTTY THOUGHTS to keep the rent low lol if you're new here I don't want you to get the wrong idea about me

#the skateboard of shakespeare - I visited Tulane last year and documented a ton of info from the Anne Rice collection! I use this tag when I share! #vampire chronicles- for book stuff!

#vampire pajama party on amc - this is my tag for the AMC show; I'm not a big fan of it so please feel free to mute if you don't want to see salt posts. (I have a second, even saltier tag called #the rolin jonestown massacre if you want to mute that one as well!)

#devils minion girlies - STILL WORKING HARD TO POPULATE THIS TAG but if you like thinking about Armand & Daniel as lesbians please see this tag. #unethical marius - I've been really obsessed lately with thinking about an AU where Marius is an unethical therapist LOLLL please feel free to peruse or mute as needed. #vampire music - I have like a ND relationship to music and I love sharing it even if no one else cares and taste is subjective but if you ever want vampirey music recs they will be here :D #fandom lolitics - I try not to share too much discourse & drama but it's here if you want to mute it! #vcficfriday - when I have time & remember to I like to share fics I've read on Fridays!!!! Please feel free to use this tag in your own blog as well, to build up fic writers!

I THINK THAT COVERS IT, FELLAS, please be kind to each other and don't be shy to send me asks if you have any questions!

[nkjemisin]

You should try to go see public works Tempest in central park, it’s really incredible and reminded me of the city we became. It’s super insane and beautiful and wild and hard to describe, so even though it’s insane to ask someone to go stand in line all day to see a play based off a random tumblr message I really think you should!

Oooh, I haven't done the line for Shakespeare in the Park in years. Not sure I still have it in me, since it requires getting up at 3 or 4 am and spending hours fighting line-jumpers and so on. But I've been hearing good things about this year's Tempest so maybe I'll muster up the energy. Thanks for the recommendation!

Since you reminded me of it, here's a deleted scene/alternate opening I once wrote for THE WORLD WE MAKE. I decided on a different opening for the final version, obvs, but maybe you'll enjoy what might have been. Cutting because long.

     He's just a man standing on a rooftop.  The outfit he's wearing is bespoke, by a Harlem tailor who came in second on Project Runway's last season.  The jacket is rich brown suede, fine-stitched, over olive-tan pants and a piqué shirt of deepest royal indigo, and he's wearing the hell out of it.  If there were anyone around to see, they'd think he was a model, standing in the kind of casual-at-attention pose that only men in magazine photo shoots ever do, with one hand in a pocket and his gaze thoughtfully locked on the cityscape horizon.  The model aesthetic is reinforced by the fact that he's got a lean, strong figure and the kind of racial ambiguity that Hollywood diversity advocates love:  brown skin that's not too brown, lips full enough to be either natural or recent collagen injections, thick eyebrows that are as sculpted as his cheekbones, eyes with just enough epicanthic fold to qualify as "exotic" but not in like an ethnic way.

     He's not a model.  He's just Manhattan, human representative of New York's contributions to the fashion, media, and sex work industries.  He's not even trying particularly hard to look good.  He has simply stopped resisting what comes naturally.

     But he's about to be late for work -- and while New York custom permits a degree of conspicuous tardiness as a social power move in certain situations, this particular job is too personally important to him for such games.  So he steps up onto the low wall that surrounds the roof, and then he steps off.

     It's fine.  The building is twelve stories tall; anything over five stories is required to have an elevator per city ordinance.  He's been practicing, too, so all he has to do is shut his eyes and imagine, and the city's power holds him aloft in midair as solidly as if he's stepping onto flooring.  (He is; it's just flooring that exists in several other iterations of his universe.)  Even with this, however, he makes sure to take a step or two forward before calmly turning away from the cityscape.  People don't usually stare at the back of an elevator, after all -- and verisimilitude is key.  "First floor, please," he murmurs. In earlier days of the city, building elevators were a complicated luxury that required trained staff to operate.  In current days of the city, many elevators run on voice activation. At Manhattan's request, there is an electronic ping of acknowledgement, followed by a very faint echo of blended, long-vanished voices:  "Watch the door, please, watch your hands, going down."  Then he begins to descend.  It's smooth, slow; this is only a mid-sized building, not modern or expensive enough to have an express elevator.  Only the fact that he's descending through thin air makes it odd.

     Just above the sidewalk his descent slows, letting him drift to a gentle halt.  There are a few dozen people on the street in this moment, and some of them notice as he just stands there for a moment, letting the metaphysical aethers settle and the metaphorical elevator doors open.  The ones who stare are tourists.  New Yorkers generally don't react to strangeness, but they do notice it, if only to shake their heads and murmur "This fucking city," to themselves before moving on.  Manhattan catches the eye of one of the starers, winks and smiles, then strides off down the street.

     As he walks, he hums John Coltrane's "Central Park West" -- not for power this time, but simply because he's walking along Central Park West and likes the song.  It's also a beautiful day. Here at the heart of the city it is clear that autumn encroaches:  Central Park is across the street, dense with color-shifting trees.  Their whispers speak to the part of Manhattan that was more, once, than just concrete and cars; the island has always been here, after all, crossroads for many peoples, and those millennia of commerce were enough to form the building blocks of the living entity that it is now.  But mostly, he just likes that rustling sound, and the flickers of color and movement, and the faint whiff of chemical sugars forming and breaking down within the leaves.  Something about that scent, and the wind's occasional brisk sharpness, speaks to him.

     There is the lightest of touches upon the part of him that is more than a man.  Just a ping, to get his attention.  "You wanna focus, or you gonna just keep spacing out about the pretty pretty trees, Mr. I Was Bebop Before It Was Cool?"

     They've all figured out that words work better than thoughts.  They are one city, the six of them, and if they ever need to, they can function as a single brain and heart and will -- but doing that is as overwhelming as it is thrilling.  New York isn't supposed to be any single thing, see; the distinct characters of its boroughs are part of its strength.  More personally, Manny's probably never going to be super-comfortable with letting his fellow parts of the city into his head, because he's got enough going on in there already. 

     But he's right in reminding Manny to focus.  "Just getting into the spirit," Manny replies, waiting for a gap in the traffic before trotting across the street.  Then he vaults the low stone wall around the edge of the park.  It's a twelve-foot drop beyond, but he manages it easily enough, landing in a crouch in a wooded thicket already carpeted in red and gold leaves.  Doesn't even make his knees twinge.  Nothing can hurt New York, in New York, except New York. 

     Well.  And one other thing.

     He moves forward at a brisk Midtown pace, pushing aside the branches of small trees as gently as he can so as not to damage them.  He starts finding white tendrils almost immediately.  Just small patches here and there:  three wigglers on a broad, still-green sycamore leaf, one on the tree's gnarling roots nearby.  A patch shaped like a handprint growing atop a hooded garbage can; that one's especially nasty, positioned as it is to infect anyone who actually tries to deposit their litter in the can instead of just tossing it somewhere.  "Rude," Manny murmurs.  He's getting rid of the patches as he passes them, just by touching the wood or ground or metal near each cluster and letting a little of "Central Park West" riff through his mind and down his arm and out through his fingers.  Earworms can be handy.  Good for killing other wormlike things.

     (Not so long ago, it would have taken everything Manny had to get rid of these things.  He had to replace all his credit cards after symbolically buying all the real estate around a particular rock in Inwood Park.  Now, however, the city is whole -- and these tendrils, tenacious as they are, are tourists from another urban locale who've overstayed their welcome.  It's easy to obliterate them, but it's more important to find the bus they came in on, and deal with that.)

     "Red alert!" says Padmini -- Queens -- suddenly.  She tugs on the shared part of their consciousness, projecting an image onto it that is stunning in its precision:  a three-dimensional and topographical map, with a moving cursor at its center and a GPS coordinate meter in the bottom corner.  Padmini abruptly zooms them in on the cursor, and then she presents them with a simplified view through her own eyes.

     There, jolting slightly as Padmini runs, is their quarry.  To most other people in Central Park, the young man who slips down a leaf-thick hill and then scrabbles his way over a tumbled, mossy pile of bedrock is just another cross-country runner, or maybe a parkour practitioner with a greater love of natural settings than most.  He's a lanky Indian-looking guy, dressed in jeans and a t-shirt -- but through the lens of Padmini's vision, Manny sees the rest.  The guy's got patches of white fronds all over him, and as he runs they waft back like long hair which just happens to be growing from his forearms and shins and ass.  Manny's used to this, people who look like yeti crabs, however horrible it is.  Far worse is the tendril which projects from the back of the young man's neck, thick and veined in a disturbingly umbilical way, forming a long white cord which twists up and out of sight amid the trees.  It stretches up into the sky, Manny knows from three months' experience, attenuating until it disappears from human eyesight with distance -- but wending southward before it does.  They all know where that cable terminates.

     "Mike check," says Veneza, and Manny's mental eye shifts to her view.  She's standing under one of the park's stone bridges, her vision bouncing a little as she crouches to stretch out her ankles.  Getting ready to run.  Manny feels her excitement as the tendril-covered man comes into view, jogging over a grassy hill covered in early-afternoon sunbathers.  But who's he kidding?  They all enjoy this.  "That's it.  Come to mamãe.  Drive him like a li'l doggie on the range, Queeny McQueenyface."

     "I can't believe you mixed like three metaphors in ten seconds," Padmini replies -- but she zigs left, across one of the roads of the park.  Manny catches his breath as she veers into a bike lane, because Central Park bikers all think they're in the Tour de France, but in the same moment he feels her latch into the bikers' sense of hurry and entitlement, drawing their power into her legs.  Her pace speeds up sharply, until she's nearly flying down a sloping sidewalk, veering now and again to move around walkers and a small crowd near a pretzel vendor.

     "That's the Jersey in me.  Metaphors are our pork roll."

"Your what?"

"Pork roll. Look it -- wait, shit, hang on."

     Tendril man has seen Veneza and stopped, halfway down the grassy hill.  It's eerie to Manny how still he is.  After all the running and climbing he's done, he should be out of breath, shoulders heaving, dripping sweat, but he isn't.  It's just like the other cases of this they've encountered in the past few weeks; they're running on something other than human power.  These tendril-people aren't avatars, however; they're more like drones, sent forth by some other malevolent consciousness and endowed with supernatural power only temporarily, and for their task.  And if they don't catch this poor guy before that power gets done using him --  Well.  Manny picks up the pace. 

     Padmini skids to a halt.  (A man nearby does a double-take, then nods in a grudgingly impressed way at her athleticism.)  "Shit.  He's going to bolt, isn't he?"

     In lieu of any reply, they all see Tendril Man bolt.  He jumps off the steeper side of the rocky hill -- a ten-foot drop; Manny really hopes the poor guy was in shape before he got drafted as a spectral conduit for a hostile extradimensional essence, or he's going to feel that in the morning. Then Tendril Man takes off, moving with truly impressive speed up a paved hill-path.

     "FUCK," two of them think.  (Manny doesn't curse, but he empathizes.)  They all take off running too.

     Tendril Man is running toward a big, round building at the top of the hill.  Its vendor doors are shut and there are only a few people hanging around near it, but abruptly he zigs toward a big wooden gate labeled PERFORMER ENTRANCE -- and vaults it, with the ease of a master gymnast.  Manny might be able to think of a way over it too, if he gives himself a minute; surely there is some quintessentially cityish concept, like elevators for tall buildings, that he can harness to grant himself the ability to jump like that.  In the fluster of the moment, however, he can't think of anything.  Gotta work on that, do better at having a "jumping" construct ready to go under duress.

     In lieu of leaping, however, he manages to remember the grating sound of garbage trucks barrelling down the street at oh dark thirty in the morning, usually with wonky transmissions and brakes that screech loudly enough to set off car alarms.  Manny's seen several of them scrape or bang into cars without bothering to stop -- and so he draws into himself the desperate need to hurry and finish a shift, the hulking size and diesel-fueled strength of the trucks, the cheerful pragmatism of the tough workers who chuck heavy bags and kick rats with unflappable equanimity.  And as Manny runs at the gate, the world blurs a little and an eyewatering stench surrounds him, and he finds it almost impossible to care about collateral damage because he's got a job to do, come on, come on, let's go...

     He remembers enough of himself to dip his shoulder a little as he hits the gate.  It only looks like wood; underneath, there's plenty of metal, and he sees that the gate has an electronic number-lock.  Probably pretty solid.  But his supernaturally-powered shoulder smashes the gate wide open, actually cracking the whole frame in half, too, and part of the fence beyond it.

     Oops.  Well, he'll make a donation on the website, because now that he's through the gate he sees:  THE DELACOURTE THEATER WELCOMES YOU TO SHAKESPEARE IN THE PARK.

     Tendril Guy is running down the steps of what Manny now sees is a huge open-air amphitheater.  He leaps again, a pretty impressive standing jump onto the stage -- and then he stops abruptly.  There's a set being deconstructed here; Shakespeare in the Park only runs during the summer months, so someone's in the middle of stripping gigantic rolls of fake grass off the stage floor.  And now, from within a huge prop built to look like a small apartment building, the avatar of New York steps forth to confront their enemy.

     He's calling himself "Neek," these days -- a phonetic pronunciation of the initials for New York City.  He hasn't told them his real name.  Manny's not sure it matters anyway; doesn't Manny, of all people, understand that they are no longer who they were?  The knowledge and joy and danger of eight million people has found its focus in Neek, and like any of their fellow great cities, this makes him strange.  São Paulo was the same, whenever Manny had time and peace enough to study him: a young-old man who radiated urbane cynicism and eerie wisdom all at once.  Hong Kong too.  Maybe this is the difference between those who represent boroughs or neighborhoods, and those who are whole cities in themselves. 

     Or maybe it's just Neek.  "Yo, man, take a breath," he says to Tendril Guy, as he slouches out of shadow.  "Touch some, uh, astroturf.  You keep letting that shit run you, won't be anything of you left."

     Tendril Guy immediately turns to run, but by this point Manny has reached the other side of the stage.  Veneza is in the ampitheater, trotting toward them from the other direction, and from somewhere backstage they can hear Padmini cursing and shoving something heavy aside, because apparently backstage is a mess amid the set breakdown.  Unless Tendril Guy can fly -- and Manny puts nothing past the Woman in White -- then he's got nowhere left to run.

     It's a dangerous time, though.  In the past, whenever they've cornered one of her minions...  Tendril Guy backs up, looks around, starts to get tense.  Manny tries to think up a construct, and finds himself looking around.  At the stage.

     Neek's gaze flicks to him, and the little smile on his face widens.

     "Two cities," he declares suddenly, spreading his arms wide and raising his voice.  The Delacourte's acoustics are perfect, of course, designed to facilitate an outdoors theatrical performance.  "Both alike in dignity!  In fair Manhattan where we lay our scene."

     Of course the theater absorbs this slightly-fudged homage, echoes it, amplifies it, and sends back a reverberation of energy:  the faint murmurs and anticipation of a crowd, a lilt of music from a nonexistent orchestra.  For just a fleeting moment Manny can almost see the suggestion of bodies in the amphitheater seats, shadowy heads that turn to each other or crane their necks or flip through Playbills.  Ready to be enraptured.

     Manny finds himself grinning -- but then he panics a little as Neek raises his eyebrows pointedly, because Manny doesn't have any Shakespeare memorized.  But Broadway is only a few dozen blocks away; maybe he can use that instead?  He sifts quickly through the grab-bag of random quotes in his head. Can't think of an actual line from an actual play, but it's a direct reference, so he clears his throat awkwardly and sings:  "They say the neon lights are bright on Broadway.  There might be city magic in the air."

     Stage lights, multihued but mostly white, appear above the seats.  The lights aren't real. Manny can see most of the lighting equipment disassembled and stacked up to one side of the stage. Tendril Guy flinches suddenly and violently, staggering back.  Steam rises as Tendril Guy raises his arms defensively, the tendrils on him whipping and hissing wildly as the city's light begins to burn them away.

     They have to keep it going.  Veneza giggles and runs down the steps, leaping to a crouch as if she's acting out some play or another, and sings, "Now is the time to seize the day!  Answer the call and don't delay!  New York can be righted, boroughs united; let us seize the day!" In response, loose cables curled on one side of the stage suddenly come to life, whipping around Tendril Guy's legs to keep him from running again.

     One of the doors on the prop building slams open dramatically. Beyond it they can see Padmini pushing aside a rack of clothing that persistently keeps trying to roll toward her.  She manages it, stumbles out, and glowers around at all of them.  Veneza gestures frantically for her to take up the thread; Neek spreads his hands too in the universal sign of Come on, hurry up.  Finally, with a little growl, Padmini snaps, "Oh, fine.  'Immigrants:  We get the job done!'" This doesn't seem to have any effect at first, but then Padmini shoves a large, heavy-looking wooden desk out of the way with ease; she's much stronger, now. Enough to get this job done.

     As performances go, it's all terrible.  Slapdash, random, corny; Manny won't be surprised if in the morning they all receive a clipped-out review from a theater magazine that exists only in some alternate reality, panning all of them for defiling the stage.  But as a construct, drawing on the power of three boroughs and the delight of a thousand audiences, from the Delacourte to the Fringe Festival and back, it's exactly what they need. 

     Then, his voice muffled by his own extradimensional growths, Manny hears Tendril Guy -- or maybe the guy within the pelt of tendrils -- try to speak.  "A-all the w-world..." he murmurs, his voice thick, too deep, flanged in a way that sounds like bad special effects.  He's steaming all over, now.  Ah, and at last Manny sees the tendrils burning away, peeling off and curling into nothingness.  As he lowers his arms, Manny sees that he's sweaty-faced and visibly exhausted... but he is smiling.  He turns to face the whispering, flickering audience, and all at once Manny can feel him.  Tendril Guy is part of New York, again -- and he knows it, and some part of his soul rejoices with the knowledge.  Probably helps that the guy is a former theater kid himself; Manny can feel that, now that the Enemy's influence has been broken. Neek grins at Manny; he can feel it, too.

     So then Neek goes over to Tendril Guy, leans close, and blows on the now-shriveled cord attached to the back of his neck.  It snaps free as if Neek's breathed fire onto it, uttering a faint creel of inhuman pain -- and then the cord is snatched away upwards, into the darkening evening sky.  Manny catches a fleeting hint of sinuous movement against the clouds, southward, and then it is gone.

     Tendril Guy, who is now just Some Guy, beams at Neek.  Then he steps back and lifts a finger.  "All the world's a stage," he says again -- clearly this time, in a pleasant baritone, projecting with the ease of long practice.  "And all the men and women merely players!  They have their exits and their entrances, and one man in his time plays many parts, his acts being seven ages."

     He does the whole monologue then, perfectly.  Not that Manny would know if he got it right -- but the Delacourte does, and as Manny glances out at their whispery audience, he sees smiles, hears soft "ahs" and giggles of approval with every precisely-enunciated line.  As Some Guy finishes, applause breaks out, echoing with unreality but loud and enthusiastic.  The artist formerly known as Tendril Guy beams in delight and extends his hands for Manny and Neek to take.  They do.  Padmini, her pique fading now that she's no longer fighting furniture, shakes her head and takes Neek's hand; Veneza giggles and runs up the steps to take Manny's.  The applause goes on as, uh, Theater Guy leads them in first one bow, and then another.  Someone in the audience whistles.  Someone else yells "Encore!"  It's intoxicating.  They bow a third time.  As at last the applause fades and the lights start to go dark... Theater Guy collapses, between them.

     "Oh, no," Veneza says, her delight vanishing.  "Please, not again -- "

     "He's fine," Manny says, crouching by Theater Guy, though he checks Theater Guy's neck-pulse and breathing just to be sure.  It's there, though the guy's skin is clammy with sweat.

     "Close," Neek says.  He's looking up at the sky, after the ugly cable that had been attached to the guy's neck.

     It's only the second time that they've successfully rescued one of these agents of the Woman in White, sent forth from her bastion in Staten Island to... well, Manny's not exactly sure what their purpose is.  Are they superspreaders meant to reinfect the city, and thus help her regain the foothold that she lost three months before?  Are they drones of a sort, reconnoitering enemy territory?  Either way, the result is always the same, if Manny and his fellow avatars don't catch the tendril-bearer and cleanse them in time:  the person burns out and dies, all of their strength used up by the alien intelligence that has worn them like a puppet.

     Not this time, though.  "Let's get him outside," Manny says, grunting as he pulls Theater Guy up.  "Easier for an ambulance to get to him out there."

     "But what about after?" Padmini asks.  She comes over to help him wrestle the guy into a sitting position, so that Manny can pull him into a fireman's carry.  "Uff, he's heavy!  But if somebody calls his family and they take him back to Staten Island, will she just take him over again?  What if she's mad at him for getting caught by us?"

     "It's fine," Neek says.  He's still turned away from them, facing southward.  There is an odd note in his voice, however, which makes Manny frown at his back.  Neek sounds... distracted.  "Most of the folks on Staten are fine.  The ones who commute here lose their little wigglers when they step off the ferry, unless they've got one of those bigger cable-things attached to them.  Grow 'em back on the after-work ride.  They don't even notice."

     "Remember what it was like when she was all over the city," Manny adds.  "All those people she... infected.  She used them if she needed them and ignored them otherwise.  They became part of her, but they didn't seem to mean anything to her, any more than..."  He shakes his head, to the degree that he can with Theater Guy on his shoulders.  "Individual hairs on a person's head.  How often do we notice when we lose one, or when it grows back?"

     "We shouldn't let him go back at all," Padmini says, scowling.  "We know she's doing something to all those people.  He's safer here!"

     Neek focuses enough to turn and eye her over his shoulder.  His tone is mild and his expression neutral, but his words have a sharp point.  "You gonna spring for an apartment for him somewhere?  Let him go crash with ya auntie and the fam?"

     "No, but -- "

     "I know a good spot under the Williamsburg."  Neek's relentless.  "Probably still good even with all the cleanup and construction since the bridge broke.  Warm on cold nights, hard to see so the kids and assholes don't fuck with you.  We could dump him there."

     Padmini sets her jaw.  "Fine.  Point made.  But Staten Islanders are still people, and we should try to help them."

     Veneza, who was peering into the orchestra pit in fascination, turns back to them, plainly uneasy at the tension she's picking up.  "We are.  But I mean, Pads... that's not really our job."

     Now they all fall into an uncomfortable silence, because sometimes the truth is hard.  And the truth is that the avatar of Staten Island is not here with them today because she has rejected them, and thrown her people to the interdimensional wolves by doing so. They are all of them New York... but they are not Staten Island, not anymore. Theater Guy's ultimate fate isn't theirs to make.

     "Ay yo fuck that bird," Neek says, scowling at Veneza, who blinks in surprise.  "Her and Squigglebitch tried to kill us, remember?  Tried to eat you.  Let Staten Island die."

     Padmini stares at him.  "Wait.  What?  Let a whole borough die?  Are you crazy?"

     "Fuck them."  Neek gestures sharply, southward.  "Everyone on Staten Island.  Buncha racist redneck Republican dumbasses, nobody needs them.  They're the reason she's still here, hanging over this city like a fucking guillotine.  I'm tired of stressing about this shit!  Let her flyover country ass die with the rest of them nobody-nothing sons of bitches."

     Manny flinches, despite himself.  That's beyond harsh.  And something about this little rant feels... off.  He's known Neek for all of three months, but in that time Neek has been a quiet and low-key leader of their group, unusually even-keeled for the personification of a city known for its aggression.  Are you okay?  rises to Manny's lips, but he refrains from saying it, aware that it could sound patronizing.  He's wondering it, though.

     All at once different lights snap on within the theater -- not stage lights, but all the rest. Padmini frowns at this.  "Hey, we don't need these anymore.  Which one of you -- "

     Abruptly a piercing electronic alarm sounds throughout the theater, and the lights all turn a startling, awful red.

     "What the shit?"  Neek says.  He blinks as if dazed, turning to stare up at the lights -- and then he stiffens.  "Manny.  You doing that?"

     Manny can barely hear him over the noise.  "No, why would I?  Can't you stop it?"  Neek is New York.  He has better control over the city's power than any of them... but all of a sudden, the city feels strange. Sluggish and reluctant, when Manny gently urges it to shut off the alarm. It's responsive, but unreliable and slow in a way Manny's never noticed before.

     And to Manny's surprise, Neek takes a step back, his very posture radiating unease.  "I... can't.  Nothing's happening. What the fuck."  He shakes his head.

     "Yo, uh, we should go," Veneza says, bouncing nervously on the balls of her feet.  "If that's a break-in alarm -- I mean, we did break in, but -- "

     The Delacourte sits the middle of Central Park, in one of the city's toniest neighborhoods, and is the site of one of its most popular attractions.  "Out," Manny snaps, when it becomes clear that Neek has been so thrown by the situation that he's not reacting quickly enough. "Now."

     Veneza's already moving, running to the edge of the stage.  Manny follows her as quickly as he can with Theater Guy, and Padmini grabs Neek, dragging him along when he doesn't move fast enough.  "Cover your faces!" she cries -- and, yeah, if the city's magic suddenly isn't helping them anymore, that's a good idea.  But Manny can't, unless he wants to drop Theater Guy, who's been through enough.

     There are people milling around in front of the Delacourte, mostly looky-loos reacting to the continuous beeeeeeep of the alarm, but Manny sees how many of them have smartphones in hand.  It can't be helped.  He crouches and carefully sets Theater Guy on a patch of soft grass, and catches the eye of an older lady who is staring at all of them.  "Call 911," he says, with as much urgency as he can.  They can't stop people from filming them fleeing the scene of an apparent break-in, but maybe the sight of someone in distress will distract most of the onlookers.  "This man is hurt and needs an ambulance.  I don't know what happened to him, he just collapsed."

     The lady gasps and starts punching at her phone.  Veneza grabs Manny, tugging so he'll leave Theater Guy there on the ground.  He doesn't want to.  If the cops arrive first, there's a strong chance they'll arrest Theater Guy for the break-in.  If he could just make sure the paramedics arrive first, and that the cops think the alarm is just a mechanical error...  He touches the ground next to his knee and reaches into it, groping for the feel of city power --

     He finds echoes of old audience frustration and annoyed staff and prematurely shutdown vendor services... but these energies will not move in response to his will. What's there feels different from all the other times he's ever used city power -- clotted, somehow. 

     "Dude," Veneza says, giving him a hard yank.  They can hear sirens outside the park, coming closer.  "Come on, man, I ain't doing Rikers for you!"

     Grinding his teeth in frustration, Manny lets Veneza pull him away. They book it for Central Park West again, zigging southward first since there are woods and rock hills in that direction that can obscure their route for anyone trying to put them on TMZ.

       In their wake, the Delacourte's alarm blares until sirens drown it out.

TWWM Deleted Scene 1 by N. K. Jemisin is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.