#a proverbial toe in the water if you will

[geonij31]

An introduction to my headcanon timeline with justification from the original Star Wars novelization which was based on the script!

[deancaspinefest]

following the light

Author: LoversAntiquities | Artist: jollyrolls

Posting on Thursday March 14

Almost a year to the day, and Castiel is still sick. After months of blackouts and near misses, Dean has managed to find a way to quell the spells and drag Castiel back from the proverbial abyss. However, when Castiel progressively gets worse and Dean's voice is no longer enough to keep him conscious, Dean sets out to find every faith healer in the country, in the hopes that one of them might shed light on what's happening, and how to prevent it. Only, Dean and Castiel find out more than they bargained for—and that the solution, apparently, has been right under their noses the whole time.

Keep reading for a sneak preview!

He takes the right, barely tapping the brakes. At the first clear patch of shoulder, Dean pulls off and slams the truck into park, shuttering the engine. He kicks the door open, rounds the engine—yanks the passenger handle so hard that he fears it might break. Hands to Castiel’s biceps, Dean helps him out of the seat and into the grass, just before Castiel turns to dead weight in his arms. Keeping him upright is a feat—getting him backed up against the side panel is a miracle.

“Hey, hey,” Dean rasps. He pats Castiel’s cheek, searching for Castiel’s eyes in the dark. “Hey, look at me, okay? Touch me, hey—” He takes Castiel by the wrist and maneuvers him, forcing Castiel to touch the warm cotton of his T-shirt. Limp, Castiel holds on. “Hey, I—I know you’re in there. You’re always in there, alright? Just hold on to me.”

Castiel’s head lists forward; Dean presses him into the quarter panel with all of his strength. “When we were,” Dean begins, a little too brittle, a little too rough. “When me and Sam were teenagers, we went to this… this canyon in Georgia. Dad said it was the Grand Canyon, but we weren’t even in the right part of the country, but we—we didn’t wanna fight him on it, ‘cause he actually took us somewhere, y’know?” He smiles, fighting back the tremble in his fingers, the ache in his heart. “All the runoff from the farms gouged out a canyon in the middle of nowhere, and it was just so…”

He stops to look down at his tennis shoes, so worn that he can almost see his toe poking through. “Sam thought it was the greatest thing ever. I—Shit, I barely remember it, but every once in a while, he’ll still talk about it, like the week before we weren’t chasing a ghoul across the entire fucking state. But I remember looking at it, and I thought…” He tightens his grip. “For once, I felt calm. Like I was… small, and like my problems didn't matter. Picture it.” He sucks in air, slow, like it might spur Castiel into breathing. “Water cutting through the clay. The green of the trees growing around the tops of the canyon walls. A river. Babbling brooks.”

Dean shakes his head, fighting a laugh. “You hear the water?”

Silence—then, a breath, and the weight piled on Dean’s shoulders threatens to bury him in the grass. Castiel blinks, his mouth forming around a word Dean can’t hear. “Hey, hey,” Dean hushes. He clasps both sides of Castiel’s neck, thumbs pressed to his Adam’s apple as he swallows. “Hey, you with me?”

“It’s loam,” Castiel croaks, and Dean lifts a brow. “Most of the soil in southern Georgia is composed of sand and clay—”

“Okay, not what I’m concerned about.” He swallows around the knot in his throat. “Seriously, you wanna give me a geology lesson, any other time. Now, are you good?”

(continue reading on Ao3 on )

[lw77]

Fade into Me (LS x F1 Driver)

Ch. 2 - Hallmark University

He’s looking out towards the waves from inside the store, imagining the softness of the sand the waves lap at. Willing his toes to remember the feeling, but all it does is make them curl uncomfortably inside his sneakers.

He could go out there and feel the soft crunch of give from the sand and the soothing coolness of the water as it laps at his skin. Before the shop’s patrons begin wandering in.

But there are people already. Surfers – people who used to know him. He can see their slow excitement at dawn patrol, growing higher like the rising sun.

He can see their wayward looks towards the store, like they know Logan’s there and he’s always there. Gazing at the sight they make at sunrise for him.

He imagines himself there like he used to do many summers ago – board in hand, looking back to wave at his Dad as he quietly opened the store. A thrum of excitement, a wave washing-in soaking his ankles, running in the ocean, paddling, lining-up and catching the first waves of the day– an endless summer. And, only coming back at the sight of his brother’s blue Jeep and his relentless honks.

When Logan tells Dalton this, the feeling of dawn patrol, an endless summer, something he can have forever. His brother agrees, there is something endless about the water, our very own inverted galaxy, he says. And Logan, like a dutiful younger brother, teases him, asking if he read this in his big-boy books from his degree at Hallmark University.

But his old friends have long since stopped trying to get him to join in, knowing Logan will excuse himself stating he needs to help his Dad, since Dalton’s away at College and retreat into the shop.They let him shuffle around the proverbial and literal ghosts on his own. Because it's been years since the road that took Logan’s brother has played host to bouquets and candles.

As the sun rises, the crowd changes. It's now families with rambunctious kids who have to be wrangled into life jackets and floaties by flagging parents as the now high bright sun mocks them.

It makes something heavy churn inside Logan, memories of his own childhood unbidden flash at the sight. He wants to look away but he knows inside is filled with even more memories ready to tear into him. The wall is adorned with family pictures. The same beach he looks away from now, stares back some odd-years ago when everything was good, his brother’s arm a solid warmth over his thin shoulders, protecting.

It only makes the churning-feeling worse and he has to hang his head, look down at the now splintered white counter and breathe before he can raise his head again. He avoids looking at the wall for now. It won’t bode well for him in town gossip if another shopper sees him like this and he gives someone else a shock, like he did with Charlie.

When Logan looks up, he’s met with a stranger’s stare. Logan wonders how long he was lost in his head to have missed the newcomer, who looks at him with his startling-blue eyes. For a second, relief flashes through Logan as he realises, it’s a tourist and he’s safe from the ire of town gossip for now.

Gathering himself and brushing off the knowledge that a stranger witnessed Logan’s daily war with being stuck between his head and skin.

He clears his throat and asks, “Sorry, didn’t see you there! Is this your first time here?” he smiles at the end but the stretch of it is uncomfortable. It makes his skin buzz and he feels his ears heat with embarrassment. Blessedly, the stranger just looks at him, and gives a quiet nod.

Logan, overcome by some unknown force, begins to ramble, “Well you came at a great time, there are lots of swells now so if you're into surfing it's great anytime really – morning, afternoon or night. Or even for swimming. Jetski. Wakeboarding! Tubing! Or even sunbathing!” Logan awkwardly rubs at the back of his neck trying to calm himself, trying to stop his train wreck of an interaction but all he manages is a weak trailing “...so do you?”

“Do I sunbathe? Not sure with my skin, it's highly recommended.” It makes Logan tear his eyes from the aisle he’s attached them to since he began his frenetic monologue. He looks at the stranger who has a wry smile now. Like he knows exactly how Logan is feeling but still letting him flounder. He’s definitely not from the coast. Thankfully, the stranger follows it up with a quick quip of, “Yes, I do all the others. So thank you: for all your helpful suggestions.”

Logan being the reason for this man’s quiet amusement feels two hot coals where his cheeks once were. “No problem! So is there anything you were looking for that I can help you with, other than things to do here that is.” Logan asks, attempting to will some coolness into his face so he’s not some frantic tomato shouting suggestions again.

The man slides a chocolate bar and a pack of energy drinks across the counter, “just these for now” Logan quickly and quietly rings him up, his flustered flurry not lost on his new patron, who chuckles as his receipt is promptly slid over to him.

The stranger leaves as quietly as he came in, a simple take care thrown over his shoulder, and finally the door shuts behind him. Logan deflates and groans.

Maybe it was fear, embarrassment or relief that made him act this way. Fear of being caught as the main star of town gossip again, embarrassment at being caught living in his head or the relief that none of it mattered because it was only a tourist, a stranger. Maybe if Charlie caught him like this, red-cheeked and rambling, it would soothe the town-fuss over him, because it was like the Logan they knew was here. And not the ghost they've come to accept in his place.

But it's a brief thought and Logan is thinking about the man again, and the way his stare felt as if he saw through him, raw and open. The way his skin still buzzes, like he has a wool sweater on. And, how he can feel his heart inside his chest, beating – alive.

[shares-a-vest]

Prompt: Finishing Something (Discord Drabble) Technically a continuation of this and then this (my past two drabbles). But they can be read standalone. I'm going to put them into one ao3 post whenever it is that I decide this little silly saga is over!

Steve should really be grabbing something for breakfast, seeing as he and Eddie had skipped dinner last night to go and makeout in his car, instead of doing this.

That being, shuffling to the Munson’s bathroom, thoroughly wiped out enough to go straight back to bed (hopefully, not on the couch this time) with nothing but his crumpled maroon polo still on.

Eddie insisted on going back outside to finish up with the car after well…

What they just did.

In the kitchen, no less.

And Eddie, the smug bastard, had the audacity to slap Steve on the bare ass and chuckle, “Go shower, Winnie the Pooh,” (a term of endearment he hopes never to hear again).

“Shit,” he mumbles, the echo of that playful slap reverberating through his hazy and still far too horny pea-brain as he steps into the bathroom, tugs off his shirt and tosses it aside.

But as he reaches for the cold water faucet, Steve spots a smear of ashen something on his hand.

“Wha – ?” he frowns, upturning his palm and following smears of different shades up his arm to find goddamn fingerprints.

He twists around to get a better look at his bicep before catching sight of more on his hips – marks that go down and over…

Steve promptly palms at the plump flesh of his ass, but can only make out a set of greedy fingertips before his stupid car crash-inducing hip and lower back twinges stop him from investigating further.

It takes a bit of maneuvering, but after placing his hand on the shower curtain rung and standing on his tip-toes, Steve is enable to get a look at himself in the world’s smallest bathroom mirror.

“Jesus Christ!” he exclaims, feeling a flush crawl up his neck at the sight of a full handprint square in the middle of his left butt cheek.

“Ha! I knew it!”

Steve jumps and turns to find Eddie hanging off the door frame, staring with wild, hungry eyes. Just as he had done earlier when he caught Steve admittedly, gawking at his mechanic attire.

Steve frowns and cups a hand over himself.

“I’m getting in the shower.”

“But not before you stare at your glorious ass in the mirror,” Eddie teases, giggling as he twirls a lock of hair that falls from his loose bun, “Careful, you might turn to stone.”

“Huh?” Steve hums, confused as he focuses on his boyfriend's desperate need for a much stronger scrunchie.

“No need to worry about your modesty with me, sweetheart,” Eddie continues, clutching his proverbial pearls as he smirks, “Anyway, hurry up. We gotta finish up with this car. Then maybe we could continue on with some… Further activities.”

“More?” Steve asks, quirking a brow.

Eddie nods, all too pleased with himself. He shoves his hands into his jumpsuit pockets, pulling it tight against his torso and – 

Steve gulps and scrambles for the shower.

[lynchs-finch]

Ross Lynch Imagine - Roaring Twenties, Roaring Desire

1920s AU

It's the 1920s and Ross Lynch, in all his timeless appeal, was all the rage. His skill as a musician and unparalleled ability to transmute heartbreak and loneliness and pain of all varieties into moving pieces of music propelled him to the heights of stardom in practically no time. Notoriety and wealth came intertwined with envious glares and gold-seeking suitors, and before he knew what had happened, Ross's once-outlet for his troubles became a magnet for ten times what he used to deal with. At a time when more people knew his name than ever before, Ross paradoxically felt like the loneliest man in the world.

Then came you. You who was new to the city with 15 bucks and a dream. You who struck up a conversation with the boy with troubled hazel eyes not knowing he could so much as hold a tune. You who Ross could speak to freely without toeing the thin line that interactions between artists and fans required him to be mindful of. It was refreshing, it was wonderful, and, though he knew someone in his position really shouldn't have, he fell for you.

He invited you to his home in all its nouveau riche glory, but all you were looking at was him as he took you up to his room. To talk- or, to listen, really, to the damaged boy in front of you and come to understand him. To learn about him not through catchy melodies and clever lyrics, but through the raw, unfiltered words he speaks through his breaking voice thickened through tears.

And then, after a silent moment of him looking at you as if you were the first person who’s ever really seen him, he invited you to his pool. Quietly, almost bashful, remaining so even as you agreed without hesitation. He took your hand and guided you out back, where he stripped down to his boxers. You intended to change with him, but a freight train smashing through his house wouldn't have taken your eyes off of what you saw.

Shining under the moonlight was Ross’s body, chiseled by some artist whose godlike talent had yet to grace this earth before. You noticed his biceps first, thick and strong and just veiny enough to be sexy instead of freaky, and couldn't help wondering what they felt like to touch- to taste. His upper chest, two bulging pecs iced with hardened brown nipples that seemed to stare back at you, looked just as enticing; and as your eyes drifted down to his abs, perfectly contoured by the moon, you gulped. Hard. It was rare you'd ever found yourself in such close proximity to a half-naked man, especially one who looked so good you wondered why he ever wouldn't be.

"Hey," Ross's voice cut clear through your nervous thoughts, "You comin'?"

And in that moment, as you watched Ross swan dive into his pool, all your nerves evaporated into the cold midnight air. Because there was nothing to be nervous about. Under all that hunk of man was still Ross- Your Ross. The man you've gotten to know, who let you see him when no one else would. Your friend.

So, free off inhibition, you gave yourself permission to hit the proverbial ignition and jump in with Ross. You stripped and dove head-first into the surprisingly lukewarm pool, finding yourself drenched with ears full of water. When you resurfaced, you were greeted by the delightful sound of Ross's laughter, followed by the sight his smile, brighter than the full moon under which his sopping wet hair glimmered.

"Careful!" Ross shouted gleefully, shaking out his hair, "You splashed me right in my face!"

You couldn't help laughing, too, and threatening to splash him again. Before you could make good on it, though, you were met with a face full of water from Ross. A declaration of total war.

The both of you chased each other around the pool, splashing water around like there was no tomorrow. Ross was agile and his splashes went far, but ultimately predictable, and you capitalized on this weakness and got him way more than he ever got you.

At some point, you swung your arm a little too close to Ross and bumped him on the shoulder. This resulted in him spinning around to lightly shove you back and, before you knew it, the war had gone from splishing and splashing to poking and prodding. You took turns chasing each other around the pool, little taps and touches evolving into grabbing at wherever you could reach. You took the opportunity to (rather shamelessly) feel Ross's pecs and biceps, and you were almost sure he was feeling you up too.

Finally, after becoming a tad too sloppy on your defense, you felt Ross's body collide into yours. He had you pinned against the edge of the pool with his hands around your wrists and his chest pressed tightly against yours. The smile on his face, so tantalizingly close to yours, was wicked unlike anything you'd seen on him. Like he had something up his sleeve just for you.

In one quick motion, Ross dove underwater and wrapped his arms around your legs, lifting you out of the water and onto the cobblestone decking. Just as soon as he'd put you on butt, he leapt out of the water and on top of you, knocking you onto your back while he was on his hands and knees. The suddenness of it all should've been at least a little scary, but the playful look on Ross's face and the trust you had in him left you feeling anything but.

There was a silence- one that would've been filled with some quip from either of you were this a more platonic interaction. Now, though, as pool water dripped down Ross's hair and chin onto you, no words came your mind. All you could do was take in the beauty that was Ross. His oppressively calming demeanor, his body fit for worship from the ancient greeks, and, most awe-strikingly, his big hazel eyes, glowing even in shadow as they were trained solely on you.

Like two streams converging in a silent forest, Ross's lips met yours with a quiet sound. You held still at first, just letting him kiss you and kissing back as best as you knew how, until you decided to slowly run your hand across his back. Lightly, as if asking permission to escalate things.

Your touch was met with a shuddering moan from Ross, accompanied by an arching back and a shiver spreading across his body. Without hesitation, you let both hands wrap around him, climbing up and down his back, feeling muscle upon muscle as Ross let his torso fall upon yours.

Without warning, you felt Ross begin thrusting his hips against you, grinding his dick against your body. The sensation of his thick cock touching you, even behind a thin layer of cloth, made you gasp for air. In that moment, Ross shifted from kissing your mouth to your neck, catching you off guard and arch your own back involuntarily.

Though his lips were gentle against yours, his mouth was relentless with your neck. His licked and kissed and bit it up and down, left to right, like he'd been waiting eons to taste you and didn't want to leave an inch of skin untouched. You could hardly contain the pleasure coursing through your body, clawing your nails down Ross's back, in turn eliciting another deep moan from him.

As your fingers reached the waistband of his underwear, a form of payback for him cross your mind. You lowered your hands further, lining them up and rearing one back. With all your might, you gave Ross's butt a hearty smack. He jumped, but didn't protest. In fact, he did quite the opposite.

"Again," He gasped between kissing your neck, "Hit me again."

So you hit him again. Harder. Then on his other cheek. Over and over, then groping his ass and pulling him into you as deep growls rose from within him, vibrating his chest against yours.

"Fuck!" He cried, driving his hips into you faster and harder. Catching on to what was happening quick, you freed a hand and reached down into your underwear, pleasuring yourself furiously.

In no time, Ross's growls turned back into light, exasperated moans as his hips came to a stop. With his dick still pressed against you, you could feel it pulsing as he came in his underwear. You came soon after, Ross sliding his strong arms under your arched back and pulling you in close as you did.

Panting heavily, with sweat and pool water still dripping off of him, Ross rolled off of you and onto his back. He kept one of his arms under you still, like his body physically wouldn't let him cease contact with you just yet.

Again in silence, you let yourself come down from the heat of the moment, feeling fatigued as you did satisfied. You listened to Ross as his breathing slowly returned to normal and watched the stars with him for a while.

And it was nice.

A Little More Ross...

[amuseoffyre]

One day I will run out of stuff to write about this show. Not today, but one day. But specifically, was watching the Jackie and Ed scenes in 2x07 and went oooooo again.

When we start episode 5 with Ed on probation, he's awkwardly trying to make amends on the ship, but clearly has zero experience of doing it and tells Stede he never apologised for anything. It takes Fang teaching Ed how to sit with himself and think about the stuff he's done. Ed realises the impact of his actions and genuinely apologises for the first time for his past behaviour.

This also leads to him realising he needs to take some time, which is when he tells Stede he wants to take things slow. It's something new for him and he's trying hard to make a change in his patterns of behaviour, the so-called whim-prone tendencies. There's also one of his many metaphors: you can't catch a fish unless it wants to be caught. He's not quite ready to be where they are yet and expresses it instead of just diving in head first.

Thanks to the speed-run of the season, we cut to the next day at the beginning of episode 6: Ed is sitting with himself and thinking about the big things that he feels remorse about.

His dad, the storm incident, cutting off Izzy's toes, killing people during the raid spree, shooting Izzy, the storm incident again and driving his employees to kill him.

He also apologises directly for the second time in his career. Not the greatest apology in the world, it must be said, but a definite leap ahead from the awkward ukelele apology Stede wrote for him the day before. And, let's be honest, also probably the only kind of apology Izzy would tolerate from anyone, prickly little cactus man that he is :D

It's such a tiny moment, but the set up of "there's a storm coming, I just can't see it" is aaaaa.

In the basket, Hornighost said "you move on or you blow your brains out". Ed's been living on the run from his memories his whole life. He's never consciously sat with them before, not until Stede and all the bleak stuff bubbled up from under the surface when he was pushed to kill someone he cared about. And after that's when he tried the blow-your-brains-out approach by proxy. (He always outsources the big job, after all)

This is first time trying something that isn't either of those two things. As Buttons said, it's about change and now, with the experience of the basket behind him, he is trying to do things differently. To give himself proverbial soup as well - taking care of himself. Getting some nutrients into him, even though it feels like poison.

He's trying to process all this guilt and decades of trauma by himself and, just as before, he falls back into water metaphors. The storm isn't about the sea. The storm isn't about the weather. The storm is about him and his emotions. Sunshine one minutes, cataracts the next. The panic and anxiety is there bubbling away like an emotional storm front moving in.

He's already got this going on when the Ned stuff happens and then he has the equivalent of Stede's conversation with Chauncey: Jackie pointing out that Stede is now successful and "the fucking man" and basically is emulating and apparently enjoying the life and lifestyle Ed has come to hate and it happened because of Ed. If Ed hadn't goaded Ned by beating his record, Ned would never have come after them and if he hadn't come after them, Stede would never have killed him. ("You're a monster, a plague, you defile beautiful things")

The emotional storm has hit and he's not handling, to the point that he's withdrawing more and more from everything and everyone, sitting quietly out of sight. And like Stede did in 1x09, he decides leaving is the best option.

Our lads are both messy disasters, but they're both trying to do so much work on themselves, trying to figure themselves out. I wanna see an S3 where they get to do some more.

[lowpolynpixelated]

Let's talk about handhelds!

Specifically the Steam Deck and what (at least I think) is a decent part of its success as a handheld in today’s rather stagnant landscape as far as competition and innovation goes in the gaming space. For those who don’t know, the Steam Deck is a device first released in February 2022 by game development/publishing company Valve. Valve is mostly known nowadays for being the owners and operators of Steam, the largest and most widely used online marketplace for PC gaming, but rose to fame in the late 90s for their smash hit game Half-Life as well as its sequels and expansions. During the mid-late 2010s Valve had taken a pretty big step back from game development and focussed more on running steam and supporting some of their games (Dota 2, Artifact, Team Fortress 2 just to name a few) though the support varied from game to game. But that aside, let's get into it! PART 1: The Steam Machines

During this time Valve had ALSO begun to dip their proverbial toes into the waters of gaming hardware in the form of both the “Steam Machines” as well as the “Steam Controller”. So what were the Steam Machines? Why are they important to this article about the Steam Deck and other modern handhelds? Well everything has to start somewhere, and I’m of the opinion that the Steam Deck accomplishes the original mission of the Steam Machines better than they ever did, but I’m getting ahead of myself. First announced on September 23rd, 2013, the Steam Machines were touted as a new pillar of console gaming. The aim was to provide a console-like user experience on a device with the horsepower and game variety of your average gaming PC. Runnin on a Linux based operating system called “SteamOS” valve wanted the the consoles to be an open source experience in the living room to compete with the likes of Microsoft’s Xbox consoles. So what went wrong? Well let's start with the big one: variety. I first want to preface this part with: I am looking at these pieces of hardware through the lens of someone with little technical knowledge, the average consumer if you will. I myself have a decent bit of tech know-how, but I wasn't always like that, and I’ve certainly been poor enough my whole life that knowing the biggest and best PC stuff on the market didn’t really mean I could afford it. So, why was variety a bad thing? To your usual console gamer, consistency is key. It's usually assumed by whoever is getting whatever Xbox or PlayStation what-have-you that the box you’re paying money for will play the games you put in it. And to that credit, this is usually the case! Back in the day if you bought a PS2 or a Wii, bought a game for either and slotted it in, your game box would play it no problem. This isn’t always the case for PCs however. PC games vary way more wildly when it comes to the sorts of specifications the game is made to run on, or even what hardware the PC has that can be considered reasonable for said game. The fact of the matter is that PCs are modular, which means optimal configurations and what is considered “a baseline” are changing far more frequently than in the console landscape. The Steam Machines still wanted to offer some of this variety, but in the end it backfired more than anything. 

Steam Machine models ranged in price anywhere from $400 to $2000 in 2015 money when they finally released (November 10th, 2015) depending on the parts they used. And the difference between a $400 model and a $2000 model could mean not being able to play a good chunk of games on the market at the time. To your average console fan, this was perhaps too much choice when it came to finding which box to get to play all the shiny PC games they were being told they’d be able to play. Now this isn’t a matter of being disingenuous, more of an oversight. Valve wasn’t specifically trying to just target average consumers, but they did end up somewhat alienating those who didn’t have the technical know-how to figure out what model best suited the games they wanted to play. What reason would I have to buy a Steam Machine for $650 that might play all the games I want when I could just wait until November 15th, 2013 when the PS4 launched for $400 and would play all the games that came out for it? It was a perfect storm of releasing a brand new (and honestly decent) idea into an already pretty stagnant and established market and not being able to sell to people who weren’t already buying gaming computers. Steam Machines were decently popular with the PC gaming crowd. Being able to buy a pre-assembled computer with decent parts is appealing to a pretty decent chunk of people who primarily play on PC. Maybe you don’t know much about building computers and have always bought pre-built, maybe you like the specs of one of the Steam Machines and don’t mind the price tag too much. This big issue with all this though, was that almost no one was buying the Steam Machines to be a Steam Machine. To quote an article by Tyler Wilde for PC Gamer back in 2018, “Nobody was buying it with SteamOS,” Digital Storm marketing manager Rajeev Kuruppu tells me over the phone. The manufacturer had already been building the Eclipse—which is still available with Windows—when Valve pitched SteamOS, and added a Steam Machine build mid-project. That version has since been axed, and Digital Storm no longer has an active relationship with Valve. 

“I think over time as the demand from customers wasn’t there we basically had no reason to speak with Valve,” says Kuruppu. Digital Storm is still open to working with Valve, so long as its customers want what Valve is putting out. Right now, they don’t.” - Rajeev Kuruppu in a 2018 phone interview with PC Gamer Executive Editor Tyler Wilde for his article “What happened to Steam Machines?” (link in sources section)

This highlights the issue beautifully. SteamOS just couldn’t make the waves Valve wanted it to with the PC manufacturers they partnered with, leading to people simply not buying the pre-built machines as what they were intended to be. So what happens now? Well, after the failure of both the Steam Machines and the Steam Controller (a topic for a different time), Valve wouldn’t try again in the hardware space until 2019 with their admittedly very impressive VR gear, the Valve Index. With the Index making positive waves in the burgeoning VR space, Valve would then go on to release another successful piece of hardware. The real topic if this article, the Steam Deck. 

Part 2: The Steam Deck (part 1: Launch)

Revealed on July 15th, 2021, the Steam Deck was Valve's answer to their failed hardware attempt of the past. A handheld computer with a brand new version of SteamOS capable of playing most of your favourite PC games with a set of specs that only changed depending on internal storage (and eventually small differences in battery life.) So what changed between the times that the Steam Machine and Steam Deck released? Well, the PC and console markets (at least at the time of writing this article, 12/21/2023) are a bit more stable in how new and better parts are being pushed. Make no mistake, the PC community’s search for new and more powerful machines will always be a constant, but it's at the very least a little easier to keep up with right now. On top of that, the Nintendo Switch made MASSIVE waves in the console landscape being a near instant success story of merging handheld and home console markets into one harmonious group. Handhelds were all the rage, with many companies throwing in their lot with the mobile console idea such as the LYRA for playing classic games, and Google’s STADIA (which hilariously imploded shortly after launching to poor reception). Valve’s new device was right at home in the new invigorated market of gaming-on-the-go, a boom of innovative and experimental handhelds to rival the Gameboy’s release all the way back in 1989 (but more on that later.) The Steam Deck launched to a generally positive reception. Lots of PC gamers were more than happy to add the device to their repertoire of ways to play their favourite games, with higher ups in the gaming space like Tim Sweeny of Epic Games and Phil Spencer of Microsoft calling it “An amazing move by Valve!” (- Quoted from a PC Gamer article by Andy Chalk written in 2021 titled “Tim Sweeney: Steam Deck is 'an amazing move by Valve”, link in sources section) The things the Steam Deck was offering on launch were more in line with what some key parts of the overall gaming space wanted at the time, and so the device was more positively received by people already in those spaces. Now let’s talk about what I said before about consoles being able to play their games off the bat and why the Steam Deck stood out despite being essentially a handheld PC. The Steam Deck stripped away the modularity that the Steam Machines boasted by having a set table of Specs to offer across all 3 of its launch models, with the price and model really only determining how much storage you got. At launch the Steam Deck models on offer were the following:

-$400 for 64gb of internal eMMC storage(embedded multi media card, think a thumb drive) (and a bonus carrying case!) -$530 for 256gb of internal SSD storage (SSD or Solid State Drive being a decent bit faster than eMMC but also more pricey) (exclusive steam profile goodies and a bonus carrying case still! wow!)

-$650 for 512gb of internal SSD storage AND a more premium anti-glare etched glass screen (along with the profile goodies, a steam virtual keyboard theme and the bonus carrying case! wowsers!!!)

These models were more on-par with consoles of the time. Maybe not as powerful, but comparatively so in performance and price in such a way that the Steam Deck was a genuinely appealing offer to not only someone who already knew their stuff about PC gaming, but someone who played on PC and maybe didn’t know too much but wanted a good mobile option other than a laptop. Now those are both still parts of the same niche, PC gamers, and we’re here to talk about your average console Jane, as it were. And we will! But first let’s compare Valve’s previous attempt with the Steam Machines to their modern success. One of the most powerful (at the time) Steam Machines on offer was the Alienware Machine. Alienware is a popular manufacturer of gaming PCs and laptops for those not in-the-know. Here’s what anywhere from $550-$900 could get you in 2014:

Alienware Steam Machine basic specifications:

Processor

Haswell Intel Based CPU

RAM

4GB - 8GB

GPU

Nvidia GPUX

HDD

500GB - 2 TB

(specifications sourced from IGN’s “Steam Machine Guide” from 2014, link in sources section) Now at the time these were decently impressive specs, but I would like to point out both the price tag and the fact that some of these parts vary! If you don’t know, the GPU (graphics processing unit) being listed as “Nvidia GPUX” could be any one of SEVERAL parts which would most likely change your price point wildly. In fact, everything on this list is a variable component! Having anywhere between 4gb-8gb of RAM, what size HDD you have, and what CPU you put in, could end up boosting you all the way to that $900 point mentioned above. As stated before, this wasn’t going to win over anyone who was already going to pay $500 less for a PS4 that could just play PS4 games with no research on components needed. Let’s compare these general specs to those of the Steam Deck, which haven’t changed much since its launch in 2022. No matter what model you pick (aside from the storage and screen in the case of the 512gb model) here’s what you get in a Steam Deck:

Steam Deck basic specifications:

APU

6 nm AMD APU

CPU: Zen 2 4c/8t, 2.4-3.5GHz (up to 448 GFlops FP32)

GPU: 8 RDNA 2 CUs, 1.6GHz (1.6 TFlops FP32)

APU power: 4-15W

RAM

16 GB LPDDR5 on-board RAM (6400 MT/s quad 32-bit channels) Storage Steam Deck 64GB eMMC

Steam Deck 256GB NVMe SSD

Steam Deck 512GB NVMe SSD

(specs sourced from the Valve official website for the Steam Deck, link in sources section)

Granted there’s almost 10 years of technology between these specs and those of the Alienware, the point here is consistency. All 3 models of the Steam Deck use the exact same internal components for things like GPU, CPU, RAM, and almost everything else! To someone looking for something with more oomph than the Switch and maybe even wanting to get into PC gaming alongside it, it’s a pretty good deal! And it’s only gotten MORE appealing with more recent developments in the Steam Deck’s models and pricing, but we’ll talk about that after a short jaunt through gaming history.

Part 3: Handheld market factor history and why I think the Steam Deck is a pretty cool example of them (intermission from the Steam Deck)

As I said we’re gonna take a short break to talk about what I would consider the core of this article. You may have noticed me using terms like “handheld boom” and “market”. I’m gonna throw out some more of those so bare with me, but we’re gonna talk about the Gameboy. What’s so special about the Gameboy? Lots of people know it for being the most popular handheld console of the 4th generation beating out the likes of the Atari Lynx and more importantly, the Sega Game Gear. Why is that important? We’ll get there in a second I promise. The bigger question is “why was the gameboy successful?” to which the answer is usually “brand recognition”. Which isn’t incorrect in its own right, but is only one piece of a larger whole. The Gameboy entered a market that was predominantly occupied by two things, home consoles and arcade games. Handheld games DID exist, but not in the cartridge based console form the Gameboy popularized. This “wild west” era of console development was the second resurgence of video games after a market crash from 1983 to 1985. Spearheaded by the 3rd generation consisting of heavy hitters like the NES and Sega Master System, it gave way to an era of constant development and innovation attempts. The Gameboy specifically hit a couple of key factors when it comes to your average person. No remember, this was during a time when large portions of people still didn’t really understand what a video game was, and a lot of them were even marketed as toys to help them sell. The Gameboy’s success lies in a few points that went a long way towards selling it specifically to people without a ton of video game experience. These were: price point, and usability. 

Let’s get into it! First off: price point! In 1989 the Gameboy launched with an introductory price of $90 in the US. Compare this to the Sega Game Gear releasing the following year for $150, and the Atari Lynx at $180. Retailing for HALF the price of a (at the time) big name competitor is kind of a big deal! Price point ties directly into something like accessibility for something being sold as a product, and needless to say paying less than $100 for something with Nintendo’s (again at the time) pedigree behind it put the Gameboy in the hands of a LOT of people. Next off: Usability! What does this mean? Well, this one is a bit rocky. To put it bluntly: the Gameboy was incredibly underpowered for its generation. (A Nintendo console underpowered? Never!) Why was this a good thing? From the perspective of someone trying to get the most “bang for their buck” so to speak, the Gameboy’s underwhelming specs gave it a bit of an edge. How you may ask? Battery life and cost! Let’s get the bad out of the way first by directly comparing the Gameboy and the Sega Game Gear. The old SGG was rocking not only a full colour backlit display in 1990, but also had a good bit more horsepower as far as its specifications go. Able to run full colour games at nearly 60fps on a handheld in the 90s is nothing to sneeze at! But the cost of that is 6 whole AA batteries that would die out in anywhere between 3-5 hours depending on the games you play. The Gameboy in comparison, had a simple dot matrix display that only showed in black and white. (or various shades of off-green if you’ve ever seen one in person.) 

The Gameboy as well couldn’t handle beefier games, with notable examples like Mario Land 2: The six golden coins having a good amount of slowdown due to its large chunky sprites and level assets. So its battery life must’ve been something special then? Compared to the Game Gear, absolutely. Clocking in at 15+ hours of battery life on just 4 of the same AAs the Game Gear uses, the Gameboy’s game time and price were unbeatable. 

This is why I think it's important to look at more than just a piece of hardware’s specifications when it comes to measuring success. And I can hear you. “Clair, why are we talking about the Gameboy and how it sold a bajillion units because it was more affordable and had Tetris on it? How does this relate to the Steam Deck?” Well my dear reader, let’s finally answer that and talk about the new Handheld Boom.

Part 4: The Steam Deck (part 2: OLED and new pricing)

So here we are! The year is 2023, the Nintendo Switch is 6 years old, the Steam Deck has been selling decently well, and I need to wrap this whole thing up. In November 2023, Valve announced the Steam Deck was getting some pricing adjustments, as well as a brand new model that included better battery life and a slightly larger OLED screen for better picture quality. The Introduction of the new OLED model not only introduced 2 new tiers of Steam Decks to choose from (the new OLED 512gb model for $550 and the OLED 1tb model for $650), but also locked in ONE of the previous Steam Deck LCD models as the only LCD model available, for a price cut! If you go back and look at the old pricing, the 256gb LCD model used to cost $530. Due to the OLED models knocking out the lower tier LCD models entirely, the price has now been locked at just $400. Why does this matter? Well, just like with the Gameboy, you’re making some sacrifices for the lower cost. The higher tier OLED models have nicer screens and better batteries, but also cost a good bit more. Just as well, the Steam Deck is in NO way one of the beefiest PC gaming devices on the market. 

In recent years more and more PC handhelds have been coming out to try and cash in on what the Steam Deck has set up. My personal favourite example is the ROG Ally, and AMD powered handheld that for all intents and purposes, outpaces the Steam Deck in raw power. So why aren’t people flocking to the Ally? Well the basic model clocks in at around $600, and can be upgraded with a better processor for another $100. Looking at just the basic models for both, the Steam Deck wins out on being just the right amount of a powerhouse it needs to be for just over half the price of the Ally. This matters because that’s going to appeal to different parts of the market and landscape as a whole. 

I hold the opinion that the Steam Deck serves as an EXCELLENT initial entry point into PC gaming for someone who has only ever played on console. It offers that console experience the Steam Machines tried so hard to at a price point that most people interested in game consoles are paying nowadays anyway. A PS5 cost $500, and a PS4 (the console the deck is most likely to be on par with) launched for $400. I find it a much easier sell to get someone who wants to get into PC to play with friends, or have a Switch-like experience for games not available on it, than trying to tell them the $700 one gets more FPS and has a better processor. It all comes down to those factors of price point and usability. It's been so interesting to see the Steam Deck rise into popularity in so many corners of the internet that I hang around in. I haven’t even talked about how emulating on the Steam Deck is one of the most seamless and easy to set up processes I’ve ever seen! With arguably the best LCD model option now locked at the introductory price for most modern game consoles, it’s so neat to see what could genuinely be considered a truly NEW game console enter the fray. And a handheld at that! Part 5: I am just one woman (conclusion and thanks)

Hey there! If you read through all this garbled nonsense I’d like to extend a small thank you. I also want to take a second to say that I’m not presenting any of this as objective facts. Yes I have listed facts in this article, but as the title of this section says, I am just one woman. These are my overly excited thoughts on a phenomenon I’ve observed in my own time and wanted to share with anyone who would read it. Thanks a ton for reading! I’ll be back with more ramblings at some point, but for now let's part with this: The Steam Deck is an awesome piece of tech that I feel really shakes up the gaming space. I’m not sponsored by anyone, I’ve only been paid in the satisfaction of writing. If you’re someone who doesn’t dabble much in PC gaming, and are planning to buy a new console, maybe give the Steam Deck a try! I definitely plan on getting one after watching some stuff on the EmuDeck frontend for emulation and being thoroughly impressed. That’s all for now, see ya around! -Clair (FembotY2K) (sources below the cut!)

[auspicioustidings]

Request for some fem Price taking care of you after a long day at work coming right up!

“I’m not going to tell you again.”

That firmly ruffled your feathers. You needed to cook dinner and instead Price was wrapping an apron around her waist and telling you to sit your ass down on the sofa and read your book. She had taken one look at you when you had walked in the door and was on the proverbial warpath to get you off of yours.

Work had been a joke and not a particularly funny one. It was the kind of work day that made you bitterly regret continually turning Price down when she urged you to just quit, to let her take care of you. You didn’t need money, not with how much she made, but you were reluctant to rely solely on someone else for income. It would be easier to feel justified in that decision if she had not put the accounts fully in your name. Not even a joint account, your name. She had claimed it meant if she ever died on the job you wouldn’t need to go through a bunch of red tape just to get access to finances. It had been a very trying evening when that discussion had come up because while it was sweet it made you burst into tears, completely inconsolable that she had even thought to prepare for being KIA.

Of course Price was always excellent when you were like that. She would just let you cry, hold you, make sure you were fed and watered and bundled in blankets. She never condescended (at least not when you were like that, when you were just plain annoyed as you were now she loved to wind you right up knowing the sex would be fantastic with you angry), she always softly asked if you would like her to solely support you or if you wanted to talk solutions. 

Right now you were not sad, you were pissed off, so she was nothing like that soft, supportive girlfriend. She was the gentle but firm authority figure instead, letting you sharpen your claws a bit against her but ultimately getting you to that space where you could forget about work and just focus on being good for her. It cleared your head to exist like that when you were overworked and your head was cloudy.

“It’s my turn to cook! The chore schedule exists for a reason!”

It was silly really, because you did not want to cook. You fully wanted to veg out on the sofa and sneak glances at her in her apron working away like a little housewife. God you loved when she wore that apron, made you desperate to have kids all of a sudden just so she could accurately be called a milf. She sighed, tying off said apron and moving to stand toe to toe with you, towering over you. You were so ready for a fight that when she just smiled indulgently and literally swept you right off your feet you were taken entirely off guard. 

“And I’m scheduled for clean up this week, so let me just put this in its proper place,” she cooed, dumping you on the sofa.

“And with its proper maintenance” she added, pressing a flurry of kisses to your face until you had melted fully into the cushions in defeat.

By the time she had finished cooking you had forgotten all about work and followed her initial instructions perfectly, earning a ‘good girl’ and a hell of a treat after dinner.

[adarkrainbow]

Playing with fire, Transgression as truth (A)

The second article from the "Queering the Grimms" anthology I offer you was written by Kay Turner. It is part of the section "Queering the Tales" and its full title is...

Playing with fire: Trangression as truth in Grimms' Frau Trude

For many years I have been inordinately curious about an obscure Grimms’ fairy tale called “Frau Trude” (ATU 334). The tale concerns a witch and a girl and how their passionate relationship comes into being despite staunch prohibition. As a story arguing the nature of “truth,” it makes numerous direct and indirect claims concerning identity, feeling, sex and gender fluidity, kinship, and being—all within the framework of transgression and transformation, or perhaps better put, transgression as transformation

I make much of this brief tale, one infrequently given scholarly consideration. And yet, as I see it, and as the history of queer studies attests, the very task of queering the Grimms’ or any other traditional tales is to seek out the small and little-known story to discover queer possibility in the traces it offers, realizing that, as José Muñoz states, “instead of being clearly available as visible evidence, queerness has instead existed as innuendo, gossip, fleeting moments, and performances” (1996, 6). “Frau Trude” is a model for tracking the traces of queer existence in folklore.

The manifest and various relations between witches and girls in fairy tales, as between old women and young girls generally, have been undertheorized. Yet such attraction is as old as Sappho, who pined for and then penned her desire for lithe Atthis and youthful Anactoria.1 Fairy-tale scholarship rarely dips a proverbial toe into interpretive waters that might impel readers to take account of attractions, rather than repulsions, between witches and maidens. But in both well-known and obscure tales, girls find themselves drawn consciously toward, or inadvertently encountering, old women in various roles, including witch, sorceress, old woman, very old woman, grandmother, mother, mistress, wise woman, old hag, and stepmother.2 The old woman/young girl character dyad shapes a complex narrative model of female relationships, some of which beg for queer interpretation. Thus, working through “Frau Trude” leads down a winding path of transgressive wonder to arrive at bolder possibilities for understanding the diversities of desire between older and younger women in other fairy tales.3

The Grimms’ Kinder- und Hausmärchen is filled with a rich assortment of Frau Trude’s “sisters.” Though it is beyond my scope here, reading “Frau Trude” intertextually with others of its kind would no doubt bear analytical fruit concerning the structural position queer old women occupy in the fairy tale. Whether they are malevolent, like the cannibal in “Hansel and Gretel” (ATU 327A) and the kidnapper of one thousand girls in “Jorinda and Joringle” (ATU 405), or benevolent, like the old woman who hides the girl in “The Robber Bridegroom” (ATU 955) and provides for her in “The Sweet Porridge” (ATU 565), the charisma associated with these female figures emanates from their unusual propensity for agency. Housed in their marginality, abjection, and private nature, they seem to take secret delight in going it alone in those cottages deep in the woods. Frau Trude is among them: an outcast and outlaw living in her self-created house of marvels. But she finds her solitary confinement has lost its allure

Frau Trude’s tale merits reading in its entirety. I use Bettina Hutschek’s translation of “Frau Trude,” from the version in Hans-Jörg Uther’s (1996, 1:216–17) edition of the Grimms’ seventh edition of the KHM. 4

There was once a little girl who was very obstinate and willful, and who never obeyed when her elders spoke to her; and so how could she be happy? One day she said to her parents, “I have heard so much of Frau Trude, that I will go and see her. People say she has a marvelous[1]looking place and they say there are many weird things in her house, so I became very curious.” Her parents, however, forbade her going, saying, “Frau Trude is a wicked old woman, who performs godless deeds, and if you go to see her, you are no longer our child.” The girl, however, did not care about her parents’ interdiction and went to Frau Trude’s house. When she arrived there, Frau Trude asked her, “Why are you so pale?” “Ah” replied she, trembling all over her body, “I have frightened myself so with what I have just seen.” “What have you seen?” “I saw a black man on your steps.” “That was a collier.” “Then I saw a green man.” “That was a hunter.” “Then I saw a blood-red man.” “That was a butcher.” “Oh, Frau Trude, I was most terrified, I peeped through the window, and did not see you, but the devil with a fiery head.” “Oh, ho,” she said, “Then you have seen the witch in her proper dress. For you I have long waited, and longed for you, and now you shall give me light.” Thus she transformed the girl into a block of wood, and then threw it into the fire. And when it was in full glow, she sat down next to it, warmed herself on it and said, “For once it burns brightly!”

I read certain structural binaries—girl/woman; young/old; youth/age; life/death; human/witch (devil); parents/witch (lover); home/house; blood/ non-blood relations; fire/light; and light/dark—as leverage to interpret this short but provocative tale as it marks intergenerational mutual attraction and lesbian seduction, inviting understanding of strategic ways that social and sexual prohibitions may be overcome symbolically and imaginatively. Indebted to a generation of queer and LGBT academics who began broadly theorizing the heterogeneity of sex in the 1980s, I work with “Frau Trude” to invite folklore and fairy-tale scholars to touch queer theory in new ways.5 Queer scholarship generally accepts postmodern assumptions concerning the contradictory and contingent nature of signs and their systems of representation. I follow medievalist Carolyn Dinshaw, claiming for queer fairy tale analysis what she asserts for a queer history interested in unraveling the multiple meanings of sex (including sex acts, sexual desire, sexual identity, and sexual subjectivity): “Sex . . . is at least in part contingent upon systems of representation, and, as such, is fissured and contradictory. Its meaning or significance cannot definitively be pinned down without exclusivity or reductiveness, and such meanings and significances shift, moreover, with shifts in context and location” (1999, 12). Sounds like the stuff of folklore, doesn’t it? But Dinshaw’s new twist helps us rethink traditional narrative, suggesting that when queerness touches interpretation, it demonstrates “something disjunctive within unities that are presumed unproblematic, even natural. I speak of the tactile, ‘touch,’ because I feel queerness work by contiguity and displacement; like metonymy as distinct from metaphor, queerness knocks signifiers loose, ungrounding bodies, making them strange, working in this way to provoke perceptual shifts and subsequent corporeal response in those touched” (151).

There may be no better narrative site for discovering strange, ungrounded bodies and contingent sexual meanings than the fairy-tale genre, which problematizes desire, convened as wish fulfillment set in the realm of enchantment. Operating as a trope for the non-normative (but not necessarily the non-heteronormative), enchantment’s liminal state invites speculation along queer lines. Even if many tales hurtle headlong toward normative reunion, marriage, and stability, often the route navigates a topsy-turvy space filled with marvels, magic, and weird encounters that don’t simply contradict the “normal” but offer, or at least hint at, alternative possibilities for fulfilling desires that might alter individual destinies. Remarkably, in the case of “Frau Trude,” disenchantment never even occurs; rather, the witch’s marvelous realm is queered as a new home for the young girl and the old woman.

If sex, desire, and pleasure can signify heterogeneously in the fairy tale, attendant issues of kinship, family, and spousal attachment come to the fore. What narrative room does the genre supply to enlarge our consideration of relational bonds across binary differences of age, status, gender, sex, and even species? The heterogeneity of kinship is the central human problem the fairy tale presents, often queerly construed within the fundamental, if ambivalent and shifting, binary “belonging/exclusion.” Certain tales trans[1]pose the social and emotional tensions stemming from this division into architectural motifs (see, e.g., Labrie 2009). Two houses oppose each other in the landscape described by “Frau Trude.” One, symbolizing conventional belonging, is natal, heteronormative, parental, known; the other is non-kin based, homonormative, single dweller, strange. I seek in this chapter to demonstrate that the distance between them can be bridged by queer desire.

“Frau Trude” presents an especially useful example for exploring the predicament raised by these oppositions because the tale draws force from a considerably more profound one: natural/unnatural, or what Robert McRuer calls the ultimate binary of “who fits/who doesn’t” (1997, 143). The tale unmakes this divide’s inexorability by different terms of desire and agency. Queering, as a utopian project built with the brick and mortar of failure to comply, privileges the necessity of that which not only does not fit but chooses not to fit. “Frau Trude” offers two “choosey” gals—stubborn, unruly, in a word, perverse—who prove unwilling to belong to anything or anyone but themselves and each other

ENCOUNTERING “FRAU TRUDE”

My initial encounter with “Frau Trude” occurred in 1998. Invited to teach as a guest professor at the University of Winnipeg by co-editor Pauline Green[1]hill, I prepared a course called Sexualities, Folklore, and Popular Culture. For a session on folk narrative, I wanted us to study the fairy tale because the feminist scholarship in this area had by that time matured into its own fertile field of reconsiderations and new ideas. Indeed, feminist reimagin[1]ings of the Grimms’ and other tales had reached an apex of production. Among the rewriters, Irish novelist Emma Donoghue’s Kissing the Witch proffered an explicitly lesbian take. I vividly remember my first reading of her version of “Rapunzel” in which the sorceress and the long-tressed girl, after much despair, separation, and longing, come back together as lovers in the tale’s end (1997, 83–99).

I wondered how Donoghue got there. Did the Grimms’ version of the tale embed motifs, functions, or structural oppositions that made such rei[1]magining logical? Bonnie Zimmerman would answer that lesbianism as a way of knowing the world affects how we read literature, that lesbians may willfully “misread” texts, adopting “a perverse strategy of reading” (1993, 139). But what stood out most at the time and has sustained me through[1]out these Grimm years was Zimmerman’s instruction that appropriation through reading perversely requires “hints and possibilities that the author, consciously or not, has strewn in the text” (144). Thus while reading Jack Zipes’s (1992) translation of the KHM in preparation to teach, I found myself regularly exclaiming my discovery of deeply queer “hints and possibilities.” Numerous tales held such requirements, especially lesser-known ones such as “The Three Spinners,” “The Star Coins,” “The Grave Mound,” and, of course, “Frau Trude,” which struck me then, as it does now, as the queerest tale of all.

For class, I assigned Kay F. Stone’s (1993) feminist rewriting of “Frau Trude” called “The Curious Girl.” Comparing the Grimms’ original with her adaptation, what a difference a gay makes! With the encouragement and help of my young lesbian students, we interpreted “Frau Trude” as a classic “coming-out story,” an adumbration replete with the desire mixed with prohibition and fear that now distinguishes that genre. We found plenty of sex, too. Stone visited our class and I remember the evening’s brilliant explosion of ideas as we engaged with her. She conceded that, though she had “lived with” the tale for many years, returning again and again as she rewrote and told it, she had never thought of it in queer sexual terms.

Rather Stone’s interest landed in her conviction that the girl was neither destroyed nor punished for being too curious; instead, her inquisitiveness was prized. In Stone’s retelling, the girl is transformed into a log, becoming fire, a shower of sparks, a bird, a hare, and a fish. “Through these meta[1]morphoses, she experienced the sacrifice of her ego-self, which . . . gave her even greater power—freedom over herself as a fuller human being” (1993, 298–99), rewarded finally with her own story of self-knowledge and fulfillment. At the essay’s close, Stone summarizes the evolution of her relationship to “Frau Trude” with a question equally pertinent to my interpretation: “And I wonder: Is it possible to ignite oneself without being consumed?” (304). Our answers are different, but compatible.6

I, too, began to live with “Frau Trude.” Years passed and still she nagged, so to speak. My interest waxed and waned and slowly changed. Whereas earlier my interest—like the other Kay’s—centered on the girl, later I felt more and more Frau Trude’s fire drawing me to her hearth. It seemed she and I had been waiting a long time for each other. I became the curious scholar compelled to meet the witch.

THE TALE: ITS HISTORY, VARIANTS AND LANGUAGE

Numbered 43 in the KHM, “Frau Trude” (“Mistress Trude” or “Mother Trude”) conforms to ATU 334, “Household of the Witch.” It belongs to the complex of old “devourer tales” (Ranke 1990, 617–18), which also includes 333B, “The Cannibal Godfather (Godmother),” subsumed by Uther under ATU 334 in his recently updated tale type index: “A girl (woman) disregards the warning of friendly animals (parts of her body) and visits her godmother (grandmother) who is a cannibal. The girl sees many gruesome things (e.g., fence of bones, barrel full of blood, and her godmother with an animal’s head). When the girl tells her godmother what she has seen she is killed (devoured)” (2004, 1:225).

The Aarne-Thompson synopsis yields less information but more intrigue: “Visit to house of a witch (or other horrible creature). Many gruesome and marvelous happenings. Lucky escape” (Aarne 1961, 125). Demonstrating the longevity of ATU 334’s hundreds of variants, Kurt Ranke (1978, 98–100) traces its roots in Eastern Europe, with subsequent migration west from Slavic and Baltic realms—Poland, Lithuania, former Yugoslavia (Bosnia and Serbia)—to eastern Germany. He speculates that ATU 334 evolved from a myth concerning the realm of death, then changed to a macabre, demonic tale, and finally to a somewhat farcical one, happily ending with escape from the ogre. He counts about ninety variants, including thirty-six from Germany alone, where the historic-geographic record demonstrates the story’s notable change to its milder version.

In his study devoted to the form and function of gruesome children’s tales, Walter Scherf (1987) interprets twenty-seven thematically related types, including AT(U) 334, with “Frau Trude” as an example. To reflect its pro[1]gressive shift in content from horrific to moderate, he proposes the tale’s division into Eastern (334A+) and Western (334B+) European versions of different oikotypes (61–62). Reminiscent of Russian Baba Yaga tales, the descriptively more ghastly Eastern versions feature, for example, a fence strung with human intestines and doorknobs made of hands.7 Discovering her “true nature”—not woman but ogress—is a pivotal plot device in ATU 334, often intensified through a series of riddle-like questions and answers concerning what the visitor has seen at the witch’s house. In numerous variants, the girl (cousin, neighbor woman, sister, rarely a male) encounters frightening figures right before meeting the witch (Ranke 1990, 617). Once inside the house, the formulaic interrogation about these individuals be[1]gins. Initially ameliorating, the discourse recalibrates markedly in ATU 334 when the girl states she also saw a horrifying creature, witch, or devil. The ogress identified as such then usually kills her visitor but in “Frau Trude” transforms her

In older variants typically a horrifying devourer and uncompromising murderer, the witch—or death-woman (Tödin)—sometimes possesses a flexible animal head she removes at will, for the purpose of picking lice. This ogress who became Frau Trude changes dramatically as she moves west to Germany. For one thing, she gains a proper name. Likely a descrip[1]tion of her nature, it may be derived from trut or drut, a type of demon well known in the Bavarian-Austrian regions (Uther 1996, 4:88).8 As the gory, death-driven tale slowly modulates, the marvelous replaces the gruesome until finally “only a fairy tale, moreover for children, remains”; one that “is totally disarmed . . . and trivialized” (Ranke 1978, 99). If Ranke regrets that the German variant has been belittled, I offer a remedy for his woe. Once drained of the explicitly gory and murderous death drive, a different drive, equally potent, replaces it in the tale

The Grimms’ version of “Frau Trude,” first published in the 1837 KHM, substituted for “Die wunderliche Gasterei” (“The Strange Feast”), the co[1]medic variant of ATU 334, which filled slot 43 in the first two editions. This innocuous tale features a liverwurst escaping from a murderous blood sausage (Zipes 1992, 658–59). Zipes suggests the change happened because “The Strange Feast” too closely resembled number 42 in the KHM, “The Godfather,” ATU 332 (738). “Frau Trude” derives from a literary source, Meier Teddy’s Frauentaschenbuch (1823), a pocket book for women including the poem “Little Cousin and Frau Trude” (see Bolte and Polívka 1913, 377), which the Grimms retold in prose.9

According to Uther (1996, 4:88), Wilhelm Grimm conceived a new open[1]ing, creating a didactic tale to show children the punishment that results from disobedience to their parents. One wishes to have been present in the editorial chambers when the brothers decided to make the switch from sausage to witch. No doubt, sometime between publishing the volume of notes for the second edition in 1822 and the publication of the third edition of the tales in 1837, one or both read Meier Teddy’s little lyric tale and saw in it an opportunity to intensify their project’s moral agenda. Moving from meat to Mädchen (maiden), from comedy to tragedy, from lucky escape to murder seems to me a profound reflection of the Grimms’ desire to solidify their narrative portrayal of social values such as women’s silence and obedi[1]ence. Equally, it might signal their worry over changing mores, including those sexual ones slightly slipping out of closets across Europe, a result of the first prospects of the Enlightenment’s individual freedoms.10

“Frau Trude” evidences these concerns in its use of language. Though compact, the Grimms’ version nonetheless spends a wealth of linguistic currency in direct speech of an intense and ardor-laden kind: argumentative between daughter and parents, then discursive between girl and witch. Though the story begins with a standard “There once was a little girl” followed by description of her obstinate and stubborn ways, the third-person narrator soon gives over the account to the first-person protagonists. Plunged immediately into a tense, dramatic dialogue, the reader first hears the girl’s definitive, assertive tone as she demonstrates her desire to go to Frau Trude. Her parents respond by admonishing her and denouncing the Frau. A few lines later, in quick succession, girl and Frau engage with each other in interrogative, reported, expository, and declarative speech modes. Having transformed her visitor into fire, Frau Trude sits down by her bright flame and, speaking to herself/to the girl, declares her satisfaction.

The exceptionally argumentative and chatty girl and the loquacious witch by no means hold to the “silent woman” protocol Ruth Bottigheimer (1986, 116) finds in full swing in Germany by the 1830s, when “Frau Trude” was first published. Bottigheimer’s correlation of the Grimm tales’ speech patterns, gender hierarchies, and values is suggestive for “Frau Trude.” In what she calls the “century of criticism” celebrating “Wilhelm Grimm’s shift from indirect speech in the earliest versions of individual tales to direct speech in the later and final versions,” she finds, “No critic has asked, ‘Who speaks?’ or ‘Under what circumstances?’” (1987, 52). In contrast, Bottigheimer argues that Wilhelm consciously determined how much speech he would bestow any particular character (53).

Finding “good” girls and women muted or relegated to indirect speech and authority, often male, noted in direct speech, Bottigheimer also discovers that if “sprach” (spoke) too often introduces speech from a woman’s mouth, “it usually heralds a bad hat” (1987, 55). That girl and witch both speak di[1]rectly and constantly suggests Wilhelm’s editorial choices in “Frau Trude.” He loads the tale with a garrulousness that announces how “bad” he thinks both protagonists are. Again Bottigheimer is suggestive: “Transgressions can be carried out knowingly or unwittingly. Conscious transgressions by girls occur in at least four tales; in two the girls are punished and in two they escape. These two possible outcomes correspond with the good or evil nature of the prohibitor.” Bottigheimer says “Frau Trude” exemplifies a knowingly disobedient girl’s punishment, foretold in Grimm’s rhetorical insertion at the tale’s start: “so how could she fare well?” (88). We thank Wilhelm Grimm for filling the tale with direct speech, for thereby inadvertently he raises our awareness of the impassioned relationships between the characters by giving us access to their heightened emotional states (including fascination, anger, resentment, fear, yearning, and contentment) expressed in a range of speech acts.

[feralhoekage]

I'm sorry, I feel like I've hijacked your asks with all this. I've just always enjoyed the journey of getting to know people beyond solely their carnal desires. Obviously it's intensely rewarding to dip your toes into proverbial waters and explore the darkest recesses of someone's desires, but moments like this are a fun change of pace IMO.

I'd ask what type of genre you most enjoy writing and would like to publish but I also don't want to interrupt your general vibe here and turn it into a long form interview lol.

Not at all 🥰 I don't mind questions plus I haven't gotten a new ask in a while so don't feel bad 🥰🥰 if I didn't want them on my page I would t answer 😅 they sounds bad but hopefully you get what I mean lol.

Fantasy is what I normally go to for writing, and smut 😅 I like to try horror/dark writing every now and then. It's fun and I like the dark side of people more haha.

[vaesha-draecon]

Embers of the Past

Just a little something as I dip my toe into the writing pool of the Resident Evil Fandom. It's my first piece of writing in nearly a year and my first piece for Resident Evil in general, so go easy on me please! (it's also OC x Canon)

“Don’t ever do this again!” Wesker grumbled as he deftly removed the needle from Vanessa’s thigh, not even bothering capping the needle as he tossed it into the wastebasket beneath his desk.

“My apologies, Doctor,” Vanessa retorted as she pulled the waistband of her shorts back over her waist, covering her thigh where Wesker had just injected her, “I promise it won’t happen again,” she purred as she playfully reached out to caress his cheek with the back of her hand.

Wesker slapped her hand away, letting out an annoyed growl,

“I mean it!” he hissed “what you did was reckless, do you have any idea what could have happened had I not caught wind of your actions?!”

Vanessa smirked, unphased by his outburst,

“Your bedside manner needs some work, Doctor,” Vanessa teased, tossing her hair over her shoulder “I just had an injection, shouldn’t you be offering me some medical advice?”

“It’s Captain, while you’re here,” he warned, his brow creasing to show his annoyance “now get out of my office and return to your duties!” he tilted his head down, glaring at the current thorn in his side over the top of his glasses.

Vanessa just smirked at him while she maneuvered to hoist herself up on his desk, gleefully swinging her feet,

“Admit it,” the flirtatious purr in her voice returned, “you’d miss me if I did that,” she leaned forward until her face was mere inches away from his, deciding to caress his cheek again. She was playing with fire, and she knew it. It brought her euphoria. She reached for his signature shades and managed to get them off and leaned back to keep them out of reach unless he stood up and pinned her into his desk.

Without hesitation, Wesker grabbed her wrist and shot to his feet, yanking her upwards, causing her to drop his glasses onto the floor behind his desk.

“I said,” he tightened his grip on her wrist in the attempt to pull her off his desk before releasing his grip, “get out!” He rested his free hand on his desk while his other hand raised upwards, pointing towards his office door, thankful that the walls were thick enough to not alert the S.T.A.R.S. members on the outside.

“What if I don’t?” Vanessa asked, cocking her head to the side.

“I will administer the neutralizing agent.” he sounded so smug, like he had won, not counting on the ace Vanessa had up her proverbial sleeve.

“Neutralize this!” Vanessa made her move. Grabbing Wesker by the collar of his shirt and crashing her lips against his, catching him by surprise, a feat that only Vanessa could accomplish from time to time.

Slowly closing his eyes, Wesker leaned into the kiss, taking control from Vanessa who gladly relinquished it to him. Releasing his collar, she snaked her arms around his neck, tangling her fingers into his neatly styled golden tresses as she leaned back further. Wesker caged her within his arms. She was an addictive drug, he needed her like an addict needed his next fix; a sweet ambrosia that had him craving more but he had denied himself time and time again.

Once they shared a fondness for one another. A dalliance where they’d share a hidden kiss here and there. But time had been cruel and for reasons unexplained, they had drifted apart. It was obvious that they still yearned for one another based on their current situation.

As they continued to get lost in one another, Vanessa slipped her legs around his waist, grinding her core up into him, causing Wesker to buck his hips into her with a grunt, which in turn made Vanessa release a muffled moan in response.

Like a bucket of cold water had been dumped upon him, Wesker suddenly pulled himself away, putting a good distance between Vanessa and himself.

“Enough!” he growled as he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and began fixing the loose strands of hair.

“You’re the one to talk,” Vanessa said, sitting up, panting softly as she attempted to catch her breath.

“What just happened cannot, and I mean, cannot happen again,” he reached up to straighten his collar and to fix his shirt “do you understand me?”

“Says the one who enjoyed it far more than myself,” she gestured to the not so subtle bulge in his pants, she hopped off his desk and started to saunter over to him, “admit it Albert, you, more than anyone missed what we once had,” she went to reach out to fix a stray hair that he had miss, but Wesker had swiftly dodged her, opting to move passed her and resume sitting at his desk.

“I think it’s in your best interest that you return to your duties, Ms. Drake,”

“Oh, back on a last name basis now, are we?”

He ignored her, choosing to scribble down a report instead. Vanessa gave a half-assed salute then turned away, quickly donning an emotionless mask, she’d have to annoy him another time.

“Fine,” her voice was cold as she strode past his desk, running her dainty fingers across the surface. She paused, kneeling down to grab his discarded shades and placed them next to him. When she reached the door to his office, she turned to look at him,

“anything else Captain Wesker?”

“No,” he responded without looking at her “that will be all,”

Before leaving him to his solitude, Vanessa gave herself a once over, ensuring everything was in order before yanking the door to his office open and letting it close behind her with an audible thud. Once alone, Wesker let out a heavy sigh, sitting straight in his chair as he watched the door, returning his shades back to where they belonged.

Frowning, he looked down to the report he had been working on, rather scribbling random lines of gibberish rather than words. The marks on the paper resembled the current state of his mind. Why was this woman who was a constant thorn in his side so intoxicating to him? Why did she affect him so much?

Meanwhile, while Wesker was at war with himself, Vanessa was in a similar situation. While at her desk, attempting to distract herself from what had just occurred in her Captain’s office. She heaved a heavy sigh, tangling her fingers in her hair as she slumped forward. To anyone looking in, it looked like any normal day at the office. Writing report after report, after report. A tedious task that everyone in S.T.A.R.S. tried to avoid like the plague. Thankful that it was just her in the office, the rest of the Alpha team away on lunch or at the shooting range, Vanessa buried her face in her arms as she anguished on the inside.

“I really fucked it up this time,” she sighed to herself, not knowing that Wesker had shared the same opinion about himself while he was hidden away in his office, nursing a glass of cheap whiskey that Chief Irons had gifted him for achievements he no longer remembered achieved.

From this point forward. There was no going back. The embers of their past affair had been stoked back to life. The only way out was forward, and if that meant rekindling what they once shared, then so be it. Let the fire consume them and get burned in the process. Maybe then they would both have learned their lesson and learn to leave one another alone and go their separate ways.

[lovelylogans]

the parent trap

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO: i said a boom GO TO YOUR ROOM

The twins' plots bear oh-so-satisfying fruit.

⁂

Remus is the one who shakes him awake in the dead of night, pressing a finger to his lips.

The plan comes back to Roman in a flash, and he nods, mirroring Remus; finger to the mouth, slippers pulled on.

Remus nods and slides to unzip the entrance to their tent as quietly as possible, turning his head back and forth.

“Coast is clear,” he whispers, and he slips out of the tent, beginning to tip-toe across the campground, Roman quiet as a mouse on his heels.

“I hope that one large sleeping pill worked,” Remus whispers in a particularly cutting impersonation into Roman’s ear, and Roman grins, approaching the tent in question.

They pull aside the cloth of the old tent; as Papa had said, a separate inflatable mattress for Maddox, Papa curled up in his sleeping bag, snoring and dead to the world.

“You take that side,” Roman whispers, gesturing.

“All right,” Remus says, circling around. 

They each take a corner of the mattress and, slowly, slowly, begin to pull.

“Gosh, he’s heavy,” Remus whispers.

“Probably the fluid ton of hair product he hasn’t washed out,” Roman whispers back, and Remus barely manages to stifle his snort in his shoulder.

They manage to tug him onto the bank before Maddox stirs.

They both leap away from the bed, hands on the air.

“Mmm… Patty,” Maddox sighs out, and he flops his head to one side, mouth opening in a great snorting snore.

They snigger together.

“Mmh,” Maddox mumbles, head turning to one side, his hand searching for something, before he settles again. 

Roman nods; they begin to pull again, wading up to their ankles in the water before they splash back onto shore.

“Ready?” Remus whispers, crouching to push the mattress out to proverbial sea.

“In three—two—one!”

With a great push, away sails the S.S. Gold-Digger, seeming to float directly in the line of light of the full moon shimmering down on them, as if from some kind of heavenly benediction of their actions.

“Sweet dreams, stepdaddy dearest!” Remus says, sotto voce, and Roman about doubles over from the effort of keeping his laughter quiet.

⁂

Remus can barely manage to get back to sleep in the aftermath of their event, he’s so excited.

But he’s somehow managed it, because Maddox’s ever-distant screaming breaks over the camp in a reveille much more effective than some teenage boy’s trumpeting.

Remus just about tears open the tent in his excitement of unzipping, Roman bumping into him as they lean their heads out to see.

Maddox’s distant yelping form on the distant mattress, his thrashing visible even from here, is a sight that Remus will cherish his entire life.

“PATTY!!!!”

The scream seems to pierce through all the wilderness. 

That, at last, seems to rouse their father, who pulls up the tent to peer out at things, bemusedly rubbing his eyes and putting his glasses on.

Just in time to see the visibly struggling Maddox attempt to stand on the mattress and promptly, accidentally bellyflop into the lake.

Remus buries his face into Roman’s back, shoulders shaking with laughter, to avoid any semblance of Look their father might be giving them.

He hears his father shuffle to exit the tent, presumably to go help, and Remus chances a peek to see Maddox paddling clumsily back to shore.

“Oh, he’s pissed,” Remus whispers gleefully to Roman, Maddox’s face gone fire-engine red.

“We’ll see if that does it,” Roman murmurs.

“Oh, I’ve got plenty of ideas if it doesn’t,” Remus says, as Maddox finally manages to get to the shore.

There’s the plop, plop, plop of Maddox’s wet slippers as he storms up the bank, hands balled into fists, a vein popping out on his neck. He angrily kicks at Pa’s coffee pot, set up beside the campfire that hasn’t yet been lit, sending it flying off a not-quite-impressive distance.

Remember the beauty of this, Remus thinks to himself. This is some of the most excellent chaos I’ll ever wreak in my entire life.

“What’s going on?” Pa asks in genuine concern.

That seems to be all it takes to make Maddox really lose it.

“Here’s what’s going on, buddy,” he yells. “The day we get married is the day I ship those brats off to Switzerland! 

Pa’s expression drops. And then, the longer Maddox yells, it solidifies into some blank, almost eerie resolve that he’s never seen on Pa’s face before.

“Get the picture?! It’s me or them. Take your pick.”

Pa looks over to see the twins, and, with zero hesitation, turns to face Maddox again.

“Them.”

That seems to pull Maddox up short.

“Excuse me?!” He splutters.

“My kids,” Pa says, overcome with some kind of preternatural calm. “T-h-e-m, them.”

Then, he tilts his head down to look Maddox face-to-face, eye-to-eye, and, in a move that makes Remus wonder about where he’s picked up the mischievous streak, adds:

“Get the picture?”

⁂

“So,” Virgil says. “Resounding success on the date front, I think.”

“Yes,” Logan agrees faintly, from where he is in the other bed of the hotel they’d managed to book for their impromptu kiss. “Yes, I think I quite agree.”

“I’d like to propose moving forward that whole mutually beneficial agreement you mentioned yesterday.” Virgil says, rolling onto his side and propping himself up on his elbow.

“I think that can be arranged,” Logan says, and he leans in for another kiss.

Their eventual departure is even more delayed, but Logan can’t bring himself to fret about it too much.

⁂

Janus looks up from his design, puzzled, as he hears a hoking of a horn that is probably meant to sound like some kind of song.

Logan and Virgil, surely; the boys and Patton aren’t due to be back for another day.

But even as Janus crosses through the front door to stand on the balcony, he spies that sapphire blue truck. He pulls his flannel around him as the doors open and his identical sons—one in green, one in red, seeming to have finally given up this matchy-matchy facade—spill out of the car.

“Hello,” Janus calls down, distinctly puzzled. “Back so soon—did you have fun?”

“I wouldn’t jump right to fun,” Remus grumbles, untying the bags and grabbing Roman’s pack for him, handing it over.

“You wouldn’t?” Janus says.

“We’ve been punished to the end of the century,” Roman says glumly, pulling his pack over his shoulders.

“Starting now,” Patton says, taking Remus’s pack off the truckbed and setting it into his arms. “Go.”

The boys begin to scuttle up the stairs to meet him as Patton picks up his own pack, leaving the rest.

“Where’s Maddox?” Janus says, still bemused. Please, please, please…

“We played a couple of harmless tricks on him,” Remus says. “He kinda freaked out a little.”

“A little?!” Patton says incredulously, catching up to all of them on the balcony. He presents the emerald-cut engagement ring in his hand for Janus to see.

“He threw this at my head.”

Janus’s hand goes over his mouth. Not in time, Janus thinks, to completely obscure the fact that his smile widened when Patton broke the news.

“At least it’s smaller than a hair-dryer,” Patton tells him ruefully.

“Oh, Patton,” Janus says, barely managing to quash the delight in his voice. “This is all my fault, if I hadn’t suggested he go…”

“Oh, tricked,” Patton says, jabbing a finger at Janus good-naturedly. “Tricked would be more like it.”

He levels a stern expression down at their children. “Like father, like sons.”

“We really are sorry, Papa,” Roman says anxiously. Janus puts a fatherly hand on his shoulder, using the other to smooth Roman’s hair over his forehead.

“Yeah,” Remus says, not at all disguising that he absolutely does not mean it. “Really.”

“Up to your room,” Patton says. “Now.”

The boys shamble along inside.

Patton cranes his neck to watch them go. And, when they’re out of earshot and eyeshot:

“I’ll have to remember to thank them for that one day.”

Janus gives him a surprised look. “I thought you were mad at them.”

“I am, a little,” Patton confesses. “They weren’t being particularly kind.”

“Maddox wasn’t being particularly kind to you,” Janus says.

Patton is quiet.

“I don’t think kindness is owed to anyone being unkind to someone you love,” Janus continues softly, then catches himself and how that might sound. “At least—I’m sure that’s what the boys’ logic is. Was.”

“...you think he was being unkind?”

Janus once again remembers that he’s speaking to one of the most benevolent, trusting people to ever walk the Earth.

“I think,” Janus says carefully, “that you have certainly raised Remus, and I know I’ve raised Roman, in a way that makes them fairly good judges of character. And—I’m not that certain how much Virgil’s disclosed to you—”

“They never got along that well,” Patton says gloomily. “I was hoping that it was introduction jitters. Virgil gets nervous around new people sometimes.”

“—well… right. Virgil didn’t like him particularly much either. And I think that… when all of your loved ones don’t particularly enjoy the new person that you’ve brought into their lives…”

Janus trails off; Patton’s face has been dropping and dropping the longer he’s talked.

“I’m sorry,” is all he can say, and that seems to do it.

Patton’s face screws up, and he quickly turns away, but the way his shoulders are hunching and his hands balling up are dead giveaways; Roman does the same thing.

“I’m so stupid,” Patton says, and his voice cracks, and a hand comes up to cover his face.

“Oh, Patton.” Janus says, cautiously stepping closer, cautiously putting a sympathetic hand on his shoulder, the other wrapping around his bicep.

“I can’t believe I didn’t see it,” Patton says. He blinks tears out of his big, brown eyes. “When you put it like that—God, how could I be so dumb?!”

“You’re not—”

“Virgil hates him, and he has a stronger gut feeling than anyone I know,” Patton says. “The boys hate him, and I have their best interests at heart, always, of course I should have recognized they’d do the same for me—God, even Maddox told me outright that the twins thought he’d be the wicked step-father, like out of some kind of fairytale, and I still didn’t see it!”

“Take it from someone working in the wedding industry: you are not the first groom to ever be led down the aisle without key, crucial context about the person he’s marrying.” Janus says. “And, I mean, hey. You didn’t even get to the led down the aisle part. You got the information, you broke it off, it’s perfectly normal to be upset about that.”

This is the wrong move. Patton dissolves into even more tears; Janus results to helpless shh-shh-shh-ing. He, floundering in these sorts of situations as he always does, simply rubs small circles into his back and makes soothing noises the best he can and resolves to try to not put his foot in his mouth like that again.

“I’m sorry, I shouldn’t—you shouldn’t have to—” Patton chokes out, but he doesn’t step away. 

“Do you want to be alone?” Janus asks. He almost says, and don’t lie, but that’s what he’d do in this situation. Not Patton. Never Patton.

“No,” Patton says miserably. “That’s what’s gotten me into this whole mess. I don’t want to be alone. I just—”

His voice cracks again; Janus, floundering in these sorts of situations as he always does, simply rubs small circles into his back.

“I want it so bad,” Patton cries.

“It?” Janus can’t help but ask.

“It,” Patton says mournfully. “I’m so close. I have the house of my dreams, and I job I love with my best friend, and a kid I adore, and I’m in contact with the other one now and I love him just as much, I just want—”

Janus swallows. “Someone to share it all with.”

Janus does not say it. But of course, he wants It too.

“Yes,” Patton says. 

Then, quieter: “Yes. Of course I want that.”

Janus clears his throat, rubbing Patton’s back one last time before he steps back.

“Would you like dinner?” He says. “I know it may not fix all of your problems, but at least you’ll have a full stomach.”

Patton, rubbing at his eyes, smiles; a little, feeble thing, but a smile all the same.

“You cook now?”

“Of course I know how to cook,” Janus says. “I can make pasta. And… spaghetti. And—”

“Pasta,” Patton interrupts him, smiling. “Pasta sounds good.”

“Good,” Janus says. “How about you go splash some cold water on your face, and I’ll go about ransacking your pantry for materials.”

“Okay,” Patton says, and he turns to go into the house.

previous chapter | masterpost | next chapter

[drgreysonmd]

Dr. Greyson, I plan to take a course in medicine. What are your tips?

- 💉

First and foremost- Congratulations! Working in medicine can be a really rewarding and exciting field if you've got the resilience for it.

But it can also suck the life right out of you if you let it. I've seen a lot of good nurses, interns, techs, and even doctors leave the practice because of the struggles we as practitioners face.

That's why my number one tip is to find yourself a really good therapist or counselor you feel comfortable with. Taking care of your mental health through med school is more important than all the study tips or hacks I can offer- truly. No amount of flash cards or Excel sheets will make up for an abysmal mental health due to the fast paced and sometimes cut throat nature of med school, nursing school especially (or so I'm told).

Aside from that, I'd add make sure you get PLENTY of sleep. There is always the joke about cramming for exams or practicum, but all that studying means nothing if you've deprived your poor brain the energy to even retain or recall all that information you so painstakingly force fed it. Eating proper meals and drinking water is important too. McDonalds and Bang energy drinks might sustain you for a year or two, but when year 4 or 5 rolls around and you start developing insomnia and migraines from the caffeine dependency, it'll feel a lot worse. Trust me I'm speaking from experience here. Ignore the siren's song of caffeine as long as possible.

My last best piece of advice is the find yourself the most reliable study buddy you can. Even better is if it's not someone you particularly like. It might sound counterproductive, but studying works best if it's A- someone who holds you accountable, and B- someone who doesn't distract you with idle chitchat. And I've found that friends and people you're friendly with are just, so very bad at both of those things. Pick someone in your course that is slightly annoying but you can still tolerate enough to not gouge their eyes out. A nice middle ground, you know?

Again, I really do want to say congratulations for deciding to dip your proverbial toes into the world of medicine, and I wish you all the luck! Who knows, maybe one day we'll meet across the table in the OR.

[shares-a-vest]

i don’t like sand. it’s coarse and rough and irritating and it gets everywhere.

Word Count: 2.1k Rated: T for alcohol consumption and some flirty flirting.

Steve just wants to take Eddie on a romantic date to a secluded beach-like spot along Lover’s Lake. But they quickly find themselves battling a new enemy: sand. Written for @thefreakandthehair’s Spicy Six Summer Fanworks Challenge using the dialogue prompt, “There’s sand in my underwear.”

Thank you Lex for once again hosting a seasonal challenge 💖💖💖

And yes, this is THE whiney Anakin Skywalker quote. When this fic started heading in the direction of the boys running into some serious sand-based problems, I knew I had to use it!

(Read on Ao3)

Steve jiggles the last peg sticking into the sand, checking it is secure. He stands upright and dusts off the sand covering his hands as he admires his handiwork. Not too bad of a non-beach beach set-up on Lover’s Lake. A spot that at least mildly resembles a serene coastal location.

He looks up at the dark figure still lingering by the parking area situated under a patch of trees.

Eddie looks a sight, dressed head-to-toe in black – a cut-off t-shirt, shorts, and goddamn combat boots – as he twirls a matching umbrella and kicks at something beneath his feet.

“I don’t do hats, Stevie,” he said as they packed (or, more accurately Steve packed) for their beach date, deeply offended as he clutched a set of proverbial pearls.

Steve waves his arms, hoping to gain his attention.

But Eddie continues shuffling about, looking everywhere but down to their setup as he sips from a prematurely opened beer can. Steve is certain Eddie doesn’t realise he can see everything through his prescription sunglasses.

“Eddie!” he calls, the echo created from their seclusion drowning out his frustration.

He drops his hands by his sides when Eddie finally snaps to attention. Eddie perches his sunglasses on the end of his nose to dramatically examine the path down the small embankment where dry grass gives way to sand. He looks like he is about to scale Mount Everest.

Steve grumbles and places his hands on his hips.

It’s not like he had lugged down the tent, two towels, a small selection of hats he has at the ready for Eddie’s inevitable complaints about sunburn, his own flip-flops, a football, an unnecessary flotation device Eddie insisted on bringing from home, a radio, each of their designated walkies and a map Dustin forced on them, all the while being dragged down by an overstuffed backpack.

Despite Steve catching his eye without the full protection of his shades, Eddie still doesn’t budge. So, Steve decides on the one move that will get his boyfriend running to him.

At least he thinks unbuttoning his white linen shirt will do the trick.

As he starts on the third button (and refuses to break eye contact), Eddie stomps his foot at the show and scoops up their cooler. He takes a small step forward and begins tip-toeing down the steady incline at a snail’s pace by the time Steve is rolling his shirt off his shoulders.

He tosses it aside with a flourish, chuckling as Eddie very obviously picks up his pace. Steve flexes his shoulders, focusing on the soothing warmth of the summer sun instead of Eddie dragging their cooler along behind like a caveman!

“Come on,” he mutters as Eddie clomps through the sand, kicking up waves of it with each step of his boots.

His legs look comically pasty – vampiric, even – in the direct sunlight.

As he waits, Steve makes quick work of gathering up their supplies and places them in the tent. He figures Eddie isn’t going to want to spend any extended time outside. He’s going to have a hard enough time convincing him to take a dip in the water. Even in broad daylight without tentacled undead bats about to suck them into a hell dimension.

He emerges from the tent to find Eddie standing over him.

“What took you so long, sunshine?” Steve teases, flashy a toothy grin.

Eddie glares down at him and dumps the cooler in the sand. It falls sideways, its contents sloshing about. He holds up his beer can and examines it with great reverence and belches.

“Charming,” Steve mutters, focusing on the probable damage to the food in the cooler as he stands upright.

“Chug one, Big Boy,” Eddie challenges, jangling his tinny-sounding (and thus, near-empty) can.

He cocks his head with a dimple-filled smile.

Steve quirks a brow. He quickly upturns the cooler and snaps it open. Thankfully, their lunchboxes (a Star Wars one Claudia Henderson gifted him, and a Garfield box Eddie has had since he was in middle school) are still intact despite their shaky voyage down from the car.

Though the sandwiches inside might be more than a little askew...

As he retrieves a chilled can, Steve fishes in his back pocket for his flick knife.

“Yes,” Eddie hisses, eyes lighting up.

Steve spins it in his fingers, ignoring the Robin-like voice in his head telling him such a move is too dangerous for the sake of some hopeful flirting.

But it gets Eddie buzzing on the spot, more than eager.

Steve leans forward, angling the can in his left hand, the knife in his right. He stabs into the bottom rim of the can, popping it enough to drink from. Replacing the knife with his mouth, he starts drinking.

The beer is cool for a good moment, quenching a thirst he hadn’t quite noticed he had built up. But he only gets about halfway upright before the carbonation burns hot in his throat, the scar around his neck stinging. He screws his eyes shut, willing away the sensation as he feels Eddie’s worried hand on his forearm.

He pulls the can away, leaving the remaining liquid to spill around his feet and darken the sand.

“Fuck!” he strains, “Can’t do that one anymore.”

He splutters and gulps harshly, saliva doing nothing to soothe his throat as he laments the loss of his former go-to party trick.

“That was dumb,” Eddie admits, voice momentarily soft before he perks right back up and smirks, “I still think it’s hot.”

He winks and loops his arms around Steve’s shoulders.

“Oof,” he pouts, skirting greedy fingers across his hot skin before playing with the dampened hair at the nape of his neck, “You need some sunscreen, stat, pretty boy.”

He tugs at Steve’s hair for good measure and looks him over, greedy and hungry as his eyes flit down to his shorts.

Little does Eddie know he is wearing a pair of red swim briefs, courtesy of his renewed swimming pursuits.

“Well,” Steve pauses, clearing his throat once more, “Looks like we’d better get in the tent, then. Promised I’d let you lather me up, didn’t I?”

“Sure did, Stevie,” Eddie coos, nodding enthusiastically, “You absolutely promised me a day of slathering up Hawkins Public Pool’s newly appointed Swim Instructor’s musculature with some tantalisingly tacky cream.”

He wiggles his brows, pleased with his lame double-entendre. But his shit-eating smile quickly fades as he looks down at the mixture of pebbles, white sand and sediment beneath them.

“Sand,” he whines through gritted teeth, gesturing with delicate ring-adorned fingers, “My balls are already itching.”

He twists the tip of his boot into the ground and gives a dramatic shudder.

“Shut up and get in,” Steve chuckles, shoving him by the elbow in the direction of their shelter.

Eddie crouches to hop in, hovering as he unfurls the front flap. Steve waits.

And waits some more.

But once again, Eddie is unmoving.

He makes the executive decision to slap Eddie’s butt to coax him the rest of the way. Yelping at the gesture, Eddie falls forward, kicking sand directly in his face.

“God damn it!” Steve splutters, attempting to lumber in behind him, sunglasses now bespeckled with sand.

He trips on the plastic lip of the tent, momentarily tangling himself up in the front opening. Stumbling forward, Steve lands hard on top of Eddie with a loud yelp of his own and firmly squishes him face-first into the tent floor as another wave of sand follows him in too.

“Shit,” they groan in unison.

Steve rolls over as Eddie clamours upright, both of them slipping and sliding on the tent’s tarp lining and whipping all the sand they brought in across the shelter, thwacking it to the four walls.

“Great,” Eddie grumbles, scrunching his nose like a disgruntled kitten, “I already have sand in my hair!” he pauses and gives a loud sigh, “... I didn’t bring a scrunchie.”

He dry-sobs, screwing his eyes shut as he mopes in sand-drenched silence.

Steve reaches for his backpack.

So much for thinking he could solve all of Eddie’s complaints now that they have fucking sand everywhere!

He produces a red scrunchie he had bought from Hawkins Public Pool’s kiosk, an item typically purchased by the instructors and lifeguards Eddie has spent most of his summer seething over. Steve barks a laugh as Eddie snatches it up.

He attempts to look away from the admittedly very pleasant sight of Eddie tying his hair up in a loose, messy ponytail, but it is too late. Eddie is grinning back at him.

“Do I look as hot as your co-instructor Becky?” he teases, leaning in a mere inch from his cheek.

“Shut up,” Steve gripes, chancing a look outside for the forgotten cooler.

He retreats with the blue box to find Eddie now hurriedly rifling through the backpack.

“Eureka!” he announces, holding up a white and blue tube of sunscreen in victory. He dumps it on his lap and makes grabby hands, “Come on, Stevie, lay down.”

He slaps excitedly at the tent floor, sand dancing with every movement.

But he abruptly pauses, grimaces, and looks at his palm.

“Hey!”

Eddie wipes his hand a little too far up Steve’s blue shorts with vigour.

But before he can work out if that move was on purpose or not, Eddie is sticking his butt in his face, pushing him against the side of the tent with maximum impatience. Steve rips his sunglasses off, worried Eddie might be tipping them (and his tent-building) sideways.

A peg flicks against the back wall but Steve doesn’t catch whatever else happens. He ducks just in time as Eddie begins flapping his yellow towel about, sending sand flying – again.

“Oops,” he says, biting the inside of his cheek as he looks around, wide-eyed.

He shrugs and goes about smoothing out the towel.

“No shit,” Steve mutters as he looks over his own sand-covered legs.

Eddie soon turns, scrambling his way back to him until there is no personal space between them. He stares at his lips, eyes downright devilish and greedy as they roam over him.

Steve smirks, leaning back on one hand so his boyfriend can get a better look at him as he mulls over exactly when he should take his shorts off.

Eddie pops the cap on the tube of sunscreen and grins. A thick blob of the stuff spurts out the top of the tube and down his hand.

He freezes and slowly turns his head to look at the mess.

“Oh no,” he mumbles, voice impossibly small.

“You are such a dork,” Steve muses.

Eddie blushes, muttering to himself about the horrors of summertime, sand and Steve’s tanned shoulders as he dirties his t-shirt with spilled sunscreen.

“What can I do to make you feel better, hmm?” Steve asks as Eddie struggles to remove the cream from between his rings.

He nuzzles into his neck, pressing a kiss to his warm – if a little sweaty, and sand-coated – skin.

“This will make me feel better,” Eddie pouts, craning his neck for better access.

He takes the opportunity to slip his hand up under Eddie’s now tacky shirt, pushing it up until he takes the hint and removes it. Steve quickly moves onto his lap, straddling him. There is an audible swish and scrape as he goes – sand moving, sliding and sticking between them.

Eddie looks down between them and huffs out an elongated breath.

“Those – uh…” he stutters, pointing his index finger into his meaty flesh, sand granules digging in with a sharp sting, “Those might need some sunscreen.”

Steve hums, nodding along. He kisses Eddie’s pink cheek, his skin is hot and flushed with little sweat marks forming under his eyes.

“And your shoulders,” Eddie continues, running his hands up his chest, scratching more sand up his torso that feels like an impromptu exfoliant, “Gotta get those shoulders.”

“Totally,” he presses a kiss to his left cheek as he bites back the sting of the grains on Eddie’s fingertips.

Eddie lowers back on the towel.

Steve eagerly moves forward, intending to drape himself over him. But Eddie grumbles, tossing about on the gritty towel as he fists at the waistband of his shorts. He squirms away, screwing his eyes shut with a frustrated sob.

“What’s going on!” Steve yelps as Eddie narrowly misses kneeing him in the junk.

“There’s sand in my underwear!” he shrieks.

Steve rolls off him, course sand bits sticking all over as he falls onto his back with a thud.

So much for a relaxing day at the non-beach beach.

[cornedbeefhashtags]

I'm sorry works been such a drag. You definitely need a date, I like the idea of wearing 3-d glasses though. Would that be to weird?

I know it’s been a while since I’ve dipped my toes into the waters of the proverbial dating pool, but… does he NEED to wear the 3D glasses?

[brain]

Pachyderm Progression

Ok ok. I too have finally decided it was time to try the elephant in the proverbial room. You can see me dipping my toes in the water at @briand@hachyderm.io

Having helped build a social media aggregator slash digital life manager in a prior time, it feels a little like "we have been here before."

"Plus ça change, plus c&apos'est la même chose"