#and i never even saw mystic flour's story

[badlydrawnbeastcookies]

👀

[uwukillmenowowo]

Hello I saw your platonic Crk story with the beast cookies and I was just rewatching the theater of lies episode and I got an idea, what if the reader gets so angry at Shadow milk cookie that they just scream "SHUT IT!" which stuns everyone into silence not even knowing the reader could get that mad, if you're not comfortable with writing this or simply don't want to that's completely alright 😊

o_O

interesting- Interesting indeed-

I could've made this so much more simple but- I didn't ToT

Annoyance

[PLATONIC]

(Beast Cookies X Reader)

Notes:

Reader will be Non-binary

#Peaceful Mode

Simple mind things

The Beasts were revived. What was the first thing they did? Find their little sibling of course.

{SecondPOV}

~~~~~

You were shocked to see your old friends in front of front of you again. The difference was not only in their appearance and names but their personality too. Blueberry Milk in particular. Or rather... Shadow Milk Cookie. He used to be your best friend... Now he's your greatest annoyance.

Before he was the most quiet and the "Hold my hand when crossing the road" friend now he's the "Jackass bitch I wanna strangle but they're still my friend" friend.

Ever day..

And I mean- EVER DAY- He's annoying you with something different before rambling on and on.

"[Reader] Cookie, why did you dye your frosting? You know I loved it [H/c]? Can I change it back?"

"[Reader] Cookie, Why are your drawing the soul jam thieves?... What do you mean they aren't thieves!?"

"[Reader] Cookie, who are Espresso Cookie and Madeline Cookie? They aren't your boyfriends are they?"

"[Reader] Cookie~! Come look at my new puppets~!"

You were getting fed up because most of the time he would bother you when you're working on important stuff.

But this time. You were working on something VERY important. Crushed Spice- Err... Burning Spice Cookie. He recently had to fight the other Wild spices because something happened. In the process, his favorite bracelet got damaged and you were fixing it.

Before, Burning Spice didn't really care about his appearance, but now he did. He wanted to look powerful and offered you somehting you couldn't refuse. So you had to fix it for him.

Leaning in closer so that you can see it better, you carefully started to melt some golden cheese so that you can fix it. Liquid cheese can get very hot so you had to be very careful when- "Wow! Would you look at that!" "WAAAHHH!!"

Screaming in shock at the sudden cookie you dropped all the liquid cheese onto Burning Spice's bracelet, absolutely covering it in liquid cheese. You stared at Shadow Milk Cookie before looking at Burning Spice's bracelet, and then back at Shadow Milk Cookie. "Are you kidding me...?" You asked in disbelief.

"Heeey~ What's it matter? I just-" You started to tune out Shadow Milk Cookie as you stared at the ruined bracelet.

THE ONE THING THAT BURNING SPICE WANTED SO THAT HE WOULD TAKE YOU TO MEET THE OTHER SPICES.

Yup! That was it! All you wanted was the meet the other Spices! but Burning Spice never allowed you because it was too dangerous! The reason why you've always wanted to go is because you helped a little Kulfi get home a couple years ago and you promised to meet them again!

"-Surely it can't be that bad-"

"SHUT IT ALREADY YOU UNKNOWLEDGEABLE, DECEPTIVE- *grumble* *grumble* DUMMY!!"

Shadow Milk, who sat across from you, paused.

Burning Spice who just walked in to check on his bracelet, went slack jawed.

Silent Salt, who was with Burning Spice, felt his soul gem die.

Mystic Flour and Eternal Sugar gasped and snorted respectively.

They didn't know how to react. How could they? Years ago, you were the cookie who would always say, "Mind your manners, it's not nice" With a small pout on your face.

But now- you just told your best friend that he was being an annoying bitch-

Shadow Milk Cookie in particular, stared at you in shock.

All of a sudden- he fainted and started frothing at the mouth.

Meanwhile, you just walked away, grumbling to yourself.

"That's not my best friend... Never has been."

~ (OwO) ~

I could've made this more simple than it had to be so I dunno why I went with lore...

[lohotine]

Just a request for a story with mystic flour cookie

Everything else is up to you

AN: I wish the way I wrote her thoughts weren't so messy.. ugh.

Mystic Flour x Reader

Oneshot

Synopsis: Giving a friendship bracelet to Mystic Flour

-Mortal Tradition-

"So... is this one of your mortal traditions?" She'd ask, holding the bracelet up and giving it a skeptical look.

"Oh, I guess so!"

You kept looking at her with that same smile you had on everyday. A smile that she just couldn't understand. Especially when you'd smile at her.

She had killed thousands of people, and there was no doubt in her mind that she would kill thousands more.

She could practically feel the blood still staining her hands; hands that no matter how many times she called them pure, would still forever be tainted.

And yet, you smile at her anyway.

"I see... What exactly is the occasion?" She'd ask, her gaze as piercing as always.

"Well, it's a friendship bracelet!"

Friendship bracelet.

"Forgive me but.. have we not moved on from that stage already? I was under the assumption that we were.. lovers."

The word always felt so foreign in her mouth. For as long as she lived, she never once thought about being in a relationship with someone. She had no care for such a fleeting mortal concept.

Yet when you confessed, she just couldn't bring herself to reject you.

It was.. odd to say the least.

"Well, we are. But that doesn't mean we aren't friends anymore! I think you are my friend and my lover. And that's fine."

Mystic Flour could not bring herself to respond. It was all so strange to her. Why did a mortal seek intimacy with someone like her? Didn't you know that she felt nothing? Had she not said time and time again how everything was futile?

"You don't have to wear it if you don't want to."

Your words snapped her out of her thoughts. "No, it's fine," she responded before promptly slipping the braclet on.

Everything about it reminded her of you. Your joy, your attention to detail, your love... your mortality and how you would die long before she would.

The thought made her feel something akin to sorrow; and that scared her.

She shouldn't feel anything at all. Much less for a mortal such as yourself.

Yet here she is, wearing a friendship bracelet and worrying about your death.

How embarrassing, she'd think.

It was obvious at the time that you would die long before she would. She knew this. So why was it only bothering her now? No. Why was it bothering her at all? She knew this relationship was futile when she accepted it.

Why did she even accept it?

Maybe... it was because of your resolve. You yearning for something that was so clearly out of reach. It reminded her a bit of herself. Yet unlike her, you never gave up.

"Well, I'm glad you like it! Anyway, see you around!" You smiled once more and exited the room, leaving a very silent and very conflicted Mystic Flour.

But when she saw your smile, she only thought of one thing.

Maybe everything was not so futile after all.

[anonymoususeru]

Pondering

It was useless to think of the "what-ifs", no worth would come out of it if Mystic Flour Cookie allowed her mind to wander...

An OC x Mystic Flour Cookie one-shot. Takes place some time prior to the Awakening of White Apathy story.

Some Tags: Past Situationship(?), Flashback, Mentioned Death

It hurts Mystic Flour Cookie dearly, that all cookies turn out to be this way. Nothing more than those who demand more and more. It was her duty to bring all the wishes to light. Yet some part of her mind wandered, to the time before the cookies all fled. The time before she snapped at all cookies in the Ivory Pagoda. A mere mortal, a doctor who would not live very long. Someone so insignificant to a creation by the godly creators. Yet, Mystic Flour Cookie always found herself being drawn to the strange doctor. It was useless to think of the "what-ifs", no worth would come out of it if Mystic Flour Cookie allowed her mind to wander...

--

How Cookies act, their selfish desires, their want for something more than what they need. It’s all so clear now. Every cookie would become selfish, angered at not getting what they think they deserved. The only way out is to feel nothing, to feel empty...and yet, there are some innocents. Innocents who did not deserve to get caught in a crossfire...innocents who did what they wanted to do and not ask more than what they needed.

--

"Jasmine Rice Cookie, may I ask you something?"

The other cookie looked surprised when they saw the Ivory Pagoda's Master approaching them but could not refuse her presence. Jasmine Rice Cookie was merely collecting some herbs around the outside of the Ivory Pagoda, not expecting the Master of the Ivory Pagoda to approach them. The way the doctor slowly nodded made Mystic Flour Cookie smile. There's something about this doctor that makes Mystic Flour Cookie feel... safe? It's hard to describe the feeling. However, the doctor did not look like they opposed it.

"You have truly left a mark in this Ivory Pagoda, whether you’re aware of it or not. I…want to ask..."

Mystic Flour Cookie was having a hard time describing what she wanted. She wanted to ask Jasmine Rice Cookie if they would continue to stick around no matter what. She wanted to ask Jasmine Rice Cookie if there was something between them since they seemed more than aware of what they had together. Yet, Mystic Flour Cookie could not even speak it into words, which Jasmine Rice Cookie had caught on.

"Hm? Great Virtue, is there something bothering you? You seem quite hesitant to say what you’re thinking at this moment,"

The way the doctor spoke to her in a calm and respectful tone. The tone Mystic Flour Cookie likes to hear from Jasmine Rice Cookie more than anyone else. The smile they gave as they finished collecting the herbs. They seem to be focusing on their job, as usual. Mystic Flour Cookie then realised that was why Jasmine Rice Cookie caught her attention in the first place. Someone who has wishes and yet never asked anything from Mystic Flour. Someone who helped others but yet knew when to stand down.

"Are you sure you do not need any help? Cloud Haetae has been getting bored and wanting to go outside–"

"I know that’s not what you wanted to ask me, Great Virtue. You can tell me, you consider me a friend, do you not?"

The word friend, it hurts Mystic Flour Cookie when it comes out of Jasmine Rice Cookie’s mouth. However, it reminded her of one of Blueberry Milk Cookie's screenplays. One where two cookies love each other dearly and yet could not tell one another until one is finally gone. The feeling Mystic Flour Cookie has, it must be...

"Great Virtue? You've been staring into space for a while. I'll be heading back to the Temple," Before Mystic Flour Cookie knew it, Jasmine Rice Cookie finished collecting the herbs and motioned Mystic Flour Cookie to follow her.

"Jasmine Rice Cookie...what relationship do you truly think we have...? What are your actual feelings towards me?"

Jasmine Rice Cookie was surprised that Mystic Flour Cookie asked them that. They are aware that Mystic Flour Cookie was interested in a friendship between them. They know how their heart desires more, but the differences are too great. Jasmine Rice Cookie thought it is better not to say anything, and yet the Virtue was asking them directly.

"I..l..lo…"

--

Mystic Flour Cookie felt herself becoming confused. She was merely going to meditate and practise the powers to feel nothing. To become empty, leaving all desires behind. Instead of that, she thought of the time too long ago. That doctor was crumbled aeons ago. That doctor is nothing more than a speck of the past. Nothing more than a fool who's been gone. The fool who stood by her until the end.

That Jasmine Rice Cookie was a mere speck compared to the likes of her, Mystic Flour Cookie, the master of the Ivory Pagoda. The one who granted wishes to so many, the one who knows true enlightenment, the one baked with the power of Ancient Magic. Yet at times, that pest keeps coming back to her mind. That daydream has some part of her memories there...

"Pitiful memories…"

The pest is long gone, and she’s still here, spreading the words of true enlightenment. However, a small part of Mystic Flour's brain still holds them dear, something she would deny until the very end.

[lavender-butterfly-cookie]

I feel so early but whatever, can we get a Dark choco x reader? I think I'm the first but that's ok. Also, welcome to the fandom

Ah- very early, butterfly. I was expecting about a week or two before getting an ask and yet you're already here. But I guess it's better than nothing, right? I shall deliver for you!

Reader x Dark Choco cookie

You're a peaceful cookie who resides in the ivory pagoda. You normally wouldn't interact with those who travel in these parts, but one cookie caught your eye. His dough was dark and so was the cloak he wore. In all honesty, he stuck out like a sore thumb in these light lands. That's probably why you even noticed him in the first place.

Regardless, You were rather intrigued by this cookie. And so you followed him from a distance, curious to see what he was searching for. Despite how discrete you had been (or at least thought you were) it seemed your presence didn't go unnoticed for too long. The cookie stopped in his tracks before glancing around for a moment, as if looking for something. "He's looking for you, idiot-" you thought, and despite trying to shake it off as an overreaction, you knew it was true.

Eventually the cookie turns to your direction and stops moving, causing you to freeze as well as he stared in your direction. You kept still in hopes that maybe he'd think you were a statue or something. But clearly that wasn't the case as he spoke up.

"I know you see me."

He said. You remain silent, earning yourself a grunt of annoyance from him as he made his way to you. You shrunk back a bit as he stopped just in front of you and you didn't know what to do from this point. You were caught.

"Why have you been following me? who are you"

Knowing there was little to nothing else you could do but comply, you introduced yourself and explained your story and how you had never seen a cookie such as himself. When he saw that you meant no harm and wielded no weapon, he eased up. You went on to ask him why he was here and where he was from, even going as far as providing him guidance around since you knew this place well.

From there, a variety of conversations sparked between you two, and the longer you explored the place, the more comfortable you had both gotten with each other. You learnt his name was Dark Choco cookie, an ex-prince from the Dark Cacao kingdom. When you asked why he was an ex-prince, he didn't answer. Realizing it must've been a heavy topic for him, you retracted it and spoke more about these lands in order to change the topic.

And them came the part you didn't realize you dreaded so. You both stood in front of the temple where your master resided and explained her history to your new companion. Upon seeing a look of realization on his face, you figured that she might've been the one he was looking for. If that was so...

Your heart drops into your stomach. Why did he seek out your master?! For a wish? Maybe to combat her? No no, regardless of his intentions you couldn't allow him to go any further than this. Not only for your loyalty to Mystic Flour cookie, but also for his safety. You had spent majority of this journey explaining who and what your master was, and all that she could do. And yet, none of that registered enough in his mind if he didn't decide to turn back.

Before he could advance further, you stepped in the way and questioned him. Why didn't he turn back when you had foreshadowed what your master was capable of doing? What were his intentions? Was he too foolish to take the hint of how dangerous mystic flour cookie was and decide to just keep going? You needed answers, and you needed them now before he did something regrettable.

But he didn't answer them. A shadow covered his eyes and you could sense that he wasn't gonna provide you with the answers you needed. You had recalled how he mentioned that it was of great importance to him that he finishes what he came to do, and how he was ready to do anything to reach that goal. It became apparent to you now that he was serious about this and was willing to find a way to bypass you if you were seen as a potential threat, reluctantly so.

"Move"

He said, his voice dark, and yet it carried a hint of something else. What that something else could be evaded you. Part of you wanted to refuse, your loyalty to your master strong. But you had grown fond of this cookie, far more than you'd like to admit. You could fight, but what would happen if you won lost? Your master was dear to you. Not More dearer than a mere stranger. You had two choices. You could fight, or you could surrender.

Whatever you chose to do, however, ended in the same way. With tears and jam on your face. Darn, if only you weren't still fond of the one who killed you, huh? Part of you knows that he regrets it. Why else was the last thing you saw his tear filled eyes otherwise?

[ninbayphua-moyan]

Where The Harvest Moon Is Brightest

Sweat trickled down my back as I lugged my suitcase behind me along the five-foot ways of Penang. A sense of Saturday afternoon languidness hangs in the balmy air like a soft, heavy blanket, lulling you to sleep. A gentle breeze fleets through the walkway, pleasantly cool against the slight stickiness of my skin. I paused and took a deep breath, head tilted back with eyes closed, listening to the faint rustling of palm leaves. The air was steeped with the fresh, earthy petrichor of a recent shower, and tinged with undertones of the alluringly sweet scent of frangipanis.

          Loud giggles. Shrieks of laughter. Opening my eyes, I turned towards the sound and saw a group of children playing a game of ‘The Eagle Catches The Chicks’ on the street. They dodged and ran with unabashedly childish grins plastered onto their mud smeared faces, eyes twinkling with youthful glee and carelessness. I smiled. It wasn’t that long ago when I too was a little rascal playing on these very streets without a care in the world. I remember the days when the neighbourhood kids and I would play in the streets until our mothers called us in for dinner. Oh, the adventures we had! Climbing up trees; playing in the rain; racing the roti man down the street as he rides by on his bicycle. Ah yes……the roti man……how we used to wait for him to make his rounds each evening after school……The tinkling sound of the metal cup-like object being struck with an iron rod signalling his arrival…our short legs running, shouting ‘roti!’ until he stopped by the side of the road…the chaos that ensues as we crowded around him like hungry chicks waiting to be fed, coins held tight in our sweaty little palms……

          Then, I heard it. The familiar ‘Ting! Ting! Ting!’ of the roti man echoing down the street, as if summoned by my reminiscence of it. The children had heard it too. They ran towards the roti man shouting ‘roti!’, their game abandoned without a second thought. Instinctively, I started running as well, fumbling around my pockets looking for loose change to pay for the bread. I joined the little gathering crowd just as the roti man was getting off his bicycle. A tantalising aroma of freshly baked breads and buns wafted out the minute he undid the catch on the little glass framed doors of the meat-safe seated behind his bike. I couldn’t help but groan internally at the heavenly sight and smell. I watched as he slathered the savoury margarine and rich kaya onto thick slices of roti benggali, mouth watering uncontrollably. After a few minutes, he handed me a big bag of the bread to me and I dropped the money into his outstretched palm. He flashed me a quick grin before returning his attention to the next customer.

          Making my way back to the five-foot way, I stuck my hand into the plastic bag and brought out a piece of warm roti banggali. Biting into the bread, I felt my tongue melting. The crispy, golden crust and soft white crumb of the bread served as a fragrant base, a sacred chapel where the buttery saltiness of the margarine and the rich, creamy sweetness of the kaya sang, each in their unique tune before harmonizing into a heavenly choir and melding into one savoury mouthful of bread. Before I knew it, I had already finished a third of what I’d bought. Realising that I wouldn’t have any left by the time I reached my destination if I continued eating, I quickly knotted up the bag and hurried along.

          Ten minutes later, I came to a stop in front of a shophouse at the end of the five-foot way. A large ebony plaque hung regally above the doorway, my family name engraved upon it in golden Chinese characters. U-shaped terracotta tiles covered the roof and three full length louvred windows lined the upper floor of the two-story building. The pillars were adorned with painted, three-dimensional decorative plaster of beautifully crafted flowers. Majestic peonies and tender lotuses blooming, their elaborate and delicate carved petals unfurling elegantly. Majolica tiles lined the dado façade on the lower quarter of the walls, adding yet another splash of colour to the otherwise, dull and plain exterior. The carved timber ventilated doors stood wide open, each of its panel depicting legendary creatures of ancient Chinese folklore. The exquisitely detailed carvings of phoenixes never ceased to amaze me, even after all this time. Perching nobly on golden branches, their wings were spread wide as if to take off at any second as I gazed, entranced. Then, as the late afternoon sun shines upon their gilded bodies, it was as if those carved mystical beauties were suddenly brought to life. Their once dull sheen now aglow in brilliant shades of scarlet, orange and gold, almost as if they would burst into flames at any moment, just like in the myths of old, and be reborn from the ashes.

          The sound of fluttering wings and clear melodic chirruping snapped me out of my daze. Looking up, I saw a family of swallows roosting in their nest at the corner of the roof. Ah…it was that time of the year again wasn’t it…the swallows always left the nest as the harvest moon approached. I remember how excited I used to get when they came to roost in the spring and how sad I would be when they’d left as autumn drew near. A-Poh[1] would always pick the nest once the swallows had flown, clean it and turn it into a bowl bird nest soup. She always told me it was good for the skin as well as health but I was never sure how true these claims were.

          Peeking my head through the door, I announced my arrival home out of sheer force of habit. There was a loud clanging and scuffling from the kitchen as I heard a delighted shout. I had barely stepped across the threshold into the house before I was pulled into a tight bear hug by A-Poh, immediately enveloped by the familiar scent of incense and rice powder. She was strong despite her age and sometimes I couldn’t help but wonder if all her stories about bird nest soup were true. Pulling out of the hug, she gave me a quick look over and pinched my cheeks, complaining that I’ve lost weight again even though I hadn’t. I tried protesting but she shushed me with a fond pat on the cheeks and shouted for A-Gong[2] who instantly came wobbling out of the ground floor bedroom, a large toothless grin on his wrinkled face. He wrapped me into a warm hug whilst A-Poh hurried off into the kitchen, determined to stuff me up with food before anyone could stop her. I shook my head in resignation whilst A-Gong just laughed and ruffled my hair, amused.

          Pouring some pu-erh tea into two clay teacups, A-Gong motioned for me to sit down, asking about my time abroad. As we sipped on the earthy fragrance of the pu-erh, I told him about my time in the UK; about its miserably wet weather; its tasteless food; its strange customs; and how much I had missed home whilst I was away. Upon hearing that comment, he chuckled heartily, a knowing look in his eyes. He too had left the comforts at home at a young age, sailing the seas to unknown lands to avoid the war. When I asked if he ever missed Hainan and his childhood home, he would always smile a little wistfully but would then shake his head saying home for him was where my A-Poh, a content look upon his wisen face. Even after all this time, they were still as in love with one another as they were back then, just like the butterfly lovers from Chinese folklore.

          Halfway through our conversation, he suddenly stood up as if he had just remembered something. Giving me a wink, he disappeared out the door. I grinned, knowing exactly where he was headed off to. As I sat by the round wooden table in the living room, I gaze absentmindedly at the sparrows fleeting about A-Gong’s potted plants. The afternoon sunlight was streaming in through the lightwell, brightening the otherwise dimly lit interior. I remember still how my siblings and I would play hide-and-seek in the interior courtyard amongst those potted plants. Ah, those really were the days……

          Shifting my gaze, my eyes were immediately drawn to the majolica tile floor. Its kaleidoscope of bright colours a stark contrast against the plain wooden and rattan furniture. Come to think about it, those mosaic pattered tiles were probably what triggered my interest in art in the first place…oh, the afternoons I’d spend on those cool, smooth floor drawing and trying to mimic their intricate patterns and colours…..

          I was brought out of my reminiscence when a bowl of steaming hot pork dumplings was placed before me. Ahh…A-Poh’s pork dumplings. How I’ve missed it while I was away! Eagerly, I picked up the chopsticks and took a bite, my mouth immediately exploding with flavour. The saltiness of the pork meat marinated with soy sauce and sesame oil, the refreshingly sweet spring onions contrasting the meat’s saltiness, the delicately wrapped flour encapsulating it all, the slight bitterness of the herbal broth…this was my definition of heaven. Seeing me happily wolfing down the dumplings, she smiled and returned to the kitchen.

          I was only halfway through my bowl of dumplings when the intense aroma of spices and chili came wafting out of the kitchen, making my mouth water. There wasn’t a need to look. I already knew what it was A-Poh was preparing. And sure enough, she came tottering out of the kitchen a few minutes later with two big bowls of hokkien-mee. Taking a seat next to me and we both dug in. I took a big slurp of soup and my tongue was instantly set on fire, the spices clashing as they performed a tango on my tongue. I had forgotten how potent the chili at home were. My lips were turning a numbing red within seconds but that didn’t stop me from downing down the entire bowl of noodles. After all, no self-respecting child of Penang would ever be caught dead bested by a bowl of spicy hokkien-mee. A-Poh chuckled as she watched me switching comically between fanning my tongue and slurping down the spicy soup.

          Just then, A-Gong came walking in through the front door and I squealed in delight. He grinned, handing me the little plastic bag in his hands before sitting down. Like a child who was just given her Christmas present early, I happily started munching on the packet of ais kacang. The frozen sweetness of the shaved ice instantly cooled my burning mouth and I quickly took a few more mouthful. Content, I glanced at my grandparents and started noticing things that had previously escaped my attention. A-Poh’s once salt-and-pepper hair was now silvery white and her hands seemed more worn and wrinkled than I last remembered. The wrinkles on A-Gong’s face seemed deeper now and his hands, especially the one with a missing finger, shook a little more than they used to whenever he held something. Since when had they aged so much?

          Realising that I had stopped eating, A-Gong pushed the plate of pandan cake closer to me, urging me to eat. Now, I was never much of a sweet tooth but I was particularly fond of this green coloured sponge cake that just melted in your mouth like a piece of cloud. The mild, aromatic sweetness of pandan and the light, fluffy texture of a chiffon cake, a beautiful fusion between European cake-making techniques and locally grown ingredients.

          As I continued munching on the cake, I couldn’t help but smile, having realized how beautifully diverse my hometown was. Just like the pandan cake, it was a place where cultures of the East and West collided and coexisted in harmony. Yes…this little culture cocktail of an island was what I called home and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

NOTES:

[1] ‘A-Poh’ means ‘grandmother’ in Hainanese

[2] ‘A-Gong’ means ‘grandfather’ in Hainanese

[3] ‘Where The Harvest Moon Shines Brightest’ is a play on  月到中秋分外明，每逢佳节倍思亲 meaning the moon is brightest in mid-autumn; homesickness multiplies during each festival

Author's Notes:

Back with Part 4 also known as the final part of the short story slash prose pieces from uni series (this was the earliest piece I wrote in first year lol). The story takes place a year and a half after Part 3. A-Yun has finally graduated uni and has now gone home. All is well ends well. Yes I am aware that there is a slight glitch and A-Gong shouldn’t exist at this point but I wrote it before I wrote everything else so we’re bringing him back to life OuO Anyways, I hope you enjoyed reading Part 4~

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3  

Since exams are over and graded and I've officially graduated, I can finally post my work online without having to worry about Turnitin picking it up as plagiarism because apparently you aren't allowed to plagiarise yourself according to university which is absolutely ridiculous but I'm not the one making the rules here so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Also, please don't reupload my works without permission.

[gaylien51]

So this is the first chapter of my story. I’m a beginner writer so if you have any advice feel free to share.

Baron Draxum watched all his precious work go down in flames. The heat overwhelmingly and the fire still roaring. CRASH! Another part of the roof collapsed bringing even more damage. He cursed his now forever enemy Hamato Yoshi. As he begun to walk away from the ruins of his previous lab he thinks of how his lab was destroyed.A prisoner of big mama that he had his loyal gargoyles bring to him for his highly anticipated experiment of creating the perfect soldiers to rain hell upon the vile humans that lived above. The experiment consisted of 4 turtles, a red eared slider turtle, a snapping turtle, a soft shell turtle, and a box turtle. He looked down in his hands to see a small box turtle, the last of his experiments. “ You shall become the perfect soldier, the perfect success, you will be the downfall of humans, the rein of pure terror as everyone kneels down to our almighty power!” Achoo! He looked down at the box turtle in disgust. Ugh germs- and from a mutant turtle no less. He felt pressure on his fingers as he looked down to see the experiment nuzzle into his hands happily cooing and smiling at him. “There is much much much work to be done little one” he expressed with tiredness in his voice.

“ Uhhhh sir, no offense but your mortal enemy who you called us to capture because of his awesome fighting skills, ninjutsu and all that, has destroyed your lab place, burned it down to the ground, escaped with the 3 other turtles, and is most likely mutated into a rat and will raise the 3 other turtles if they survived, and will most likely prep himself over the years to come and fight you, has completely and utterly destroyed your work, soooooooooo where we living?”. Baron looked at the gargoyle on his shoulder (which he solemnly forgot about) and wore a frustrated and pinched expression as he explained the obvious. The other gargoyle on his shoulder also looked at him waiting for an answer to their question. Frustrated, tired,angry, and annoyed Baron Draxum argued in his head if he should kill them for their very annoying existence. “ We will rebuild our laboratory starting from the ground up and prepare experiment 42005 for his long and successful journey of destroying the humans!” He answered with determination. “ As for now we will visit the yokai city and remain there for the time being” he added. Both gargoyle looked at him and shrugged satisfied with the answers. “ hey as long as me and Muninn have a place to stay we’re a-okay with your plan boss man!” replied the gargoyle on his left shoulder. “ what huginn said!” Munnin, the gargoyle on his right shoulder said.

So Baron Draxum, Munnin, Huginn, and the experiment 42005 began their trek to yokai city and onwards to their journey of the destruction of the humans.

CRASH! Baron hurried out of bed and into his kitchen to see his experiment trying to cook breakfast for himself. Tiredness dripped in his voice as he asked “ Little one when I said you must learn survival skills such as cooking, I did not mean to make a mess of the kitchen” his racing heart calmed seeing his son on the counter unharmed but dirty with flour all over his clothes. Which was also on the counters and tables- and how did pancake mix get on the ceiling? All over the kitchen causing quite a mess.

“ I’m sorry da- I mean sir, I was trying to create a acceptable meal for us today but it didn’t go over quite well” replied his son with disappointment and frustration. “ Just make sure to clean this up and meet me in the lab for your training... we will eat cereal so you may have your breakfast”. Internally experiment 42005 groaned at just the thought of eating bland boring old nutritional rations that his dad called cereal. As his dad continued to walk away from him he quickly and expertly cleaned up his mess frustrated at his failed attempt at cooking. Usually he was quite good at this and created the best meals with whatever was stocked in the pantry but his mind was distracted with thoughts of what he’ll do today and this resulted in the mess before him. But he decided to not think too hard about it and stored those thoughts away and quickly finished up. He ran to the lab through the dark and creepy decaying hallways all colored the same dull gray and rusted. He then saw his dad and the left out “cereal” for him and proceeded to make his way to the table with the laid out food and sit and eat it hurriedly. His father in the background working on many technologies to improve their home and for his patrols.

“42005 today is your 13th birthday” his father said suddenly. 42005 stood up from his chair standing tall and proud as he’s always done since he can remember. “As you know I have been preparing you since birth to destroy the vile humans that live up above, the disgusting creatures who forced us down here into yokai city, making us soft, and stealing the surface from us, and- yadda yadda yadda I know dad you’ve been saying this since my birth!” Interrupted his son. Looking at him with a disgruntled expression he stared into his sons eyes as his son stared back. “Ha you blinked! I win” his son said with smug. “ENOUGH!, experiment 42005 you will listen to me! You know I hate interruptions!”. His son cowered a bit internally but did not show it out of fear for punishment. “ Yes sir, I apologize “ he said solemnly. Satisfied with his answer he continued on his rant about vile human as his son mentally bored with the same discussion hes heard again and again and waited for him to finish. “And that is why human are disgusting and you will go on to destroy the- Are you listening to me?!l he yelled. Startling his son out of his short nap. He sighed with dissatisfaction and drag his hand over his face. “ Proceed to training with Munnin and Huginn and the foot bots, later today we shall proceed with your far more intense training and then patrol will happen is that understood?”. 42005 flinched very subtly at the mention of the clan but replied yes and proceeded to go train. The training room was a stimulation his father made that can produce whatever needed. 42005 chose footbots this time as some early practice while waiting for Munnin and Huginn. He tried desperately to bury himself in his training tearing foot bot after foot boy apart with his mystic kusari fundo the fire ball shrieking wildly as their enemies were torn apart. He had started to train with the foot clan when he was 4 and learned quickly how cruel they were. Every mistake he made he was punished for severely. His scars aches just thinking of it. Burning, drowning, poisoned , whipped, and many other methods of torture he had to induce upon people or else he would be punished instead. They told him this was the way of the clan and that it was effective for enemies.They silenced him quickly with threats to not tell his father unless he wanted even more punishments. At age 4 42005 learned what the word discipline truly meant and when to enforce silence. He grew to be one of the most notorious assassins out there a product of the foot clan and his father. He was a cold blooded thirsty terrifying killers known as the fire akuma, the devil, the bringer of death, and many other names. All at the cost of his innocence. At age 8 his father found out about the horrible punishments after hearing the excuse one too many times he was hurt from patrol and training. His father accepted it too busy with projects and destroying humans to pay attention to him. Once he learned of the horrors being done to his creation he rained hell upon the foot and promised 42005 that no one shall ever harm him again. He started paying more attention to his experiment from then on making sure nothing tainted his creation. As time went they grew closer and acted more as father and son although Baron would never admit it as he was too prideful. Baron always felt guilty for his trauma and did his best to help him with it. Although he still had plenty nightmares from the screams he heard and bones being crushed and throats be big split- he was getting far too much in his thoughts. Baron never did explain why he allied with the foot - he never explained many things but 42005 learned to not question it. His father was still very guarded hence why he was never named an actual name instead of numbers.

SWOOSH! Oh right he was training! 42005 lassoed the foot bot who threw kunai at him and threw him at the wall effectively making him short circuit with his neck being twisted at an awkward angle. He proceeded to the next foot bit and threw his fiery friend into the foot not making an effective burning hole. As he continued on with his training his father watched him through the screen at his work station satisfied and proud of his son with what he was seeing. A few hours later 42005 had created and effective pile of destroyed bots and was panting heavily. Baron called for his son over the intercom that connected to the speaker within the stimulation room. Once 42005 came he stood in front of his father waiting for instructions as his patrol would begin soon.

“42005, you have done remarkably well since I have raised you and have succeeded my expectations, you will be sure to wipe out the human race and bring hope for us Yokai and mutants alike to rule the surface, and I am... p-“. Baron coughed on trying to swallow his ego and pride. “ what was that pop?! We’re you going to say-YES LETME FINISH, I just need a second”. 42005 looked smudged and excited staring at Baron who somehow managed to swallow his ego and proceeded with his original saying. “ Yes 42005 I am p-proud of you and I know for certain I can call you my s-son. For your birthday I gift you this and give you your name... Michelangelo” baron heaved a sigh of relief as Mickey squealed and jumped all over. His father had promised him when he was 8 that when he exceeded his expectations of him he would finally give him a name and 42005 or we’ll Mickey hadn’t let him forget since. It was a true sign of parental love and trust. Baron had struggled to do this for so long because he didn’t want to get attached to an experiment that could still fail and he might need to replace even if he started from scratch again. In truth he chose the name Mickey because he read about a renaissance artist once who was named Michelangelo and was highly successful. As Mickey grew up he promised great strength and ambition as well as intelligence but not in the way you think.

You see Mickey has ADHD which caused him to have trouble paying attention during lessons his father was teaching more focused on what to draw and having multiple thoughts in his head. He also constantly had to be doing something wether it was tapping his feet or humming a tune he heard or other things. This quickly annoyed his father as he didn’t know why Mickey was like this and at first assumed it was because he had a lot of energy since he was a child but it continued to happen as he grew up and then mood swings started to appear a lot more. So Baron decided he should look into it more and see what was wrong and found mickeys symptoms to match most of the adhd symptoms. He asked Mickey later that day why he had trouble paying attention and why he was so impulsive and as his son explained he concluded that he had ADHD. He felt guilty for yelling at his son so many times over something he couldn’t control and never asked why he did what he did. He looked up herbal teas and created many medications similar to those used for humans but instead for a growing teenage mutant turtle boy. Of course this didn’t cure his adhd and he’ll always have it but over the years they’ve learned to manage it and what medicines did and didn’t work. But because Mickey had adhd he had to find other ways to do things other solutions. This caused him to memorize skills and cooking and other acedmic stuff in several ways for example most things were labeled around their home and Mikey used lists in order to keep track of things. Once he got a phone he also put reminders on there and his father would also him remind him of his tasks. Growing up Mikey also had special interests such as games, technology, reading but mostly comic books, cooking, and creating art. His father encouraged his behavior as it helped for him to gain confidence and he was able to use it to his advantage in training and fighting. But when Mikey was with the foot clan he was mocked for his habits and drawings. They would tear up his drawings in front of him and beat him when he couldn’t pay attention or he was stimming. This caused him to have low self esteem and ptsd. His father was a busy man selling his creations and do in g business deals among the yokai city so often times he neglected Mikey. Mikey was angry at him for this and this caused a rift between him and his dad he was afraid and scared and needed his dad but didn’t want his dad to find out about the abuse. This left him confused angry and frustrated as well as draxum as he was emotionally stunted. Wanting to know why his son was acting this way he visited the foot clan without telling them and saw Mikey being cut and beaten in a fight as they yelled horrible words at him. This sent him in a rage destroying everything in his path and getting his son out of there. Once in the safety of their home Mikey spilled about everything like an overflowing sink as he kept crying as well. Baron unsure of what to do simply held his son tighter and listened. Once this happened his father became more protective of him but also trained him more to fight back against harmful people and they continued to repair their relationship.

“-ickey, Mickey, MICKEY!” Yelled his father. He rose to attention still full of energy but stood straight waiting for instructions . His father looked at him with his classic I- love-you-so-much-but-your-gonna-be-the-death-of-me look . “It is time to start your patrol, your task today is to find the needed chemicals I sent to your phone to create more mutagen for my oozesquitoes, stay safe out there my son” Draxum patted mikeys head with slight fondness and Mikey beamed at him. He then hurriedly made his way out of his home and towards yokai city. He snuck into a nearby alleyway and drew the symbol for the portal going through quickly to the surface world. He checked his black utility belt for all his weapons. “ I have my kunai, my shuriken, my tento, my kusari fundo, my protein bars -ughhhhhh, my sketchbook, pencil, yup! I think I have everything!” Mikey exclaimed. He skated rooftop from rooftop heading towards the old abandoned factory filled with chemicals his dad usually made him get for his experiments. He was wearing a black hoodie and mask that showed a wide grin of sharp teeth and his skateboard full with stickers that consisted of smiley faces, graffiti words, neon signs, gaming brands, etc. Patrols weren’t necessarily patrols more of errand runs for the human world unless it was an assassination for a human who wronged a fellow yokai. As much as his dad hated humans he worked with the ones from the foot clan for yet untold reasons and had Mikey assassinate humans who were especially evil. The foot clan had also messed that up for him taking away his in once when they started executing innocent people who wronged them and made him watch and kill them. He shuddered at the reminder and of things that still haunt his nightmares and shook his head to be clear of the horrific thoughts. As he jumped from the next rooftop he hears chatter that gets louder and ducks down on a balcony to spy on whoever’s coming his way. There he sees WHAT!?!? 3 OTHER MUTANT TURTLES dad said I was the only one, the only mutant turtle who was trained to be an assassin. Are they even assassins?!? What’s going on? Mikey thought.

Mikey can get angry and sadistic . Can be downright cruel and unforgiving. Can kill someone quick and merciless. He’s a soldier, an assassin, a demon if you will. His names is feared within the Yokai community despite not being a yokai. But that’s to be expected of Baron Draxums son. He’s proud of it and it certainly helps that his dad praises him for it. He’s a turtle or we’ll a mutant turtle ,created to be the perfect experiment. The only mutant turtle in the world. So why the hell does he see 3 other mutant turtles on a rooftop during his patrol?! Unless... No! They couldn’t be! Dad said they had died in the fire! They are dead...right? Or maybe someone stole dads work and mutated 3 other turtles for their own benefit? Or something??? Ughhhhhhh!

Mikey then peered up from the balcony to spy again as he saw the 3 mutant turtles talking amongst themselves and a ...human!!! Aren’t all Yokai supposed to hate humans?! This night just keeps getting confusing! Mikey then decided to look up again and as he shifted around he forget about the skateboard next to him

CRACK!!

The skateboard had fallen of the balcony and broke in two over a dumpster. Mikey froze as his breath was taken away. Slowly he looked up, only to find the turtles gone?

“ Huh? Where’d they go” Mikey climbed onto the rooftop confused and a bit hesitant And then heard some shuffling behind him. He quickly grabbed a Kunai and held it up to one of the turtles neck

“Uhhhh hi? Nice dagger you got there” Mikey stared fiercely at the turtle ready to kill if necessary.

[lailyn]

A Funny Turn

For @kymera219

Pairing: Loki/Tony Stark

Prompt: Epilepsy

The first time it happened, Tony did not think too much of it. He had seen Loki all manner of injured since he talked Loki into joining the Avengers on missions; the more dangerous they were, the better. Like a magnet, the Asgardian prince attracted trouble wherever he went, a magnet without which they would not have won half as many battles. 

So it all balanced out in the end, Tony figured; a concussion here, a fractured ankle there. If it meant victory, Loki was all for it, his all-too-human lover less so, for Tony was beginning to wonder if the latest knock to the head was one knock too many. Magical exhaustion, Loki had said. 

Magical exhaustion my ass, Tony fumed. In order for it to be called magical exhaustion, by definition, a magical act needed to have been performed, before any sorcerer worth his salt could claim to have succumbed to such a thing. 

No. Loki had simply been watching the television when it first happened with Tony by his side; one second, he was playing idly with Loki’s black curls (unearthly fragrant ever since Nat introduced him to bubble bars and bath bombs - which sounded terrifying and dangerous but were actually things you chuck in the tub when you feel like luxuriating in the bath after a long, hard battle) and the next, Loki was sprawled on the living room floor, frothing at the mouth, his limbs jerking erratically like a fish out of water. 

Tony did not panic. At least, not until the five-minute mark had passed with no sign of the seizure planning to cease anytime soon. The sight of Loki’s bluish lips sent a bolt of icy fear into his gut and Tony damn near broke his phone trying to get someone on the line, when all of a freaking sudden, Loki stopped flailing. 

After the hair-raising first ‘episode’, without waking, Loki sank into a deep sleep that had Tony obsessively checking his wrist for a pulse and his chest for spontaneous breathing every five minutes (despite reassurances from Banner and Dr Cho that Loki was fine, all his vital signs were fine). 

The next morning saw Loki all bright and cheerful and flipping pancakes, for God’s sake.

“Are you okay?” Tony showered Loki’s face with kisses and got doused with flour for his effort but he persevered, for not many things in the world could scare him like the sight of Loki shaking and blue (even if blue was Loki’s default setting, bless his beautiful Jotun form), “Are you really okay?”

“I’m fine! Stop kissing me!” Loki yelled, hitting Tony on the arm with a spatula. “What is going on with you?”

When Tony confronted him verbally about the ‘episode’, Loki only said, “Pish posh.”

When Tony confronted him with a five-minute-long video footage of Loki thrashing on the floor, his mercurial lover stared at the screen long after it had gone blank. 

“Magical exhaustion,” was the only explanation given Tony. 

What did Tony know about these things? He would have accepted the bizarre reasoning at face value had Loki not looked suddenly alarmed (a better choice of word would be terrified. Yes, Loki looked terrified) and the pancake all but forgotten. 

Of course, Tony did some asking around, and most of the Google doctors said the same thing: seizures were quite a common occurrence, one that could happen to just about anybody at any point in their life. And most people never experienced another episode after the first one. 

Well. Loki was not most people. 

Luckily (or not) the second episode happened in front of an audience, and Tony meant audience. 

Just the week before, Loki had saved a little girl from being thrown out of a tenth-story window by her mother who had fallen victim to one of Victor von Doom’s illusionary attacks and someone caught the rescue in all its magical glory on video. It spread like wildfire in a matter of hours. 

Of course, it warranted a medal ceremony that simply must take place; the mayoral election was just around the corner and Loki of Asgard could not possibly say no without having to answer questions. Loki hated nosy journalists; Tony did not mind them so much, especially the leggy ones.

So there Loki was, accepting his medal with the swagger of a successful pirate and all the surly demeanour of a teenager when lights flashed from the cameras and he dropped like a stone. 

“Medic!” Someone shouted. 

Never had Tony run up the podium so fast, but someone got to Loki before he did, and he damn near pushed the person off the stage before he realised who it was. “Strange!”

“Wong got a stomach virus,” Stephen muttered, already rolling Loki onto his left side to keep him from choking on his vomit. “I told him the tuna smelled funky.”

********************************

 

When Loki awoke, the unfamiliar surroundings had him scrambling for his magic to draw his daggers but the only thing he drew was a sudden bolt of pain spiking his temples. 

“Easy,” an annoyingly familiar voice said, deep and wary.

Loki gritted his teeth. “Second-rate.”

He should have known. The whole room smelled of incense and moth balls. 

“Loki, be nice.” Tony sounded hoarse, like he had been screaming. Or crying. “You’re at the Sanctum Sanitorium.”

“Sanctorum,” Stephen growled. 

“Tony, stop playing with my hair.” Loki flung an arm over his eyes. “What happened?”

“You tell me. And if you say magical exhaustion one more time…” Tony could not find the words to convey just how upset he was. 

Loki could not resist. He peeked through the crevice between his fingers. “You’ll what, spank me?”

“You stopped breathing on me, Bambi.”

Loki sighed. That would explain Tony’s red eyes alright.

“That’s unsettling.” He hoped his voice only sounded shaky to his own ears.

Stephen rolled his eyes. “Right. So here’s the lowdown. Ebony Maw left a piece of his torture instrument in your cortical gray matter back when you were...under.”

“Under.” Loki had to laugh. “Fancy choice of words, but accurate. In a manner of speaking.”

“You think this is funny?” Tony snapped. “Your heart stopped beating, Loki! If Stephen hadn’t been there - ” he choked.

“Tony,” Stephen called softly. “You’re not helping.”

Loki ignored his boyfriend and addressed the Sorcerer Supreme directly for the first time. “How do you know?”

“Because he practiced his art on me too,” Stephen said quietly. “Good thing Tony was there to stop him or I would probably be suffering from the same.”

Loki laughed again, a sad, soft chuckle. “I couldn’t get it out.”

“You knew?” Tony raged. “You knew you had that thing in you all this time and you didn’t tell me?”

“...I’m sorry.”

“Sorry doesn’t cut it, Lokes.” Tony snarled, fighting hard to keep his composure but failing spectacularly. “This thing could kill you. It almost did.”

Stephen watched as Loki regressed slowly back into his shell, his eyes glazing over as Tony’s rant fell on obviously deaf ears. 

“Stark, I think that’s enough.” He grasped Tony’s shoulder and pulled him away from the bed. “I can help.”

Tony stared into his eyes and Stephen saw the kind of crazed desperation he used to see on a daily basis, back when he was living his old life, cutting into people for a meaningful living. 

“I can help,” he repeated; Tony dropped onto the bed, shell-shocked. 

Stephen redirected his attention to his once-nemesis who had snapped out of his stupor, just in time. “I just need you to consent.”

He watched Tony promptly pick Loki’s hand up to rub it in between his palms, wondering just what he had gotten himself into and if this was even the right thing to do. 

“So what will it be?” The Sorcerer Supreme crossed his arms impatiently. “Let’s be quick about it, I haven’t got all day.”

But things happened for a reason. Wong picked today to be sick for a reason, leaving him one man down with noone to stand in as security detail at the function.

Mystical threats were everywhere, even at silly award ceremonies.

Tony’s jaw clenched in suspense as he waited for Loki’s answer; when it came, it was the most beautiful thing he had ever heard. 

“Yes,” the beautiful thing said. “Yes, I consent.”

 

THE END

[lit--bitch]

Current-Reads (13/04/20 - 18/04/20) 🎺🐝

(Disclosure: I know one of the writers (Annie Dobson) I’m featuring in the current-reads this week through Writing Squad. I also know Tom Bland who runs Spontaneous Poetics but I don’t personally know the two writers whose work I’ve enjoyed on the zine. And I don’t know anybody else sadly, probably because I’m a loner and a loser). 

Here’s the standard preface: every Sunday without fail I throw up the freshest literature and photography I’ve read over the week, sometimes it’s a book, sometimes it’s a piece I saw in a magazine or an online zine, sometimes it’s something I saw on social media, etc. Sometimes I add ‘RECOMMEND’ next to a few of the titles, but that’s not to say I don’t recommend all of them, I just love some pieces more than others. C’est la vie. And any titles that you see in bold are hyperlinked so if you click or tap them they’ll direct you straight to the source... or shopping basket. 

Anyway I’m just gonna get right into it. 

So this week I’ve been reading C.C. Hannett / kmwgh’s Lockdown Life and Charles Theonia’s Two Poems on Queen Mob’s Teahouse, I’ve read Haibun/Uncertainty/A Promise To Your Clothes from Jane Burns on Spontaneous Poetics and I flipped right back to September 2019 and re-read E.A.B’s have a wank because it’s fitting advice for our current predicament. I’ve returned to Patrick Süskind’s Perfume and I’ve been falling in love with Ariana Reines’s The Cow all over again, (whose new collection, A Sand Book, I’ll be reviewing in a few weeks time). Also been reading Annie Dobson’s Before The Ghost Town on the Writing Squad’s Staying Home series which boasts brilliant work. I can never get over how many amazing writers there are in the world. I’ve also discovered a new photographer with a brand new book out from Palm* Studios, Molly Matalon’s When a Man Loves a Woman. 

***

E.A.B’s have a wank, Spontaneous Poetics (21/09/2019): I keep going back to this specific piece because this poem makes you feel like you’re stood outside the John Snow in Soho, completely wasted, having a cig with a friend who’s also pissed up too. That’s the feeling I get from E.A.B’s work. She’s memorable and familiar and probably has a decent right hook. This poem is short, succinct, and means exactly what it means. I love work that is entitled quite plainly, in a way doesn’t subvert expectation—it’s tongue-in-cheek and funny. It’s also pretty good advice for when you’re in the midst of a global pandemic... or a personal crisis, I’m not sure what the difference is anymore. She also has another one up on Spontaneous Poetics, which is equally brilliant, blue balls at the end of humanity. 

Jane Burn’s Haibun/Uncertainty/A Promise To Your Clothes, Spontaneous Poetics (17/04/2020): This is a deeply sad poem eclipsed by grief and time’s relentless push and pull. It also has some absolutely beautiful personification, and it’s in the description of these vernacular objects that you really feel the subject’s hurting. ‘You’ is so empowering here, because it attempts to universalise the reader’s accessibility to the ardour of experience in this work, but is equally an attempt to sever the writer’s ‘You’ from themselves as ‘I’. This poem tells us that some pain is so painful, we can never fully accept that it has been ours to bear. 

Annie Dobson’s Before The Ghost Town, Staying Home from The Writing Squad (RECOMMEND): I’m not saying this just to be kind, all of the work on Staying Home is absolutely brilliant (discluding my own work, I promise I’m not that full of it) but Annie’s piece happened to be one of the first I read and I still think about it. Annie probably doesn’t know this but I stalk her writing. I’m her big fat secret admirer. Quintessentially British, her work smacks of kitchen-sink realism and cherry chapsticks you get in the chemist’s. I always get a noughties vibe from Annie’s writing, I always know what she’s on about. She doesn’t make the banality of life mystical, she treats the ordinary as well, just ordinary, and that’s magical enough anyway. Before The Ghost Town is a mish-mash of genres, it’s an essay but it’s a thought piece but it reads like a diary-entry and is formatted like poetry in some places. More than anything it’s a document on civilisation in Lewisham during the Covid-19 pandemic, and how full the world is still despite the reductive effects of a worldwide crisis. It’s a political critique on how fucked the UK government is, and how community is still one of the most valuable things we have in a world that is trying to make you fight over the last bag of fucking bread flour. It’s honest and sad and retrospective. It’s also filled with promise. I absolutely loved it. 

Molly Matalon, When a Man Loves a Woman: For a long time I shot pictures of men on 35mm to 120mm. I often felt strange doing it. I was used to the dogma of typical male politics; boys don’t cry, having a tough dad, penis envy, etc. It didn’t interest me anymore; the object of masculinity in its most vulnerable, in its deepest sensitivities was the impetus behind my desire to photograph men. Molly Matalon takes pictures of men I wish I had taken. But I don’t think she reverses the power dynamics, per se, although you can absolutely make the case for this, even argue her work is a case for the female gaze. But for me, she strips away these typical power dynamics, she doesn’t polarise herself as the subject, or the object. I don’t see tensions between sexes in these images. I see vulnerability, I see trust, I see relationships. I see men just as worthy of depiction as flowers, as fruits. I feel softness, I feel curves. The photographs in When a Man Loves a Woman are works of of idealisation of woman is implied by man, man as woman, woman as man, the fragile unity in these two creatures, and their reciprocations. She’s absolutely one to watch. 

Ariana Reines, The Cow (RECOMMEND): Ariana Reines is a writer so dear to me, that I can’t really contain in words just how much impact she’s had on me. I salute Elizabeth Ellen (a wonderful writer, and an editor at HOBART magazine in Los Angeles) who, one day, was moving apartments and very generously sent me a box of books all the way from the USA to my parents’ house in Manchester. In that box amongst many books lay Tiqqun’s Theory of the Young-Girl translated by Ariana Reines, and her debut collection, The Cow. So if it wasn’t for Elizabeth, I wouldn’t have read any Ariana Reines until probably much later on in life. At least, I’d like to think I’d have come across Ariana at some point anyway. 

The Cow was published in 2006 by my all-time fav magazine/publisher, Fence. The Cow isn’t poetry, isn’t prose, it’s not an essay, it’s just not any genre at all. And the fact you can’t categorise it is just really is emblematic of Ariana Reines as a writer, because she doesn’t redefine the dimensions of genres, she fucking blitzes them up in a big genre-food-processor. The Cow is the mythologisation and de-mythologisation of the woman as cow. It is the consumption and defecation of woman as cow. It is a lamentation. It is raw. It is beastly. It is thoughts and statistics and menstruation and abbattoirs. It is a dark work of art, and it’s one of the most beautiful, angry and strong texts I’ve ever read. It’s one of those books I think about often. I’d be engrossed on London tubes re-reading this over and over. It’s absolutely everything. 

Patrick Süskind, Perfume (RECOMMEND): Ah, the mothership. Patrick Süskind is... one of a kind. I borrowed the book from my best friend James and after reading it, I read it again. I still haven’t given back James’s copy (which I really need to), and I recently bought a UK first-edition of Perfume so now I can say it’s on my bookshelf. Reading Perfume is an intoxicating experience... I guess it’s because of the way Süskind writes about smell, and he writes about it so vividly that, for me at least, it can induce olfactory hallucinations. It’s not just about the story of a murderer with a superhuman power for scent, it’s about our relationship with different smells we come across throughout our life, their pungency and their ability to kind of tattoo our memory. You can recall scents in a way that you might not be able to with sounds. I don’t remember fully the way my maternal grandmother sounded, she passed when I was a little girl, but I still know her smell. It’s Youth Dew and sweets. Perfume induces sensations and memories in me. It’s a text I go back to time and time again. 

C.C. Hannett / kmwgh’s Lockdown Life, Queen Mob’s Tea House (03/04/2020): Queen Mob’s Tea House is a new fav of mine and their zine kind of reminds me of the Richmond Tea Rooms in Manchester’s Gay Village. They’re a bit Alice in Wonderland, a bit occult, a bit down-the-rabbit-hole, pink and sparkly, with black lace. If that description of the zine borders on pretension then, sorry. I have zine synaethesia. So these poems from ‘C.C. Hannett / kmwgh’ (I’m not sure I understand the name) were awesome little tidbits on living through a global pandemic. An ellision of pop culture, absurdity and tenderness. A reminder that we will never get this time back, and that if you’ve got the luxury of being with your loved ones right now, cherish it. I also really loved the last line of this guy’s bio, no social media handles or website, just: “You can find him if you want to.” Lol. 

Charles Theonia, Two Poems, Queen Mob’s Tea House (24/05/2017) (RECOMMEND): I loved both of these poems but I mostly wanted to talk about ‘shame’. I enjoyed ‘shame’ for its density—it’s a single block paragraph—the format has a weight to it, like that of feeling shame. I know this was published in 2017, basically I was just surfing the zine’s website and clicked on Queen of Pentacles (I was intrigued bc I read Tarot) and this was the  latest entry on there. I enjoy the bluntness and conversational-ism of these two pieces, but I particularly loved ‘shame’ for the way it unpacks shame as a multi-faceted, festering spawn that drags you under, and under, and under. Its resonance is powerful. 

*** Anyway that is enough from me zis week. Next Friday I’m reviewing Charlotte Geater’s poems for my fbi agent which is again from Bad Betty Press. Stay safe, eat cake. xxxxxx

[citypillow2-blog]

What Makes a Great American Food City?

What makes a great modern food city in America? Over the nearly five years I roamed the country as Eater’s national critic, this question almost involuntarily rumbled through my brain. Some standout criteria are obvious: A city’s dining culture needs baselines of excellence and eclecticism in every tier of restaurant. It needs first-rate grocers, farmers markets, and single-focus shops (coffee, ice cream, wine, bread, and pastries). Restaurant-goers should support culinary traditions but, at the same time, encourage creative momentum. And the “sense of place” about which food writers love to crow must include an innate respect for a city’s collective communities, both rooted and new.

But at some point during my wanderings, I realized greatness might boil down to the Long Weekend Theory. The core hypothesis is this: In most every American city with a sizable population and sufficient degree of cultural density, you can eat (and drink) with consistent pleasure throughout three leisure-filled days.

Almost anywhere, for example, you could kick off Friday at the irreverent cocktail bar; fill the major meal slots with the buzziest restaurant in town, the big-ticket splurge, and the indie marvels serving regional dishes from, say, Mexico, or Thailand, or Syria; go crazy at the do-what-we-want sandwich shop serving delicious monstrosities; moon over the soulful pie counter or the ice cream parlor concocting mind-jangling flavor combinations; and wrap it all up with one final blowout at the coolest breakfast hangout in town.

So the real test of a superior food city is, what would happen if you kept eating past the dreamy Monday-morning breakfast?

In a merely standard city for dining, a steep drop in quality and enticement becomes evident. Other hyped restaurants wobble in execution; places serving similar cuisines seem to duplicate one another’s menus. A great food city surpasses the long-weekend itinerary. It is replete with restaurants that deliver their own unique versions of the special something that can make dining out one of life’s sincerest joys.

Of course it’s unrealistic to expect that every meal at every restaurant will be near-mystical in any place. But an exceptional dining town has enough restaurants delivering abundant individuality and constant attention to detail that the choices don’t feel limited to a dozen or fewer true standouts.

Our most immense and our most richly aesthetic metropolises (New York, Los Angeles, Houston, Chicago, San Francisco, and New Orleans) can pass this test easily, as do the expected smaller urban centers whose food scenes draw plenty of notice, like Austin, Charleston, and Portland, Maine.

But what about a place like Phoenix? It’s the fifth-largest city in the United States by population, and, including adjacent cities such as Scottsdale and Chandler, the country’s 11th-largest metropolitan area. Despite its magnitude, Phoenix’s restaurant scene largely goes overlooked in the national media. There’s a vague perception of the city as an indistinguishable, sprawling flatland full of middle-of-the-road dining options, many of them chains. Local publications are acutely aware of its reputation as a culinary dead zone.

Scattered national acclaim does materialize. Veteran local chefs like Kevin Binkley (chef-owner of the tasting menu restaurant Binkley’s) and Silvana Salcido Esparza (lauded for her Barrio Café and sublime chiles en nogada) receive steady nods as James Beard semifinalists. Chris Bianco, whose game-changing Pizzeria Bianco has made him the country’s most famous pizzaiolo, is Phoenix’s most recognizable food ambassador. On a countrywide level, that’s about it.

I’ll admit to largely ignoring Phoenix on my Eater beat. I went once during those five years, and even then sped through only a polite survey of the town — I was really there to research a story about Bianco and how his dominion had grown since I’d first tasted his pizza in the 1990s. This past September, the Association of Food Journalists held their annual conference in Phoenix. I didn’t go, but the few attendees I informally polled about their dining experiences didn’t seem overly impressed.

Still, I wondered if treasures had gone unnoticed. Latino residents comprise 41 percent of the population: Surely they were paragons serving specialties from the neighboring Mexican state of Sonora? Ranching and agriculture is a $23.3 billion business in Arizona, and the intense heat equates to unique growing cycles: Asparagus was in high season during the February when I blitzed through Bianco’s restaurants. What other chefs were plugged into the rhythms of the Arizona seasons, and how were they expressing them? Dominic Armato, dining critic for the Arizona Republic, ate hard to compile a recent list of his 100 favorite metro-area restaurants. His roster of curries, tacos, tasting menus, biscuit sandwiches, and dishes that defy easy labeling makes a compelling case for the scope of local dining.

So in October I returned to Phoenix to see if the Valley (as its metro area calls itself) could pass — or surpass, really — the long-weekend test. I came for seven days to understand dining in Phoenix as best and as quickly as I could. A week, obviously, could never be enough to truly absorb the depths of a city’s food culture, though I trusted it was enough to judge if we’ve all been missing something. Or not.

Dinner at Tratto, a handsome restaurant of calming white walls and oak in the Town & Country shopping center, began with chicken livers spread over some righteously charred toast. Sweet-sour plum jam offset the livers; the fruit was left in big, melting hunks and scented with lemon verbena. Wide-mouthed rigatoni came next, sauced in a guinea hen ragu whose lightness felt ideal for a warm Arizona fall evening.

Conveniently located right next door to my favorite branch of Pizzeria Bianco, Tratto is the restaurant I’d most fervidly recommend to anyone visiting Phoenix right now. The finessed cooking, focus on stellar ingredients, and spirit of generosity put it on par with the finest modern Italian restaurants in the country.

A colleague and I ended up sharing the pork chops with apples, and a side dish of garlicky oyster mushrooms, with the group of four seated next to us; it was our sixth meal of the day. We were pointed toward a bottle of Klinec Medana Jakot, a funky Slovenian varietal that was as orange in color as it was in its citrus-blossomy notes. The wine saw us through to the finale, a wedge of custardy lemon tart exactly right in its simplicity.

Tratto opened in 2016 to rhapsodic reviews by local critics. Why don’t more people know about it coast to coast? As a maker of best-new-restaurant lists, I’ll speak to my own (flawed) thinking: Chris Bianco owns Tratto, and I didn’t think he needed any more attention. Yet Bianco has moved into a career phase where he is as much or more of a restaurateur and mentor as he is a chef. At Tratto, he cedes some of the spotlight to the energized team of chef Cassie Shortino, pastry chef Olivia Girard, and beverage director Blaise Faber for the day-to-day operations.

Bianco steps into more of an advisory role at Roland’s Cafe Market Bar, an all-day restaurant launched last year as his collaboration with Armando Hernandez (who previously worked for Bianco), Seth Sulka, and Nadia Holguin. In my long-weekend matrix for Phoenix, Tratto is the Friday-night stage-setter, and Roland’s is the Monday-morning finale. Hernandez and Holguin, who are husband and wife, also run three-year-old Tacos Chiwas on McDowell Road, a bastion of old-line Mexican restaurants northeast of downtown. “Chiwas” riffs off of Holguin and Hernandez’s heritage; both have roots in the northern border state of Chihuahua. The tacos and burritos at Chiwas are solid, but the gorditas — yawning wheat-flour pockets most memorably filled with deshebrada roja (shredded beef in red chile sauce) — steal focus from every other dish.

At Roland’s, the Mexican-with-hints-of-Italian cooking is uplifting and individualistic. An open-faced (read: pizza-shaped) quesadilla dotted with mortadella and asadero cheese is a palpable tribute to Bianco, whose company provides the organic Sonoran wheat flour for the tortilla on which the quesadillas are built. Yet this is really Holguin’s show — an expression of la cocina norteña (the cooking of northern Mexico, born of its desert and Gulf of California geography) that merges her background and her culinary training.

Beyond the fantastic quesadillas (they rightly star on the breakfast, lunch, and dinner menus), the entomatadas highlight Holguin’s precision with textures: crisped and stacked corn tortillas bathe in chile-spiked tomato sauce, fused by shredded asadero melting in the heat, and crowned with a fried egg. Alongside the flaky, painstakingly plaited empanadas filled with cabeza (beef head meat), ask for an array of salsas, bright in color and flavor, that aren’t automatically brought to the table. Chihuahua is the spiritual home of the burrito; Holguin fills her concise, captivating version with pork saturated in ruddy, garlicky chile colorado.

Breakfast or lunch at Roland’s makes for an apt conclusion to a long-weekend agenda, especially in how it frames la cocina norteña: This is a chef ascending to her deserved platform. If in a decade Phoenix becomes nationally synonymous with chefs ingeniously upholding and interpreting variations on northern Mexican cuisines, I predict Roland’s will be seen as a major touchstone in that progression.

Before a meal at Roland’s, seek out some Sonoran- and Chihuahuan-style cooking throughout the Phoenix metro area: It puts a nationally under-sung aspect of the city’s culture in delicious perspective. A rambling Saturday outing began for me with those lush wheat-flour gorditas at Tacos Chiwas. At the original Carolina’s Mexican Food, not far from downtown, sunshine slipped through narrow windows, revealing a nearly imperceptible blizzard in the streaks of light. The air was filled with flour; Carolina’s doubles as a tortilla factory. I ordered a simple, blazingly hot burrito wrapped around scrambled eggs and machaca — a Sonoran staple of dried and rehydrated beef, served shredded and often combined with other ingredients.

I’d return to Carolina’s for the atmosphere, but El Horseshoe Restaurant, on an industrial stretch west of downtown, is the place to truly savor homemade machaca for breakfast. Here, the Avitia family sautees it among potato, egg, and onion, its concentrated beefiness permeating every molecule of the dish, with sides of rice, beans, and a freshly made tortilla. The state of Sonora, beyond its desert interior, stretches across much of the Gulf of California’s eastern coastline; Horseshoe serves a restoring version of cahuamanta, a classic brothy stew bobbing with shrimp and pearly hunks of manta ray.

For a deeper immersion into regional seafood dishes, I swung by El Rey de Los Ostiones, a seafood market in a low-slung strip mall northwest of downtown. The bilingual staff graciously quizzed me on my tastes, finally delivering customized aguachiles and ceviches full of shrimp and oysters, along with several kinds of hot sauce and other condiments to tweak the seasonings. A 10-minute drive from El Rey, I had my favorite tacos of the trip at Ta’Carbon, an always-packed draw specializing in carne asada (among other meats like lengua and cabeza) grilled over mesquite.

Before the afternoon ended I veered off the Sonoran trail for a “taco” of another kind: a puffy, palm-scorching, mood-elevating flatbread filled with green chile-laced beef, refried beans, and cheese at the Fry Bread House, a Phoenix institution started in 1992 by Cecelia Miller of the Tohono O’odham Nation.

Restaurants serving American Indian cuisines are too few around the country and in the Southwest. Kai, the flagship restaurant at the Sheraton Grand at Wild Horse Pass and one of the Valley’s toniest dining experiences, vaguely themes its dishes in Native American directions with indigenous seeds and beans and plants. But really, Kai falls more into the category of modern-American splurge restaurant.

The signature grilled buffalo tenderloin came surrounded by sides and adornments straight from 1990 — smoked corn puree, cholla cactus buds, a light chile of scarlet runner beans, chorizo, a drizzle of syrup made from saguaro blossoms — that manage to coalesce. That entree is $58. The setting, with the sun disappearing behind mountains in the distance, is gorgeous, but for a more consistently dazzling and sure-file splurge, I’d suggest Binkley’s immersive tasting menu, or Silvana Salcido Esparza’s Barrio Café Gran Reserva for beauties like pan-seared corvina served with rose pepper mole sauce and salsa fragrant with smoky morita chiles (and her chiles en nogada, as superb as ever).

On Sunday, I needed extra coffee to jolt me after Saturday’s taxing schedule. A skillful macchiato and pour over at Giant Coffee animated me. First stop: Little Miss BBQ. Every major city in America has a pit master whose next-level dedication has pushed its scene to great smoked-meat raptures in recent years. Scott Holmes achieved this in Phoenix with his blackened, barky brisket, deliriously fatty in the style of Austin’s famed Franklin Barbecue. Loved the on-theme smoked pecan pie for dessert.

Second lunch, a restaurant recommended by local food-writer friends, was the trip’s sweetest surprise. I’d been briefed on the setup at Alzohour Market. Owner Zhor Saad takes orders and prepares the tiny restaurant’s Moroccan specialties herself. I poked around, looking at the clothing and candies and bric-a-brac she sells in the retail space adjacent to her dining room while I waited for bastilla, the sweet-savory masterpiece traditionally made of spiced pigeon and roasted almonds wrapped in phyllo and dusted with sugar and cinnamon. Saad substituted shredded chicken in her bastilla, but it was among the best versions I’ve had in America. Her lamb tagine was nearly as poetic.

Charleen Badman, chef and owner of FnB, also regularly appears on Beard semifinalist lists; her restaurant in Old Town Scottsdale gave me the trip’s most accurate and evocative sense of Arizona’s growing cycles. Salads of persimmon and pistachio, or little gem with pears, plums, and pecans; rice-stuffed squash blossoms with a riff on shakshuka made with summer squash; sheets of pastas entwined with foraged lobster mushrooms: I felt myself settle into the land in Badman’s dining room. Like many modern chefs, she thinks about flavors globally. For example, wonderful lamb manti (Turkish dumplings) dolloped with yogurt, sprinkled with pine nuts, and served in butter flecked with urfa chile was one of several dishes that evoked Middle Eastern cuisines. That dish also paired well with a fairly spectacular syrah from Rune Wines, a luminary among Arizona’s maturing viniculture industry.

I sat finishing the last bites of huckleberry-lemon sponge cake with fig-leaf ice cream, thinking that in a city with a glossier dining reputation, Badman and FnB would be basking in even more accolades. If I’d have beelined to Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport right after this dinner, I would have climbed into the heavens happy and sated.

A quartet of Addison’s favorite tacos in Phoenix, at Ta’Carbon

Assuming that most people don’t gorge through a city like a food critic on a research jag, I’ve detailed more than enough meals to exceed a long eating weekend in Phoenix. (And here I’ll fill in a couple of potentially empty slots in the Long Weekend Theory itinerary I vaguely followed above: You can drink as well as you eat at Tratto, but for a pre-Friday night dinner starting point, the move is Bitter & Twisted Cocktail Parlour, cheekily located in a building where the Arizona Prohibition Headquarters was once housed. Also, for a second breakfast option, try local darling Matt’s Big Breakfast for Americana personified.)

Sure, there were ups and downs as I continued grazing through the area. Other charmers included Pa’La, where Claudio Urciuoli writes out his affordable daily menu on a chalkboard behind the counter, anchored by a top-shelf mix-and-match grain bowl. But there were mid-level letdowns, too. Two memorable disappointments came from newer arrivals with strong local word of mouth. Maybe I totally misordered at Cotton & Copper in Tempe, but the oddly mealy corn dumplings in parmesan cream and carpaccio topped with citrus segments and chunks of chewy cheese felled my dinner at the bar. And I was intrigued by the promise of “modern Southwest cuisine” at Ghost Ranch in Chandler; that amorphous genre could use some sharp redefining. I didn’t find it in a ho-hum sampler platter (pork and chicken enchiladas, cheese-filled chiles rellenos, grilled skirt steak) and bland grilled chicken with polenta and green chile jus.

Overall, though, I left impressed by Phoenix. I knew there were pleasures and pockets of potential gems I’d left untried: dim sum at Mekong Palace Restaurant in Mesa, other serious pizzerias spurred by Bianco’s success, and upscale stalwart Rancho Pinot, for starters. But even after only a week of immersive gorging, it’s clear that dismissing the Valley as a snowbird’s destination for chains and lowest-common-denominator palates is anachronistic and plain wrong. I’d nudge other national food writers to come test out the Long Weekend Theory here for themselves. Is Phoenix’s restaurant culture on par with a similar sprawl of urban vastness like Houston? Not yet. Is the breadth and depth of dining better than most of us are giving it credit for? It won’t take more than a few happy, immersive days of eating to know the answer is: absolutely.

Bill Addison is a food critic for the Los Angeles Times; he was Eater’s roving national critic for nearly five years until November 2018. Fact checked by Pearly Huang Copy edited by Rachel P. Kreiter

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Source: https://www.eater.com/2019/1/23/18183298/best-restaurants-phoenix-scottsdale-tempe

[tgr489]

… to another dimension, play close attention

Nice title, befitting of the below and homage to the legendary Keith Flint who tragically passed away recently.

I’ve been lying low for a while, not because I’ve done anything dodgy but trying to make sense of some developments. Always trying to make sense of things me. This is different though. So in the run up to Easter, the end of lent and me finally being able to eat sugar I caught up with Lily a great friend of mine whom I met when travelling through Asia. She’s a real hippy chick that wears lots of tie dyed hemp clothing, has feathers woven into her dreads and is very much in touch with the spiritual plane. She came to town to see someone and wanted to ask a favour so we had lunch, her treat, nothing special. A simple favour really, to design a tattoo. She gave me the details of what she wanted and why so I’m set. Have designed many tattoos in the past and always happy to have a go and even if my ideas aren’t what gets finally drawn the inspiration is there to expand upon. It’s a personal thing she wants so won’t go into it here.

Anyway over lunch we chatted about stuff, my trials of lent and our recent exploits since we last met (nearly 2 years ago!). We got onto therapy and she asked if I’d ever tried Ayahuasca. I hadn’t but read and heard lots about it, she told me more. She spoke of a retreat she was going to, and had been several times, and that she would refer me to the ceremony leader. It sounded interesting and mystical, plus a bit of psychedelic action sounded like it could be good for a change. Have done some good time with shrooms and acid in my youth and always found it awesome, so what could this be like.

Had an introductory call a week later with the Shaman (that wasn’t his title but that’s what I’ll call him) and we delved into lots of therapy type Q&A, to make sure I’m no nutter I suppose and then he said an invite to the week would be forthcoming, along with a diet to follow in the two weeks leading up to it. A diet I asked, what was on it or more importantly NOT on it? he didn’t say but when it came through I had a second thought as to whether I’d made the right decision. No dairy, meat, chilli, peppers, cooked tomatoes, white flour, white rice, caffeine, weed or salt! How was I gonna do it I wondered. Much like sugar, salt is in practically everything so some careful planning was required to avoid it. It was a fucking tough couple of weeks but it was stated it enhanced the ‘ceremony’ without those toxins in our bodies. The email said it may take a day to get back into normal life. Fuck, 4 days on psychedelics would see me needing a bit more than that I thought, so I opted not to take the bike as I’ve not ridden in ages and took the train, and I really appreciated it on the way back. Lily picked me up from the station closest and we made our way, but only after she left her details on a car windscreen because she backed into it…. I haven idea haw she was granted a licence.

There’s something about going to a retreat. If I hadn’t gone with a friend I think I’d have not made the final 400m. The whole place felt like some death cult religion. An old farm house the hills which had been hired for the week…. If I had a bad trip would I be screaming of demons in the woods like the Evil Dead? Knowing Lily had been 3 times before chilled me out. I was introduced to the shaman and after meeting everyone in the group we sat down to a talk through of what would happen. With the formalities out of the way we all sat don to a pretty awesome vegan lunch which I was conflicted over. As this was the last time I’d be eating for 15+ hours my instincts told me to load up, but knowing the downside of sporadical radical purging, I was somewhat restrained. The last thing I wanted to do was to be so out of it I’d be shitting myself uncontrollably. Lunch put me at ease and everyone there had some form of deeper connection to the planet, either in what they did or in what they’d done, spiritually. I had this strange sense of ‘knowing’ someone the group, you know the feeling you get when you’re sure you’ve met someone before? I have a pretty good recall for faces, especially those that have come into my life for a purpose so this feeling is one I tap into when it’s presented. I’ve briefly touched on serendipity andI’ll come back to it I’m sure, meeting people at the right timer the right reason has happened me so often I have to trust it. Everyone I talk to about this thinks I’m bonkers and shouldn’t read too much into it sit happens to everyone to a degree. This I knows true but for me I think happens more than most. I’ve digressed, so I’ll come back. With lunch out of the way we were pretty much left to ourselves to wander around the area and take in all natures beauty, so I took in a long stroll with Lily and Jack, an exec level guy at Warner Music. We shot the shit telling our stories, Jack quite captivated by Lily’s stories of our hedonistic time in Asia, which is how she came to be so into the spiritual side of things.

We reconvened at 5 where we had to surrender our phones for the remainder our stay and change into our ceremony clothes. These were white scrubs so we all looked like inmates, the cult was taking over. I figured if I’ll be sitting in a pile of my own bodily excrements better to be not doing it in my own gear. Walking into the ceremonial hall I had a small streak of fear run through my body. Seeing all the floor mats arranged in a big circle with a bucket at the end of each was a stark reminder of what was almost certainly gonna happen. We got comfy then the ceremony started. Prayers to the spirits, some pipe smoking, blessings and aligning of the chakras and we were all set as the sun dipped below the horizon. We all received our cup of the sacred vine juice, which looked just like bile and when the time came to drink, tasted a bit like liquorice, but muddier. Another prayer of thanks and safe journey and we were left on our own, in the silence. How I wanted my phone to listen to some music. After some time, seemed like an hour, the shaman started singing and playing his drums quite softly, and this was really good as it gave me something to focus on. I realised why the musical interlude when shortly afterwards one by one those in the room started throwing up which pretty much continued for the remainder of the night in varying degrees of intensity. Trying to block it out and focus on myself was hard and I was getting nothing, so was welcoming when the shaman kindly touched my arm and asked if I wanted some more medicine. I accepted, why not, better to be all in I thought and gulped down the cup of allsorts.  The night continued, every now again I’d hear a sob between the gut wrenching purging of others and eventually I started feeling the effects. The visuals were so intense and reminded me of occasions when I’d had similar in the past. I was glad I’d brought my sketch book as I wanted to remember this and get it down the following day. The only thing I did manage to reminder the following day was the slime pulling apart which was shown to me in black and white, but in my peripheral vision the colours were so intense I was forced to look at them, but when my eyes made it there the colours bleached. This happened everywhere I looked so I could never experience those colours in full. Every stretching strand I looked at was the same pulled design, but made of glass, or metal, organic matter, plastic, . Within each band I saw more bands and bubbles and within those more of the same.What was this telling me? What was I supposed to be seeing? The shaman sang a song of thanks and told us the night was complete and if we wanted there was some fresh fruit in the dining room. My eyes opened and the visuals ceased immediately. I was hungry so made my way out of the pitch black hall by memory, congratulating myself when I’d made the door without stepping on anyone, or a bucket.

Pineapple had never tased as good as it did that pre-dawn morning. Once started I didn’t want to stop so swapped to apple wedges  dipped in cashew butter, of which I ate about 3 apples so called it a day as didn’t want to be labelled as the fat or greedy guy. There were others surfacing and we exchanged stories, most were far more personally revealing than mine. I’d missed out on ‘getting in’ which was common the first time you take the medicine, but I wasn’t down about it because I still had a good time - I didn’t chuck my guts up or shit my pants after all.

The second night followed in the same format, but this time I ‘got in’. I was shown my brain and all the things I constantly think about which is many. It was like looking at all my browser windows laid open from an aerial perspective and I was diving into them, seeing a snippet of it, then through it and into another for the same fleeting views. This went on, over and over and over until I was reaching for my bucket. As soon as my eyes opened the sensation and visuals were gone but every time my eyes closed it was full tilt. Throwing up didn’t help much but when I had no more to give I was euphoric. There was a constant theme of imagery and that was Elise. I was shown videos of us of the times I want to remember and those that I hadn’t remembered, but told of the lies that were there and I’d overlooked, or had wondered about but dismissed. The windows were closing as I came out of them, was this my brain deleting them as I went, forgetting them forever. I tried to remind myself of what I’d already seen but couldn’t because newer things kept coming relentlessly. Was I gonna relive the whole relationship again I wondered. I came out of the diner and I could feel anger and sadness all over my body. The street was busy and familiar but I din’t know from where. It was raining hard and I needed to get dry and there was no respite until I saw an umbrella in the distance, motionless. When I got to the spot a man was standing with his back to meat dry as you like. As I approached to take shelter he turned and it was the shaman and he said ‘time for some fruit’. I was wide awake staring at the ceiling and I could hear some of the group around me making moves for the door.I lay there for a while digesting what had happened and teethings I’d seen. What was the medicine telling me? One to ponder the following day.

The 3rd night was worse, much worse. I saw my friend Andy and he was asking me why I’d not been in touch recently. I could feel guilt but immense sadness at not seeing him in so long. Should I feel this way? I’d not thought of my old college friend for a loooong time which now seems a lifetime ago. He’s dead, has been for a while. A fight on the street one night saw him stabbed many times. The effects of that knocked me for six and I did a runner to Asia. Running away from things… We were talking about an idea without actually saying what it was, but how we’d make this thing into something really big. I was excited at our prospects feeling his energy and letting it flow through me, understanding what he was telling me, without actually knowing what the fuck we were talking about. Someone else joined us but they were facing away, talking to Andy, then Andy said he had to go. ‘It’s been good to see you Rye, will probably be longer until the next catch up’, were his parting words and was gone behind me and when I turned round I was looking back at the other person but from Andy’s position. The newcomer was Rich, his cheeky smile radiating across his face, an older friend from my school days. He’s also dead, killed in a car crash our last year of school, along with 2 others from our year. He just said ‘Well, aren’t you going to ask me?’ I couldn’t think of what he was on about so he turned to leave, handing me a postcard as he did. The picture was of a dark blue car at the edge of a field under some trees, on the flip side was written ‘ call me when you remember. I was offered more medicine by the shaman, I took it. When I settled back down on my bed and closed my eyes I was immediately somewhere else. I was queuing up in the dark standing next to Carly, the sister of someone I’m not really friends with any more (it’s a complicated one). I was watching this event again, exactly as it happened, but I was flooded with absolute fear, even though we were laughing. She was telling me about the guy who was hosting the house party we were going to (and went to) the following day and what some of the people there would be like. Movie people and the hanger-ons. I remembered the party and wanted to tell her things but I couldn’t say anything, it was so frustrating. We were nearing the front of the line and the realisation of my fear became apparent as I knew what was going to happen next so I prepared myself for the run I knew I was about to make. I looked around to see if I could spot the person who was going to commit the crime and grabbed Carla’s hand. Then I saw the incident all over again in glorious technicolor, we were at the front of the line and the doorman was asking us to come forwards when his face exploded and he dropped to the floor, revealing a guy behind him with a gun already making to run. We made off too but in the opposite direction along with everyone else outside to the sound of more shots. I was gripping her hand so tight as we ran, my heart in my mouth, all I wanted to do was stop and puke, which I did when we found the alley way. We looked at each other, covered in that poor guy’s blood, again wondering what had happened and why. As we got up to leave Carla said we should go in here, motioning to a door I didn’t remember from previous. It seemed like the right course of action but it hadn’t happened that way before. I walked with her and she opened the door. Inside was semi dark but there was light from a darkened window framing two people in silhouette. I knew where I was, I’d been here once before, and I knew the people. I turned to Carla and she was gone and I was left holding the postcard. I knew what I wanted to ask Rich now, and I also knew the answer he would give me. I walked further into the room and my mother’s face came out of the shadow. ‘Come and sit down Riley, you look tired,’ she said, motioning the chaise. I will write about this particular moment separately because I’m still trying to understand what exactly happened and how best to convey it. The feeling of cuddling my parents again, smelling them, touching their skin was amazing. As I awoke at the end of the night I was an absolute mess, I’d been crying so hard I could feel the pain in my chest and I had some serious snot all over my face. I was so distraught I didn’t leave my bed until the following lunch.

Night 4 - The grand finale. This night I decided to add fuel to the fire and try some Hapé along with the Ayahausca. It lived up to the description of focussing the mind, once I’d got through the searing pain in my sinuses and the fountain of tears. I saw more of the same visuals from the first night but this time I could actually look into the bubbles in the strands and see what’s actually going on. The bubbles represented decision points in my life, all the important ones and the trivial. As I looked at all the strands I saw the thousand upon thousands of tiny bubbles. Could I go to any point and change the outcome? I was told no, not at this time. The more I looked around I saw more of these strands in their different colours and the colours represented different people’s consciousness that intertwine with mine, some more prominent than others. I asked to see Elise and it took me to that place where we ‘mesh’ and whilst I tried to look at her strands and the bubbles within, they were blocked/blurry. I asked how many of these decisions may have been about her telling me the truth, but got no reply. Our intense relationship, living in each others pockets and it never came up, or it started to surface and I turned a blind eye to it, subconsciously wanting it to not be true. I think I’m done with her now. I woke up and walked to the dinning room for some food, the realisation of what I was telling myself washing over me and it was hard to take. I’ve given her an ultimatum which will be hard for her to deliver against, but not impossible, and I do want her to, but I can’t wait around for that and I should maybe just chalk it up to a a lesson learnt. 

There’s some weird shit going on with this DMT and I’ve learnt that we are all connected. The ‘medicine’ we took was like upgrading the operating system on my laptop and watching it all happen and being able to dive into anything at any point. It was an intense time that I glad I went through and I think I’m gonna do it again at some point, it was like 100 therapy sessions in one go without the difficulty of explaining things in great detail. The people I met were amazing and will try and keep in touch, especially with those that live close enough to meet up. I met with Warner Jack last week as he may have some work for me in the form of some music videos. Not made a music vid for ages so If it comes off it’ll be great, although it’ll probably mean working over the summer, which I’d kinda planned not to do, but we’ll see. I was stuck in my head for days once back in town, thinking of what I’d experienced and I even kept my phone off for an additional day to keep the outside world from coming back in too rapidly. The adjustment back into working life was tough, but a few weeks in and lots of social engagements has put paid to that. The one thing I have kept up mostly is the diet regime. I am gonna continue to eat far less land meat and sugar. It’s better for me and more importantly the planet.

This has been far too long a post but that’s done to my own procrastination of pulling everything together. Still lots to get down and that will come in time.

Late Gator.

[hotelbones]

Archive (Formerly Algo-Arcana) Update 2

After figuring out how the projector would work on water I began preparing how to make my game actually function. Despite all of my research into my concept I did not reach a point of satisfactory game design. However, I wanted to start playtesting as soon as possible so I started by making a simple interaction with abstract shapes by putting different ingredients into my cauldron.

I made a square for the cauldron, three triangles for three players, and then a circle for the button that the players would have to figure out how to attach. I coded it so when the players completed the circuit to the button and hit a button on my keyboard the shapes would change stroke color in order to give a form of feedback.

I also wanted the players to be encouraged to mix things into the water in order to emulate the process of creating a potion. So I got a cardboard box and then poked holes at the top of it which my vessel for water would sit on top of. I hoped with this that players could mix materials into the water and photoresistors would be able to detect if there was change. For the potion materials, I purchased baking soda, flour, salt, and sugar. Then I did research into seeing what materials I could use for players to complete a circuit between two wires that would make a button functional. I discovered that hand soap was a good material for this.

Along with these materials I also wanted to make a container that looked similar to a computer screen to fit the narrative of unknown characters coming to a computer to learn more about themselves. So I went to the metal shop to begin creating something. I bought an 18 gauge sheet of metal, took measurements of my water container and made a paper prototype of my first container.

During this time of producing my mask for the container I also came up with the idea of each player having bracelets that would communicate what roles each of the players were. I cut these out of my sheet along with the shape of my mask.

After CNC cutting, bending, and welding (poorly) I had my first playtest of my game.

https://1drv.ms/v/s!AiehfsctWGCisxAJvUv5FOoAMkCq

(Note that lack of any projection in this test. This was because I did not have access to a projector for this portion of the project).

The playtest revealed many things about the ways players interact with the objects I fabricated as well as the ruleset of the game. Without saying much people went directly to interact with the potion materials and the cauldron. However, no one really thought about the differences between each of the materials or how they could use them outside of the cauldron (to connect the button’s circuit). After putting some of each powder into the cauldron they saw differences on the screen. However, they seemed dissatisfied by the results on screen and decided to just plunge their hands into the water to see what results would show. They could not solve the puzzle this way and I ended up joining just to see if it was a possible solution to the problem.

This playtest revealed to me the ways that people interact with adding materials to water and how much fun it was to get messy for playing a game. Everyone thought it was really fun to get messy in the water while playing my game and I think everyone actually just had more fun with the actions of mixing properties together and interacting with different physical objects. However, the game was still lacking so I stopped my work on the physical computing part to make sure the design of the game was fun.

I spent a bit trying to figure out just what my game was going to be. I know I wanted to create a game with deception and roleplaying but each sketch I made was disatisfactory. I kept on creating systems that were overly-complex for no reason at all and it felt disappointing. So I decided that to playtest I would need to think about designing without the arduino and controller in order to playtest in a more efficient manner that would give me more satisfactory results. Before playtesting however I decided to do research on other social deduction games that could inspire signifiers that would create enjoyable player interaction. I researched this with the game “Killing Dr. Lucky” as it was the only social deduction I could obtain that was about social deduction.

I played “Dr. Lucky” with 4 others and found the three elements that made social deduction fun was language, lying, and roles. I decided I would try to make something in a paper prototype with one of my friends.

For this playtest I created a system where players would distribute pain and pleasure in order to create a potion together and eliminate players from the collaborative process. The rules worked so that a player could choose pain or pleasure, add special supplementary powders and stir the pot to push the effects in the direction towards another player. Here are that playtest’s rules:

Red Powder = Pain on yourself  

Blue Powder = pleasure on yourself  

Yellow Powder = neutral (base) 

Special Powders:

Green (Player 1): Invulnerability  

Light Pink (Player 2): 

Buttons:

Player 1 Left: Effect player – 1 & Minus Pain

Player 1 Right: Effect player + 1 & Switch pain and pleasure

Player 2 Left: Effect player – 1 & Switch

Player 2 Right: Effect player + 1 & Minus Pain  

Player 3 Left: Effect player – 1 &  Plus pleasure  

Player 3 Right: Effect player + 1 &  Plus neutral  

Player 4 Left: Effect player – 1 & Plus pleasure  

Player 4 Right: Effect player + 1 & Eliminate Pleasure

Player 5 Left: Effect player – 1 & Switch pain and neutral  

Player 5 Right: Effect player + 1 & Eliminate Pain

Red powder + Player 1 Left + Player 4 Left + Player 5 Right =  

Pain + (Rotate Powders + 1 ) + Switch pain and neutral 

Red plant + Yellow powder + never root = +1 pain  

Blue plant + red powder + little stub =  +1 pain  

Yellow plant + blue powder + never root = +1 pain 

However after testing this my friend immediately found issues with my design.

-What is their goal?

-Do they have health which pain and pleasure is effecting?

-What do the potions do?

-Are there rounds?

The rules were still overly complicated and I was still worrying about the complexities I could accomplish with a vessel instead of basic rules. So I subtracted some rules and made some modifications.

Powders:

Red Powder = Pain on yourself  

Blue Powder = pleasure on yourself 

Mix:

Stir left: move one player left

Stir Right: Move one player right 

Health = 6  

Amounts of 3 = 5 of opposite  

5 rounds 

This playtest also failed. My friend still did not understand the purpose of the game and we could not even get past one turn because the function of making potions did not make sense. I felt frustrated with where I was at and spent a long period of time thinking of what I have made. However I kept running into a wall. Then I went to talk with John Sharp about my project.

I spoke with John for about two hours about my game and how it was frustrating me. He gave me suggestions on social deduction games that I should check out. Then he told me that my game was focusing too much on the role of being a social deduction role playing game. It was stuck to the category that I originally designed it for. I told him about what I was doing with the Arduino and he told me that the arduino sounded like it was creating frustration and that it didn’t sound like it was doing anything important for the game. He said that if I wanted to make this a fun experience I should either take the cauldron and do more tests with it or take my system and work with it more. I decided to continue working with the game system I had created.

However, going back to the game system meant going back to square one to find a base system that works. I eliminated the idea of a cauldron, spells and competition and thought about the ideas I initially liked about this game: colors and identity. So I thought about words that could connect to some colors.

I only started with words that the internet attached to these colors and decided to do a prototype where players would point to a color and talk about how each of the colors make them feel.

After going to Times Square at 4 in the morning with a group for Design Set for Strangers I decided to start my first playtest with a paint palette. The playtest for this version would ask the players to tell a story based on the word attached to the color. The following are notes from the session:

I could tell the entirety of the story but it would be a bit long. Essentially the story was a decentralized tale about three people that met multiple times in history but never knew each other. First they met a long time ago when they were hunting a mystical, bipedal plant called the “tootsie”, the second time when they went to a bar drunk together, and then the third time when they went to the Bermuda Triangle and saved fish in the ocean.

The game was somewhat satisfactory for the first time since the potion making playtest. I felt really strong about it. So I took some notes and then went to playtest it again later that day. However I made some modifications for the players...

The game would now start with players standing outside of a space. Then a moderator asks them to enter the space, warning them that they will lose their identities before entering the space. I also really liked the idea of decentralization in storytelling so I decided to make the rules state that players were ghosts living across a long period of time and they would all be recounting the events of the world before it was destroyed. I decided on the theme of the world being destroyed because I wanted to see what direction players would direct the narrative about why they thought the planet would end. Maybe it would be negative maybe it would be positive. I also decided to add some tokens to make the storytelling more enjoyable. These tokens would allow players to interrupt players in two ways:

1. Ask the player if they remember something that may have happened, making the player answer the question with their story.

2. A switch which would allow the player to change the word the player was given for the color and force the story to change.

I also changed the words attached to colors as I spoke with people because the words attached to colors are cultural norms, not universal. So I made it at the beginning of a playtest players would contribute words that are assigned to the colors.

The playtest was even more successful than the previous one. All of the players told the story of a planet that was visited by aliens which were kidnapped by the world’s government and then put into a state of war. Then a group of rappers joined together to create a peace movement that the government oppressed. The aliens shot a star down to earth which created dust that covered the sun. Humans slowly were wiped out and dogs rose up.

Here are the notes from this playsesession:

However the game was not done. There were changes that needed to be made before I considered how technology would be implemented because the game was not at a point where a computer could be implemented to moderate or add to the rules of the game. The three playtesters suggested adding more functions for players to interact while playing and finding better ways to end the story.

Then I attempted a final playtest before I hoped to integrate the arduino.

In this version I made a new rule that if the player hesitated another player could take the story and continue it. I also added a new rule that added player roles that want to see the world documented in a negative way and a positive way. I didn’t add too many more rules because I felt that the last playtest worked so well. However this playtest resulted differently.

The playtest did not go as well as I had hoped based on the past two playtests. Players interacted but they did not tell long stories and they were not interested in the roles that they were playing. Another problem that was pointed out to me when I confessed that this would have to utilize arduino is that some of the players felt that the game would not map to computers in any form. I spent a long time discussing this problem and I came to a decision about whether or not I would continue to make this game for a computer. It had become something that was more of an analog, fluid, and open roleplaying/storytelling system. For now, it would not work with implementing arduino at all.

I felt frustrated and sad with this concept. I had worked so much on this only to be told that it shouldn’t have arduino implemented in it. However, after I accepted this I decided to be confident in my failure.

I have submitted this to Miami @ Play conference and I hope whether I am accepted or not to continue developing this idea because I find a lot of enjoyment in it.