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whatsnewalycat · 2 years ago

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Just Dumb Enough to Try

Chapter 25: Pitch Dark

Word Count: 4.3k+

Pairing: Javier Peña x F!Reader

Rating: Explicit (18+ only)

Tags / CW: swearing, cheating/infidelity, domestic abuse, smoking, kidnapping, pregnancy, tension, cops, gore and violence, I don't really want to say anything else to prevent spoilers but I think if you've made it this far you'll be fine???

Chapter Summary: The search comes to an end.

Notes: Chapter title from "Pitch Dark" by Chelsea Jade. FYI: the playlist for this chapter is a banger. I'll post chapter 26 probably on Friday this week because I'm going to the WWWY festival in Vegas next weekend (pray for me I am very neurodivergent why am I doing this). I cannot belieeeeeeeeeve we're almost to the end of this story. I'm a proud mama. OK ANYWAY HERE YA GO!

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8734 177th Rd, Laredo, TX July 31, 1998

After you’re roused from sleep by creaking footsteps outside the closet door, and come out the other side of your subsequent full-body panic attack, Dan drags you out into the foyer again.

The foyer, with its dusty hardwood floors, and cobwebs, and fucking yellow wallpaper, and the woody ammonia mouse piss smell. Morning sun hits the other side of the house, making the vacant room all dim natural light and shadowy corners.

He deposits you in the same spot he did yesterday, his presence suspiciously neutral as he sits down facing you and takes the gag out of your mouth. You take a deep breath of air and choke on it, triggering a coughing fit. Fearing the metallic, rotten wad of fabric being stuffed in your mouth again, you gasp out, “Sorry- not- trying,” when your seizing lungs let you.

He pulls a chocolate chip granola bar out of his pants pocket and opens it, ignoring the coughing completely. You note that he’s in a clean set of clothes and is no longer covered in blood. On his skin and hair, though, faint red stains remain.

It reminds you of Halloween 1995, when you dressed up as a vampire. You bought a tube of fake blood for $1 at the local drug store to smear on your face for dramatic effect. The red dye was unforgiving and left your face tinged red for a week, no matter how hard you tried to scrub it off your skin.

Again, you wonder if it’s Javier’s blood. But unlike last night, the thought doesn’t make you spiral. Because something happened.

I hear you, cariño.

The words play on repeat in your head. In the midst of your good morning panic attack, you were praying to God or anybody, his voice cut through the fog, crystal clear. It perplexes you.

Dan pinches off a chunk of granola bar the size of a quarter and brings it to your lips. You open your mouth and grab it with your teeth, trying not to be too obvious about how hard you’re avoiding touching your lips to his fingers. Between bites, he tips a plastic water bottle to your lips and you take sips.

He gets up and retrieves something from behind you, then sits down, crossing his long legs in front of him as he sets a first aid kit on the floor between you. You flinch when his hands land on your shoulders. He doesn’t react to the involuntary movement, just murmurs, “I’m gonna remove the rope to clean your wounds. Don’t make me regret it.”

“Ok,” you exhale in a shaky breath and watch the wallpaper like you expect it to do something. He moves methodically, untying the knots around your ankles, then your wrists, then your shoulders. His blonde curtain bangs hang loosely in front of his face, swaying from side to side as he tends to you.

Steady hands crinkle the weak plastic of a disposable water bottle when he twists it open, then pours some water over the lacerations. He dabs them with paper towels in an attempt to clear the wounds of debris. The pop of a cap being pried open makes you flinch, then he advises gently, “This is going to sting,” before he pours rubbing alcohol on the wounds.

Sizzling, searing pain rips a howl from your hoarse throat, and, even though you try your damndest to sit still and work through the pain, your feet smack against the dusty hardwood floor with a mind of their own.

“I’m not trying,” you whimper when he stares at you with a clenched jaw, deep blue eyes drenched in annoyance at your outburst.

He shoulders soften as he sighs, “I know.”

The searing pain fizzles out to a faint sting. He applies goopy ointment, then wraps the wounds in gauze. Once the rope burns are cleaned and dressed, he moves you closer and has you face him so he can clean your split cheek. The first couple of times he reaches out to touch you, you flinch.

Eventually, though, the movements don’t seize your breath, and it feels... strangely intimate. He’s calm, face almost appearing sympathetic, when you whimper helplessly at the rubbing alcohol burn this time. It dawns on you that the man you’ve spent the last four years with is still there somewhere.

You try to make casual conversation like you have across the dining room table hundreds of times before, asking him, “How was softball?”

To your surprise, he responds to this with a shrug, “It was fine. Average, I guess. We played a scrimmage, went ‘n’ got some drinks at Cowboy Slim’s after.”

“How is your new glove working out for you?” your throat feels raw and bruised when you swallow hard, tiptoeing into the realm of non-violent interaction.

“Kinda sucks, not gonna lie,” he mutters as he tapes down the gauze on your face, “Still breaking it in. So pissed I lost my old one. That one was perfect, I had it for so long.”

“Yeah,” you nod, staring forward at the yellow-tinged wallpaper, “Sometimes you lose things and just… have to move on, you know? It’ll get better.”

He stops moving, and you can feel his eyes burning into your profile. Abruptly, he stands up, picking up the first aid kit, carrying it out of the room down the hallway.

You inhale sharply as you remember the unattended front door. As you saw when you were ushered into the foyer, you can’t be more than a dozen steps away from it. There are creaks at the back of the house as he rummages around for something.

He might not notice. How much of a head start could I get?

Before you can think twice, you clamor to your feet and turn around, taking a step towards the screen door. Your bare feet are silent as you take another quick step.

Then another. A few more. Each step gives you a fresh surge of adrenaline.

Two steps away.

One more. You’re so close.

When your fingers touch the door handle, a creak sounds from directly behind you, and you hear the metallic click of the safety being pulled back on a revolver. You freeze.

“If you move, I’ll shoot you right in the fuckin’ skull,” Dan growls from behind you, burying the barrel in your hair. The cold metal circle presses flush against your bruised scalp. Your heart thuds in your chest and your field of vision goes white with panic.

He speaks quiet and calm as he instructs you, “Put your hands up.”

You comply, extremities breaking out in tremors as you slowly raise both arms at your sides. One of his hands encloses your wrist.

“Unfucking believable,” he grunts as he puts the safety back on the handgun and the cold circle of death is pulled away from your head. He brings your hands down behind your back, securing them in place with a zip tie, making you wince as the plastic digs into your fresh bandages. You can’t decide if this is an upgrade from the rope or just a different kind of hell on earth.

“Do you have to use the bathroom?” he asks as he turns you around to face him. It was a mistake to try escaping. His features are shadowed again, steeped with fury.

You ponder his question briefly, taking inventory of bodily functions you’d been completely neglecting to monitor, then shake your head.

With this, he yanks on your arm, leading you back to the closet. When he opens the door, you step inside obediently. He closes it. Your legs shake when you try to squat down into a sitting position, and you end up toppling over backwards against the wall behind you.

With a groan, you shimmy your ass to the floor and accept this as your seat. You stare at the slit of light shining under the door. Thoughts bounce around your brain like it’s a pinball machine.

“Did you love him?”

You wonder whose blood was on Dan yesterday. The red stains on his skin and hair. Was it even blood?

“Well that was pretty fucking stupid, wasn’t it?”

You wonder if there’s anyone searching for you. If Claudia or your parents know you’ve been kidnapped. If your parents would even care.

Something tickles your face.

Probably a spider.

You wonder what the odds of surviving a black widow bite are.

A shudder runs down your spine as you remember the cold circle of a revolver pressed against your bruised scalp.

You wonder what the odds are of surviving a kidnapping are.

Probably about the same as a black widow bite.

Your thoughts take a sharp turn, and you remember that it’s Friday, then wonder when The X-Files will start airing on Friday nights again.

Will I ever find out what happened to Agent Fox Mulder’s sister? Will he and Scully ever kiss?

This summer, you wanted to see The X-Files movie, but it came out the same day as The Truman Show, which you wanted to see more.

What if, instead of spiraling into an existential crisis while teetering between tipsy and drunk from giant margaritas, you gabbed Javier’s ear off about the possibility of extraterrestrials?

He might not have witnessed you bearing your soul, spilling your guts across the table in front of him (I don’t want to have to gut you, too ) as you came to the realization that being with him was the first thing you did for yourself in a very long time. Would you have come to that conclusion if the two of you had seen a different movie?

In his car two weeks prior, he talked about how, back in 1993, he didn’t like to be around Michelle other than “the fucking, yeah. Not like you…“

“What do you mean not like me?”

“I like being around you.”

“I like being around you, too.”

And it’s clear to you then, that it doesn’t matter what movie you saw, or where you went, because it would have resulted in your breath on his, hot and pleading for him to fuck you. You could have done anything in life, and you would have ended up tangled together in bed, Javier playing with your hair as you write love notes onto his skin.

It’s kismet.

This thought brings you enough peace that the erratic pinball that is your stream of consciousness settles into a lull, and you close your eyes. Maybe just a little nap. It’s not like you have anything better to do.

—

The sound of the hardwood floor creaking outside the door wakes you.

You blink a few times before coming to grips with your surroundings, realizing you’re propped up in the corner of the closet, settling into the dust and spiderwebs. The door groans open, spilling sunshine into your enclosure, and you hum with relief as the (relatively) cool air hits your sweat-drenched skin. You’re groggy and delirious when Dan asks, “Do you have to use the bathroom?”

You take a bodily inventory and determine that: yes, for the first time in probably 24 hours, you have to pee.

When you nod, Dan hoists you up and folds you over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes, then starts carrying you down the hallway in a direction you haven’t been yet. Your head is spinning, dazed, like you’re in a dream.

He comes to a stop and lowers your feet to the ground. You think he does, anyway.

Your feet are numb phantoms, but you’re upright and semi-stable. The muscles you can feel scream in protest. You roll your head on your shoulders to squint and find Dan’s face, and when you do, he has a mask on again. Neutral as he guides you backwards through the threshold of a room, until the backs of your knees press up against cold porcelain.

He lowers you down onto a toilet seat, then pulls your shorts down until they meet the zip tie at your ankles. The big, shiny, red button gifted to you from the crows slips out of your pocket and clatters onto the ground.

You swear you can hear cawing.

Your face falls and you frown, voice coming out in croaks like your vocal chords are shards of glass, “Oh no, I didn’t feed the crows today.”

He says nothing.

You expect him to leave, or at least fucking turn around to give you some privacy, but he kneels down in front of you, one hand helping keep you steady as you weave back and forth, pulled by the weight of your spinning head. It’s not until your body releases a stream of piss you realize his other hand is in the toilet bowl.

He’s giving me a pregnancy test.

Not able to emote yourself properly in your delirium, you scrunch your face up and shake your head, asking with curiosity in a hoarse whisper, “Why?”

“You’re not fucking leaving here until I know whether or not you’ve been knocked up,” he growls.

That’s gonna be a problem.

—

Middle of Fucking Nowhere, Laredo, TX July 31, 1998

Someone broke the news of your disappearance to the media. Probably some fucking blabbermouth. Javier knows it’s bad when he finds himself pushing his way through throngs of people as they gather around the established perimeter.

As he reaches the blaring yellow crime scene tape, he scans the area for Detective Anderson. A petite blonde woman in a neat, fitted pantsuit widens her eyes as she spots him walking up beside her, then lays her hand on his forearm as she asks, “Excuse me, are you Javier Peña?”

This catches him by surprise.

He turns to face her and takes a step back, surveying her short stature as he answers, “Yes.”

He shouldn’t have answered.

“Do you have anything to say about the photos of you and the missing woman?” she questions, pulling a pen and a pocket notebook out of her smart navy blazer.

“No,” he snaps as he turns away to face the blocked off crime scene. He picks out Detective Anderson standing at the back of a cop car, hovering over a map, marking things off with a dull pencil as he talks to a few other law enforcement officials.

“Do you feel responsible for her abduction?” the woman questions next. Javi can feel the heat rising to his head.

The fucking balls on these people.

He steps over the crime scene tape and approaches Detective Anderson. Greg follows his lead, holding the list of empty properties under his damp armpit, while Claudia stays behind the barrier to shoot daggers at the blonde news reporter.

The Webb County Sheriff looks up from the map and nods at Javi. Anderson follows his gaze, then waves Javi and Greg over. They make room around the map for the newcomers.

“Sorry about the circus,” Anderson grumbles sideways to Javi, then clears his throat, “No blood in the car as far as we can tell, so we’re working under the assumption that she’s still alive. Organizing a search of these areas here,” he taps the eraser of his pencil to the areas circled on the map.

He starts dictating specifics about who he wants where, and the men nod as they listen along diligently.

Greg looks over the map, then flips through his papers, cross-examining the two documents. He prods the map in two specific areas with his sausage fingers, explaining, “We searched the empty properties here earlier today and didn’t find anything,” then points to two other spots, “These two haven’t been cleared yet, we can go check 'em out if y’all haven’t already.”

“Fine by me,” Anderson nods, which surprises Javier.

With this, Greg and Javi double back towards Greg’s truck. Anderson catches up with them, tapping Javi on the shoulder. Javi stops and turns to the detective, who instructs, “If you find anything, call right away and we’ll be there in a jiffy. Especially if you find the suspect. Don’t confront him. We don’t want any bloodshed.”

Javi’s mouth forms a flat line and he nods, “You got it.”

He doesn't mean it.

—

The two properties in question are on the same country road, about a mile away from each other and where Dan’s car was abandoned, forming an equilateral triangle on the map. Greg parks at the mid-point of the subject properties at Javier’s suggestion to approach with stealth, not come roaring down the driveway in a pickup truck. He wants to get you out alive. If you're not already dead.

“No blood in the car as far as we can tell, so we’re working under the assumption that she’s still alive.”

There’s hope. He’s been tortured by the unknown for the past 26 hours. The notion that he spent a decade avoiding serious relationships while in Columbia, only to come home, fall in love, and have her ripped away, is driving him fucking mad.

Javier’s hands shake as he lights a cigarette and their ragtag search party of 3 starts off towards the first house. The gravel road crunches and stirs dust up under their steps. He wipes beads of sweat off his forehead with back of his hand and grimaces at the sun that’s beating down on them.

Claudia glances to the cigarette clamped between Javi’s index and middle finger, “Can I have one?”

“I didn’t know you smoked,” he comments as he digs the pack out of his back pocket and holds it out to her. She plucks one out and presses it between her lips. Javi flicks his shiny silver butane lighter ablaze, holding fire to the end of the cigarette.

She inhales deeply, then exhales a plume of blue smoke, “I quit when I was pregnant with Michael, but my nerves are fucking shot. I need it.”

Javi nods in understanding, taking a drag, then tells Claudia, “I tried quitting a few years ago, but I couldn’t stick to it.”

“It’s fucking hard. If I didn’t have that motivation, I’d probably still be a pack-a-day smoker,” she scoffs.

“I think I’m going to try to quit again,” Javi announces.

“Yeah?”

“With the baby and all. I don’t want this shit around the kid,” he tilts his head and considers something he never had previously, “Plus, I should probably try to stick around for them as long as I can. Don’t want lung cancer to take me out at 50.”

A toothy grin spreads across Claudia’s face and she nods, “How are you feeling about it? Being a dad?”

The acid that was previously at a simmer in his stomach shoots up in his throat at a full boil. He clears his throat to lessen the feeling, then admits, “Fucking terrified. What if I’m not… I don’t know, good at it?”

“I’ll let you in on a secret: Nobody knows what the fuck they’re doing when they become a parent,” Claudia chuckles, taking a puff off the cigarette, “You’ll do great, I know it.”

Javier takes a drag off his cigarette. His eyebrows press together as he asks her, “How do you know?”

“Javi, look at what we’re doing right now. All you’ve done in the past day,” Claudia gives him a reassuring smile, “There’s nothing you won’t do to make sure your family is safe.”

Although he doesn’t point out that it was his own ignorance that put you in danger in the first place, he supposes she’s right. You’re part of his family, and he won’t find peace until you’re home with him.

“Thanks,” he mumbles, and one corner of his mouth upturns.

—

The first house was a bust.

While they did find approximately 17 feral cats in the barn, there were no humans in sight. The search party is silent on their route to the second house. Claudia and Greg shoot concerned glances back and forth, eyeing Javi from behind as he blazes ahead of them.

Javier ignores the fatigue settling in his bones and the burning in his calves as he quickens his pace. There’s a decent chance you’re at this next place. He remembers what you looked like in his dream. Beaten to shit.

What if you’re not there? Or worse, what if he’s too late? Would he be able to live with that guilt?

When the 8734 mailbox comes into view, he goes from a brisk walk to a jog. The driveway is long, winding back from the road a quarter of a mile, Javi estimates. Claudia and Greg catch up to him when he stops and crouches down upon hearing crows cawing. He thinks he sees a pair of fat, black bird loitering in front of the run-down rambler.

“She’s here,” he tells them, squinting up at the home, once again cursing himself for not seeing a fucking optometrist.

Greg crouches down further, “Do you see them?”

“No,” answers Javier as he pulls out his pistol to verify it’s locked and loaded, “Crows.”

While Claudia nods knowingly, Greg tilts his head and furrows his brow, “Crows?”

“Just trust me,” Javi sighs, then looks between Claudia and Greg, “Ready?”

—

Dan pulls you to your feet and steadies you against the sink as he tugs your shorts up over your thighs, sticky with sweat and streaked with dirt. He doesn’t button them, just shimmies them up to your waist and then hoists your dead weight over his shoulder again, carrying you into the adjoining room.

Without warning, he tosses you onto the floor like a rag doll.

Your back hits the dusty hardwood floor and the wind is knocked out of you. The ceiling is spinning above you. You’re gulping for air like a fish out of water, only able to rock from side to side as you try to curl into a protective ball and suck in air at the same time.

Your clamp your eyes shut and spin in the darkness.

When you open them, he’s standing over you, head spiraling like you’re being flushed down a toilet drain. He pulls you up to your knees by the zip tie around your wrists, and you don’t even feel it cutting into your swollen hands. The spinning slows and you’re able to take a broken breath in, out, slowly, his face centers and stills in your vision.

“You fucking bitch. I would have given you everything ,” his eyes bore into you, darker by the second, and you meet his stare with your own, trying to muster the illusion of bravery. He holds his hands to your shoulders to ensure you don’t topple over.

Then they come up to your throat.

As you realize what he’s doing, you scream and try to get away, only falling backwards for a moment before he catches you, spindly fingers wrapping around your neck. He squeezes down and holds you suspended. You wheeze when you try to breathe around his grip. A smile creeps across his stone face and he clamps harder.

Panic.

Telling you he loved you in the park. Making out in the photo booth.

Can’t breathe.

Hand resting on your bare leg, fingers drawing sweet nothings onto your skin. Playing with your hair.

No noises, no airflow.

Kissing your knotted wrist that was once a gaping wound.

You try in vain to rip yourself away.

Can’t move.

His lips against yours. Silky dark hair your fingers comb through. The slope of his nose. Dimpled smile. Bedsheets that smell like the love of your life. Puppy dog eyes.

Buzzing in your ears.

“I hear you, cariño.”

Sizzling. Ringing. Popping.

In a tunnel, all you can see so far away, surrounded by black.

Flashes of people you love: Grandma, brothers, Claudia, Javier. Jellybean.

Energy drains from your body and you feel your eyes start to flutter shut, even though you can’t see anything anyway.

-BANG-

You fall onto the ground, collapsing in a heap, gasping for air. Choking. Coughing. Your arm is wet and sticky and scarlet.

It’s blood.

You search frantically for its source, then see Dan.

He’s laying the floor, staring at you. You’re gasping for air, heartbeat exploding in your chest, trying to kick yourself away from him and the impossibly dark red circle expanding around him.

His blonde hair is a gushing, black, viscous spring. A waterfall of it spills down across his face. Pooling the darkest red in his mouth, gaping wide. Streaming over his open, vacant eyes. Not vacant like they were before.

No, this time, they’re vacant as in dead.

You scream but it’s silent and sets your throat on fire.

Just the whistle-high pitch like a teakettle that’s almost ready to pour. Then there are hands on your body, pulling you away from the pool of blood. You buck away from the contact in a frenzy of confusion.

The grip anchors in your shoulders and shakes you.

Your whole body goes numb and your ears start ringing. Because you see him then.

He’s wearing a gray polo shirt, hair wild and flying in all different directions, just like the last time you saw him. It feels like a lifetime ago. Dashingly handsome, looking more terrified than you’ve ever seen him.

Javi. Holy shit it’s him.

Your ears come out of the tunnel and tune into earth, and you hear him saying your name, mumbling, “Baby it’s ok, I’m here, I’m here, I got you, it’s ok.”

Someone else cuts the zip ties on your wrists and ankles, and you throw your arms around him weakly. He pulls you in, burying his face in your neck, hugging around your chest so tight, you start to cough again.

“Fuck, sorry,” he gasps, then he lowers to the floor and pulls you onto his lap, stroking your dirty, blood-soaked hair. Your body wracks with sobs when it dawns on you that this is real.

It’s real. He’s here. He’s alive. You’re alive.

He cradles you in his arms and yells at Greg to call an ambulance. You inhale the musk of his sweat and curl into him as your body heaves. His lips on your forehead, promising, “You’re ok, you’re safe now.”

[ Next Chapter ]

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uiokoloy · 4 years ago

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queens-of-lockscreens · 3 years ago

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Crystal Methyd ❉

(like/reblog if u use, kay?)

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stayawakeatnight · 4 years ago

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Top 12 attractive wall mirrors designs

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wearingmywings · 6 years ago

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Destiel Meta - an outsider’s perspective

I’ve been reading meta for about a year, but now I wanted to add my own post regarding it.

I don’t really see things when I first watch episodes, I don’t get mirrors or parallels or pay attention to background details like wallpaper or neon signs or anything like that. I’m not good at analyzing things or interpreting it, not in literature nor film, I don’t do something in this area professionally or studied it.

However, there are some things that jumped out so much that even I thought “Hey, that’s something!”.

Part 1: Mirrors

Seriously, mirrors? You’re telling me that it’s a known method to present mirrors to characters, that they can be used in subtle or totally obvious forms, and they can tell you a lot about the character that’s being mirrored just by existing? Wow that’s so cool!

14x300: In the first scenes when my friend yelled “Look! they look like Dean and Cas!”, I wasn’t 100% sure if that’s what was going on, but oh boi at the end of the episode it was crystal fucking clear. Three people next to each other, the one on the right taller than the others, one is wearing a jacket resembling a trench coat, one is wearing plaid. Trenchcoatjacket and Plaid are holding hands.

We noticed Plaid’s crush on Trenchcoatjacket the whole episode, it was so obvious! Hm, what else was there in resemblance? I remember the taller kid was pretty nerdy, and Plaid stole the Impala at one point, so it’s pretty clear we have Sam and Dean here, which leaves Cas for the last person, and it fits so well! Thats awesome!!

Apart from “Lebanon”, the episode ‘Mint Condition’ basically taught me how they use mirrors and that I should pay attention to them right now. They pointed out who was Sam and Dean, then resumed with the plot and I sat there thinking “Oh!”.

My friend explained to me how the ghost of that episode relates to John Winchester, and honestly if you follow the train of thought about mirrors that the episode presented to you, it’s pretty easy to get there.

Dreamhunter: The confirmed ship with two girls, ah yes! Again, I don‘t really pick up on visual cues or background stuff, but when Kaia said to Claire “I’ll go with you,” I had flashbacks to the season 11 finale immediately. I mean, using the exact same dilagoue? But alright, maybe they’re gonna keep playing it as a cute subtextual crush or how you call it, because neither of them says “You’re my crush”, so-

Oh, wait, Kaia was also stabbed in front of Claire who screamed “Noo!!”, that’s another striking resemblance. Hm.

Oh, Dreamhunter is confirmed to be a couple thing? Neat! So does that mean all the DeanCas stuff is romantic? Because y’all used the same dialogue and plot.

Part 2: Dean’s pining (season 11)

To be fully honest here, I didn’t understand season 11. At all. I didn’t get the whole Amara thing, why was everyone talking about pining? Dean told us that it wasn’t about desire with him and Amara, just a weird fixation, but still, the lady in the senior home told Dean that he “was pining for somebody else”. That makes no sense!

Unless it’s true? Dean didn’t pine for Amara, he tells us that, but everyone’s still talking about pining, therefore the topic of pining is important. Dean x Amara wasn’t romantic, that’s clear from what Dean told us and how he behaved, so no pining.

The only person left he could pine for is Cas. The dude who let in Lucifer, who Dean’s worried about, who Amara touches and she knows where Dean is? That’s..interesting. I’m still kinda confused, but some things are clearer now. No romance between Dean & Amara, but pining is still a theme, and only Cas makes sense. Got it.

Part 3: Cas’ endgame as being human

I wanted to include this because I’ve had this headcanon for years, then saw the meta community talk about it, and honestly there’s one scene to watch and it’d be clear that Cas wants to be human.

“We need grace-” “He can have mine”. 14x08

Alright dude, you’re so eager and ready to throw away your grace? Okidoki.

To go back in time, everyone always had these TED talks about how Cas loves humanity and loves humans and human things, that he feels stuff (season 4 yall, it’s been a while), that he compliments Hannah with things that “are human”. He doesn’t get along with other angels because they’re different than him, or they don’t understand his love and devotion for humans. He spends pretty much all his time on earth, around humans, because he loves them, and one in particular.

To quote Metatron, “He’s in love with humanity”. Do I need to add more? No? Fantastic, because this post is long enough already.

Part 4: Random things in no particular order

Episode 12x12, because come on. Some people took the gifs of Cas’ deathbed confession and connected them to the shots before, showing you where everyone’s standing, who Cas is looking at, and it’s so bloody clear. Don’t get me started on the singular vs plural “i love you” because I literally don’t have to, it’s right there.

“I could go with you”- season 11 finale. Cas, ready to die to accompany Dean on the suicide mission to save the world. He wants to ease Dean’s fear and be there for him until the very end, without hesitation. Castiel really fucking loves Dean Winchester. Wow.

That’s it I think? Those are the top things that jumped into my face when I watch the show, things I didn’t have to read other people’s thoughts on to understand what’s happening. :)

To finish this up I want to say something about meta writers. I didn’t start out reading meta, I didn’t really care for details and background stuff and took the show as I saw it, which is why I shipped Destiel immediately because there were enough things so blatantly obvious to me that I just had to. Then I found @tinkdw, then @bluestar86, @dotthings, @occamshipper, @postmodernmulticoloredcloak and all the other bloody amazing meta writers, and boom! A whole new world!

I started a series rewatch, read the posts for the episodes or seasons, paid more attention and there was so much to see and notice! It gave me joy in watching SPN in a time where I was kind of burned out because I had just discovered the bad side of the fandom and was a bit hopeless, for my OTP and the show itself. It gave me friends, and interesting conversations, but more importantly: These people helped me be realistic about episodes, upcoming episodes and PR stuff. “PR is not showrunning” was a strange concept to me before they showed me what it meant, and I vividly remember being in tears before all this after some PR material promised amazing things but failed to deliver.

These people are so good at predicting what’s going to happen because they read the fine print and understand it, pack it up and show it to us who either can’t read the fine print or dont notice it. They help fans to control (?) their expectations, to soften blind excitement over promo shots or interviews with people who have either no clue what they’re talking about (Jensen bby, i love you but what are you even saying?) or are purposefully exaggerating things.

They saved me from so much disappointment, they improved my fandom experience and changed my feelings for the show and how I watch it. There are so many interesting things to discover, things that confirm theories and explain plot points. I haven’t been disappointed in a new episode because of PR or rumors since I’ve met them, except ep 300 but that’s...a whole other thing. They were right about that too, though, and I didn’t listen. Catch me crying at four am because of it.

I love those people immensely, and I’m so thankful for them. They take the time to write all these essays about the show, all you have to do is read them.

A toast to meta writers! Consider this your personal love letter.

Kisses,

Jana

#destiel meta #Destiel #pr is not showrunning

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templeofulchtar · 5 years ago

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Pop Culture Altars

My Trine Shrine, complete with “Firebird,” my illustration of Starscream as the Risen Phoenix.

What is an altar—and do I need one?

An altar is, very simply, a point of focus.

It represents a meeting place between yourself and the divine, between the physical and spiritual worlds. And no, you don’t need one, at least not in the traditional sense. Of course, it’s also entirely possible that you already have one!

Many Transformers fans have a shelf filled with figures of their favorite characters. Some even have a shelf devoted to just one character, with various figures, artwork, images and memorabilia pertaining to one particularly cherished character.

Are these altars? Well yeah, kind of! Maybe the people who create and maintain these shrines don’t think of them as sacred in the usual sense, but they are. They’re a space that’s been set aside as a tangible representation of one person’s devotion to a particular character, or a group of characters. I can’t think of any better definition of sacred than that.

I’m not a toy collector as such, so my own altars are deliberately set up as sacred spaces. My main altar sits atop my dresser and features figures of Starscream, Skyfire, and other items that are sacred to me. It includes a space for Tarot cards which I’m currently working with, a space for offerings (lucky for me, the spirits I work with all have a taste for dark chocolate!), a bottle of my Starscream annointing oil (see Chapter 13 for recipe), and various crystals, dried flowers and other things that offer me a sense of the divine.

This is part of my main altar, where I keep some of my ritual supplies such as essential oils, divination cards, and the like.

Making an Altar In Your Home

If you want to set up an altar of this type, my suggestion is to take your time with it. Set aside a space, cleanse it thoroughly using salt, sage, or another preferred method, and perhaps lay down an altar cloth. My altar-cloth is a piece of dark, shimmery red material that I bought specifically for the purpose. You might find that a scarf or table-runner work well as altar cloths, too.

With your space now prepared, you can begin adding things to it, and create an arrangement that feels ‘right.’ This will take some experimentation, which is fine; there’s no rush, and you can change your altar around as much as you like. Some people change their altars to match the season. Mine stays pretty much the same, with a few minor variations, except during Ghost Season, when I turn my altar cloth inside out to expose the fabric’s dark backing, and rearrange things to create a more somber atmosphere.

If you do create an altar like this, I would strongly advise dusting and maintaining it on a regular basis so that it doesn’t get gunked-up with any unhelpful or negative energies. You’ll probably get a sense of when this needs to be done. Take good care of your altar, and your altar will take good care of you.

Very basic example of a travel altar.

Making a Travel Altar

Not everyone has the space (or, frankly, the privacy) to set up a large altar in their home. If you have this problem but still want a physical altar, or you want an altar that you can take with you when traveling, consider creating a travel altar.

A lot of witches and pagans use mint-tins for this. Yes, those little metal boxes that Altoids come packaged in. They’re portable, sturdy, and have just enough room inside for a tealight, a cone of incense, a book of matches, or whatever small items you prefer to keep on hand for your devotional practices.

You can decorate the inside of the tin with images appropriate to your practice—say by gluing a picture of Starscream to the inside of the lid. When you want to use your travel altar, simply pop the tin open and light your candle, incense or whatever, and there you go! Instant altar, ready wherever you happen to be.

Making a Virtual Altar

If you really need to be stealth with your practice, this might be the one for you. Many magicians create virtual sacred spaces, in various ways. You could create a blog or web-page that’s all about your practice, or set up a Pinterest board (public or private) with images of a particular entity you honor.

Starscream really lends himself to this approach, considering the sheer quantity of images he’s inspired to be created of him. Pick your favorites—or perhaps just one favorite—and use it as a focal point for your rituals, meditations, and so on.

I have an image of Starscream as the wallpaper on my phone, which makes my phone feel like a type of altar. When I open my phone and see Starscream smiling at me, I usually can’t help but smile in return. It’s a great mood-lifter for me, and serves as a reminder that he’s always with me.

I hope these suggestions have been helpful!

Blessed Be, Grayseeker

#starscream #starscream spirit guide #pop culture magick #pop culture paganism #pop culture spirituality #pop culture spirit guides #pop culture shrines #my altar #my travel altar #pop culture altars

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anonthenullifier · 6 years ago

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An Auspice of Scarlet - Chapter 11

A Scarlet Vision Victorian AU

Chapter Title: In which an olive branch is offered and the witch discovers the truth

Chapter summary: The occupants of the tower strategize how to handle the threat of Ultron and Wanda is presented with new information about her past.

AO3 Link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12184758/chapters/43265102

The wall of the room is ordinary. Not the ordinary of her own bare walls in Normanskill but of the framed portraits and gorgeous landscapes hung on the embellished wallpaper typical of houses owned by wealth. Yet this specific wall is different. Wanda replays in her mind the way it looked opened two nights ago and then tries to remember how it shut. If she can recall its movement then she should be able to recreate it. Her fingers skim the seams of the wallpaper, inspecting every indent and raised portion, swiping underneath each picture frame as she searches for the solution. Nothing happens.

Wanda steadies her fingers by balling them into fists and inhaling deeply. There hasn’t been any sign of Vision all day, not even a conversation to be overheard about his well-being. That itself has acted like a splinter under her nails, a steady, just below the surface anxiety gripping her the longer she goes without feeling his mind. Foolishly she thought his need for order would prevail, that at eight he’d bring her tea and at ten he’d stop by for last checks before the tower retired into the oblivion of dreams. Instead she was met with Happy’s discombobulated apologies at roughly 8:30 and 10:15, a hurried, rambling exchange of items that underscored the clear differential in discipline between the butlers.

Cold tea or receiving a finger towel instead of a hand towel doesn’t matter to her. What does matter is the slow drip of dread submerging her in the running narrative of her life and the role she seems destined to play, even when she vows to change. Wherever there is order she always tips it into chaos.

Wanda shakes the thoughts away, refusing to become mired in self-loathing, and concentrates on the wall. There’s a sconce to the right—a shapely bronze mermaid. If she were to wade into the terrifying depths of Stark’s reasoning, this seems right up his alley for a switch to a secret door. Wanda grips the waist of the mermaid and pulls down, victory racing through her veins as the wall opens.

The passageway is dimly lit, though still brighter than the tunnel this morning. A solitary gaslamp, spitting out its last breaths, and the residual light of the hallway ahead of her are doing their best to break the darkness. Wanda trails her fingertips along the wall as she approaches the corridor, hoping to anchor her nerves to the sensation of the rough panels so that once she reaches Vision she can form coherent thoughts. All she needs is his ear for three seconds, at the least, just long enough to apologize and stare into his eyes to confirm he’ll be okay.

When she reaches the brighter path of the servants’ wing, she turns left and freezes.

“You lost?” Tony disembarks from his casual lean against the wall.

“No.” The man’s arms cross as he faces her, a challenge etched into his wide stance, one she meets head on. “I wanted to check on Vision.”

Derision rocks his chest with an exaggerated snort, “You sure like to make stuffed birds laugh.” Hardened amusement shifts into an unflinching seriousness. “That’s not happening.”

Wanda accepts the statement, any challenge sure to be met with more hostility if their past interactions are any indication. “Okay, then how is he doing?”

“You hurt him, Wanda.” Her quiet, “I know” is shoved aside by Stark’s overly enunciated, “Again.” He steps towards her and it takes every ounce of her resolve to not be pressured into moving, “We had an understanding about this. You aren’t getting close to him again.”

Anger is to be expected, hatred is not surprising, and unfortunately, she can’t even bemoan him this decision, even if she’ll challenge it in the future. All she needs right now is just some confirmation Vision is okay. “How is he doing?”

“Go back to your room.”

Wanda can feel the bile rising up her throat and the scarlet dancing beneath her skin, both of which she keeps in check in case any ill-will from her lessens her chance at getting an answer. “Is he awake?”

This only hardens Stark’s face more, his feet stepping out wider, physically expanding to bar her from even seeing the door to Vision’s room. “I really don’t see why it matters to you. Vision’s not out here right now, no need to keep pretending to care.”

“I’m not pretending.”

“And I’m the King of England.”

Stark digs his feet in and it seems the only way she will get to Vision tonight is through mental force, an option she discards immediately. This means what she should do is walk away, allow another night to pass and Vision to recover, hopefully once he is fully cogent he can convince Stark to let her talk to him, like he did the last time she hurt him, though this requires the presumption he’ll want to see her. But staring at the thin, slimy smirk on Stark’s face presents her an opportunity to needle back, channel her heightened anxiety into acrimony at someone other than herself and possibly get answers along the way. Without the risk of compromising her chance to see Vision there’s no requirement she tiptoe around her disdain, so she switches topics, making sure her voice is as serious and emboldened as Stark’s. “How long have you known Ultron?”

The corner of his mouth drops, eyes attempting to bore a hole into her or cause her to combust, but she stands tall, matching the angles of his body to put them on equal footing. Stark doesn’t dismiss the question, head bobbing side to side until he shrugs, sending the whole world off his shoulders as if he’s got nothing better to do than begrudgingly deal with her, “I could really use a drink, care to join?”

The offer catches her off guard until she realizes that the most successful way to keep her from Vision is if she’s with Stark instead. It’s not a bad strategy, for either of their goals. “A drink sounds good.” Never in all the long nights since she lost her parents, did she ever think the idea of sitting down over a glass of spirits with Tony Stark would be considered appealing more than tortuous.

“Perfect, just give me a second.” She watches Stark walk to the only door in the hallway, is tempted to move closer to look inside, but the man isn’t at the door for long, just enough time to peek his head in, and then he shuts it and starts walking. “Come on.” Nothing more is said between them, Tony purposefully staying three steps ahead of her the entire journey, even when they enter the study (every inch of which is covered in mahogany with accents of forest green paisley), all he provides her for direction is a grunt and nod towards a chair while he fills up two glasses from a crystal carafe.

Wanda accepts the drink, sniffing the liquid and waiting until Stark takes a sip before she follows suit. It burns in the best way, coating her throat and chest with a medicinal warmth that feels almost like an atonement, or at least the first step in searing away the guilt suffocating her.

The question has been asked and based on the way Stark is inspecting his drink so studiously, rotating his wrist to send the liquid sloshing, it is unlikely he has forgotten the topic of their nightcap discussion. Within the crystal prison of Tony’s glass, amber spirits swirl into a cyclone. “What do you know about Ultron’s past?” The raging storm is mesmerizing, never slowing, his wrist absentmindedly maintaining the perfect rhythm as he waits for her to answer his counter-question.

The image of Ultron during their first meeting is crystal clear, the way his prosthetic hands rested so openly, the way his eyes always had a sheen of sorrow when he probed her on her own tragic past. He’d been refreshingly unreserved in allowing the sharp corners of his life to stab at her heart, forgoing the socially accepted method of sanding down the edges to make it more palatable. If only she’d seen through his disguise that day. “He was a businessman, fairly small company. There was a riot near his office,” the details are still fuzzy to her, social issues and financial nuances that never seemed necessary to understand the aspects of his story he deemed important, “something about bread, I think.”

The liquid keeps its spiral even while Stark responds. “FlourA.”

“Sure.” Briefly she loses the thread of the story, distracted at Stark’s knowledge of Ultron’s past and why he wants her to tell him what he already appears to know. “He went into a shop to try and stop some men from killing the owner but the crowd grew too frenzied and someone threw an incendiary through the window.” Ultron had given her graphic details of his injury, described the way it felt to be torn apart by the red-hot ball of fury, “lost his arms, injured his leg, had glass shards embedded in his face.”

“Yeah,” the tornado dies as Tony takes a sip of the drink, lips smacking at the strong taste. “We’re definitely dealing with the same person. That’s what he told me too.” Tony breathes in, places the glass down, and releases an audible, worn out breath, his body slouching into the chair as he finally begins to answer her question. “My first contract, after assuming ownership of Stark Industries, was for the War DepartmentB. Apparently, they’d received a gift of a rare precious metal from some jungle kingdom.” The tone suggests the metal may not have been freely given. “Wanted me to develop some sort of an exoskeleton meant to help wounded soldiers get back to war. I had hoped to then bring it to the public once it worked.” No doubt for the sake of profit and not because of some charitable need to help the less fortunate of society. “We decided that we’d choose our test subject based on physical need and mental functioning,” he picks up his glass and tips it towards his chest, studying the liquid, “you know, no lunatics or anything.”

“Ultron was your subject?”

Tony nods at her supposition. “When we sent out feelers for subjects, over twenty people recommended this guy named,” the glass clings against the table as he tries to conjure up the name, “MarkC or something like that, touted him as a community hero for how he’d responded to the riots.” A long sip empties his glass. “Want another?” Her own is only half empty, but she hands it to him anyway, eyes following as he fills up both glasses. “We were torn, you know,” the carafe swings in his hand, sending the liquor into a frenzy, “should we choose an actual soldier or choose someone we could make into a solider?” Tony hands her the now brimming glass and plops back into the chair across from her, facial muscles loosening the more he imbibes. “Mark always rose to the top of our list— intelligent, even-keeled, persuasive, promised us everything we could want with his willingness to undergo our tests. I didn’t even think of checking his story.” His lips clasp into a thin line, eyes never leaving the steady swirl of his drink. “It’s not an excuse,” which means it is going to be offered as one and she will promptly reject it, “but my parents had died only months before, I was overwhelmed with the company and dealing with their estate, all I wanted was to protect people, to feel like I-”

“Like you had control.”

Tony’s nod is in slow-motion, her words being weighed with each dip of his chin, “And then I lost it. Two days before we were going to start building the vibranium exoskeleton on his body, some high-level, hoity toity government guy discovered glaring inconsistencies in his story.” This is information she has never heard nor gathered from Ultron, his version always maintaining the exact same details and heroically tragic overtones. “He was at the riots that day. Not as a bystander but as an organizer. Gave a speech and everything.” Ultron does love public oration and manipulation so this fits her knowledge of him as a person. “Turns out he was the one that suggested they all march over to Hart’s business to make their demands known and that if Hart refused their offer of less money for flour then they should take it by whatever force was necessary.”

This sounds far more in line with what she knows of Ultron, what she has seen him do simply with words, offer subtle suggestions to turn the tide of individuals and crowds. “He started the riots?”

“He did. Apparently, he was also the one trying to kill Hart, not stop it.”

Another behavioral consistency with the true man but this still doesn’t explain Ultron’s fury and need for vengeance. For some reason she never inquired of Ultron why he hated Stark, the mere fact his hatred matched her own was enough to assume Stark was the nexus of all Ultron’s pain and anger. Now it seems vital to understand the origins of his motivation. “What did you do to him?”

“I didn’t do anything to him,” defensiveness enters his voice, body bristling and ready to fight.

It causes her to rethink what she said and acknowledge it could have been phrased better. “I’m sorry, I meant, what happened next?”

Stark’s annoyance lessens slightly, though his knuckles remain white from gripping his drink. “I literally did nothing to him. We released him from the program, the War Department locked up the vibranium and started brokering deals of who they might sell it to, and my contract was done, project U.L.T.R.O.N. was forgotten and frankly I haven’t thought of Mark, or whatever his name was, for some time.”

There is a disconnect in how Stark views harm, one that seems to demarcate around the intricacies of commission versus omission. “Doing nothing isn’t the same as not harming.”

“Oh, well, since you seem to be the expert,” how easily they always return to this state, the push and pull of their relationship requiring tension and sarcasm, “please tell me how I ruined his life by merely releasing him.”

Wanda proceeds with a caveat, an olive branch to soften his negativity to what is coming, “Nothing excuses what he has become or what he is planning to do.” Stark’s crystal tumbler sways to the side in acceptance of her preemptive placating, encouraging her to proceed. “You gave him hope,” just like Stark Industries had done in Novi Grad, a promise of something just a bit better than what they’d had before, “a path forward after he’d lost so much. My guess is you had fitted everything and tested it out.”

“We had created functional versions in less resilient material.”

Sokovia had tasted the fruit of their labor, an economy that at least provided what was needed—food on the table and a roof overhead for everyone. The success of Stark’s factory was already bringing other businesses into negotiations to establish a presence in the city. “Then you just took it away, did you even let him have a prototype or offer anything to help his injuries?” Tony’s silence speaks volumes, eyes distant and mouth set in a stern line, as if he’s possibly looking in a mirror for the first time in his life and realizes the blemishes in skin. “He’s a horrible man, a monster, and he likely didn’t deserve anything, but I imagine, in his mind, you abandoned him when you knew he needed help, just like you did Sokovia after the factory.”

His voice is quiet and forcefully even, “I left Sokovia because I thought my continued presence would only be a reminder of what happened.”

“You helped send us into a depression. No one else wanted to come to the city with the skeleton of your failure still standing.” There’s no counter argument or biting remark, only his unnerving stare, “Had you just done something, anything, it would have hurt less than the abandonment.”

Tony glances down, morosely watching the ebb and flow of his drink, wrist endlessly in motion. “All he was to me was the lunatic who caused a year of my work to be for nothing.” A sip breaks the sentence, followed by a grimace and he continues, “Then again all Sokovia was to me was an ill-handled disaster I could forget about by just turning away.” Frustrated tears threaten to fall from the corners of her eyes at finally getting an honest admission from him. “But you can’t forget it,” it seems the tears are mutual, glistening in his own eyes, “and neither can he.”

“He wants to obliterate you and everyone around you.”

Tony’s wrist stops, the ripples of his drink calming into a placid lake, “Do you still want that?”

Whether the answer she gives is the one meant to get her back to Vision or the truth, it is the same, “No.”

Briefly he snaps out of the melancholy, lifting the glass in solute to solving one problem at hand, “Cheers to that.”

“Cheers.” Their glasses clink and the feeling in the air is unburdened, almost peaceful, though that is strongly influenced by the alcohol. She considers keeping him in this mood, not currently annoyed at his company, but there are still more answers she needs. “How did you get the vibranium back for Vision?”

Stark sobers, putting the glass down and leaning forward, elbows coming to rest on his knees while he lowers his voice as if the heads of the War Department are in the hidden passageways surrounding them. “It was an amazing material, actually tried to buy it from them myself, but I didn’t succeed at that. So I kept an eye on it, tracked it as they sold it and turned my interests more towards finishing the arc reactor. Conveniently, they sold it to Queen Victoria a year before I went over to do some work, give some speeches to aspiring engineers like myself.” Like Victor Williams.

Vision told her he’d never asked or wanted details about the acquisition of the vibranium, his control over curiosity and morality impressive, something she doesn’t consider a vital trait in her own life. “Did you steal it?”

“I did,” mischief alights on his face as he picks up his drink again, “don’t tell Vision though.” His jovial pride slips backwards into somberness as he continues, “Vision was the perfect candidate. He needed it to survive, he had a clean past, a bright future, clearly had heroic qualities.” And Tony’s guilt at being the cause for the injuries no doubt played into his (not wrong) perceptions of Vision’s fit for the program. “The design was going to need an update given the difference in injuries, which wasn’t a big deal, but project U.L.T.R.O.N was done and they said I couldn’t re-up the contract. I did try,” the glass waves through the air as he attempts to resolve the dissonance created by breaking the law, “to use official,” he pauses, “somewhat official channels and when they didn’t respond in a timely manner, what else did they expect to happen?”

Wanda weighs the words, a little perturbed at finding she believes Stark so easily. “How did they never realize you took it?”

“Oh, they knew.” The trademark cocky grin he uses in public saunters into their conversation. “They could never find it though,” his voice grows conspiratorial, inviting her into a dark web even Vision is ignorant of, “I convinced them Vision had the plague, so they never went into his room and that also made them want him out of the country. All of that, plus being the preeminent businessman of my country,” this is the Stark she knows far better than the vulnerable one of before, “made it easier for Polk to convince the Queen to let me return to the States instead of facing prosecution.”

Belief in his veracity and the cunning of his actions, however, can’t change the truth of what Ultron wants or what he has planned, the past cannot save the present. “Ultron is looking for the vibranium.”

“Of course he is.” A beat and the uneasy comfort they have descends into mistrust, “You didn’t tell him about-”

Wanda makes sure her, “No,” is forceful and irrefutable before easing into the uncomfortable truths of Ultron’s knowledge. “But Ultron suspects Vision has it.”

“Fuck.” A hand to his face muffles the second part of his comment, “Don’t tell Vision I just said that in front of you.” An alien, surprisingly hopeful smile forms on her lips at the now two implicit suggestions of speaking to Vision at some point in the future. “Wanda,” then it flees at the way Stark is eying her, “since I’ve been so open to your questions, mind if I ask some of my own?”

The only way they will successfully take down Ultron is if an alliance is formed, if the line between sides is thoroughly and unmistakably carved into the ground. Wanda does her best to mimic the way Stark tilted his glass towards her earlier, “Go ahead.”

His fingers tap against his mouth as he sorts through whatever questions he has, pausing several times to raise a finger and then seemingly deciding that question is not the best. Finally, he seems to hone in on a strategy, settling himself back comfortably into his chair, and proceeds, “How’d you get involved with Ultron?”

Unlike Tony, Wanda doesn’t feel compelled to share long narratives, no matter how much alcohol she’s consumed. “We had the same goal, to destroy you, it seemed an ideal partnership.”

“That’s honest.” Typically he’d say it sarcastically, yet in this moment it seems a refreshing observation to him. “You know, I always kind of fantasized about underground crime networks out to get me, shunned scientists or jealous business partners who realized they could never reach my intellectual potential.” Of course he has, no doubt he’s even given them snarky and Stark-centric names. “It’s really not fun, now that I know it exists.” He finishes his second glass as he transitions to a new topic, “I’m still having a hard time with one minor—actually major thing. I get you wanted to destroy me.”

“Yes.”

“And you maintain you’ve never wanted to harm Vision?”

“Yes.”

Tony scrunches his face as she confirms what she’s already told him on numerous occasions. “So how does he keep ending up like this?”

The full explanation involves going all the way back to Sokovia, to the baron, the emergence of her powers and the winding path that brought her to Stark’s mansion. Each step of that journey will no doubt be crudely questioned, her intentions and her motivation never truthful enough for Stark. Even with the aid of bourbon, she has no desire to go through that, so she tries to find a way to summarize all of it as succinctly as possible. “My best guess,” Wanda can’t look at the man across from her and actually say this, so she keeps her eyes locked onto the checkered pattern of the tabletop between them, “is that everyone I’ve ever loved in my life, I’ve lost. And the deeper I care about Vision, the more I want to protect him, the more hurt he gets because of my past associations. I think it’s my fate or something.”

Silence isn’t what she expects, Tony Stark not a man capable of more than a second of stillness before he feels the need to fill it, yet he hasn’t spoken, hasn’t even placed his glass down or suggested another drink, the only sound in the room is her own heart beating in her throat. “He’s doing okay, Wanda. Not great by any means, but okay.” The tiniest weight lifts from her chest. “Been sleeping pretty much all day, like he is now. The one time he was awake, well that’s a bit dicier.” This isn’t comforting, though she waits to see if Stark elaborates on his definition of dicey. “At first he seemed himself, logical and quiet, and then,” her fingers grip the glass tighter as Stark elongates the pause in his sentence, “Then he went off the rails.” Stark laughs, it’s one note, brief, and borderline manic, “Like when I asked him what happened he tried to tell me you have powers that come out of your hands.”

Wanda bends forward to place her drink down, using enough force that the clink of the crystal on wood is loud enough to pull Stark’s attention solely to her. “You mean like this?” Scarlet engulfs her hand, pulsing in even rhythms, growing brighter the longer he stares, and then she steals his glass with a whip of scarlet.

“Huh.” She’d expected him to be gobsmacked, maybe a bit terrified because fear is still a welcome look on his face, and it’s possible his lack of words is the way this manifests, but it is not nearly as satisfying. “I suppose him saying you read minds is not a whole hogD either?” Wanda shakes her head, not particularly interested in entering the millionaire’s mind to prove it. “Huh.”

This would be the point where she should bring back the séance, help him understand she’s being truthful, yet she feels perhaps it is best for him to come to that conclusion alone or possibly even go back to Vision, a source he trusts far more than her. “Anything else?”

His face is full of questions, ideas treading together just beneath the surface until he tamps it down. “I think I’ve reached my weird quotient for the night, so maybe tomorrow.” The atmosphere cracks around them as he stands, stretching his arms out to shoo away the ghosts of their past before he glues on an unconvincing disinterest to his close-lipped smile. “I should check on Vision.” Stark hesitates, mulling over something in his mind, “I’ll let you know when he wakes up.”

“Thank you.” The door shuts behind Stark and she’s left alone once more.

“This room’s too small.” Clint paces through the empty rows of chairs, eyes taking in every angle of the room. “There’s no clear shots in case we need to shake a flanninE.”

Over breakfast they all discussed how to prepare for Ultron, a conversation that was illuminating and helpful, though uncomfortably absent the one person Wanda wanted to see the most. The path forward is structured along two branches - technological and tactical. Stark, Rhodes, and Vision (once he stops, according to Stark, sleeping away his responsibilities) are experimenting with what was labeled a failsafe option in case Ultron gets ahold of the arc reactor, though Stark maintained an infuriatingly tight-lipped policy on the device stating it was too soon in development to divulge more. This left Wanda and her chaperones to determine the defensive strategy for the demonstration, and Wanda can’t help but wonder if the insistence they check on the set-up at the Crystal Palace is an elaborate way Stark is keeping her from Vision.

Natasha follows in Clint’s path, face devoid of all emotion or sign of her thoughts. The room itself is on the third floor, deep in the west nave with a small stage at the front and enough room for about twenty people to sit and watch. It’s exactly what would be needed for an intimate demonstration meant only for experts in the field. But, considering Ultron’s intentions, it is also perfect for an ambush as there is nowhere to hide, or run, and little room to fight back once control is lost. Natasha seems in concurrence as she steps onto the stage and stares out at the seats, “It’s not ideal.”

“Not ideal?” Clint flails his arms, turning to emphasize the space around them. “Nat, this is the reincarnation of Budapest.”

Whatever event he references casts a dangerous cloud over Natasha’s mind. “Do you have a better suggestion?”

“I do, actually, thanks for asking.” Clint marches out of the room, his steps confidently leading them down the semi-crowded hall and to the railing overlooking the main floor under the dome. “Right there,” he points to the stage still constructed from Stark’s opening demonstration, “I could stand up here and,” with realistic sound effects he pantomimes notching an arrow and letting it loose, “have actual control of the situation.”

Wanda was rarely included in the intricacies of tactical planning in Sokovia and with Ultron, only being brought on once her own part had been cast, making her feel practically useless right now as the two bicker. “You’d have ten times the people to watch.”

“They didn’t call me Hawkeye for nothing, Nat. I can hit anyone from any distance.”

Natasha’s remains on task, uninterested in joining his competition. “We open the demonstration to the public it means more people are being put in harm’s way.”

It’s a fair point, a large portion of their breakfast revolved around the need to reduce collateral, the reminder of Vision’s torture still too fresh. Except the size of the room won’t matter if Ultron succeeds fully with what he wants. When she dove into the abyss of his mind, she found a similar, monstrous plan to the time before, a bait and switch where a personal attack on Stark sits at the epicenter of wider destruction. Wanda glances over her shoulder, an action she’s been doing constantly since they left the tower, before hesitantly adding to the conversation. “He wants to use the arc reactor attack as a way to steer people deeper into the building,” the images still float in her mind and the harrowing glee he felt when thinking about it tingles on her palms, “where they can’t escape as easily.”

The rest is left hanging, too unbearable to utter in the open like this. Both of her companions seem to understand her concern. Natasha’s stoic and calculating stare sweeps across the open and majestic room before them. “How many minds can you control at once?”

“It depends.”

“On?”

The list is long and not at all exhaustive, this very line of inquiry of great interest to the scientists and the baron. Wanda narrows it down to the three most prominently featured in this setting. “I’m better in smaller rooms,” this allows her quicker access to everyone, “I’m better the closer I am, and if they are all thinking of the same thing.”

Clint leans against the rail to get a better view below them, “It’s pretty spacious compared to the other room.”

An eye roll betrays Nat’s feeling on the uselessness of his obvious observation. “If we could get you close and have everyone paying attention to one thing, how many?”

Wanda flexes her powers, hand buried in her skirt in case of curious onlookers, and presses gently against the crowd below. It’s difficult, hundreds of minds bouncing in hundreds of directions, no two the same, though she can locate pockets of similarities based on the displays. This isn’t how it would be if Stark moved his display here, that man, for better or worse, demands attention and during the Iron Man presentation almost every thought coalesced around him. When she recalls that feeling, the onslaught of hundreds of minds in unison, her powers flow a bit easier. “Two hundred, at best, and it couldn’t be anything complicated and I’d need to be protected, I can’t focus on all those people and defend myself.”

“I’ll cover you,” these words from anyone other than Natasha would be viewed as a polite yet empty promise, from the spy, however, it’s a binding oath.

“Then I think it could work.”

Clint surveys the ground floor again with an appreciative nod, “We should mosey on back to the tower to update everyone, plus,” the blacksmith’s pocket watch isn't on a shiny chain but it is a well-crafted and durable device, the solid silver face popping open to confirm his thought, “we need to get ready for the shindig tonight.”

Stark’s lavish party, the one Vision informed her was in protest to the President’s own event, is occurring on the Virginia in a few hours. Wanda wasn’t invited, not a single person inquired if she had clothes or if she intended to go, which is fine, because she’d have declined anyway. It does create a barrier on their reconnaissance efforts, “We should head back,” Natasha’s open displeasure lies at the crossroads of inadequate time to prepare for a mission and the unenviable option of crossing Pepper’s sternly reiterated timeline for the evening. “On the way out look for anything that obscures sightlines, evacuation paths, or might be trouble for us.”

What two days ago was a wonderland of unique, enthusiastically narrated innovations, turns into a nightmare. The Fresnel lensF is stripped of its structural beauty and revealed to be a monolith blocking the closest route of escape. Each statue rises to block sight lines and cage in the eager crowd likely to form, Wanda even pushes her powers against the base of scene frozen in struggle—a hunter attempting to strike down the snake poised to attack. The pedestal shakes and Wanda adds it as a potential concern. They walk past the cord pyramid and it is a fire hazard, the Colt display becomes either an armory for themselves or a garden of death in Ultron’s possession. For a moment, Wanda stops and stares at herself in the enormous mirror, a fuzzy recollection of its history only heightening her attention to the empty space beside her. She begins to turn away and then stops, feet slowly rotating her back to her reflection where over her shoulder she can see the woman in white in the distance, staring directly into the glass. The woman moves on, apparently gaining all she needed.

When they return to the tower, it’s abuzz with activity. Numerous nameless, nigh identical socialites lounge in the front parlor awaiting the scheduled ride to the Virginia. The women are experts at looking at ease even in their intricate structured and lavishly decorated dresses, and the men, being chivalrous, lean against walls and tables and the backs of couches as they cheerily chat. Pepper flits between groups, the polite and gracious smile of a host affixed to her face. There's an entire fleet of butlers and maids, faces she has never seen before and assumes are employees of the invasive species of wealth in the room. Natasha guides them through the crowd, deep into the secondary parlor reserved only for long-term house guests. It’s here they find Rhodes and Tony locked in debate. “Are you really turn coating now?”

“I’m just saying,” Rhodes’ manner is similar to how she’s seen parents acting while defusing the bomb that is a sassing adolescent in public, “For the sake of time, go with the other one.”

“Tony,” Natasha, who has a built-in clock and believes in wasting none of that time, intervenes, “we have some ideas for your demonstration.”

The millionaire whisks around, a toothy, slightly disordered grin on his face. “Great, you can tell me at the gala, but more importantly, do you like this one,” a garish gold laced monstrosity is held to his neck, “or this one?” a subtler maroon cravat with flecks of gold ascends. Most people would allow feedback at this point, but they instead get the backstory. “Without spoiling anything, Rhodes and I prefer one of them and then, in an act of utter betrayal, Vision has sided with Pepper.”

Natasha’s inhale isn’t audible, but the disapproval and annoyance at this being the crisis is palpable in the air around her. “It really seems Vision is the only intelligent man in this scenario. Like him, I will always side with Pepper.”

“I like the gold one,” Clint’s selection isn’t as sincere as it is devious, a smirk on his face belying his need to cause more drama.

“Thank you!” Tony now turns to her, “Okay Wanda, you’re the literal tie breaker now.” This she takes as a promising sign, the act of asking her opinion perhaps indicating there is some level of understanding and possibly (though unlikely) forgiveness. “This cunning gold one,” a dramatic flourish brings the eyesore to his throat, “or,” limply he displays the other one, “this one that probably twenty other people will also be wearing tonight.”

Due to the breakneck pace of Stark’s mouth, her mind took far too long to connect all of the information being lobbed around the room. “Did you say Vision is awake?”

Tony piggybacks on her question with a bribe, “He is, side with me,” the gold cravat rises to his neck and does a little dance, “and maybe I can tell you where he is.”

“He’s in the study,” Rhodes states it matter-of-factly, ignoring the daggers sent his way via Stark, “asked us to inform you he’d find you as soon as he’s done.”

Tony’s “Traitor” occurs simultaneously with her, “Thank you.”

Patience being an aggravating virtue, Wanda locates an available seat on the other end of the couch from Rhodes, settling in to wait for Vision to finish whatever he’s doing, certain if she tried to disengage from the conversation and slip out the back door in search of the butler, she would be immediately apprehended. “Wanda,” she looks up at Tony, his voice lacking its usual layer of acidity while maintaining its cocky authority, “you didn’t choose.”

The cravats shimmy in the air as he waits for her. “The gold one,” Tony perks up, shoving the supposedly boring one away, “is hideous.”

“You know what,” the majority opinion is shoved deeper into his trouser pocket, a seething shrug undermining his attempt at nonchalance, “clearly none of you understand fashion,” Rhodes’ Hey! isn’t acknowledged in the mini tirade, “and this room doesn’t have to be a democracy.”

Wanda startles when the door to the parlor opens, heart frantically tapping against her rib cage until she sees it is Pepper, not Vision, entering the space. “Tony, we need to go,” there is no leeway offered in the statement, her austerity shackling Stark’s usual flippancy as he silently obeys and heads towards her with a smile. The woman glances at the cravat being tied around his neck and her lips purse into disapproval, “You are not wearing that thing.”

This seems to be the key to releasing any control she had, Stark leaning in to kiss her cheek while offering her a waggish, “We need to go, Pepper, can’t be late to our own party.”

Tony struts out of the room, leaving Pepper to share a commiserate and silent stare with the room. “Natasha are you-”

“Clint and I will meet up with you at the boat.” This seems the only concern left, Pepper exiting towards the main parlor and Clint and Natasha out the back door towards the living quarters.

Only Rhodes remains, sitting with his legs crossed and book in hand, fingers tapping out a spirited rhythm to whatever tune seems to be in his head. “Are you not going?”

The tapping stops, “I don’t particularly feel like being surrounded by Brown Stone FrontsG tonight.”

Having witnessed how the wealthy and hoping-to-be-wealthy treated the man on the journey down river, Wanda can’t fault him his decision even if she knows it is more likely to be a pretext to the real reason. “And I’m guessing Stark doesn’t want me alone with Vision.”

“That is the ancillary purpose.” The book closes over his finger, saving his place as he angles his legs towards her. “Based on everything that’s happened, figured it wouldn’t be a bad idea for a third person to be around in case there’s trouble.” If the comment had come from Tony she would immediately internalize it about herself, but there is something in Rhodes’ nonjudgmental cadence that implies the trouble is external, that he is thinking more of an ambush from without instead of from within, and this trust, as misplaced as it is, soothes a fraction of her anxiety.

Wanda smiles at the man and they lapse into silence, his book opening up as his legs swing back into comfort, swaying with the song of his mind. Typically companionable silence is welcomed, something Wanda doesn’t mind on good days, but on days where her mind is firing like an out of control piston, it puts her on edge. “Do you know what Vision is doing in the study?”

“Tony called in some doctors. Wanted someone other than Vision to tell him everything was fine.” A fair decision to make, one Rhodes seems unconcerned with, his attention returning to the book.

Her fingers twist together, each second that passes urges her powers on, and it’s when the scarlet threatens to break that she stands up and moves to the window, where she can hide her fidgeting hands from Rhodes. Scarlet twines between her fingers in an orderly, focused fashion as she counts each person who gets into the carriages outside, every flouncy dress or four-piece suit that disappears into the rod iron and wood vehicles being one less potential source of interference once Vision is done. Instead of helping to pass the time, the procession into the three carriages is agonizingly slow, each hand gently cupped to help up the large-skirted women, or pat to the back as the men speak, is another reminder of how long it has been since she’s seen Vision.

Wanda watches as Tony bows low, hat clasped in his hand, when Pepper (the last of the train of guests) approaches the carriage. A detachment of sorts exists, her feelings towards the man still lurking in the background, but she is able to watch the seemingly flirtatious banter, the brazen way Stark kisses Pepper’s cheek in public, the sheer exuberance on both their faces, and accept how wonderful their love seems. She even finds herself caring that it not be ruined by Ultron. It’s a bit disquieting to wish good will to Stark. Tony pauses as he follows his lover into the carriage, his face turning towards the tower, and Wanda fights the impulse to duck out of view, instead remaining at the window in full sight, hoping it serves to further extend the peace treaty between them.

Once the doors are shut and the horses trot away, Wanda leaves her observation point, pacing back and forth behind the couch, getting occasional glances from Rhodes, her mind going over each word she intends to say to Vision. She has at least five variations, all depending on what she thinks he may (or may not) say upon seeing her. Each one starts with his name and an apology, from there it diverges into additional apologies or inquiries as to his well-being, or promises it won’t happen again, or explanations as to why he should never talk to her again, or, her current preferred route, simply wrapping her arms around his waist and refusing to let go.

The sound of voices, particularly the gentle lull of Vision’s, renders her motionless, her feet stuck mid-stride and her hands finding each other. Two women dressed in rational costumesH enter the room, one of them (her jet-black hair secured in a serious bun just above the equally serious knot of her apron) is walking backwards as she speaks. “You are certain this can wait until after the demonstration?”

“I am certain.” Wanda’s breath catches once Vision enters, his voice matching the relaxed clothing he wears, his shirt loosely tucked into dark linen pants she knows he would never wear in public, even if they are still nicer than what Clint wears on a daily basis.

The other woman mirrors the concern from her companion, “We can do it tonight.”

“I cannot afford to be quiescent right now.” Whatever their discussion concerns, it is one that feels as if it is the third time it is happening, an obstinacy to Vision’s refusal that is common when people feel their limits are being unduly challenged. “Mr. Stark is expecting a great deal from me in the next two days.”

“Three days then,” the second woman, auburn hair braided and draped over the shoulder strap of her stiff white apron, makes the decision.

Vision gives in with a somewhat strained, “Very well.” It’s only at the conclusion that the three people realize they aren’t alone, Vision’s face turning up to survey the room and then freezing when he sees her. All her planned words flee at the timid concern in his eyes and his tentative, soft, “Wanda.”

“Vision.”

She’s upset she can’t muster more, doesn’t provide him guidance or any sort of question, despite her careful plan. But he fills the silence by taking up the mantle of pleasantries. “How are you doing?”

If not for the entreaty on his face and the tension of his body as he waits for her response, she’d label this as default politeness. Except this is genuine, perhaps not the actual question he has, but all of his concern, his worry, his rumination on what happened is stuffed into the one phrase. Wanda offers him a small smile and watching his own anxiety be sloughed away by the action eases the weight on her chest. “I’m fine, Vision. How are you?”

“I have felt better,” perhaps he’s finally moving away from the socially expected dampening of his pain, “a lot better, actually, yet it is still a vast improvement over yesterday.”

Wanda’s relieved, “Good,” barely reaches the midpoint of the chasm between them.

“Vision,” the black-haired woman, her back still to Wanda, places a hand on his arm, a touch that is friendly and not unwelcomed, or at least he doesn’t pull away or deflect the invasion of his typically well-guarded personal space. “We’ll be back in a few days.”

Vision’s face slips into embarrassed congeniality and Wanda takes it to heart that her presence made him forget, for a moment, what was happening around him. “Of course, thank you for all of your help,” he steps back and opens his shoulders up to both women, “both of your help.” Even Rhodes joins Wanda’s interested stare at the group, his book forgotten as they watch Vision’s eyes widen in horror, “My sincerest apologies.” His placation is leveled at every person in the room. “Miss Maximoff, Officer Rhodes, please let me introduce you to Dr. Helen Cho,” he angles his body a bit to the right to indicate the black-haired woman, who turns around and offers Wanda and Rhodes a small bow, “and Dr. Christine Palmer,” the other woman smiles and the honorifics are what Wanda focuses on, not certain she’s ever heard a woman, much less two with that title. “They both have been instrumental in my well-being for many years now,” this is said with a pointed weightiness typically absent his voice, one that insinuates for those in the know (currently everyone but Rhodes) that the re-construction of Vision’s body lays in the hands of these women, “and, fortuitously, are both in town for the Exhibition.”

“I am here for you,” Wanda decides she likes Dr. Cho, the woman’s assertion of Vision’s importance is unshakeable and a bit of a challenge, even if she has a bright joy on her face, “The Exhibition is secondary.”

“And it is enormously appreciated.”

The conversation lulls and etiquette binds them all to remain in place, even Vision appears uncertain how to proceed in juggling his two guests in conjunction with how to respond to Wanda and how to also bring Rhodes in, his eyes discreetly bouncing between all their faces. Rhodes rises from the couch, lays the book on the cherry coffee table, and fastens a friendly grin to his face. “Allow me to show you two out so Vision can get back to resting.”

Vision’s face falls at the excuse, mouth already opening to provide a counterpoint at the suggestion he cannot complete his duties, but Dr. Palmer accepts the offer, striking down any dissent with an impressively firm and multifaceted, “Thank you.” Both women give goodbyes to the butler before following Rhodes out of the room.

The subtle swishing of the door fills the charged yet silent air between them, Wanda still stationed behind the couch while Vision stays near the doorway, their eyes locked and both of them waiting for the other to move. They should reconcile over Ultron, at the very least establish enough of an understanding to finish planning for the demonstration. But that’s an ugly conversation to have when she’s only just gotten him back. His continued silence suggests he may be struggling with the same battle, so she detracts from the Ultron tainted space between them. “You know, I’ve never met women who were doctors before.”

“Oh,” Vision’s eyes veer to the side, mind needing a few seconds of adjustment before he irons out the confusion contorting his features, “Yes, unfortunately society deems women incapable of such a job despite compelling evidence otherwise.”

Wanda braces her hands along the back of the couch in what she hopes is a casual lean that lightens the atmosphere of the room. “So how did you end up with two then?”

His face relaxes, whatever else had been on his mind abandoned as his voice takes on a hint of the enthusiasm it had at the Exhibition. “From my understanding, which is based on Mr. Stark’s explanation,” a look is shared between them that acknowledges the grain of skepticism required, “due to the experimental and controversial nature of his proposed procedure, no surgeons were willing to risk their reputations on,” now the corners of his mouth droop and she can practically feel his thoughts muddle, “what they deemed Mr. Stark’s Frankensteinian endeavor.” She only understands the reference based on what he told Ultron and it is not one that sounds generous towards himself.

“So how did he find someone?” Wanda laces her question with encouragement, fingers digging into the leather upholstery to tamp down her temptation to walk closer to him, deciding now that he’s fully alert, she needs him to make the first move, that he should tip them into whatever momentum seems best. Ideally it would be returning to what they had developed over their time together, what culminated between them on the steamboat.

However there is no sign of him moving, a rod shoved down his spine and into the ground keeping him tense and still. “A surgeon by the name of Stephen Strange contacted Mr. Stark and explained that, though he could not perform the procedure due to a recent injury, he had a very talented colleague, Dr. Palmer, who was interested.”

Wanda carefully considers his words. Even within the spiritualist community there are gender divides, the mesmerists are the reputable face of the movement, the men who meld science and mysticism into dramatics, and they are almost all that, men. The worst, most unconvincing mesmerist will still be believed over herself. She imagines the medical community is just as dismissive towards women. When you are denied visibility, then even the most egregious or controversial procedure can’t really harm a reputation that isn’t allowed to exist. “And Dr. Cho?”

Bemusement crinkles along the outer corners of his eyes, “She happened to be on a research fellowship, though we were not aware she was a woman for over half a year.”

“How is that even possible?”

A nervous, self-effacing laugh proceeds the explanation, “Dr. Cho subverted societal limits by hiring a man to act as one Amadeus Cho, famed JoesenI biologist, and she accompanied him as his interpreter. When Mr. Stark first heard of her, well his, I suppose, work it was at a consortium on physiology where she was presenting the translated talk on counteracting malignant bodily responses to surgical procedures.” Vision’s shoulders relax, slightly, pride at Dr. Cho’s bluff evident in his voice, “It was a cunning ruse, she could answer all questions asked at the presentation without drawing suspicion or derision.” For a moment Wanda wonders how many men have any idea the exhaustion that imbues your life when the only way to be considered seriously in your field is to have to be a completely different person.

“How did you finally figure it out?”

“Once I was conscious and conversant enough to handle my own communications,” something that took over half a year, far longer than even she imagined, “I thanked her for her integral role in facilitating the development of my medicine and constructing the infusion pump. Though she was ostensibly just an interpreter, she played a surprisingly hands on role which led me to inquire if she had ever considered pursuing the field itself.” Politeness isn’t a tool she ever believed needed to be honed, it was always just something people used to remain civil and distant, yet Vision utilizes it just as efficiently as she imagines Natasha can garner information with a pistol. “She informed me of the truth and then returned to Seoul soon after,” he pauses, assessing her face for recognition of the name. Wanda has heard of it once, from Tony, she thinks. Based on the woman’s appearance she can reach an educated guess the city is in what she has heard people refer to as the Orient. “We communicate monthly via letter or telegraph on my progress and she continues to synthesize all of my medication.”

Wanda isn’t sure how to respond, awed at the drive and ingenuity of the people surrounding Vision while realizing she isn’t ever going to reach such levels. “They both sound amazing.”

This draws his right foot forward, face growing severe at her tone despite his voice maintaining its even keel, “I am incredibly fortunate to know such remarkable women.” Another step towards her and her heart pounds against her ribs, “That includes you, Wanda.”

Her half-formed, disbelieving, “Vizh...” is enough to finally propel him to a decision. Wordlessly he crosses the room and envelops her in his arms, draws her tight against his chest and she collapses into him, returning the embrace, anchoring herself to his waist, her cheek resting firmly against the soft fabric of his shirt.

“Wanda,” her name is muffled, his lips pressed to her scalp as he offers an unnecessary, “I am so sorry.”

“No,” half her mind tells her to step back and say it to his face while the other half commands her to stay in the safety of his embrace where she can hear the familiar and remarkable rhythm of his heart. The latter half wins out, her sentence soaked up by his shirt, “Don’t apologize.”

Thankfully his own mind seems in concordance with hers concerning their closeness, his arms snug around her and his lips laying another kiss to her hair to help transmit his response, “I should have come sooner, but Mr. Stark-”

Without connecting with his mind, she can’t be sure of the rest of the sentence, but it probably would have been about confining him to his room or being too devoted in caring for the butler to allow space for others. Both of which are true. “Was only trying to protect you. I’m not angry at him.” Which is also true, annoyed, upset, disheartened, yes, but she can’t fault Stark his need to protect family. “Or you.”

The feel of his arms pulling back incites in her a need to cling to him, yet he still manages to pry himself away enough to stare at her, his unerring attention tugging her own eyes to meet his. “Wanda,” his bare hand molds to her cheek, “there is no reason I need to be protected from you and I have informed Mr. Stark that, though I appreciate his concern on the matter of my safety around you, it is wholly and completely misplaced.”

He is wrong to put his faith in her, she knows this based on sifting over and over again through her own past and what occurred with Ultron, revealing numerous fine points of contention to his argument. Only one is needed, however. “I hurt you.”

“Against your will.”

Wanda shakes her head, her movements dampened by his hand still holding her face, “What if it happens again?” Ultron is only one of the faces from her past and not the only one with a grudge against Stark, if they all find out who Vision is, how many others will manipulate their bond? “Vision, I-”

“I suppose if it becomes a regular ordeal, absent sadistic third parties, then perhaps we be concerned.” This is not at all how she envisioned their conversation going, him being the comforter, the foundation of calm, immutable optimism that somehow brightens the room around them, even managing to coax a laugh from her. His smile encourages her lips to maintain their upward arc. “I,” his free hand finds her own, sliding over it in a snug embrace, and then he brings it to his face, “I trust you, Wanda.”

The offer hangs in the air, her palm laying against his freshly shaved jaw, temptation and desire warring with the memory of watching him flinch from her and the weight of his body in her hands, of the fear still residing in herself at what she is capable of doing. For now she stays out of his mind, needing more time to trust herself again, but she needs him to understand how much the offer means. “Thank you.” She lays a hand to his chest and lifts onto her toes to press a questioning kiss to his cheek, seeking permission that this level of intimacy is fine. Strong, slightly trembling hands, cup her face and draw her in, their lips meeting and it doesn’t matter that she’s not delving into his mind, everything he is thinking is channeled into the kiss. The scrunch of his fingers against her cheek, the half step forward to eliminate all space between them, and the unerring, desperate pressure of his mouth asks her to accept his pardon, begs her to understand that what she has done against him has been weighed judiciously and he’s acquitting her of wrongdoing. Even if she has yet to agree, she accepts his judgment, hoping it can help her stay strong against what is on the horizon.

An uncertain, “Hello,” edges itself between their chests, forcing them apart as they turn towards Rhodes’ body leaning halfway through the doorway, “sorry for intruding,” he truly looks apologetic, “just wanted to let you know I’ll be in the lab.” Wanda doubts this was Stark’s intent of having a chaperone on hand, not that she will challenge Rhodes’ decision. “They should be back sometime around eleven, so you should probably mosey on down before then to make yourself look at home, okay?”

Vision seems just as surprised at the freedom offered them, a confused, “Of course,” falling limply from his lips as the sailor leaves the room again.

Perturbation is etched into the wrinkles forming on his forehead. “What’s wrong?”

“I have never parsed him out,” it’s a confession that bothers him, the role of a good butler hinging on accurately reading the room and understanding individual preferences. “I always assume, due to his military background, a strong adherence to orders, for which he is often a voice of reason against some of Mr. Stark’s more outrageous ideas. On the other hand, he is often just as enthusiastic of breaking rules as Mr. Stark. They can be a terrifyingly roguish duo when their thoughts align.”

Wanda admits she never imagined their prime confidant and gooseberry picker to be Stark’s closest friend. “Maybe he sees the line between morality and rules as more fluid than you.”

“That is possible.” A possibility that seems to send his mind diving deep into thought, his lips parted slightly in anticipation of speaking. “Wanda?” The seriousness is back on his face, a dreadful portentousness oozing from his very slow, very cautious suggestion, “If you are amenable, I wanted to show you a project I have been working on.”

Whether this is about Ultron or Tony or the Exhibition, it honestly doesn’t matter, she would say yes to anything he asked of her right now. “Of course.”

A precise nod joins his unconvincing, “Wonderful. It is in,” his voice falters, just a slight break in the words, “my quarters.” This isn’t offensive to her even if he hastily attempts to assuage her nonexistent concerns, “If you are more comfortable here, I can bring it down.”

“I’ve been in your other room before and you snuck into mine not too long ago.” And they have shared a bed.

“Yes, this is true.” He steps away and offers her his arm, an action she almost declines, out of principle. Instead she accepts, willing to conform to any societal expectation that dictates she be closer to him.

They walk through hallways, up several stairs, through secret doors, a path that is either the fastest (even if the most complicated) or meant to disorient her. With each turn in their journey Vision’s overall calm dissolves, the jitteriness in his steps and his politely distant directions send prickles along Wanda’s spine. The only promising sign of his nerves being unrelated to her is the fact he practically clings to her. When they walk they are arm in arm, when he has to find the switch for a secret passage he laces their fingers, and each time he waves her through a doorway ahead of him his hand moves from her arm to her back. It reminds her of the tunnel, of how her fingertips dragged through the roots and dirt of the wall to tether her to physical reality and away from spiraling thoughts.

“After you,” Vision motions her through the door and into his room. Like the manor, it is far bigger than any butler usually has, this space even more luxurious with two separate rooms, the main one housing his bed, a mirror, a wash basin, walls that are not busy but still display exquisitely realistic paintings of trees and mountainsides, and a table piled with books and covered in papers, a sight that would be surprising, given his usual cleanliness, if not for the general feel that he had been working on something prior to being interrupted. “It is back here,” his hand rests on her lower back as he guides her into the second room, a small laboratory filled with metal parts (organized in piles based on size and shape) and even more scribbled-on parchment.

“I thought you said you weren’t an engineer anymore,” she says it lightly, a gentle prod with a wide smile and he, thankfully, responds how she hopes, with a mild shrug and marginally sheepish tilt to his mouth.

“Mr. Stark included in my contract that, as his butler, I had to be well versed in mechanics and machinery to be an overall help in the household.” Sometimes (usually in weaker mental moments) she thinks that if Stark didn’t have that name, she may actually like him. “I only have a working space here, however, as I do not want to be involved in this aspect of the job too frequently.”

Wanda stands in the middle of the metal menagerie watching Vision wring his hands with distant eyes. “Vizh?”

This snaps him back to attention, determination filling his movements even if his, “Over here,” is a tad shaky. On the table is an array of devices, all almost identical—a metal plate (with a rivet in each corner) holding what appears to be a long cylinder that is flanked by metal rods sticking up from the plate. “These are some of the electromagnetic coils recovered from Mr. Stark’s factories.” Suddenly his jitters make sense and her heart sinks at the knowledge of what these small, harmless looking devices have wrought in their lives. “I,” Vision pauses, his fingers twining through her own, pulling her gaze to his face, one that is steeped in guilt and only sends her heart careening down towards her feet, “For years I had been attempting to figure out what caused the malfunctions.”

She doesn’t miss his roundabout acknowledgment of success, “What was it?”

The desk chair creaks as Vision pushes it out of the way and her body recoils into numbness when he lets go of her hand and picks up one of the coils. “This is the one from Mr. Stark’s London factory,” it’s horrifying to see the contrast of his scarred skin next to the charred remains of the very thing that changed his life, but it is even worse to see him turn it so casually through the air, “it had a small dent just under the primary interrupter leading the rhythm to be off just enough to build up too much energy. And this one, from his Brussels factory,” the prior one is placed down and another is picked up, no sign of hesitation or worry about it, and she has to imagine it is due to some sort of mental detachment he has formed, a dissociation from the past that allows him to do this. “It was in the coil itself, one of the inner wires appears to have been frayed upon the initial manufacturing.”

He stops the explanation and allows the suggestion to gestate in her mind. “Are you saying it was purposeful?”

“Based on the available evidence, it does suggest someone sabotaged the parts during their assembly.”

Fire flashes before her eyes, the screams of that day, of Stark’s memory of Vision’s own fate, echoing in her ears. “Who?”

The coil descends onto the table and the way he so gently grips both her hands is the opposite of comforting. “I am not sure,” anger boils up at his ignorance, at why he is telling her this if there isn’t even an answer, at how he could decide now, of all times, is the best to broach the topic, “but I think you may be able to help me.”

“How?” She spits it out, yanking her hands away and crossing her arms, recognizing he is not the one that deserves her ire and yet she's incapable of pushing her emotions aside.

Vision, in return, is overbearingly calm in response, his movements slow and words careful as if she is the damaged coil ready to burst into flames. “I saw an engraving on Ultron’s hand, when I shook it.”

Growing up she and Pietro played a game where one of them would draw a picture, sitting close enough to make out the general swoops of the pen but far enough that the image was obscured.

“It is the same mark that is etched into each of the defective coils and only on the defective ones, even Sokovia."

The entirety of winning or losing balanced on correctly guessing what was drawn. After the wager was placed, the piece of parchment was flipped over. Wanda almost always won, her attention to detail and ability to read her twin’s body language trumped Pietro’s quickness of guessing. He never slowed down long enough to consider what they’d seen that day or the day before, never thought about the conversations they’d just had as sources of inspiration.

“This is it.” Wanda barely registers grabbing the palm-sized piece of paper he offers, her eyes honed in on the unmistakable lines drawn in black ink.

Since she was ten, the broad brush strokes of her life all indicated that when the picture was finally revealed it would only be Tony Stark’s cocky face.

It’s not.

The paper flutters to the ground, her lungs collapsing in on themselves and bursts of light pop into her periphery from holding her breath. “Wanda?” Her name is said from far away, years stretching out in front of her as she stumbles backwards in her mind. “Wanda?” She tries to speak but her lips are parched, her tongue a useless, dried out thing in her mouth. By his third, very imploring, “Wanda?” her hands manage to act, pulling the hem of her blouse from her skirt and lifting it up and over her head, ignoring his startled, “Wanda!”

Wanda shoves the band of her chemiseJ off her shoulder and angles her back towards Vision, pointing him where to look. Thankfully he understands without requiring more from her. His touch is tender, skimming forward over the indented scar on her shoulder and then backwards, as if the first time was a lie. It’s unnecessary for him to bend and retrieve the paper, to hold it to her back and compare, because it’s obvious he memorized the interconnected initials well enough to recognize it on Ultron’s hand during a brief handshake. “Who did this?” The mournful fury of his voice is so foreign, so ill-fitting to his demeanor that she almost laughs, but she doesn’t, worried the action is too close to sobbing and she refuses to break down now.

“His,” the word comes out in a croak, her tongue working poorly at wetting her lips, “name is,” the first part doesn’t even come out as noise, only “von Strucker” surfacing. That’s all she can get out, the wave of self-loathing far too strong as she wrestles with the converging image of yet another misstep at seeing the truth. Years after Stark left, a baron from Prussia entered Novi Grad armed with a promise of revitalization to the ailing city, a well-laid out plan to rebuild its legacy, establish it as a leading center for scientific inquiry and innovation. All of it was meant to allow them steps towards autonomy. She and Pietro soaked up his words, years of living in squalor and nursing their anger made them revel in the condemnation leveled against capitalistic experimentalists such as Stark. They were blinded by hatred, a flaw she can’t ever seem to shake, believing Baron von Strucker when he said he had a way for them to finally show the world the true might of Sokovians. Even after he branded them, making them his scientific property, they rationalized it as simply part of the process, a necessary pain towards their role in the new Sokovia. “He did,” Wanda lights her hand with scarlet flames and watches the reflection of her torment in Vision’s eyes, “this to me.”

Vision cups her hand confidently, not flinching or rescinding his touch even when the red inferno crawls up his wrists, “Wanda I-”

The content of his question is lost as her mind reels, all the pieces cascading around her in random patterns, but if she can just grab a hold of them, one at a time, she can finally fit them together. Pride has to be swallowed for her to accept the clear, well-researched proof Vision has that Stark, though not blameless or pure by any means, was himself not fully in control of the disaster. That the death of her parents and all the others lost in the factory fire were enmeshed in a larger, longitudinal scheme for power, one directed by the man who stepped in as their savior. All the minds she ruined, all the lives that crumbled before her, the families and relationships torn asunder by her need for vengeance, were for nothing other than removing obstacles that happened to be pestering von Strucker or threatening his standing. But she recognized the malevolence and the mistreatment in Sokovia, she and Pietro had been drifting away from the von Strucker's hold, and Pietro’s death finally motivated her to carry out their plan to run, to start a new life. Then Ultron found her and the cycle repeated.

This is where her puzzle begins to turn from easily connected tabs and slots to wavy, indiscernible edges that seem to fit with any number of other pieces. Ultron groomed her, called her his miracle, his gift, a happenstance meeting that brought him in contact with a like-minded soul. Eventually she told him about von Strucker, the mutual goal they shared and Ultron’s lack of sufficient financial resources was enough to convince her to briefly reinstate her connection with the operation, all with the intent of righting the wrongs wrought by Stark.

Arms wrap around her and she feels her body moving, can hear her name in the distance and ignores it, mind working to shove the last bit in place, the thing that changes the entirety of the image she thought she’d been making.

Ultron already had the prosthetic when she met him.

“Wanda…” hands cup her face and she finally opens her eyes. Scarlet pulsates wildly around her, her emotions thrown out and in amongst the tempest of red is Vision, his face pale and lips moving with a frantic, “Wanda.” Words fail her still, her mouth opening and only a guttural breath conveying any information. Vision leans his forehead against hers, the fog of her powers fleeing from his path only to reform around his head in an eerie halo. It doesn’t faze him, his hands sure against her face and his voice beseeching. “Please let me help you.” There isn’t anything he can do about her past, her story written, her life painted and the colors are dried, ready to be hung on the wall next to his trees and mountains. He grabs her hand and puts it to his face, repeating his plea, “Please, Wanda, let me help.”

The scarlet coiling around his body becomes less chaotic as she accepts his offer and anchors herself to his mind. Immediately she is met with the sound of rain, a gentle patter so soft she can count each drop pooling into the empty bucket of her sanity. But then she remembers the symbol, the hand, the implications of what it means that Ultron knew von Strucker before she ever arrived in New York and she begins to unconsciously change Vision’s mind, the drizzle escalating into a storm, lightning crashing and thunder shaking the foundation of their connection. Somehow he pushes back, his hands firm without hurting her and his head pressing closer to her forehead, forcing their noses to touch. The storm dies down to the type of weather that is comfortable to watch from the window and this is when she begins to leeches his calm, packaging it into a bundle and moving it into her own mind, their breathing synchronizing until she is no longer shaking. Only then does she open her eyes and meet his doleful stare and unnecessarily remorseful, “I am so sorry, Wanda.”

It’s not his fault, he knows this, she knows this, his apologies can’t change anything, can’t go back in time and convince her to walk away after the first experiment, can’t bring Pietro back, can’t stop her from falling into Ultron’s honeyed promises of vengeance. Nothing can change what has happened and for the first time she accepts it, bottles up her anger and her fear and directs it at the future, the only thing she has left that is under her control. It’s fortunate that her future is tangible, his forehead pressed to hers, his breath hot against her cheek, the waft of metal finally associated with something pleasant, and she realizes there is only one way to guarantee her past can no longer haunt them. “I’m going to kill Ultron.” It’s not a perfect remedy but it is expedient and final and arguably a horrible idea, one she needs him to counter. Vision remains deathly still, even his mind shutting down and presenting merely an empty field. SO she pushes him, “Why aren’t you telling me not to?”

“Because I cannot decide if morally it is worse to kill him or to allow him to live on to do it again.” The torture of the dilemma makes his voice crack, his eyelids dropping as he directs his stare down and he whispers, “There could be one other option.”

Wanda lifts his chin until their faces are even, “What?”

“Mr. Stark and I have been designing a failsafe.”

“Yeah, I’ve heard it mentioned like ten times,” she doesn’t try to temper her annoyance, too tired and emotionally exhausted to be polite. “What is it?”

An apologetic purse of his lips is his only acknowledgment of her frustration. He leans back, hands traveling from her face down to her hands, which he clasps between his. It’s only now she realizes he relocated them during her mental crisis to sit on his bed, out of sight of the coils. “We have been designing a mechanism that will only be activated if the arc reactor is removed from the pump. It,” he hesitates, a deep exhale sending a scurry of agitation along her arms, “would destroy the reactor, something we believe is necessary to eliminate the possibility of Ultron harnessing its power and it will," his voice shifts into what is almost tipping into optimism, a morbid one and one he seems to reticent to share, "in the process, severely maim the individual who grabs it, that was Mr. Stark’s addition. But-”

Wanda can’t be passive on this, ice freezing her veins and stopping her heart, imbuing her voice with a frigidness she hopes he feels bodily. “Absolutely not.”

“Wanda-”

“No, Vision,” red seeps out of her hands, engulfing his arms once more, “you are not sacrificing yourself, I won’t let you.”

Defiance lingers in his otherwise placid features, “It is an option of last resort only. We have already-”

“It shouldn’t even be an option, Vizh. There has to be another way.”

He examines their joined hands, uncomfortable with being the messenger yet still he soldiers on in his attempt to justify his ridiculous suggestion. “We believe we have devised a way to dampen the power of the Arc 2 from the Iron Man to function adequately within the infusion pump.”

Of course he would have a fall back option and a source of rationale for the tightrope walk over a gaping grave he’s suggesting, “And what if the pump is destroyed?”

“It shouldn’t be, but,” the length of his hesitation is unnerving, a fissure forming in his usually unflappable countenance, “to be frank,” a phrase that concerns her far more than the idea of destroying the arc reactor, “according to Dr. Palmer and Dr. Cho, regardless of the functioning of the pump, parts of the exoskeleton are degrading at a faster rate than is sustainable.” Tears wet the corners of his eyes and frustration tenses his fingers around her own, “And if anyone has to take on the yoke of potential harm in this plan, there is no reason for it to be you," he almost stops there, continuing in after a few seconds, "or Mr. Stark, or Miss Potts, or Officer Rhodes, or anyone who has an actual chance at longevity.”

Her mind wasn’t prepared for the whiplash of emotions, diving from joy at seeing him into the depths of angry resolution and now swinging into hopelessness. It is discombobulating and makes her feel like she is lost at sea, splashing out an SOS. “Is there nothing that they can do?”

“There is an experimental procedure,” the one they must have been talking about when they entered the inner parlor, “with equal chance of success and failure based on Dr. Cho’s animal trials.”

All he has offered her since they’ve met is a kindness predicated on an optimism that all will work in her favor, that she is strong and capable and this will carry her through. It’s alarming to see his inability to apply the same support to himself. Wanda lets go of his hands and rises onto her knees, using the momentum to lean into him, her arms wrapping around his neck so that she can lay her forehead to his once more, ensuring he can hear her, “Stop being an imbecile, Vision.” Air rushes past her cheek as he chokes out a laugh, “Regardless of what happens, of whether the procedure works or not, of how fast your the metal degrades, you matter just as much as anyone else," this is the truth in general, but not quite for her own view, "but to me, you matter even more than everyone else."

“Wanda…”

“There’s no logical argument against my statement so don’t even try,” another deprecating laugh and she draws him in for a kiss, one that is feather light while still conveying her certainty in what needs to come next. Everything until this point has been taken from her, over and over again, so many times it was influenced by a misplaced trust formed in desperation. Through all of those stumbles, and falls, and metaphorical cliffs she’s been shoved from, it’s allowed her to recognize the rarity that is the bond between the two of them, one she ardently refuses to lose and she needs Vision to know this, in case what he fears comes true. “You matter to me because your mind is brilliant and makes me feel safe.” He tries to respond but she takes a page from Stark’s book and just keeps talking. “Your words enrapture me because they are always filled with warmth, and kindness, and genuineness even if you are a sore winner and sometimes stubborn." His tiny smile urges her on. "Despite what you may think, you are incredibly handsome.” She kisses away his disagreement, thrilled when his hand comes to rest on her waist. “But most importantly, you have the single most extraordinary soul I have ever found. I love you, Vision and no one is taking you from me.”

Anxiously she reads the lines on his face, untrained in how to interpret the branching near his eyes or the long, unbroken line across his forehead, lines she needs and wants more time to learn. But she doesn’t feel like more can be said, her point made, and she refuses to access his mind right now, needing whatever he says or does next to be of his own volition. Finally, his features still and he doesn’t hide anything behind a wall of etiquette, every drop of contrasting emotion allowed to flit through his eyes. And then he smiles and the world, for a moment, exists only in the space around their bodies, its core resting in the decreasing space between their lips as he requites her profession. “I love you as well, Wanda Maximoff.”

If they were not a day away from potential catastrophe, if there were not other plans to iron out, strategies to delineate, if the clock on his desk didn’t tick quickly towards Stark’s return, she would extend out this moment, trap him in her embrace and lose herself in him. But if they can figure out how to stop Ultron, can find a way to stop the past from encroaching on their future, then she knows they can lavish themselves in their affections after, unimpeded by anything and anyone, a promise of a tomorrow much better than she’s used to. “Is there nothing else you can think of to stop Ultron?”

She’s not surprised by his quiet and remorseful, “No.” Which leads her into the next thing to confirm.

“Do you actually think it will work?”

Vision’s hands curve snugly around her waist, keeping her close as he answers, “Theoretically it should incapacitate enough without undue harm to others or the infusion pump,” this isn’t the strength of assurance she wants. “I am supposed to be constructing it now so we can test it tomorrow.”

If they want a fighting chance against Ultron, they have to prepare for all possibilities, even the ones they vehemently hate. “We should go to the lab. I want to see this thing,” but this begrudging acceptance of at least seeing if the failsafe is a feasible last resort doesn’t mean she foregoes the opportunity of one more drawn out kiss (one that curls his fingers into her blouse and ends with a sigh for more) to solidify her stance before setting them on the path to figure out Ultron’s destruction. “Come on.”

A solemn nod of acquiescence is paired with him untangling from her embrace. He helps her stand from the bed, his hands flattening the creases in his shirt while she walks to retrieve her blouse, leveling a deadly glare at the coils on the table. “Wanda?”

“Vizh?”

The comment takes time to wrestle from his throat, a rationale she didn’t let him make earlier coming out, “The device is only necessary if the rest of the plan fails. I trust you, Miss Romanov, and Mr. Barton will render it a useless endeavor.”

“We won’t need it.” It’s a promise she intends to keep, whatever it takes. The picture of her past has been rendered, and now she’s determined to allow no one other than her to draw her future. “Let’s go.”

Victorian Culture and Language Decoder:

The Flour Riots of 1837 occurred in the dead of winter when a confluence of increasing food prices and poor political and legislative response to food shortages sparked a riot. It is believed a group of largely anti-capitalist speakers (known politically as the Locofocos) were responsible for calling together the meeting in the park.

The U.S. Department of Defense at the time was still named the War Department.

Ultron Mark Twelve is one of Ultron’s aliases and really the only human-ish sounding one I could find. I’m open to suggestions if there is something better.

Whole hog: Thorough, bare-faced lie

Shake a flannin: get into a fight.

Fresnel lens: a description and a couple pictures are at the bottom of a website that has the link on AO3

Brown stone fronts: Wealthy politically oriented men of New York City. The epitome of wealth at the time was to live in a Brown Stone house like the millionaire Vanderbilts.

Rational costumes: Women who wear pants.

It wasn’t until 1896 that the Korean Empire began, so prior to that it was known as Joseon.

Chemise: the common undergarment for women during this time. Something like this (link can be found on AO3)

#scarlet vision #wanda maximoff #vision #au #alternateuniversescarletvision #thescarletvisionnetwork #mine #aos #ao3 #please just go in the tags

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pixelzfairy · 5 years ago

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Vector vs Raster - What Is The Basic Difference and Which One Choose for Your Artwork

If you are a photographer or designer, you probably know what you are dealing with. For the others who are just starting, it can be a little bit overwhelming �� raster, vector, bitmap, pixel. I’m expecting that everybody knows .jpeg, .jpg, but what about .svg? What is the difference between .png and .jpeg? Well, if don’t know about .jpeg, probably you have never downloaded a wallpaper then but do not worry, everyone has to start somewhere, someday!

What is actually the difference between vector and raster?

Which formats are used for each of them?

For which projects I should use vector or raster?

For a digital artist, it is very important to understand the difference between vector and pixel art. Each of them has special software and needs, each of them is used for different purpose. Also, every single file format is giving you different options. Today we will look at the basics of these to get a better understanding.

Raster (bitmap, pixel)

Raster images are often called bitmaps. They consist of millions of tiny little squares which we call pixels. Pixel stands for “picture element”. It’s the smallest physical element of a digital display device. It’s pretty easy to recognize it by yourself. Try to open any photo you have and zoom in. Closer you look, more blurry the image becomes and in the end you will be able to see the little pixels. Bitmaps are created with pixel-based programs, captured with a camera or scanner. Usually, almost every drawing/painting app is raster oriented. Creating such artwork is pretty similar to traditional painting or drawing. You have many brushes to choose from, you can blend colors easily to soften the transition, you can apply many filters, gradients, undefined lines and shapes, and complex composition.

Raster format is resolution specific – that means that the photo you just took is displayed in one specific resolution. If you will try to resize the picture, bigger without changing the number of pixels, it will get blurry and not nice to look at anymore. Scaling down its not such a big problem, but the smaller version could be less crisp or softer than the original. There is a possibility to change the number of pixels but the pixels will be added randomly, rarely producing a good outcome.

We have two main names using raster images. PPI and DPI. They are both describing the resolution or clarity of an image, but they are not the same thing.

PPI (pixel per inch) means how many pixels will fit into one inch. A 72 PPI image will have 72 pixels per inch. PPI describes the number of pixels for the digital screen. PPI can be modified with photo/painting editing software.

DPI (dots per inch) means how many dots per inch my printer will print on the paper. Printers are not printing little squares. So how do they do it with raster images? They reproduce the image by spitting out tiny dots consisting of a mix of colors – Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, and Key (black) per the pixel of your image. DPI is set by the printer itself and cannot be manipulated.

That’s why we as digital artists can work with two different color schemes CMYK and RGB. Today we are not going so deep into this, so just put it simply – CMYK is for printing method, RGB is for electronic displays – monitors, phones, tablets etc.

Almost all the pictures you will find on the websites are raster images (even though they could be vector images before). Photographs and pictures in books or magazines are usually also pixel images, but these images are saved with very high resolution what is making them very big files in the end.

Formats of raster images

.jpg, .jpeg, .gif, .png, .tiff or .tif, .psd (Photoshop)

Popular programs used with raster images

Adobe Photoshop, Procreate, Affinity Designer (pixel persona), AutoDesk, Corel and many others

In which hobbies or jobs I can use pixel graphic

Photography, digital painting

Vector

Total opposite from pixel images, vector images are created with a mathematical formula that’s defining lines, curves and primitive shapes like polygons, circles, and rectangles known as paths. Vector graphics have to be created in software that is designed to create lines includes node position, locations, lengths, and curves. Because vector graphics are composed of geometrical primitives, it is very best to use it for more structured images like logos, line art, illustrations with flat, uniform colors, letterheads, and fonts.

Vector images are more flexible and versatile. You can scale them down, up easily and perfectly. They have also no resolution restriction and therefore they are not depended on the output device. And because vector images don’t have to handle millions of tiny pixels, these files are usually smaller than their raster sibling. You can easily recognize vector by looking at the edges, doesn’t matter how much you scale, they will always stay crystal clear and smooth.

One of the biggest disadvantages is the compatibility. They are often saved as native files from the programs they have been created in. Like Adobe Illustrator and their native .ai file. If I will use Affinity Designer to open .ai file, good, I will succeed. But if I will save a file with Affinity, I will not be able to open it with Illustrator. Another disadvantage is the limitation of effects. Vector will be never as a natural painting. It is just not possible. The best to print vector is PDF or EPS, which are producing the sharpest result.

THEREFORE MANY ARTISTS ARE COMBINING THESE TWO TOGETHER AS WELL.

Formats of vector images

.ai, .ait, .art, .svg, .pdf, .eps and many more

Popular programs used with vector vector graphics

Adobe Illustrator, Affinity Designer, Corel Draw, Sketch, Inkscape etc.,

In which hobbies or jobs I can use pixel graphic

Graphic designer, illustrator, printing publications design and others

Conclusion vector vs raster

It all depends on your project. Vectors are best for logos and illustrations. Raster images are classic for digital photography and are very often used for all graphic once they have been published digitally. If you want to repaint Mona Lisa on your iPad, you will not use vector unless you would like to look it as Picasso style Mona Lisa.

Raster images should be used if you require high lever detail (photos) and you don’t care much about by enlarging the image by a great amount. On the other hand vector you will use on images what requires tiny details and might be resized in the future.

#blogging #raster #pixel #vector

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talhaghafoor2019-blog · 6 years ago

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Electronic Music Styles - Electronic Music

Acid Jazz

The music played by a generation raised on jazz as well as funk and hip-hop, Acid Jazz used elements of all three; its existence as a percussion-heavy, primarily live music placed it closer to jazz and Afro-Cuban than any other dance style, but its insistence on keeping the groove allied it with funk, hip-hop, and dance music. The term itself first appeared in 1988 as both an American record label and the title of an English compilation series that reissued jazz-funk music from the ’70s, called “rare groove” by the Brits during a major mid-’80s resurgence. A variety of acid jazz artists emerged during the late ’80s and early ’90s: live bands such as Stereo MC’s, James Taylor Quartet, the Brand New Heavies, Groove Collective, Galliano, and Jamiroquai, as well as studio projects like Palm Skin Productions, Mondo Grosso, Outside, and United Future Organization.

Acid Techno

When the squelch of mid-’80s acid house music was given time to sink into the minds of impressionable youths, they became quite influenced by the sound. Many who began to make music in the early ’90s applied the sound to harder techno instead of the warm sounds of classic Chicago house. Quite similar to early German trance, Acid Techno includes the earlier recordings of Aphex Twin, Plastikman, and Dave Clarke, among others.

Alternative Rap

Alternative Rap refers to hip-hop groups that refuse to conform to any of the traditional stereotypes of rap, such as gangsta, funk, bass, hardcore, and party rap. Instead, they blur genres, drawing equally from funk and pop/rock, as well as jazz, soul, reggae, and even folk. Though Arrested Development and the Fugees managed to cross over into the mainstream, most alternative rap groups are embraced primarily by alternative rock fans, not hip-hop or pop audiences.

Ambient music evolved from the experimental electronic music of ’70s synth-based artists like Brian Eno and Kraftwerk, and the trance-like techno dance music of the ’80s. Ambient is a spacious, electronic music that is concerned with sonic texture, not songwriting or composing. It’s frequently repetitive and it all sounds the same to the casual listener, even though there are quite significant differences between the artists. Ambient became a popular cult music in the early ’90s, thanks to ambient techno artists like the Orb and Aphex Twin.

Ambient Breakbeat

Ambient Breakbeat refers to a narrow subgenre of electronic acts with less energy than the trip-hop or funky breaks, but with a pronounced hip-hop influence to their music. Some of the more downtempo works on British labels like Mo’Wax and Ninja Tune paved the way for New York’s DJ Wally (of the Liquid Sky Records brigade) and British artists such as Req, each good examples of the style.

Ambient Dub

Coined by the Beyond label for its compilation series of the same name, Ambient Dub has since been generalized by artists, critics, and audiences alike to refer to any form of rhythmic, usually beat-oriented ambient using the tastes, textures, and techniques of Jamaican dub-style production (e.g. reverb, emphasis on bass and percussion, heavy use of effects). Although the term has fallen out of favor due to the fevered intermingling of styles characteristic of post-rave electronica, it remains useful in demarcating the denser, more electronic applications of dub from the more hip-hop derived styles of downtempo, atmospheric beat music. Artists include the Orb, Higher Intelligence Agency, Sub Dub, Techno Animal, Automaton, and Solar Quest.

Ambient House

An early categorical marker used to distinguish newer wave ambient artists such as the Orb, the KLF, Irresistible Force, Future Sound of London, and Orbital, Ambient House was often applied indiscriminately to designate dance music not necessarily just for dancing. In its more rigorous application, ambient house implied music appropriating certain primary elements of acid house music-mid-tempo, four-on-the-floor beats; synth pads and strings; soaring vocal samples-used in a dreamier, more atmospheric fashion. It’s since been replaced (or rather, some would argue, complicated) by a barrage of more specific terms and is rarely used.

Ambient Pop

Ambient Pop combines elements of the two distinct styles which lend the blissed-out genre its name-while the music possesses a shape and form common to conventional pop, its electronic textures and atmospheres mirror the hypnotic, meditative qualities of ambient. The mesmerizing lock-groove melodies of Kraut-rock are a clear influence as well, although ambient pop is typically much less abrasive. Essentially an extension of the dream pop that emerged in the wake of the shoegazer movement, it’s set apart from its antecedents by its absorption of contemporary electronic idioms, including sampling, although for the most part live instruments continue to define the sound.

Ambient Techno

A rarefied, more specific reorientation of ambient house, Ambient Techno is usually applied to artists such as B12, early Aphex Twin, the Black Dog, Higher Intelligence Agency, and Biosphere. It distinguished artists who combined the melodic and rhythmic approaches of techno and electro-use of 808 and 909 drum machines; well-produced, thin-sounding electronics; minor-key melodies and alien-sounding samples and sounds-with the soaring, layered, aquatic atmospheres of beatless and experimental ambient. Most often associated with labels such as Apollo, GPR, Warp, and Beyond, the terminology morphed into “intelligent techno” after Warp released its Artificial Intelligence series (although the music’s stylistic references remained largely unchanged).

Bass Music

Springing from the fertile dance scenes in Miami (freestyle) and Detroit (electro) during the mid-’80s, Bass Music brought the funky-breaks aesthetic of the ’70s into the digital age with drum-machine frequencies capable of pulverizing the vast majority of unsuspecting car or club speakers. Early Miami pioneers like 2 Live Crew and DJ Magic Mike pushed the style into its distinctive booty obsession, and Detroit figures like DJ Assault, DJ Godfather, and DJ Bone melded it with techno to create an increasingly fast-paced music. Bass music even flirted with the charts during the early ’90s, as 95 South’s “Whoot (There It Is)” and 69 Boyz’ “Tootsee Roll” both hit the charts and went multi-platinum.

Bhangra started in Northern India, and shows what happens when you blend traditional music with electronic dance sensibilities. It has now spread to other parts of Asia and the UK.

Big Beat

Rescuing the electronica community from a near fall off the edge of its experimental fringe, Big Beat emerged in the mid-’90s as the next wave of big dumb dance music. Regional pockets around the world had emphasized the “less intelligent” side of dance music as early as 1994, in reaction to the growing coterie of chin-stroking intellectuals attached to the drum’n’bass and experimental movements. Big beat as a distinct movement finally coalesced in 1995-96 around two British labels: Brighton’s Skint and London’s Wall of Sound. The former-home to releases by Fatboy Slim, Bentley Rhythm Ace, and Lo-Fidelity Allstars-deserves more honors for innovation and quality, though Wall of Sound was founded slightly earlier and released great singles by Propellerheads, Wiseguys, and Les Rythmes Digitales. Big beat soon proved very popular in America as well, and artists attached to City of Angels Records (the Crystal Method, Überzone, Lunatic Calm, Front BC) gained a higher profile thanks to like-minded Brits. Other than Fatboy Slim, the other superstar artists of big beat were the Chemical Brothers and Prodigy, two groups who predated the style (and assisted its birth). Both the Chemical Brothers and Prodigy were never tight fits either, given productions that often reflected the more intelligent edge of trip-hop, and rarely broke into the mindless arena of true big beat.

The sound of big beat, a rather shameless fusion of old-school party breakbeats with appropriately off-the-wall samples, was reminiscent of house music’s sampladelic phase of the late ’80s as well as old-school rap and its penchant for silly samples and irresistible breaks. Though the sample programming and overall production was leaps and bounds beyond its predecessors, big beat was nevertheless criticized for dumbing down the electronica wave of the late ’90s. Even while recordings by the Chemical Brothers, Prodigy, and Fatboy Slim hit the American charts and earned positive reviews-granted, from rock critics-worldwide, many dance fans rejected the style wholesale for being too reliant on gimmicky production values and played-out samples. Big beat lasted a surprisingly long time, given the restraints of a style reliant on the patience of listeners who’ve heard the same break dozens of times, as well as the patience of DJs to hunt local thrift stores to find interesting samples on old instructional records.

Dance Hall Reggae

This dance music style takes reggae and electrifies it, strips down the beat to the essentials of drums and bass, and adds a vocalist doing rapid-fire “toasting” over the beats. Several pop groups have adopted this style and had hits, but the results are pretty diluted compared to the original.

Dance-Pop

An outgrowth of disco, Dance-Pop featured a pounding club beat framing simple, catchy melodies closer to fully-formed songs than pure dance music. It’s primarily the medium of producers, who write the songs and construct the tracks, picking an appropriate vocalist to sing the song. These dance divas become stars, but frequently the artistic vision is the producer’s. Naturally, there are some major exceptions-Madonna and Janet Jackson have had control over the sound and direction of their records-but dance-pop is music that is about image, not substance.

Dark Ambient

Brian Eno’s original vision of ambient music as unobtrusive musical wallpaper, later fused with warm house rhythms and given playful qualities by the Orb in the ’90s, found its opposite in the style known as Dark Ambient. Populated by a wide assortment of personalities-ranging from aging industrial and metal experimentalists (Scorn’s Mick Harris, Current 93’s David Tibet, Nurse with Wound’s Steven Stapleton) to electronic boffins (Kim Cascone/PGR, Psychick Warriors Ov Gaia), Japanese noise artists (K.K. Null, Merzbow), and latter-day indie rockers (Main, Bark Psychosis)-dark ambient features toned-down or entirely missing beats with unsettling passages of keyboards, eerie samples, and treated guitar effects. Like most styles related in some way to electronic/dance music of the ’90s, it’s a very nebulous term; many artists enter or leave the style with each successive release.

Detroit Techno

Early Detroit Techno is characterized by, alternately, a dark, detached, mechanistic vibe and a smooth, bright, soulful feel (the latter deriving in part from the Motown legacy and the stock-in-trade between early techno and the Chicago-style house developing simultaneously to the southwest). While essentially designed as dance music meant to uplift, the stark, melancholy edge of early tracks by Cybotron, Model 500, Rhythm Is Rhythm, and Reese also spoke to Detroit’s economic collapse in the late ’70s following the city’s prosperous heyday as the focal point of the American automobile industry.

The music’s oft-copied ruddy production and stripped-down aesthetic were largely a function of the limited technology available to the early innovators (records were often mastered from two-track onto cassette). The increasingly sophisticated arrangements of contemporary techno (on through to hardcore and jungle), conversely, has much to do with the growth and increasing affordability of MIDI-encoded equipment and desktop digital audio. Second- and third-wave Detroit techno, too, has gained considerably in production, although artists such as Derrick May, Juan Atkins, and Kenny Larkin have sought to combine the peerless sheen of the digital arena with the compositional minimalism of their Detroit origins.

No longer simply contained within the 313 area code, Detroit techno has become a global phenomenon (partly as a result of the more widespread acclaim many of the original Detroit artists have found in other countries), buoyed by the fact that many of the classic early tracks remain in print (available through Submerge). Detroit’s third wave began re-exploring the aesthetic commitment of the music’s early period, with hard-hitting beats (Underground Resistance, Jeff Mills), soulful grooves (Kenny Larkin, Stacey Pullen), and a renewed interest in techno’s breakbeat roots (Aux 88, Drexciya, “Mad” Mike, Dopplereffekt).

Disco marked the dawn of dance-based popular music. Growing out of the increasingly groove-oriented sound of early ’70s and funk, disco emphasized the beat above anything else, even the singer and the song. Disco was named after discotheques, clubs that played nothing but music for dancing. Most of the discotheques were gay clubs in New York, and the DJs in these clubs specifically picked soul and funk records that had a strong, heavy groove. After being played in the disco, the records began receiving radio play and respectable sales. Soon, record companies and producers were cutting records created specifically for discos. Naturally, these records also had strong pop hooks, so they could have crossover success. Disco albums frequently didn’t have many tracks-they had a handful of long songs that kept the beat going. Similarly, the singles were issued on 12″ records, which allowed for extended remixes. DJs could mix these tracks together, matching the beats on each song since they were marked with how fast they were in terms of beats per minute. In no time, the insistent, pounding disco beat dominated the pop chart, and everyone cut a disco record, from rockers like the Rolling Stones and Rod Stewart to pop acts like the Bee Gees and new wave artists like Blondie. There were disco artists that became stars-Donna Summer, Chic, the Village People, and KC & the Sunshine Band were brand names-but the music was primarily a producer’s medium, since they created the tracks and wrote the songs. Disco lost momentum as the ’70s became the ’80s, but it didn’t die-it mutated into a variety of different dance-based genres, ranging from dance-pop and hip-hop to house and techno.

Downbeat is a quite generic term sometimes used to replace ambient house and ambient techno, considering that the amount and complexity of electronic listening music described under the “ambient” umbrella had made the terms practically useless by the mid-’90s. It often implies the use of moderate breakbeats instead of the steady four-four beats of most ambient house or ambient techno. The style also breaches territory claimed by trip-hop, ambient techno, and electro-techno. In its widest possible definition, downbeat is any form of electronic music created for the living room instead of the dance floor.

Dream-Pop

Dream Pop is an atmospheric subgenre of alternative rock that relies on sonic textures as much as melody. Dream pop often features breathy vocals and processed, echo-laden guitars and synthesizers. Though the Cocteau Twins, with their indecipherable vocals and languid soundscapes, are frequently seen as the leaders of dream pop, the genre has more stylistic diversity than their slow, electronic textures. Dream pop also encompasses the post-Velvet Underground guitar rock of Galaxie 500, as well as the loud, shimmering feedback of My Bloody Valentine. It is all tied together by a reliance on sonic texture, both in terms of instruments and vocals.

Dub derives its name from the practice of dubbing instrumental, rhythm-oriented versions of reggae songs onto the B-sides of 45 rpm singles, which evolved into a legitimate and accepted style of its own as those re-recordings became forums for engineers to experiment with the possibilities of their mixing consoles. The practice of re-recording reggae tracks without vocals dated back to 1967, when DJs found that dancehall crowds and partygoers greatly enjoyed being given the opportunity to sing the lyrics themselves. Around 1969, some DJs began talking, or “toasting,” over these instrumentals (known as “versions”), frequently reinterpreting the already familiar original lyrics. The most important early DJ was U-Roy, who became renowned for his ability to improvise dialogues with the recorded singers; U-Roy ran the sound system owned by engineer King Tubby, who mixed all of the instrumental tracks over which his DJ toasted. Eventually, Tubby began to experiment with remixing the instrumental tracks, bringing up the level of the rhythm section, dropping out most or all of the vocals, and adding new effects like reverb and echo. The results were seen by many reggae fans as stripping the music down to its purest essence. 45-rpm singles with dub versions on the B-sides became ubiquitous, and King Tubby’s credit on the back soon became a drawing card in and of itself. Full-fledged dub albums began to appear in 1973, with many highlights stemming from Tubby’s mixes for producers Bunny Lee and Augustus Pablo (the latter of whom also played the haunting melodica, which became one of dub’s signature added elements); other key early producers included the minimalistic Keith Hudson and the colorful, elaborate Lee “Scratch” Perry. By 1976, dub’s popularity in Jamaica was second only to Rastafarian roots reggae, and the sound had also found acceptance the UK (thanks largely to the Island label), where roots reggae artists like Burning Spear and Black Uhuru became just as well-known for their forays into dub. The Mad Professor and the experimental Adrian Sherwood helped Britain’s dub scene remain vital in the ’80s, but in spite of skilled newcomers like Scientist, Prince Jammy, and Mikey Dread, Jamaican popular taste had by then shifted to DJ toasters and lyrical improvisers, which led to the prominence of dancehall and ragga. The downtempo atmospherics and bass- and rhythm-heavy textures of dub had a lasting influence outside of reggae, beginning with Public Image Ltd.’s 1979 Metal Box/Second Edition album; during the ’90s, dub was frequently incorporated into the melting-pot eclecticism of underground avant-garde rock, and Britain’s thriving electronica/drum’n’bass scene owed a great deal to dub’s mixing and production techniques.

Blending ’70s funk with the emerging hip-hop culture and synthesizer technology of the early ’80s produced the style known as Electro. But what seemed to be a brief fad for the public-no more than two or three hits, including Afrikaa Bambaataa’s “Planet Rock” and Grandmaster Flash’s “The Message,” neither of which made the pop Top 40-was in fact a fertile testing ground for innovators who later diverged into radically different territory, including Dr. Dre (who worked with the World Class Wreckin’ Cru) and techno godfather Juan Atkins (with Cybotron). Electro also provided an intriguing new direction for one of the style’s prime influences. Herbie Hancock, whose 1973 Headhunters album proved a large fusion hit, came storming back in 1983 with the electro single “Rockit.” Despite its successes (documented in full on Rhino’s four-disc Electric Funk set), the style was quickly eclipsed by the mid-’80s rise of hip-hop music built around samples (often from rock records) rather than musical synthesizers. Nevertheless, many techno and dance artists continued harking back to the sound, and a full-fledged electro revival emerged in Detroit and Britain during the mid-’90s.

Electro-Acoustic

Electro-Acoustic music thrives in more unfamiliar territory; the styles that emerge are often dictated by the technology itself. Rather than sampling or synthesizing acoustic sounds to electronically replicate them, these composers tend to mutate the original timbres, sometimes to an unrecognizable state. True artists in the genre also create their own sounds (as opposed to using the preset sounds that come with modern synthesizers). In progressive electro-acoustic music, the electronics play an equal if not greater part in the overall concept. Acoustic instruments performed in real time are usually processed through reverb, harmonizing, and so on, which adds an entirely new dimension to the player’s technique. At best, this music opens up new worlds of listening, thinking, and feeling. At worst, progressive electronic artists worship technology for its own sake, relinquishing the heart and soul of true artistic expression.

Electro-Techno

Influenced by the early-’80s phenomenon of electro-funk but also reliant upon Detroit techno and elements of ambient house, Electro-Techno emerged in the mid-’90s when a full-fledged electro flashback hit London clubs, complete with body-rocking robots and vocoder-distorted vocals, inspired by original electro classics like Afrikaa Bambaataa’s “Planet Rock.” The actual fad-spearheaded by Clear Records and led by artists like Jedi Knights, Tusken Raiders, and Gescom (masks for Global Communication, µ-Ziq, and Autechre, respectively)-was quick in passing, but it inspired some excellent music during the latter half of the ’90s, including the work of England’s Skam Records, Sweden’s Dot Records and, closer to the original sources, Detroit’s Drexciya and AUX 88.

Electronic is a broad designation that could be construed to cover many different styles of music-after all, electronic instrumentation has become commonplace, and much dance-oriented music from the late ’80s on is primarily, often exclusively, electronic. However, in this case, it refers mostly to electronic music as it took shape early on, when artists were still exploring the unique possibilities of electronically generated sound, as well as more recent music strongly indebted to those initial experiments. Avant-garde composers had long been fascinated with the ways technology could be used to produce previously unheard textures and combinations of sounds. French composer Edgard Varèse was a pioneer in this field, building his own electronic instruments as early as the 1920s and experimenting with tape loops during the ’50s. Varèse’s work was hugely influential on American avant-gardist John Cage and German composer Karlheinz Stockhausen, both of whom greatly expanded the compositional structures in which electronic devices could be incorporated. But electronic music didn’t really begin to enter the wider consciousness until around the ’70s, when sequencers and synthesizers became more affordable and easier to obtain. Wendy Carlos’ 1968 Switched-On Bach album, a selection of Bach pieces performed on the Moog synthesizer, had ignited tremendous public attention, and Stockhausen’s teachings had begun to inspire a burgeoning experimental music scene in Germany. Kraut-rock groups such as Can and Neu! integrated synthesizers and tape manipulations into their rabid experimentalism, but the two most important electronic artists to emerge from the scene were Kraftwerk and Tangerine Dream. Kraftwerk pioneered the concept of pop music performed exclusively on synthesizers, and their robotic, mechanical, hypnotic style had a tremendous impact on nearly all electronic pop produced in the remainder of the 20th century. Tangerine Dream, meanwhile, was indebted to minimalist classical composition, crafting an atmospheric, slowly shifting, trance-inducing sound that helped invent the genre known as space music. Other crucial figures included Klaus Schulze, who explored a droning variation on space music that was even more trancelike than Tangerine Dream, and Brian Eno, whose inventive production and experiments with electronics in a pop context eventually gave way to his creation of ambient music, which aimed to blend thoroughly into its environment and often relied heavily on synthesizers. Ambient and space music helped give rise to new age, which emphasized the peaceful, soothing, and meditative qualities of those influences while adding greater melodicism; the progressive electronic branch of new age crafted a more dramatic, lushly orchestrated style that broke with electronic music’s roots in minimalism. Synth-pop, techno, and its artier companion electronica all owed a great deal to the basic innovations of early electronic artists as well.

A suitably vague term used to describe the emergence of electronic dance music increasingly geared to listening instead of strictly dancing, Electronica was first used in the title of a series of compilations (actually called New Electronica) spotlighting original sources of Detroit techno such as Juan Atkins and Underground Resistance alongside European artists who had gained much from the Motor City’s futuristic vision for techno. The word was later appropriated by the American press as an easy catch-all for practically any young artist using electronic equipment and/or instruments, but electronica serves to describe techno-based music that can be used for home listening as well as on the dance floor (since many electronica artists are club DJs as well).

Euro-Dance

Euro-Dance refers to a specific style of club/dance music produced on the European continent during the ’80s and ’90s. Euro-dance is generally informed by disco, hi-NRG, and house music, and performed entirely in the recording studio on synthesizers and drum machines; the producers are much more responsible for the finished product than the singers. Like its close relative Euro-pop, it’s usually simple, lightweight, and catchy, with fluffy, repetitive lyrics that don’t require much translation among listeners who speak different languages. The main difference between Euro-dance and Euro-pop is the exclusive and pronounced dance-club orientation of the former; while Euro-pop is frequently informed by dance music, it doesn’t have to be, and when it is, it doesn’t always fit into dance-club playlists. Most Euro-dance artists concentrate on crafting hit singles, with album releases almost an afterthought.

Experimental Dub

Thousands of miles away from sunny Jamaica, a loose collective of Berlin producers jump-started the style of music known as Experimental Dub. If the scene was centered at all, it occurred at Hard Wax Records, a record store as well as a tight distribution company that was home to several of the style’s crucial labels (Basic Channel, Chain Reaction, Imbalance) and producers (Maurizio, Mark Ernestus, Porter Ricks, Pole, Monolake). Indebted to Chicago acid house and minimalist Detroit techno figures like Jeff Mills, Rob Hood, and Plastikman, experimental dub was rather easily characterized; the sound usually focused on a mix of crackling, murky atmospheres that sounded almost subaquatic, with a mid-tempo beat and strong, clanging percussion. The similarities to classic Jamaican dub producers King Tubby and Lee “Scratch” Perry were indirect at best, but the term worked well for identifying the signature sound of many of Germany’s best experimental producers. Other than the Basic Channel camp, experimental dub’s most important figures were Mike Ink (aka Wolfgang Voigt) and Thomas Brinkmann. Ink, a longtime Berlin producer responsible for more than a half-dozen aliases and labels, did most of his important work on the Profan and Studio 1 labels. Brinkmann, a comparative newcomer to the style, earned praise for his remixes of material by Ink and Plastikman. Experimental dub, in turn, inspired several major techno figures (including Plastikman and Mills) by the late ’90s, and its influence was even seen in American indie-rock and post-rock.

Experimental Electro

With the revival of the classic electro style, dubbed the neo-electro movement, came a wave of Experimental Electro artists with more abstract agendas, still influenced by the sound of the streets but with more curious minds when it came to noodling around in the studio. Names such as Freeform and Bisk characterized the style.

Experimental Rock

As the name suggests, Experimental Rock is music pushing the envelope of the form, far removed from the classic pop sensibilities of before. Typically, experimental rock is the diametric opposite of standard “verse-chorus-verse” music. Because the whole point is to liberate and innovate, no hard and fast rules apply, but distinguishing characteristics include improvisational performances, avant-garde influences, odd instrumentation, opaque lyrics (or no lyrics at all), strange compositional structures and rhythms, and an underlying rejection of commercial aspirations.

Experimental Techno

The field of electronic dance music has limitless possibilities for experimentation, so Experimental Techno has a similarly wide range of styles-from the disc-error clicks and scratches of European experimenters Oval and Pan sonic to the off-kilter effects (but straight-ahead rhythms) of Cristian Vogel, Neil Landstrumm, and Si Begg. Experimental techno can also include soundscape terrorists such as Twisted Science, Nonplace Urban Field, and Atom Heart; digital-age punks like Alec Empire; and former industrial stalwarts under new guises, such as Scorn, Download, or Techno Animal. Any artist wishing to take electronic dance places it’s never been can be characterized as experimental, and for better or worse, that includes a large cast.

Often growing in tandem with contemporary styles like electro and house, Freestyle emerged in the twin Latin capitals of New York City and Miami during the early ’80s. Freestyle classics like “I Wonder If I Take You Home” by Lisa Lisa & Cult Jam, “Let the Music Play” by Shannon, and “Party Your Body” by Stevie B relied on angular, synthesized beats similar to electro and early house, but also emphasized the romantic themes of classic R&B and disco. The fusion of mechanical and sensual proved ready for crossover during the period, and both Shannon and Lisa Lisa hit the Top 40 during 1984-85. Freestyle also dovetailed nicely with the rise of dance-pop during the mid-’80s-Madonna’s early producer and remixer, John Benitez (aka Jellybean), was also active in the freestyle community. By the end of the decade, a number of artists-Exposé, Brenda K. Starr, Trinere, the Cover Girls, India, and Stevie B-followed them into the pop or R&B charts. Even after popular success waned in the late ’80s, though, freestyle moved to the underground as a vital stream of modern dance music alongside house, techno, and bass music. Similar to mainstream house, freestyle artists are usually (though by no means exclusively) either female vocalists or male producers. Newer figures like Lil Suzy, George Lamond, Angelique, Johnny O, and others became big stars in the freestyle community.

Funky Breaks

An amalgam of trance, hip-hop, and jungle, Funky Breaks became one of the most widely heard styles in electronic music thanks to its popularity as the sound of choice for those wishing to make some noise on pop charts and television commercials during the late ’90s. Pioneered by the Chemical Brothers plus James Lavelle’s epic-stature Mo’Wax Records stable, funky breaks really came into the fore in 1997, the year music-industry experts predicted would finally break the new electronica in the mainstream. Of the artists picked to spearhead the revolution, almost all-the Prodigy, Death in Vegas, the Crystal Method, Propellerheads-had that sound. That’s also a significant reason why the electronica revolution failed, at least commercially, since the highly-touted acts all sounded similar.

Most popular in the Netherlands and Scotland, Gabba is the hardest form of hardcore techno, frequently exceeding speeds of over 200 BPM. Popular DJs and producers like Paul Elstak and the Mover categorized gabba’s early evolution from German trance and British rave. By the mid-’90s, the music had acquired some rather unsavory connotations with neo-fascism and the skinhead movement, though much of the scene was free from it. Surprisingly, gabba made a rather successful attempt at the Dutch pop charts, with Elstak producing several hits. Many producers and fans proclaimed him a sell-out, and soon there appeared a divide in the scene between the hardcore and the really hardcore.

Named for what is arguably the birthplace of house music, the Paradise Garage in New York, Garage is the dance style closest in spirit and execution to the original disco music of the ’70s. Favoring synthesizer runs and gospel vocals similar to house music but with production values even more polished and shimmering than house, garage has a very soulful, organic feel. Though the style was most popular in New Jersey in the ’80s, the mainstream of British dance clubs championed the style throughout the ’90s as well.

Goa Trance

Named after a region on the coast of southwestern India famed as a clubbing and drugging paradise ever since the ’60s, Goa Trance broke away from the Teutonic bent of European trance during the early ’90s and carried the torch for trance during the rest of the decade. The presence of LSD on the Goa scene-instead of the ubiquitous club drug Ecstasy-translated the music into an appropriately psychedelic version of trance that embraced the mystical properties of Indian music and culture. Traditional Indian instruments such as the sitar and sarod (or electronic near-equivalents) often made appearances in the music, pushed along by the driving, hypnotic sequencer music that trance had always been known for. The style is considerably less turntable-oriented than other electronic dance styles, especially since vinyl tends to melt in the heat (DATs are often used instead). As a consequence, Goa had comparatively few DJs to recommend it worldwide until the late ’90s. Labels like Dragonfly, Blue Room Released, Flying Rhino, Platipus, and Paul Oakenfold’s Perfecto Fluoro became important sources for the sound. Oakenfold, Britain’s most popular DJ, finally gave Goa trance the cache it had lacked in the past by caning it on the radio and in clubs across the country. The British sound system known as Return to the Source also brought Goa trance to the mainstream hordes, releasing three volumes in a compilation series of the best trance music on the scene.

Happy Hardcore

Gradually evolving from the English rave scene of the late ’80s and early ’90s, Happy Hardcore featured many of the same elements that characterized rave: impossibly high beats per minute, similarly fast synthesizer/piano runs, and vocal samples altered to make the most soulful diva sound like a warbling chipmunk. The jungle/drum’n’bass movement had also emerged from rave, but the two scenes split and grew quite anathemic. The positive vibes of happy hardcore were criticized by most clubgoers as music for the drugged-out youth, but just as the hardcore-into-jungle scene found favor with critics later in the decade, a certain amount of respect for happy hardcore appeared as well. The work of combination DJ/producers such as Slipmatt, Hixxy & Sharkey, Force & Styles, and DJ Dougal produced innumerable compilations, as well as the inevitable solo production LPs.

Hardcore Techno

The fastest, most abrasive form of dance music currently available at any one time, Hardcore Techno was, by the mid-’90s, the province of a startlingly wide array of producers, including breakbeat junglists, industrial trancesters, digital-era punks, and cartoonish ravers. The style originally emerged from Great Britain’s 1988 Summer of Love; though the original soundtrack to those warehouse parties was influenced by the relatively mid-tempo rhythms of Chicago acid house, increased drug intake caused many ravers to embrace quicker rhythms and altogether more frenetic forms of music. Many DJs indulged their listeners by speeding up house records originally intended for 33-rpm play, and producers carried the torch by sampling the same records for their releases. During 1991-92, hardcore/rave music had hit the legitimate airwaves as well, led by hits like SL2’s “On a Ragga Tip,” T-99’s “Anasthasia,” and RTS’ “Poing.”

The resulting major-label feeding frenzy produced heavy coverage for lightweight novelty fare like “Go Speed Go” by Alpha Team, “Sesame’s Treat” by Smart E’s, and “James Brown Is Dead” by L.A. Style. By 1993, British producers like Rob Playford, 4 Hero, and Omni Trio began leading hardcore techno into the breakbeat territory that would later become known as jungle, even as the Teutonic end of hardcore morphed into harder trance and gabba.

During the mid-’90s, most ravers had grown out of the dance scene or simply tired of the sound; though the original hardcore/rave sound had spread to much of the British hinterlands as well as continental Europe, most Londoners favored progressive house or the emerging ambient techno. The simultaneous lack of critical coverage but wide spread of the sound-into the north of England and Scotland as well as the continental centers of Germany and the Netherlands-served to introduce a variety of underground styles, from the digital hardcore of Germany’s Alec Empire to English happy hardcore. In fact, the term had practically become a dinosaur by the end of the decade.

Hi-NRG

Hi-NRG is a fast variation of disco that evolved in the ’80s. Driven by a fast drum machine and synthesizers, Hi-NRG was essentially a dance-oriented music with only slight hints of pop. There would be a few hooks-generally sung by disembodied vocalists wailing in the background-but the emphasis of the music, like most dance music, was in the beat. Hi-NRG was a predecessor to techno and house, which drew from its beats in decidedly different ways. House had a funkier, soulful rhythm, while techno expanded with the mechanical beats of Hi-NRG.

Hip-Hop

Hip-hop is essentially the rhythm track to rap, which meanders at a relatively slow tempo, and features a minimalist collection of samples, loops, and/or turntable playing. The emphasis is definitely on the bass, with fat, thick drum beats. Groups like Public Enemy took hip-hop beats but added raps with more of a political, literate edge.

House music grew out of the post-disco dance club culture of the early ’80s. After disco became popular, certain urban DJs-particularly those in gay communities-altered the music to make it less pop-oriented. The beat became more mechanical and the bass grooves became deeper, while elements of electronic synth-pop, Latin soul, dub reggae, rap, and jazz were grafted over the music’s insistent, unvarying four-four beat. Frequently, the music was purely instrumental and when there were vocalists, they were faceless female divas that often sang wordless melodies. By the late ’80s, house had broken out of underground clubs in cities like Chicago, New York, and London, and had begun making inroads on the pop charts, particularly in England and Europe but later in America under the guise of artists like C+C Music Factory and Madonna. At the same time, house was breaking into the pop charts; it fragmented into a number of subgenres, including hip-house, ambient house, and most significantly, acid house (a subgenre of house with the instantly recognizable squelch of Roland’s TB-303 bass-line generator). During the ’90s, house ceased to be cutting-edge music, yet it remained popular in clubs throughout Europe and America. At the end of the decade, a new wave of progressive house artists including Daft Punk, Basement Jaxx, and House of 909 brought the music back to critical quarters with praised full-length works.

A loaded term meant to distinguish electronic music of the ’90s and later that’s equally comfortable on the dancefloor as in the living room, IDM (Intelligent Dance Music) eventually acquired a good deal of negative publicity, not least among the legion of dance producers and fans whose exclusion from the community prompted the question of whether they produced stupid dance music. Born in the late ’80s, the sound grew out of a fusion between the hard-edged dance music heard on the main floor at raves and larger club events, and the more downtempo music of the nearby chill-out rooms. DJs like Mixmaster Morris and Dr. Alex Paterson blended Chicago house, softer synth-pop/new wave, and ambient/environmental music, prompting a wave of producers inspired by a variety of sources. (Many DJs and producers were also reacting against the increasingly chart-leaning slant of British dance music during those years, exemplified by novelty hits like “Pump Up the Jam” by Technotronic and “Sesame’s Treat” by Smart E’s.) The premiere IDM label, Sheffield’s Warp Records, proved home to the best in the sound-in fact, the seminal Warp compilation Artificial Intelligence alone introduced listeners worldwide to a half-dozen of the style’s most crucial artists: Aphex Twin, the Orb, Plastikman, Autechre, Black Dog Productions, and B12. Other labels-Rising High, GPR, R&S, Rephlex, Fat Cat, Astralwerks-released quality IDM as well, though by the mid-’90s much of the electronica produced for headphone consumption had diverged either toward the path of more experimentation or more beat orientation. With no centered, commercial scene to speak of, North America became a far more hospitable clime to IDM, and by the end of the ’90s, dozens of solid labels had opened for business, including Drop Beat, Isophlux, Suction, Schematic, and Cytrax. Despite frequent attempts to rename the style (Warp’s “electronic listening music” and Aphex Twin’s “braindance” were two choices), IDM continued to be the de facto way for fans to describe their occasionally undescribable favorites.

Industrial music was a dissonant, abrasive style of music that grew out of the tape-music and electronic experiments of the mid-’70s bands Cabaret Voltaire and Throbbing Gristle (the term was coined from the latter’s label, Industrial Records). The music was largely electronic, distorted, and rather avant-garde for rock circles. By the mid-’80s, industrial dance bands Ministry, Front 242, Nitzer Ebb, and Skinny Puppy had evolved from the original template. During the next decade, industrial went overground and became a new kind of heavy-metal courtesy of crossover groups like Nine Inch Nails, White Zombie, and Marilyn Manson.

Industrial Dance

During the ’80s, industrial music progressed from being an obscure, experimentalist style to a position where it was quite popular and straight-ahead for a growing audience unenthused by limp-wristed alternative music as well as cock rock and heavy metal. Early distinguished by the term “electronic body music,” several artists, such as Front 242, Nitzer Ebb, Skinny Puppy, and Ministry gained significant airplay in clubs. By the ’90s, industrial had split along a guitar/electronics divide, with the latter usually carrying on the tradition of electronic body music. America’s Cleopatra Records featured the most Industrial Dance acts, including Leætherstrip, Spahn Ranch, and Die Krupps.

Jungle/Drum’n’bass

Based almost entirely in England, Jungle (also known as drum’n’bass) is a permutation of hardcore techno that emerged in the early ’90s. Jungle is the most rhythmically complex of all forms of techno, relying on extremely fast polyrhythms and breakbeats. Usually, it’s entirely instrumental-it is among the hardest of all hardcore techno, consisting of nothing but fast drum machines and deep bass. As its name implies, jungle does have more overt reggae, dub, and R&B influences than most hardcore-and that is why some critics claimed that the music was the sound of black techno musicians and DJs reclaiming it from the white musicians and DJs who dominated the hardcore scene. Nevertheless, jungle never slows down to develop a groove-it just speeds along. Like most techno genres, jungle is primarily a singles genre designed for a small, dedicated audience, although the crossover success of Goldie and his 1995 debut Timeless suggested a broader appeal and more musical possibilities than other forms of techno. Dozens of respected artists followed in their wake, fusing breakbeats with influences lifted from jazz, film music, ambient, and trip-hop.

Kraut-Rock

Kraut-Rock refers to the legions of German bands of the early ’70s that expanded the sonic possibilities of art and progressive rock. Instead of following in the direction of their British and American counterparts, who were moving toward jazz and classical-based compositions and concept albums, the German bands became more mechanical and electronic. Working with early synthesizers and splicing together seemingly unconnected reels of tape, bands like Faust, Can, and Neu! created a droning, pulsating sound that owed more to the avant-garde than to rock ‘n’ roll. Although the bands didn’t make much of an impact while they were active in the ’70s, their music anticipated much post-punk of the early ’80s, particularly industrial rock. Kraut-rock also came into vogue in the ’90s, when groups like Stereolab and Tortoise began incorporating the hypnotic rhythms and electronic experiments of the German art-rock bands into their own, vaguely avant-garde indie-rock.

Madchester was the dominant force in British rock during the late ’80s and early ’90s. A fusion of acid house dance rhythms and melodic pop, Madchester was distinguished by its loping beats, psychedelic flourishes, and hooky choruses. While the song structures were familiar, the arrangements and attitude were modern, and even the retro-pop touches-namely the jangling guitars, swirling organs, and sharp pop sense-functioned as postmodern collages. There were two approaches to this collage, as evidenced by the Stone Roses and Happy Mondays. The Roses were a traditional guitar-pop band, and their songs were straight-ahead pop tunes, bolstered by baggy beats; it was modernized ’60s pop. Happy Mondays cut and pasted like rappers sampled, taking choruses from the Beatles and LaBelle and putting them into the context of darkly psychedelic dance. Despite their different approaches, both bands shared a love for acid-house music and culture, as well as the hometown of Manchester, England. As the group’s popularity grew, the British press tagged the two groups-as well as similarly-minded bands like the Charlatans [UK] and Inspiral Carpets-“Madchester” after a Happy Mondays song. (It was also known as “baggy,” since the bands wore baggy clothing). Madchester was enormously popular for several years in the UK before fading, largely because the Roses and the Mondays fell prey to laziness and drug abuse, respectively. The genre never made much impact in America outside of alternative circles, but Madchester’s offspring-bands like Oasis, Pulp, and Blur that were heavily influenced by the collision of contemporary and classic pop-became international stars in the mid-’90s.

One of the main innovations in the contemporary classical field, Minimalism has also influenced new age composers and electronic producers alike, particularly in progressive electronic styles where sequencers play an important role. Generally, this music is characterized by a strong and relentless pulse, the insistent repetition of short melodic fragments, and harmonies that change over long periods of time. A trio of ’60s figures, LaMonte Young, Terry Riley, and Steve Reich, did the most to pioneer the field, though Philip Glass had the most success with the style during the ’70s.

Neo-Electro

For several months in 1995, British clubs were afire with the sights and sounds of robots, body-poppers, and a revival of America’s early-’80s electro movement. Though much of the attention was given to the old-school masters (Afrika Bambaataa, the Egyptian Lover, Newcleus), much of the influence for the electro revival had come from more recent sounds. Detroit acts such as Drexciya, Underground Resistance, and Ectomorph had begun looking back to electro, and Drexciya’s multi-volume series of 1994 EPs were much-heard on the other side of the Atlantic. In Britain, Clear Records headed the revival hot-list, with singles from Jedi Knights, Tusken Raiders, Plaid, and Gescom (almost all were aliases for more well-known dance acts including Global Communication, µ-Ziq, and Autechre). Though the electro revival didn’t last long as a British club trend, good records continued to be released (especially by Clear), and other labels, such as Skam, Musik Aus Strom, and Dot, progressed beyond the sound to create intelligent new music with heavy electro influences.

A rather brief phenomenon (even for the style-a-minute world of dance music), Newbeat emerged late in the ’80s as a mid-tempo derivation of acid house. Influenced as well by Detroit techno and Euro-dance, newbeat was centered in Belgium, where labels such as R&S and Antler-Subway-home of the newbeat anthem “I Sit on Acid” by Lords of Acid-characterized the style with acid synth leanings, but more pop-friendly approaches to dance. The blazing success of the KLF during 1990-91 sustained newbeat for awhile, but after their exit from the music industry, the style faded quickly. While both Antler-Subway and Lords of Acid later moved on to a self-parodying approach to acid house, R&S became a respected name in the dance industry, focusing mostly on trance and ambient techno.

Sludgy, abrasive, and punishing, Noise is everything its name promises, expanding on the music’s capacity for sonic assault while almost entirely rejecting the role of melody and songcraft. From the ear-splitting, teeth-rattling attack of Japan’s Merzbow to the thick, grinding intensity of Amphetamine Reptile-label bands like Tar and Vertigo, it’s dark, brutal music that pushes rock to its furthest extremes. By the end of the ’90s, a resurgence in the use of sine waves-originally explored by musique concrète artists in the ’50s-became increasingly frequent among noise artists such as Otomo Yoshihide.

Noise Pop

Noise Pop is just that-pop music wrapped in barbed-wire kisses of feedback, dissonance, and abrasion. It occupies the halfway point between bubblegum and the avant-garde, a collision between conventional pop songcraft and the sonic assault of white noise-guitars veer out of control but somehow the melody pushes forward, and the tension between the two opposing forces frequently makes for fascinating listening.

Nu Breaks

A hard-edged dance style developed late in the ’90s with the convergence of techno and drum’n’bass as well as a few elements of the earlier rave scenes, Nu Breaks was led by artists and DJs including Brits Adam Freeland, Dylan Rhymes, Beber, Freq Nasty, and Rennie Pilgrem plus a bare few Americans like BT. From drum’n’bass the style borrowed two-step breakbeats and chilling effects, from techno its smooth flow and machine percussion, and from early-’90s rave/hardcore some of the crowd-pleasing bells and whistles (figuratively as well as literally) that in some cases had not been heard for years. Freeland was probably the best-known of the nu breaks crew (especially since most producers concentrated on singles output), as rock-steady mix sets like Coastal Breaks and Tectonics earned acclaim with dance fans around the world.

Old School Rap

Old School Rap is the style of the very first rap artists who emerged from New York City in the late ’70s and early ’80s. Old school is easily identified by its relatively simple raps-most lines take up approximately equal amounts of time, and the rhythms of the language rarely twisted around the beats of the song. The cadences usually fell squarely on the beat, and when they didn’t, they wouldn’t stray for long, returning to the original pattern for quick resolution. The emphasis was not on lyrical technique, but simply on good times-aside from the socially conscious material of Grandmaster Flash, which greatly expanded rap’s horizons, most old school rap had the fun, playful flavor of the block parties and dances at which it was born. In keeping with the laidback, communal good vibes, old school rap seemed to have more room and appreciation for female MCs, although none achieved the higher profile of Grandmaster Flash & the Furious Five or the Sugarhill Gang. Some old school songs were performed over disco or funk-style tracks, while others featured synthesized backing (this latter type of music, either with or without raps, was known as electro). Old school rap’s recorded history begins with two 1979 singles, Fatback’s “King Tim III” and the Sugarhill Gang’s “Rapper’s Delight,” although the movement had been taking shape for almost a decade prior. Sugarhill Records quickly became the center for old school rap, dominating the market until Run-D.M.C. upped the ante for technique and hardcore urban toughness in 1983-84. Their sound and style soon took over the rap world, making old school’s party orientation and ’70s funk influences seem outdated. When compared with the more complex rhythms and rhyme schemes of modern-day rap-or even the hip-hop that was being produced less than ten years after “Rapper’s Delight”-old school rap can sound dated and a little unadventurous. However, the best old school tracks retain their liveliness as great party music no matter what the era, holding up surprisingly well considering all that’s happened since.

Post-Rock/Experimental

Post-Rock was an experimental, avant-garde movement that emerged in the mid-’90s. Most post-rock was droning and hypnotic, drawing from ambient, free-form jazz, avant-garde, and electronic music more than rock. The majority of post-rock groups were like Tortoise, a Chicago-based band with a rotating lineup. Tortoise viewed their music not as songs, but as ever-changing compositions that they improvised nightly. Most post-rock groups were defiantly anti-mainstream and anti-indie-rock in the vein of Tortoise. However, there were certain groups-like Stereolab-that essentially worked in a pop and indie-rock format, only touching on the experimental and avant-garde tendencies of most post-rockers. Thrill Jockey’s reissue of albums by European experimental names like Mouse on Mars and Oval led to the birth of a transatlantic scene, of sorts, with Germans more focused on electronic music while most Americans preferred rock-oriented setups.

Progressive House

House music had reached the mainstream by the late ’80s (more so in Britain than anywhere else), and while several early house hits were by genuine pioneers, they were later overwhelmed by the novelty acts and one-hit wonders dominating the charts around the turn of the decade. As well, ambient, techno, and trance made gains early in the ’90s as electronic styles with both street cred and a group of young artists making intelligent music. A generation of house producers soon emerged, weaned on the first wave of house and anxious to reapply the more soulful elements of the music. With a balance of sublime techno and a house sound more focused on New York garage than Chicago acid house, groups like Leftfield, the Drum Club, Spooky, and Faithless hit the dance charts (and occasionally Britain’s singles charts). Though critically acclaimed full-lengths were never quite as important as devastating club tracks, several Progressive House LPs were stellar works, including Leftfield’s Leftism, Spooky’s Gargantuan, and the Drum Club’s Everything Is Now. By the mid-’90s, the innovations of progressive house had become the mainstream of house music around the world.

Rave is more of an event than a genre of music. Raves were underground parties where acid house and hardcore records were played and large quantities of drugs-particularly ecstasy-were consumed. Most of the music played at raves had a psychedelic quality, even before drugs became a major element of the scene. DJs played at the raves, mixing stacks of house and techno singles; the DJs, not the recording artists themselves, became the most recognizable names in the scene. Raves were primarily an English phenomenon during the late ’80s and early ’90s. They were conducted in large venues, particularly abandoned warehouses and open fields. Eventually, the British government became concerned that raves were a dangerous, antisocial phenomenon that had to be shut down, but the parties never disappeared, especially since word of the events were usually passed through word of mouth and handmade fliers. In the States, raves began to make some inroads in the early ’90s, but they never gained a large audience, even by underground standards. Throughout the ’90s, bands that were directly influenced by rave culture-particularly “baggy” bands like the Stone Roses, Happy Mondays, and Charlatans; Brit-pop acts like Pulp and Oasis; and techno artists like the Prodigy-made their way into the mainstream, and the culture continued to capture the attention of British youth into the late ’90s.

Salsa is the music of Latin America, which has stretched its way up to the United States by way of Puerto Rico. Rhythmically complex and featuring large bands with lots of personnel (percussion, horns, vocalists, piano, bass, etc.), salsa remains a vital form of music in the Latin community, and is becoming increasingly popular with mainstream America.

Schranz – New!

Since there has been a lot of talk about the word “Schranz” lately, I wanted to post my very own statement about it and not one,which is written by people who don`t really know. Yes, it is true, together with a friend I came up with the word “Schranz” in a Recordstore in Frankfurt in the year 1994. Not true is, that I am now annoyed by the term, I am only annoyed by all the discussions which come up about it, especially here in Germany. Everyone who uses the word “Schranz” to describe her or his musical taste or even way of living, shall do so and I think that is completely o.k.. Basically I like to call what I spin and produce “Techno” and in general “electronic Music”. For me personally, since that day in 1994, “Schranz” is a description for various dark and distorted sounds in Techno. At that point I couldn`t come up with a better word, but of course then I also didn`t know, that one day it would become so popular. I don`t want to and I can`t tell anyone how and where to use the word and in what respect. That´s CLAU 04 was called :”Call it what you want…” So be tolerant, make up your own mind about it and don`t believe everything which is written in magazines. Chris Liebing, 2002

Shibuya-Kei

The Japanese pop phenomenon known as Shibuya-Kei exploded forth from the ultra-trendy Shibuya shopping district of west Tokyo, an area home to some of the most fashionable and best-stocked record and clothing stores in the world. Shibuya-kei-literally, “Shibuya style”-was the name given to the like-minded pop musicians who emerged from this consumer culture, a group of young Japanese weaned on a steady and amazingly eclectic diet of Western pop exports; the result was an unprecedented collision of sights and sounds, with trailblazing acts like Pizzicato 5 drawing on disparate influences ranging from the lush lounge-pop of Burt Bacharach to the rhythms and energy of urban hip-hop. In its purest form, shibuya-kei is classic Western pop refracted through the looking glass of modern Eastern society-music cut up, pasted together, and spit out in new and exciting ways. Shibuya-kei is also pop music at its cutest: it’s a view to a world where the sweetness and simplicity of the girl-group era never ended but simply evolved, never out of step with the times but always true to its roots as well-the Lolita complex so pervasive throughout Japanese culture informs much of this music, and its youthful innocence is the key to much of its endearing charm.

Shoegazing is a genre of late ’80s and early ’90s British indie-rock, named after the bands’ motionless performing style, where they stood on stage and stared at the floor while they played. But shoegazing wasn’t about visuals-it was about pure sound. The sound of the music was overwhelmingly loud, with long, droning riffs, waves of distortion, and cascades of feedback. Vocals and melodies disappeared into the walls of guitars, creating a wash of sound where no instrument was distinguishable from the other. Most shoegazing groups worked off the template My Bloody Valentine established with their early EPs and their first full-length album, Isn’t Anything, but Dinosaur Jr., the Jesus & Mary Chain, and the Cocteau Twins were also major influences. Bands that followed-most notably Ride, Lush, Chapterhouse, and the Boo Radleys-added their own stylistic flourishes. Ride veered close to ’60s psychedelia, while Lush alternated between straight pop and the dream pop of the Cocteau Twins. None of the shoegazers were dynamic performers or interesting interviews, which prevented them from breaking through into the crucial US market. In 1992-after the groups had dominated the British music press and indie charts for about three years-the shoegazing groups were swept aside by the twin tides of American grunge and Suede, the band to initiate the wave of Brit-pop that ruled British music during the mid-’90s. Some shoegazers broke up within a few years (Chapterhouse, Ride), while other groups-such as the Boo Radleys and Lush-evolved with the times and were able to sustain careers into the late ’90s.

Ska originated in Jamaica in the early 60s, with an emphasis on vocals and horns, and rhythm guitar hitting on the offbeats. Today’s “ska revivalists,” like No Doubt, often jack up the tempo but otherwise remain relatively faithful to the concept.

Space-Rock

Once used as a tag to describe ’70s-era acts like Hawkwind, in more recent years the term Space-Rock has come to embody a new generation of heady, hypnotic bands with aspirations of cosmic transcendence. Arguably the first and most prominent of the new space-rock groups was Britain’s Spacemen 3, whose famous “Taking drugs to make music to take drugs to” credo subsequently influenced most, if not all, of the like-minded bands in their wake; indeed, the music of the genre is typically narcotic, defined by washes of heavily reverbed guitar, minimalist drumming, and gentle, languid vocals.

Speed Garage

Revving up the sweet sound of garage techno by adding ragga vocals, rewinds, and DJ scratching along with occasional drum’n’bass rhythms, Speed Garage hit the London clubscene in 1996, gaining momentum from its Sunday-night status as a good end-of-the-week comedown to supplant jungle/drum’n’bass as the hotly tipped dance style of the late ’90s. Influenced by American producers like Todd Edwards and Armand Van Helden, speed garage grew with European acts such as the Dream Team, Double 99, Boris Dlugosch, and the Tuff Jam crew.

Tech-House

Tech-House is used to describe a variety of rangy, mostly European producers who culled many of the rhythms and effects of acid and progressive house yet with a clean, simplistic production style suggestive of Detroit and British techno. The style came to cover a wide variety of names including Herbert, Daniel Ibbotson, Terry Lee Brown Jr., Funk D’Void, and Ian O’Brien, among others.

Techno had its roots in the electronic house music made in Detroit in the mid-’80s. Where house still had explicit connection to disco even when it was entirely mechanical, techno was strictly electronic music, designed for a small, specific audience. The first techno producers and DJs-Kevin Saunderson, Juan Atkins, and Derrick May, among others-emphasized the electronic, synthesized beats of electro-funk artists like Afrika Bambaataa and synth-rock units like Kraftwerk. In the United States, techno was strictly an underground phenomenon, but in England, it broke into the mainstream in the late ’80s. In the early ’90s, techno began to fragment into a number of subgenres, including hardcore, ambient, and jungle. In hardcore techno, the beats-per-minute on each record were sped up to ridiculous, undanceable levels-it was designed to alienate a broad audience. Ambient took the opposite direction, slowing the beats down and relying on watery electronic textures-it was used as come-down music, when ravers and club-goers needed a break from acid house and hardcore techno. Jungle was nearly as aggressive as hardcore, combining driving techno beats with breakbeats and dancehall reggae-essentially. All subgenres of techno were initially designed to be played in clubs, where they would be mixed by DJs. Consequently, most of the music was available on 12″ singles or various-artists compilations, where the songs could run for a long time, providing the DJ with a lot of material to mix into his set. In the mid-’90s, a new breed of techno artists-most notably ambient acts like the Orb and Aphex Twin, but also harder-edged artists like the Prodigy and Goldie-began constructing albums that didn’t consist of raw beats intended for mixing. Not surprisingly, these artists-particularly the Prodigy-became the first recognizable stars in techno.

Breaking out of the German techno and hardcore scene of the early ’90s, Trance emphasized brief synthesizer lines repeated endlessly throughout tracks, with only the addition of minimal rhythmic changes and occasional synthesizer atmospherics to distinguish them-in effect putting listeners into a trance that approached those of religious origin. Despite waning interest in the sound during the mid-’90s, trance made a big comeback later in the decade, even supplanting house as the most popular dance music of choice around the globe.

Inspired by acid house and Detroit techno, trance coalesced with the opening of R&S Records in Ghent, Belgium and Harthouse/Eye Q Records in Frankfurt, Germany. R&S defined the sound early on with singles like “Energy Flash” by Joey Beltram, “The Ravesignal” by CJ Bolland, and others by Robert Leiner, Sun Electric, and Aphex Twin. Harthouse, begun in 1992 by Sven Väth with Heinz Roth & Matthias Hoffman, made the most impact on the sound of trance with Hardfloor’s minimal epic “Hardtrance Acperience” and Väth’s own “L’Esperanza,” plus releases by Arpeggiators, Spicelab, and Barbarella. Artists like Väth, Bolland, Leiner, and many others made the transition to the full-length realm, though without much of an impact on the wider music world.

Despite a long nascent period when it appeared trance had disappeared, replaced by breakbeat dance (trip-hop and jungle), the style’s increasing impact on Britain’s dance scene finally crested in the late ’90s. The classic German sound had changed somewhat though, and the term “progressive” trance gained favor to describe influences from the smoother end of house and Euro dance. By 1998, most of the country’s best-known DJs-Paul Oakenfold, Pete Tong, Tony De Vit, Danny Rampling, Sasha, Judge Jules-were playing trance in Britain’s superclubs. Even America turned on to the sound (eventually), led by its own cast of excellent DJs, including Christopher Lawrence and Kimball Collins.

Tribal House

By the early ’90s, house music had undergone several fusions with other styles, creating ambient house, hip-house and, when the four-on-the-floor punch was blended with polyrhythmic percussion, Tribal House. The style covers a bit of ground, from the mainstream leanings of Frankie Bones and Ultra Naté to the electro-hippie sensibilities of Banco de Gaia, Loop Guru, and Eat Static (all denizens of the UK’s Planet Dog Records).

Trip-Hop

Yet another in a long line of plastic placeholders to attach itself to one arm or another of the UK post-acid house dance scene’s rapidly mutating experimental underground, Trip-Hop was coined by the English music press in an attempt to characterize a new style of downtempo, jazz-, funk-, and soul-inflected experimental breakbeat music which began to emerge around in 1993 in association with labels such as Mo’Wax, Ninja Tune, Cup of Tea, and Wall of Sound. Similar to (though largely vocal-less) American hip-hop in its use of sampled drum breaks, typically more experimental, and infused with a high index of ambient-leaning and apparently psychotropic atmospherics (hence “trip”), the term quickly caught on to describe everything from Portishead and Tricky, to DJ Shadow and U.N.K.L.E., to Coldcut, Wagon Christ, and Depth Charge-much to the chagrin of many of these musicians, who saw their music largely as an extension of hip-hop proper, not a gimmicky offshoot. One of the first commercially significant hybrids of dance-based listening music to crossover to a more mainstream audience, trip-hop full-length releases routinely topped indie charts in the UK and, in artists such as Shadow, Tricky, Morcheeba, the Sneaker Pimps, and Massive Attack, account for a substantial portion of the first wave of “electronica” acts to reach Stateside audiences.

Zouk comes from the Caribbean, but it also extremely popular in France, where musicians from former French colonies congregate (Kassav is one of the better-known Zouk groups in France). Zouk is uplifting, uptempo music with the kind of vocal and instrumental interplay that’s reminiscent of purely African music.

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