#he like 'warps' through things weird and in an almost glitchy way

[vigilbutts]

ok ok you know what

little 5am ramble moment ummm because i wanna talk a lil about some EoD stuff with Luis, because while he doesn't do all that much directly w/the story (that's Kalla's business) there IS still some stuff happening with him.

But basically to put it simply, he winds up learning (or really more like just manifesting) some specter fun stuff. Effectively being a specter but with deadeye rifle. WE MULTI TRACK DRIFTING NOW Most importantly of the specter fun stuff is specter shroud, which also REALLY freaks him out when he taps into it the first time. To be fair, he freaked out because his hands became incorporeal and smoky??? Swirling masses of blue and purple shadow??? He's pretty sure that is not how hands are supposed to be?? And it was a very Weird feeling! Felt kinda cold and tingly and numb at the same time! Now he knows what the sensation feels like when he no-clips out of someone's grip, though. Deep down he is a terrified anxious creature so he hates surprises and tends to catastrophize. He does put away the worry that it's void corruption within a few days because it is proven to be unrelated, but still does not put down the worry that something is very wrong with him. (there are many things wrong with him but he's known about those things already for years lol) as to how he keeps developing new things. Well, he's been through a lot and the removal of the Orrian curse had some Interesting surprise effects and unlocked a lot of weird enhanced abilities. Because to break the curse without causing him harm, he was infused with magic to put it simply. also hanging around for various big cataclysmic events where a FUCKTON of magic got released into the world helps. He might have missed most of the dragons but he didn't miss Balthazar getting pasted. No, he helped with that one because things were Personal :') Also got front row seats to Primordus and Jormag (and almost died again, but that's another story)

Also side note! his shadowstep "noclip" abilities are a bit more powerful than in-game stuff. He can take people with him when he noclips so long as he's physically touching them and chooses to do so. It feels a little funky, a little dizzying for whoever he's giving a ride to. This is, however, very draining on Luis too, and causes his illness to flare up due to the strain on his body. TLDR: his alac specter build is Fully Canon now but he also still does a big shooty with his favorite rifle.

[heliopauseentertainments]

Safety Technologies

For fandomweekly - placed 1st

Prompt: 202 - Catastrophe

Continuity: G1

Rating: General

Relationship: Megatron/Ratchet

Characters: Megatron & Ratchet Warnings: Swearing

Summary: In which Ratchet and Megatron take the Hyperjump on vacation.

Crossposting: AO3 | Event Dreamwidth | Main Dreamwidth Fic under cut. See AO3 for complete notes.

“We should have sold this useless thing for scrap,” Megatron said, his head under the floor paneling of the shuttle’s cockpit as he searched for the fault in the impulse drive’s circuitry. Presumably. Ratchet honestly had no idea what the big fool was actually looking for or what the problem was. It was just as likely that Megatron was searching around down there for some piece of hardware to be mad at. It would explain all of the banging noises as he slapped around seemingly aimlessly under the floor. “You still don’t really grasp the concept of sentimentality, do you?” Ratchet said, arms crossed as he stood nearby to “supervise” in case Megatron accidentally electrocuted himself for the umpteenth time. It had been easy enough to get Prime to grant him the Hyperjump as a part of the peace arrangement he had forced everyone into. With its now functional warp drive, the shuttle was also the perfect size to take for rare vacations with his partner. Neither of them were good at relaxing, but Soundwave had recently given them vouchers for a visit to resort world known for its geothermal hot springs. It was the perfect opportunity to dust the shuttle off. Though, Ratchet too was beginning to regret telling Megatron they would be keeping the Hyperjump all those years ago after the glitchy experimental shuttle had been their only place of refuge for many months in unknown space. At the time, he had thought it would be nice to have something to remember their weird ordeal by, but, now as they orbited their vacation destination with a dead impulse drive, he was reconsidering. “We warped all the way here,” Ratchet said, frowning at the floor where Megatron was wedging himself further into the maintenance crawlspace, “and now we can’t park.” It was just their luck. More banging echoed across the cramped cockpit, followed by a loud zapping noise. Megatron recoiled with a frustrated grunt, clearly having been the cause of the zap. “Could anything else possibly go wrong?” he growled, redoubling his efforts to do… something down there. “Do you need help?” “No, I can fix it!” Which is what Megatron said when the impulse drive wouldn’t start up after they came out of warp. The problem remained to be fixed. Another zap. He caught the acrid scent of smoke. The shuttle lurched downwards, Ratchet stumbling with it. Rolling across the cockpit’s floor, he could hear Megatron madly scrambling out of the crawlspace. The shuttle plummeted through the atmosphere; arms wrapped protectively around him as the planet’s gravity asserted itself. This way they would at least arrive at their destination, he thought bitterly, though almost certainly not in one piece. The cockpit heated up as the ablative heat protection panels on the hull were pushed past their limit. The warning alarms sounded, lights flashing. :: Imminent collision detected :: Ratchet turned off his optics and waited for impact. :: Warping to a safe distance in three… two… one… :: “Warp?” Suddenly the alarms stopped. The intense heat began to dissipate. Were they dead? :: Collision avoided. Orbital stability re-enabled. :: No, not dead. Ratchet onlined his optics and twisted in Megatron’s firm grasp to peer out of the viewport. They were in orbit above the resort world once more; the plumes of some of the massive geysers were visible from their vantage point. “I’m calling for a tow; they’ll fix the damn thing in port.” Megatron sighed in defeat, arms still wrapped tightly around Ratchet. “Agreed.”

[bearsuitrecords]

Eamon The Destroyer - “We'll Be Piranhas” (BS061) - review from Aural Aggravation: Just a little over two years since the idiosyncratically-monikered Eamon the Destroyer arrived with his debut single ‘My Drive’, he’s gone from strength to strength – to the extent that his output has erupted, Godzilla-like, expanding and flexing immense musical muscles. Sort of. Because Eamon the Destroyer’s work is, despite the connotations of a raging beast laying waste to entire civilizations with a single roar, incredibly intimate, with tension building from the introspective minimalism of the songs. With the release of the debut album A Small Blue Car and a remix / reworking of said album landing in quick succession, the arrival of We’ll be Piranhas seems swift.

We’ll be Piranhas finds Eamon the Destroyer (any truncation of the name feels wrong: Eamon too casual and to cuddly; the Destroyer simply unrepresentative) pushing the parameters of experimentalism, conjuring the sonic equivalent of the surreal oddness of the album’s cover, which looks like a three-way split-screen of medievalism, Anglo-Saxon fable, and a deranged reimagining of some of Captain Cook’s sketches of newly-discovered species with what appears to be a polar bear resting its chin on a narwhal, while gulls look on and rabbits look away. Or something.

‘The Choirmaster’ is both droney and playful, quirky, and mellow, until it spins off its axis and into a whole other world of spiralling prog and doodling daftness. It certainly packs a lot into five strange and disorientating minutes. Single ‘Rope’ is glitchy, awkward, and feels like it doesn’t belong to anything, and suddenly, it lurches too life with a loping rhythm and fuzzy synths which provide a backdrop to tense, almost strangled vocals, hushed, strained, and gravelly. Not for the first time, I long for a lyric sheet as the scratchy vocals render the words difficult to decipher, but this is perhaps his most vitriolic piece to date; more often than not, Eamon the Destroyer croaks melancholy: here, there’s a fire, and it carried through into the wheezing clatter of ‘Sonny Said’. There’s a moment around the mid-point I get a pang of Seventeen Seconds-era Cure. But it’s fleeting, and nothing is pinpointable, particularly in this swirling maelstrom of a piece.

When it comes to Bearsuit releases, I often find myself using and reusing the word ‘weird’ as a descriptor – mostly because it’s the thing that really defines the label. While the likes of Harrold Nono spin Eastern hues into spirals and spin drifts of experimentalism, We’ll be Piranhas finds ETD really going all-out to try stuff. And the result is brain-bending.

‘Underscoring the Blues’ somehow manages to melt fairground oddness with The Doors and prog and, well, all sorts, to blur into a curious cocktail.

It’s difficult – if not impossible –to listen to this album and feel ‘normal’. It feels like the soundtrack to a dream: one of those weird dreams where familiar places aren’t quite right – the walls of familiar rooms are different, doors and windows are in the wrong place, and continually moving, and you look to make your way out and suddenly the door has vanished. The floor is moving and familiar faces warp and acquire new, alien aspects. You don’t know who you are or what’s going on, but you know that this isn’t what you expected as the sights and sounds of the familiar melt into one another. You feel your sense of time and space begin to crumble. Where am I? What even is this?

It feels like isolation. It feels like… like… like numbness, confusion. You feel your body tense, the backs of the legs growing taut. The title tracks sends everything spinning and whirling every which way, and there is no easy way to assimilate this, and the same is true of the woozy glitchings of the desolate ‘A Call is Coming’. Ignore the call; decline it. Look inwards. Woah, something isn’t quite right.

We’ll be Piranhas leaves you feeling detached, askance, apart, removed, not quite right. It’s an introspective work delivered from on the cusp. On the cusp of what? It’s hard to say. Perhaps it’s best not to. Christopher Nosnibor Aural Aggravation (1.11.23) https://auralaggravation.com/2023/11/01/eamon-the-destroyer-well-be-piranhas/?fbclid=IwAR2IO2WnY1TG633GiFRJzAlAGAl1YH1IbJHzbIvuGvQ4NoR5lFfpFzRVAjg

[grim-faux]

2 _ 10 _ The Prison and its Key

First

 The door came to rest on familiar shores. Familiar sights, familiar smells. This place he knew from somewhere, but he didn’t understand the where. It was like following footprints in the sand, the impression the same shape and depth as the succeeding step in the endless pattern. Where did they go, this shadow of the pioneer? How would they meet?

 They wandered the shore for some time, utterly lost. He was lost, but She was following. The-this-many-fingers girl. The Six. Dragging along in too large pajamas, looking displaced but rigid despite circumstances.

 He’s ecstatic but also frightened about the development. Is she a new pack mate? She travels with him, but that is likely due to no place they could be going, to separate. No go or reach, not with the impervious walls of folded buildings and crumbling cement. The city side is collapsing into the beach and shallows, but there is no place else to wander into. Nothing, unless back to the sea.

 One day he caught her a fish, and she seemed astonished by the gesture.

 “No?” he hummed, softer than a weeping leaf. It wasn’t the best fish, he’d admit. Floundered from muddy shoals, mostly scale and spines. But she snatched the fish away and ate up everything of it that was chewable.

 At first he is unsure if she can keep up. If she would want to. The loss of his former pack, it hurts. The hurt hasn’t faded much, and he is afraid. They should be safe, a small pack. This might work. They call in soft murmurs and whispers, move swiftly hand in hand when strange sounds emerge around the shadows of leaning walls.

 The strange glitchy child gave him direction. Beneath a mournful bulb glimmering against the infinite collision of brick, a crooked door hung above crumbling steps. The door creaked on a salty gust.

 He takes her hand and shows her the way. Still, there are times she is fearful of light, where the lines in your shape are sculpted from the shadows. It is fine. He squeezed her hand and tugged her along.

 “Come. Come,” he cooed. There is nothing on the beach. They can’t eat fog, they can’t drink tears – the air is salty and they are parched of color. “Here.” After some coaxing and gentle towing, she does follow him.

 They leave the beach and enter into a familiar scene of decay and forgot. It’s as Mono suspected, nothing in the ruins is viable or worth noting; aside from apparent desertion. The air is stale and murky, the jagged floorboards dusty. No footprints, at least. This doesn’t put him to ease. Neither is the girl. Her caution in the near certifiable absence of danger, does make Mono optimistic.

 In their venture onward, the girl proved herself reliable, maybe trustworthy. All good. Quick witted and spry, though she didn’t seem as strong as him. Discarded tools such as pipes and knives gave her a struggle, though she didn’t make the grand try at stealing any. However, she is better in other ways, where he is not. That was good. Together, they are balance.

 When they got separated, or he had to go off on his own, she would risk making noise and call for him. Try and get him back. He would call back, let her know he was coming or hadn’t forgot her. Wasn’t leave. In the first few days it didn’t happen often, not by an accident. They traveled very close, slipping through cluttered alleys and the murk throughout the twisted pathway. He got to show her how to use a fuse to spur lights in some drafty building, and she showed him how to eat sweet goo with dry crackers.

 She was kind of weird. While jam mashed with crackers was good, who did that? It was faster to eat one or the other first, usually the crackers, then the jam. Whatever, it made share easier.

 And they did share food, like packmates would. He found something, or she found something. If there was enough to divide out, then they made sure to get the others attention. She was usually better at finding foods, and she always made certain he got something.

 It was a stupid fight. That’s how he wound up in the hole. A dumb fight, and he couldn’t recall at all what the skirmish was about. Most likely food or something, or someone caught him with a television again. The point being, he got away because he and his pack had a dumb fight. He was on the fringe of the snatching, only on account he couldn’t reach the door when the smoke unwound its snare. But he fell into the hole, like a dolt. If he had the chance he could’ve made right, he could’ve fixed what he broke. But the Snatcher. They were gone. He was here still but they were gone, and they would never come back.

 He wanted to do better. He knew better now.

 The schoolyard had many things to look at – a swing, some goalie frames, a see-saw, a sad little shadow. He was distracted by one side, she by the other. They were not glued together. Under somber moon shower, they tried to understand the things. By the swing he met her, she sat on the platform and he pushed her. The rope gave a soothing whisper as it rolled across the bar above. The see-saw was a different matter, it took a few minutes to figure out its gimmick. They tried to balance on it at either end, he fell off, she pushed one end up and the other crashed down over his back.

 When they did figure out the game with the see-saw, they abandoned it briskly. When either side hurtled down, it cracked against the coarse pavement. It was too loud.

 A bundled sheet hung from a window high in the building that loomed over the stony yard. That wasn’t there before, he’s certain. Isn’t he? Either way, it was someplace to check now. Take on shelter, search for food. They will never see who let down the line. To get away, he knows, but he doesn’t hesitate to climb.

 “Hey,” he rasped. “Up. Let’s go.” He wasn’t certain if she would come. She didn’t need to, not if there was someplace she wanted to go or see. The girl didn’t have to follow, but not many paths are open to children, even less for one lone packless kid to get through.

 The rope snapped tight against his toes. She was climbing. He almost lost his grip, his heart was doing flips. It would be all right. They would be all right.

 When he reached the ledge, he centered his balanced and peered into the gloom, taking the time to listen for the air. He sniffed. That smell. He hated it! Burning! No! NoNoNo NoNoNo NoNoNo!

 He recoiled and nearly lost his balance, if she hadn’t caught him by the shoulders and shoved him forward. They sway on the sill – it’s either pitch backwards to certain death, or drop into this unknown place with unknown dangers.

 Unknown was better than a certain and sudden. They topple to the floor in a heap, the floorboards crackled beneath the combined weight. She’s up first, crouched and frozen in place. He didn’t bother pulling himself together and let the silence settle, waiting for thundering steps, a growl. When no other noise announced itself, he took in their surroundings.

 The lights worked. Ruin lay across the corridor, the planks bent across the floor and the paneling of the walls warped. Long dresser benches lined the walls and the coat racks above sat ripe with backpacks and coats.

 He eased up and slunk forward. There was no way out, not together. If he or she boosted up to the windowsill, there was no way for the other up. It made him wonder how the other kid got out of the window in the first place. Unless, they abandoned their friend.

 The burning smell emerged from a canister, between the dresser benches. He approached on feathery strides, as if anticipating something to lunge out and snag his face. His paper bag didn’t do much to bar out the smell, even so, he moved closer.

 Whatever was burned, it was ash and bits of remains. He took the handle of a charred cane a rifled around the coals. A piece of… it looked like a face.

 She was beside him, staring into the container. She made her speek beside his bag mask. What?

 He took her hand and led away.

 The only path was to the right. He had no complaints, the creepy pictures on the wall stared at them. The corridor they turned into had nothing, aside from one open door. It was lit and passive, so he led her by the hand.

 She tugged at his sleeve as they stood by the boarder of the light, taking in the room. Bedframe upon bedframe stacked to the ceiling, blocks of wood with speek, an assortment of toys piled under the beds. What was this place?

 She was trying to tell him something, but he didn’t understand the speek. If he let her hand go, would she flee?

 She didn’t. She gestured him to move and come away. There was no place to go, nowhere to run. The corridor was barred with furniture and bedframes, it couldn’t be safe to squeeze through that.

 Eventually, he got Her to calm. He pulled her to the side next to a set of small dressers, and crawled under one of the beds. While she huddled down and hid, he went through the room. Listening for the breeze, checking the shadows and climbing up the side of the stacked bedframes. More toys lay on the beds. He found a few crayons and some paper.

 He returned to her with the finds, and a blanket tugged off one of the beds. He draped the blanket over her and him, then showed her the pages. He drew a figure with a coat and a bag, and a key.

 “Mono.” He did another picture. “Tree.”

 She blinked. Then, took a page and a crayon. He watched intently as she scratched down the lines, forming a box with lines. “Cage.” She put a small figure huddled inside the tight bars. “Prison.” She held the page up and tapped it. “Prison.” On a clean page, she etched in the bedframes stacked, among other likeness of the room. Then, she lay the cage and its occupant over the bedframe picture.

 “Prison.”

 Mono sounded out the speek. She worked with him a few times, it was hard because she wouldn’t raise her voice. To be certain, he did a picture of a large, gnarled figure clasping a small figure of a child. It could only be a child. It didn’t necessarily have to be a monster with a sack and an eyehole, it only had to be bigger and terrible.

 “Prison?”

 She shook her head. “Take.” That speek was different.

 This time, he did a picture of a child alone in a box, with only one door. He put small lines behind her, and added the music box.

 “Prison?”

 She snatched the page away and tilted her head. But offered nothing.

 This went back and forth for some time. Making frail noises at the other, passing speek between them with pictures. Over and over. Until, Mono knew nothing.

 The haunts dragged him back to the waking world. A pleasant world, wherein he can focus on other thing sites, and not have to stare at the hallowed faces of the ones he ran from. He is still curled up under the bed, clutching he blanket to his chest. A faint rasp escaped him.

 Six is on the other side of the room, examining a music box hidden by the murk of the other bed. It doesn’t make a sound when she twisted the crank. She’s up and moving, a certain indicator nothing has alerted Her since he nodded off. He hated sleeping.

 “Sleep?” he posed, as he crawled along the floor to her. She looked his way and shook her head. “Bad if not.”

 She gave him a firm scowl, nose crinkled beneath her bangs. Definite NO. It’s not safe to travel on no sleep, but he won’t argue with angry girl. She didn’t hesitate to raise the rifle.

 The room is too interesting to leave immediately. Especially since She is more relaxed now, exploring up the beds and pulling out toys. It’s not incredibly warm, but the air is not drafty or clammy from nearby shore. What little bit of food they previously scavenged off and around the buildings staved off the necessity to explore out immediately, and Mono had no clue where they could venture to next. Not out the window, when no way for both of them to escape was apparent. If they had something to stand on….

 A somewhat deflated ball provided amusing distraction. It made a little sound when it fumped against the floor or a bedframe, but they overlooked that in order to chase it a bit. The game was simple, keep the other from the ball by carrying it or tossing it. If tossed too hard, the ball didn’t go wild and rebound all over the place. At one point he tried to hide it under himself and his coat, a poorly built plan fabricated by his tuckered-out head. This made girl mad, especially when he wouldn’t relinquish the toy.

 This initiated a first but mediocre wrestle between them. He was surprised, the girl was a lot stronger than she made out. The two scuffle around a bit, until it’s not worth it, and he didn’t want the ball anyway. She could have it. For a time they separate. She goes to a corner of the room and sleeps, while he watched… and raided the dressers for a new hat or foods.

 A page of paper folded into an arrow made not a whisper, and when he tossed it, the thing sort of… floated. Like the door, but on air. He showed it to her, showed her how it worked. The two spent some time tossing it back and forth, taking turns chasing or catching. He almost got a giggle out of her, or a smile. He knew he was grinning, but she couldn’t see that

 Another game they played was when they climbed the bedsides, searching for anything amiss. Maybe food. Mono liked to hang from the sheets.

 “Hey. Fall.” Then, he would slowly slip backwards little by little, always secured by his grip, and never high enough to warrant real danger. “I fall.”

 Upon hearing his whimper, she’d clamber over from wherever she’d been perched and snatch his wrist. They’d make a grand drama of her pulling him up, and once ‘saved’ he’d supply a wild show of gratitude. Even she took turns of the game, giving a little yelp and dangling with her legs kicking below. No real reason, just to make the other stop whatever they were up to and come over.

 These theatrics came to an end when she… maybe actually got into some real trouble with climbing the bed, and wound up really dangling from the second highest bed. Too high for safe. Mono scrambled up to assist as she lost her grip, but was too late to secure his own hold before an attempt to hoist her up. If not for his hand knotted in the blanket cover stalling their decent, someone might’ve shattered a bone. They lay badly bruised and a little sore, but not debilitated.

 Though the room was very nice and began to feel safe, it was still a prison. As Six called it. A cage with an open door, which had nothing to offer its occupants. They needed to figure out where to go, explore around, and locate something edible. Soon.

 For no reason, She snatched one of the off tune music boxes and he took the folded plane. They revisited the corridor, first checking the furniture and desks jammed into the hallway preventing passage.

 “Through,” she posed. She hefted up the metal casing of the music box, but rethought chucking that at the knotted mess and lowered the treasure.

 “Not safe,” he echoed. She followed him, all the way back to the window they climbed up through. The smoke stink wasn’t so strong now, if possible that upset him even more. He stood beneath the window glaring at the pale sky soaking up tinges of yellow and green, early dawn. On impulse he tossed the paper plane and watched it crest the windowsill, the tail dipped out of sight. Gone. Free.

 The kid before them, climbed down the makeshift rope they built. How did they climb up from this side? More importantly, what did they escape from?

 That was a dumb question. What child wasn’t running from something? The world was unforgiving and dangerous, hardly anything out roaming the roads wasn’t intent on catching or killing.

 Side-by-side, they ambled to the other end of the corridor. She set each footstep purposefully on the floorboards, while he examined the floor and walls interchangeably for breaks or minor flaws. When they reach the opposite side, his eyes alit on something he hadn’t given much credit earlier.

 A switch. An electrical switch.

 He pulled his hand from Her’s and gave a leap, snagging the broad handle. A little hiss escaped her when the latch clicked. Through the intersecting corridors the radiance doused, nearly entirely.

 Nearly. Where the ghastly pictures hung, light punched through twin holes and stabbed into the floor. “Trick,” he muttered, and released the switch. The lights remained inactive, every inch of the corridor held captive to drafty gray and icy haze. Except for where the illumination cleaved through the shadows, some illumination flooded in from somewhere.

 The face of the framed portrait was frightening and creepy. Even with no substantial eyes to speak of, it felt as if those gaping holes chiseled right through his soul. Without a thought he flashed his hand out and took her palm against his.

 He didn’t want to go. He did not, didnotdidnotdidnot! DID NOT! have the drive to leave the safe area. Yet, there was nowhere else for them,  and they needed to begin moving. It was only a matter of time before something stumbled upon them when they least expected, while they dipped into a vulnerable stupor.

 “Danger,” she uttered.

 He sighed and dipped the paper bag. “All it place danger.” The only assurance he found for momentary safety, was never stop moving. He learned that… the hard way.

 With her hand in his, they made the trip back to the room that was a prison. He selected the ball, and she took up a building block this time. He would make that portrait stop looking at them.

Next

[id-never-letyoudown]

A Muse List

Wilford Warfstache: reality warping semi-madman. He goes through time and just rolls with the punches. Knows at least a dozen alternate versions of the same person. Makes multiverse ships technically canon. Sometimes he forgets which timeline he's in and acts like a kid who fell asleep in the car and woke up in bed. Kinda OP, but I I'll discuss anything big with the other mun beforehand. For now it's just small stuff. -tagged: pink stache whiplash

Dark: literally watch Damien. Only this Damien had ties to the mafia, which Celine was heavily against. Also Damien and Will had a romantic relationship, highschool sweethearts, promise ring. Then Damien started running for mayor, Wil met Celine, feels were had. (ps: he's got both sets of genitalia, cuz everyone forgets.) -tagged: 3d dream

Fordwil Stachewarf: started as a joke of a bizarro!Wil and now, welp, here he is. He's a manipulative green haired asshole. A creep. He does not "roll with the punches", if one version of you likes him then he will expect all of them to, and he will take. Stuff with him can get hella triggery so I don't use him often. He's a total hardass. -tagged: green jerk

Chase: ha, an average bro. Trickshots. Memes. Bad puns and scraped knees. Anxiety ridden and depressed. Tries to drink away the pain. Also he's a werewolf and used to have hella bad anger issues, they have gotten better, but when it's that time of the month it's easy for him to slip. -tagged: sad awoo

Dr. Iplier: ;A; after losing his V-card to his highschool sweetheart who was moving away, three months later when he tries to break it off, she tells him she's pregnant. So they have a shotgun wedding. Also his family disowned him for this. He had to balance college, a job, and financially caring for his long distance, pregnant, wife. The boy was stressed, and he vented to her. Very next day she says she lost the baby. And ol' doc blamed himself. They've been married since, and whenever he brought up separating she would bring up the baby. He hired a PI who uncovered that there never was a baby to begin with, so now he's just "fuck you, fuuuuck yoooou." Now he's trying to get her to divorce him so she won't take everything. -tagged: doctor love me

Host: ah hah, favorite boi. My Host did used to be the Author, and after getting his ass handed to him, started looking for ways to really amp up his abilities. He found It(not the clown, fck off)and offered a deal "I'll give you a vessel, in exchange for power" and It misinterpreted and took HIS body instead of letting him find someone else. Over the years he's realized his mistakes and has become much more humble. Basically: Host is a host to a being not of this world or even dimension. -tagged: host2

Yan: goes from "not feeling a thing" to "feeling too much" real quick. If you see him being peppy and cheerful, it's an act so ppl don't question him. He wants to feel. So whenever he gets feelings for someone he often takes it too far. Much too far. Also he's a kitsune h e r e -tagged: bloody cute

Winston: fucking pink, pompadour, greaser demon. Him big. Tol. Stronk. Very protective of his partners, especially if they're human. Big teddybear. Loves animals and works as a mechanic. His town? Almost everyone is a demon there, they just wear glamours all the time. -tagged: big pink

Anti: fucking glitchy glitch tech demon. Acts like a computer virus. Very bitter. Up Dark's ass. He has feelios that he refuses to deal with, so he just annoys Dark and insists on being by him most of the time. He likes Dark because he's one of the few who don't take his bullshit and aren't scared of him. -tagged: virus boi

Bing: saaah dude. Super laidback unless he's alone, then he gets to work and is actually semi serious. He's got a few defects, mainly with his eyes, so he wears shades. Default safemode, the dial(yes, dial)is on the back of his neck. Ppl confuse this for volume too often. Notch one: he can cuss. Notch two: he can look up lewds. Notches from then on just increase how raunchy he can be and the frequency of his lewd statements. Very last notch: he can FUCK. also, he has a detachable dick, like, he can still feel it when it's not attached, thanks to bluetooth. Weird man. -tagged: robruh

Virgil/Anxiety: anxious bab with a sarcastic tongue and foul mouth. Total pessimist. Will not go out of his way to interact with people. Loves puns and dad jokes and Disney. Sings. Acts like a damn cat tbh. But surprise! Him a spider. Has giant spider legs coming out of his back that he hides -tagged: smokey eye

Patton/Morality: god, fckin. He's trying so hard. He wants to be the bestest friend/father figure that he can be. Sometimes he holds his own feelings in and bottles them up. -cough-surprise binch, daddy kink and puns. -tagged: pun papa

AD: h e y, I know we all have headcanons n shit, but my Dark would have tried to get their pal DA out of the mirror and into a body, after things settled, somehow. It would have taken him years, but he would have. Course it didn't go quite as planned. By then whatever remained of the DA was far too gone, turns up being stuck in a broken mirror realm can really fuck you up. And eventually turn you into a demon. AD is not the DA anymore, all they remember is that night and that night only.

Any semblance of the DA they once had is now gone. Now they're out for revenge, and when you're able to travel through reflections that can come quite easily. Ofc they look like Mark(more specifically Dark, as he was the one who both put them in and took them out of the broken mirror that was keeping them tied to the manor), only hella scarred and with white streaks all throughout their hair. Their eyes are mirrors, which is just fckin creepy. Personality wise they don't trust easy. A smartass with a sharp tongue. Brutally honest. Redeeming quality? If they see someone/something that's vulnerable they'll protecc. -tagged: spitting image

Kink(Klancy): a kinky mtherfcker. Used to be in a hella abusive relationship with someone who called beating and using him with no regard for his safety at all "bdsm". And it was Klancy's first and only romantic relationship. It wasn't until his bad, horrid excuse of a dom took them to an actual, legit bdsm club that he realized what the dom was doing was abuse. So he dumped him, and Jeremiah and his buddies helped get his stuff. Klancy decided that from now on he'd take his sex life in his own hands. He isn't currently looking for a a relationship, but I'm a shipping hoe so if y'all are up for a slow burn, hit him up -tagged: kink it up

Eric: hoooooo b o y, well, his backstory was awful before. Now it's uh, downright trigger worthy. I won't go into detail, let's just say Pops has a bad touch way of getting Eric to "calm down". He is a quiet, anxious boy. We all know his canon story. He feels guilty that he's the only one of his siblings living now. And Derek doesn't help. He's moved out and with Klancy, because I want them to be friends and you can fite me in the pit. Klancy-aside from Host-is the only one that knows what Derek's been doing since uh, Klancy being Klancy decided he'd try the dad on for size and Derek said some questionable things in the heat of the moment. Klancy has practically adopted Eric, he'll fight Derek.

Eric is a nervous wreck and easy to manipulate. Which makes him perfect for juicy, angsty threads. -tagged: yellow handkercheif

Periwinkle: a defective Google unit made with an experimental sensory system, it made him incredibly sensitive to the point of pain. So he wears clothes from head to toe, along with a helmet, Daft Punk style. He works at a nearby Google place, doing surveys with owners of Google units. He fakes being emotionless when on the clock, as he's been threatened with deactivation due to violent outbursts. -tagged: off limits

Copiplier: his name's Leslie, Officer Morgan. He prefers being called Lee. He abides by the l a w!! No exceptions. Whenever someone makes a noise complaint or some other with the office, he's the one that shows up. Mostly because none of the other officers want to deal with t h a t mountain of paperwork. His hair's on the long side, man bun long. And he buff. When I say he looks good in the uniform I mean "gets mistaken for a stripper" good. Which is fair, because for some time he was a stripper, before police academy(cough, he still is, on the weekends). Strict boi is kinda dense and ever since Yukio gave him some damn pocky he's been addicted to it. Which is great, since he used to be a smoker. -tagged: oh officer

[worryinglyinnocent]

Fic: The Darkness Within (22/?)

Apologies for any formatting weirdness. Glitchy Tumblr. If you click the read more, it will fix the formatting.

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Summary: When washed-up paranormal investigator Rum Gold meets Belle French, he does not quite know what to make of her claim of a supernatural presence in her life, but sensing her genuine fear, he begins to investigate. What he uncovers shakes the cynicism he has so long held to its very core, and he calls in the help of disgraced ex-priest Father Macavoy to help him lay some demons to rest…

A slow burn, eventual rumbellavoy. The rating may increase in later chapters.

Rated: T

[One] [Two] [Three] [Four] [Five] [Six] [Seven] [Eight] [Nine] [Ten] [Eleven] [Twelve] [Thirteen] [Fourteen] [Fifteen] [Sixteen] [Seventeen] [Eighteen] [Nineteen] [Twenty] [Twenty-One] [AO3]

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Twenty-Two

Ella was awake, and she wasn’t quite sure why. She could tell that something wasn’t quite right, and she didn’t know what it was, but it was making her feel distinctly uneasy. Perhaps it was the fact that it was the middle of the night and all the strange things that she’d seen and thought about throughout the day time were now creeping up on her and making her nervous when she’d not given them a second thought whilst it was light. Darkness was funny like that, twisting and warping everything that had been benign in the daylight into something that was a cause for concern.

Gold had not told her the full story of precisely what was going on between him and Belle and how Belle’s problems were connected with his own family tree, but from what he had told her and from what she had gathered from Belle, it was a deep and delicate connection. Whatever affliction Belle was suffering under - they would call it sleepwalking for ease of understanding although Ella knew that it was more than that - had affected her for her entire life and she was desperate to be free of it. Desperate enough to go to Gold, of all people.

Perhaps that was what was making her uneasy. Belle was definitely desperate. Desperation in and of itself was not worrying, and Ella had met more than enough desperate people seeking reassurance in the supernatural during her secondary career. At the same time though, the fact that Gold had been the one to approach her was strange.

She’d joked about it at the time, laughing about how desperate they must be if they were coming to her rather than using any of Gold’s tried and tested scientific methods, coming back to things that he had always privately scorned instead. But that desperation was genuine, and if Gold had resorted to coming to Ella, then what on earth were they dealing with that was beyond the scope of his knowledge?

She shook herself, getting out of bed and determining to make sure that everything was all right in the house. She knew that she would never get to sleep unless she checked, so she grabbed her robe and padded out onto the landing.

She almost jumped out of her skin when she saw the pale figure standing there, before realising that it was Belle and calming down with a sigh of relief. She was standing outside the door to Gold’s room, and Ella just smiled to herself. Maybe she had misjudged the relationship between them and they were further along in it than she’d thought.

She was about to go back into her own room, assured that nothing strange was going on, when she realised that Belle wasn’t moving. She was just standing there, her hand on Gold’s door handle, as still as a statue.

Sleepwalking, Ella thought. She’d never dealt with anyone who sleepwalked before. Were you supposed to leave them be or wake them up? She really didn’t want to leave Belle standing out there on the landing all night, she’d freeze.

Cautiously, she took a few steps down the landing. Belle didn’t seem to be responding to her presence, and Ella had to wonder. Whatever it was that connected her and Gold had been tracking him down throughout the country, to the extent of reaching his garden. Now she was only separated from him by an unlocked door, and yet she wasn’t going through it.

“Belle?” Ella whispered. “Belle, can you hear me?”

There was no response, and Ella came closer, until she could reach out and touch Belle’s shoulder. She was cold to the touch, but she still didn’t react.

“Belle?”

Cautiously, Ella shook her a little, but there was still no reaction. Ella’s brow furrowed; she wondered if perhaps she could get Belle back down the landing to her own room and no-one would be any the wiser.

“Belle, are you awake? Are you in there?”

Ella thought of the cards that she had drawn, of the Devil in Belle’s past that had plagued her since long before she was born. She thought of what Gold had told her, and the links to Malcolm and the missing piece of his soul. She thought of the faint extra life line on Belle’s palm, and she shivered. What was going on here was something far out of Ella’s remit, something that she had never encountered before.

Belle shivered then, taking in a deep, long breath, as if she had not been breathing before. Ella was fairly certain that she had been, otherwise she’d have lost consciousness, but all the same, that big gulp of air was not exactly encouraging considering the state that she was in. She turned to Ella, blinking, complete and utter confusion evident in her face.

“What happened?” she asked. “Where am I?”

She glanced around her surroundings as she came back to herself, and realisation seemed to dawn.

“I think that maybe you’d better go back to bed,” Ella said gently, but Belle shook her head.

“No. No, I need to stay awake now. If it can get this close, then it’s not safe for me to be off my guard.” She sighed. “I’m sorry I woke you.”

“I don’t think it was you. I just got a funny feeling.”

“Yeah.” Belle smiled grimly. “That was probably me.”

Ella made the executive decision that a night cap was definitely in order, all convention be damned.

“Come on,” she said. “I think you could do with a drink. And if you couldn’t, then I definitely could, and if you want to stay awake then I can think of no better way than by imbibing copious amounts of coffee. I’ll have whisky and you’ll have coffee and we can forget that this strange little conversation on the landing ever happened. With any luck Gold’s still blissfully unaware in the land of nod and won’t be joining us and drinking all the booze.”

In spite of being so obviously shaken, Belle gave a soft laugh and followed Ella down the stairs into the kitchen, gratefully accepting the blanket that the other woman fished out for her.

“Can you not remember what happens at all when you drift like that?” Ella asked as she made the coffee.

“No, it’s always just a blackout. I’ve had a little success with hypnotherapy for recovering some of the memories, but then I just blackout whilst under hypnosis as well. I don’t know what’s going on. Rum’s seen me in those induced blackouts, he probably knows more about what’s happening than I do. I just… This is different, this time. I’ve always wandered towards him, but this is the closest I’ve ever got, and it makes me wonder why I stopped short. Is it because the goal is different? Maybe it doesn’t want to get to him after all. Or is it something that I’m doing subconsciously to try and control this thing because I know what’s at stake now and I don’t want Rum to get hurt.”

Ella brought two mugs over and offered Belle a slug of whisky in hers; she declined.

“Do you know what it is?” she asked.

“No. I just know that it’s sharing my mind and it’s connected with Rum in some way. We’re trying to find out exactly what it might be. Joseph and Rum think I’m possessed. After seeing the Devil in my past this evening, I can’t say I entirely disagree. I don’t really know anything about it; it’s not like it tells me things. A couple of times I’ve woken up with vague impressions, but that’s it. That’s why it’s strange that it’s come so close to its goal today and pulled up short. If I am fighting it subconsciously, then that gives me the hope that I can fight it consciously as well, but the whole thing about the subconscious is that you don’t know you’re doing it. How on earth am I meant to work out if I’m fighting this thing if I can’t remember what I’m doing to it?”

“I’m sure you’ll get there in the end,” Ella assured her, although she didn’t feel all that reassuring at that moment in time, having witnessed Belle’s strange blackout first hand. Still, one of them had to be optimistic and she didn’t think that Gold would take too kindly to her being a morbid doom-monger when he had ostensibly brought Belle down here to have a good time.

“Yeah.”

They fell into silence for a while, not uncomfortable but certainly heavy and brooding, both of them mulling over the events of the night.

“Ella,” Belle began presently, “when you found me outside Rum’s door, did I look… normal?”

“I’m not sure I follow.”

“Did I look… I don’t know… Did I look possessed?”

Ella raised an eyebrow. “I’m not entirely familiar with what possessed people look like, but you looked pretty normal from where I was standing. I didn’t get a close look at your face, but your profile seemed normal. A bit blank, but normal.”

“Right.” Belle’s brow was still furrowed, and it made Ella slightly nervous.

“Shouldn’t you have been?”

“No. Yes. No, I don’t know. I’ve never really been in a position whereby people have seen me while I’ve been absent. Sheriff Humbert found me in the road and he said that there was something strange about me, it made him uneasy.”

“I was slightly unnerved by just how still and unresponsive you were, but you didn’t look strange,” Ella said.

“Right. My dad’s the only other one who’s seen me whilst I’ve been absent and he wouldn’t talk about it. Whatever he saw really shook him, more than the sheriff I think. So it just makes me wonder what was different this time round.”

Ella gave a snort of laughter. “Maybe I just have a stronger constitution than the both of them.”

“That’s probably it.” Belle raised her mug and chinked it against Ella’s. “Here’s to women, far less easily scared than the menfolk.”

They were both chilled into silence by the sound of a door opening upstairs and footsteps coming closer. It was Rum, it had to be. There was no other person it could be and there was no other explanation, so Ella didn’t know why she was feeling so nervous. After everything that had happened already that night though, she thought that she could be forgiven a little unease.

“We must have woken him up after all,” Belle said, but her voice was weak and there wasn’t much humour in it. “Maybe he smelled the coffee.”

“More likely the whisky.” Ella snorted.

The kitchen door opened and Rum entered, stopping short when he saw that the room was already occupied.

“Oh.”

Ella and Belle looked at each other.

“Well, I think that rules out us waking him up,” Ella said. “Are you all right there, Rum? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

“I have,” he muttered, coming over and sitting down with them, grabbing the whisky bottle as he went past. Ella swung around in her seat to face him.

“What’s going on, Rum?” she asked. “Not that I don’t enjoy drinking till three in the morning with you, but it usually involves a lot more laughter and a lot less of everyone seeing ghosts.”

Gold poured himself a measure and took a sip.

“I saw something tonight that I haven’t seen in a very long time,” he said. “Something that I had almost convinced myself had been a figment of my imagination. I’m trying very hard to re-convince myself that it’s all a figment of my imagination.” He paused. “What’s going on with you too? Should I be worried that you appear to be conspiring in the middle of the night?”

There was no humour behind it; none of them were in the right frame of mind and all attempts at lightening the mood fell flat.

“I blacked out and wandered,” Belle said eventually. “Ella found me on the landing.”

Gold was silent for a long time, staring into the depths of the whisky bottle and pointedly not looking at either of the ladies.

“I think we can finally rule out any chance that your and my supernatural experiences are unrelated,” he said eventually. “Belle, you remember what I told you about the shadows I saw when I was younger, just after I’d come to America?”

Belle nodded. “Their appearance and disappearance coincided with your father leaving and his death. Do you think… Are they connected to me as well?”

Gold inhaled sharply.

“I saw the shadow outside the window tonight,” he said. “It was the first time in almost fifty years that I’ve seen it. I don’t know what to make of it; it’s not like I’ve been seeing it ever since you arrived in town and came into my life, so it can’t be that obvious a connection. But the fact you wandered tonight, and that fact I’ve seen it again, well, it does make me wonder.”

“Do you think it might be protecting you?” Ella suggested. “Belle was outside your door, but she didn’t go through it. Might the shadow be preventing her coming any closer?”

Gold shrugged.

“It’s possible.”

“But you don’t think it’s likely,” Ella finished for him.

“Well, it still gave me the same fear that it did when I was seven,” Gold admitted. “There’s something about it that doesn’t exactly give an impression of benevolence.”

The three of them fell into silence again, unnerved by the events of the night but nonetheless reassured by the presence of the others. Safety in numbers, Ella supposed. None of them could understand what was going on; they could only hope that together, the three of them and Joseph would be able to find a solution, and fast.

[egobangin-tonight]

[earinfluxion]

Autechre: elseq 1-5 (Autechre)

I'm late to the party, but when Autechre put out a quintuple album, a proper writeup takes significant time! elseq 1-5 is certainly an undertaking. Over their 25+ year career, the Sheffield duo have progressed from exploring the nascent sounds of early UK techno and IDM to truly foraging the outermost limits of electronic and dance music. While one might argue that it's been decades since they've really explored obvious dance music, it's the lack of obviousness that makes their skimming off of dance music for their own devices so masterful and noteworthy. Listening to the first cut of elseq 1-5 and you may beg to differ: indeed, “feed1,” one of the only cuts they previewed before they released this on their own store, is about as far from regular, danceable rhythm than they've ever been. Over 11.5 minutes of sputtering synthesis, colliding, thudding bass kicks, and woozy mixing, it debunks the notion that their turn of the century work such as 2001's Confield are their most “difficult” — incidentally, a return to Confield with the perspective of time has revealed it to be far more conventional than it once may have seemed. It's both curious and obvious that they would lead with “feed1,” though. It lets people know that despite the career-spanning synergy of 2013's Exai, which touched on musicality and rhythm more overtly than they had in ages, they are still fearless. And that includes being unafraid to rub people's noses in their most noodly and wanky material, a sputtering sprawl. Fear not, because things look up from there. Consider “feed1” less of a pleasant listening experience and more of a palate cleanser, or perhaps an exercise in endurance. The four other cuts that comprise the remainder of the first part of elseq are more to my liking, fusing together the unusual staggered layering of drums and noise that has characterized so much of their later output with an almost head-bob-worthy flow. Some of these might be the closest companions to the most out there moments of their Oversteps/Move of Ten dual companion releases from several years ago. And yet as I try to describe the sounds herein, that's the slippery thing about Autechre. They sound in some ways as they always have, or similar to how they've sounded before. And yet totally different, clearly a different animal by context and juxtaposition despite some similarities.

The most distinct likeness between elseq and Exai or L-Event is their use of zippy, often atonal synthesis, often with shuddering choruses and reverb that twitch unpredictably, giving the sounds a nervous energy that can sometimes feel downright frantic. There's a swelling of their synths that feels more like a living organism at times, a wobble that has nothing to do with dubstep and everything to do with disorientation. Regardless of what camp listeners fall into, I think the same takeaway will apply to most: “What the hell did I just listen to?” Four hours and 21 tracks combined, elseq 1-5 is as uncompromising a slab of new work as Autechre could aspire to. And that is commendable, diving headlong deeper into their own weirdness and curiosity rather than resorting to watering down their sound. (And yet sometimes I wonder: what would an Autechre album that returns to dance music conventions sound like? I suspect something like Akkord...?) “Pendulu hv moda” has a cool buoyancy amidst its wavering synths and zaps, a downtempo groove to steady its otherwise airy and glitchy swaths of synths. The second act is comprised of only 3 cuts, the first a 27-minute jam around a semi-regular glitchy hihat (if you will) pattern. Even at its most deconstructed, it still has the lurching underpinnings of a steady groove. Halfway through it sputters into a squall of bleeps and signals that feels like a machine's REM sleep, and the evolution is so gradual and steady that it might not be obvious at first that a listener's ended up so far from where he/she started. It starts to feel overly academic in writing when contrasting a field of aural laser zaps with a series of bleeps or writhing squiggles elsewhere, but in practice “elyc6 0nset” feels more organic than academic, like David Tudor's heaving electronic organisms of the past. It's long enough and broad enough to feel like a full live session of its own. In that same sense, the whole of elseq feels like a rare treat of a capture of an even more expansive live set, and much of its thudding kicks and syncopated asymmetry recalls that disorienting vibe that they brought to live shows last year. But this feels even more nuanced and exploratory, formally leaving conventional media behind and releasing these as a large digital wallop (though each segment would fit on a CD of its own), sort of an Autechre without boundaries. “Chimer 1-5-1” has a somewhat familiar boom-clap-clap rhythm about it, feeling more akin to some of MoveOfTen's punchier moments. “c7b2” feels like an alien groove, and you can practically hear the duo riffing off one another as a sort of call and response, with a sputtering, digital havoc that feels raucous and fun. The final section, elseq 5, is perhaps the most balanced of all, combining dynamics heard across the other sections but perhaps feeling a little more restrained in comparison. I especially like the jerky breaks of “spaces how V” and then surprisingly steady throb of “freulaeux,” the latter of which is supremely satisfying after hearing the duo sprawl in every direction but “regular.” (Don't get me wrong — it still has their signature shudder, but its techno underpinnings feel warmly welcome to these ears.) If there is anything Autechre cannot be accused of, it's underdelivering. With its five acts, elseq 1-5 is a mammoth artistic statement that puts Exai to shame with its scale and scope. It's inordinately hard to digest as one body of work, and it doesn't need to be; its five segments help divvy it up in ways that ought to make it more approachable for listeners, even if it's a far cry from the accessibility of their mid-90s Warp days. They continue to hone their craft, and, while it may be progressively more challenging to not repeat themselves, the nuanced and often unpredictable maneuvering throughout elseq 1-5 makes it a fascinating and dense listen. Highly recommended for anyone curious about the outer limits of beatmaking and IDM, far removed from its origins but not completely.

Preview and buy it: Autechre Shop

[egobangin-tonight]