#he would shave his eyebrows for a concept

[thegetdownrebooter]

THE RANGE!

[mr-butter-face]

I've already expressed my adoration of both designs of Telltale's Joker. But I just want to break down why they're so appealing to me.

In the game, John Doe goes through huge changes in his life that are expressed in his wardrobe. But the most dramatic change is at the last episode of the series. When he fully transforms into Joker.

Brian Matyas is a concept designer who had worked on both Batman Telltale games. He had posted some of his works on Artstation and Instagram.

[Brain Matyas Instagram Post]

https://www.instagram.com/p/BhucYx5lGCb/?img_index=1

(I suggest you read the entire post till the end.)

[John Doe]

As the game progresses in the story, players will probably take note of how John's wardrobe goes through the most changes compared to everyone else. But the key thing to note that stayed consistent in each episode was his half-fast way of buttoning/tucking-in his shirt and how progressively colorful his outfit was getting.

[Villain Joker]

There's a lot of things to break down about this outfit. First, Brian Matyas stated that Villain Joker was molded primarily by Bruce Wayne. Not Batman. Joker's business tie and fancy suit's purpose was to emulate Bruce's public persona of being a CEO (or, more simply, a person with power). Interestingly enough, Joker's gloves are basically the same kinds that Harley wears in game, as if it were to say now they're equals in their relationship (but obviously they're not). I've heard from others that gloves are symbolic of secrets, which describes how Joker has kept some information hidden from Harley.

The Villain Joker design is probably the most colorful one. His bright green hair, the 80 carpet patterns in his navy suit, the pop of hot pink, and the most disgusting looking dress-shirt I've ever seen. Jack Nicholas' influence isn't lost on me. This outfit screams bold and confident, and most importantly, free.

There are still elements of John Doe. The poorly done tucking and buttoning of Joker's shirt are there. But strangely enough, the strain of hair in front of his head is flipped. John’s was located on the right side while Joker purposely flipped it to the left. And that's not the only thing that's flipped. John's outfit consisted of a purple vest inside and a green/teal shirt outside. Now the pattern is switched with Joker, green shirt inside and dark navy suit outside. Subtle differences like this are led to believe that Joker wants Bruce Wayne to know that he's completely different from John Doe.

The last thing to talk about is his shaved eyebrow. I have no idea why he would do that. People have said it's because he wanted to express how much damage Bruce did to him. Personally, I thought it was like ‘girls making bad hair decisions after a breakup’ thing.

Although his design encompasses both Bruce Wayne and Harley Quinn's impact on his life. It's more leaning into Bruce.

[Vigilante Joker]

There's something about this design that always makes me feel so heartbroken. Not because it's a bad design but because of how much it reminds me how John had faith that if he lived up to Batman's standards that he would be able to maintain their friendship.

Brian Matyas said that he wanted the Vigilante Joker's silhouette to emulate Batman's. It's shown by how his hair and shoulders are curved to a point. Joker's makeup is a lot more gothic and is a lot more menacing than Villain's makeup. It also almost resembles the mask that typically Robin would wear.

Again, there are still elements of John Doe present here. But they are less noticeable than Villain's. Joker's left arm has stitches, (John has been seen wearing a vest that has a different color button then the rest) his shirt's collar isn't properly folded correctly, (John is practically never seen to maintain his dress-shirt collar properly) and he still keeps his vest unlike Villain route. (Although like Villain, there is a color swap with the green shirt and purple vest)

But one thing that jumps out to me is how dull in vibrate color he is compared to Villain Joker's or even John Doe's fourth episode outfit. I had to brighten up my screen in order to identify the smile patterns in his suit. Vigilante design is flashy, but it feels like he's being held back from fully expressing himself.

Joker never really understood Batman's moral code. For players to unlock the Vigilante route, they had to enable John's more violent tendencies. So his outfit only reflects the darker side of Bruce Wayne because that's what Joker believes to be what Batman wants from him.

Huge thanks to hemfbg. They were able to locate both Joker's concept art from Brian Matyas' Instagram.

[Hemfbg Telltale Community Post]

https://community.telltalegames.com/discussion/121009/concept-art-by-brian-matyas

[theloveinc]

any hobie and/or miguel icks? 😟

whoever sent this: thank you + i ADORE you. i hope you don't mind i'm switching up the formatting/style a it in comparison to my older icks... shorter list, more detailed <3

(warning: some fem terms used at the end, such as “mama!”)

-

Miguel O'Hara

- This guy... has some long ass toenails. Type of toenails that poke you at night in bed, and tear holes in his socks.

It's maybe somewhat related to the claw thing he's got going on? Has a lot stronger and faster-growing nails than the average person... but the real problem here is that he's TERRIBLE about clipping them. Claims it doesn't bother him even remotely and that you're the one overreacting when you ask him to... but hardly anything gets through to him about it. You probably even offer to do it for him one day, thinking the offer of a foot massage would sway his thinking and that it'd actually work... but he fought you on that just as easy...!!!

...which is how you came to the conclusion that you have a man who'll even argue w/ you over toenails. Petty boy.

- Miguel is also tired 24/7. AND yeah, it's pretty hard to be un-sympathetic towards that, but he's tired in the... I'm-gonna-prioritize-this-one-last-email-over-saying-goodnight-to-you way. Which gets real irritating when you're asking him to help you out w/ anything, like cleaning up or answering a question or JUST HAVING A DAMN CONVERSATION W/ YOU and he's using "I'm tired" as an excuse when his response is shitty or distracted.

Like one of those stupid guys whose always squinting at their damn iPad when you ask what he wants for dinner... which is ironic given that he'll get snippy at you for not giving him your full, entire attention whenever he wants it. Type of man to start picking imaginary lint off your head when you're simply trying to finish up a text before engaging him so that you aren't distracted.

- Odd about Lyla. Not that he loves her or anything, but she'll like pop up to give him updates about whatever even if you're MID-MAKEOUT session and he won't change that setting. Pulling away from your lips all pouty and squinty only to glare at his watch for thirty seconds before trying to go right back into kissing you.

No. No sir.

(Lyla will also always say something to or-but-usually-and about you, which... Okay, she's an AI and doesn't Get It... but it's still weird because it feels like someone you don't know just walked into the room.)

- Picks his nose when he's too busy to find a tissue, and forgets to sanitize his hands after. Denies this when you tell him.. but you've witnessed this multiple times (he's weirdly kind of whiney for a dude and lazy for a workaholic LOL).

Hobie Brown

- Lovely boyfriend because he doesn't give a crap about your appearance or the idea of needing to "look nice" for a man... but also stupid, nuisance boyfriend because this means he doesn't give one hoot if you try to get all gussied up for him. Nags you about wasting time getting ready because he doesn't need you to do all that instead of just saying "THANK YOU, YOU LOOK NICE." Even probably complains about you feeding into gender stereotypes or w/e when you do something like shave your legs or pluck your eyebrows😭

You try to talk to him about this, ask if he even cares that you tried to look nice, and he skirts around admitting it because he has an argument for everything. "'oughta know I think you're pretty either way"-ass when you just spent an hour trying to look all good for him.

- Tries to share the most obscure music with you... which is like, sweet in concept, but weird when it actually happens since it's never like a generic love song but an eleven minute underground jam session.

Which isn't to say he has bad taste in music, usually it's fine if not fantastic... but you try to tell him you don't want to listen to some dude's first draft of himself banging on a drum set for a full album and he's like: "tsk."

HOBIE. TSK??? FUCKING TSK????????? WHAT ABOUT WHAT OTHER PEOPLE LIKE????????

(He'll also use his to get out of listening to your music. Claiming his "inconsistency" is why he liked your playlist yesterday but not today. Stop!!!)

- And you know I gotta say it, he's a punk, after all: absolutely refuses to clean his favorite leather jacket, and it smells RANK. He's genuinely sentimental about it, though... and if you even try to bring up cleaning it somehow (even if very gently), he's acting like you betrayed him. Goes through the five stages of grief over you asking him not to wear it on one of your dates, and teases you by TALKING to it:

"Mumma didn't mean that, jackie. She just doesn't understand our lifestyle, does she?" while giving you a (lighthearted) stink eye.

[anabdaniels]

A taste of what you asked for

Paring: Agent Whiskey x Female reader

Summary: Jack decides to prove you that not only his mustache can have a porn vibe.

Word counting: 1.6k

Rating: +18

Warnings: Oral (f receiving), unprotected sex, love bites, creampie, rough sex (but not that rough), undertones of the author's polemic opinions toward some sex positions, Jack being a talented bastard when it comes to sex.

A/N: I'll not explain myself about this one hahaha. I saw a tweet of a girl complaining about her boyfriend shaving his mustache without warning her beforehand and my brain started to work.

Divider from: @saradika-graphics

Masterlist

Unworriedly scrolling your phone, you were lying on your back on the bed while you could hear Jack’s little noises while taking care of his beloved mustache in the en-suite bathroom. A few minutes later you heard the shower running and smiled as you smelled the scent of your shampoo that Jack swore you would never notice he casually stole.

When Jack came out of the bathroom only with the towel wrapped around his waist you didn’t waste the chance to take a look at him, analyzing every part of your handsome husband. Noticing your attention over him, Jack approached the bed with a smirk, crawling on the mattress to get close to you, planting a teasing kiss on your shoulder as he settled by your side.

You stopped for a moment, realizing that something seemed out of place, not realizing what it was immediately, but needed no more than a couple seconds to find out, sitting on the bed with an intrigued expression.

“No, you can't have done this.” You said in pure perplexity while touching the spot at Jack’s face where his sideburns were supposed to be “Daniels you haven't.”

“Why do you seem so surprised, sweetheart?” Jack laughed pulling you to lay on top of him “I told you I was considering doing it a few days ago, remember?”

“I thought you were just bluffing about shaving your sideburns, I didn't believe you would betray me like that.” You explained while still running your fingers on the sides of his face.

“Betray you?” Jack raised an eyebrow with a curious grin while caressing the sides of your body.

“How should I feel with you casually showing up with your sideburns shaved without giving me a single warning before?” you raised both of your eyebrows as you got comfortable on top of him “If you ever dare to touch this mustache, you'll be a divorced man.”

“Y’know I would never damage my mustache, sugar. But now you tempted me just for the sake of seeing you this mad about it.” He retorted in his cocky manner, making you roll your eyes.

“You really can’t spend a day without being bitchy, hum?” you said softly slapping his bicep.

“Jesus Christ, you’re the first woman that gets pissed because your husband cares about looking good.” Jack pinched your cheek teasingly, with that damn seductive smirk on his lips.

“I never said that.” You contradicted promptly, lifting your head from his chest to look at his face “What got me was the surprise element.”

“So you’re not that unhappy at all.” He concluded while grabbing your chin between his thumb and index finger.

“Of course not, I mean, I had nothing against your 70s porn sideburns and mustache combo, but I ain’t finding any problem with the new look.” You squinted at the moment he burst into a laugh.

“70s porn, honey? Really?” he questioned raising one eyebrow, still smirking.

“I haven’t created the concept.” You shrugged, biting your bottom lip as he rolled on the bed, letting you underneath him.

“But something tells me you enjoy the whole thing.”

“I do actually.” You confirmed while your idle hands moved to unwrap the towel off his waist, smiling satisfied as you saw his cock proudly erect.

“Then I may give you a bit of help to keep your little fantasies fed.” Jack spoke as his hands moved under your dress, lifting it and getting you rid of it with no ceremony. You intended to ask what he was planning, but he gave you no time as he flipped you on the bed and started to trail kisses down your spine, making you shiver all over.

As he did with your dress, Jack got rid of your panties, smiling at the sight of you so beautifully relaxed on the bed. Not wanting to waste such an opportunity, he squeezed your thighs and kissed your lower back, moving down to kiss your rear, only moving forward after biting one of your buttcheeks. Carefully, Jack grabbed your hips, lifting them until your knees were resting on the mattress; he wasn’t a jerk, Jack perfectly remembered how you warned him that having you on all fours was completely out of the question, unless it was for a bit of harmless foreplay, so you knew exactly how that was going to end even before you felt another soft bite on your butt.

Wanting to appreciate that great view of you spread open right in front of him, Jack took his time, kissing all over your thighs, hips, and ass before starting to approach your already wet core. He savored and covered with kisses every inch of skin from your outer lips, then to the inner lips, causing you to whine and smash the nearest pillow you could reach when his low groan reverberated against your pussy as his tongue buried on your entrance. You didn’t even try to keep rested on your elbows, letting your face and chest sink into the bed as you unconsciously pranced up your rear against his face, contorting and whimpering more at every move of his tongue.

Giving you no chance to foresee it, Jack moved ahead, sucking your swollen clit as his hands gently massaged your ass, getting you completely out of your mind as you sighed, moaned, and bit the pillow you were squeezing, feeling your heart beating on your throat and your breath messed while you concentrated on enjoy the marvelous work of his mouth on your clit accompanied by the sporadic little nudges of his nose on your entrance. You did the best you could to keep yourself together for a little longer, but Jack knew way too well what he was doing to give you a chance to keep your composure, so you followed your body’s urges, moving your hips along with his tongue, arching your back and crying out when you finally got your release, feeling your strength vanishing and your hips falling back on the bed as the effects of your orgasm spread all over your body.

You were more than ready to just lay down completely boneless for a few minutes, but of course, that wouldn’t going to happen yet, after all, Jack Daniels wasn’t a man of left a task unfinished or play at work, if you thought that his mustache alone passed a 70s porn vibe, then he would provide you with a performance that matched your opinions.

After gently apart your legs, Jack placed himself between them, resting his elbows on the bed while kissing your shoulder and the curve of your neck. When you were recomposed enough to turn your head and look at him, no second thoughts were necessary for him to go on and kiss you hungrily, moving his tongue into your mouth as his torso was softly pressed against your back. You choked on your breath as he smoothly moved inside you, the tip of his cock brushing against your cervix softly and it kept like that even with his thrusts not being precisely gentle; of course, Jack was more than aware that too much energy on his move could end up with your cervix being hit in a not so pleasant way, but he also knew very well how to manage his pace to not cause you any discomfort, even while railing you so energetically like that.

As your head leaned back for you to catch your breath, Jack couldn’t help but grin at the beautiful sight of you taken by the pleasure he was providing you with, feeling his urge for every inch of your body growing wilder. He passed one arm around the upper part of your torso, keeping your shoulders pressed against his chest while he covered you with kisses and praises, wondering how he could be so lucky to have you to call his, to love dearly every day and fuck well every night.

Even feeling like your body was out of control, you managed to move one hand back, resting it on Jack’s nape and grabbing his hair tight. He sighed heavily and rested his head against yours, only then giving you the chance to realize how good it felt to rub your face against his without a sideburn scratching your cheek. Your free hand rested on Jack's forearm that was holding you close, your nails digging into his skin as your cunt became more sensitive to his steady rough pace, making you pulse involuntarily around his already throbbing cock. As it became more common with the passing time you were married and knew better how each other’s bodies worked, you and Jack fell apart together, remaining at the mess of tangled limbs you two had become while both of you enjoyed your orgasms.

At the very moment Jack moved to lay on his back on the bed, he pulled you to rest on his chest, caressing your back and kissing the top of your head. You made sure to snuggle yourself comfortably, letting one leg on top of him. He smiled at the very moment he saw the slight mark of his teeth on your butt and caressed the spot gently, making you moan quietly and move one hand to his face, letting your fingers move along, taking a little long on the region his sideburns used to be.

“You’ll really not forgive me for that?” he questioned playfully, looking at you.

“On the contrary, I was actually planning to tell you to keep like this. I can live happily having only your mustache.” You admitted looking at him with a smile, chuckling when he shook his head.

“You’ll be the death of me someday, sugarcube.” Jack rested one hand on your cheek, leaning to give you a gentle peck on the lips before nestling you even more between his arms.

@missladym1981

[cx-boxbox]

I was going to write a fic about Lando wanting to wear pretty clothes, but I gave up after a couple scenes. Anyway, here's the only part I kept:

Lando’s fingers twitch nervously as he collects his packages, fiddling with the corners and ducking under the tape sealing the flaps shut, but he’s careful not to accidentally open them where anyone can see. It was already embarrassing enough to ask the concierge for them, and he cringed at the heavily branded boxes. The lady probably now thinks he has a secret girlfriend or something.

It’s nice out in Melbourne, and Lando is more than happy to swap the polo and jeans he wore to the paddock for a new purple v-neck that’s so soft and light to the touch it might disintegrate between his fingers and shorts that are just a tad bit shorter than the ones he ran around the city in. He has already been photographed without his shirt within days of arriving, so if he does bump into someone, it shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise.

But it is really just Lando’s luck that he quite literally smacks into his teammate’s back as he rounds the corner.

Oscar straightens with his bucket of ice, blinks at him, and asks, “Where are you going in such a rush?”

Lando folds his arms over his chest.

“Dinner. Not a foreign concept to you, hopefully.”

“‘Course not.” What is a foreign concept is how Oscar’s gaze keeps drifting south, flickering between the plunging neckline of Lando’s shirt and his upper thighs.

Oh, how interesting, he thinks, amused. Out loud, he asks, “Wanna come with? I have no idea which places are trainer-approved.”

It takes a moment for Oscar to shrug and respond, “Sure, why not. Teammate bonding and such, right?”

Lando gasps and plucks the bucket from Oscar’s hands. He pokes Oscar’s shoulder for good measure. “We’re plenty bonded, mate!” Not as much as he’d like, but still. “Just admit that you’re simply leaping at the idea of spending time with me away from the paddock.”

“I’m going to bring you to a seafood restaurant.”

“Aah! No, no, don't do that. I dressed up so pretty, I even shaved, and you’re not ruining my hard work with, eugh, fish.”

Once again, Oscar’s gaze travels over Lando’s figure, and Lando is incredibly delighted to see red tinting his cheeks. He preens a little, which he cannot be blamed for.

It’s so flattering that it more than makes up for Oscar’s simple affirming, “Hm.”

God, Lando would be so over this whole flirting-not-quite-boyfriends thing if it wasn’t so entertaining. He just hopes that Oscar’s patience doesn’t run out before either one of them gives in and just confesses. He also hopes that he isn’t misreading anything either. That would be fucking humiliating.

The little smiles and full-body laughter Lando regularly receives from him keeps him hopeful at best and delusional at worst.

On the way to Oscar’s hotel room, Lando asks what he planned on doing with the ice, and he only receives a shrug and a mumbled, “You never know when you just need a bucket of ice.”

“That’s fair.”

“Speaking of ice, are you going to be cold in just that? It gets cooler in the evenings, and your circulation sucks.”

“A price I’m willing to pay. Have you considered that maybe your circulation is working overtime? That it might be doing too much?” Lando retorts in lieu of admitting that he didn’t actually think that far ahead in his nervous excitement. A green hoodie promptly hits him in the face.

It’s not McLaren merch. It’s OP81 merch, and it smells like Oscar. Lando resists the urge to ball it up and shove his face into it.

“Just hold onto it if you don’t wanna wear it now,” Oscar says before disappearing into the bathroom. He re-emerges in a long-sleeved shirt and trousers that don’t have drawstrings. Lando almost breathes a sigh of relief. Small mercies.

Oscar’s hoodie also ends up being one of those small mercies, and Lando burrows into it comfortably as they take a longer route back to the hotel because the city after dark is nice. Oscar raises an eyebrow at him in his subtly gloating fashion, which Lando ignores in favor of tucking his nose into the collar.

“You look prettier in my hoodie,” Oscar mumbles.

“Huh?”

“Never mind. We’re here anyway.”

[cannedbeefaroni]

hii i really enjoyed your nsfw alphabet for eli sunday, i was wondering if you could write one for klitz? thanks hehe :3

Timothy Klitz NSFW Alphabet

A = Aftercare (What they’re like after sex)

He’s so caring and sweet. He holds his partner close and kisses their forehead. Usually he likes to cuddle and take a nap together after sex. He’s a very sleepy guy. 

B = Body part (Their favorite body part of theirs and also their partner’s)

Tiddies. He likes boobs. Even on a guy he likes the chest area, whether it be more soft and squishy or toned. By proxy he really likes nipples and areolas. 

His partner would obviously like his dick. He’s hung like a horse. 

C = Cum (Anything to do with cum, basically)

He likes to cum on his partner's face. Also their chest if given the chance. He likes seeing them covered in him. 

D = Dirty secret (Pretty self explanatory, a dirty secret of theirs)

He, like, totally has a crush on Eli. He also is an underwear thief. Yeah, it’s literally true. Becky told me. 

E = Experience (How experienced are they? Do they know what they’re doing?)

He kissed a girl for a school play once and she instantly started crying and threw up. 

Yeah he’s a virgin. 

F = Favorite position (this goes without saying)

Mating press, because he’s romantic and sentimental and want to look into his partners eyes while they make love <3 

G = Goofy (Are they more serious in the moment? Are they humorous? etc.)

Yes. He will randomly say something that takes them out of the mood. He also sometimes makes cringe little jokes. A little bit of a jokester he is. 

H = Hair (How well groomed are they? Does the carpet match the drapes? etc.)

Smoother than a baby’s butt. He shaves everything. Even his ass crack. 

I = Intimacy (How are they during the moment? The romantic aspect)

He’s so romantic. He will proclaim his undying love during sex. He doesn’t even like calling it sex, he says love making. 

J = Jack off (Masturbation headcanon)

He sometimes does mutual masturbation with Eli. Uh it’s not gay if their dicks don’t touch. But maybe it is *eyebrow raise* 

Yeah he masturbates like twice a day. 

K = Kink (One or more of their kinks)

He likes brat taming. He loves it when his partner is being annoying and whiny and he has to put them in their place, but he wouldn’t admit it. Overall he likes sub/dom dynamics like degradation and praise. He’s also into voyeurism and exhibitionism in theory, but in practice he’s hesitant about it. I don’t think he’d be all that freaky besides that.

L = Location (Favorite places to do the do)

He thinks it’s freaky to have sex anywhere else but a bed. So like on a desk or in a chair or against a wall would be super kinky to him. If he had public sex he’d combust.

M = Motivation (What turns them on, gets them going)

A beautiful soul :) 

N = No (Something they wouldn’t do, turn offs)

He wouldn’t do non monogamy or casual hookups. He wants to be entirely devoted and loyal to one person and only make love to them. 

O = Oral (Preference in giving or receiving, skill, etc.)

He’s not very good at giving oral, but he fucking loves getting his dick sucked. He also loves throat fucking. 

P = Pace (Are they fast and rough? slow and sensual? etc.)

He likes to go slow and sensual. If given permission he’ll go faster and rougher, but he’s not into that all the time. 

Q = Quickie (Their opinions on quickies, how often, etc.)

He likes them in concept but he would always end up wanting more. Usually afterward he’d still feel needy. 

R = Risk (Are they game to experiment? Do they take risks? etc.)

Sometimes. He likes to play it safe but on occasion he likes to get freaky. 

S = Stamina (How many rounds can they go for? how long do they last?)

I think he’d have good stamina. *gets booed and has objects thrown at me* 

T = Toys (Do they own toys? do they use them? on a partner or themselves?)

He has a flesh light but doesn’t use it because it’s a bitch to clean out. I don’t think he’d be experienced with using toys during sex but he’d be open to trying.

U = Unfair (How much they like to tease)

He only teases as punishment. If his partner is well behaved he’d be super sweet. But once they give him attitude he’s very willing to deny their orgasm. 

V = Volume (How loud they are, what sounds they make, etc.)

He’d be quiet, but he makes a good amount of noise. Little high pitched “uh, uh, uh”s for the most part. He kinda sounds like a girl when he moans. 

W = Wild card (A random headcanon for the character)

If Eli asked him to be in a porno that he's directing, he would do it.

X = X-ray (Let’s see what’s going on under those clothes)

His dick is like 8 inches. Very intimidating. It’s disproportionate to his lanky body. It’s pretty thick. He’s circumcised (duh, he’s Jewish. At least I think he is). He has cute little sensitive perky nipples. 

Y = Yearning (How high is their sex drive?)

He’s pretty good at hiding his sex drive. He can act like he doesn’t care if he dates anyone or not. He doesn’t expect people to find him attractive. Internally he really really just wants to fuck something. 

Z = Zzz (How quickly do they fall asleep afterwards?)

He’s a sleepy guy. He likes to cuddle and snooze. He’s the type of person to get no sleep because he spends all night studying, so he can fall asleep in an instant.

[noodyl-blasstal]

Cool, Calm, and Collegiate - Chapter 3

Day 3 of @blupjeansweek and the prompt is Strings!

Read below or on Ao3. Missed yesterday? Catch up here!

-

Lup shuffles the cup carrier to the same hand as the muffin bag and knocks on Barry’s door.

“Yes?” Barry asks.

“Good morning, Dr Barold.” Lup pokes her head round the door.

“Lup!” No matter how many times he’s seen her in the last two weeks he’s always seemed pleased about it. Which is the right answer, of course, Lup’s incredible, she knows this, but not everyone else does. “I mean, er, Dr Tacco, come on in!”

“I come bearing gifts.” Lup brandishes the carrier and bag and sets them down on the desk.

“Gifts or bribery?” Barry levels her with his best attempt at a serious face, which she’s learning fast is flimsy at best. It’s wonderful discovering all the little him-nesses which don’t come across in emails. Sure, she knows Sildar’s coffee order, but now she also knows how Barry scrunches his mouth when he’s thinking hard.

“Gifts!” Lup says as she flops into the visitor chair and attempts to kick her feet up on the edge of the desk, only for Barry to catch them and deposit them back over the side.

Barry raises an eyebrow.

“Gifts to bribe you.” She smiles as big as she can possibly smile.

“Uh huh.” Barry looks wary. Which is probably reasonable after the shaving cream incident, but she maintains that they both learned stuff and had fun, plus she was the one who did cleanup. Lucretia didn’t even really seem that angry honestly.

“We’re learning about force next.” Lup says mildly.

“Uh huh.” There’s a smile nagging at the corner of his mouth. She knew this topic would get him.

“...and I thought it would be good to do a practical example, you know, to help the visual and active learners, because as a teacher it’s important to focus on a variety of different learning styles and engage the whole class.” She nods solemnly, the weight of young minds on her shoulders alone.

“... and so you would like…?” Barry asks, still struggling with the smile.

“String.”

“String?” Barry’s brow knits, perplexed by the concept of woven threads, and definitely not the trap at hand, this was flawless, seamless. Then he gets it. Shit. She knew he was smart, she should have had an extra plan for this. “How much string, Lup?”

“Uh.”

“You’re going to need to know before you ask Lucretia.”

“Much.”

“Many of string, would you say?” Barry asks. “Shall I put that on the forms?”

“How many balls do you think it takes to support the average teenager?” Lup asks.

There’s a long pause. Long enough that she worries she might finally have found Barry’s limit.

He pulls a sheet of note paper from the stack of scrap on his desk and grabs a pen. “How long is the string and what are the anchor points?”

–

Lucretia can’t argue with the numbers. They’re flawless.

She did argue with the health and safety element, but thankfully Barry agreed to be on hand to cast Fly as needed and she relented. Afterall, Lup’s weekly student reviews were flawless (because she was made to do this), and string was cheap. Lucretia couldn’t argue with the fact her resources cost nothing close to what the twins had already requested from the budget - not that she should officially know that, but the students couldn’t stop talking about the flashy (definitely unnecessary) components in necromancy 101.

–

“Barry.”

“Yeah?” Says Barry, somewhere to her left.

“This is so much string.”

“I believe that was what you wanted, much string.”

“Do you think we overestimated?”

“Maybe a touch.” Barry says, emerging from the boxes. “But you got a ridiculous bargain.”

“Garfield’s fine at haggling, but cha’girl’s better.”

“We do, uh, need room for the students in here. Hard to learn if you’re, er, smashed against a box.”

“Pocket dimension?” Lup asks.

“Genius.” Barry’s casting before she finishes talking. “There.” He dusts his hands off.

She loves how enthusiastic he is. Not that she’d really thought there would be too many limits in a school which aims for fun, but there’s always an element of caution needed when it comes to tenured staff. In Lup’s experience they’re more inclined to quash anything which sits outside their prescriptive idea of what should be happening. That or they’ll steal your research. She’s still mad about it, she’ll die mad about it. He didn’t even put her down as an author on the fucking paper. But it’s fine. It’s fine. It’s not like that here. Lucretia’s letting her do spider class. Barry’s helping her make her stupid ideas happen. They’re not here to steal anything from her. She needs to leave the past in the past.

The students filter their way in and look around the suspiciously empty room. It’s heartening to see how quickly they’ve gotten used to her.

“Heeeeeeeelllllllo and welcome everyone to….” Lup spreads her arms to reveal her spider legs. “...spider class!”

There’s at least two whoops.

“Dr Lup!” A hand shoots up.

“Yes Angus?” Lup says, fighting hard not to smile. It was great to have him in her class - especially because he’d originally been in Lydia and Edwards and asked to be moved.

“I thought we were supposed to be doing force today.” Lup learned quickly that these questions weren’t impertinence, he just wanted to know.

“Ding ding ding! Right answer, Ango! And who knows force better than spiders?”

“You?” Angus asks hopefully.

“Well, it’s a half me, half spider hybrid teaching you today. So class, today we’re going to be metaphorically punching gravity in its metaphorical face, but first we’ve gotta learn the theory so we can do it real good. Grab your notebooks, you’re gonna need ‘em!” She’s heartened by the immediate scramble that begins for notebooks and pens.

–

“I can’t believe how many kids you stuck to the ceiling. I mean, I can, I know the maths of it, but seeing it.” Barry’s genuine delight is wonderful to see.

Lup shrugs nonchalantly, as if she spends every day making child catching webs. “Oh, you know.”

“No, Lup. You… they loved it.”

“I mean…”

“They couldn’t stop laughing. They did maths,# and they had fun! You’re a genius”

Lup preens a little, she’s allowed. “Did you have fun too?”

Barry doesn’t even think about it. “Yeah, I really did.”

He gives her a look so soft, so full of admiration, that she can’t bear it. There’s only a certain amount of praise she can accept before she feels itchy about it, she’s never quite mastered Taako’s full bluster mode.

“Right, I think today is macaroni day, would you care to accompany me to the canteen? Maybe afterwards we can go have another look at the equations and see if we can figure out the too many solutions solution?” There’s no way Barry can resist the allure of mac and cheese and research.

He looks right into her soul. “Fine, but I’m going to tell you how good at teaching you are at least four more times.”

Lup rolls her eyes and flounces in the direction of the canteen (so that Barry can’t see the smile on her face).

–

They solve it.

They drink coffee.

They talk.

They talk.

They talk.

They even sit in companionable silence, which, honest, Lup still finds tricky - there’s always the impulse to fill the gaps with a lot of people. She trusts Barry with silence though, he’ll be careful with it.

“Are you going to the social tonight?” Barry asks her.

“Are you?” Lup replies.

Barry looks at her as if he’s trying to figure out a puzzle. “Uh… yes.” He says without any confidence.

“Really?”

He clears his throat.

“Yeah… yes. Yeah.” He says.

“Wow, real keen there, Barold.” Lup smiles.

“Are you, er, will you be there?”

“Yeah, cha’girl’s going. I guess we’d better get ready soon…”

“10 more minutes?” Barry asks, like Lup hoped he would.

–

“Oh, how artfully rumpled, darling! You really managed to make it look like you’ve been wearing that all day.” Lydia says almost as soon as Lup makes it through the door.

“Have you and your boyfriend been hiding in the labs again?” Edward wrinkles his nose as he says boyfriend.

How dare he? Lup and Barry aren’t dating, obviously, but if they were she’d be proud of it! There’s nothing distasteful about Barry.

“Barry’s great.” Lup says quickly.

“Of course, no one said he wasn’t…” Lydia pauses “…great.” She purses her mouth and makes it abundantly clear that she’s an idiot who doesn’t know a good thing when it’s walking down the hall towards them.

Lup resists the impulse to hiss at them, settles for raising her eyebrows and breaks away to meet Barry at the door.

“I like your shirt.” Lup says in greeting.

Barry definitely seems to get slightly pinker than he was before, maybe he walked over too fast. “Thank you. You look nice too… I mean, you look nice… I mean… drinks? Shall we get a drink?”

“Sweet music to my ears, Barry. Lead on!”

He peers round the room, then zeroes in on a table at the back. “Come on then.”

“Oh, hang on. Sorry.” Barry deviates off course slightly. “Hello!” Barry greets Lucretia and a man Lup doesn’t recognise on the way over. “Lup, have you met Captain Davenport? Davenport, this is Dr Tacco.”

“Hello Dr Tacco, I heard about the shaving foam.” Davenport looks worryingly serious, his moustache is so neat she swears he must have used a ruler, and his shirt and jacket are perfectly tailored.

“Hello Captain Davenport. Reports of the explosion have been greatly exaggerated.” Lup hopes her tone is demure enough to hide the pride.

“How about the photographs?”

“Er…” Lup looks to Barry for help.

He shrugs. “Lucretia put them in the group chat.”

“Yeah… it was pretty bad. They learned a lesson though.”

“Honestly, Lup.” Davenport leans in conspiratorially. “I wish I had been there.”

She warms up to him after that.

The drinks selection is fairly paltry, but Lup figures there’s no rules against mixing them into something more interesting.

Ren, from the chemistry teaching team, joins her. “I think the elderflower fizzy thing would go well with the orange and pineapple juices.”

“Excellent choice, would you like that as it comes or on the rocks?” Lup asks, grabbing a spare cup.

Ren thinks about it very seriously. “I think iced will suit the profile best.”

Lup salutes and begins concocting. “Your wish is my command.”

By the time Barry drifts back towards her, they’ve experimented extensively and settled on two menu additions.

“Can I interest you in Lup’s Strawberry Dream or Ren’s Elderflower Orange Pine(bl)a(st)pple?” Lup asks.

“Ren’s what, sorry?”

“Like, pineapple, but also it’s a blast. Also there’s elderflower and orange.” Says Ren, like it’s there’s no possible way for someone to misunderstand. “It’s going down well.”

“It is.” Lup affirms. “I’ve had two.”

Barry looks wary.

“Here, you can try both.” Lup pushes two cups towards him. “Never say I’m not generous when it comes to free drinks.”

“I won’t.” He says solemnly.

–

She’s chatting with Sloane and Hurley and some more of the summer staff when Cyrus nudges her arm. “So how long have you and Sildar been dating?”

“He prefers Barry.” Says Lup quickly, then adds. “And we’re not.”

“Lydia and Edward said that…”

“I’m sure they’ve said a lot of things.” Lup cuts him off before he can even think of finishing that sentence.

“Woah, okay. Touchy! Nevermind.” He steps away from her and joins another group.

–

“We should go sing.” Carey says suddenly. Mid conversation, in fact, but Lup’s not going to get in the way of conversation. “There’s a karaoke bar like, two streets that way.” She points with worrying deftness.

There’s muttered assent in the scutch of people she’s stood in.

Lup looks round for Barry, sees him, looking like a rabbit in the headlights as the plan forms round him. She tries to smile reassuringly. Maybe he won’t come? She hopes he will though. It’d be nice to hear him sing properly, she’d heard him humming a few times and she liked the rumble of it.

“I’m in.” She says.

–

Hey Ko,

You telling me how stupid these are is only giving me more encouragement to write them. They should be getting there daily now, a barrage of out-of-date-news, just for you! (Obviously I expect you’ll be putting them in a scrapbook or something because you love them really, I’m on to you.)

I stuck some students to the ceiling in class today. Barry helped. Well. He didn’t help stick the children, that was all me, baby (via the medium of teaching them how to do it), but he helped me pass the health and safety check. No one got splattered. Everyone learned the most important physics rule “what goes up must come down unless you use a fucktonne of string to stop that from happening.”

All the academic staff are doing a social later, team bonding stuff, but it’s free. The others are pretty nice too, there’s someone called Ren I think you’d like a lot. She’s really into using science in baking (sound familiar?). Hopefully Edward and Lydia decide they aren’t coming, although, honestly, it’d be interesting to see them interacting outside of here. Maybe they’d be more normal? Signs point to highly fucking unlikely though.

Anyway, love you always,

Lup xxxxxxx

-

Thank you for reading! I hope you had a good time. Find the next installment here.

[sixty-silver-wishes]

When I was a kid, the Appalachian/Southern US folk tale “Tailypo” used to scare the shit out of me. I’ve been wanting to illustrate a short horror story for a while, so today, I’ve been sketching out concepts for my own take on “Tailypo.” These definitely still need work (especially when it comes to the animal anatomy!) but I thought I’d share what I have so far:

So, first is the "Tailypo" itself. I devoted an entire page to this thing because I know it's probably going to go through a lot of changes, so I decided to start experimenting with what worked for me and what didn't. While many adaptations describe it as looking like a cat with a large tail, I wanted to make my Tailypo a mixture of animals- a wolverine, a cat, a mountain lion, a raccoon, and a weasel. Obviously, the tail had to be the most prominent part of the design, so I made it longer than the creature's body, with a jagged pattern. I think the Tailypo would be a very flexible animal, able to twist its body and slip into small spaces, so I modeled the body shape after a weasel, while giving it the back legs of a cat since its torso was higher above the ground. I'm still working out the details with its teeth; I want them to give it a frightening appearance, but I'm not sure whether I should base them off of a real animal or further stylize them.

I'm having a lot of fun designing the old man's cabin, although I can't yet settle on how I want it to look:

I've been looking at pictures of run-down Appalachian cabins, particularly from the 19th century (the story could be set any time, but I'm choosing to base my designs somewhere between the late 1800s and early 1900s), and they're giving me a lot to work with in terms of stylization. In terms of inspiration, I wanted to draw the crooked tree trunks supporting the porch in the first picture below, as well as the door and the uneven roof shingles in the second one.

Lastly, here are the old man and his three dogs. I was admittedly sort of running out of steam when I was drawing these, so the dog anatomy sorta sucks, but I just wanted to get my ideas down.

The old man is a hunter who lives alone in the woods, so I gave him a rifle and long facial hair because I don’t think he’d be super concerned with shaving his beard. He's heavily based on this picture:

To add more to his character, because he's starving and desperate enough to eat the tail of a strange creature he doesn't recognize, I made him very thin, with his clothes falling apart, like his hat and shoe. His eyebrows and beard will help to exaggerate his facial expressions throughout the story.

The three dogs were drawn with shape language in mind. I wanted to make them all distinct shapes and sizes. Their names vary across versions of the story, but in most of the ones I could find, their names are typically some variant of "Uno," "Ino," and "Calico." This adds for the bit that scared me most as a kid, where, after the Tailypo kills the dogs and the old man insists he doesn’t have its tail, it tells him “you know, I know, you’ve got my tailypo” before killing him. I wanted to incorporate the dogs’ names into their designs- “Uno” is made of round shapes to reflect the round letters in his name, “Ino” is a bloodhound based in triangular shapes since his name is a play on “I know” and triangles are associated with intelligence in shape language, and “Calico” is a Dalmatian based in square shapes. I also wanted to give each dog a collar that not only reflects their shape language, but also will allow the audience to know they’ve been killed by the Tailypo when their collars are all that’s left of them.

There’s still quite a bit for me to design and workshop before I get into illustrating this story, but I’m really excited! I really want to give it the same creepy feeling I had when I was a kid reading it for the first time.

[the12thnightproject]

Chapter 10: Lessons in Larceny Only a mischievous kitsune could turn a lockpicking lesson into an innuendo fest.

Mitsuhide x OC; Hideyoshi x MC (Mai)

All Chapters Archived on Ao3 

Logline - With Mai, Hideyoshi, and Aki missing, Mitsuhide and Katsuko reluctantly team up. Disguised as a merchant and his concubine, can they outsmart the man known as the God of Deceit?

“What do you think of my gift?” Mitsuhide gestured to his former personal quarters, which now sported a few feminine touches – a low table filled with cosmetics, a rack displaying the recently purchased peach kimono, and a delicate tapestry.

What it did not contain - a window.

With Sho next to me, oohing and aahing over the surprise gift, I could not tell him exactly what I thought about his room switching gambit. “I am overwhelmed, Master Kyubei.”

“After all, with your new wardrobe arriving soon, I believe you should have more space.” He paused and then his Kyubei disguise was marred by a smile that was pure Mitsuhide tease. “Perhaps some might say I’m spoiling you, but this is what you deserve.”

More space… ha!

The new room did not appear any larger than the previous one. In fact, it seemed smaller, with the smell of sandalwood and cinnamon pervading every corner. It would be like sharing a room with his ghost – or astral projection (not that I believed something like that was possible, although if it had been possible, I completely believe Mitsuhide could and would practice it). Crowded in, with no means of escape. Now that Mitsuhide slept directly under my old window, in the room closest to the stairway, I would not be able to sneak out in the night without waking him up.

The curtailed freedom on my end resulted in curtailed conversation for him, as I gave him the silent treatment for a few days, and our meals devolved into me glaring at him while he devoured a series of increasingly disgusting smelling meals.

(It’s possible that he didn’t consider eating in uncomfortable silence a loss).

Whatever he did while the sun was up, I had no idea. While I suffered days of beauty regimens (apparently my skin needed ‘help’ and my hands were ‘hopeless’) under the guidance of sweet but uninteresting Sho, he would, in that long dark wig, disappear in the morning and not reappear until it was time for Sho to return to the house she shared with her mother and siblings. I couldn’t leave the house with her, in case she was a spy for Shojumaru, nor could I leave her alone for the same reason.

Needless to say, the whole beauty routine was mind-numbingly dull. I had never enjoyed the twenty-first century version, and the Sengoku stuff was even worse. Thankfully, the merchant class that I would be moving about in didn’t conform to the aristocratic customs of shaving off their eyebrows and blackening their teeth.

So when after five days of repetitive afternoons and silent evenings, the first of my outfits was delivered, I was nearly tempted to kiss it in relief, even though it was pale pink. At least it meant that Mitsuhide would take me out.

Somewhere.

Anywhere…

“…the meeting of the Kaigoshu?” I was impressed in spite of myself. “How did you manage to get an invitation to that?” Even Francisco, who had been based in Sakai for several years, hadn’t managed to break through that barrier (or maybe he had, but didn’t realize what it was).

“Another spice merchant owes me a lot of money.” That was all he had to say about the matter. Gambling was illegal, so I was left to wonder what the spice merchant had done to get in Mitsuhide’s debt. Potentially that fell into the ‘you don’t want to know’ category.

“And you’re permitted to bring me?” Sounded fishy. I doubted that anyone else would bring a courtesan to what amounted to a city council meeting.

“I am certain you’re aware of the concept ‘it is better to ask for forgiveness than it is to ask for permission.’” It was the night prior to the meeting, and rather than go back to my room to sulk, I had allowed my curiosity to get the better of me and had followed Mitsuhide into his office. “In my observations, it appears to be your primary mode of operation.”

“I’m familiar.” I could not deny that I’d found myself asking for forgiveness a lot.

From the look he gave me, Mitsuhide had expected that answer. “Not that it would make any difference in this particular situation, for Kyubei is not the type to ask for either permission or forgiveness.”

Yeah. I’d figured. “Do you have a particular plan? Or is this simply for reconnaissance?” Maybe he already had a theory to test out. Who knows? I wasn’t in the loop.

“Oh my, I see you’re talking to me again. Did we get bored with the silent treatment?” He didn’t look at me when he asked, preferring instead to unroll a scroll of paper, and read (or pretend to read) it.

“I’m talking to a co-conspirator about a mission. As soon as we get those details figured out, then you will become invisible to me once again.” Well, he probably hadn’t been invisible since birth, but I would give it my best shot. “So? Plan? Generalized snooping?”

He put down the scroll and sighed – theatrically, so I am sure he didn’t mean it. “If you can wander amongst the Portuguese merchants and listen to their conversations, that will allow me to concentrate on the Japanese ones.” He didn’t mention Shojumaru specifically, but I figured the man had to be at the top of our suspect list.

Ok. Cool. Was that so difficult to tell me? “And if it looks like you’ve gotten into trouble, I should create a diversion so we don’t have to fight our way out? Not that I couldn’t fight if you need me to.”

“Dear me, are you questioning my competence? I will not get into trouble.” He picked up the scroll again and I am certain he was just using it to shield himself from me.

I took no offense. I was just happy that I was finally going to be permitted to do something. Well. Tomorrow I would be doing something. Tonight… I couldn’t face another night staring at the windowless walls of my new room.

It wasn’t until my third circuit of the office that I realized I was pacing.

Mitsuhide glanced up and distracted me from my walkabout. “Is there a reason for your prowling? One would have thought that you went through here thoroughly the other night.”

“The other night I was looking for something in particular.” I paused in front of a neat display of musical instruments – a flute, a koto, and a biwa – arranged neatly among some Noh masks – had these, like the furniture and décor, belonged to the previous tenant? They looked too exquisite to belong to whomever had painted the walls red and black, and owned that gruesome screen in my former bedroom. Something told me that these were Mitsuhide’s, although I couldn’t back that up with any evidence. Just… a feeling. “Now, I’m just looking.”

He finally put the scroll down. “Any competent spy ought to be able to perform both at the same time.” He motioned me over to his desk, opened the drawer for like… three seconds… and then slammed it shut again. “What is in the drawer, brat?”

Oh.

A game.

A puzzle game.

I love this stuff. “A pot of ink, a spare brush, three locks – probably Chinese in origin, a roll of paper, and not my letter, which you really should return to me.”

He raised one eyebrow. Ok now you’re just rubbing it in that you can do that and I can’t. Then he opened the drawer again and peered inside. “You missed four items.” He pulled them out of the drawer as he named them. “A small clump of dust… a crumb of… mm… is that dried rice?” He popped it in his mouth and bit down on it (and… ew). “Still unknown. And a set of lock picks.” He held up a few metal rods of varying lengths and thickness.

Oooh. Lock picks. That was interesting. I wondered if he could show me how to…

He derailed my thought by asking, “what does this combination of items tell you?”

“That the desk is commonly used by a thief who writes a lot of letters and rarely dusts? Particularly a correspondence thief who also has a cast iron stomach.” I sent him a look of contrived innocence along with the snark.

“Consider the order of the items in the drawer. The placement shows that the locks were used more recently than the paper.” He laid them next to each other on the desk. They were all rectangular shaped padlocks, one with kanji characters written across it, although I suspected it was Chinese, not Japanese, simply because most locks in this era were made in China. “You do appear to be interested in these – considering brushing up on your burglary skills?”

Hey, a girl’s gotta have a parachute.

“Aki says no knowledge is ever wasted.” Show me. Show me. Show me.

The eyebrow went up again. It was getting a workout tonight. “Yes… you are indeed uncharacteristically fixated on these. Dare I suggest a lesson in larceny?”

I mimicked his bored tone. “Why yes, I believe I would find that a pleasant interlude.”

Aaaand of course he took my wording and ran with it. “Oh my. If it’s a pleasant interlude you want…”

Walked right into that one.

He smirked and patted the cushion next to him. “Sit down. Observe. It’s simply a matter of sliding a shaft,” he held up one of the metal rods, “into a tight chamber, and finessing it until you gain entry.”

That totally deserved an eyeroll, so I provided it, but I did want to acquire this skill, so I sat where indicated and waited for him to begin.

“A very eager pupil indeed.” He set the three locks in front of me. The one with the kanji opened by combination, and would be impossible to pick, but the other two were keyed locks, with the keys already resting inside the locks.

“The bolt is spring-held in place by its shape, wider at one end than the other. The key is generally used to push the spring open.” He pulled one of the keys out, fastened the lock, then slid the key back in. “Listen to the sound it makes when it hits the spring.”

Click.

“However, the process is easier to feel than it is to explain.” He locked the lock and handed me the key and the pick. “First unlock it with the key but slowly. Get used to how the motion feels when the key presses on the interior sides to free the bolt.”

I have in fact unlocked locks with keys before, even these antique (though not at the moment antique) rectangular ones. Unlike modern padlocks, which rely on rotation, the locks used in this time require a bit of force to open, especially if the pin sticks – which it did in this case. In the end, I had to jam my palm against it to exert enough pressure on the key.

“Some things do require a bit of sensitivity.” He locked the lock and returned it to me. “Try with one slow, smooth stroke. Caress the inside of the lock.”

Seriously?

I side-eyed that one, and received from him a look of such theatrical innocence that I’m surprised the Gods didn’t smite him for it. Great. And I’m sure that if I called out his wording, I would be the one accused of having a dirty mind. Fine. I returned my attention to the lock and put the square key back inside, trying to pay attention to the moment the key depressed the spring enough for the lock to disengage.

Click.

“Now the keys to these locks vary somewhat in shape.” He held up the key I had just used which was basically a square tube. Then he showed me the other key, which was two horizontal double bend curves, running parallel with about a quarter of a centimeter between them. “They operate in the same fashion – to compact the spring on the other end.” He returned the curved key to the other lock and the bolt disengaged. “As you have no doubt already surmised, if you want to go about opening locks, it’s impossible to carry with you the number of appropriately shaped keys in which to do so. Hence, these.” He lifted up two of the two metal rods.

Returning to the original lock, he inserted one of the picks on the left side of the square keyhole and pushed it all the way through. Then the other pick on the right. With a minimal amount of wiggling, the bolt slid out.

Hm, that seemed almost too easy. I repeated his actions on the lock…

Click.

… it was literally that easy. “I don’t understand. What’s the point?”

“There’s a reason why most people carry their most important valuables on their person, or hire armed guards.” Mitsuhide handed me the other keyed lock, the one with the curved hole. “Although this one should take slightly more effort.”

In seconds I had the other lock open.

“Of course, it’s also true that most people – most honest people - don’t expect to encounter a lock, or they find themselves unexpectedly in chains. So, one must improvise.” He pulled two of the sticks from my hair. Of course, my hair immediately jenga’d into total entropy. He relocked the locks and gave me back the hairsticks. “Try it with these.”

I blew my hair out of my eyes and got to work. With the wooden hairsticks, it was a bit more difficult – I was afraid to put too much pressure on them because –

Snap!

“Damn.”

“Such language.” The tone was teasing, but I got the sense he really did not appreciate me swearing.

With half of my hair stick now wedged in the lock there wasn’t much else I could do. Reluctantly, I turned the lock back over to Mitsuhide who shook it until the reminder of the stick fell out. He silently handed it back over to me. I suppose he didn’t want a souvenir of #lockpickfail.

“Now this one.” He held up the combination lock. It had five rotating barrels, each with four kanji characters on them. “There is no key, it will open when you arrange the letters in the correct order.”

Yes. I had gathered that part of it. “So it’s a matter of trial and error until I hit the correct combination?” Math has never been my strength. I knew there was a formula for figuring out how many possible combinations there would be, but I didn’t know what that formula was, and to be honest, I wouldn’t be able to do that sort of calculation in my head anyway. I had a feeling the answer would be in the realm of ‘reallybigion.’

“Hm. You could try that.” Mitsuhide waved to a cushion on the other side of the room. “Over there.”

Yeah, I don’t want to sit next to you all night either.

I took the lock to the indicated spot and proceeded to try and solve the combination.

About twenty minutes later (just a guess, no clocks in the Sengoku), when I realized that the job was made more difficult because the barrels were slippery, Mitsuhide’s voice interrupted my concentration. “Did I fail to mention that you likely will not have enough time to go through all the potential combinations before you are interrupted, or your prison cell floods, or you are executed at dawn?”

“Why yes, I believe you did fail to mention that.” Dammit, I had lost my place.

“Or even,” Mitsuhide oozed over to my side, “in addition to being chained to a wall, it’s completely dark in the cell… or you’re wearing a blindfold.”

That was all the warning I got before the world turned pink. Figures he’d put a pink blindfold on me. “Hey! Ask permission before you do something like that.”

I reached up to remove the blindfold but was immediately distracted by Mitushide, who seated himself directly behind me. He reached around my waist and put his hands on top of mine. His breath tickled my neck, and the steady rhythm of his heartbeat pounded against my back. It was like being enveloped in the essence of him, surrounded by cinnamon and sandalwood, and Mitsuhide.

He adjusted my grip on the lock. “Can you feel the tension on the bolt?”

I could, in fact, feel tension everywhere.

His heartrate had picked up slightly.

Or maybe that was mine. We were so close together it was impossible to tell any longer.

Resolutely I ignored that (pretty sure he was trying to distract me on purpose) and concentrated on the barrels of the lock.

“Keep the pressure on the bolt.” He placed my index finger on the underside of the bolt. “Now, can you feel as I turn the barrel the moment when it becomes slightly looser?”

I held my breath – why, I don’t know, it wasn’t necessary – ignored the pounding in my ears, and concentrated on the barrel he was turning. He was right – there was a moment when the were less pressure on the bolt.  “There!”

“Very good. Now, the next one. Keep the tension level even but slide your finger to the next barrel. Feel the pressure while I slowly twist it.” His voice rasped in my ear. Had he lowered his tone to a sensual purr just to further distract me?

Well, it won’t work, sir. I concentrated on the tension in the lock and not the curious breathlessness that was building inside me. Not on that buzzing that was traveling along every nerve ending. Not on the way certain muscles had tightened. “There!”

“Good. You might have a talent for more than chaos.” He moved on to the third one, and again, I identified the spot relatively easily. “For this one, you rotate the barrel. Slow, even speed.”

Those cool calloused fingers guided mine across the rough bronze surface of the lock, placing my thumb and pointer finger on the fourth barrel. “Don’t forget to keep pressure on the bolt. You don’t want to undo all the work by releasing prematurely.”

Carefully, I twisted the barrel, trying by feel to reach the place that would loosen the bolt another degree. In one sense it was not unlike when Aki had taught me how to listen to the wind when I was practicing archery. And yet in another, it was unlike anything I had ever experienced. All my focus was inward, as only the tiniest shift would alert—

There! Without checking with Mitsuhide, I moved on to the final barrel. He made a faint hum of approval, so I knew I had been correct.

That approving hm reverberated through me, fizzing, celebratory.

But not yet. I had one more piece to decode.

My hands almost were too small for the lock, because in order to establish the final placement of the last barrel, I had to keep the pressure on the bolt and make sure none of the previous tumblers slipped out of place. I wanted to speed through, to hurry, but that would be the worst possible strategy. I bit the inside of my cheek for control, did my best to keep from trembling.  If I messed it up now and had to start over, I would scream in frustration.

“Slowly, stay steady. You’re almost there.” Maybe it was my imagination, but it seemed Mitsuhide was nearly as breathless as I was.

As soon as the final barrel was in the correct position, the bolt disengaged with a –

Snap

It shot out of the lock…

… and it clattered to the floor.

Finally, I let go of all the air that had damned up in my lungs.

Mitsuhide backed away from me in that instant. By the time I had ripped the blindfold off, he’d beamed himself back to his desk, put the lock back together and rescrambled the barrels. “Practice. With your eyes closed, because I don’t have another lock.” He handed me the lock.

I jumped to my feet. “Um, yeah. Great idea. I think I’ll go do that in my room.”

“Mm, yes, the quiet of your room would be advisable.” The smile he gave me had dialed the wicked up to eleven. “You do appear to be rather overstimulated.”

I didn’t exactly run out of there. But it felt like I did, especially as I thought I heard Mitsuhide’s laughter follow me out the door.

@bestbryn

@selenacosmic

@mllorei

@tele86

@lyds323

@akitsuneswife

[triplecatattack]

The Facial Hair Fiasco

Based on the ask I sent @cloudninetonine (as seen here ) and featuring her linksonas (also as seen here) I loved the concept and just wanted to elaborate further on it while I have a writing kick.

=================================

" I love your beard crypt I think it looks very nice on you."

We're the famous last words before nearly everyone stopped shaving one morning.

at first it wasn't noticeable with everyone trying to eat, pack up, and leave in a timely manner less important things like shaving and sometimes bathing (I will throw their asses in the nearest river soon so help me god!) Went the wayside.

at first it wasn't noticeable but.... then it was hard not to notice the amount of facial hair within the group.

First to boast was courage (the cocky bastard) strutting up to me like a peacock displaying his feathers or in this case his beard.

"So what do think sunshine my beard is way better than his." courage said, while waggling his eyebrows at me.

And after his display of course time and twilight followed.

Wars wanted to grow some but he said that

knights weren't allowed to grow facial hair as it "unbecoming of a soldier."he sighed disappointedly.

And of course dear rulie, tried his best but his attempt was lackluster compared to the others but while he didn't get a beard (however his stubble look was kinda nice ngl.) he still received a nice kiss for his efforts.

Gilt,mory, and four all wanted to grow theirs out more but didn't all for the same reason.

"If sparks hit our facial hair we would probably get burned y/n" four explained sadly.

Even Mecha was not immune to the facial hair fiasco as he woke up? (Do robots even sleep???)one morning to animal fur glued to his face only to realize this after he became aware of everyone's snickering at him no one admitted to the crime, however winds smug looks said enough.

And to be honest everyone looked nice with their facial hair but, crypt looks the best. (but that's only for him to hear.)

==================================

Truce/mory/crypt/iron/gilt are all @cloudninetonine OC's if you want to read more about the check out their blog.

And please let me know what you think.

[negativepeanuthoarder]

Finally had the time to read Our Werewolf Boyfriend Under His Bed and I love it so much! Sapnap being all growly and intimidating towards George and Patches because he's scared he will hurt them is so precious ; u ;

I would love to know more about the other werewolves if you have ideas for them yet! Like what does Karl, Foolish, and Punz look like in their wolf forms?

Aww, thank you! :D

I do have ideas for the other werewolves - I just haven't gotten around to drawing their concepts yet lol - so forgive my awkward descriptions.

Karl - he's a sort of almond-y color, with one bright white paw (like he stepped in frosting and it got stuck) on his left foreleg. He also has a while stripe down his back, beginning at his shoulders and eventually consuming his entire tail, which is solid white and curled like a shiba inu's (some werewolves have that mutation after they get bit - his is supposed to stand in for the spiral marking on his minecraft skin :D). He has a white belly, and a white spot on his chest unconnected too said white belly.

Foolish - he's a bridled sable color - with a black saddle marking across his back and soft brown blob eyebrows. He also has a black nose and a black tip on his mostly brown tail, while having brighter colored paws. His brown markings spray across the rest of the body and look kind of lightning-y - but he has a very distinct set of stripes on his neck that look kind of like shark gills.

Punz - Punz is nearly entirely white-blonde, with bright blue eyes (like a husky) and a pink nose. He has two greyish blob eyebrows (one of which is broken up slightly with a line through it) and a darker streak of fur down his back, beginning with his ears and the top of his head and slowly fading until it reaches his tail, which is solid white except for a small grey spot about halfway down, which is unconnected to the rest of his coloration.

All of them have fur lengths depending on their hair, too - they have thicker neck/chin fur when they don't shave, and it gets shorter in wolf form if they DO shave. Their hair also somewhat determines fur lengths - the longer their hair the shaggier their fur will be. Whether or not their hair is curly doesn't affect their fur, though.

Also all of their designs are severly unrealistic when compared to actual wolf designs but I mean eh werewolves aren't real so I might as well have fun with them lol

[surelevi]

the mutant problem !

what is your ability?

fire horse physiology

what is your government-assigned classification level?

level two. he’s basically a real life mr. heat-miser. fiery hair (that’s almost always either shaved/extinguished or beneath a hat... so consult all the red toboggans), fiery eyebrows, fiery eyes, facial hair that’s essentially cinders... it’s a good thing it doesn’t affect his surroundings or he would be burning down every single thing he comes into contact with. ( he can also fully transform into a fire horse and was born with little hooves and a mane-shape as opposed to bald/regular, but... decidedly does not whip out the hooves or the mane now )

what can you do?

to begin with, he can fully transform into a fire horse, but he does not do that unless he is away from regular society. he can always generate and manipulate fire that can’t be extinguished by anyone but himself ( party trick: fire breath ! ). in addition, he is immune to fire and able to generate heat. he is able to levitate in regular form, able to fly in full fire horse form. he can generate solar energy in any form. he also learned, rather recently, that immortality is in the cards... which he absolutely loathes. when in fire horse form, he has the fire and flight with the addition of overall horse physiology. 

what can’t you do?

forever extinguish the literal flames on his face. outside of that, he’s discovered all there is to discover with his ability, although mastery is still in the cards.

what are your weaknesses?

in specific ? water -- although it doesn’t last too long, as he can just generate it again. 

how did you first come to the realization that you were a mutant?

he was born into a long line of mutants, so the likelihood was there from his conception... then he had hooves. 

if given the choice, would you remain a mutant? why or why not?

no. he doesn’t hate much about his ability, but he still cannot fathom immortality. outliving his child ? jesus christ... in addition, he does suspect it’s part of the reason carina gained sole custody over charlotte. yes, a history of alcoholism doesn’t track well, but with no violent events and a long period of sobriety, it would be more likely that he’d just get less days than her, right ? and there’s no way to prove he cast a spell over her or had anything to do with it ( especially when he didn’t ), so that should be inadmissible, right ? but she looks like a woman, he looks like a mutant... 🤨

what do you hope to see change in the future, with respect to the current strife over mutant acceptance? short-term? long-term?

general acceptance. since he comes from a long line of mutants, he’s seen how things have changed over time. he has hope that everything will keep changing for the better -- all they need to do is keep... doing what they’ve been doing.

[gatorkid509]

Did some doodles of Meat Sweats 2 days ago in my sketchbook, as well as concept sketches for his very own Cloaking Brooch( He just wants his life back!!) I like the idea of the brooch as a clip or buckle that attracts to his scarf, I tried to make one of them shaped like a pig's snoot, but I thought that the gemstones being in the place of the nostrils was too weird, so I changed it to a diamond/star sparkle shape and one that was inspired by @forceway brooch design for their drawing of Meat Sweats human form.

As for why I drew Meat Sweats with big old ears. It's actually because real-life domestic pigs have pretty big ears and find it a bit confusing that M.S. had small piggy ears, then I thought " Why not draw and see how Meat Sweats would look with big ears?" And while the big old ears look great on him, especially with the flopped ear, it does make the top of his head look busy due to his tiny hat.

And yes, I gave Meat Sweats his hair back in the second Drawing!!!!! I always thought it was odd that he lost his hair when he mutated. And while you can argue that domestic pigs are hairless and therefore Meat Sweats losing his hair was inevitable when he mutated. How come Warren and Repo keep theirs when they also mutated into hairless creatures? I guess you could argue that M.S.' red hair would make him the stereotypical red-haired villain once he became a villain( Though the show does depict him as a stereotypical angry short-tempered red-head) but that's kinda a stretch( Actually if you want a full in-depth look at how Red Headsince are seen on-screen, TheTake made an amazing video about it

)

Anyways, I just wanted to do my take on how M.S. would look if he kept his hair if he mutated.

Cherry.Cro on Twitter made amazing artwork of M.S. with his hair, and it looks AMAZING!!!!!!

I did primarily based mine off of theirs, but I did make his beard a bit more detailed as that's how it appears in the Flashback of " Donnie's Gifts", and because his scarf covers his whole entire neck.( And I just noticed they made his eyebrows red in just that shot, probably an animation error)

Actually now that I've noticed it, his human design does look a bit more different in " Donnie's Gift" than in " Cloak and Swaggart", and not just the scarf. It's quite possible that because they needed the human design for the latter episode they decided to refine the design a bit.

And yeah, I did change his face shape a little, I like his actual face shape, but it makes his face feel too thin, so I altered the face shape a bit.

And while I love his cute little piggy nose, man was it surprisingly hard to draw, no idea why thought, it's basically an upside-down heart with 2 loops for nostrils, WHY IS IT SO HARD TO DRAW?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!

( And please ignore the stray eraser shaving on the first Meat Sweats, I swear I thought I wiped them all of before I took the picture)

[bluepenguinstories]

(Anxious) Mouse Vertigo 10

Pynchon once had a name he called his own.

But when he stared out from the tree stump he stood on, he wondered why he ever called himself anything.

His back was turned to a group, all in white cloaks. Everyone was looking forward to the day, he even fooled himself into rejoicing. There were six others behind him, and they turned every which way to stare at the damage done. That same damage which they all wished for. He was no different, he was complicit. That much was known, has been known for a few years now.

The sky was blanketed with a thin cloud of smoke and soot rained down. He saw several fumes billowing up, far away toward a civilization that might have once been.

It’s far too quiet. Did we all sleep during the collapse? What is left of us?

Despite the sunglasses he wore over his head shaved bald, his eyes were wide and the image was seared into his retinas. Little red streaks of veins filled his eyes and tears fell without him registering that they were tears at all. Indeed, despite the sting, they came off as little more to him than a mild allergic reaction.

In the distance, but not nearly as far, the Rockies had all toppled over, taking down several evergreen trees with it. Nay, those trees, once evergreen, were withered in the very same instant as the rest of the collapse. He caught a glint, a faint glimmer, of a lake, or some body of water, also covered in soot.

Surrounding the church members, him included, were dead beetles, lying on their backs, legs stood up stiff.

Yes, he knew what such a wish entailed, but like Joyce, he just thought of it as a practical joke that everyone was in on. Just some fun little get together with horrible implications.

His bushy, black eyebrows, his soft and pink cracked lips which trembled while he remained motionless. There was a last chance of salvation in his pocket, but at the moment, all he could think was:

“We did this.”

He was the second member of the church.

Never one to put stock into those cults with their egotistical leaders and their made up, bullshit worships, he only had a passing awareness of what such a world was like. Things like:

“Distrust outsiders.”

“Devote yourself to us.”

When he met the first member, the de facto leader, he wasn’t thinking about any of that crap.

No, with his sharp, black plastic rain jacket, he walked through the rainy streets of his city. The hood of his jacket was up and he had stretched the strings down to scrunch the hood in such a way that, in theory, it would have protected his face and not let the rain in.

Fat chance.

The rain came down with a slant, almost as if targeting his face specifically.

He hated the smell of rain, the raw and vinegary scent of the dumpsters he passed by, and the scent his hair got after it was drenched. Like mildew, or soft, fuzzy mold.

If he could, he would have left all of the scents of the city he lived in behind. There were never any prospects for him there and all the people he passed by either pissed him off or depressed him.

At one of his favorite haunts, however, he found solace:

A tavern, simply called the Fat Tiger. Somehow, the sidewalk near the bar had perfect, smooth sidewalks, while the sidewalk outside of the zone that was the ‘Fat Tiger Zone’ was cracked, uneven, and gravelly.

Inside the bar, it was cloaked in darkness and had that familiar, musty scent. As if everyone, man and woman alike, forgot what the concept of ‘hygiene’ was. He smelled no such floral scents, and the closest fruity scent was the sour grape smell that the patron’s sweat brought with them.

Little lights hung above, orange and glimmering. There was a strobe effect, but he couldn’t place from where or what it came from.

On the mat by the door, he dragged his feet along. His slick, black stiletto heels, which were once pristine leather, now had splotches of brown from all the mud tracked on it.

God damn puddles.

Even though he tried some modicum of politeness and hung up his jacket on the stiff, wooden coat rack to his left, he couldn’t help but drip remnants of the rain onto the wooden floorboards, sloppily painted red.

He forced himself to smile, even though he couldn’t break himself of the slouch he carried with him. While trudging his way to an empty stool at the bar, he spotted a tall lady, with shoulder length, plum colored hair, curled inward.

“Now what’s a...doing in a...like this?” He wanted to ask, but refrained from such trite questions.

He too had shoulder length at the time; black and matted. He’d try to tame it and keep himself neat and tidy, but gave up somewhere along the way. At work, he wore his hair in a bun, and a net over his hair. Ugh...just the thought of work was starting to give him a headache, and he had yet to have a single sip of ale.

He sat upon a stool, leaning one leg up before the other. He wasn’t exactly a short man, by any means, but those stools could be so god. Damn. Tall.

“Not wearing the usual deerstalker and flannel?” Meringue asked. She was a stocky woman, orange polka-dot sweater dress, saggy breasts, and bushy orange hair with hints of gray and green, almost as if her hair was a moldy tangerine. Somehow, that fit her, and some nights, Pynchon could swear that Meringue was the most beautiful woman in his life.

“Have you seen the weather outside? It just wouldn’t be appropriate,” he shook his head and folded his elbows over the table.

His usual attire which he wore to the bar, and the attire he wouldn’t part with, even after joining the church, was at home. He really didn’t want to think about returning there.

“Is there a spare room tonight?” He asked Meringue.

“Afraid not. Another gentleman beat you to it.”

“Ain’t that the pits?” He chuckled, his soft, but gravelly voice. It was the same kind of voice that Meringue had, and sometimes he could have sworn the two were the same people.

“Will you have your usual tonight?”

He shook his head.

“Just give me a bottle of hard cider.”

His usual drink was a pint of plum brandy. He would have preferred if they left the pit in, but he couldn’t blame Meringue for that; she was a simple bartender, not the one who brewed the blasted drink.

“How’s the knees? And them wrinkles?”

“Fuck,” was all Meringue had to say.

“Is there anything more to say about that?”

He chuckled, which was about all he could do these days. In order to produce a laughter more raucous, someone would have to tell him a joke funny enough to kill him.

Both of them were in their 40s and aged far too early, put under the weight of their lots in life. Despite all that, or because of that, to the other, they saw the other as a sort of divine beauty. It wasn’t a romantic attraction, however, nor anything else quite as sentimental: Meringue had her shitty husband, Pynchon had his shitty girlfriend.

Neither were satisfied, but both were far too accustomed to do much else.

“Does Lorelei know you’re out drinking?” The bartender asked while pulling a bottle out of the fridge.

“No. And it doesn’t matter.”

“Rough day?”

He chuckled again.

“When is it not?” His smile lowered back into that wide, glum expression he was far too used to.

By day, he worked at a paper mill. His clothes would get covered in the scent of mulch and pulp, with debris gathering all over as well. Any of his clothes that he once considered nice no longer applied, as several rounds in the washing machine could attest to. The money was decent, or, at one point was decent. By the point he was at, it was only just enough to get by, and even then, he could only afford to live in his home due to the income supplanted by his girlfriend’s job.

It was a rather twisted sense of hilarious, as any who passed him by might have mistook him for being homeless.

Meringue slid the bottle on the table, and he slid a $20 bill from out of his pocket.

He was about to say, “keep the change,” before he noticed that the lady with the plum hair beside him was without a drink.

She really is quite the looker, he examined before slapping on another $20 on the table.

“Get this fine lady a drink as well, will you?” He looked up at Meringue before tapping the stranger’s shoulder and asking, “hey. What do you want?”

She flinched, less like she was bracing for hurt, and more like she just got tickled when she turned to him, her face held a rather crooked smile, almost lopsided, like she was caught taking a cookie out of a cookie jar.

“A peter pan, please,” she said with a twinkling timbre. It reminded him of the first sign of spring. Her bangs were parted on each end, which revealed her forehead, with a few freckles, but nary a blemish otherwise. Her lips were a crimson red, and smeared just a little to give off the impression that she didn’t know how to apply lipstick. That, or…

Her lips were bloody.

No, he shook away such thoughts.

No matter what images sprung forth, he couldn’t deny the sight before him: like a porcelain doll, or a nymph bathing by a hidden fountain of water.

“A peter pan?” He asked. “You come to a bar, a seedy one at that, and you order a kiddie drink?” He almost sounded incensed, but he meant it in a joking way. It didn’t really matter. She could order cotton candy for all he cared and he would have still obliged her.

“I wish to have a clear head while it’s still mine.”

Her head was tilted, and her palms rested off to the side. The angle seemed to straighten out her face more than staring straight ahead did.

Damn. She really is...she’s…

He felt that spark in his groin. For now, he ignored it.

“What brings you to a place like this, anyway?”

“Well…” she kicked her legs about and looked up at the ceiling. A rather uninteresting sight, although he gave it a quick glanced. All he saw was a tiny abyss. “This isn’t a world I’m used to visiting, but I needed something to frighten me. I’ve fallen under hard times, you see.”

“Damn. You too, huh?”

“Yes. I lost my job. Or rather, there were things my job could no longer provide.”

“What did you do?”

“I was a psychological researcher. Not a psychologist, as I didn’t quite work with people. But I worked with the brain.”

“A neurologist?”

“No. Something close. My team’s research was rather famous. If I told you my name, you might have heard of me.”

“Probably not. I never cared much for that stuff. I already know I’m messed up, I don’t need to know the names for what I got. Part of the problem is society.”

“Yes. People don’t fear enough.”

“Don’t fear enough?! You’ve got surveillance, drugs, violence in the street, half of which is perpetuated by the authorities. We can barely afford to live and are in constant worry, and you’re telling me we don’t fear enough?”

“I’m sorry. I misspoke. What I meant is that we’re not in touch with our fears. We are afraid, but don’t know how to deal with it, and it keeps us from progressing.”

“Oh, yes, I’m frozen in fear,” he retorted. He never expected to get angry with such a beauty, someone who just a minute he considered akin to a Greek goddess. Blame the atmosphere.

“I know. You’re afraid of your life, afraid that it will never change, but too afraid to break out of it, either, for fear of disrupting your routine. Surely, breaking away would lead to a greater fear, but perhaps a greater life as well.”

Damn. I changed my mind. This chick’s nuts.

The room spun around him and he could have sworn he never took a swig from his bottle, yet it felt half empty in his hand. Shadows were cast on this lady’s face and all the features he thought he could once identify (the shamrock green eyes, the thin eyebrows, those freckles on her forehead) dissipated as her face turned to black clouded rain.

“People aren’t afraid of monsters these days because the monsters in their lives are always with them. But those fairy tale monsters, they do exist, you know? Ghosts, vampires, werewolves. I’ve seen them all.”

“You’re kidding me.”

“I am not. I know you think I am, but haven’t you ever woken up to scratches you couldn’t explain? Felt a chill in an otherwise warm area? Walked into a room and forgotten why you were there? Do you really think those things only came from your mind?”

He waved his hand away.

Meringue came by and set down the glass: a cocktail of dry gin, peach bitters, and orange juice, with a couple of other mixtures. He couldn’t remember it all, nor did he care.

“Thank you. Has anyone ever told you how lovely you look? Especially that orange and green in your hair. You remind me of an orchard,” she told Meringue.

“Aw, shucks. You’re gonna make me blush.”

The lady, someone who Pynchon no longer had a grasp on, turned back to him.

“I want to help people with their fears. I believe with your help, we can guide the world. There’s a great mother waiting for us all, and I need five more people to make a complete group. Will you help me?”

He knew well enough.

She’s crazy, but good enough for a lay, he thought, before saying:

“I’ll think about it. Give me your number. If I’m interested, I’ll give you a call.”

She smiled and handed him a business card from her pocket. As he took it, the sensation conjured images of dipping his hand in black ink. It was repulsive, but not enough to get him to pull away.

Pynchon, or the name the man once went by, walked home in the blistering rain, chugging down his bottle and singing an orchestral tune along the way. He waltzed about, but he knew that as soon as he walked in the door of his home that the feeling wouldn’t last.

His home one was a, in relative terms, modest one.

It rested on the outskirts of the suburbs where grass didn’t grow. It was a yellow house, one floor, with paint scratched up and a roof covered in moss. Off to the side were wilted flowers, back from when his girlfriend tried to start a garden, but quit when she realized she would have to consistently water the plants. The windows which overlooked the front of the house were all boarded up. Some folks would walk by and whisper rumors about Pynchon’s home being a drug den. It was a joke between him and his girlfriend that they really did cook hard drugs in their home, even though neither did.

The truth was far simpler: some rowdy kids had accidentally tossed baseballs at their windows and shattered the glass, and rather than get them fixed, the couple settled with boarding them up.

He rustled in his pockets for his keys. A few blocks back, he tossed the bottle of hard cider in an an open-faced dumpster.

The drink didn’t get him drunk.

It barely gave him a buzz.

When he opened the door, it creaked and in the living room sat his girlfriend, Lorelei, cross-legged and cross-armed on their beige colored sofa. Her face, too, was cross.

“You reek of alcohol,” she grumbled.

“I reek of rain,” he argued. Whatever bliss he had on the way home left as soon as he saw her:

Her hair was dirty blonde and ragged, her cheeks sagged, and her eyes drooped. Not even the hazelnut shade of eyes which matched the shade of the burn marks of her cheeks (a childhood accident, a long story). She wore a white tank top (those thin ones...what did they call them again? Wife-beaters? Ha. What a joke) and gray, baggy sweatpants.

“Whatever. You’re always going to reek,” she went on.

“Then why mention it? Are you just looking for something to complain about?”

He shimmied over to her, even as all words told him not to.

The TV was on in the background, and flashing white lights filled the house. The kitchen, in the back corner, flashed. He didn’t even want to look at the mess that was the backyard.

Whatever. The whole house was a mess.

Some nauseating shade of brown always greeted him; the painted tapestry on the walls, some of which had peeled off. The living room was cluttered with stacks of books, magazines, and newspaper. There were stuffed animals of clowns and creatures from the jungle thrown about. On the walls were shelves, a darker, burnt shade of brown, which housed various trinkets they found at antique shops and flea markets, most porcelain or tin.

He sat next to her and felt a loose spring try to poke out from the cushion.

On TV was some old film, silent, and featuring a man in a striped suit pantomiming.

“Got anything nice to say?” He asked while crossing his legs and arms in the process.

“Do you?” She echoed.

“You know, I met this girl at the bar.”

“Did you fuck her?”

“Would you get mad if I said yes?”

“I don’t care. Would you get mad if I was seeing someone else?”

At one point, he would have feared such a prospect. Now, it felt like winning the lottery.

“Maybe you should. Better make sure they make enough. I know you can’t survive on your current income. What would happen if I left? Would you go homeless?”

“I could ask you the same. If I got fired, or quit, you couldn’t afford to keep living here.”

Pynchon sighed.

“You know, if we ever both go homeless, I’m not going to stay with you. I would rather die in a ditch.”

Her face was stiff. He stared at her and noticed the stiffness and wondered if she would cry.

Damn it. Feel something.

She didn’t cry.

“We’re both going to die homeless,” she said, “maybe we should just quit our jobs or get fired and get it over with.”

It was an enticing offer.

Neither Pynchon nor Lorelei knew how the two had come to hate each other, only that they did now. There was no doubt that at one point, they gave each other warmth in their lives and even after fights, were all smiles.

Now, the only reason they were together was because they depended on each other to keep living. Neither understood why they let the other live.

Their relationship ran its course years ago. There was no returning to that, and anything it could turn into would have surely been worse than the current toleration of the other.

Even still, that strange woman at the bar must have had a point, as the very next day, Pynchon called her up and left the house, no note, no explanation.

He never knew what happened to Lorelei. He almost felt a sick, poisonous delight in the idea of her being destitute.

The strange, yet alluring lady, explained that she was starting something she called ‘the church,’ and that she named herself HD, after a famous author. She also urged him to do the same and pick the last name of an author to go by.

Of course he saw it as weird, but he went along with it. He was never much of a reader, but two books which stuck in his mind was Gravity’s Rainbow and Inherent Vice by the author Thomas Pynchon. The way that man wrote in simple, casual language really resonated with him. Forget shit like themes or plot structure, Pynchon just came off as the easiest name to use.

HD took Pynchon around the country in a white Volkswagen van, and they ate out at various restaurants and diners along the road. Pynchon ate better than he had in years, even while sleeping in a hammock in the back of the van.

There was no doubt in his mind that he was homeless, but at least he was away from his old life. That much he could get behind.

Sooner or later, she’ll let me lay her, he told himself, and to that end went along with every whim she had. It didn’t matter to him whether or not he believed her speeches. He was waiting on a promise that would never come to pass.

Watching the state of the world upon that stump made him realize that one promise was fulfilled:

“Do you know what it means to pray for Mother’s arrival? It means that we would be praying for genocide.”

The words echoed in his mind. The words he told to Joyce, the young man he recruited.

Now, he saw how true those words were.

He reached into his inner pocket and found his salvation.

I’ll still have the last laugh, he told himself while giving off a wide, crooked grin.

“Well, looks like my work here is done,” he announced, his voice hoarse, and with much less humor than he wished to express. It didn’t seem to turn any heads.

Tears ran down his face, and he was thankful for his round, dark glasses.

“Are you harboring doubts?” He remembered asking Joyce. In fact, it was the very same day.

He held his salvation up under his chin. He gulped and his throat hit the cold, steel barrel. It was loaded with a single bullet. If he failed, he would be in a lot of pain, but a heat rose within him which indicated that luck was on his side.

He pulled the prick near the end of his salvation and a shot rang out through the air, a sharp howl which echoed. It was like a banshee walked up to every member of the church and screeched.

Everyone’s heads turned toward Pynchon, who fell over, lifeless. The pistol dropped onto the ground next to the stump, on the other side of him. Blood had sprayed onto the ground and painted the black beetles red.

They all shook and their eyes went wide. Most didn’t react beyond that. One of them screamed, but no one could tell who it was, not even the one who screamed.

“What the…?” Joyce uttered and tears welled up in his eyes and flooded his face. Some of the blood had gotten on the cloak that Joyce wore.

Joyce wiped away the tears, even as they still flowed.

No. No. I told myself long ago that I was numb to all this, he tried to coach himself out of distress.

“Wow,” Ocampo said, and said nothing more.

She sat on the ground next to Joyce.

Behind them, the trio of Borges, Steinbeck, and Mansfield sat together. Borges to the left, closer to Ocampo, and Mansfield to the right, furthest away from everyone.

It didn’t seem like the three were shocked, but Joyce wasn’t always the best at reading people’s reactions, even though he knew that everyone responded to distress differently.

Pynchon had been off to the side of the white building that was the church’s headquarters, near the back. All the rest were near the front. Most of them were lost in their own conversations right before the shot rang out. Only the most fervent believers had an idea of what happened to the world. Joyce and Ocampo simply speculated.

“Well, then,” an absentminded and dull voice broke through the silence. “Now that I have your attention, I would like to explain what happens next.”

Everyone turned to face the tall woman in the white cloak, her hood down. She was bald, as was everyone else, and her pale skin, thin eyebrows, and freckles on her forehead were the main identifiers that separated her from everyone else. She often reminded Joyce of one of those department store mannequins.

Joyce often liked to look around and imagine what the church members used to look like before shaving the tops of their heads. Some of them had grown back part of their hair, even if at most, they had what he would describe as a pixie cut.

As usual, he looked around, except when his gaze met the back of Pynchon’s lifeless frame, he cringed and shuddered.

“So –” HD began to speak again, but Joyce wouldn’t have it.

“Hey! One of our members just committed suicide and you want to hold a meeting?!” Whatever tears he had faded away and in its place was a red-faced righteous anger.

HD glanced over to Pynchon’s corpse, then looked away in the other direction and toward the ground where the corpses of bugs rested.

“Yes. It’s quite sad. We’re down one church member. I often relied on him to recruit new members, since I’m...uh…” her pale face almost looked blue, as if she was gasping for air, “I’m not so good with people.”

“That’s what you’re sad about?!”

“We need seven to make it work.”

“Make what work?” Joyce huffed. His rage was palpable and he snorted out every other breath. What was more baffling to him was that no one else seemed to be as angry.

“That’s what I was going to get into. See, Mother has arrived. The world population of every creature has been reduced by over 90%. In its place will be beasts. There is no need to be alarmed, however, as each of us will help restore humanity. It will take seven church members, and scattered about are different objects. For symbolism’s sake, we’ll call these objects ‘trumpets’. Each of us will sound these trumpets and gain abilities which will help guide humanity.”

“Excuse me?” Joyce raised his hand. “I’ve been going along with this ‘mother’ business, but I really have to ask: do you have some kind of Oedipus Complex? Were you not loved enough as a kid?”

“Good one,” Ocampo slapped Joyce’s shoulder and sneered.

A soaring, glowing feeling worked its way into him and he wondered just how far he could carry that feeling.

“Um, well...are you interested in my personal life?” HD fidgeted in place without making eye contact with Joyce.

“No. I just want to know what your deal is. Why this Mother thing? I’m tired of everyone giving me vague crap instead of just coming out and saying what they mean.”

“Mother is...yes. I see now. Many civilizations have had their form of a mother goddess. The Anatolian civilization had Cybele, the mountain mother. The Babylonian civilization had Tiamat. Mother is no exception. A better name might be ‘Fear’ as that is what our Mother is.”

“Fear?” Joyce’s head tilted.

“Yes. Many see the emotion of fear as an enemy, rather than the nurturer it is. I have made contact with our mother, Fear, and I have been tasked to build a mythology. Are you familiar with the book of Revelations from the Christian bible?”

“Is this what it is? You brought about the apocalypse because you wanted to recreate a series of events that were meant to be allegory?”

“No. I wanted us to create a new mythology and make it into reality.”

“And you decided to copy a pre-existing one? How is that making a new one?”

“Well...nothing is wholly original…”

“Yeah, but what you’re describing is plagiarism.”

“I’m impressed,” Ocampo nudged Joyce, “you went past being skeptical of the world ending and are now just criticizing the one responsible.”

“Oh, no. I’m still skeptical. I just can’t deny what’s in front of my eyes. Maybe outside of Colorado, most of the world is fine. For all I know, HD might have just used some explosives or used special effects to give off the impression that actual damage was done.”

“I..didn’t. That would kill a lot of people,” HD interjected.

“Oh, right. We wouldn’t want that, would we?” Joyce put his hands on his hips and leaned forward, “even though according to you, most of the world is DEAD.”

“I didn’t bring it about, though. I only invited Fear here. This destruction is simply a byproduct of Fear’s arrival.”

“If you knew it would happen, sounds like you’re responsible.”

HD turned her head, stared straight into Joyce’s eyes at last. Her shimmering green eyes shifted to a bright, orange, fiery look. Joyce shuddered.

“I see now. This is why Pynchon recruited you. I needed this,” she said with an icy calmness. Despite the burning glare, her words nor voice showed anger.

“What?” Joyce had no words of rebuttal, only confusion.

She continued, however, with no further explanation given:

“Each of you will be tasked with finding your trumpet. It may appear in any form, but each one will grant you abilities based on what suits you. Once the seven have been sounded, the next phase can begin.”

“What is the next phase?”

“Up to your discretion. It cannot truly begin until we have seven members again.”

“Why?”

“Because it felt most significant. That’s why there are seven trumpets. For each of us. They aren’t meant for anyone else.”

“I don’t know. I prefer six, personally,” Ocampo added her opinion, “with seven, it was always going to be uneven on the male/female ratio. With six, we can have an even three and three.”

Joyce counted each member, including himself: indeed, there were three male members (Joyce, Steinbeck, Borges) and three female members (Ocampo, HD, Mansfield). However, there was a glaring issue.

“Excuse me? Do you even count as a member? Aren’t you the leader? Shouldn’t that mean that we need two more members?” Joyce pointed to HD.

“Well...I thought we were all leaders…”

“No,” Joyce said, and nodded his head, slowly. “You organized this. You planned this. You supplied the food and housing, you brought your ‘Mother’ here. God damn, I must have landed in the most incompetent cult in existence, and this is saying something.”

“I need my trumpet, too,” HD whimpered and pursed her lips.

“I think you’re doing great,” Mansfield spoke up. Her face was gaunt and she looked so frail. “I hope we can find another member. Whoever they are, maybe I can fall in love with them.”

“Fat chance,” Joyce turned toward Mansfield, “who are you going to find? Most people are dead, if you haven’t noticed. Are you really expecting to find love in the apocalypse?”

Joyce couldn’t imagine anything more absurd than two people banding together in such desperate times against grotesque creatures and falling in love with each other.

“Let her dream,” Ocampo patted Joyce’s shoulder.

“Yes! Dreams! I cannot wait!” Borges stood up, his fist in the air. Joyce took note of Borges’ curled mustache and how round Borges was. It made Joyce think of a meatball, and he imagined that even when Borges had his hair above his head, he never had much of it.

“I for one like that the population has been reduced. Maybe now there will be enough food to go around for everyone,” Steinbeck sat and nodded while stroking his long, light brown beard. His wrinkles and creases all over his face, his dark, sunken eyes, all were signs that Steinbeck was the oldest of the group. Joyce imagined Steinbeck’s hair was once either blonde or white, and long and stringy, and that he liked to wear a straw hat.

“Are you kidding? That ‘overpopulation’ fallacy? The problem with the world was never how many people we had!” Joyce shouted.

“Never mind them. Worry about what you want to do and how you will survive,” Ocampo whispered into Joyce’s ear. He hated to admit, but he felt his member shift around in his brown, hay woven pants and stiffen.

These pants are too tight. My dick’s too uncomfortable. Damn it, why did she have to blow into my ear? Doesn’t she know how sensitive my ears are?

HD clapped.

“This concludes our meeting. While the church will still exist, in its current form, it is disbanded. Go out and do what you will. With any luck, we shall all meet again.”

HD was the first to walk off. Mansfield got up and ran behind HD. Maybe the two would follow each other?

For the moment, both Borges and Steinbeck remained in place.

As did Joyce.

While Ocampo stood up, Joyce stopped her from walking away, grabbing hold of her wrist. Once again, the appendage between Joyce’s leg stiffened further and began to throb as his legs heated up.

Why is holding onto her arm turning me on? What is wrong with me?

Ocampo looked down and smirked.

“What’s the matter, boy? Are you going to miss me?”

“Of course not! But what are we going to do about Pynchon? Shouldn’t we bury him?”

“Leave him. The carrion will find him. And if they don’t, the beasts will.”

“Don’t tell me you believe in that crap! I don’t care if most of the world has died out, but that doesn’t mean there’s monsters all of a sudden!”

“I don’t know what is or isn’t real right now,” she shook her head while continuing to hold her smirk. “Like you and Pynchon, I never believed in this ‘church,’ I only joined and played along because I had nowhere else to go in my life. All three of us come from similar places, but that doesn’t mean we’re all the same people. I want to see what’s out there, and if I can influence the world, I will. Despite how horrible things have become, I still want to believe some good can come of it.”

“Let me come with you! We can survive together!”

She chuckled.

“You’re desperate, aren’t you? What’s the matter? The poor cynical boy who cursed the world started to catch feelings?”

“No! Quit fucking with me! You’re just the only connection to Pynchon I still have! He mentored me! You knew him, too!”

He let go of her wrist. She held her wrist in her other hand and rubbed it. Joyce knew he didn’t squeeze that hard, so he found the gesture odd.

“Good luck out there. May we meet again,” were her parting words.

He huffed.

Bitterness filled him.

Of course. Being alone still suits me best, he told himself.

Time and time again, he expected to die.

But one year passed and Joyce persisted.

At a certain point, a month or two ago, he raided a home in an otherwise wrecked suburbia. The once uniform, trimmed lawns, were overgrown, to the point they covered up many of the doors to the houses, or at least the ones that weren’t demolished by either the initial calamity or trampled over by beasts around the area.

In a way, the wrecked homes and furniture strewn about the cracked roadway with wilted flowers growing in between and overgrown grass lawns which could have housed any number of hidden beasts held a sort of obscene beauty in Joyce’s eyes.

Every now and then, he waited for a beast to jump out and tear him limb from limb. It brought him a perverse pleasure to imagine a scene of himself mauled by a beast while his intestines were pulled out by the teeth of a beast. His lifeless body turned into a mushy combination of yellow and red.

No beasts ever jumped out at him.

Instead, he found a button-up blue and white striped shirt from a dresser drawer. In another room of the house, he found a pair of blue jeans in his size. He abandoned his old clothes in the same house he found his new ones and moved on. As soon as he left the house, the large head of a hunched over beast poked out from the side of the house. It huffed hot air out of its large snout and several thin, human arm-like appendages poked out from the nostrils and wriggled about.

Out of the corner of his eyes, Joyce spotted the beast and fell back. He nearly pissed his pants, and his crotch grew cold. Despite that, the beast paid the young man no mind and took a step forward. The ground shook and before Joyce could get up, he fell again.

Yet again, the beast took no notice.

That was how Joyce’s life had gone. Beast surrounded him. Many resembling animals he recognized back before the calamity, but with oddities that didn’t fit with what he knew.

Despite all the danger he should have been in, the beasts never took notice of him. They never harmed him, they never looked his way. He never could find an explanation for it, and wondered if that was all the beast’s purpose served: to scare him, and nothing more.

He’d soil his pants on occasion and his apathy for life made him not want to bathe, even in situations when he could have done so. He ate whatever scraps he could find and raided any home he came across. Rashes developed on his arms and legs. Cuts formed from itching everywhere on his skin. Even when he didn’t have cuts, his skin was red all over. When it rained, he not only shivered, but it felt like his skin burned, and worse, his clothes clung to his drenched self.

He had yet to come across another person in his travels. No, that wasn’t true: once, he saw someone mauled by a beast while he watched, too paralyzed to help or run away. Ever since watching that person get murdered, he fantasized about it being him.

Where he stood at present was an unimpressive locale: a thick, forest atop a mountainous road. He knew that the road was close, and that the road was twisting and winding. What he couldn’t tell was whether he was still in the land once known as the state of Colorado, or if he had moved on to another former state. No, he knew such details didn’t matter to him. Names were in places, but now places were just places.

Few, if any hair, regrew on his head in the span of that year. Just brown patches throughout. Meanwhile, a thick mustache had attached itself and refused to let go, and curled hairs fixed its way across into what he could only call a haphazard goatee. His face had become larger, thicker than it once was, and his cheeks were constantly puffed out in a way that reminded him of a chipmunk. To make matters worse, it was once again raining that evening, and his clothes were not only drenched, he was not only broken out in hives, but he was also covered in mud.

The road was close. There was a bus shelter that he knew was close by, and its clear, glass awning would protect him from the rain. For the past few days, he dared not stray from the area near that bus shelter. It was like a shrine or temple to him.

“My, aren’t you an eyesore,” crooned the voice of someone he constantly tried to forget.

His usual slouch jolted him to turn around and for his back to straighten up. Before him stood a pristine, even as her white cloak had been grayed out from the rain, Ocampo.

“What? What are you doing here?!” He demanded. He blinked a few times, not sure if what he saw was real or not.

“It seems you’re still alive. Good,” she ignored his question. Her voice had that syrupy richness to it, and her smirk was the one thing he might have changed.

“Were you following me?”

“I already knew where you were.”

Between them, the bushes rustled. It could have been the wind, or some hidden beast nearby.

“So. Uh. How are you?”

She shook her head.

“Different.”

“Huh? What do you mean?”

“It’s all real – all of it. The lack of life, the beasts, and the trumpets.”

“The trumpets, too?! Tell me where they are! I’ve been all over, but I don’t know where to look or what they look like!”

She shook her head again.

“You don’t want it. Trust me. It’s best to keep living as you have. I found mine, and I picked it up. It changed me. I don’t know if I’m still human, but I know that what I am...it’s not how I should be.”

“You’re not making any sense!”

“When I picked it up and it sounded, I saw visions: I think I know now why she called it ‘Mother.’ It’s the reason for the beasts. It gives birth. It doesn’t stop giving birth, either. It’s like a living factory. That’s all I can call it.”

A sudden ache erupted on the side of Joyce’s head and he clutched it while squinting. He hadn’t noticed before, but she had a full head of hair: deep purple, like the color out of space. If he squinted further, he might have seen stars in her hair. It went down to her waist. Joyce couldn’t help but be enraged.

Why does she get her hair back? What about me?

“Never mind that,” he said through his headache, “what I want to know about are these trumpets. If they’re real, what ability did you obtain?”

“The ability to change others. You may not have noticed, but I too am covered in mud. Truly, nothing is quite so filthy as cleanliness.”

“I disagree.”

“I can make others into the selves they never knew they needed to be.”

“What if somebody doesn’t want to change? Or what if how they change isn’t what they need? I’m not saying I believe you, but how is such an ability helpful if you’re forcing someone into a role that they didn’t accept for themselves? I thought you had a controlling husband! What makes you any different from him?”

As soon as he said those words, he felt like he was struck by lightning, but Ocampo continued her smile.

“He was controlling, indeed. Every night, he made me make the meals, do his dishes, clean his floors that he spilled his food and drink all over. I was to fuck when he told me to fuck, not when I wanted. I was too meek to say no, too bound by my routine. He would come home, with men and women alike, a different one every other night, and I was to make no comment. I knew they were fucking. I heard them. Those grunts, those screams. Don’t you think I wanted to fuck another man or woman every once in a while?”

“I’m sorry.”

Her smile faded, but she didn’t look angry.

“So I left. I had to leave. There was no freedom for me there. Once, there might have been love. There must have been some reason I had gone with him before I turned into this dutiful housewife. I put on a smile for the children, I let them do as they pleased, but it wasn’t enough for me. When I left, I didn’t return home. I thought, once, about returning home to pick them up. But if I did, he might have been there. Maybe he returned early from work. Who knows? He would have beat me back into submission, made sure I had no means of escape again.”

“You had kids? And you just left them?”

Her smile returned, but it wasn’t a smirk. Droplets of water ran down from her face – the rain.

“Yes, I did. But I can do right by others. I can coerce others into the same freedom I now have. I can remove the shackles they didn’t know bound them.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Good. Keep it that way. If you want to preserve who are you, don’t seek out the trumpets. Forget about me.”

“You know I can never do that. I’ve always felt...”

She laughed and it sounded like the sounds of a macaw taking flight.

“Why, if that isn’t the essence of who you are: you say you don’t need anyone, but at the slightest hint that you might be into someone, you try latching onto them. You say everything is hopeless, but you so desperately want to hope. You’re not a pessimist, no: you’re a scared optimist.”

“Shut up! Everything is hopeless! No matter what I did to change the world, my efforts went unnoticed.”

“What’s more important: making things better or being noticed?”

“What I mean is, the people in power...they made sure the ones beneath them had no power. They blocked any attempt to make the world a better place at every turn. What hope could I have?”

“And? Where are these people in power now? Look around you: aren’t we the ones in power? What’s stopping you?”

“I lack resources! And look, the beasts! There’s nothing I can do unless I obtain that trumpet!”

“How have you survived as long as you have without finding one?”

“I’ve only survived because I went unnoticed! No matter how many times I thought a beast would kill me, they never looked my way!”

“My. Don’t you think that’s an amazing ability?”

“How? Tell me how!”

She shook her head.

“I don’t need to change you. All you need to do is see what you have.”

“What?”

But she disappeared from sight. There wasn’t a hint like she had faded away – no, it was like she was never there at all.

“Ha. I must have made up that whole conversation. Even made up a backstory for her that made sense to me. That’s all it was.”

His legs shook, but it wasn’t from the cold.

He found the bus station just as he left it. There was a thick fog in the air, but he was confident no beast would show up and attack him. He curled up on that stiff bench made of wooden boards and shivered. As he looked out into the fog, he thought he saw the outline of Ocampo’s face take shape. Everything was there, down to the mole under her lip and the widow’s peak of her hair.

“Look how feeble you are,” the wind howled in Ocampo’s sardonic tone.

Joyce curled up tighter and covered his face with his hands. With one final plea he shouted:

“MAKE IT END!”

[princeofgod-2021]

LIGHT OF LIFE 496

John 1:4

DIVINE ORDER 61: Law Of The Tree Of Knowledge 9

Gen 2:16-17 But the LORD told him, "You may eat fruit from any tree in the garden, EXCEPT THE ONE THAT HAS THE POWER TO LET YOU KNOW THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN RIGHT AND WRONG. IF YOU EAT ANY FRUIT FROM THAT TREE, YOU WILL DIE BEFORE THE DAY IS OVER!" CEV

COMPLETE LAW 2

So, we have seen from scriptures that the LAW can make nothing PERFECT, right?

Heb 7:19 For the law has never made anyone perfect, BUT IN ITS PLACE IS A FAR BETTER HOPE which gives us confidence to experience intimacy with God! TPT

The LAW shows how sinful Man can be and how much he’d need Jesus to perfect him. The law formed a Link to be followed and culminates in the coming of Jesus our Lord.

Gal 3:19 WHY then was THE LAW given? IT WAS MEANT TO BE AN INTERMEDIARY AGREEMENT ADDED AFTER GOD GAVE THE PROMISE OF THE COMING ONE! It was given to show men how guilty they are, and IT REMAINED IN FORCE UNTIL THE SEED WAS BORN TO FULFILL THE PROMISES GIVEN TO ABRAHAM. When God gave the law, he didn’t give it to them directly, for he gave it first to the angels; they gave it to Moses, his mediator, who then gave it to the people. TPT

In this context then, the LAW is COMPLETE and PERFECT in itself because it fulfilled - and is still fulfilling - its Purpose to humanity.

Gal 3:24 Wherefore THE LAW WAS OUR SCHOOLMASTER TO BRING US UNTO CHRIST, that we might be justified by faith. KJV

To understand the LAW and Christ better, you need to think of the creation of Man and Woman again.

The Man was created PERFECT as an entity but with a NEED (Woman).

Then a Rib - forming a Link - was taken from him to form and bring the Woman to him.

But for the Man to PROCREATE and PRODUCE, the Woman will have to “perfect” his efforts.

Mat 5:17 “If you think I’ve come to SET ASIDE the law of Moses or the writings of the prophets, you’re mistaken. I HAVE COME TO FULFILL AND BRING TO PERFECTION ALL THAT HAS BEEN WRITTEN. TPT

Now, somebody may ask: “but why would God create people naked and declare such perfect; is it not rather the wearing of Clothes that would make them look perfect”?

Gen 1:31 And God saw everything that He had made, and BEHOLD, IT WAS VERY GOOD. And the evening and the morning were the sixth day. MKJV

If you think about it, would you say that God wears Clothes or needs to wear clothes?

When He appeared to Moses and showed His backside, do you think there was clothing?

Exo 33:22-23 and before I PASS BY IN ALL OF MY SHINING GLORY, I will put you in a large crack in the rock. I will cover your eyes with my hand until I have passed by. Then I will take my hand away, and YOU WILL SEE MY BACK. You will not see my face. CEV

I don’t think God ever needs to wear clothes because he is all covered in Glory. That is the way of Spirit beings.

I think all Moses saw of His back was yet that great shinning Glory.

Most times God is described with Clothes, it’s actually the descriptions of spiritual Values.

Psa 104:1-2 Praise the LORD, my soul! O LORD my God, you are very great. YOU ARE CLOTHED WITH SPLENDOR AND MAJESTY. YOU COVER YOURSELF WITH LIGHT AS THOUGH IT WERE A ROBE. You stretch out the heavens as though they were curtains. GW

I also believe that when Jesus was described with a ROBE in Revelations, it was mainly to portray the concept of the Priestly Robe that Men were charged to wear in Office.

Rev 1:13 and in the midst of the lampstands was one like a son of man. HE WAS DRESSED IN A ROBE EXTENDING DOWN TO HIS FEET AND HE WORE A WIDE GOLDEN BELT AROUND HIS CHEST. NET

So, I believe that creating Humans NAKED was perfect because if they were indeed created in God’s Image, then they had Glory covering them.

When they ate the fruit, they were simply exchanging God’s Glory for physical clothes, like replacing GRACE with WORK.

It is like women shaving off their natural eyebrows and deciding to use eye pencil instead.

Rom 1:23 and CHANGED THE GLORY OF THE INCORRUPTIBLE GOD INTO AN IMAGE MADE LIKE CORRUPTIBLE MAN, and birds, and four-footed animals, and creeping things. MKJV

May our lives be embodiment of perfect obedience to God’s Laws, IN JESUS NAME.

Come back on Monday, as we proceed in digging into this inspiring Subtopic.

Brother Prince

Friday, April 12, 2024

08055125517; 08023904307

[infinitelycomplexpuzzles-archive]

The more I learn about detective fiction the more I am convinced that the obsession with Sherlock Holmes has deprived us of so many other, weirder detectives. 

Example, Nero Wolfe. A genius obese man who refuses to leave his home to do his detective job. Absolutely refuses. Never does any work outside of his home. To quote wikipedia, “he is loath to leave his home for business or anything that would keep him from reading his books, tending his orchids, or eating the gourmet meals prepared by his chef.” 

Supposedly, his weight is somewhere between 310 lbs to 390 lbs, which at the very least makes him physically different than the average thin eccentric we’re so used to seeing. 

Furthermore, to quote a description of his habits: 

He insists upon the point: under no circumstances will he leave his home or violate his routines in order to facilitate an investigation. The exceptions are few and remarkable. Instead of spreading the principles of order and justice throughout his society, Wolfe imposes them dogmatically and absolutely within the walls of his house—the brownstone on West Thirty-Fifth Street—and he invites those who are troubled by an incomprehensible and threatening environment to enter the controlled economy of the house and to discover there the source of disorder in their own lives. The invitation is extended to readers as well as to clients.

Imagine shooting an entire series where your protagonist never leaves his house, and instead does all his work over fine dining and being entirely disinterested in other people’s problems. ‘If you want my help, we do it on my terms, and my terms are never leaving this fucking house’ is something that resonates with my autistic aversion to going other places unless I have to. 

There’s also Jules Maigret, a french detective whose description amuses me: 

Maigret wears a thick overcoat, a bowler hat and frequently smokes a tobacco pipe. He is described to be tall with a heavy weight, and to have broad shoulders, big hands, a thick face, thick hair, thick eyebrows and bright eyes of a "greenish gray" colour. He has a heavy beard, and shaves every morning.

In his investigations, Maigret's method is to put himself in another persons place to search for the reason, and understand why, the crime was committed, rather than just finding out whodunit. He is described as a character with an extraordinary humanity.

Again, having a guy whose description more closely matches out idea of a turn of the century fisticuffs boxer rather than a detective who spends his time trying to grasp why people do the things they do, amuses me greatly. 

But also, having a character who is deeply invested in grasping the way people think is such a modern concept in crime fiction that I’m shocked it hasn’t been given more American attention. 

We must break the mold of all slightly odd detectives being molded into sherlock holmes.