#i am almost done uploading all the designs in my shop

[weekly-eons]

could i request a xenogender flag dragon type fakeon?

Apparently I didn't put this one in the queue lmao??

Surprise bonus design woo! Thanks for asking for one of my Fakeons!

[dreams-madeof-strawberrylemonade]

Reunion

Request: HERE  A/N: UPLOADING IT AGAIN BC I FORGOT TO TAG IT SORRY Soo it’s been what, one year, since I last posted a fic here? I’m kind of rusty ngl but nevertheless, it felt comforting to write something like this :) As usual, critiques and comments are welcome  Word count: 1.7 K+ Warnings: none

To be added - or removed - from the taglist, please DM me or leave me an ask!

GIF credit goes to @edgeofgreta; the original post is HERE

You walked into the apartment and set the two groceries-filled shopping bags onto the laminated floor. You kicked off your shoes and carried the bags into the open kitchen, placing them on the counter. With boredom, you took out every single item and placed them in their designated spaces. With the same growing boredom, you made your way back into the living room and threw yourself on the navy-blue sofa with your head sinking in one of the biggest pillows.

You pick up your phone and look at the screen – specifically, at the lockscreen wallpaper, which was a photo of you and Jake. Josh had taken that photo on one of the getaways you made together. Jake had on a beige shirt with his top four buttons undone – in other words, only with his lower two buttons done – and his favorite black hat. He was standing up tall, a wide smile on his face, and you were leaning against him, with your head placed on his right shoulder. You smiled and unlocked your phone, then opened the messages app and texted Jake.

I miss you :( Why does tour have to last this long?

Underneath the blue message bubble appeared the notification that the message had been read, then three typing dots appeared on Jake’s end.

I miss you too, honey. I can’t wait to get home and see you.

You begin to type.

Can we facetime later?

The answer came shortly.

Sorry, but tonight we have a gig. Tomorrow, too… We’re having practice now. Josh has again too much energy and needs to drain it a little bit before going onstage. Got to go now :( Love you

You typed back a formal luck-wishing message and threw the phone on the coffee table in front of the sofa. You were bored out of your mind and in the mood to do nothing whatsoever. Jake had been gone for almost three months now. You understood that it was his job and those were the terms and conditions you agreed to when you started dating him, but you didn’t figure at the time that separation would feel like that. It was safe to say that from time to time you missed him so much it hurt you.

You curled into a fetal position and turned on the TV. Flicking through the channels, you stopped at MTV. Highway Tune just began to play. Your heart grew at the sight of the boys and especially at the sight of Jake. You were so proud of them for getting that far and the mere thought that there actually is a far longer way for them to go made your heart beat in exhilaration. As the last notes of the song echoed through the room, you closed your eyes, pleased that you had seen the band on TV again.

You woke up from the “nap” way too late – it was 1 AM when you opened your eyes – so you moved from the living room to the bedroom. You didn’t bother changing your clothes and you just got underneath the blankets covering the double bed. Before falling asleep again, you looked over at the empty space next to you and you caressed the sheets, wishing that Jake would be there.

The new morning brought along a new day, but unfortunately, the base routine was the same: breakfast, staying in bed for way longer than you should’ve, going outside for some more groceries, flipping through magazines, watching TV, texting – or at least trying to text – Jake. The difference was that today, you called in sick for work and decided to do something fun.

After calling multiple of your friends, asking if they were free to go shopping with you, you finally let yourself defeated and decided you’d visit some shops on your own.

While you were at the bookshop – the one you frequently visited with Jake – you found a puzzle which, put together, should create a 3D globe with multiple images from the Renaissance era. You figured that Jake would find that puzzle at least as intriguing as you did. I could start putting together a welcome-home gift for Jake, you grinned as the thought crossed your mind. You picked the puzzle box off the shelf and walked around the bookshop with it. You stopped in front of the vinyl-filled boxes and you began browsing through them. Jake had a ridiculously large vinyl collection, but you listened to it together so many times that you almost knew every record by heart.

After way too much time spent pondering which records to get, you finally settled for The Doors’ Morrison Hotel and T-Rex’s Electric Warrior. On your way to the register, you stopped by the wine-for-special-occasions section and picked up a bottle.

With your heart filled with excitement, you came back home and called out. “Jake, I’m –,” but you stopped as you remembered that he wasn’t actually home. You slowly let the paper bag containing the puzzle, the wine bottle and the two records on the ground as you locked the door. Before unpacking, you checked your phone. No notifications from Jake. You felt your heart lightly twitch. You couldn’t blame Jake: he was just busy and most likely tired.

You took out the new acquisitions and arranged them on the low coffee table and smiled at the thought of Jake coming in through the front door.

You were tired, so you quickly did your night routine and you got into bed. Once you were in bed though, you couldn’t fall asleep. You just kept tossing back and forth, unable to find a comfortable position. Unannouncedly and unexpectedly, tears welled up in your eyes as you laid there, alone, facing the empty space to your left. You didn’t fight the tears back; you were alone in the darkness, there was no one who could see you. You just missed Jake so much. You missed the smell of his cologne imprinted even in his pajamas. You missed his laughter that managed to make you laugh all the time and you missed those moments when you’d both begin to laugh hysterically and you’d laugh at Jake’s laugh and he’d laugh at yours, and you both laughed so much that you forgot what started it in the first place. You missed his random moments of dancing around the house and you missed his complaints mostly aimed at Josh. As the memories reeled in the back of your mind, your sobs got more frequent. Thinking of it, three months didn’t sound like such a long time, but in reality, time is tricky. Three months can easily feel like three hours and just as easy can feel like three years. For you, it felt like three decades. You mindlessly grabbed Jake’s pillow and hugged it tightly to your chest, wishing it would be Jake instead of just a pillow.

As a new day dawned, you shuffled in your sleep and hugged the pillow again. You didn’t want to wake up just yet.

“Wakey, wakey,” a voice said from somewhere behind you, almost through a dream.

“Five more minutes,” you groaned, unwilling to open your eyes. You paused then and held your breath.

“You’re gonna be late for work,” the voice spoke again and a warm finger traced your side.

You jumped almost instantly. “Jake!” you shouted and collapsed over him, your arms circling his shoulders. You buried your face in the crook of his neck and inhaled deeply – that faint smell of freshly squeezed lemons, mint and cigarettes. His arms circled your waist and you both fell onto the bed. “God, I missed you so much,” you whisper.

“I missed you too… I am so happy to be back home,” he said and hugged you tighter.

Time stood still for you. You were in your happy place and nothing could get you away from there. You pulled away and looked at Jake. You ran your index fingers on both sides of his face and then cupped his face in your hands. Jake didn’t break eye contact with you not even for a second. He softly leaned into your right hand and with his right hand, he took your free one and brought it up to his lips, leaving a kiss on it. “Come here,” he whispered and smiled at you, as his hand made its way up to your cheek, slowly guiding you in towards his lips. You closed your eyes and slightly tilted your head to the side, anticipation growing in your stomach. His lips on yours felt so soft, so satin-like and sweet. You couldn’t get enough of this feeling. As an instinctive gesture, you brought your hand up to Jake’s face and let your fingers roam over his soft skin until they mindlessly tangled into his hair. Jake chuckled in-between needier and needier kisses, “More to come later.” He softly pulled away and rested his forehead against yours. “Next time, you’ll quit your job and come with me on tour.”

“Definitely,” you giggle, already picturing it in your mind. City after city, state after state – and you’d be there to see it all. “Jakey,” you say and pout a little.

“Yes, I will cuddle with you,” he nodded his head before you even got the occasion to ask the question. You break out in laughter and fall into the bed which, now that Jake was home, was even more comfortable.

You snaked your arms around Jake’s torso and pulled yourself closer to him. Jake pulled the blanket over the two of you in one swift move and wrapped his arms around your shoulders. “I’m never letting you go,” you whisper and cuddle closer to his chest.

“Please never do,” he answered and placed a soft kiss on your forehead. “I love you.”

“I love you, too.”

“Did one of the boys tell you by any chance that we’re coming back early?”

“No, why?”

“Oh, that’s good. I wanted it to be a surprise,” he spoke lowly. “I saw you had some wine in the kitchen.”

You giggled. “It’s for us, for when you would come home.”

“I am home now,” Jake raised an eyebrow.

“I’m calling in sick again,” you announced and Jake’s laugh echoed through the room.

“That’s my girl.”

Tags: @myownparadise96, @satans-helper, @littlegeekwonder, @songbirdkisses, @angelstraightfr0mhell, @freeeshavacadoo, @safari-karrot​, @mountainofthesunn​, @bigthighsandstupidguys​, @starshinekiszka

[indomies]

#showyourprocess

From planning to posting, share your process for making creative content!

To continue supporting content makers, this tag game is meant to show the entire process of making creative content: this can be for any creation.

RULES — When your work is tagged, show the process of its creation from planning to posting, then tag up to 5 people with a specific link to one of their creative works you’d like to see the process of. Use the tag #showyourprocess so we can find yours!

sabrina @lanwangiji​, my love, tagged me to share my process of making this typography edit! check out her explanation of her the untamed edit and her edit tag. 

1. PLANNING

i once opened lyrics edit requests so i can learn and practice typography. this edit was a request as well. i asked them which lyrics they wanted to have and the colors they’d like. since i got several requests and it was hard to keep tabs on them, i made a trello board so i could organize everything. i’m still using the trello board for every edit idea i have, the board makes my life easier.

above is what i filled the card in the board with. basically just information of the requests.

1.1 INSPIRATION

once i got the request, my first thought was to find the vibe the song/lyrics exude. “it’s an old curse” screamed witchy vibes to me, so i went to pinterest to find some inspirations. at first i was looking for witchy poster designs and i came across this. i liked how it has smoke-ish graphic and i thought the smoke suited the “old curse” lyrics. and tbh pinterest is a rabbit hole, they gave me suggestions after suggestions, like this and this which became my inspiration for the color palette (i added the gold from those pics) and the sun moon design gave me the idea to incorporate space stuffs too. i somehow landed on this too, and because i wanted to include space theme, i made a simple phases of the moon. ultimately the hero of this edit was the lyrics, i didnt want the graphics took the center stage. i was inspired to make a crystal ball and do this kind of typography but after several trials i couldnt get the the typography right, so i scratched that idea and went with the space theme instead.

1.2 PICKING COLORS

after i was feeling inspired enough, i went looking for the right colors. i usually just type “color name” and “palette” on pinterest. example “dark grey color palette” and i chose the one i liked best. when the request only asked for 1 color, i always searched for either a complimentary or contrasting color to give it a jushz, to add sprinkles. that’s why i added gold on top of the dark grey. 

1.3 FINDING FONTS

this is the hardest part. the fonts play important role to the design. they need to convey the vibes of the lyrics, in this case witchy/magic vibe. i needed to find fonts or font just as magical and a bit whimsical. tho i hoard fonts... i like to use new font for every typography edit lmao sue me.

i highly recommend going to creativemarket free goods site, pixelsurplus font freebies and behance to search for fonts. i always use 100% free fonts, that means i can use it personally as well as commercially. creativemarket gives me desktop license for the fonts, which means i can use it for commercial as well. the reason i do this because i want to open an etsy shop someday, and i want to have the right license when i sell my stuffs. i almost never buy fonts bc they are expensive lmao. 

the fonts in used are “Vintage” for the main typograpy (i think i was a freebie from creativemarket) and “Morganite” for the title of the lyrics and the name of artist. 

2. CREATING

once i have my materials and ideas, i open my illustrator and hope it doesnt crash every 5 min.

for this kind of typography edits, i use 600x700 px. tbh i dont like using 540px, the suggested tumblr size, as the width bc to me it doesn’t look as good in quality, so i up the px. but more on this sizing later. i utilize the artboards function in illustrator, and i use 2 artboards.

i use illustrator (ai) bc i’m working with vectors. when i work with vectors, the graphics/texts or whatever im making in ai wont become blurry or lose its quality when i enlarge or shrink it. in compare to photoshop, i need to make for example the moon graphic very big, so i wont lose the quality when i reduce and enlarge it again. with vector, i can start small and when i expand it, it’s still as good as when it’s tiny. 

2.1 GRADIENTS

i started with the gradients first. i created a rectangle as big as 600x700px and with the “freeform gradient” tool in ai, i played with the colors. below is the color palettes i used

2.2 LYRICS AND GRAPHICS

once the gradients are done, i worked with the lyrics and graphics right away. when i first doing this edits, i made typos a lot lmaooooooo. so i copy and pasted the lyrics on top of my artboard, so i wouldnt have any typos. 

i had 3 layers in my ai. one for the inspo pics and the OG lyrics. the rest for the edits themselves. i broke up “It's an old curse/dreamers diving headfirst” into to parts, hence the 2 more layers

i almost always started with the lyrics first then the graphics. but for this edit, i made the smoke first so i can layout where my text would be.

tbh the process of making the lyrics is a trial and error. i tried bunch of different stuffs and i chose whatever the best. but i worked like methodically, i made sure i finished the first part of the lyrics first then i could move on.

i was lucky with this font “vintage”. the font offers me several glyphs like these

and i chose the one at the bottom. you’re very lucky if you find a font and they have glyphs.

excursion: glyphs vs fonts

glyph is an individual character. It might be a letter, an accented letter, a ligature, a punctuation mark, a dingbat, etc.

A font is a digital file which is used to display a typeface, which contains the entire upper- and lowercase alphabet as well as punctuation, numbers, and other special characters.

after i was finished with all the lyrics i added some graphics to make the edit pretty like small stars or dots. i added the song title and the artist too, sometimes at the bottom sometimes at the top. and i added my watermark put it as small as i could and made it a bit invisible but still can be seen.

2.3 EXPORTING

exporting! this is where i’m going to go deeper with the dimension of my work. in ai, i always choose to save with “export as screens” function. it automatically divides the artboards i have and save them separately. i always save as png, bc the size is smaller than jpg but can maintain the quality.

now the export tab looks like this

see the formats? i always scale up my edits, 2-3 times the original artboard size. reason is, to maintain the quality. i have tried to save it as original, 600x700 px, but it turned out a bit blurry. bc everything in ai is vector, when i scale up it doesnt lose the quality. BUT once i save it as png, it’s not a vector anymore, and when you zoom in until a certain degree it’ll be pixelated. that’s why i always scale up, to avoid it becoming pixelated when it’s just zoomed 1 or 2 times.

2.4 FINAL TOUCH

i opened my photoshop and also pray it won’t crash. import the png of my edits, add some grains/noise. the reason i use photoshop is, the noise filter is way better than in ai. it’s smoother somehow. and then i export my edits.

(i have a timelapse of how i made one of my edits, it’s not this one, but it’ll give you a better visualization. find it HERE

3. POSTING

now the hardest parts are done, we go to posting!

i uploaded the 2 posters on tumblr as photos then i wrote the captions. for this typography edit, i always chose another lyrics that i like from the same song for the caption. i bolded the lyrics, add link to all of my typography gradient edits.

i always use this link to color my caption. i usually choose 3-4 colors, and i took the colors from my edit. but this was not until recently lmao. before i just took a guess and looked for similar colors that match the edit, but then i thought “why didnt i just use the color in the posters lmao”

ok after i have my html code for the caption, i go to this site to replace the “;” with “ “ so tumblr can read the code.

i’m not one who puts their edits in draft, bc i just cant wait to post it. i have to option here, either i post it immediately when the time is right (i usually post between 4-8) or i schedule it, if im finished before 4. 

i put all the necessary tags and click post! i am done finally!

i’m tagging:

@thetriangletattoo​ for this amazing series

@deludedandlostcause�� for this impressive gif

@half-lightl​ for this spectacular edit

@gayndrew​ for this stunning drawing

@thechampagnelovers​ for this cool collage

@cloudslou​ for this incredible edit

@heyangels​ for this incredible edit

[master-sass-blast]

Winter Stay-cation.

*insert pithy quip here*

Summary: A massive squall hits New York City. The snow, combined with a deep freeze, brings the city that never sleeps to a standstill once the police issue travel bans. Fortunately, you and Piotr know how to keep yourselves entertained during your impromptu stay-cation.

Pairing(s): Piotr Rasputin x Reader, Nathan Summers x Wade Wilson, and Ellie Phimister x Yukio.

Rating: G for fluff.

Word Count: 3.4k.

Set after “It’s Truly Magical.”

A/N: The movie quote from Day Five is from Alfred Hitchcock’s “Rear Window.”

Taglist:  @marvel-is-perfection, @chromecutie, @girl-obsessed-with-things, @super-darkcloudstudent, @dandyqueen, @leo-writer

“—continuing into the middle of next week, if not longer. Expect heavy snowfall and temperatures below freezing, with windchill taking things below zero over the weekend.”

“Good grief.” You shake your head as you watch the weather report on the morning news. “It doesn’t get that cold when I fly full speed.”

Piotr, your husband, hands you a cup of coffee and shrugs. “January is ugly month.”

You smirk into your mug. “Bet this doesn’t compare to Siberian winters.”

“Not really,” he admits with a chuckle.

“The Chief of New York City’s Fire Department has issued a statement reminding residents to be careful when using their fireplaces and to monitor children and pets.”

“Yeah, yeah,” you quip, “Don’t use fireworks as kindling, we got it.”

Piotr snorts.

“In addition, the Police Department has issued a travel advisory in light of the predicted precipitation and sub-zero temperatures. All none-essential travel is restricted until the cold snap passes.”

“Groovy. Tell that to half the city.”

Piotr grins, shakes his head again, then turns the TV off. “Looks like we will have to keep ourselves occupied here this week.”

You cast a disparaging glance outside –where the snow is already up to Piotr’s knees—then say, “Like we were going anywhere else.”

 ***

 Day One

 There’s an upside to when the “deep freeze” hits. It’s already winter break, meaning there’s no coordinating classes, figuring out how to pick up students that don’t live at the mansion, or having to get up at the balls-ugly hours of the early morning in the stupid, frigid cold.

The two of you wake up at your leisure, around nine o’clock. You laze around in bed for a bit, snuggling and chatting and smooching, then head downstairs for breakfast. You wind up setting up shop at the dining room table, catching up on grading and filling out end of the semester report cards.

“Can you check these for me?” Piotr asks, handing you a stack of essays from his art classes. “I already made content-based marks; I am just not sure about English grammar.”

“Fun fact: most native English speakers aren’t sure about their grammar, either,” you joke with a smirk.

Piotr snorts, then checks his computer clock before standing. “Is about lunchtime. I was thinking soup and sandwiches?”

You nod. “Sounds tasty.”

“Would you like anything in particular?”

“Surprise me.” You make a contented hum when Piotr leans over the table to kiss you, then smile as you watch him head to the kitchen.

You really are the world’s luckiest woman (a sentiment you feel even more keenly when he comes back with a fresh cup of hot cider for you).

 ***

 Day Two

 “We should clean.”

The two of you are sitting on the couch. Your laptops sit on the coffee table, displaying the completed efforts of uploading grades to the online gradebook that the school uses. Two mugs that once contained coffee sit next to either laptop.

You look up at Piotr. You’re tucked against his side, head leaning on his shoulder while his fingers trace designs on the sleeve of your sweater (which is technically his sweater, but that’s neither here nor there). “Huh?”

“We should clean,” he repeats as he scrubs at his face with his free hand. “House could use it.”

You crane your neck to look over his shoulder. “We don’t really have that many dirty dishes.”

Piotr snorts, then raises an eyebrow at you. “When was last time we vacuumed? Or deep cleaned bathrooms? Or washed windows?”

“We can see out the windows just fine!”

Piotr grins and shakes his head. He stands, holding his hand out to you. “Come on, myshka. Clean home, clean mind.”

“I’ll have you know that my mind is nothing but dirty, and I’m offended that you would dare insinuate otherwise.”

Piotr laughs and helps you up. “We can start upstairs and work our way down.”

 ***

 Cleaning with Piotr isn’t so bad. He carries his fair share of the workload, does things to their proper doneness, and is a firm supporter of blasting tunes while cleaning.

“Take! Me! On!” You bounce up and down in time with the beat while you clean the sliding glass doors in your bedroom that lead out to the balcony. “I’ll… be… gone! In a day or two!”

Behind you, Piotr laughs. He’s hauling out a trashbag from the bathroom –no doubt filled with the sheer amount of crumpled paper towels it takes to get the place sanitary again. “I see you are enjoying yourself.”

“Absolutely not. I’m suffering endlessly. I’m going to die any minute now.” And then, to prove you point, you flop to the floor dramatically (taking care to use your powers to cushion your landing).

Piotr lets out a choked gasp, then clutches at his chest. “You keep scared me!”

You look up at him and laugh. “You know I can catch myself! You’ve seen me do that before!”

“Changes nothing!” He lets out a ragged breath, hand still pressed over his heart. “I could have heart attack.”

You giggle, then lift yourself off the floor with a swirl of wind. You land nimbly on your toes before him and wrap your arms around his waist. “Aw, now who’s being dramatic?”

“I fail to see how concern for your well-being is dramatic!”

You suppress a grin, opting to pop up on the balls of your feet and kiss him instead. “I’m very sorry I scared you, baby.”

“Is okay.” He kisses you gently, then gazes down at you with a rueful smile on his lips. “What am I going to do with you, myshka?”

“Dance with me?” You flash him an impish smile, then start bouncing in time to the music again.

Piotr chuckles, then takes your hands in his and bops along with you.

The two of you dance around the room –well, as much as what you’re doing can be called dancing. You sing the lyrics of the song to each other, not sticking to any particular key or tempo.

You laugh when Piotr lifts you into his arms, bridal style, then squeal in delight when he spins the two of you around.

It’s perfect.

 ***

 Day Three

 You wake up to the sound of Piotr’s phone chirping –because, even on vacation, he still keeps a daily morning alarm.

He groans as he comes to, then laughs when you roll over him and shut off his alarm for him. “Well, good morning to you, too.”

You set his phone back on his nightstand, then straddle his hips and plant your hands against his brawny chest. “You’re not making me clean today.”

Piotr smirks up at you, bushy eyebrow raising in challenge. “Oh?”

“We’re spending today in this bed,” you continue. “Just you” –you tap his chest—“and me, and as few clothes as possible. Sound good?”

He pretends to mull it over, even has he takes off the shirt he’d been sleeping in. “Are we allowed bathroom and meal breaks?”

“I’ll allow it.”

“Ah, very generous. Thank you, benevolent myshka.”

“You’re very welcome.” You giggle when he grins –then let out a delighted yelp when he rolls suddenly, pinning you between him and the bed. You sigh as he kisses you, eyes fluttering shut. You arms wind around his neck, holding him against you while his hands smooth down your body.

 ***

 Day Four

 Cabin fever starts setting in between the third and fourth day. There’s only so many chores you can do, only so many papers you can grade (and you’re out of papers to grade, which doesn’t help your case), only so much sex you can have before you’re gonna start losing your mind.

Fortunately, Piotr is well-attuned to you and your mental states –meaning he notices that you’re getting twitchy before you dip into pyromania to keep yourself entertained.

“We should do something fun today,” he says during breakfast. He spreads some sour cream over his plate of blinis, then adds cottage cheese and sausage meat. “Perhaps play some video games. Ellie has been pestering me to play some multi-people games with her and Yukio.”

“Could be fun,” you say before stuffing your mouth full with Nutella-covered blini. You swallow, then ask, “What did she want to play?”

“Ah… she had two. I think… Falling Guys and Among Us?”

A slow, wicked grin stretches across your place. Fuck yeah. “Let her know we’re in.”

 ***

 Piotr, unfortunately, turns out to be none too good at Fall Guys.

“No!” He wails, then flops back against the couch when he gets thrown off a platform and into the slime. “I could not run away!”

“You have to anticipate the enemy’s movements,” Ellie says over Discord. She’s already qualified and is spectating you and Yukio. “Predict their strategy, then counter.”

“I think it is less strategy and more ‘giant hands do not play nice with tiny controller,’” Piotr grumbles good-naturedly.

“Or maybe you got your butt kicked like a scrub,” Ellie fires back.

“I never contested that,” Piotr chuckles.

“Alright,” you say, eyes glued on your pink and yellow striped player. “I’m almost there, there’s plenty of slots left –no, you fucking pigeon! Let me go!”

“Language,” Piotr murmurs between bouts of laughter.

“It’s always a pigeon!” Ellie groans. “Fucking skyrats.”

“Language, NTW.”

You qualify for the next round (no thanks to the damn pigeon, who qualifies, too). Egg Scramble is next, and you wind up facing off against Ellie and Yukio for the win.

“Damn it!” There’s the sound of something hitting the floor –most likely Ellie throwing her controller—when she and Yukio get booted out. “Yellow always loses!”

“Is that it?” you ask while the loading screen plays. “Are we at the final round yet?”

“There’ll be one more,” Yukio says. “To finish whittling down the competitors.”

Sure enough, there’s a round of Tip-Toe –which you get through by the skin of your teeth—and then you and eight other players are sent to the finale.

“Okay, Hex-A-Gone. You’ll want to just hop from tile to tile,” Ellie advises you while the level loads. “It makes the tiles last longer.”

“Don’t be afraid to drop a couple levels at first,” Yukio adds. “You can carve out one of the lower levels, meaning anyone that falls above you will have further to go and will be more likely to get out.”

“I appreciate it, but don’t expect any miracles,” you say, laughing self-deprecatingly.

Piotr kisses the top of your head. “You can do this, myshka.”

You follow the girls’ advice; you let yourself drop down two levels, then start hopping from tile to tile to start carving out the platform.

“One guy’s already out!” Ellie announces. “You’ve got this!”

“Shit! I fell!”

“That’s okay,” Yukio reassures you. “Find a decent mass of tiles and hop, don’t run. Make them last.”

“The pigeon grabbed another player,” Piotr marvels, shaking his head.

“Yeah, well, they both died, so fat lot of good it did them,” Ellie mutters.

You keep going, bounce from brightly colored hexagon to brightly colored hexagon.

“Only four left!” Ellie lets out a whoop. “Holy shit, you’re gonna make it!”

“Don’t jinx me!” you laugh as you dodge another player’s attempt to grab you. “Don’t jinx me!”

“Three left –two! It’s just you and one other guy!”

“You’ve got this, Y/N!” Yukio cheers.

You dive for a clump of tiles –and miss. “No!” You groan, then laugh as your character plummets into the pink slime. “Damn. I’m never going to do that good ever again.”

Piotr wraps an arm around your shoulders in a conciliatory hug. “You did wonderful job, myshka.”

“He’s right. That was really good. The winner fell a few seconds after you, so it was basically a coin toss as to who was gonna get the crown,” Ellie says while the winner’s animation plays on screen.

“Yeah! Great job!” Yukio congratulates you.

“Wanna do another round?” Ellie asks as she flicks between skins and accessories for her avatar.

Yukio laughs lightly. “Baby, we were going to get lunch.”

“Oh, right.”

“Perhaps we can try other game after lunch,” Piotr suggests. “‘Fall Guys’ is okay, but makes me too dizzy.”

“Yeah, sure. Text me when you guys are done eating.”

***

 Among Us doesn’t go much better for Piotr, if only because he doesn’t adhere to the strategy of the game. He does his tasks without fail –which usually leaves him alone, and thus a prime target for killing or pinning a murder on. He’s also a terrible liar, which makes it easy to tell when he is the impostor.

You laugh as Piotr’s little red spaceman goes floating into space. “I honestly feel bad.”

“I don’t,” Wade says (he and Nate hopped on the Discord call when Yukio sent them an invite). “Pay for some acting classes, Chrome Dome! Give us a challenge, at least.”

Piotr starts grumbling in Russian, but it gets cut off when the round starts up again.

(You all still wind up losing because Nate’s the other impostor and racks up bodies like nobody’s business.)

“I’m still waiting for when Ellie and Dad get the impostor role together,” you comment as the defeat screen flashes on your laptop screen.

“What, so we all die in five minutes?” Wade grumbles. “So we can suffer the agony of betrayal and not honoring trust again?”

“It’s just a game, Wade,” Nate sighs. “And I apologized already.”

“Is our relationship ‘just a game’ to you, Natey? I gave you an alibi –and then you shanked me in the shower like rejected prison bitch!”

“Language, Wade,” your husband pipes up, voice world-weary. “Please.”

You all start another round once Wade calms down –which, admittedly, takes a while and a great deal of coaxing from Nathan. You grin when you see that you’re an impostor alongside Yukio –then giggle to yourself when a plan pops into your mind.

You start stalking Piotr around the map. You fake doing tasks alongside him, acting as his shadow as he treks around the map. On the corner of your screen, you watch your kill timer wind down, then wait for the right moment once it runs out, and—

Downstairs, in his art studio, your husband lets out an indignant scream when your character murders his.

You fall back onto the bed and cackle.

 ***

 Day Five

 The squall rages on outside. The world is practically buried in snow. It’s a sea of white outside your bedroom windows, blinding and sterile.

You peer at the swaths of snow blanketing every inch of ground, every tree branch, and every shrub, then nestle further under the blankets. “Ugh. I don’t even want to get out of bed today.”

Piotr chuckles, then wraps an arm around your waist. “How come?”

“Have you seen what it’s like outside? It’s disgusting!”

“I thought you liked snow.”

“I do. That’s how you know it’s bad.” You sigh as you eye the fat, fluffy flakes falling from the sky. “I wish I could, like, go outside. Go to a store or something. Leave the house.”

“Is not safe to drive yet.”

“I know, I know.” You sigh. “Is it bad that I miss the color green?”

“Nyet. Is normal.”

You smile, just a little, when Piotr kisses the back of your head. You roll over to face him. “Can we build a blanket fort today?”

He raises an eyebrow. “What… here? In bedroom?”

“Yeah. We can make it look all pretty, and snuggle in bed, and watch movies, and have sex…”

“Bozhe ty moi.” Piotr snorts, then takes a moment to study your face, your eyes. “You really want blanket fort?”

“Kind of, yeah. I just… I want something new to look at.”

The corner of his mouth turns up in a soft smile. He presses his lips against your forehead. “Alright, myshka. Let’s make fort.”

***

 “When a man and a woman see each other and like each other, they ought to come together. Wham. Like a couple of taxis on Broadway.”

You let out a content, relaxed sigh, then wriggle closer to Piotr.

The fort, admittedly, is simple –but you don’t mind. While you were taking a shower, Piotr assembled the whole thing, just to give you a little surprise.

He’d brought up a couple floor lamps from the main floor, then clipped some fairy lights to them before draping the largest quilt in the house over top to make the room. He’d pinned some throw blankets to either side of the quilt to make the sides, then made the bed and assembled the pillows so the two of you could have a nice, cozy, comfy den to watch movies in.

The recurring, delighted thought of ‘he made it for me; he made it for me because he knew I wanted one’ loops around in your brain like a bumblebee drunk on fermented crab apples. You grin, then loop your arms around Piotr’s neck and kiss his cheek.

He grins, cheeks flushing ever so slightly. “What was that for?”

“You made me a blanket fort.”

“You asked for one.”

“Yeah, but you made it for me. You could’ve just waited until we could both work on it.”

He shrugs, lips curving into a soft, pleased smile. “I wanted to see look on face. You were very happy.”

“Correction: I am very happy.” You kiss the tip of his nose, then his lips. “I love you, Piotr.”

“And I love you, Y/N.”

 ***

 Day Six

 You know it’s bad when you wake up before Piotr.

You look over at your husband, who’s still slumbering away next to you –and sawing some logs, no less—then out at the winter hellscape outside, and decide there’s only one thing for it.

You’re channeling your inner Great British Bake Off contestant and demolishing the kitchen.

***

 Piotr comes downstairs around ten in the morning –which is a miraculous amount of sleep in time for him—but by then, the damage has already been done.

There’s a cake cooling on the counter (you’d found a box of cake mix in the back of the pantry and decided to use it as a warm-up. The mixer is working overtime on a double batch of sugar cookies –plus there’s already chocolate chip cookie dough chilling in the fridge.

You look up from the cookbook you’d been perusing –you were thinking pie next—and flash your husband a slightly sheepish grin as he gapes at the kitchen. “Uh… good morning?”

“Myshka…”

“I made cake.”

“I can see that.” Piotr drops his heads into his hands and makes a noise somewhere between a groan and a laugh. “Why?”

“Because being trapped inside is stressing me out and I want to cope by eating my weight in desserts.”

Piotr sighs, then lifts his head. He eyes the mixer, then the increasingly sheepish expression on your face. “How much is that?”

“In the bowl or in the fridge?”

“Bozhe ty moi.”

“Look, the way I see it, we can share—”

“You have that much correct. We do not need five million cookies.”

“Excuse you, I’m only making three million. Also, do you know where the lard is?”

Piotr’s face scrunches up. “Lard? Why—”

“I wanna make pie.”

He pinches the bridge of his nose. “We already have cake. And goodness knows how many kinds of cookies.”

“But those aren’t pie.” You smile impishly at him. “Plus, like, pie has fruit, so it’s good for you. You like fruit. Think about how good it’ll be to eat something with fruit after all the cake, and the cookies…”

“Or I could just eat fruit.” He sighs, resigned and slightly frustrated, when you bat your eyelashes at him. “I will check pantry.”

***

 Day Seven

 “—as of today, authorities are lifting the ban on nonessential travel—”

“Yes!” You launch yourself into the air, twirling around and pumping your fists before landing lightly on the couch once more. “Finally!”

Piotr laughs and shakes his head. “What, is staying inside with me so terrible?”

“Absolutely not.” You crawl across the couch and into his lap, then give him a loud smooch. “I have enjoyed every single day of your company. However, you’ve got about fifteen minutes before I start repainting the walls out of sheer boredom.”

Piotr bursts into raucous guffaws. He puts a hand over his eyes, shoulders and stomach shaking with each laugh. He sighs, wiping tears of mirth from his eyes as minute giggles slip past his lips. “Well, we do need to restock on food. And flour and butter, since someone decided to open bakery yesterday.”

You pointedly ignore the pies and full cookie jar sitting on the kitchen counter. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

He snorts, then pats your thigh. “Get dressed, myshka. We will go shopping.”

“Fuck yeah!” You zip up the stairs.

Downstairs, you can hear Piotr start laughing again.

[declencurran98]

Who am i as an artist: Essay & Analysis

I have been a printmaker now for over a year and a half, attempting and producing various types of prints, but as time has went on, I have become more confident in Screen-printing and seems to be my go-to so I will work towards that process in greater depth. Screen-printing is the printing process of transferring a design onto a relatively flat surface or textile by using Ink, a Silk/ mesh screen and Squeegee. Screen-printing has been a constantly evolving process that has become a favourite and Widley used because its colours are so vivid on dark fabrics, allows the printmaker to reproduce a design multiple time of various shapes and sizes, creates bold highly detailed prints with a wide range of inks available. I have become more familiar with this process over my HNC with creating very high standard and multicoloured pieces on various textiles with combining and printing digitally created threshold images onto tracing paper and transferring/ exposing them onto silk screens and for me, it’s a very rewarding process if done right. I have chosen to work towards Screen-printing as I am very organised and fluent in how I produce and style my work. The process and style stand out to me as a printer in terms of how freely you can layer and change the piece if you desire to create a depth on the piece or even develop it into a whole new piece which always gives a new perspective. Over time i would like to produce a portfolio that clearly demonstrates and expresses me as a person and an artist. 

Chuck Sperry

Chuck Sperry is an American Printmaker who has been producing rock-based prints in San Francisco for the past decade. He specialises in multi coloured rock posters which catch the eye upon first glance. His use of colour and topic really depicts what he tries to convey through his style and artwork. His work can be compared to classic cultural murals with the sheer amount of detail and appropriation to colour and topic.

"Empathy" (2021)

Chuck Sperry. (2021). “Empathy” Blotter Art Release. [online] Available at: https://chucksperry.net/empathy-blotter-art-release-2/ [Accessed 14 Mar. 2021].

When looking at Sperry’s work, its clear he knows how to use colour appropriately, the way he mixes cold and warm colours to create a fresh perspective is quite an accomplishment. When first viewing his piece “Empathy”, my eyes instantly went to the blue section of the artwork as it feels like the coldest part of the image with the outer colours surrounding the blue feeling more enclosed and darker, it’s like Sperry did this intentionally to capture the viewers eye and make you look further into the print. The more I analyse this image, the more patterns I capture in the females skin and the gaps between the green flowers, it adds more depth to an already immersive print, The direction of the females stature facing towards the viewer with her eyes looking right at you creates this sense of mystery and welcoming which makes you want to know back story on her. The overall image gives off the idea that we should accept natural beauty like the female in the image has, she appears to be naturally faced with no make-up enhancements being present and is surrounded by nature in its truest form with no technology or human created materials shown. Sperry has blended floral decoration with natural human physique to give off the impression that this female is one with nature and the calmness in her facial expression makes you feel the same. The choices of colour used on this piece create a distinct aura of fresh and vibrant which adds to the images overall natural beauty, you find yourself being constantly drawn to another part of the image with how the yellow and orange bleed and blend into the green leaves and blue smaller flowers and when your eyes get used to that colour palette, the pink/magenta floral art grabs your attention making you spend more time analysing and investing in this print. The style Sperry has chosen for this image works as its already an busy image with lots of colour so his choice to keep the style simple but adding a lot of detail without it overtaking the image is an accomplishment. Overall this piece works visually and expressively giving the human eye something new to look at the longer the gaze.

Dogboy

Dogboy, also known as Philip Huntington, is a Camberwell College of Arts graduate who mixes and incorporates Screen prints and digital methods in his work. I came across Dogboy when first researching screen-print artists and his work stood out as it was bright, whimsical and mysterious which gives them their impressiveness. Dogboys work spans from the very obvious to the very abstract, showing that they don’t go into every piece produced with an idea of what they are trying to convey.

"Mutation"

Dogboy Illustration. (n.d.). MUTATION. [online] Available at: https://www.dogboy.co/work/illustration/mutation.

Out of all the prints Dogboy has produced, this one stood out to me due to its cold tonal presence. Even if you don’t have an understanding of what is going on in the image, the colour palette used is enough to draw you in and get you thinking. The image itself gives off a sense of helplessness as it depicts some sort of future, dystopian setting with the patterns along the walls and ceiling almost looking like 20th century depictions of spacecrafts on television, “people” horded together in a hole in the middle of the image desperately trying to escape while there are what appear to be “guards” just standing by, watching them pathetically attempt to escape. What makes this image stand out is how controlled yet unpredicting this image is. The amount of detail in this image makes it feel more real as the colour palette draws your eyes with how the turquoise mixes in with the lighter shade to create depth and vibrance in a cold, desolate image. The way Dogboy has kept the black part of the screen-print in the image imperfect adds to the density and darkness of the image while almost making it feel on purpose. When you aren’t drawn to the figures at the bottom, your eyes get drawn to the amount of different patterns and things going on in the top image, the sharp zig-zags and single line colours make the ares of the image seem si-fi and immersive, yet again another part of the image not lacking in detail and intricacy. It’s not clear what Dogboy is trying to convey or portray in this image, but I think that was his idea while creating this piece, To give the viewer no definition of what’s going on apart from the title of the piece and the image itself, to then let the viewers mind create its own depiction of what’s going on. Pieces like this stick in the mind as you’re brain is trying to create an understanding of what you’re visually seeing.

Rob Corradetti

Rob Corradetti is a Bay Area based artist who specialises in Screenprints, paintings, T-shirts, comics and Psychedelic pieces. His style is quoted as “a blend of head shop and punk rock” which he was inspired by in his coming of age in the early 1990’s. The thing that stands out about Robs work is how bright and fun it looks on first glance but makes you want to see more. He has collaborated with many pop culture bands and brands such as VANS, Buzzfeed and Wiz Khalifa. 

"Death At Home" (2016)

Etsy. (n.d.). Death at Home Screen Print. [online] Available at: https://www.etsy.com/uk/listing/288520471/death-at-home-screen-print?show_sold_out_detail=1&ref=nla_listing_details [Accessed 14 Mar. 2021].

I had a look through Robs inventory of prints and its clear in all his pieces that he tries to give insight into different perspectives and his piece “Death At Home” is a great example. The images black background sets the overall tone of the image as it makes the environment seem enclosed and small focusing all your attention on the white outlines and patterns. This type of colour palette works for pieces like this, as theres alot of dexterity and There is so much going on in this image but yet still maintaining its overall image which creates this impressive, eye catchiness to the viewer. My interpretation of what is portrayed in this image is we as humans are so obsessed and reliant on technology that we spend most of our times indoors, In front of a television slowly rotting away in the comforts of our own homes till death. This is shown by the skeletal figure sitting close to the television, smoking and drinking, playing a videogame which states “game over” on the television which could be a metaphor for the once human now skeletal figure playing a game of life that they have now lost. Rob has succeeded in trying to portray this with his bold white and black colour palette blending together and the composition of the image giving the viewer an unknown sense of wonder. The image has so much going on in terms of detail and presence with how each white outline of the garb is its own and if you look even longer, you start to see other patterns and things going on in the image like the spiral swirls and eyes staring at the viewer. The image gives off a feeling of unsureness as it doesn’t really explain what’s going on too much, yet another piece of screen-print that makes the viewer create their own interpretation of this image. The pop art style really lifts the image off the ground and catches the eye even with its two-colour palette which is a great choice. Overall the detail, the matter of the image and the way is composed gives “Death At Home” so much revisit value in terms of what the viewer finds in the image and their interpretation. The image upon multiple viewings gives off this aura of Horror and when you delve into the image and what it stands for, it works. 

References:

Chuck Sperry

Info:

Chuck Sperry. (n.d.). About. [online] Available at: https://chucksperry.net/about/.

Image:

Netdna-ssl.com. (2021). [online] Available at: https://3nmir91xseyl7jrgx40dgp41-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/EMPATHY-BLOTTER.jpg [Accessed 14 Mar. 2021].

Dogboy

Info:

Chayasatit, A. (2013). People of Print: 20 Screen Print Artists You Should All Know About. [online] People of Print. Available at: https://www.peopleofprint.com/general/people-of-print-20-screen-printers-you-should-know-about/.

Image:

Dogboy Illustration. (n.d.). MUTATION. [online] Available at: https://www.dogboy.co/work/illustration/mutation.

Rob Corradetti

Info:

tumblr. (n.d.). Tumblr. [online] Available at: https://robcorradetti.com/info.

Image:

Etsy. (n.d.). Death at Home Screen Print. [online] Available at: https://www.etsy.com/uk/listing/288520471/death-at-home-screen-print?show_sold_out_detail=1&ref=nla_listing_details [Accessed 14 Mar. 2021].

‌

Wordcount: 1537

[the-good-noodle-kf]

Redacted (First) Impressions

My Saiou Winter Exchange Gift for @evil-muffins

Prompt: Pre-game fic, angsty w/ a side of fluff

Hope you like c: 

I.

Life has no meaning.

-

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 “My name is ******* ***. My audition number is three-hundred fifty-one.”

“I’m… always looked down on and.. I probably deserve it. So, I thought, fuck my memories huh? It’s not like I care about anyone. Just… I don’t want to be weak anymore. I want to be rewritten as someone less weak. Maybe I could be someone to look up to, like a leader. But, it doesn’t matter what I am; I’m desperate, and isn’t that what you want from people? People so desperate that they’ll willingly offer their lives away to become part of a killing game?”

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 -

Every day is a string of bland pointless blurs that bleed into the next like watercolor paint. 

So, why not make life as interesting as possible?

-

Kokichi Oma stares blankly. He presses down on the lit power button of his computer monitor, effectively shutting it off. It’s done. That’s it. The chance that they’ll consider him is low, but maybe they - Team Danganronpa - will find value in him that no one else has. He barely got a submission number. It took hours of staying awake, eyes peeled, staring at the stinging blue light of the screen until he requested an audition as fast as he possibly could. Even still, he ended up with number three-hundred fifty-one. He wonders how someone could possibly get the first audition. 

Applying for Danganronpa has become much more… commonplace, ever since they began using simulation technology. As strange as it may seem, not everyone is exactly willing to stake their lives on a show, but for some, their memories are a small price to pay for becoming a part of the show. Though it might also have something to do with the prize money, Oma doesn’t care much about that. He’s omniscient enough to know that he definitely doesn’t have a very high self-worth… or self-preservation for that matter, but it’s not like he can change that just from being aware of it.

II.

School is boring.

Each additional day of school he's feeling more tired and drained, regardless of how much he falls asleep in class. What is the point of working if he has nothing to work towards? 

III.

Shuichi Saihara.

It’s the name of his new coworker… the one he’s supposed to be training. Oma’s worked at the place for not even a year, yet his boss says he’s qualified to teach the boy that was hired just a few days ago. 

“Thank you for shopping! Have a great day!” He repeats his response, with his cyclic forced smile bridging his cheeks. It’s almost robotic, in how habitual and automatic it’s become after saying it to every single customer once they’ve paid. He looks to Saihara once the little bell on the door rings, signaling the exit of the customer, and he’s back to his normal expression. It’s not a frown, but it’s definitely not a smile either. “And that’s it. Did you want to try?” he offers, not really sure himself.

Saihara’s staring at him closely, like he doesn’t know what to make of him, but yet he still startles at the response. His brows furrow together but he does nod, so Oma moves aside and lets Saihara stand in front of the register instead. Saihara mumbles as he looks down at the keys, “I wonder why...”

Oma tilts his head at the unfinished sentence as he assesses Saihara. He’s taller than him, and he seems nervous. Oma can also see that he’s good looking, but he probably isn’t a very popular or outgoing person, judging by his mannerisms. 

IV.

Working is… habitual for Oma. It’s not that he particularly hates it, and he does make money, but he only does it because he knows that he’d otherwise be doing legitimately nothing, and doing something at least makes him feel a little better about himself. Regardless of how much he dreads being a functional human being in general, he has to - he has to because he’s terrified of what will happen if he stops. 

V.

“Ah, Oma-kun,”

Oma looks over with curiosity at the other as he restocks shelves. It’s only the two of them right now. There haven’t been many customers because of the cold, dreary weather. It’s also a Monday, so people are too busy working or at afterschool activities to have any need to stop at the relatively small convenience store. 

“Your cheek…” Saihara trails off, scratching his wrist, and Oma reflexively lifts his hand and brushes his fingers over the scrape, reminding him of it with a slight sting.

He lifts up the corners of his cheeks, walls raising, “hmmmm?” 

“W-wait, I have-” Saihara cuts himself off as he runs off into the employee’s only door. It’s a little room with a few tiny lockers that Oma throws his school bag in on the days he comes straight from school. Saihara comes back with a bag of his own and huh- Oma didn’t expect Saihara to have so many Danganronpa pins, or any really; there’s a little Monokuma keychain hanging from one of the zippers too. He raises his eyebrows and even smiles a little bit at the thought of someone else liking what he likes, but it’s smothered by the fear of being known, of showing who he really is, and Saihara is oblivious to all this as he tugs a band-aid out of the front pocket and hands it to Oma. 

It’s like his mind fizzles like a burnt-out lightbulb for a second when Saihara, instead of just handing him the band-aid like a normal person, envelops Oma’s hand with his own and deposits the band-aid with the other. Oma’s sure that’s not normally how people give other people band-aids, or anything, but the feeling of Saihara’s shockingly warm hand is gone as quick as it arrived when he releases him and smiles. Oma’s even more embarrassed because he actually briefly considered if Saihara was a warm or cold hands person, which isn’t normal, because who does that? Who thinks about their co-worker’s hand temperature - who he doesn’t really know, but seems really nice, if handing him a band-aid could be considered a point of reference. 

Oma’s not even sure what tangent his mind is going off on this time, so he looks down in his hand at the band-aid and sees that - huh, it’s got Kyoko Kirigiri on it. He must’ve mumbled her name aloud because Saihara gasps and has an expression that almost reminds Oma of a dog wagging its tail. “You watch Danganronpa?” Saihara grabs his hands again, and Oma knows he can’t blame his blush on anything else but Saihara if questioned. 

He squeaks out an “mhm,” and tries to look back at the band-aid that’s now fallen on the floor after Saihara grabbed his hands, and he ends up just looking at their hands. Why is he so focused on Saihara holding his hands? 

Saihara lets go and runs to put his bag away again, at least, that’s what Oma assumes. It gives him a moment to pick the band-aid up off the floor and come to realize why, in fact, Saihara handed him the band-aid in the first place. ...Does he… expect me to put this band-aid on my face? 

...But, it would be rude not to. So he opens the band-aid and sticks it on his face, approximating where he puts the cottony part over the place on his face that’s stinging the most when he brushes his finger over it. It wasn’t even bleeding, but Saihara practically beams when he comes back, and the rest of his shift goes by like a fog. He’s not really able to focus on anything after experiencing that - he was completely unprepared. 

VI.

Oma isn’t sure why he keeps thinking about Saihara. He’s ashamed of himself. Why does he keep going back to the feeling of Saihara’s hands on his? It was completely… platonic? Except Oma doesn’t think that word works either, because there’s no way him and Saihara are friends, even if they’ve spent a total of fifteen hours together total since he met Saihara three days ago; he’s known him three days, and already, he has some dumb, crush, or something. He doesn’t know what to do with it, and having not had any physical contact that wasn’t bodily damaging with someone in as many years as he can remember, isn’t helping him. He groans aloud as he face-plants into the open textbook on his mattress. He wouldn’t call it a bed, since it has no sheets and sits on the floor instead of being sandwiched between a bed frame. 

He peers over to the side of his resting place where his little trash can is and of course, there’s the band-aid that he peeled from his cheek immediately after getting back from work last night - not home, he’s never “home” when he’s here - and of course everything he looks at is reminding him of the boy. 

He’s not supposed to do this - to want to be held; he’s not a damn child. He definitely can’t count the number of times he’s thought about Saihara hugging him on one hand. He’s not supposed to do this. 

For one of many times, he wonders why he’s like this. Why is he like this?

VII.

Oma’s something of a… target, at school. He fits the parameters perfectly; he’s small, short, effeminate, generally weak, quiet. It’s nothing dramatic like being beaten up within the school, luckily. It’s the little things, like being tripped in the hallways by an upperclassmen’s ‘conveniently’ outstretched foot and then snickered at, having a book of his be hung high above his head, out of his reach, by another student until he repeated whatever idiotic thing they wanted him to say, the occasional mockery, his belongings getting stolen when he’s not looking, being chosen as the designated monkey in the middle as his belongings are tossed between two guys that think they’re the absolute pinnacle of comedy, and various other meaningless things he deals with.

School is something he can handle, though. 

VIII.

“Oma-kun.” Saihara ducks his head as he pushes his phone into Oma’s hands. It’s open on the contacts screen, and Oma stares at it for a second, the unfilled contact info, before realizing it’s Saihara’s roundabout way of asking him for his number. He smiles a little and Saihara’s eyes widen, his expression becoming pretty serious as he takes in Oma’s grin. 

Oma doesn’t realize he’s smiling until Saihara points it out, “You’re smiling.” 

Even though he’s a little self-conscious now it’s been acknowledged, he still nods, and smiles even wider; he hands the phone back to Saihara, his number in place.

IX.

He wishes he could handle being home as well as he can handle school.

X.

Saihara texts Oma a lot. 

He’s constantly sending messages about anything and everything, especially Danganronpa. As Oma reads through he wonders if Saihara just texts him every time he thinks something. It doesn’t bother him though; every time he gets a new message he smiles in a way that he would deny if he were face to face with Saihara. 

It’s a little weird, but hearing Saihara’s thoughts and theories and opinions is so interesting. Oma really hopes Saihara doesn’t get discouraged by his own lack of response. He doesn’t ignore him, but his replies are far and few between - things like little smile emotes and one-word responses. He doesn’t exactly know how to reply otherwise.

He can’t help but feel hesitant. Talking about his own opinions makes him feel self-centered and narcissistic, and he wants to be anything but that. What if Saihara thinks that he turns everything around to make it about himself? Saihara probably doesn’t want to hear what he has to say anyway… Oma’s come to accept the fact that people don’t want to hear what he has to say, so he stays quiet. 

That doesn’t stop him from reading all of Saihara’s messages over again and grinning secretively under his blanket.

XI.

Saihara invites him over the next day. It’s Sunday, and neither of them is scheduled at work, so Oma accepts. 

Getting ready is nerve-wracking for Oma, because he can’t remember the last time he had a friend to hang out with. It’s such a “normal people” thing to do - leisurely spend the day with friends. It’s a thing that feels so out of the ordinary to someone like Oma. He puts on a long sleeve shirt but then changes out of it after his nervousness makes his body temperature rise, and the sleeves feel a little too tight and warm. He puts it on again because of how bare his arms feel in a T-shirt and maneuvers around the floor and out the door before he can change his mind or before his aunt notices his presence. 

The first impression Oma has of Saihara’s living space is that it’s quiet. It’s also pretty neat and ordinary, and Saihara makes no mention of any parents or relatives which leaves Oma feeling a little curious. 

The day is surreal. He and Saihara talk and watch some of the earlier seasons of Danganronpa while eating some artificial tasting junk food, and it’s fun. It’s so fun. He’s shocked about how natural it feels, spending time with the other boy. He doesn’t think he’s ever felt so content, ever had a true, genuine smile on his face for so long - ever had someone else have such a genuine smile on their face in return. 

Saihara asks him things and he answers them, because if he’s asked, then he can talk about himself. Oma’s glad that Saihara wants to know about him just as much as he wants to learn about Saihara.

He wants it to last, and there’s a twisting feeling in his chest because he’s already convinced that it won’t.

-

When Oma gets back, it’s late enough that he has to sneak in through his window - the apartment is on the ground floor, and the screen already has holes torn into it that make it easy to reach in and remove before placing it back and latching it in. The brass latch reminds him of the color of Shuichi’s eyes as he locks it - Oma’s not sure when Saihara became Shuichi - and he’s so caught up in Shuichi, and talking to Shuichi, that he jumps when a door slams, shaking all thoughts of his day out of his mind. 

XII.

Oma doesn’t know what to do. The day after visiting Saihara had been one of the worse ones recently, and Shuichi catches onto it through his messages somehow and asks him if he’s okay of all things.

And Oma replies, “why?”

Oma doesn’t know what to do when Shuichi Saihara sends him the five-word message, “because I care about you…”

No one cares about him. That’s just how things are. There’s no way Saihara actually cares about him. Why would he? 

XIII.

If Shuichi cares about him, then why couldn’t his parents? 

XIV.

He’s not exactly sure when he and Shuichi became friends, but he supposes it happened somewhere between Shuichi making it known that he was generally concerned for Oma’s well being, (that’s never happened to him before; have someone be concerned? About him? The ridiculous idea rolls around in Oma’s head like an optimistic interposition), Oma realizing that on his days off, he’d long for Shuichi’s presence, and their countless messages to each other that make the longing a little more bearable. 

It’s new to Oma. He’s never… craved the company of another. It makes him feel pathetic, but also… kind of lonely. 

It makes the moments when he’s around Shuichi all the better. 

XV.

He becomes Kokichi to Shuichi. Being addressed by his given name, despite giving Shuichi his explicit permission, makes Kokichi feel giddy.

XVI.

School isn’t so bad… especially on the days that Shuichi takes the train over so they can walk home together.

Side by side.

 Hand in hand.

 XVII.

He wants to kiss Shuichi.

XVIII.

Kokichi’s room is a less depressing place when he has Shuichi to sneak in. The two of them waste time by watching movies on Kokichi’s computer or playing board games that Shuichi carried in. 

XIX.

Shuichi speaks up from behind the register when the store is devoid of customers. “I noticed…” he starts, scratching at his wrist, and Kokichi looks up to make eye contact “at first, you always had this smile on, but it was just pretend…”

Kokichi doesn’t have time to react before Shuichi’s continuing his train of thought.

“But when I asked for your phone number, you had a different smile for the first time. It made me really happy to see that I made you smile for real…” Shuichi fumbles with his hands, but Kokichi doubts that Shuichi’s more embarrassed than he is after hearing something so… sentimental. 

XX.

Shuichi’s favorite thing about Kokichi may be seeing him smile, but Kokichi’s favorite thing about Shuichi is feeling his warm arms enveloping him when they hug.

Kokichi’s feelings have escalated so much that he’s drowning in them, and he doesn’t ever want to come up for air. 

XXI.

Oma’s long sleeves usually hide the finger-sized bruises on his arms, but he can’t hide the ones around his neck.

Shuichi goes on high alert as he shuts the door behind them. It is the first time he’s seeing where Kokichi lives - besides when he snuck into Kokichi’s window with snacks to watch a movie on his computer - but it isn’t the time to take notice of the dilapidated state of the furniture and wallpaper. All he can focus on is the alarming marks on Kokichi’s neck that look like someone shoved him up against a wall and didn’t let him breathe for who knows how long. “What happened?" Concerned, he reaches a hand out to gesture and Oma flinches. 

Oma wants to tell him, “I forgot to lock the door, so my aunt got mad,” because, she didn’t want him to begin with, it’s not her fault she got stuck with him after his parents left. He wasn’t wanted. At least he had somewhere to sleep, his aunt would tell him, and Oma thought she was right. 

But he can’t tell him that, because that would mean seeing the look in Shuichi’s eyes as he realizes Kokichi is a burden to him too.

“It’s nothing,” he deflects.

It’s silent as Saihara mumbles, but in a way that’s loud enough to hear, “I knew something was off when we first met. When you got so guarded about how you got that scrape on your cheek. I thought maybe someone was bullying you at school, but after we started walking together, I knew that wasn’t the case.”

Oma shrinks back, but Saihara keeps going.

“I didn’t push it at the time, because it was none of my business, but… was it… your guardian?”

He says “guardian” because Oma hasn’t spoken a word to him about his aunt. But the silence is Shuichi’s answer.

“Kokichi, you have to tell someone- you can’t just let them-” let them what? Give him what he deserves? He’s a problem child. A burden. A -

“I can’t.” Saihara doesn’t understand. Oma doesn’t even have it that bad. It could be so much worse, and he can stick it out for a few more years, can’t he? 

A failure. “It won’t get better if you don’t report this!”

Oma avoids his eyes. “Shut up.”

A mistake. “I’m trying to help,” he says pleadingly, desperately.

“Maybe I don’t want your help! I’m not some problem that you have to solve Saihara!”

Saihara’s lips thin and when Oma expects him to retaliate he just - leaves. He turns around and runs off, shutting the door behind him.

It’s only after he’s gone and Oma is standing in the middle of the quiet, empty room that Oma is encompassed in the feeling of absolute dread. 

XXII.

Saihara doesn’t show up for work the next day. Oma feels guilt gnawing at him during his shift, because it’s all his fault. He shouldn’t have pushed Saihara away. He texts him “sorry” and “can we talk?” through budding tears and hopes Saihara can forgive him. 

XXIII.

He hasn’t texted him back anything in the past forty-eight hours, so Oma sighs and lets his feelings pour out in a long message when Saihara doesn’t answer his call. He tells him that he’s sorry, and that he doesn’t want Saihara to hate him.

XXIV.

The water cup he filled the night before has an almost stale taste to it in the morning, but Oma drinks it anyway because his throat is dry, and he can’t summon the energy to get up even though he’s been sleeping for the past thirteen hours. He’s still tired once he sets the cup down so he scrolls mindlessly through his past messages to and from Saihara before staring at Saihara’s last message to him, before their fight. He hasn’t said anything since.

He doesn’t go to school; he’s already sleeping again by the time it starts and he’s too preoccupied to care.

XXV.

With no reply, Oma gets worried really quickly. It’s unlike Saihara to completely… cut him off. He at least figured Saihara would reject his apology upfront instead of hiding away and giving him the silent treatment. 

His chest makes that twisting feeling again and he feels unbearably nauseous when he goes to Saihara’s apartment and no one opens the door. There’s not even the telltale sound of footsteps towards the door to signal someone checking who’s there. 

It’s like no one’s home.

-

He sits curled up in his blankets and practically spams Saihara with messages of “please answer me” and “tell me that you’re okay” but Saihara answers none of them. He’s sweating, and heaving, and he doesn’t care if Saihara hates him, he only wants him to say something. Oma needs a reply so he doesn’t keep panicking like he is now, thinking something happened to Saihara; he feels sick, and he can’t stop thinking about it. 

XXVI.

Oma tries to rationalize. Saihara doesn’t have any family, and after Oma shut him out, maybe he simply… left. Just because he disappeared doesn’t mean something bad happened.

But, Oma thinks, what if something bad did happen. What if Saihara was abducted - or - or - killed? The thought of Saihara being dead makes Oma so uncomfortable; his throat feels like it’s closing up and it’s hard to swallow his own saliva. He’s growing more and more anxious each day he shows up to work and Saihara isn’t there beside him, despite being scheduled. 

XXVII.

The metal of the buttons and zipper on his clothes feel especially cold against his skin as he gets ready for school. He probably looks terrible, but he can’t find it in himself to worry about that. 

He has more important things to worry about.

 Saihara is more important.

XXVIII.

Oma remembers sending in his Danganronpa application and thinks, this would be the perfect time to forget everything I’ve ever cared about, but then, what if Saihara comes back?

He wants Saihara to come back.

He wants to say sorry for shutting him out when he shouldn’t have.

He wants to have more long conversations about whatever comes to mind. 

He wants to see Saihara smile at him again.

He wants to sit next to Saihara and watch movies for hours on end. 

He wants to feel Saihara’s hands on his like that day when Saihara gave him that stupid Kirigiri band-aid. 

 He wants Saihara to forgive him.

XXIX.

His aunt makes him feel worthless.

XXX.

He should’ve kissed him when he had the chance.

XXXI.

Oma lies in his unmade bed, staring up at the ceiling, phone in hand. 

It’s been over a week. 

 Why hasn’t Saihara replied to him? How can he fix this? Did Saihara forget about him like everyone else has?

 His eye sockets are weighed down by a combination of depression and sleep deprivation.

His phone speaker blares through the silence - his alarm - his mind supplies through the ever-unchanging headache. He turns it off, already awake, and forces himself out of the temporary comfort of his blanket’s embrace, and gets dressed for work. Because he has to. Because he doesn’t know what else he’ll do if he doesn’t.

Because he hopes Saihara will show up. 

(He doesn’t.)

 On his walk home from work, he’s approached and pulled into a car, hearing the engine and looking out at the silent street as he falls into panicked unconsciousness. The initiation for the fifty-third killing game commences.

-

Ouma hesitates as he comes to the memories section of the contract. Even after everything, the participants won’t get their memories back... he won’t remember ever meeting Saihara; he won’t remember falling in love. He’ll know of nothing but whatever backstory Team Danganronpa cooks up for him.

But...

Saihara’s gone. As hard as it is to think about, Ouma doesn’t think Saihara will be waiting for him once the simulation ends. No one cares about him anyways, so he might as well make things interesting, right?

 ...right?

Ouma’s nose is tingly; his lower eyelids are about to spill over as he signs the contract, signing his past and present away. 

 Two doors down, Shuichi Saihara does the same.

 I.

Life has no meaning.

I also posted this on my Ao3 Account (More A/N there)

[hippriestess]

Part 3 - “ I thought we had some kind of agreement but with you it was just prurience”

So, where were we. Ah yes....Record Store Day 2019.

It was, perhaps inevitably, a heavy day for Fall fans. Lead-in times both for the manufacture of vinyl records and for participation in RSD are such that Smith's death came too late for the impact to be evident in the 2018 event but for 2019, we were absolutely flooded in a way that caused some, quite rightly, to question the judgement of the organisers in allowing so many obvious vultures to swoop in for an easy bite. 

The “monitor mixes” from the 2CD edition of “The Unutterable” were pressed to vinyl for the first time. “Whoo-fucking-pee” quoth the faithful and you will have absolutely no difficulty acquiring it today should you be down to few enough marbles for it to seem like a good investment. BMG hold the rights to the group's Rough Trade recordings and went with a box set of five 7” singles under the awful title “Medicine For The Masses”. This was the exact same format as “The Rough Trade Singles Box” from 2002 although with the bonus of containing the correct Peel Session versions of “Container Drivers” and “New Puritan” (Castle/Sanctuary had updated the 5 disc CD edition once they had acquired the rights to the BBC tracks but the vinyl edition of Italy's Earmark Records retained the Grotesque and Totale's Turns versions used in the initial pressings). Given not only that none of this material is any way scarce but that an excellent single LP release had been given to all 10 tracks in the box (Peel takes included) by US imprint Superior Viaduct in 2018, it was perhaps inevitable that “Medicine For The Masses” pretty much flopped on the day and can now be acquired brand new for a good £10 less than the asking price on the day itself.

Ah yes, Superior Viaduct, let's not forget them. A well-regarded reissue label with a smattering of current artists, they had already issued some Fall vinyl in 2016/2017, putting all the studio albums up to “Perverted By Language” back onto vinyl as well as the first 2 singles and the eternally category-defying “Slates” 10”. Following Smith's passing, they have (almost) completed the task with the aforementioned “Rough Trade Singles” LP and a new pressing of “Totale's Turns”. These editions have been very well received and have been praised for the quality both of the mastering and of the pressings but they remain largely inaccessible to UK fans due to licensing restrictions preventing the editions from being imported. As such, you'll hafta pick these up on a one-to-one basis off your own bat.

Right, back to Record Store Day 2019. We also had the “opportunity” to buy a number of live albums. 5 of them, in fact. All of these had previously been released on CD towards the end of 2018...so this was going to be called Crap Rap Part 14 but it's now called “Stop Releasing Every Gig You Can Find On Some Mouldy Third Generation Maxell C90 on a double LP”

Live albums have always been canon with The Fall. “Totale's Turns” was their 3rd LP release, “Live In London 1980” was issued by Chaos Tapes with the group's permission in 1982, “Fall In A Hole” was allowed until copies were exported. We had “Seminal Live” and “The 27 Points” mixing live with studio, as did “I Am Kurious Oranj” with several tracks recorded during the original Edinburgh run of the ballet. Even the “Perverted By Language Bis” video was largely live material. Even once the shark was jumped in the late 90s/early 00s with the endless recycling of those outtake/live compilations, there were official live missives, such as the excellent “Last Night At The Palais” in 2009, the wonderfully titled but patchy “Uurop VIII-XII Places in Sun & Winter, Son” in 2014 though to the terrible “Live In Clitheroe” in 2017. So, all in, it comes as no surprise at all that over 20 more live albums have been added to The Fall's discography since Smith's sad departure from this realm.

There were no less than 5 live albums dumped merrily onto the shelves for RSD 2019, 3 of them doubles. On their own, this would have been an outlay of over £100...in fact, if you wanted the full RSD Fall, you'd have had little or no change on the day from £250. For exactly no unreleased music. No unreleased music? What were these live albums then? Let's wind back to late in 2018... (I told you this was tough to do in any kind of linear fashion).

Arriving via the PledgeMusic site, “Set Of Ten” released by “Cog Sinister”, worked like this: 10 previously unreleased live recordings were contained in a sturdy square box with spiffy new artwork from Pascal LeGras. The tariff? £100. Ouch. Now, a handful of them were announced as separate releases, however, if you bought the box you would receive an exclusive disc – a recording from Derby, 1994. Cometh the hour, the Derby CD was one of the first to be released on its own. Huh.

A small amount of digging revealed that this set was the work of Rob Ayling. With the dates running from 1980 to 1999, the general opinion re: Set Of Ten was that these tapes were very likely to be in Ayling's possession due to the “Live From The Vaults” series on Voiceprint, Ayling's previous imprint, from 2005. When that series was announced, the five releases were said to be simply the first batch.  It could therefore be deduced that these tapes had been destined for future batches. At the time, there was a minor dust-up over them and no further volumes were issued. Whatever the motivations, presenting an 11 CD set of old bootlegs with so little quality control being put into the audio and asking £100 for it felt like cold ash in the mouth. Worse still, PledgeMusic went bust before many customers could receive their sets, leaving them to either claim chargebacks on their credit cards or simply out of pocket as ordinary creditors to the failed business. It must have been galling for those who lost money to see the CDs arriving on their own and several cut onto expensive vinyl.

I've picked up a couple of the CDs separately and these have been largely fine. Recording quality is listenable but obviously audience derived. The best one by far of those I've heard is “Live 23rd June 1981 @ Jimmy's Music Club New Orleans”, a great recording of a full-tilt Fall performance from a critical time in their existence (pictured) . There's a palpable tension, possibly due to the return of Burns, brought back not just out of practicalities but also to even the group up a bit, now that Smith was beginning to reconsider the wisdom of having a team of childhood friends for a group. Rehiring Burns was designed to put some grit back into the machine and it worked. Having a full set from this line-up is a worthy addition to the canon and it should be snapped up before it vanishes – this is the only one of the “Set Of Ten” CDs that seems to be thin on the ground. The artwork and credits show the level of care taken over the release; that is – pretty much none. The CD artwork has the 6 piece “Hex” line-up – Karl Burns is the only drummer here as Paul Hanley was at home doing his O Levels. However, the sleeve credits Paul Hanley and not Burns, adding a credit for Duncan Burndred, who was the group's driver at the time. The info had been sourced from the “Slates & Dates” press release which credited Burndred with “the rest” (ie anything other than music and management). Likely pilfered from thefall.org, this missive was retooled for the artwork without any real consideration.

However, it seems there was sufficient demand out there and, cometh the tail end of 2019, cometh another Set of Ten, given the snappy title...”Another Set Of Ten”. They must have been up all fucking night thinking of that one. Again, it has 11 discs. It does get interesting here insofar as most of the tapes come from between 2009 and 2013 suggesting not only that there wasn't much left from the original “Vaults”- destined batch but also making it unclear from whom these tapes were being licenced. They are, of course, under no obligation to discuss such matters publicly and, indeed the current incarnation of Cog Sinister would likely feel aggrieved at having the question asked. They are, after all, a legitimate enterprise. 

A quick skwizz at the Discogs page tells you that “Another Set Of Ten” is not a triumph; all the tapes are listed as being audience tapes, one disc has just six songs from the gig and several others are also incomplete and/or mislabelled. The main contributor to the Discogs entry (to whom, hello!) notes that the tracklistings appear to be taken from photographs of setlists uploaded to thefall.org's justly revered and thoroughly sublime gigography but, where the setlist didn't match what was played, no attempt has been made to correct this. They haven't even matched up the content with the tracklistings!!! At time of writing, these ones are just starting to slip into the shops on their own, possibly Covid delayed as you could get them via online retailers for a while. The cover for a Manchester gig from 2009 looked like a sick joke and it was hard not to think similar (albeit at lower pitch) about the inclusion of an infamous Motherwell gig at which MES was completely plastered and Brix had quit the band an hour or so before the show. What's next? Worthing? Brownies?

Yet it is very hard not to be continually tempted. There's some juicy setlists in these discs and the artwork at least has some effort – Pascal LeGras has done a very fine job here and his art certainly gives the right feel to the releases. I'm guessing that was the plan. I’ve got my eye on a few. It’s a disease this, I tell you...

Anyway, one way of the other, 5 of the “Set Of Ten” discs found their way onto vinyl on RSD, courtesy of reissue imprint Let Them Eat Vinyl and all of these are still easy to score, should you wish. The whole Gonzo/Let Them Eat Vinyl hookup is interesting for scholars of who-owns-what in terms of The Fall's catalogue. As above, we know that BMG have the Rough Trade recordings but LTEV's “Grotesque”, issued in 2017, states it is licensed by Sanctuary.

LTEV have also been putting some of the other lesser releases from the catalogue onto vinyl, including 2 mid 90's live albums (Phoenix 1995 and “The Idiot Joy Show” - nothing that was wasn't available for buttons on CD in the early 00s) as well as “Interim”, the demos and live cobble-together that attempted to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory in 2004. The latter had never been pressed to vinyl before and with bloody good reason.  Yr mileage, as always, may vary.

Whilst not The Fall, acolytes will doubtless want to know that Ed Blaney issued a 2CD edition of “The Train”, containing the full 40-minute “(Part Three)” CD, a similarly lengthed alternate version and a clutch of remixes. Blaney also uploaded a properly touching tribute to Smith on YouTube, including reminiscences with other friends of Smith.

One more part to come, in which we burn the spotlight of shame onto a couple of the worst products ever to have had the name The Fall unwillingly emblazoned upon their sleeves and take a quick look over some of what we know is in the pipeline.

[a-bit-too-much-of-a-zelda-fan]

LinkedUniverse Fanfiction Ch. 16: A Sailor and a Ranch Hand Walk into a Store

Stop! You’ve Violated the Law!

So, you’ve stumbled upon this original post for my Linked Universe fanfiction. That’s okay, it happens to everyone. As of March 2021, I’ve uploaded the entirety of this fanfic to my Archive of Our Own page. Along with finally giving the story a name–Oops! All Links: A Linked Universe Story–I made substantial edits to some of the chapters. These range from minor stylistic revisions to fixing a gaping plot hole that kinda completely broke the character conflict in the earlier chapters. I also renamed and renumbered (but not reordered) the chapters. Specifically, this is now Chapter 18: A Sailor and a Ranch Hand Walk Into a Store

The AO3 iterations of these chapters are the definitive versions. So, if you would like to read this fanfiction, please do so on AO3, right here. With this embedded link. Hehe. Geddit? Link?

Note: My screen name on AO3 is FrancisDuFresne. Yes, that is me. I am not plagiarizing myself.

Anyway, for posterity’s sake, the rest of the original post is below the cut.

Oof, it’s finally done. I’ll try to not let 3-month hiatuses become the norm... The last we saw our heroes, Wind and Twilight ended up in a treasure teller’s shop trying to earn back the money Wind’s missing wallet held. Thus begins the next chapter of my @linkeduniverse fan narrative.

Word Count: 2666

The Links started and whirled around, their hands flying to the hilts of their swords. The heroes scanned the front of the store for the source of the voice. No one seemed to be there. They drew their swords. Sunlight pouring through the high windows danced on the polished blades. A disembodied voice almost always meant bad news.

Suddenly, there was movement in the dark corner. The Links turned it face it. A pale, wrinkled hand seemed to appear out of nowhere and reached up. It drew back a veil to reveal a wizened old woman. Her sparse, stark white hair was pulled back into a loose bun. She looked positively ancient. She stepped forward.

Wind and Twilight stepped back. They now saw that her long robes matched the design of the walls. The same beads of the curtain made up the numerous necklaces and bracelets she wore. Twilight silently cursed himself for not seeing her before. She parted her thin lips in an unsettling smile. “Now, now, young men,” she continued in her dreamy drawl, “this is no place for swords.”

As the woman slowly walked around the heroes to her counter, they exchanged a quick look they understood as “don’t let your guard down,” and carefully sheathed their weapons. Now behind the counter, the woman eased herself onto a stool they hadn’t noticed either. It seemed the same wallpaper was painstakingly applied to the stool.

Leaning her elbows on the counter and resting her chin on crossed fingers, she stared through them. “Or, at the very least, no place for swords pointed at me. Now… how may I help you boys?”

Wind stepped forward. “You think you can scare us like that an—”

Twilight silenced his partner with a sharp nudge. After a fierce glare down at him, he turned back to the shopkeeper. “What my friend here means is ‘why were you hiding from us?’”

“Well…” she drawled, “I do quite enjoy getting a good… read… of my guests.”

“By hiding in the corner and spying on us while we waited for someone to come?” Wind shot.

The woman smiled again. “Yes.”

“You’re lucky we’re disciplined swordsmen,” Twilight said. He discreetly checked his pocket again. His wallet was still there. “We were about a second away from skewering you.”

“Heheheh,” the woman chuckled. “Yes, yes, very lucky indeed.”

Wind considered their options. Leave the store with no rupees or deal with this hag and maybe turn a profit. He decided to feign friendliness. “Well, ma’am, I think we got off on the wrong foot,” he said, offering his hand. “I’m Link, and this is…”

Twilight didn’t hesitate a beat before he finished, “Colin.”

The less she knows about us, he figured, the better.

The woman extended her skeletal, liver-spotted left hand to shake. Wind stared at it for a second. Left hand? he thought. Did she notice how we hold our swords?

The elder of the heroes nudged the younger again. Wind retracted his right hand and extended his left. He awkwardly shook the woman’s hand. Her grip was much stronger than he had expected. She then turned to Twilight. They shook left hands as well. Seemingly content, she crossed her fingers and rested her chin on them again.

There was an awkward silence for a few seconds before Wind asked: “And your name is…”

“Madame Wondra Spectrula Viliafore.”

Another moment of quiet. Twilight decided he needed to keep the exchange rolling smoothly. “Pleased to meet you, Madame Viliafore.”

“Mmm… yes, likewise. Now, I believe you boys are here for a reason?” she asked.

“Yes,” Twilight said. “We have a few trinkets you may want to take off our hands.”

Madame Viliafore’s eyes opened just a bit wider. “Ooh, I do like trinkets. Let us see them.”

Wind tore his skeptical eyes from the old woman and rummaged in his spoils bag. Looking between what was essentially junk and actual quality treasure, he decided to start small and work upward. He grabbed one of the butterfly pendants. It really was garish. After a closer look, Wind could see why no one but that one teacher would like them. He placed it on the counter.

The skeletal hands gingerly picked up the necklace. The old woman inspected the pendant. Her nose wrinkled even more than it naturally was. Wind winced. She lowered the necklace and eyed Wind condescendingly. “Three,” she said with mild disgust; the dreaminess was gone from her voice.

“Deal,” Wind accepted. He was eager to take whatever he could get. He reached into his bag and retrieved the other six. Madame Viliafore raised an eyebrow higher into the folds of her forehead. She snatched them and, with the one already in her hands, placed them at one end of the counter.

Twenty-one… Twilight counted. He didn’t want this woman to pull a fast one on them.

“Anything else?” Madame Viliafore asked. Her voice was floaty again. “Anything less… common?”

Wind nodded. This time, he knew he had to gain her respect. Nothing too fancy, though. He pulled out five colorful feathers by their shafts. He gently placed then on the counter and fanned them out as if doing a magic trick. “These,” the youngest hero started with a dramatic flair, “are tailfeathers of the Helmaroc King, a magnificent and regal bird native to the Great Sea.”

Madame Viliafore picked up one of the feathers and scrutinized it. Sunlight played off the vibrant vane. Spring green faded into turquoise, then sunset orange, dandelion yellow, and finally brilliant gold. It seemed to glitter in the light. Wind was sure these were a step up from the awful butterfly pendants.

The Links waited in silence as the old woman inspected the feather. She turned it over in her hands, running her fingers gently across the smooth barbs. By the way her eyes widened a fraction of an inch, the heroes could tell she was interested. She set it down and carefully looked over the other four. She looked up at Twilight and Wind. “Thirteen each,” she said declared, her voice lacking its dreaminess once again.

Wind nodded. After all the grief the Helmaroc King put him and his family through, he was glad to be rid of the plumes. Twilight quickly crunched the numbers in his head. Eighty-six. Madame Viliafore moved her new spoils next to the chintzy necklaces. She rested her elbows on the counter once more, this time tapping her fingertips together slowly.

After a beat, Wind realized she was eagerly awaiting his next offer. Twilight looked on. He noted how wildly her demeanor changed. Clearly, the floaty dreaminess was a façade, and she was actually a thrifty businesswoman. Wind looked in his bag, reached in, then pulled out another necklace. This one was a set of jet-black pearls strung together on an ornate bronze chain.

This time, Madame Viliafore seemed genuinely interested. She leaned forward and snatched the necklace out of Wind’s hand. He seemed about to protest this rudeness, but Twilight nudged him again. Wind locked eyes with his partner. Even after their conversation in the street, he still felt like he was being treated like a little kid. He decided that problem could wait. For now, though, they needed rupees.

Madame Viliafore looked over the necklace as meticulously as she had the others. She was clearly interested, by the way she worked the pearls through her bony fingers. She raised it up to catch the sunlight, then gently lowered it to the counter. The Links waited with bated breath. At least, she spoke. “This one is a sight to see, my dearies…” she drawled. Then, with her deadpan voice, “Fifty.”

The Links exchanged another glace and a barely noticeable shrug. Wind turned back to the old woman. “Deal,” he assented.

“Heh heh heh…” she chuckled. It sounded as if she was expelling dust from her ancient lungs. “I assume you have more, Mister Link? More you weren’t showing until I gave a price?”

Wind stood and stared for a moment. She had figured out his tactic. Twilight knew she would figure it out instantly, but he gave Wind credit for drawing it out so long. The younger of the heroes didn’t take his eyes off the woman as he pulled an identical necklace from his pouch.

Madame Viliafore chuckled again. “Naturally, naturally… you do seem wise… for a child.”

This time, Wind forced himself to restrain a retort. He could feel Twilight’s eyes on him. “Funny,” he said through gritted teeth, “I’ve been told I’m more courageous than wise or powerful.”

Not bad, kid, Twilight thought as he flashed a grin. He resumed his counting. One eighty-six.

The old woman took the second pearl necklace from Wind’s outstretched hand and put it beside the other spoils. She went back to tapping her fingers together. Twilight noticed her eyes were wider than before; she knew they had more treasure up their sleeves. He hoped his partner could deliver.

Looking in his bag, an orange glimmer caught Wind’s eye. He smiled, reached in, and pulled out a solid chunk of amber. It was so large that it could only barely fit in his hand. Trapped in the center of it was a perfectly preserved horned beetle. Madame Viliafore’s eyes lit up as bright as the stone. “My, my… what do we have here?”

“Goron’s Amber,” Wind said suavely, or at least his best preteen attempt at it. He held it up to the light and an orange shadow fell upon the counter. “Fossilized tree sap so flawlessly preserved you can clearly see this eons-old beetle.”

The teller gazed upon the amber, mesmerized. She had stopped tapping her fingers, now pressing them stiffly together. She seemed to be restraining herself from snatching it out of the young hero’s hand. The Links exchanged a quick grin, knowing they had her in the palm of their hands.

Madame Viliafore stared for a few seconds more, then extended her hands slowly. Wind lowered the amber to her. He let go only when he knew she had it securely. He didn’t want their pièce de résistance shattering on the hardwood floor. Still, her hands dropped a fraction of an inch from its weight. Wind’s heart skipped a beat. The stone didn’t fall.

Twilight noticed a change in the woman. She seemed too awed by the amber to remember either of her façades. With a barely perceptible shake of her head, Madame Viliafore snapped out of her reverie. She looked up from the amber at the Links. She looked back down, then back up. Twilight couldn’t read her expression. “Well, dearies,” the old woman breathed, “you truly have caught my interest…”

The two young heroes glanced at each other again. Wind grinned. Twilight nodded. They looked back to Madame Viliafore. She looked them over in turn. “Eight hundred,” she said finally. Her voice was a confused sort of mixture between her two personas.

“Seriously?” Wind exclaimed. All that for a chunk of amber was a steal. Twilight was about to nudge his partner to mind his manners but was interrupted by the woman.

“Not enough?” she asked. “Fine, fine, nine hundred. No more.”

Wind turned to Twilight. The young seafarer’s eyes were gleaming. Twilight nodded. Wind turned to the woman. “Deal.”

Madame Viliafore perked up. She clearly hadn’t made such a trade in a long while. She gently lowered the amber onto the counter next to everything else she had purchased. Her eyes lingered on it a moment before she looked back to the two heroes. Falling back into her dreamy drawl, she continued, “And anything else for me, my dearies?”

Twilight didn’t wait for Wind’s assent before answering. “No, that will be all.” He crunched the numbers in his head. “I believe you offered one thousand eighty-six rupees for all these.”

The old woman’s face fell; she clearly wanted more treasure from them. Still, she withdrew a key from among the many necklaces she wore and inserted it into a drawer behind the counter. She withdrew three gold rupees, one silver, one purple, one red, three blue, and one green. Twilight grinned as she dropped them into his outstretched hand. He glanced down to his partner, who beamed back at him.

“Thank you, Madame,” Twilight said with a slight bow. “Pleasure doing business with you.”

“Yeah, thanks!” Wind added.

Madame Valiafore looked the heroes up and down again. To Twilight, it seemed she was wondering just who and what they were. How did they come across these treasures? Why was a boy so young armed with a sword and shield? Were they friends, or brothers, or something else? He realized how unusual they must seem to ordinary folk and found he couldn’t blame her for being so interested in them.

“Farewell, Colin,” she drawled. “Farewell, Link. It was a pleasure.”

The Links smiled, turned, and exited. Wind found himself squinting in the morning sun; the store had been rather dim. He turned to Twilight. His friend was fitting the rupees into his own wallet. A thought struck him. “Hey Twi?” he ventured. “Why did you say your name is Colin?”

Twilight glanced back at the storefront as they walked away. “Something about that hag put me on edge. I figured the less she knew about us, the better. It is very unusual that we share our name.”

“I guessed that much, but why Colin?”

“Oh,” he said. “That. One of the boys from my village is named Colin.”

“Ah,” Wind replied. He assumed Twilight was finished so was surprised when he continued.

“Colin…” Twilight almost whispered. His mind flashed with images of Colin, from his hometown to Kakariko Village to the Bridge of Eldin… to his friend bound to a war staff, to fighting furiously on horseback to save him. He shook his head to clear it. “His father practically raised me, so in a way, I suppose we’re… brothers, almost.”

The older of the two looked down to the younger to see him wide-eyed and smiling. For a moment, Twilight couldn’t help but see Colin in his other self. He returned the smile and ruffled Wind’s hair. “That was a good show back there,” he said.

“Thanks.” Wind hooked his thumbs in his belt as he walked. “I was put off by that woman, too. What do you think her deal is?”

Twilight crossed his arms. “Honestly, I think she’s just a weird old coot. She never tried to pull something over on us and paid what she promised.”

“What about the shaking hands thing?”

Both Links instinctively flexed their left hand. “Hm,” Twilight began. “She may have noticed how we held our swords, or she could have been a lefty herself.”

“Ya know, it wouldn’t surprise me if she did it to maintain her mystique. I bet you that isn’t even her real name.” Wind snorted. “ ’Madame Viliafore?’ Yeah, right.”

Twilight chuckled. “I’ll keep my rupees, thanks,” he conceded. It was a silly name.

The two Links shared a laugh. When Wind sobered up, he looked up at the late morning sky. Twilight mentioning rupees stirred a thought in his head. “Twi?”

“Hm?”

“Are you still mad at me for losing my wallet?”

Twilight shrugged. “Well, I was.”

Wind was still looking skyward but glanced at his friend in his peripheral vision. Was? he thought.

“You were irresponsible, and it was a hassle earning back the rupees, but we’re eight hundred rupees richer than we were yesterday. I can’t really stay mad about that.”

The youngest hero let out a sigh. His partner exhaled sharply through his nose and grinned. “Don’t take that as permission to lose your wallet again,” he joked.

“Alright, alright,” Wind waved Twilight off. “I’m sorry. It’s done and over now, though.”

“Yup. Time to buy potions.”

“Ugh, I forgot about that.”

Wind’s shoulders slumping and Twilight’s acute senses relaxing, the two continued their search for an apothecary. Hopefully, Twilight mused, our friends have had an easier morning.

[soyouareandrewdobson]

Oh not again the Paywall!

… Oh boy. This comic will be deader than expected.

When Dobson announced a few years ago he was working on a new comic involving a mountain cabin and supernatural elements, I was at the very least intrigued enough to see where this was going. I never expected it to be a groundbreaking comic or the worst thing anyone has ever done, but considering his track record so far when it came to creating original, long planned out comics, made me at least curious. Would it be better, worse or more woke than Alex ze Pirate. One thing I did however hope for was that Dobson would be for once smart enough to not hide his stuff behind a paywall, which has so far always killed his comics that are neither Ladybug or SYAC related. But hey, unlike Dobson, I can admit when I am wrong with an assumption.

 To be clear here, I am aware that Dobson “hides” the comic behind a 5000 dollar paywall only so that some person who donates to him the necessary dollar a month to see the panels uploaded by Dobson thrice a week can no longer do so and leak them to kiwifarms.

 However, even the dollar per month thing to me is a very, very dumb idea.

 I get it. People want to make money of something they create. I don’t hold it against webcomic artists to sell merchandise/tradepaperbacks of their stuff or create additional content to their regular updated comic pages, that people can pay for to see. But here is a major difference between Andrew Dobson and almost every other webcomic artist out there and which has been a key factor in why Dobson’s career as a comic creator has never taken off to.

 Webcomic artists stay relevant, by making their major comics public.

 I know Dobson’s work for a couple of years and the overall quality (or rather lack thereof) in his work aside, one thing I was dumbfounded the most off was how he basically sabotaged his own “career” in the medium. I have read a couple of sprite and webcomics over the years and even if the webcomic in question was utter bullshit for some reason cough sinfest cough one thing I saw was that in one way or another the comic and its artist would find an audience, BECAUSE the comic was easily to access on the net. You did not need to pay for the privilege of seeing  something someone created out of a whim. You could see the thing develop and go on because the person creating it became aware of people liking it and in doing so getting an extra boost to continue on.

 And by doing so, as time went on those people would eventually manage to make money of their work and even improve at least some aspect of it, may it be the storywriting or just the artwork.

 But Dobson made sure that when he wanted to start off his career, his stuff would not be seen.

 See, before SYAC became the thing he focuses on the most, there were at least two major comic series Dobson created and wanted to make money off. Percy Phillips, a detective comic about a Holmes knock off and Formera, a story about a boy stuck in a prehistoric fantasy world, no one is really sure about where it was heading for (not even the author).

Dobson made sure there was fanart of his characters and at least reading samples of around 10 pages on average everywhere he went to online the most (deviantart and smackjeevee). But aside of that, he did nothing with his creations online. Some random, unregularly uploaded fanart on aside, he would never upload more pages of Formera e.g. on deviantart, nor information about the comics direction, assuring that average interest of people in his stuff and the story was dimished fast. And when people are not interested in your story, they are not interested in you as an artist much. And when people are not interested in you as an artist (and your behavior online starts to additionally alienate them from you even more) it is no wonder your career never gets off. Now some may wonder, if Dobson drew reading samples, did that mean he wanted to draw more? Yes of course he wanted. And he actually did. But you needed to buy the tradepaperback to see those pages.

Basically what he did back then was, that he falsely approached the “webcomic” audience in a manner more suffice for people who want to buy physical copies of comics in bookstores or comic shops. Release a few reading samples, hope they get people interested in you and then make money by them buying this stuff. However, this entire approach was faulty. First off, the general quality of Dobson’s writing and artwork even back then made it not really look in any way worth to buy the comic, when there were way better products to be found either professionally published or online. To give you an example, these are some of the opening pages of Formera, published around 2005-08.

By comparison, that is a page of infamous internet webartist Bleedmann and his Powerpuff Girl comic , released around 2006.

I am sorry to say that, but why should I pay good money for Formera, something that looks like it was drawn by an average 16 year old anime fangirl at the time, when I could have something “better” drawn and designed by others? Even if those others are freaking lolicons.

I mean sure, the backgrounds look okay here and there, but composition wise the thing looks just not good. And that is from someone who went to art school and had the gaul to talk shit about mangas?

Secondly, the reading samples where just the first pages of his comics in general. Meaning nothing really happened in them and with the lack of information about the comics provided, nothing was really there to get others’ attention. Add to all of that the fact Dobson wanted between 10 and 20 dollar for 170 pages on average or less (Look up Legends, the precursor to Alex ze Pirate. Only 78 pages! Formera at least had around 152 per volume at prices between 9,99 and 15$) when you could buy a manga with more than 250 pages for less at the time…

And people said nope and rather looked up what the heck this Sonichu was people talked about.

As a result, Dobson never really sold stuff as proven with deviantart entries like this…

and he cancelled his comics after 1 or 2 volumes, not even wrapping up his stories he was supposedly so proud of and wanted to tell. All because Dobson essentially cared more about “making quick money” instead of telling a decent story he wanted people to read.

By abandoning these projects (and the characters in it) unceremoniously, Dobson had in my opinion also contributed a lot towards his online infamy. After all, what are you supposed to believe about a creator, who abandons his own creation completely instead of at least trying to salvage it (he could have still made Formera publicly readable by making it a webcomic) and has the audacity to call the overall popularity of others (particularly anime and mangas) the reason for its failing success. Plus it seems that their failure was the main reason why he would rather create 4-panel or one page comics instead of stories with more complexity afterwards, which resulted in the way Alex ze Pirate was presented (and is a topic for a later entry) and eventually SYAC.

 Bottomline, creating a “paywall” for his original work resulted in people on average not becoming aware of Dobson as the creator of some okayish comics, because they never saw them and instead would be exposed to other, “inferior” if not outright meanspirited and toxic artwork and opinions. And creating a paywall for Cabin’s Rest, even if as minimalistic as 1$ will just result in history repeating itself. He can claim that he creates a great comic as much as he wants, if we can’t see it for ourselves and judge, we can only say “what comic”? He won’t gain widespread popularity this way, because so far only 13-16 people (the total amount of Patreons he has to my knowledge) even were able to see the comic.

And now not even they can, because Dobson wants to spite his critics/trolls and take away the chance for them to see it, by making it unwatchable for anyone. I know he claims it is only for as long till he finds a way to get rid of the leaker, but that also begs the question: How do you want to do that? How do you want to assure only those who will not leak it, see this comic? You have already so little traffic on the site, you should actually be happy even for trolls paying you, cause at least it pays for a Happy Meal once a month. Dobson, if you really want Cabin’s Rest aka muslim vampire comic to succeed, you should just make it public. I know doing so will mean you are also exposed to all your critics and yes they will find something to mock and criticize, but at least you are out and have a higher chance to find also people willingly ready to support you, cause they want to see it.

[scotiaeire]

JUST THINKING OUT “LOUD”.

I’M AN OLDER WOMAN, WHO GREW UP IN THE TIMES WHEN IF YOU HAD A TELEVISION YOU WERE CONSIDERED WELL OFF. VIDEO RECORDERS HADN’T BEEN INVENTED YET. MOBILE (CELL) PHONES WERE THE STUFF OF STAR TREK AND SCI FI. THE NET? WE’D NEVER HAVE IMAGINED IT, EXCEPT IN STORIES.

AND HERE WE ARE. THE AVERAGE SMARTPHONE HAS MORE TECH IN IT THAN IT TOOK TO PUT ARMSTRONG ON THE MOON.

FEW FOLKS WATCH TV NOW, BECAUSE EVERYONE HAS “A DEVICE”, NORMALLY THEIR PHONES, TABLETS, WHATEVER THEY CALL THEM NOW. AT THE LEAST, A LAPTOP (ME. I’M A LUDDITE. I TOLERATE THE LAPTOP BECAUSE, GOING BLIND, I CAN’T *SEE* ANYTHING SMALLER)

AND WATCHING ALL THIS TECH COME INTO BEING, FOLKS OF MY GENERATION HAD OPTIMISM..IT HAD SO MUCH POTENTIAL. ALL THAT POWER, THE CAPABILITIES. WOULD IT HELP HEALTH BE DIAGNOSED OR TREATED EASIER? WOULD IT HELP FAMILIES SCATTERED ACROSS THE GLOBE KEEP IN TOUCH WITH ONE ANOTHER?

WELL, AYE, IT DOES BOTH OF THOSE THINGS.

BUT LOOK AT WHAT ELSE IT DOES...

IT ALLOWS HACKERS TO STEAL FROM THE BANK ACCOUNTS OF VULNERABLE OLD OR POOR PEOPLE. AND EVEN IF IT’S NOT CASH THEY WILL STEAL, IT’S INFORMATION, A LOT OF IT INTIMATE AND PERSONAL, PRIVATE. AND BY “HACKERS” I’M NOT JUST MEANING SOME GUY IN A BLACK HOODIE SITTING IN A DARKENED ROOM IN A BASEMENT SOMEWHERE. GOVERNMENTS AREN’T ABOVE WATCHING YOUR EVERY MOVE ONLINE EITHER, FROM WHERE YOU SHOP AND WHAT YOU BUY TO READING YOUR EMAILS, FOLLOWING YOUR SOCIAL MEDIA (SOME POOR BUGGERS  IN GOV OFFICES MUST HAVE HELLUVA BORING JOBS, REALLY...)

IT ALLOWS NARCISSISTS OF ALL AGES, TYPES AND MINDSETS TO CREATE “BRANDS” OF THEMSELVES..LITERALLY, SELLING THEMSELVES...BY SETTING UP ACCOUNTS THAT ARE CAREFULLY CURATED, CAREULLY STAGED, ALL TO PRESENT A LIFE THAT IS *NOT* THEIR REAL, ACTUAL LIFE, BUT MORE OF A WISHLIST.

IT ALSO, BY DEFAULT, HAULS MASSES OF FOLKS INTO SITTING ON THEIR ARSES, SPENDING HOURS SCROLLING THROUGH PIC AFTER PIC, POST AFTER POST, IMAGE AFTER IMAGE, JUST STARING AT WHAT OTHER PEOPLE THEY DON’T KNOW AND PROBABLY NEVER WILL, ARE DOING.

WHAT A WASTE OF TIME AND ENERGY....

IT ALLOWS US TO BE TARGETED LEFT RIGHT AND CENTRE BY COMMERCIAL CORPORATIONS SEEKING TO SELL US JUNK, WHETHER WE NEED IT OR NOT. AND FAR TOO MANY FALL FOR THAT, WHEN THEIR CASH COULD BE SPENT MORE PRODUCTIVELY.

IT CREATES ENVY, AS THOSE WHO FEEL THEIR LIVES LACK EXCITEMENT OR ADVENTURE LOOK AT THE FAKE LIVES OF “INFLUENCERS” (THAT IS SUCH A LOADED WORD BTW) AND SO CALLED “CELEBRITIES” (WHEN I WAS YOUNG, TO BE A CELEBRITY, YOU HAD TO HAVE *DONE* SOMETHING OF WORTH OR AT LEAST, BE A HALF DECENT ACTOR, NOT JUST A PRETTY FACE) AND THAT ENVY IN TURN CREATES DEPRESSION AS FOLKS REALISE THEY’LL NEVER BE ABLE TO OBTAIN THOSE MAKE BELIEVE LIFESTYLES.

AND IT *IS* MAKE BELIEVE. TRY IMAGINING, FOR A MOMENT, YOUR FAVOURITE CELEBRITY SITTING ON THE TOILET. PICKING THEIR NOSE. LAZING AROUND ON THE SOFA WITHOUT A SCRAP OF MAKEUP, CONTOURING OR THREE INCH THICK EYEBROWS, READING TRASHY MAGAZINES.

IT ALLOWS “CYBER BULLYING” WHERE ANONYMOUS SHITTY PEOPLE THINK IT’S OK TO RIP TO SHREDS THOSE WHO ARE VULNERABLE, FRAGILE AND UNABLE TO FIGHT BACK.

I’M AN OLDER WOMAN WHO NEVER THOUGHT THIS TECH WE USE ON A DAILY BASIS WOULD EVER COME TO PASS. YET GOVERNMENTS ALLOW US THE USE OF IT, BECAUSE IT KEEPS US DISTRACTED FROM REAL LIFE. LIKE A DRUG FOR THE MASSES, AS THEY USED TO SAY TELEVISION WOULD BE. (THEY WERE RIGHT THOUGH...)

IT HAS BECOME, ALMOST, A NECESSITY AS, MORE SO IN THESE TIMES, FINANCIAL TRANSACTIONS SUCH AS PAYING BILLS, BUYING GOODS ETC, CAN ONLY MAINLY BE PERFORMED ONLINE NOW, AND TO DO THAT YOU *HAVE* TO HAVE A BANK ACCOUNT WITH CARDS, AND THEY REQUIRE NOT ONLY THOSE DETAILS BUT YOUR PHONE NUMBER AND IN MANY CASES, YOUR NAME, DATE OF BIRTH AND MORE.

THEY’LL WANT YOUR DNA NEXT BEFORE YOU CAN BUY A LOAF OF BREAD....

SEE WHAT THEY’VE DONE?

YES, THE NET HAS IT’S GOOD FACETS. BUT IN MY OPINION (WHICH DOESN’T COUNT FOR ANYTHING BUT HERE I AM, ON SAID SOCIAL MEDIA, GIVING IT ANYWAY) THE BAD OUTWEIGHS THE GOOD.

YOU’RE SPIED UPON. HACKED. BULLIED. ENVIED OR WILL ENVY. CONSTANTLY PAYING BILLS ONLINE. BUYING JUNK YOU LIKELY DON’T NEED ONLINE DUE TO CONSTANT ADVERTISING OF SAID JUNK.

WORSE, WE GET THE NEWS FROM ALL AROUND THE WORLD AS AND WHEN IT HAPPENS.

BUT NOT THE GOOD NEWS, OH NOPE. WE GET THE WARS, KILLINGS, RAPES, VIOLENCE, SHITTY POLITICS, FEAR-MONGERING PLAGUE STORIES AND MORE. AND MOST OF US ARE NOT IN A POSITION TO HELP CHANGE IT OR DO ANYTHING ABOUT IT. THAT’S THE SIMPLE TRUTH. ALL DESIGNED TO KEEP US IN OUR PLACE....RIGHT WHERE OUR RESPECTIVE GOVERNMENTS WANT US.

SO KEEP ON BEING DISTRACTED BY ALL THE PRETTY PICTURES. THE LOVELY PEOPLE. THE CAREFULLY STAGED LOG CABIN INTERIORS. ALL THE LOVELY STUFF YOU DON’T ACTUALLY *NEED* FOR SALE. SIT AND RAGE OR COWER OVER HOW “AWFUL” THE WORLD OUT THERE IS WITH THE INCOMING CONSTANTLY BAD NEWS, WHILST FORGETTING THAT EVERY DAY SIMPLE ACTS OF KINDNESS AND SMALL BUT IMPORTANT *GOOD* THINGS HAPPEN TOO. THEY’RE JUST NOT REPORTED IN MAINSTREAM MEDIA.

BUT DON’T FORGET, THERE’S A REAL WORLD OUT THERE. AND A LOT OF THIS GENERATION CAN’T WALK ALONG A STREET AND DARE TO LOOK ANOTHER PERSON IN THE EYE, IT MAKES THEM SO UNCOMFORTABLE.

NOBODY SMILES AND SAYS “HELLO” NOW. IT’S ALL HEAD’S DOWN AND SCROLLING.

IN EXILE IN BELGIUM, I ONCE SAW A TEENAGE GIRL LITERALLY COME WITHIN INCHES OF BEING RUN DOWN BY A TRAM BECAUSE SHE WAS CHATTING TO HER BOYFRIEND ON HER PHONE. I WAS ON THAT TRAM. INCHES.....

HEAD DOWN, GIGGLING AND LAUGHING. TRAM DRIVER HONKED THE HORN AND YELLED AT HER. SHE NEVER EVEN LOOKED UP. NEVER EVEN BLINKED. DID NOT DEVIATE FROM WHAT SHE WAS DOING...FLIRTING ONLINE WITH HER FELLA. AND SHE ALMOST DIED.

*THIS* IS WHAT MODERN TECH IS DOING.

DO I ADVOCATE WALKING AWAY FROM IT ALL? NO. BECAUSE IT *DOES* HAVE A GOOD SIDE. BUT I DO, AND ALWAYS WILL BELIEVE, PEOPLE HAVE TO FIND THE HAPPY MEDIUM..WHERE YOU USE ONLINE LIFE AND MODERN TECHNOLOGY AS A TOOL ONLY WHEN NECESSARY.

AND THAT YOU DON’T LET IT RULE YOUR LIFE TO THE POINT WHERE IF YOU HAVE A NET-LESS DAY, YOU FEEL EVEN FAINTLY ANXIOUS ABOUT IT.

THERE’S AN AWFUL LOT OF SHIT ONLINE. FAKE NEWS. LIES. DANGEROUS STUFF LIKE PORN AND PAEDOPHILIA MASQUERADING AS INNOCENCE. BAD POLITICAL AGENDAS. STUPID ONLINE FEUDS. EMPTY HEADED MEDIA (ASK ME IF I GIVE A F*CK WHAT ANY ONE OF THE BRITISH ROYALS EVER DOES OR WEARS....) AND AN AWFUL LOT OF PEOPLE FALL INTO THAT HOLE AND NEVER DIG THEIR WAY OUT.

BUT SOME ARE WAKENING UP. SOME ARE ADVOCATING TECH FREE DAYS. SOME ARE SAYING JUST WHAT I’VE BEEN SAYING (WELL, MAYBE WITHOUT THE “WHEN I WAS A GIRL” BECAUSE THEY’RE MOSTLY YOUNGER FOLKS AND NOBODY LISTEN TO OLD PEOPLE ANYMORE, IF THEY EVER DID)

ANYWAYS, AFORE I SIGN OUT, HERE’S A FEW TIPS:

THAT INFLUENCER YOU’RE FOLLOWING? FAKE.

THAT CELEBRITY YOU ENVY? FAKE.

99% OF THE NEWS YOU’RE HEARING? IF NOT FAKE THEN SERIOUSLY MANIPULATED TO SUIT WHICHEVER GOVERNMENTAL AGENDA IT FOLLOWS. AND BY DOING SO, YOUR OWN MINDSET.

AND HERE’S A VERY SPECIAL TIP. IF YOU LIVE ANYWHERE NEAR TRAFFIC, LEAVE YOUR PHONE IN YOUR BAG/POCKET/WHEREVER. DON’T TAKE IT OUT AT ALL. AND ESPECIALLY NOT WHEN CROSSING ROADS/TRAMLINES/BUSLANES.

ABOVE ALL, TRY WALKING AWAY FROM IT FOR A WHILE ON A REGULAR BASIS AND TAKING AN ACTUAL LOOK AT LIFE AROUND YOU. THERE’S PEOPLE OUT THERE WHO AREN’T EVEN ONLINE. MAYBE THEY’D LIKE TO BE FRIENDS? TRY SEEING NATURE WITHOUT A CAMERA LENS...GO SMELL THE AIR, TOUCH THE LEAVES, WALK THROUGH THE SCENE YOU’RE TRYING TO SHOOT THE BEST OF. SIT A WHILE AND DRINK IT IN. EXPERIENCE IT FOR REAL.

(JUST HALF AN HOUR AGO I SAW A BEAUTIFUL IMAGE OF A YOUNG GIRL SITTING ON A DECK BESIDE A LAKE. BEAUTIFULLY STAGED, BUT I CAN TELL YOU FROM HARD EXPERIENCE, SIT THE WAY SHE WAS (BACK ARCHED TO LOOK SLENDER ETC) AND YOUR ARSE WOULD BE HURTING, YOUR SHOULDERBLADES GETTING SPLINTERS FROM THE WOOD FENCE AND YOUR TEETH FIRMLY GRITTED. JUST SAYING.)

I USE VIDEO CAMERAS TO TAKE IMAGES AROUND MY HOME. WHY? BECAUSE I’M ALMOST BLIND. I USE THE CAMS AS TOOLS. I TAKE FOOTAGE (WHICH INVOLVES AIMING IN THE GENERAL DIRECTION AND HOPING I’M ACTUALLY FILMING WHAT I WANT TO SEE) THEN I UPLOAD IT TO MY LAPTOP AND VID CHANNEL SO THAT, THROUGH A LARGER, CLOSER SCREEN, I CAN ENLARGE AND *SEE* WHAT MY EYES NO LONGER DO. IT’S THE ONLY WAY, NOW, MY EYES CAN SEE THE LANDSCAPE THAT SURROUNDS ME IN ANY DETAIL.

THOSE ARE TOOLS. THAT’S A GOOD WAY TO USE THEM.

I’VE SEEN SOME HORRENDOUS USES OF TECH OVER TIME. FROM THE GHOULS TAKING PICTURES OF ROAD ACCIDENTS OR PEOPLE BEING BEATEN (WHEN THEY SHOULD HAVE BEEN GOING IN TO HELP) TO THAT GIRL AND OTHERS ALMOST BEING KILLED, SO INTENT ON WHAT WAS ON THEIR SCREEN THEY WERE, IGNORING THE *REAL* WORLD AROUND THEM.

DON’T BE A SLAVE TO YOUR TECH. BE IT’S MASTER. AND COME BACK TO THE REAL WORLD AT LEAST ONCE IN A WHILE.

[mowulf]

How to Train your Downer: CH4

<–|Start|—>

I am so, so sorry that I forgot last weeks and almost forgot this weeks chapter uploads. Hhhhhhhhh! Here we go!

“I think we should try letting him out.”

Green choked on his tea in surprise and very nearly spilled his mug all over the table. A couple papers had tea spilled and he was quick to slam some napkins on them to prevent any damage. Once he was satisfied that his notes were saved, he rounded on Davies with a snarl. “What on earth is going through that thick skull of yours?”

Davies shrugged nonchalantly and sighed. “Being cooped up like this isn’t good for him. Yes, he’s friendlier now, but he’s also getting antsy.” He paused, swirled his cup, then continued, “If we let him out freely he’ll be more inclined to come back.”

“Do you know what for sure?”

“No, but…”

“But nothing! What if he doesn’t come back?” Green stood up abruptly and slammed his hands on the table. “If he gets loose, if we can’t get a hold of him again, then it’s out necks on the line! Verloc may take us in his place if we lose him!”

“I know! I know. But think of it like this,” Davies set his mug down and moved to stand over Green. “Why wouldn’t he come back? He’s got food and water here. He doesn’t have to worry about joy-tainted water. He’s never gone hungry. Hell, sometimes he asks for food just to see if we’ll actually get it for him. He’s got a whole room of his own with a large bed and clean clothes. Why wouldn’t he come back?”

“Because he doesn’t like us.”

“He doesn’t like you, maybe. He seems to enjoy my company just fine. Maybe if you were nicer to him and stopped beating him every time he pissed you off-”

“I keep telling you, he’ll learn faster if you beat sense into him-”

“And I keep telling you that it doesn’t work that way! Animals do NOT respond to punishment like people do. If you want to get him to listen, then you have to work with him. And that means rewarding good behavior. Listen…” Davies pressed his hand into Green’s shoulders. They were tense to the point of shaking and he sighed. Green could be so stubborn at times.

With a sigh, Davies leaned down to press a kiss into the back of Green’s neck, trailing his hands down the doctor’s arms to finally thread his fingers with Green’s longer ones. Another kiss and he said softly, “I’ll take full responsibility. Besides, he’s still hurt. He was in awful shape when we got him. I don’t think he’ll ever fully recover. He moves slow. Running away just isn’t an option for him at this point.”

Green groaned in frustration but ran a thumb along Davies’ fingers. “...Fine. I still think this is a bad idea, but fine.”

Davies planted a firm kiss into Green’s cheek with a broad smile. “Everything’ll be fine! You’ll see.”

---🔫(ᐕ)

The collar was heavy around his neck. Arthur ran his fingers over the carefully detailed leather for what felt like the thousandth time, but the thick leather was locked in place. There was absolutely no hope of taking it off. Despite the satin lining, it still chafed, though that would clear up once he’d built up a bit of callus wherever the leather rubbed. Within a week he was certain he wouldn’t even notice the collar anymore.

Except Arthur didn’t want that. He didn’t even want the stupid collar to stay in place. No, the collar had to go as soon as possible.

He absently fondled the metal tag. It was stamped with his name and blood type. An identifier in the event that his corpse was beaten beyond all hope of recognition. A morbid thought, but not unrealistic.

To be fair, the collar as a whole was meant to be an identifier. It was meant to stand out. Bad enough that it was designed to draw attention to him, but now he had no way of disappearing into the background. Which was almost certainly why the bedroom door had been left open and the house was entirely too quiet. Arthur had been happy to sit in bed and wait, but now he was starting to get antsy and bored. Davies really wasn’t coming back, was he? And from the silence, it seemed Green had left as well.

He was well and truly alone.

Arthur ran a hand along the stamped tag once more time before he finally slid his legs over the side of the bed. If they were gone for the day and he wasn’t locked in, then perhaps he could explore the house a bit. With a groan, Arthur slid out from under the blankets and stood up. First things first, those blasted stairs...

------

The house really was empty. Arthur had taken his sweet time exploring every corner of the house. Navigating the stairs had been tricky until he’d finally given up and slid down one step at a time. Now he hovered nervously by the door, torn between staying inside where it was (vaguely) safe versus going outside and finally being free after nearly a year of captivity. He could leave if he wanted. It would be so easy to just walk right out.

But then what?

His hip had healed wrong and now he could barely walk, let alone run. Maybe, given enough time and physical therapy, he could get back to scampering around, but he didn’t have high hopes. Throw in the bright red collar and there was absolutely no way he was going unnoticed. Sure, he’d be outside. But at what cost? He was a half skip away from a disaster just waiting to happen.

Fuck it.

Before he could lose his nerve, Arthur threw the door open and stumbled outside. The sun was bright! And real! Not that faded, soft light from the room that never saw the light of day. Okay, so it was a little overcast, but the sun was real and (mostly) shining on his face. His face split into a wide, genuine smile.

He took a deep breath of fresh air and took a careful step forward. Of course he forgot about the step up and ended up falling to his hands and knees, but he quickly picked himself up like he didn’t just eat shit and took a look around. Seemed no one had noticed his tumble. Good, good.

Okay. First things first: new mask. A task easier said than done, mainly because he couldn’t remember how on Earth he was supposed to secure a new one. He vaguely remembered a shop where one could get custom masks made for their face. Much better than a generic mask. But where was the shop even located?

Arthur started off in a random direction with the hope that he would find some kind of landmark that he could use to direct himself. It didn’t even matter that he didn’t know where the store actually was. So long as he could get to the general vicinity, he’d be fine.

“Hey! You!”

Arthur turned in search of the voice and found an angry young man stomping over. He tensed and widened his smile nervously. “Top of the morning! Can I help you?” he asked cheerfully. Was everyone staring at him or was that just his paranoia? And when had so many people gathered? Why did he have to get himself wrapped up in his head all the time? Stupid. Stupid!

The man marched up and jabbed a finger into Arthur’s chest and snapped, “What happened to your mask?”

“I-” Oh god he hadn’t thought of an excuse. Fuck. Shit. Okay, calm down. He was a master of improvisation. “I stepped on it.” Okay. Wow. Maybe not.

The man bought it, hook, line, and sinker. With a laugh, the man said, “You ought to be more careful. Though I suppose it can happen to anyone. I once set my mask on a chair and then completely forgot and sat on it! Though,” he leaned forward and gave Arthur a thorough once over, “maybe next time you should wear your mask, even if it’s broken. You should get yourself a new mask. Wouldn’t want to be mistaken for a downer, now!”

“Oh, absolutely! I was actually just looking for a shop, but I can’t seem to remember where it was…” Arthur trailed off thoughtfully and tapped his chin. What was the shopkeeper’s name again?

“I’ve got just the thing!” The man grabbed his left arm and Arthur had to bite back a pained yelp as he nearly lost balance and had to catch himself on his bad leg. He managed to disguise it as a cough and limped along as best he could. Thankfully, the man got the hint quickly and slowed down without being asked. Arthur made small talk and threw out cheerful greetings every time someone so much as looked at him.

Most of the citizens gave him curious or suspicious looks, which wasn’t all that surprising. Without his mask and with the red collar, he stood out like a sore thumb so he made sure to be particularly cheerful. Despite the suspicion, it worked. Each greeting combined with his smiling guide seemed to ease the tension and everyone was quick to return the greeting and go about their business. Periodically someone would stop them and demand an explanation or some idle chit-chat, but Arthur just continued right on smiling.

Being out and about, there really wasn’t much that could bring his mood down!

Until a bobby approached and cheerfully asked, “Well, well, what’s going on here?”

“Seems he broke his mask,” the man, Henry, said. Arthur offered a shrug and nodded, but regarded the bobby with caution. The bobby did the same, giving Arthur a hard look before straightening up.

“Then I suppose you won’t mind if I take you to get a new one?”

“Oh, would you?” Arthur exclaimed. “That would be wonderful! Henry here was just taking me, but I feel so bad dragging him around. I hate to be a burden, but I just can’t seem to remember where the store is. You know how it is.” He shared a laugh with the officer. A few more pleasantries were exchanged until Henry was certain that he wasn’t needed and left.

“Off we go, then!”

“Ah! Wait!” The bobby turned back with a raised brow and an ‘a-ha!’ expression. “I’m terribly sorry but could we go slow?” Arthur asked. The bobby frowned in surprise and Arthur explained, “I hurt my leg pretty badly, so I can’t really manage a cheerful stroll, even. Nasty business, really, but walking is really difficult right now.” He tilted his head down a bit and looked up, an old tactic that he’d learned as a child that authority figures always seemed to enjoy.

The bobby simply smiled and started walking. Even with his slowed pace, his long strides had him well ahead of Arthur on no time. Once he noticed, he turned around to see Arthur hobbling along as best he could. He had his hand pressed into his hip to try and relieve some of the pain and each step was clearly painful, judging by the grimace that crossed his face with each step.

And yet he kept right on smiling and waving as if he wasn’t about to collapse in the middle of the street.

Arthur finally caught up with a cheerful, “Thank you!” and they resumed their trek. This time, the officer made sure to match his pace. Arthur, however, carefully stayed half a pace behind; another trait he’d learned at a young age. Adults always preferred to stay ahead. Made them seem like they were in control of whatever situation, even when they weren’t.

After a moment, they were joined by two other constables. One regarded Arthur with suspicion while the other seemed more genuinely interested, even sidling over to stand next to Arthur and strike up a casual conversation to try and get to know him better. Arthur played along and chattered on about his interests as vaguely as possible while still giving enough to keep the conversation flowing until they finally fell into a comfortable silence. With the three officers walking with him, Arthur noticed he received much less attention from wandering bystanders. Most of the attention he received now seemed largely focused on the leather collar.

“I have a conundrum,” Arthur said suddenly. The officers glanced at him to acknowledge that they were listening. “About a year ago, I found a… cat.”

“A cat?” Two officers shared a look before turning their attention back to Arthur. The third, closest to Arthur, however, looked genuinely interested and gave him a gentle nudge to keep talking.

Arthur glanced at each of them before he looked down at the road. “I found a cat. It was really hurt so I took it in, but it doesn’t trust people. It kept fighting me every time I got too close so I may have lost my temper a bit and…” He didn’t need to say anything. The unspoken words came across loud and clear. “I made a mistake and I took steps to make sure it would never happen again. No one will hurt the cat while it’s under my care. So long as it stays inside, it will be well cared for and fed and spoiled.”

“But?” the one officer prompted.

“But it got out. I don’t know what to do. If it’s outside, it’ll get hurt again, or worse. I’m worried about it and I’ve been trying to get it back but it seems… confused? Torn. Like it wants to come back but it isn’t sure. And I just don’t know what to do. Would it be better off outside or would it be better inside? With me?” He looked up. “What do you think?”

Silence. The constable mulled the story over in his head as he walked. Finally, he said, “I think the cat should give you another chance. You’ve taken steps to make sure it doesn’t get hurt in your care again. You made mistakes but you’re better now, right?” Arthur nodded. “And besides, if you try to hurt the cat again, it can escape and find somewhere else to live. Who knows, maybe I’ll take it in.” He laughed as Arthur gave him a startled look before quickly regaining composure.

“Here we are,” the officer said as he held the door open. Arthur stepped inside and looked around. Masks were everywhere. In display cases, hanging from the ceiling, and mounted on the walls. The white masks stood out against the vile pink of the walls and Arthur found himself reflexively gagging. Once again, he hid the reaction behind a cough and made his way to the counter while a bobby dressed in red hurried over the three in the doorway.

“What is he doing here?” the officer in red hissed as Arthur meandered over to the counter. “I thought he was supposed to be with Green and Davies!”

“Well, he hasn’t tried to make a break for it yet,” one started, only to be interrupted by,

“There won’t be a problem. He’ll probably head back to Davies once he has a new mask. Or maybe he’ll enjoy the sun for a bit and then head back tonight.”

“And how can you be so sure, Marcum?”

Marcum gave an 'are you serious right now' look and said, “He just told us.”

“He told us he found a cat and- oh. Oh that makes a lot more sense.”

Arthur ignored the hushed whispers behind him as he knocked on the counter to catch the shopkeeper's attention. The woman took one look at him and brightened up. “You must be here for a new mask! Oh wonderful!” Before he could reply, she rushed out from behind the counter and grabbed his arm. “Sit down! Sit down! Get comfortable and let’s see what we can do.”

Arthur dropped into a chair and smiled uncertainly up at her. She proceeded to chatter away at him while she took measurements, ran her fingers over every inch of his face (though she did apologize when she pressed into his bruise, causing him to flinch back sharply), and finally told him to “Wait right there” as she rushed into the back. She returned moments later with a pristine mask and freshly gloved hands.

“This is still warm,” she warned him. “I’ll need you to close your eyes and hold still.” Once his eyes were closed, she placed the mask on his face and began smoothing it out. Just as she’d said, it was still quite warm. Almost uncomfortable, but not quite. He maintained a bland smile as she worked the mask to fit his features until, finally, she stood back. “There we go! You’re good to go!”

He opened his eyes and grinned back at her. “Thank you so much. I was afraid you wouldn’t be able to work with me so suddenly.” She stepped back to let him stand up and waved him off.

“Nonsense! Not many people need emergency masks anymore. Mostly everyone just comes by when their old masks wear out or they don’t want something so generic anymore. And don’t worry about payment,” she said as he reached for his pocket. “I’ve been looking for a face like yours for ages to try out my new line! Just tell people you were at ‘Holly’s Boutique’ and we’ll call it even.”

Arthur sighed in relief because he’d realized only seconds after she’d finished that he hadn’t actually brought any money with him. Alright, task one complete. Now he wouldn’t be under the intense scrutiny of everyone. Now he could actually go about wherever he wanted!

Except home. He couldn’t risk blowing his cover, and the officers and doctors were clearly interested in him. Speaking of which… Arthur turned to the entrance to find that the red bobby had returned to his station while only one of the original trio waited casually by the door. Arthur blinked and narrowed his eyes. Was he being watched?

Yes. Yes he was. Arthur worried his lip as he slowly stood up. He didn’t particularly like the way he was being watched. It was sly and almost hungry. Like there was a request just waiting to be made but couldn’t due to being in public.

Two could play at that game.

“Officer!” If he ignored the way his hip screamed with every step, he could power stride over to the door and-

Oof. No. Nevermind. Hobbling it is.

The officer chuckled at him and Arthur stuck his tongue out playfully as he got close. “What are you still doing here?” he asked as they stepped outside.

“I thought I’d hang around. You know, just in case.”

Arthur snorted. “I am perfectly capable of taking care of myself.”

“I know.” Marcum let Arthur lead the way and followed along, careful to match Arthur’s pace without letting him fall even a half step behind. “I just think you’re… interesting? Is that the right word? Different. Point is, I enjoy your company. And,” he swung around in front of Arthur, “I’d really like to know you better.” He tucked a card into Arthur’s front jacket pocket and gave it a quick pat. “Think about it,” he said before he trotted off.

Arthur stared in vague confusion before he finally pulled the card out to take a good look at it. It was an invitation which he quickly tucked away as soon as he realized what it was to. (He could feel his whole face flush as he thought about the implications of what the officer had just said.)

Well, he had a mask now. The officer was, unfortunately, off doing something else. Unfortunate because he struck Arthur as being different in an equally interesting way. There was still some time before curfew. Might as well enjoy what little sun was left. With a final glance around, Arthur tucked his hands in his pockets and began to wander the streets.

---

“Hello there!” Arthur was pulled out of his thoughts at the chipper voice and a wide instinctively slid into place. The woman was tall, about his height if he had to make a guess. And she was kind of cute. The energy in her eyes and genuine smile caught his attention first and reminded him of Sally when she was younger.

“Um, hello?” Arthur cocked his head as she leaned back and looked him over. Was she judging him?

Her eyes locked on to his collar and he could swear her gaze turned predatory. “I’m Valerie,” she said abruptly and stuck her hand out.

“Arthur Hastings,” Arthur said and grabbed her hand in a firm handshake. Her smile widened at that and she gave a nod.

“Firm handshake. Very nice.” She stepped forward, invading his space, and began to circle around him. Arthur leaned away from her and curled in on himself, his smile strained and nervous. “You should stand up straight,” she said as she pressed her fingertips into the small of his back. He arched away with a nervous whine, but she had already pulled away and resumed pacing around him. “You’ve got a bit of a limp, but not too bad. You’re stronger than you look, aren’t you?” She gave his bicep a quick squeeze and pulled away before he could react. “Yes. Yes! You’re perfect!”

“For what?” Arthur snapped, exasperated and stressed from the sudden scrutiny. His answer was an envelope thrust into his face. As he took it, Valerie said, “Come by tonight. I’ll be there from 9 ‘till they close. Bring your friends if you want, but I’ll show you a much better time than any of them can.” She trailed her hand from his shoulder down his arm as she strode past and he almost missed the casual wave she threw over her shoulder.

Arthur stared after her, mouth open and brain working overtime to figure out just what in the hell happened. And then it clicked. His mouth snapped shut and the color drained out of his face. She thought he… with constable Davies?! Oooh no no no! He had to get this collar off yesterday!

He looked down at the envelope in his hand for a moment before his lips thinned and he began to limp back home. It was the same as the one Marcum had given him. Maybe… Maybe having the collar wasn’t so bad after all.

Who would have thought?

[goodguysparis]

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[travelwankerworld]

Another trip booked with ‘Untravelled Paths’ & another success.

This time a 4 night trip to the Puglia region of Italy – The Dolce Vita Puglia Experience

We flew from Luton to Bari with Wizz Air.

It was very cheap, about £70 each return.

It would have been even cheaper had Wizz not done their ‘Roulette Wanker Seat’ routine! Where unless you pay to pick your seats; unlike any other airline who will allocate you seats together – Wizz makes a point of making sure you are as far away from your travelling partner as possible!

So underhand. So out of order.

It is a 4-hour+ flight so is nice to be sat together.

The upshot, about a 1/3rd of the flight’s cost, was paying to sit together!

The saving grace is that overall, it is still cheap for the distance (& the convenience for us from Luton).

We did the lounge at Luton. The basic reason being that I had a credit left on my ‘Priority Pass’ membership which I wanted to use up before it expired.

  1st Stop – Matera

The flight was good & when we arrived we were met by our guide Marius. We were the only 2 on our flight & found out there were just 2 more coming & they were on the later Stanstead flight that night.

Off we went to our 1st stop – Matera – It is a city carved into the mountainside. The original dwellings here were effectively caves.

It was quite an impressive place & we saw it first at night all lit up.

Our accommodation was – Residence San Giovanni Vecchio

We had a wander about & up to the main square, then back down to get some food in a little pizza place –

Trattoria Braceria Bellavista di Fedele Manicone

It was a nice little place, the food wasn’t amazing but it was fresh & the wine was cheap! – it was also served in a carafe with wicker around it & with small glasses.

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Standard ‘funny faces’ picture was required. Lisa is getting much better at them!

  Lost In Translation

Whilst wandering around we found a bakery (Gran Caffe) that Lisa had seen whilst researching – it was stuffed with loads of dirty cakes!

We ended up asking a bloke behind the counter what was the best – he pointed out what sort of looked like doughnuts but with a bit of custard creeping out of them.

We ordered 2.

Wow! They were gorgeous.

So we then tried to find out what they were called.

One thing I need to say here, which was one of the reasons Italy grew on us, was the fact that most people don’t speak English, just Italian.

I love this. (we Brits are generally shit at languages so for once we didn’t have to feel guilty for this).

This then lends itself to a lot of gesturing & the use of Google Translate!

It is also how we arrived at what we called these – Titty Titty Lemon Cakes!

We ‘spoke’ to a woman & she tried to explain in Italian whilst gesturing to her chest & laughing & saying Limon a lot.

Cue immature photos:

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Wehay! – Titty Titty Lemon Cakes

Loads of Lemon Titties!

Anyway, enough fun for day one & back to the apartment & bed.

The next day we went across the road for breakfast & finally met our other 2 ‘travellers’ – Kamal & Friddy.

Marius met us & gave us the ‘What to do’ rundown in Matera on a map.

We then went almost next door to a shop that had a model of the town so it could be explained further – it is very much a 3D type of place with lots of levels & alleys to explore.

https://travelwanker.world/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/VID_20191010_101702.mp4

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We did a lot of walking, the place was impressive & the weather glorious (it’s October!).

One of the places you are supposed to go is Casa Grotta which was a look at the ‘caves houses’ presented to you of how they were lived in.

Quite frankly, it was shite!

Throughout Matera, there are various sculptures of Salvadore Dali’s art. Can’t remember if there was a reason for this.

We also came across some a temporary art exhibition whilst we were there – some female sculptures sat in various places & some ‘turkeys’ which were individually designed & painted…..but, to be honest, they just looked like big cocks!

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Dali

Dali

Female Sculpture

Big Painted Cocks

  Cookery Class At A Retreat

We all met up late afternoon to go to our cookery class. About a 30-minute drive & we arrived at some grounds.

From what we understood it was like a retreat. It was in the middle of nowhere & looked very nice.

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We made pasta dough from Semolina flour & then went onto make a variety of different shaped/types of pasta.

We also made 2 other dishes, one was made from nearly stale sourdough bread (soaked in water) rubbed with garlic & layered with tomatoes. The other was very similar but mixed with egg and herbs to make balls that were to be fried.

It was quite a laugh doing it with a few breaks so we could get a bit of wine in.

Then we got to eat all of our own stuff. It was pretty good actually & very simple.

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We got back to Matera, went for a quick nightcap & then bed.

Next day, we had breakfast & checked out – we were off to Alberobello

  Bread & Focaccia To Die For

On the way though we were going to visit a traditional bakery that still uses a stone oven & only cooks sourdough bread. The place was called DiGesu’

Wow!, both Lisa & I could have died here. The bread looked & tasted amazing.

We got to try the various types of bread washed down with a small glass of red (well I did, it was 10.30 am but they wouldn’t have put it out if they hadn’t wanted us to have it).

The whole thing was very interesting.

A sort of byproduct from this style of baking is the focaccia bread.

They make the focaccia dough & put it in various spots in the oven to test the temperature.

Quite frankly it is one of the best-tasting things I have ever had! So much so that it was what we bought from the bakery to have later for our lunch.

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So we left there & were on our way to Alberobello.

  Early Proof Of Tax Dodging

This place is very famous for the type of houses they have – they are called Trulli’s.

They are round in construction & were originally built without mortar/cement.

It is said that part of this style of housing came about as a tax dodge.

Landowners at the time were taxed by how many building they had; so the landowners would get their workers to build these house for them to live in.

When/if they got news of someone coming to check their ‘wealth’ the landowner would instruct his workers to take apart the houses thus avoiding tax.

So we got to stay in one for the night. This was right in the heart of the area where these were best preserved (& funnily enough where the tourists came). They were lovely.

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So off we went for a wander.

  The Wine Tour – A Tale Of 2 Servers

Early afternoon we met up again to be taken to a local vineyard for a tour & wine tasting – Yay!!!

The winery was called I Pastini.

It was really nice here, a family-run place in lovely surroundings.

A young lady did the tour around the various buildings & part of the vineyard. It was actually quite interesting and didn’t go on too long which gets a massive tick!

They plant rose bushes at the end of each row of vines here. They do this as if there are pests/bugs etc, they will attack the roses first. This is like having a warning system for their grape crop & so if it happens, they can do something about it.

Simple but effective. I found stuff like this quite interesting.

Some wine tours we have been on are beyond dull.

And let us face it, nobody gives that much of a shit about how it all came about etc – we are there to taste & drink the wine!

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The wine tasting was good – we got a selection of nibbles to go with it.

As I recall we tried 4 or 5 wines.

What I do remember very well (which is where the problem lied) is that 2 people were doing the wine pouring for the tasting.

The side we were on was a woman who had clearly challenged herself to pour so little in the glass that it would have evaporated by the time you went to taste it!

It literally was the smallest amount of wine that could allow you to taste it.

On the other side of the room was the young lady who did the tour & she was making up for our loss with her pours, she wasn’t pissing about!

Kamal & Friddy were on her side & after about 3 they were not finishing theirs & pouring some away ready for the next one. I can’t even get my head around this, but we would have loved that problem!

The result – they ordered a case of wine to be shipped back to the UK & we bought a bottle to take away with us.

You would have thought that most people that own a vineyard & do these type of tours must have realised that if you get people a bit pissed they will get their wallets out.

We would have.

There is no question we would have also bought a case, they were pretty reasonable. Alas, we were sober & therefore could easily rationalise & avoid spontaneous purchases!

We left there, wallet intact, back to Alberobello.

We did a bit more wandering & picture taking; then went to a wine bar to try & rectify the wrong from earlier.

That evening we went to a nice little restaurant, the food was pretty good but I am not naming it. The service speed was a joke & getting the bill at the end was like pulling teeth. Such a shame really,

Next day was time to move again.

We had until lunchtime to wander around the bits we had missed & sneak in a cheeky beer before leaving.

The next destination was our final one in Bari.

On the way, we stopped for lunch at a little town called Locorotondo. We were told to have a little explore before settling down to eat which we did.

Was a very pretty little town with lots of rabbit warren type of streets.

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We wandered around for what seemed like ages looking for somewhere to eat. We googled various places but nothing seemed quite right & most were in these narrow streets which were in the shade.

  A Perfect 90 Minutes With Wine, Meat & Cheeses

We finally, just before we lost the will to live, decided to sit at an outside restaurant that we had passed about three times  – Controra

Quite frankly, this turned out to be one of the highlights from our trip. We sat there for about an hour & a half and was just perfect.

We had a great view, were sat under a shade (it was proper hot that day) & ordered a bottle of the white wine that was from the vineyard we went to the day before. We also ordered a plate of meats, cheeses & bread. It was all superb.

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It turned out, through broken English & lots of gesturing, that the woman who owned the restaurant/bar was the sister of the woman at the vineyard who was tight with the tastings (who turned out to be the owner’s mother!).

The toilets in this place were a bit quirky. My favourite part was the fact that above the sink there was no mirror on the wall, there was just writing saying ‘You Look Fine‘ which quite frankly is genius.

We left here to go to our next stop.

If we didn’t have to go, we would have happily ordered another bottle of wine, more food & sat here for hours.

Enroute to Bari was another stop, this time to visit an Olive farm – Masseria Brancati

We had the standard tour of the old buildings with old ‘machinery’ AKA massive stones that crushed shit, no big shakes in terms of new stuff.

What was interesting that we didn’t know, was the fact that olive oil used to be called ‘Liquid Gold’. It was the modern-day equivalent of oil i.e. it was used for all sorts of things and thus made it very valuable.

So much so, that they would hide & disguise where the olives were stored and processed to avoid being robbed.

The olive groves here were massive. All the trees were 5 meters apart from each other which was the distance required to make sure each tree got all the light & water it needed without imposing on each other.

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The slightly mind-blowing thing of it all is that all the trees were saw were at least 1,000 years old, quite a few were 2,000 years old & there was one that they had dated at 3,000 years old – so if Jesus did exist, this tree existed well before he did.

….and they are all still producing Olives!

Also, each individual tree is a National Heritage Site – they are all tagged & are monitored by satellite.

What the fuck!

  The Buzz Of Bari

We left there and headed to our final destination – Bari. (** – Sidenote story – read at end)

We arrived & went to our B&B – Antipico.

Bari, we were told, was a lively local town.

There are tourists here, no question, but the locals outnumbered by far.

We liked it here and it grew on us very quickly.

We had a quick wander about and got a drink in this really cool little bar – La Ciclatera. It was a small place that had alcoves & stuff everywhere!

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Then back to get showered & changed ready for dinner.

When we went out in the early evening, we got to see what Marius has said about it being lively.

The place was buzzing with people everywhere. It was a Saturday night, yes, but not like you would think.

The big difference was that it was everyone. There were families, groups of young people, groups of older, groups surrounding by kids.

Everyone was out.

People were sat everywhere & anywhere and there was a lot of noise being created by what seemed like the whole community coming out to play.

We had decided to try a place to eat called MareViglie lo Sprofondo

We really liked it here, it was pretty busy but the service was excellent. Again, the lack of English speaking made the asking/choosing more fun.

This was very apparent from our starter order – we thought we had chosen a ‘premium’ platter to share – we pictured it being hams, salami’s, cheese, olives and the like – lovely!

What came out?

3 big portions of raw cold fish! – Salmon, Tuna & Swordfish.

A far cry from what we wanted but actually really nice.

The main course was better but somehow I ordered a pizza which effectively had chips on it & a bit of ham!

Lisa fared better with ‘mouse ears’ pasta.

Despite this, it was a really nice meal & a nice bottle of white.

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Afterwards, we wandered about for a bit; the streets were still full of people & this still included kids of all ages. We went back to our little bar again for a couple of G&T nightcaps.

The next morning we heading for our breakfast. Not quite the same as we had experienced in the 2 other places.

It was a short walk to a cafe where we were eligible for a free coffee & a croissant.

This was supposed to be the ‘Bari’ way……well, quite frankly, we preferred the other way!

  Bari On Bikes

We then met up with Marius, Friddy & Kamal. This was going to be a tour around Bari on bikes.

Friddy & Kamal decided they didn’t want to do it. They were going to get a train & visit another town nearby. We said our goodbyes as we wouldn’t see them again.

A shame really as the cycle tour was really good – Velo Service

We saw a lot of places that we had already seen….but this time with some information explaining what on earth things actually were & with some history behind it.

Including Basilica San Nicola which was St Nicholas’s church – he was the patron saint of sailors, prostitutes & children; which sorts of works if you think about it.

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One of the stops has a bittersweet taste to it.

We stopped at basically a woman’s house in a square. she had a little kitchen set up outside.

We were going here to learn how to make pasta again as we did when we were in Matera.

This woman was quite a character, she spoke no English & just shouted for most of the time.

She shouted to her neighbours, to people walking past she knew…but most of the time she shouted at her husband.

Marius & the girl from the cycle tour gave us a running commentary.

She was laying into her husband big time.

Really slagging him off, saying how lazy he was & utterly useless arsehole! (he looked a lot like the character of Manuel in Fawlty Towers).

We sat there in the sun, with a beer & made pasta.

She cooked various things & we tried them.

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We really enjoyed it here, so much that we said to Marius about coming back for lunch, which he arranged.

We did our last bit of wandering & then headed back for food.

We had asked Marius to join us which he did before he had to leave for his flight.

Anyway, we had some lunch, it was like tapas really, a few small plates, nothing mind-blowing.

When we left and asked for the bill, they wanted 50 euro!

Holy shit! How much?!

We did the British thing and paid immediately asking no questions.

Then followed it up with a whole lot of bitching in private.

It did put a bit of a dampener on our last lunch to be honest, but such is life.

Since then I have looked at the Google reviews & a lot of people complain about the ‘Quantity to Cost’ ratio, so it wasn’t just us she stiffed which is nice to know.

Anyway, off we went & found a little bar to get a bottle of white wine & while away an hour or so until we were ready to head to the airport & home.

Another great trip with Untravelled Paths to a lovely part of Italy.

___________________________________________________________________

** – Sidenote Story:

When we 1st arrived in Bari, a friend of mine, Simon (Hells Bells Hols Bols) rang me. I text back to say I was away in Italy & would ring when I got back to the UK.

A variety of texts were then exchanged where it turned out that not only was he also in Italy, he was also in Alberobello! & further to this, he & his wife Rosemary had bought a Trulli! He was actually there having work done!

Gutted!

Had he rung the day before we could have all met up for a beer & seen their new holiday home (which they will be renting out when finished) – you can find it on Instagram – https://instagram.com/trullo_genista

  Puglia, Italy – Pasta, Pizza, Wine, Sourdough Bread & More Wine Another trip booked with 'Untravelled Paths' & another success. This time a 4 night trip to the Puglia region of Italy - …

[my-love-peterp]

Mistaken Chapter Five

IF YOU WOULD LIKE TO BE ADDED TO THE TAGLIST DROP ME AN ASK

please like and rb/comment <3

Word Count: 2721 (this actually comprises chapters 7 and 8 on Ao3)

THERE ARE NO ENDGAME SPOILERS, THIS IS A DELAYED UPLOAD FROM AO3

Fic Summary: Peter Parker has been given the responsibility of bringing in a new recruit. Now, as an adult, he realizes that none of the trashy YA novels he read in high school could have prepared him for this. There was a storm on the horizon, and all they could do from the Tower is watch.

Chapter Summary: Lol updating within a few hours after weeks of not updating at all? It’s more likely than you think. HOnestly, not my finest work but I’m so tired and I feel so bad about not getting anything out there sooner. I want to change bits and pieces of this story but my goodness, yeah. So if you’d like to Beta read shit for me, y’all would be much appreciated.

Warnings: honestly idk, if I missed something besides language hmu friends

Chapter One   Chapter Two   Chapter Three   Chapter Four

I ran. There was no stopping me. I stole a cowl from a closet and drifted into the shadows, just long enough to leap from the window.

I materialized and flitted down back alleys until I hit Park Ave. I didn’t know much about this area of New York, but every borough has their drinking holes, right?

Minutes later, I was staggering into a quaint little bar that wasn’t quite the dive that I was looking for, but it would do. This was probably better in any case, fewer leering eyes and a hefty, red-haired, Irish woman who kept my drink full and men away.

Hydra was just one of the many skeletons rattling around in my closet, but they were the Rosetta Stone to my trauma in a lot of ways. Not the foundation, but the guide.

Two more glasses of Lagavulin and those pressing thoughts were kicked to the wayside.

Behind me, the grandfather clock chimed five o’clock. Just call me Jimmy Buffet and saddle me up with a margarita.

What no amount of alcohol could do, unfortunately, was erase the people I’d… met with Hydra. Or lost with them. Most of all, I could never forget my sister.

Brave and stupid drunk, I left my drinking post and headed down Park Avenue rather aimlessly. It felt like I was being drawn in a certain direction, meant to be there, which is absolutely absurd, but I was just drunk enough to believe it.

My feet halted half an hour later outside of a quaint little tattoo parlor. I’d always wanted a tattoo but I’d never had the time nor the money to get one. Fortunately, as a runaway Avenger-in-Training, I had both of those in spades now.

And, as fate would have it, the shop was advertising that they were available for walk-ins today.

Whipping out my new cell phone, I pulled up a picture of what exactly I wanted. My sister and I had always fancied we'd get matching ones someday.

The overly muscled and extremely tattooed man just nodded his ascent and began freehanding a design for the Phoenix on my right side. I was decently numbed from the booze, but as time passed, the more my sides protested in pain. Occasionally, I would feel a quick rush of air push cold wind over my aching skin and nearly groan in pleasure.

Finally, three hours later, I was gingerly easing my shirt back on, sides to be kept wrapped for the next hour or so, in case they started bleeding or weeping plasma and ink.

I stood, signed my name along the dotted line for the payment and stepped out on the street to find none other than Pietro standing, back resting against the side of the building with his arms crossed, obviously waiting for me.

Rather than acknowledge his presence, I moved to hail a taxi. He took that moment to wrap his arms around my middle, sending bolts of pain shooting from my fresh tattoos, and bolted down the street.

Fate, should it exist, obviously had a sense of humor. Minutes later, we were standing in the lobby of Avengers Tower.

Hesitantly, I moved for the elevator doors, wincing with every step as it pulled along my aching muscles, both from the walking and the movement of inked flesh. Pietro followed loosely behind me, as I anticipated. Once he had retrieved me, he certainly wasn’t going to let me escape. He was perhaps the one Avenger I couldn’t simply evade or trick, his eyes caught things as though they were moving half the speed they actually were.

An uncomfortable silence ensued as Pietro pressed the button to take us up to the Penthouse, the de facto floor for team meetings.

Despite receiving an equal number of concerned and suspicious glances, most of the team paid me little to no mind.

Peter gestured to Pietro, eyes questioning, and nods were exchanged. What I wouldn’t give to be able to hear what they were thinking. And maybe it was vain of me to assume that they’d been communicating about me, but I was almost positive.

Lost in my reverie, I almost missed the command Cap gave to Wanda to put me under. I hadn’t even taken a step by the time I was falling to the ground, unconscious, caught in lean arms.

It would be the best rest I’d get for weeks to come.

________________________________________________________________

I woke up in my own rooms, restrained to the bed. What had happened was fairly obvious, considering the only person who was in my rooms besides me was Tony. And he had an Iron Gauntlet trained on me as I came to. I hacked to clear my throat before speaking. “Seems like a bit of overkill Grandpa.”

Tony just glared down at me, not moving a single inch or softening in any way.

I tried again. “So I take it Witchy rummaged around in my head and found some… Not so savory things. Perhaps my stint as a Hydra assassin. Maybe the length of my kill list even. Let me guess, you’re currently prepping a room for me at whatever new and improved raft you built to keep Thanos locked up and never coming back. Fair warning, I’ll never go willingly and I can put up one hell of a fight.”

“Fortunately for you, that decision’s not up to me and would require the input of the feds, which, knowing what we do now, I can fairly certainly say, you’d prefer if they stayed out of it. 12 US government officials assassinated in less than three months by yours truly. Wow. Talk about a wolf in sheep’s clothing. Were I not a better man, I’d shoot you right now.”

“So why are you here Tony, if not to kill me?” I snarled back at him. “What good does me being alive do? To anyone.” That startled him a little bit, shell shocked enough to look up and into my eyes, where I saw my own feral irises reflected.

But he steeled himself again within moments. And then, out of the breast pocket of his blue blazer, he grabbed a sheet of paper.

Not a sheet of paper I realized as he folded it out for me. A picture of a skinny redheaded woman. One I recognized intimately. “Target 17. What do you need to know?” I questioned coldly, unfeeling. That made him jerk backward in his seat and hastily stand, panting and heaving, murderous intent glinting in his brown eyes.

“Her name was Pepper. And she was killed three days before our wedding, carrying my child. So I’d like to know. Was it-,“ he spat out like the words were physically fighting to escape from his body.

“Was it me? No. I was in the wind with my sister for a few months after our covers were almost blown taking out a diplomat in Indonesia. For what it’s worth, I truly am sorry Tony. Especially,” I said, voice dropping to a whisper, “about your son.”

“Excuse me, my what?” Fists clenched, he strode up to the side of my bed, closer to my head. I shied away from him as he bent down and got into my face. “What did you just say to me?”

Fuck. He didn’t know and I just made it ten times worse. The sound of his repulsor charging broke the most pregnant silence I’d ever heard. Before he could fire, though, Thor and Steve burst through the door and caught him as he collapsed in anguish, taking him away, leaving me alone. They knew everything about my time with Hydra. The evil I’d done and the evil I’d allowed to happen. I was the enemy. And I had no backup.

So back to normal.

Hours later, I gave in to my bone-deep weariness and collapsed into sleep. Dream after fever dream encased my drained mind, ephemeral and diaphanous. Most images were forgotten immediately, flighty and fragile as a butterfly’s wing. Others though, others stuck like mosquitos stuck in amber. Flashes.

Light, blood, destruction. Tattooed stars and deep, harrowing scars on ragged faces. Sobbing little boys with green eyes and silky hair.

Despite the intense lunacy and deep feeling of realness, I felt while dreaming, I was aware of a deep, striking pain within myself. It settled in my chest, buried deep, as though I’d replaced my stomach with Mjolnir. The ache was both sharp and dull, full and waning. It signaled that a harsh reality awaited me in the waking world. When I was dreaming it was like the pain had no anchor, no reason for tormenting me, as hapless and defenseless as a newly hatched bird.

When I’m half-awake, like I am now, I know why the pain is here, understand the presence of gut-wrenching guilt and searing hot shame and thus can accept them. I’m not sure which is worse to experience.

Sometimes I’m fully awake, being handed crackers or grapes or bottles of water by a person whose name I don’t know because I’m never cognizant long enough to catalog their face. Seconds later, I’m again drowning, pulled into the depths of my dreamscape.

My reality blurs and the cycle continues, vicious unto the end. And every time I wake, my cheeks are embarrassingly wet. It feels like weeks before I’m awake long enough to realize I’m not alone. That every time I wake, a new face is staring back at me from a different chair in my room.

I come to recognize them again in time. Wanda, Pietro, Bucky, Steve, Vision, even Peter. But never Tony.

I sit up for the first time after what feels like a month, though the limited aching emanating from my bones tells me, logically, that it’s only been a fraction of that time. One either side of my bed is a Maximoff. Wanda looks more concerned than wary. Pietro looks like a lion who caught the scent of an enemy pride.

“Go slowly Kaida,” Wanda urges, “you must be weak. It’s been a few days since you rejoined the land of the living. Her continued inquiries and entreaties fall on deaf ears. As vulgar as it now sounds in retrospect, I knew I had to move or else an accident would occur. I stumbled into my en suite, knowing even without needing to look that they would have removed anything that would have made a suitable weapon.

I also know that, should my biology betray any sign of shifting to make use of my abilities, F.R.I.D.A.Y. would alert the others and the full might of the Avengers would fall upon my head. And Wanda would have me back out in seconds. What couldn’t be stopped of measured for, of course, were things such as my superhuman hearing, that was currently picking up on the muffled conversation the twins were having in my bedroom on the other side of the bedroom door.

“Why are you blocking FRIDAY, we should be alerting the others that the prisoner is awake and ready for their attention.”

“Pietro! She’s not our prisoner,” Wanda reprimanded. “Besides, I wish to have a moment alone with the girl. Even if she is not a child of Strucker, she is what Hydra made her to be, somehow. I just… I’d like for her to have a sympathetic listener at first. We never got the benefit of the doubt. If you remember we weren’t exactly unwilling in our crusade against the Avengers.”

Pietro just grunted in agreement but remained tense at his sister's side. I quickly twisted off the faucet and reentered the bedroom. Rather than speak, Wanda simply patted the seat of the chair across from hers, indicating that I should take a seat. It was the gentlest command ever issued. I slid back until my shoulders brushed the high back of the chair.

Wanda opened her mouth to speak, but I cut her off with a gesture of my hands. I leaned forward, extending my head towards her.

“Just look, let my mind answer your questions. I don’t know that I’d have the strength to or that we’d have the time before the others come charging in. If I’m going to die, I need at least one person to know and believe the truth. Maybe help persuade Captain Rogers to end my life swiftly. It’s more than I deserve.”

With that Wanda, eyes shining, placed her hands on my temples and breathed deeply as we were both transported to an infinitely darker place, many years ago.

Sinking through my memories was like drifting uncontrollably through a minefield. Tiny bursts of anguish shot through my mind as Wanda relived my upbringing with my sister, the house of horrors that was our home, being tapped to join Hydra and agreeing without ‘persuasion'. The missions, targets and our downfall. My sister's son. And finally, the mission that sent us both running for the hills...

The time since then. One dead-end job to another, sisters working to support each other, all while looking for the last remaining piece of our family. And, then that day had come. The snap and dust. Guilt flooding me and overwhelming a sense of horror as time passed.

Homeless until my… boyfriend. The horror that home turned into, one that I do still feel as though I deserved. Until one night he went too far and I left. The night Peter found me. Of course in the midst of all this, you had my ‘heroics' that mostly consisted of helping women out of situations I understood all too well. And that damned school. So Peter was looking for me at the behest of the Avengers after the most recent event had even landed on the front page of the New York Times.

My deeply buried need to have somewhere to call home, to have not just someone on my six but to have a family. All the emotions that Hydra and I, through my conditioning at their hands, thought of as compromising and weak.

I had agreed, understanding that I could play the role of Asset for the good guys for once, maybe correct some of the horrific circumstances I had had a hand in creating. My mission would be protecting others for the first time. Only in my wildest dreams had I imagined I'd ever have a family again, but they had begun to feel like home, in spite of the secrets I kept. Now that was ruined. That was inevitable, I reminded myself. Because of who I am, I could never have a family. I didn't deserve one.

“No,” Wanda said, interrupting our shared stream of thoughts, "not ruined, just a little, broken. They accepted us in time." Pietro nodded, eyes alighting on his sister and then on me. Curiosity burned in his soul-deep gaze. He leaned forward and used his abnormally large hand and rough fingers to cover his sister's hand, which I just realized was now twined in mine.

Connected like this, I felt the smallest flicker of hope come to life in me, setting my heart aflutter. Understanding and acceptance filled their eyes and I did tear up a little. I never expected this.

“You are not the monster your parents created. Nor the asset that Hydra trained. You are more than that Kaida. Let us help you find it. Find yourself.”

I nodded, leaning into her embrace as she gripped me by the shoulders and kissed my cheek.

At Wanda’s urging, I stepped into the shower, running my hand through my hair as nearly a week’s worth of grime was stripped off my body. I think it was safe to say that I’d never felt more confused and well, vulnerable in my life.

For the time being, I didn’t have a mission or a purpose. My handler, or the surrogate my mind had appointed was questionable at best now that all had been revealed. I didn’t like being left to my own mind and devices. Too many thoughts would rattle around inside my head. After a few hours, the twins left again, gentle eyes and kind reassurances.

Later and not seconds after my stomach rumbled with a fierceness I had forgotten it had, my door opened and a tray of food entered, held by Bucky, the Winter Soldier.

A/N: I’m uploading another chapter tonight that I am formatting and scheduling right flipping now so I don’t flake again. Really pumped for the new fic I’m starting though!

taglist: @peeterparkr @laurfangirl424 @private-bucky-barnes

[mayorjaystown]

Let’s Talk About Animal Crossing on the Switch

I can’t stop thinking about animal crossing on the switch. It’s taken up all the free time in my head. With E3 fast approaching the hype keeps building. So, I thought I’d make a post talking about my concerns and hopes for what’s coming. I tried to include things I don’t think other people have covered yet/ I haven’t seen anyone cover yet. But there will be some rehashed points.

To begin, i tried to vision what animal crossing on the switch would be like. In this conversion to the switch console, there were a few problems that came up. In this post I tried to organize my thoughts as best I could but you do have my apologies if this is messy. 

Here goes my predictions, concerns, and hopes for Animal Crossing on switch:

something we’ve never seen before.

I’d like to first ask how different nintendo is going to make the game. Animal Crossing through its new releases has stayed pretty much the same but with a few tweaks in between, sometimes facing criticism for how almost nothing changes. But the switch console has a small history of shaking things up. with Legend of Zelda, Breath of the Wild, they gave Zelda fans an entirely different game that was very different than its previous by introducing an open world. With Super Mario Odyssey it appears very similar to super mario galaxy but in this game mario can fling his hat onto enemies and possess them ? ( I haven’t played odyssey but I know this is a new thing for the mario games). And my last example, Kirby Star Allies. I’ve never played any Kirby games but it appears to be that this is the first time multiplayer is being involved ? I could be wrong but that’s how its advertised. This all leads me to believe that something is going to be added. Some different amazing feature that will say, “Don’t buy the past Animal Crossing Games! Buy this one on the Switch ! It has *this * feature that the past animal crossing games don’t have!” this is my big prediction for the new game. i just don’t know what new thing they could offer..

my concerns.

1. Nintendo Online

One thing that would extremely effect my opinion on the whole thing is Nintendo Online. You know, having to pay for having access to online features? When Nintendo Online first showed up, I was very upset. The idea of having to pay for online services was crazy to me. This was because I don’t have a PlayStation or Xbox or at least haven’t played on one in years. Now I don’t really mind. $20 for 12 months? just a month after that initial purchase and it feels free because I got over the dent in my pocket. But I am just one person and this is how it was for me. I’m sure for some other people they are stuck playing offline because that price is something that they just can’t afford. Moving aside that for a second I’d like you to think about how many features in ACNL require internet. Dream addresses, going to a friends town, reading a qr code, etc. 

Nintendo Online is something I didn’t think about until I considered solutions for different problems that came up while I made this post (that I’ll discuss later.) But, for example dream suites and visiting your friends town. It just feels weird to have to pay for things like that. But the more I think about it, the more I feel like that’s how it’s going to be.. sadly. Maybe they’ll introduce a new feature that would make paying for Nintendo Online worth it.

2. qr codes and designs

Currently on my 3ds it’s easy to work with patterns and qr codes. Making my own designs and taking pictures of other peoples qr codes is really easy. But a Nintendo switch presents a couple problems there. First is the obvious problem, the switch doesn’t have a camera. But I’ll tell you what, your phone does. I have Spaltoon 2 and it can connect to the Nintendo Switch app and that app can do a lot. So maybe I’d need to read qr codes with my phone instead. But there’s still a problem there. I usually use my phones screen to read a qr code, and I’m sure many other people do that too. There’s a solution to that as well but at that point it’s just less convenient than new leaf for the 3ds, and from a business standpoint, I’m supposed to be wanting to play the switch version more that the 3ds. So here’s where I remembered Nintendo Online. Maybe they could make an online database of designs and then qr codes become out of the question. Say, you go into the able sisters shop and theres an option to browse designs online. Kind of like how in the sims 4 you can have a profile and upload houses or families. I’m not really sure how much I like this option but it’s possible? Maybe. Alright now second problem with qr codes and designs, making them. Like I mentioned earlier, I have splatoon 2 and drawing on that is one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. But making a design in animal crossing is just pixel art so maybe it wont be that bad.

3. Save Files

The Nintendo Switch let’s you have multiple profiles on one console. Hopefully each one of those profiles get’s their own game. I don’t want to have to share a single town with everyone who uses my switch.

and that does it for my concerns. here’s my...

Hopes and Rambles:

Since the Switch only has one screen, the user interface will probably be like Animal Crossing City Folk from the Wii. It’s been forever since I played that. What im really curious about is the camera position. since there are two joy sticks on the switch, will the camera view be like breath of the wild or odyssey ? Something to think about.

different skin tones! maybe asking where you’re from to determine a skin tone. i know you could get tanner in new leaf but come on. easier way please.

 a separate pocket for tools.

I wish I didn’t have to go to my home or pull up my phone to see what an item or shirt looks like. I would like new sprites but that little leaf is so iconic I doubt that would change.

New furniture. I know there’s already so many sets but I don’t think more could hurt. i love the classic and sloppy series. 

im so curious as to what the title is gonna be and how the story is gonna progress. are timmy and tommy gonna be grown up ? is tortimer die?

i think my biggest concern is whos mayor. i  really just want control. control over what the town looks like. for me the more control the better. 

[five-hour-anxiety]

depresssion vlog 😥😴👎💭🏳️ | The Theory Of Real Activity | thursday vlogs

Taglist: @zerogettie  @spacevirgil@tree4life25@thebiggestnaturaldisaster @pailettehazel@jordandobbertin@thecityofthefireflies @the-fabulous-kimball@azuranightsong@virmillion @erlenmeyertrash @irish-newzealand-idian-dutch @the-sanders-sides @punch-you-with-friendship@captaincantatrice@clovenpinetree @jughead-is-canonically-aroace@aplaceinthevoid@that-random-fandom-girl @zennyo

Word Count: 4431

Warnings: depression and talks of anxiety

Pairings: platonic prinxiety, platonic logicality, platonic analogical

Summary: Virgil is in the middle of a spiral and the back to back bad days are making it hard to function. He texts a few friends for help, and this is the result.

Designated Nerd:  Virgil, it has been some time since I’ve heard from you. Are you feeling well?

Me:  i mean, am i ever fine

Designated Nerd:  Well that is indeed worrying. Is there anything I can do for you, or would you rather I contact our more… emotional friends? Do you need me to come visit?

Me:  no, i dont want anyone over right now. this is gonna sound so stupid but,,, could u tell me what u do when ur upset

Designated Nerd:  If it helps, of course. I tend to listen to stimulating music and take hot showers. Please try to brush your teeth sometime soon as well, as hygiene is something that we all tend to be lax with in these states.

Me:  i should have expected advice like that

Designated Nerd:  Is it not useful? I apologize.

Me:  o no, its good. thx lo

Designated Nerd:  Anytime Virgil. Do not hesitate to contact me if you need anything else.

 ***

Sir-Sing-A-Lot:  hey panic at the everywhere, u still breathing

Me:  wow didnt kno u cared that much

Sir-Sing-A-Lot:  of course i care u ass how u doing

Me:  i mean im not dead. thats a fucking victory dude can i get a hell yeah

Sir-Sing-A-Lot:  hell fucking yeah bro im proud of u

Me:  hey while ur here,,,, how do u deal with ur bad days.

Sir-Sing-A-Lot:  poorly

Me:  damn dude

Sir-Sing-A-Lot:  yeah well thats life but i also light candles and fucking moisturize. unlike u u heathen

Me: thanks u fucking prick

Sir-Sing-A-Lot: hate u too u asshole c u this weekend~

***

Pat-Dad:  hey kiddo!! haven’t heard a peep outta you lately, just wanna make sure you’re still okay!!

Me:  im not okay, actually. but im glad u texted bc i have a q for u

Pat-Dad: anything for you kiddo, tell me how i can help!! :)

Me: wat do u do on bad days. like, how do u deal with the shitty emotions

Pat-Dad:  language kiddo.

Me: hellcrab.png

Pat-Dad: i dont have the profanity manatee on me so just pretend i sent that. anyway! i like to watch a bunch of funny shows and sit around in my favorite clothes! gotta feel good somehow!! and like, a lot of pillows are involved.

Me:  is this permission to turn my living room into a pillow fort

Pat-Dad: absolutely!!! but make sure you eat something today kiddo,,, making food is gonna be better than takeout btw. Feels good to have made something, trick the brian into enjoying the food more.

Me:  brian

Pat-Dad:  *brain, oh hush up

Me:  thanks 4 the help. <3 u

Pat-Dad: anytime kiddo!!!! :) <3 love you more!!!!!

***

   “Welcome back to the Theory of Real Activity -- today’s vlog: not what you all signed up for.” Virgil sighed, running a hand through his hair. “As I’m sure a lot of you have noticed, or at least the twitter crew has, I haven’t been as active on the channel lately. And I’m sorry about that, but I think I’m ready to talk about why now.

   “As many of you know, I have depression and anxiety. No way around it, there’s the truth. Often, these diseases prevent me from functioning like a healthy person would. That’s what’s been happening to me for the last few months. I’ve had a hard time getting up and dragging myself anywhere, much less making new content for all of you. Talking to friends via text is really hard too, so Twitter is something I can’t deal with either.

   “And I know a lot of you out there are the same way -- heck, when I do use Twitter and the likes, I see messages like that all the time. And I’m happy I’m able to help you all through those days when I can. But I can’t always be around to make stuff like that, so today I’m gonna talk you guys through helping yourselves when the days get bad and the voices get loud, okay?

   “But don’t let the start of this video fool you -- this isn’t a ‘oh we’re all gonna be okay if we just believe!’ kinda thing. Because there’s a lot of those. Don’t get me wrong, those are all wonderful messages and I really appreciate them, but I don’t think we need another one right now. What’s the point in trying to be motivated when the energy just isn’t there? I don’t know about any of you, but I almost feel worse when I watch those because I know whoever is on the other side of the screen wants me to work for happiness and I just… can’t. I can’t do it when I’m that low. So, no, this is not one of those videos.

“This is something completely different, I really hope it clicks with a few of you.”

   The camera switches out of selfie mode to reveal a table full of shopping bags. Virgil laughs off-screen and there’s the sound of papers shuffling.

   “Ladies, Gents, and everyone beyond the binary welcome to ‘How to Kinda Cope with Shit Brains’, starring yours truly. Let’s begin, shall we?”

***

   “Logan, you didn’t tell me you were uploading a video today! What’s this one about?” Patton squealed, clicking on the notification. Logan peered over his shoulder, trying to make out the display behind layers of smudges and a few cracks.

   “I- I did not upload a video today as Thursdays are typically reserved for anything Virgil wishes to post. That’s why there have not been any midweek videos recently.” Logan pulled out his own phone, giving up on Patton’s, and quickly unlocked the screen. “There is no one else with access to the account, so who- oh never mind. That is clearly something of Virgil’s creation.”

   “My goodness, he sure loves emojis, huh?” Patton giggled, reaching into his pockets. Logan groaned something like ‘you have no idea’ and pulled out a screen cloth for Patton. The younger man took it and quickly cleaned off his screen before pulling out his earbuds

“Do you wanna watch it together?” He asked, dangling them in front of Logan. Logan stared at him, grimacing.

   “Do you know how unsanitary sharing earphones is, Patton? I have a split connector in my bag, allow me to retrieve it and we shall view it together.”

***

   “So, I have compiled a list of things my friends do when they’re having bad days, as well as a few activities of my own, and we’re gonna test them. I’ll take note of how I feel before I start, do the activities, and then I’ll rate them by how I feel afterward. And if that sounds complicated, it is! Kinda. Logan says it’s the proper way to test things, by having a starting point and an end point, so go ask him? I don’t know, he’s always talking about control groups and I don’t know about any of you but I don’t want to make myself have bad days back to back just so I can test a bunch of things ‘fairly’.

“Anyway, first up: Roman’s list. He- he actually didn’t have much to say, just “moisturize bitch’ so I just pulled ideas from what he normally does on off-days. Sorry, Ro, but you brought this upon yourself.”

   Virgil reaches into the bag marked “Bed, Bath, and Beyond” and fishes out a bottle of something pink, as well as a purple container of lotion and a green candle.

   “I know for a fact Roman prefers grapefruit face wash, so that’s what we got here,” he shakes the pink bottle, “so we can gift this to him when we’re done here. And we have a bottle of lavender-scented lotion to go with it. I read somewhere that lavender helps with anxiety or something, but like,” he points at the camera, “it just smells good, and I am not ashamed to admit to that. Don’t read too much into this.

   “I also bought a scented candle, because that’s the only other thing Roman offered advice-wise. I fact-checked this one, and apparently good scents are supposed to help you think more clearly? Or something. I don’t know, I read the article at four in the morning, there’s not much I can really remember about it. Four am Virgil is really bad at retaining information.”

   The camera jostles as Virgil picks it up and walks into his bathroom. “Uh, just for like, the starting point? The best way to describe this type of anxiety is the buzzing and tensing of your muscles and the tightness in your chest. There’s nothing I want more than to dive under my bed sheets and sleep until tomorrow and try again later.

   “But I’m going to do this, so wish me luck.” He mutters, turning the tap on and grabbing a washcloth. The screen cuts away to black as an upbeat nineties song plays, and the text on the screen reads ‘Roman’s results’.

   “So,” Virgil starts, his face covered in white foam, “this stuff kinda burns? Roman, what the hell is wrong with you, you like this stuff? Ugh. Also, just so everyone knows, the smell of artificial grapefruit and lavender do not mix. Like separate, they are really good smells but just… don’t mix them together. It’s a really bad idea. We may have to do my list next so I can let the house air out for a while. As it is, I didn’t even try to light the candle, we do not need to add spearmint to this stink bomb.

   “Beyond that? The face wash is definitely waking me up. I feel a little more ‘oh hey, I’m a person’ that I did before so, yeah. This wasn’t a total bust. And my skin is soft! I understand the appeal of moisturizing now! Roman, how dare you keep this a secret from me?” Virgil laughs, rubbing his hands together. “Holy shit I feel like a million bucks. I am keeping the lotion, you can take this demon face scrub.” Virgil reaches off screen and picks up the pink bottle, scanning the back panel of text.

   “So overall, I’d say Roman’s tactics work. You just gotta like, make sure you get complimentary smells so you don’t stink yourself out of your house,” He says, still reading the bottle, “And you should definitely read the instructions on the bottles because this,” He holds up the pink bottle, “says to wash off after a few minutes, and it’s been ten. I’m gonna go get this off my face now.”

***

   “Babe, you seriously didn’t read the instructions?” Roman howled, throwing his head back into the couch. He could hear Virgil scoff from the kitchen.

   “Excuse me, but I thought it was like one of those face masks you leave on for half an hour! How was I supposed to know!” He asked, walking back into the room and plopping down beside Roman. “They look the same when you put them on, and you have a few long-lasting ones that smell like grapefruit! I had no way of knowing!”

   “You could’ve called, man. I would have helped you!” Roman lifted his arm, inviting Virgil to crawl under it. He took it and wrapped his arms around the taller man’s chest. “You bought face scrub, which is definitely not the same thing. Both are good though! Just, not that same.”

   “Yeah, well, I know that now,” Virgil muttered, burying his head in Roman’s hoodie.

   “We can do actual face masks after this if you want.” Roman offered, picking his phone back up. “Your pores could really benefit from one.”

   “You’re a dick. Turn that thing off.”

   “Love you too, bastard, but there’s no way in hell I’m turning this off.”

***

   The camera cuts again, and this time Virgil is in his bedroom. The window is open, and the sound of passing cars is almost inaudible but still present. His peach walls are bathed in a warm glow of the setting sun, a light breeze pushing his bangs up every so often.

   “Okay so, next up is Patton’s list. As per my own ‘rules’, I’m feeling mentally exhausted and ready to check the fuck out right now. But despite this, I’m actually… really excited for this one? It involves food, there’s no way this can go poorly.”

   The video cuts to footage of Virgil screaming as food on the stove erupts into flame. The 1812 Overture is playing the background. Whatever was in the pan is no longer food, as the burnt sustenance is bubbling in an ominous manner. The oven mitt is no longer on Virgil’s hand and is instead in a smoky heap on the kitchen counter.

   “No way this can go poorly” Virgil’s voice echoes as he runs off camera screaming. He returns with a fire extinguisher, the lens becoming jammed with foam just before the video cuts back to Virgil in his room eating Chinese takeout.

   “Okay so. It turns out it can go poorly. Patton said that making sure you eat, like, actual food and not six servings of chocolate cake with a glass of cherry coke on the side is supposed to help with the depression thing but like. It definitely didn’t help with the anxiety. Something about the food you worked to make tasting better?

   “So, I cheated and ordered take out. But hey! This stuff has got a bunch of veggies in it, so I think I won this round. Moving on,” Virgil puts the food down and leans down to grab something off the floor, “Patton also recommended watching some shows that I know I enjoy, so let’s do that next.” Virgil puts on the purple headphones he had grabbed and pulled his laptop onto his lap. He clicks off the light on his desk and plunges the room into darkness with only his computer light illuminating his face.

   “We’re watching the entirety of the Brooklyn Nine-Nine Halloween episodes, so be prepared for a highlight reel of that while I stuff my face with rice.” He twirls his finger around in a ‘roll film’ motion and kicks his feet up on the desk.

   The camera cuts to a black screen once more, the same upbeat music playing in the background. The text now read’s “Patton’s results”.

   The next few minutes is a series of clips strung together, many of them consisting of Virgil mouthing the lines along with the characters, and screeching with laughter. The last one shows him crying into his takeout, mumbling about how much he loves the relationship between Jake and Amy. He had taken his feet down from the desk at some point, now curled into his chair and bundled in his hoodie almost entirely.

   The video cuts away to a slightly more composed Virgil, who is now cuddling a pillow and scraping the bottom of the takeout box. His eye makeup had run down his face over the last few hours and he looked unnaturally pale in the weird lighting.

   “Yeah that uh,” He coughs awkwardly, “that worked. Ten out of three Patton, way to go. Got my brain to shut up for like, I don’t know, two hours?” He takes a deep breath and puts the takeout container on the desk. “It’s late, I think I’m gonna just do Logan’s and I’s lists tomorrow.”

***

   “Should I be concerned that he set the kitchen on fire and didn’t call anyone?” Patton whispered, pausing the video. “Why didn’t he call anyone? Did he get burned?”

   “I do not think you speeding to his house would have done any good, Patton, as he got the fire out by himself. That being said,” Logan pinched the bridge of his nose, “he is not allowed to cook for game night. Ever. What was he even trying to make?”

   “He can join me in the kitchen ban, then. The store-bought cookie club just gained a new member.”

   “God help us if you ever cook together. I’d have to take out a loan for a new apartment. I already cannot pay my student loans, I fear the possibility of adding to my life debt.” Logan shuddered, reaching over to unpause the video.

***

   “Okay, good morning internet. It’s buttcrack early outside, I don’t even think the sun is up yet? That’s good, actually, and I’ll get to why later.

“So, all that’s left is Logan and I’s lists, and to be honest? Logan may have already won the whole thing, looking at this on paper. He actually cares about like, not dying by germs or some shit.,I can guarantee his list will be practical. I gotta go set some stuff up for my list, so hang tight.” The screen cuts to a slightly more awake Virgil.

   He grins and gives a tiny wave before tapping the screen to switch the camera and show a hammock.

   “So, I’m next. I’m also gonna save Logan’s advice for the end of the video so you guys watch this whole thing. Give people an incentive for sticking around. Because I can see the stats on this, I know half of you like, exit the video halfway through. Stay for the whole thing, dammit, I need the ad money.” He laughs, gently putting the camera down. The screen shows a new sunrise, one full of soft purples and oranges. Above the sun and its halo are a few stars that have yet to go out for the day, barely visible behind the hazy clouds. Virgil picks the camera back up, the footage shaky.

   The camera stills to a shot of Virgil’s legs, the hammock swaying gently in the breeze. A few frogs can be heard singing in the background and Virgil hums a few notes. His voice is low as he speaks, still rough from sleep.

   “Again, to follow my own rules: I feel so awful I don’t even want to talk about it, guys. Sorry.” Virgil is quiet for a while longer, the occasional whispered lyric picked up by the microphone. Eventually, he speaks once more, a lighter tone to his voice.

   “Sure, this looks peaceful, but if you could all hear what kind of music I’m listening to right now, you’d be calling my therapist. Hey, Paul, I apologize my bro, but wow are you not gonna like me the next time I’m in.

   “So yeah, my list is just ‘get sun and get songs’. You Gucci fam, just stay out here until you either feel good or get cold. Probably gonna be the last one but, hey, you tried. Gold star. Bring a blanket if you wanna aim for the best possible outcome.”

   The camera cuts again, this time looking down from what is assumed to be a porch. The sky is dark once more, and the only source of light is a small candle.

   “Huh. What do you know, the candle works after all. Spearmint -- the poor man’s anti-anxiety. You know, I actually looked that up. Spearmint is supposed to be a good stress reliever and some kind of mood booster. The more you know, huh?”

***

   “Virgil, what the hell does that mean?” Roman chuckled, rubbing Virgil’s arm.

   “It means that when I’m panicking at work I just pop in a breath mint and BAM I am suddenly closer to reality than I was ten seconds ago.”

   “Do I wanna know how you discovered that?”

   “I had a hangry panic attack in high school and the only thing I had to eat in my bag were breath mints I was meaning to gift to you.”

   “Oh, that’s pretty- hey.”

   “You could still use some, man. Keep your nasty breath away from me.”

   Roman just hummed, looking at Virgil from the corner of his eyes. He smiled softly, his eyes sad and concerned. Pulling him closer, he unpaused the video and listened as he continued to hold his friend.

***

   “And last but certainly not least, is the list of the late, great Logan. He’s not dead. He’s just always late to dinner dates. Like a pretentious nerd, his excuses are ‘oh, I was studying’, ‘oh, I had an exam’, or ‘Patton set the kitchen on fire again, call 911’. What an ass.

   “Anyway. This list, which doesn’t have a cool name because Logan is against emojis and stuff, just has like, five items on it. In order that is: brush your teeth, put on some clean clothes, wash your hair, put on some socks, and the last one is a surprise. Because it really took me off guard and I need you all to be as surprised as I was.

   “And right now, I just feel apathetic. In case someone gets upset that I didn’t mention I felt going into this, I just feel apathetic.”

   The video cuts away to Virgil’s bathroom once more, and the leftover mess from the other day can be seen in the sink.

“Uh. Just, just ignore that mess. You know what it’s from, I don’t feel bad about that. Anyway, teeth brushing. Let me just find the toothpaste…

“You know, I can’t remember if I bought toothpaste at the store. Of all the crap I bought, don’t think toothpaste made it into the bin. So, let’s just see if I still have any of the travel samples from the dentist.”

Virgil riffles through his cabinets, pulling out items such as combs, hair dye, bleach, and a bottle of pills. He hums for a second, before crouching down to look under the sink.

   “I feel like, and I could be the only one who experiences this, I feel like anything that gets put under the sink will never see the light of day. So maybe I won’t be brushing my teeth today- wait. Wait! Oh gosh, thank you Jesus- there’s a- there is a bottle in the back there, but I can’t reach it. Outta my way, makeup kit, I got teeth to be cleaned!”

   Virgil pops back into view, holding up a half used mini bottle of toothpaste. It’s the kid’s kind, that tastes like berries and bubblegum. He uncaps it and starts to squeeze it out onto his toothbrush buts stops short.

   “Why the hell are there sparkles in this thing? That- isn’t that a, like, choking hazard or some shit? Okay, sorry Logan, teeth brushing is not happening in this video. I think you’d agree with me on this. When you get to this point in the video, feel free to add toothpaste to our shopping list.”

***

   “Jokes on you, Virgil, I added it yesterday when I spent the night and had to use that monstrosity.”

   “I use that stuff all the time, Logan, there’s nothing wrong with it! Look at me, I’m perfectly fine!”

   “That’s… that’s a, uh, great point Patton. Explains a lot.”

***

   “Okay, so next on the list was clean clothes. I’m doing that off camera, you nasties, so hang tight for a word from our sponsors.”

   The screen is black, with white text reading “crofters plz sponsor us logan is desperate.”

   Virgil reappears, in the same hoodie and shirt. He smirks, pointing at a pile of clothes on the floor.

   “Ha, I own two of these hoodies and three of these shirts. I am a cartoon character, y’all will never see me in a different outfit. You can dream, but my job is to crush those dreams.” He makes a fist as he says this, laughing through his teeth as he tries to appear tough.

   The camera cuts again, this time showing Virgil singing into a hairbrush while a towel is wrapped around his head. The scene doesn’t last long, as we are once again taken back to Virgil’s bedroom where he is set up with a laptop. This time he’s on his bed and the curtains are drawn.

   “It said to wash your hair, and you can’t wash hair without serenading the monsters living behind the shower curtains we all feared when we were little. Just because we aren’t afraid of them doesn’t mean they aren’t real!

   “Anyway, this is the last part of Logan’s list. It’s actually really sweet? Like, I am a grown ass man, and I am not ashamed to say I sobbed over this.” He continues, voice starting to tremor.

   Virgil spins his laptop around to show a YouTube video that’s about half an hour long. The title reads, ‘the best of Bert and Ernie from Sesame Street’. Virgil sniffs real fast, raking a fist over his eyes.

   “He uh, he knew these guys were my heroes growing up. And he knew it would cheer me up. Guess w-hat man,” Virgil sniffs again, “It- it worked like a fu-fucking charm. I uh, I’m actually feeling things after going through your list, so like. Nice work, I guess, I owe you dinner. Like, dinner at a restaurant, not a cooking dinner because I don’t want to poison you.

   “Ahem. Anyway. That’s the best thing in this whole video, you win Logan. And that about wraps up the Thursday vlog. Thanks for listening everyone, here’s the obligatory ‘we’re gonna be okay’ message, because as corny as that is -- it’s true. Find yourself a Bert to go with your Ernie and it’ll be okay. Maybe throw in an Elmo or a Zoey if you wanna round out the group. And my metaphor is getting too complicated, so! Virgil out! See you this weekend for the next Theory of Real Activity -- Logan and I are joined by Patton this time and we get into wild shit this week, let me tell you.”

***

   “Well, what are we still waiting around here for?” Patton asked, turning his phone off. He disconnected the earbuds, stuffing his haphazardly into his front pocket. Logan winced at the sight, and quickly but carefully wound his up into their case.

   “I’ll text Virgil to make sure he knows to expect us. Patton, if you could text Roman?” Logan asks, standing up and smoothing out his shirt. Patton nods, already poking away at his phone.

Me: Greetings, Virgil. Patton and I are on our way over to your house if that is okay?

Virgil Jackson: cant tell you no, you practically live here

Me: Yes, well, that is true. Is there anything I should bring with us?

Virgil Jackson: would it be lame to say a hug

Me: Not at all. If there is anything this group is good for, it’s hugging and crying. The occasional yelling, but that could go either way.

Virgil Jackson: whatever nerd, get over here already