#ironically not the only prehistoric thing I have for today

[ur-fav-is-older-than-discokid]

The Cambrian explosion from the early Paleozoic Era is older than Disco Kid!

Began: Approximately 538.8 million years ago

Requested by: @ohshy

[tearueful]

HEY tell me about your boys oc

You've twisted my arm, LMAO.

Time to dump my brain. My The Boys OC is PURE SELF INDULGENCE because she's basically an alt version of Tea but what if The Boys? So you know, a cringe almost self-insert OC that evolved into her own thing in my brain. She 300% only exists to smooch Homelander but as of today and runaway story ideas, MAYBE NOT.

I've got this whole vague outline of a story in my head I've taken notes on and written a few lines and drabbles for, but she'll most likely just stick in my brain cause OC x canon isn't well received and I don't have the free time to RP her with friends like I'd like.

ANYWAY - This is LONG. So LONG.

Her name is Stray, which is super not original to anyone who knows my online aliases or the fact that the first version of my vtube character was named Stray but I like short aliases and Stray is as good a name as any for a cat-based Supe.

Her supe power is that she can shapeshift into any feline. House cat, tiger, leopard, and even prehistoric cats because I want her to lay on Homelander as a polar bear sized saber. THE VISUALS.

Like Doppelganger, Stray fluidly shifts between forms in mere moments but unlike Doppelganger, these forms are all Stray. She can't transform into a visual copy of say, your pet cat.

Like Beast Boy, her animal forms are coded to her colors. She's a calico cat (surprise, surprise) if she's a house cat. A golden tabby coated tiger if she's a tiger. Basically all coat colors try to mimic orange, brown, white to some degree. If she's a lioness, it's a richer orangy hue instead of tawny.

I'd have to pin down the exact colors and make a coat pattern chart, but basically every coat is a little off on what the default is for wild cats. Enough to make you go, 'hmm that seems odd' more than seeing a big cat in a weird spot would. The other thing that's constant is her eye color, same green eyes in all forms. So her hair color / skin color reflect her cat coat patterns and her eye color is consistent, basically.

The main perk is that her supe power scales with form. She's a house cat? Well- That house cat could theoretically blast herself through your skull like Jamie the hamster and come out fine on the other side. This scales, so you get a jaguar biting you it's no longer a 1,500 PSI bite but idfk, biting through steel beams. The bigger Stray is, the more durable and the more damage she can do. Get her big enough and she could bite through Homelander's limbs. :D

The downsides are:

Stray is a perfectly normal, squishy person when not in a feline form. Very fragile, don't let near other Supes when she's a person.

She can't stay in feline form forever. Like Doppelganger, it hurts if she keeps a form for too long but she's been trained (forced) to endure it. After 24 hours, she starts to become debilitated from the pain but can push on depending on desperation level. Regardless, she'll be pretty useless quick.

Stray can be locked out of shifting or locked in a form with a metal band around her neck/wrist/ankle. Say, iron does it because uh- It's the most stable element or something which blocks Stray's atoms from doing whatever the fuck they do to reform her into various kitty cats. Having a power lock is fun for situations.

The backstory is that around the same time of Homelander's debut, Stan Edgar wanted to have a contingency plan. I don't know the exact timeline, but I assume Victoria Neuman was adopted by Edgar around that time as his backup plan for Homelander. Stray was picked up for the same reason, except she was more a creature to get locked away and trained to hate Homelander.

Her SUPER TRAGIC backstory is that she had a normal life, save for being a supe, until she turned 18. Then Vought snatched her up with the excuse of that binding Supe Contract, so her family was none the wiser that through daughter was shipped off to a lab. Meanwhile, Stray was fed some story that her family DIED HORRIBLY because of Homelander with her hatred of him encouraged subtly. Enough to make a bitch pissy, but not rampage through the lab. (That or they kept a bitch collared a lot)

Stan Edgar gets thrown in jail and Stray gets lost in the shuffle, forgotten for the most part until her file is dug up or The Boys are tipped off about something strange over in a SUPER SECRET LAB that Butcher is apparently good at finding, given how he found The Woods in Gen V.

The Boys get a new pet cat as they assume Stray is a suped up animal, since they find her collared and unable to shift. I get to write a few cute drabbles of Stray being tormented as people coo over her as a kitty cat until someone takes her collar off. Then the idiot is hell bent on revenge, which suits Butcher just fine.

She infiltrates Vought Tower by being picked up as a stray cat (haha) by Ryan Butcher. Cue Homelander having beef with a cat who keeps stealing his son's attention. Also, that cat keeps looking at him weird. More excuses to write cute fluff with Ryan getting a pet he can cuddle but can't kill. She chills in Vought Tower with Ryan, getting rather attached to the boy because he is SUCH A SWEETIE PIE.

Stray goes to chomp Homelander's head off eventually, hunting him down like prey and wrecking his shit because I just want to write Homelander being afraid. There's something fun about having Homelander hunted by a bigger predator, something primordial and feral. c:

Ryan intervenes before Stray eats Homelander and she pisses off for a bit. Also, probably dealing with a Compound V high given how much V must be in Homelander's blood.

Something something, Homelander researches the bitch who almost ate him. Figures out her weakness and there's probably MORE DRAMA with them fucking with each other. I haven't banged out the details but these lil shits will be toxic as fuck, but since Stray is a strong supe he'll want her for his supe army. Homelander even shows Stray that her family is alive and she's all, "Well fuck. Uh, my bad bro?"

Ultimately, Stray will waver between hating Vought for what they did, having some loyalty to members of The Boys for their kindness, but loyalty to Homelander and Ryan for similar. She's not a good person so she could go for the DESTROY VOUGHT or SUPE SUPERIORITY side on a coin flip.

She's just a character I want to put in situations within The Boys universe. (Sexual situations)

I want tiger!Stray sprawled out on the floor while Ryan uses her as a living lounge chair as he does his homework.

Bickering between Homelander and Stray. Stray being a VERY FUCKING ANNOYING CAT at Homelander before he knows she's a supe.

Therapy cat for Kimiko. 🥺

Butcher being a jerk and dubbing her 'Moggy'.

Stray leaving bite and claw mark scars on Homelander. c:

[amethystamanda]

Sheep and Llama shear overrides, plus hanging shears

When I started this post on patreon, it said "Tell a story." These shears HAVE a story. I won't do it justice, but it's there. I was annoyed by the modern electric shears for the sheep in my historic save, and didn't see an override anywhere, so I decided to make one.

The only way this could have gone worse is if they crashed my computer.

I opened up the original mesh for the sheep shears in blender, and thought it would be easy enough to make the basic shape and size, and then hide the electric shears and refine the iron ones. They insisted on turning into a fan or distorting wildly out of shape.

I got through that.

Then I needed to make a new texture for them. Teal and white was not the look I was going for.

There are three or more images hiding in this mesh somewhere that cannot be accessed or made visible in any usable way.

What I eventually used was nothing like any of those images. But it's there and usable.

Great! Overrides done. Just make the lower LODs and import everything to the files.

LODs won't form. I had to restart blender twice to get them to work.

Okay! Two working files. Pop them in game and make sure they work!

The sheep shears, the ones I started this whole thing for, are invisible in game.

I remade them again. Still invisible.

The sheep shears for Horse Ranch? They require Cottage Living. If BE tells you they conflict with each other, ignore it. I had to use that file as a base. They both work fine in game. It's a good thing I decided to make the llama shears, or there would be no sheep shears, and I would continue to cringe at the blue plastic electric razors.

Don't ask about the wall shears.

ANYWAY

Iron hand shears for your sheep and llamas.

BOTH require Cottage Living. The sheep shears also require Horse Ranch.

Black iron, as suitable for many centuries as is possible given the nature of the game.

Historically, sheep have been raised for wool since prehistoric times. Originally, the wool would have been pulled off by hand, and later using hand shears similar to these, and they're still in use in some places today (but I'm sure they're shinier): https://www.ramshornstudio.com/shearing.htm https://youtu.be/kjw8Fn-ISgM?t=233

440 polys. The original electric shears in game are between 100 and 300 polys.

They still have sound. I tried removing it, but it must be tied to the animation.

The wall shears are 472 polys and basegame compatible. They cost 50 simoleons, and found in wall sculptures, and have just one swatch.

Download: http://simfileshare.net/folder/227167/

If there's anything else wrong with them, make sure to tell me so I can cry about it.

[returntosaturn271995]

March 2nd: Clearing Out

Some days I truly feel like that prehistoric squirrel from Ice Age, anxious and constantly in pursuit of something so menial it hardly seems worth the chaos. Other days I just feel like a regular squirrel, in that they lose like 75% of the nuts they store. 

I was reminded of this, when in the midst of making my bed, I decided my weighted blanket was making it too hard to want to get out of bed. I threw it in to our long-suffering linen closet, bursting at the hinges with yellowing sheets and forgotten clothes from people who have partied or stayed the night.

Simply put: they was no space to shove anymore useless crap in to and it all came spewing out in the hallway. Clothes that I had tucked away for winter, or to give back, or to give away as PJs, or just to store for no reason other than I hadn’t parted with it. Jackets of all the wrong sizes, jerseys for sports teams I don’t root for, sweatshirts for companies I don’t work at, sweatpants from schools I didn’t go to, and oh the truly insane amount of shacker shirts from guys I don’t even remember dating. 

None of it had seen the light of day in 2 years and most of it didn’t belong to anyone or anything other than the garbage. I stared in to the pile. It stared back from the floor. The linen cupboard sighed with relief. What goes in must come out.

I pushed the pile in to the room with my foot and checked the clock. 30 minuets until I had to drive to therapy. I shoved the pile to a corner and did my yoga and mindfulness for the day instead. There was something on the nose about my irrelevant past scattered before me as I closed my eyes and tried to stay in the moment. The meditation played in my head as I drove to therapy, ironically inciting road rage from other cars as I’m a shitty driver even when I’m not trying to achieve enlightenment. 

We talked about my habits today. How all of the yoga (3 days), bed making (2 years), meditation (1 year), journaling, reading, running, applying, cleaning, fashion, political interests (on and off for forever) are supposed to help me cope more effectively with the dark and messy shit.

The feels never go away. I just don’t want to be the person who binge drinks, fucks around, and generally avoids responsibility when they come back. There’s this ingrained cynical part of me that doesn’t want to be the caricature of wellness. Like Lorde singing in “Mood Ring”. Another white lady with brown roots thinking a chakra can heal the wounds of unmet ideals and hugs never given. 

But fuck it: it’s just stretching and breathing. I’m allowed to stretch and breathe and try to be in the moment, right? Maybe Marie Kondo is annoying seeing God in organization, but it’s still nice to clean, right? Moisturizing my skin and drinking less aren’t going to stop me from aging, but at least they’re good for me, right? 

Does it make me an asshole to try to be healthy? To experiment with micro-dosing mushrooms (tbh can’t tell much of a difference) or buy the green juice or go on a long walk in the sunshine? Isn’t the point that I’m showing up? That I’m taking the steps while trying not to roll my eyes?

I’m the only person who writes in the journal and I rarely read it back. But it’s something rather than nothing. It exists. 

The old clothes were separated in to a trash bag and some things worth keeping (Giant’s jersey, UCSB crop top, some deadass comfortable loungewear). The rest went in to the garbage.

[ayellowbirds]

Excuse me ma'am.

You said something about hyenas being canine/feline hybrid or something?

And the whole gender thing?? What gender thing.

Can you elaborate?

I would normally look this up but i have the math exam to decide my life tomorrow and can't afford to go down this rabbit hole immediately. Also this is more fun?

no problem at all! I love to talk about this, hyenas are some of my all-time favorite animals.

k, so: hyenas are commonly mistaken for canids, but they ain't canids. They ain't even in the Carnivoran suborder Caniformia w/ canids, bears, raccoons, etc. They're in suborder Feliformia, along w/ felids (cats), mongooses (includin' meerkats), fossas, an' civets. Their closest living relatives, taxonomically speaking, are animals like this:

and that also means that your average hyena (whether spotted, brown, striped, or aardwolf) is more closely related to Stationmaster Tama in ancestry than it is to a wolf or coyote.

the thing is, hyenas have historically and prehistorically wound up filling some very canid-like niches. Although the line of 'dog-like hyenas' is today only known from the aardwolf, even the 'bone-crushing hyenas' still have comparatively long muzzles that they use for catching prey by chasing and biting, rather than the heavy focus on ambush tactics that felids tend to use. Hyenids and canids are both well-adapted to running, suck ass at climbing, and have roughly-padded paws with non-extensible claws.

ironically, the most 'dog-like' hyenas around today specialize in an insectivorous diet. Many of the general hyenid characteristics are still considered very feliformian by researchers: their scent-marking, their mating habits, the way they loaf:

and if you take a good look at hyenas—especially spotties—compared to canids, you'll notice that their builds are still pretty different, with long, strong necks and a build where the hind legs are noticeably shorter than the forelimbs.

(source)

as for the gender thing:

female spotted hyenas have such high levels of androgens that they not only tend to be bigger than the males, but they also have dicks and balls of their own.

No, really! The vulva and clitoris of the female (ovary-bearing) hyena takes the form of a 'pseudopenis' that can be as long as the phallus of the male (semen-bearing) of the species; it's usually only distinguishable by the shape of the glans, or if the hyena in question is pregnant, nursing, or actively engaged in reproduction. Female hyenas actually give birth through their pseudopenis (which usually results in some pretty gruesome tearing), and they have a false scrotum of fatty tissue formed from part of the labia. This leads to a situation where the females have complete control over when and whom they mate with.

it's widely asserted that this is linked to the tendency (note, it's a tendency: there are observed cases of dominant males, typically the son of a dominant female) of female spotted hyenas to take the socially dominant role in interactions with males, but there is strong evidence that it's actually social factors that determine who is in charge in a spottie clan.

[the-fae-folk]

What is a Fairy?

I suppose they probably need some explanation, especially nowadays. Fairies (Faeries, Fay, Fey, Fae, or even Fair Folk) could be considered a type of mythical being. Some have described them as spirits, others as ghosts of the deceased, some deified ancestors, prehistoric precursors to humans, personifications of nature, pagan deities, or even angels and demons in the way of Christian traditions. Often they encompass a metaphysical aspect, being depicted as spirits or beings who transcend the physical universe and world that we know. Or given features of the Supernatural, such as magic or extrasensory perception, which allow them to violate or go beyond the laws of nature. Even sometimes Preternatural, which something abnormal or strange and explainable but still within the boundaries of the natural laws of the universe (for example I could say someone is a preternaturally good cellist, and mean that they are impossibly good beyond expectations or even belief, but I’m not saying that they are actually magical...just that their apparent abilities and how they gained them are unknown and very strange to me.) But what is a fairy? Well you already know what some of them look like. Many people might immediately picture Tinkerbell from the animated Disney feature film, or even from the original Peter Pan novel by J. M. Barrie. And they would be correct, in part. Tinkerbell is a depiction of a Pixie, a specific type of fairy. But there are lots of fairy types, I don’t actually think there’s a complete list. (I should probably try to make one at some point, but no promises.) During some points in history the label of fairy was used to mean magical beings who had a mostly human shape. Gnomes, leprechauns, goblins, pixies, dwarfs, elfs, etc etc etc. And at other points it also included non humanoid magical creatures such as Unicorns, Dragons, Kelpie, Basilisk, and more (Sometimes these were referred to as Fairy Creatures). So where did they come from? Well the funny thing is that Fairies don’t actually come from only one area or set of myths. They are a strange combination of the folklore from all over Europe (and possibly beyond) and include ideas and stories from Celtic, Scandinavian, Nordic, Germanic, French, and English Folklore and Mythology. As these stories were passed around and intermingled and changed they brought about the collective creatures we know today as the Fae or Fairies. The Renaissance, Romantic Era, Victorian Era, Edwardian Era, and even the Celtic Revival Movement of the 19th and 20th centuries all had their influences on the stories and ideas connected with the Fairy folk, some significantly less helpful than others. Even the Fantasy Literature Genre, with Tolkien at its forefront, has added and changed much about people’s view on these creatures. So lets talk about some basic things you’ll want to know when dealing with Fairies. The first thing you might want to remember is that many people view the Tuatha Dé Danann (Supernatural gods, goddesses, heroes, and kings of Irish Mythology) as being the source for Faeries, or at least one of the strongest influences. Celtic Folklore and culture is easily one of the most visible bits of Faerie lore that you can find these days, but there’s a lot more that starts showing up when you begin to dig. Another thing to note is that the Renaissance, Romantic Era, Victorian Era, Edwardian Era, and the Celtic Revival Movement had a massive influence on how people saw fairies. They would mix folklore from different areas of Europe, attempted to prove the existence of fairies through scientific means, created artistic depictions of fairies, and much more. Often they sanitized and shrunk the fairies until they were mostly harmless or relegated to the outskirts of human life as a curiosity. Which brings me to the next point. In a lot of older folklore, from all over Europe, fairy beings are often depicted as being incredibly dangerous. Kidnapping humans or human babies, causing crops to wither, water to dry up, food to rot. They could lure people in with magic into a fairy ring of mushrooms and make them dance forever or make them forget their life. Sometimes they even played with time itself. A person could dance with the fairies only to find that they’ve been gone a hundred years when they try to go home. And many beliefs have depictions of some kind of Otherworld, a world apart from our own, or layered over it like an extra dimension we are unable to perceive or directly interact with. Sometimes its a land of the dead or a hidden underground kingdom, other times is a strange and fantastical country with its own laws and ways of doing things. As these stories meshed together we got what is known as Fairyland. The land which the fairies dwell in. Though some believe they simply live on Earth, hidden in the wild, or among us. Some reoccurring ideas are often connected with fairies, though not all have stayed the same as the original lore they were born from. The idea that Faeries, for whatever reason, are unable to or will not lie. This is a very important idea because the Folk are also simultaneously depicted as deceptive. Like particularly vicious lawyers they will play with words, never quite lying, but purposefully leading you astray or tricking you into a bad deal. They will often obey an oath, promise, or deal exactly to the letter, but ignore the intent behind it in order to twist it to their own benefit or amusement. Whether or not fairies are immortal depends entirely on where you draw your folklore from. Sometimes they are immortal; deathless, not mortal. Unable to die in spite of starvation, terrible wounds, age, or anything else. They are bound to life for all time. But some stories depict the stranger Fae Folk as being Eternal. Beyond time, always having existed and always existing, sometimes cycling, sometimes directionless and boundless and everything. Some tough concepts to get your head around, but nobody really agrees which one fairies are. In some folklore they’re even depicted as mortal, same as you and I, but a lot longer lived and harder to kill. A reoccurring motif in older Folklore is the need of humans to try and ward off fairies with charms and totems. When they were not depicted as outright malicious and dangerous, sometimes being thought to cause illness and death or bring about disastrous misfortune or steal a person’s name and voice, fairies were still mischievous and valiantly unhelpful. So people had all kinds of lucky charms to protect from them: like four leaf clovers, various plants, or actions like wearing your clothes inside out to confuse them. Iron is said in many beliefs to burn them, and certain herbs they view as sacred and will refrain from touching the bearer. A few more things. Christianity plays an important part in this discussion, though many people don’t like that. In many places myths and legends were wiped out by Christianity, either intentionally or simply by the very fact that it was trying to convert people in Europe and old pagan beliefs were seen as nonsensical. But still stories persisted despite this. Many old Myths and Folkloric beliefs were recorded for posterity by Christians, and some stories were altered and we are unable to see exactly how much (Beowulf). A lot of fairy stories remained too, only Christianity painted them as fallen angels or even demons of a kind, who could be kept away from Holy Ground, or were forced to kidnap humans to pay a tithe to Hell (or be taken themselves if they couldn’t pay). So folk beliefs, though generally discouraged by the church as superstition, remained quite strong all over Europe for a very long time. The last three things you need to know. One, there are many people who still believe in Fairies, though their beliefs often vary, sometimes wildly. Witches who claim to work with them. People who believe in them through their religions (usually pagans and other non christian groups). People who claim to have encountered or been abducted by them. And many others. While I personally do not believe in Fairies (though I like to keep an open mind, just in case), I do believe that the beliefs, cultures, and and rights of these people ought to be respected. Which leads me to other mythical beings that are similar to Fairies but hail from cultures and peoples outside of Europe. It might be tempting to label some of the spirits from various Native North American Tribes or from Chinese Folklore (or many others) as fairies. Don’t do that. If Fairies are real, you have to consider that there might be other mythical beings who fall under different categories and groups. And even if they are not real, it is extremely disrespectful to the people of those cultures to take their stories, myths, beliefs, and folklore and try to mesh it in with European Folklore. (this is exactly what the Victorian and Edwardian Era were guilty of.) And finally... Some people might tell you that they know everything there is to know about Fairies. Don’t believe them. Even I, who have spent years and years studying European Faerie Folklore, find new things about them every day. I have sources I’ve found and haven’t yet had the time to look into, areas of study I’ve had to neglect. There is so much about Fairies to explore that it’s quite literally impossible for any one person to know all of it. Personally I’m doubtful that a single person can even know an eighth of it all, you can hardly imagine how much there is. And while there is a great deal of it buried on the internet, there is even more offline. Books which are out of print or have never had their contents uploaded, cultural stories passed down in various European groups which are saved from oblivion only by the oratory tradition, and the remains of all kinds of long dead or vastly changed civilizations who believed in the Fairies and tried to work with or avoid or appease them. All the misinformation and personal gnoses out there also make it a lot harder to find accurate information about traditional folklore. And that’s not even counting the multitude of inventions and ideas spawned by fictional literature surrounding fairies. There is simply too much. But of course... Since when has something being impossible ever stopped a human from trying anyway? If you’re still interested, then who am I to discourage you? Go, jump right in. There’s so much to learn about the Faerie Folk.

[cerastes]

E2 artworks are for the most part delightful, but today, I would like us to pay particular attention to certain characters’ Elite 2 artwork: Nightingale, Cuora, and Specter.

The three of them have two things in common: The first is that they are all amnesiac (or, in the case of Nightingale, partially amnesiac, but amnesiac nonetheless), the second is that they are all drawn by Skade. I think the Hypergryph writers just have an Amnesiac Hotline for whenever they conceive another amnesiac character and it connects directly to Skade’s temporal lobe, where all information about the new character is immediately uploaded to and then he just starts furiously drawing.

But let’s focus on the fact that they are amnesiac in this post, and how this is reflected in their E2 art in a way I found clever. Let’s begin with our favorite fashionable demon, Nightingale.

Nightingale’s name is a two-fold allusion: The most evident one is being an homage to Florence Nightingale, the mother of modern nursing. The other, perhaps least apparent but of equal importance, is to the Greek aesop “The Laborer & The Nightingale”, which tells the tale of a poor laborer who, enthralled with the beautiful song of a nightingale that sang every day atop a tall cedar tree, grew selfish and built a cage of iron and twigs to capture the nightingale to make its songs his and only his. Her lines make several allusions to cages and empty rooms,

and of only being let out of her ‘cage’ when someone needed her healing powers, her “song”, if you will (especially relevant when you consider how song and Arts seem to be related in Terra). Her E2 art, thus, represents her bursting out of her cage or iron and twigs. Unlike other Sarkaz Operators, her E2 is not a shape or a representation of a Demon, it is, instead, a representation of her inner Demon, the cage of her head, which contains all of her memories and emotions locked tight within in. She’s not there yet, but she’s making progress. It is worthy of note that Shining also doesn’t depict a Demon in her E2 art, her artwork instead centering on her shield, but while Shining’s E2 art is an allusion of her deep, deep shame of being a Sarkaz and the things she’s done as a Sarkaz (or, in other words, denouncing her own identity to focus on what she truly wants to do from here on, which is to protect others), Nightingale’s E2 artwork instead depicts her destroying part of the cage that holds her back: She’s not fully out yet, but now, it is only a matter of time.

Then, what about Cuora?

Some Operators show a manifestation of their identifying animal that might not be entirely physical but it’s clear, with hard colors and textures. Other Operators show their animal very clearly, as if it was truly there, like Perfumer and Siege, and in some cases, it REALLY is there, as with Eyjafjalla (who directly addresses them in a voice line), and this seems to be matter of artistic preference, but whereas Skade normally draws E2 manifestations with solid colors, in the case of Cuora and Specter, he chooses to make them almost phantasmal, with soft colors and an ephemeral feel to them instead. In fact, the turtle you can see above is as generic as can be, it doesn’t seem to be identifying of any particular turtle species, and all we know about it is that it is “a turtle”. This is deliberate, meant to represent Cuora’s amnesia: Her race, Petram, is not unknown, but she doesn’t remember what specific kind of Petram she is. There’s a lot of turtle species, so which one is she? We have no idea. We know Blue Poison is a Poison Dart Frog, we know Nearl is a Pegasus, so when it comes to species either real or fantastic, we usually have an accurate account of which each Operator is supposed to represent, but not with Cuora, because she’s amnesiac. Whatever specific kind of Petram she is, we’ll never know unless someone that can properly identify her or that knew her from before the amnesia can divulge that information. To represent this, thus, her animal manifestation is ephemeral, phantasmal, ambiguous: It shows us exactly as much as we know of it, that is, that she’s a turtle, nothing less, nothing more.

So where does this leave Specter?

Nightingale has partial amnesia, Cuora is amnesiac but her Oripathy was caught in time and she’s been stabilized, but Specter’s nervous system has been ravaged, and not only is she amnesiac, she’s also prone to bouts of insanity and of sometimes saying some rather concerning things, such as wanting to take Doctor to the “place where secrets are imparted” or how “some people were never ever meant to be one, so it is her duty to cut them into many”.

Nightingale’s art, if you look above, is ‘solid’, bereft of particles or separated parts: It’s an iron cage, the twigs, and herself. Cuora’s art is somewhat more ‘loose’, with some weaving loose lines on the lower part of the drawing to presumably represent low tide, where you would normally find small turtles, as well as to represent her somewhat deteriorated but overall well-preserved psyche. Specter’s art, in contrast, is very loose: There’s an emphasis on aquatic trails all over the composition, representing the deep sea, as well as her flowing cloak, hair, and habit flaps. There’s many loose ‘particles’, like smudges of splattered ink, representative of her shattered psyche, and, most importantly, there’s not one but two sharks of different species as her animal representation. I believe they are representative of how she’s currently ‘two’ people: The somewhat manic but otherwise harmless Specter that can be found roaming the halls of Rhodes Islands’ dorms, and the completely silent fighting machine named Specter that can be found roaming the battlefield like a vengeful ghoul, following orders to the letter, her own safety be damned.

But there’s another meaning, I believe: Cuora at least has one turtle in her art, which can at least let us approximate which species it could possibly be (likely a freshwater turtle judging from comparative size and shell shape, bigger than tortoises, smaller than sea turtles), but Specter has two sharks, which means properly approximating her exact species becomes a lot harder. Skadi and Deepcolor, fellow AEgirians, make it very clear which animals they are supposed to be (Orca and Dumbo Squid, respectively), which further proves that this is a Specter-specific conundrum and not a Deep Sea trait. Likewise, her outfit has several allusions to the overall shape of a shark, but not to any specific shark.

If we want to dig deeper, and boy howdy I bet we do, we can take a look at the Chinese Hanzi that composes her name:

“幽灵鲨”, or “Yōulíng shā”, which translates literally to “Ghost Shark” from Chinese to English. Fitting that her codename is given as Specter. So, what’s a “Ghost Shark”, exactly? Aside, from, you know,

a really bad B-Movie.

Sounds like it’s just a cool poetic name for someone who is but a specter: a fleeting existence, with no memories, only a shadow of her former self, no?

Well, that works out, to be frank, but it turns out, Ghost Sharks are a real species. This is the Bahamas Ghost Shark:

And this is the Australian Ghost Shark:

They belong to a species of fish known as Chimaeras, and they live in temperate ocean floors down to 2,600 m (8,500 ft) deep and are some of the oldest fish alive, they share plenty of characteristics with their prehistoric ancestors (or, to translate this to Arknights terms: keep in mind how Specter looks just like a regular human). These are deep sea fish, with only a couple of them coming close to the surface rarely, and it fits with what we know of Specter, what with her background of fighting giant Deep Sea monsters as an Abyssal Hunter. Of course, whether she is supposed to be a Chimaera of any sort remains to be seen, but it wouldn’t surprise me if she was, given the thematic similarities.

I found all of these little nudges and nods to be plenty fascinating. Am I perhaps reading too deep into this? Always within the realm of possibility! Are Skade and Hypergryph planting seeds of lore that will bloom much later, making every piece of evidence given until that point suddenly make cohesive sense? Wouldn’t put it past them! So analyze, analyze, and analyze, because even if it takes you nowhere, lord knows it’s fun to do so.

[nealiios]

The Supernatural 70s: Part I - Corruption of An Innocent

"We're mutants. There's something wrong with us, something very, very wrong with us. Something seriously wrong with us - we're soldiers writers."

-- with apologies to the screenwriter of "Stripes"

Dear reader, I have the darkest of revelations to make to you, a truth when fully and wholly disclosed shall most assuredly chill you to the bone, a tale that shall make you question all that you hold to be true and good and holy about my personal history. While you may have come in search of that narrative designer best known for his works of interactive high fantasy, you should know that he is also a crafter of a darker art, a scribbler of twisted tales filled with ghosts, and ghouls, and gargoyles. I am, dear innocent, a devotee of horrors! Mwahahahaha!

[cue thunderclap, lightning, pipe organ music]

Given the genre of writing for which most of you know me, I forgive you if you think of me principally as a fantasy writer. I don't object to that classification because I do enjoy mucking about with magic and dark woods and mysterious ancient civilizations. But if you are to truly know who I am as a writer, you must realize that the image I hold of myself is principally as a creator of weird tales.

To understand how and why I came to be drawn to this sub-genre of fantastic fiction, you first must understand that I come from peculiar folks. Maybe I don't have the Ipswich look, or I didn't grow up in a castle, but my pedigree for oddity has been there from the start. My mother was declared dead at birth by her doctor, and often heard voices calling to her in the dead of night that no one else could hear. Her mother would periodically ring us up to discuss events in our lives about which she couldn't possibly have known. My father's people still share ghost stories about a family homestead that burned down mysteriously in the 1960s. Even my older brother has outré memories about events he says cannot possibly be true, and as a kid was kicked off the Tulsa city bookmobile for attempting to check out books about UFOs, bigfoot, and ESP. It's fair to say I was doomed - or destined - for weirdness from the start.

If the above listed circumstances had not been enough, I grew up in an area where neighbors whispered stories about a horrifically deformed Bulldog Man who stalked kids who "parked" on the Old North Road near my house. The state in which I was raised was rife with legends of bigfoots, deer women, and devil men. Even in my childhood household there existed a pantheon of mythological entities invented explicitly to keep me in line. If I was a good boy, The Repairman would leave me little gifts of Hot Wheels cars or candy. If I was being terrible, however, my father would dress in a skeleton costume, rise from the basement and threaten to drag me down into everlasting hellfire (evidently there was a secret portal in our basement.) There were monsters, monsters EVERYWHERE I looked in my childhood world. Given that I was told as a fledgling writer to write what I knew, how could anyone have been surprised that the first stories I wrote were filled with the supernatural?

"The Nightmare" by John Henry Fuseli (1781)

My formative years during the late sixties and early seventies took place at a strange juncture in our American cultural history. At the same time that we were loudly proclaiming the supremacy of scientific thought because we'd landed men on the moon, we were also in the midst of a counter cultural explosion of interest in astrology, witchcraft, ghosts, extra sensory perception, and flying saucers. Occult-related books were flying off the shelves as sales surged by more than 100% between 1966 and 1969. Cultural historians would come to refer to this is as the "occult boom," and its aftershocks would impact popular cultural for decades to come.

My first contact with tales of the supernatural were innocuous, largely sanitized for consumption by children. I vividly remember watching Casper the Friendly Ghost and the Disney version of the Legend of Sleepy Hollow. I read to shreds numerous copies of both Where the Wild Things Are and Gus the Ghost. Likely the most important exposure for me was to the original Scooby Doo, Where Are You? cartoon which attempted to inoculate us from our fears of ghosts and aliens by convincing us that ultimately the monster was always just a bad man in a mask. (It's fascinating to me that modern incarnations of Scooby Doo seem to have completely lost this point and instead make all the monsters real.)

ABOVE: Although the original cartoon Scooby Doo, Where Are You? ran only for one season from 1969 to 1970, it remained in heavy reruns and syndication for decades. It is notable for having been a program that perfectly embodied the conflict between reason and superstition in popular culture, and was originally intended to provide children with critical thinking skills so they would reject the idea of monsters, ghosts, and the like. Ironically, modern takes on Scooby Doo have almost entirely subverted this idea and usually present the culprits of their mysteries as real monsters.

During that same time, television also introduced me to my first onscreen crush in the form of the beautiful and charming Samantha Stevens, a witch who struggles to not to use her powers while married to a frequently intolerant mortal advertising executive in Bewitched. The Munsters and The Addams Family gave me my first taste for "goth" living even before it would become all the rage in the dance clubs of the 1980s. Late night movies on TV would bring all the important horror classics of the past in my living room as Dracula, Frankenstein, the Wolf Man, the Invisible Man, the Phantom of the Opera, The Creature from the Black Lagoon, and Godzilla all became childhood friends. Over time the darkened castles, creaking doors, foggy graveyards, howling wolves, and ever present witches and vampires became so engrained in my psyche that today they remain the "comfort viewing" to which I retreat when I'm sick or in need of other distractions from modern life.

ABOVE: Elizabeth Montgomery starred in Bewitched (1964 - 1972) as Samantha Stephens, a witch who married "mortal" advertising executive Darren Stephens (played for the first five seasons by actor Dick York). Inspired by movies like I Married a Witch (1942) and Bell, Book and Candle (1958), it was a long running series that explored the complex relationship dynamics between those who possess magic and those who don't. Social commentators have referred to it as an allegory both for mixed marriages and also about the challenges faced by minorities, homosexuals, cultural deviants, or generally creative folks in a non heterogeneous community. It was also one of the first American television programs to portray witches not as worshippers of Satan, but simply as a group of people ostracized for their culture and their supernatural skills.

Even before I began elementary school, there was one piece of must-see gothic horror programming that I went out of my way to catch every day. Dark Shadows aired at 3:30 p.m. on our local ABC affiliate in Tulsa, Oklahoma which usually allowed me to catch most of it if I ran home from school (or even more if my mom or brother picked me up.) In theory it was a soap opera, but the show featured a regular parade of supernatural characters and themes. The lead was a 175 year old vampire named Barnabas Collins (played by Johnathan Frid), and the show revolved around his timeless pursuit of his lost love, Josette. It was also a program that regularly dealt with reincarnation, precognition, werewolves, time travel, witchcraft, and other occult themes. Though it regularly provoked criticism from religious groups about its content, it ran from June of 1966 until it's final cancellation in April of 1971. (I would discover it in the early 1970s as it ran in syndication.) Dark Shadows would spin off two feature-length movies based on the original, a series of tie-in novels, an excellent reboot series in 1991 (starring Ben Cross as Barnabas), and a positively embarrassingly awful movie directed by Tim Burton in 1991.

ABOVE: Johnathan Frid starred as Barnabas Collins, one of the leading characters of the original Dark Shadows television series. The influence of the series cannot be understated. In many ways Dark Shadows paved the way for the inclusion of supernatural elements in other soap operas of the 1970s and the 1980s, and was largely responsible for the explosion of romance novels featuring supernatural themes over the same time period.

While Dark Shadows was a favorite early television program for me, another show would prove not only to be a borderline obsession, but also a major influence on my career as a storyteller. Night Gallery (1969-1973) was a weekly anthology television show from Rod Serling, better known as the creator and host of the original Twilight Zone. Like Twilight Zone before it, Night Gallery was a deep and complex commentary on the human condition, but unlike its predecessor the outcomes for the characters almost always skewed towards the horrific and the truly outré. In "The Painted Mirror," an antiques dealer uses a magic painting to trap an enemy in the prehistoric past. Jack Cassidy plots to use astral projection to kill his romantic rival in "The Last Laurel" but accidentally ends up killing himself. In "Eyes" a young Stephen Spielberg directs Joan Crawford in a story about an entitled rich woman who plots to take the sight of a poor man. Week after week it delivered some of the best-written horror television of the early 1970s.

In retrospect I find it surprising that I was allowed to watch Night Gallery at all. I was very young while it was airing, and some of the content was dark and often quite shocking for its time. Nevertheless, I was so attached to the show that I'd throw a literal temper tantrum if I missed a single, solitary episode. If our family needed to go somewhere on an evening that Night Gallery was scheduled, either my parents would either have to wait until after it had aired before we left, or they'd make arrangements in advance with whomever we were visiting to make sure it was okay that I could watch Night Gallery there. I was, in a word, a fanatic.

ABOVE: Every segment of Night Gallery was introduced by series creator Rod Serling standing before a painting created explicitly for the series. Director Guillermo del Toro credits Serling's series as being the most important and influential show on his own work, even more so than the more famous Twilight Zone.

[pallasperilous]

Funny Bone

The other day Supernatural9917 threw out this meme as a cracky Halloween Dean/Cas prompt and I was SO MAD, because I then had to write it:

And so here it is. Goddammit.

Funny Bone

https://archiveofourown.org/works/26761150 Words: 4930 Castiel/Dean Winchester Fluff and Crack, Crack Treated Seriously, Skeletons, Bad Pick-Up Lines, No Angels AU, Men of Letters Bunker, Mild Gore Mature (mentions of lewd acts, canon-typical violence, and some truly horrible pickup lines)

It wasn’t even a particularly creepy skeleton; it was in kind of a “just chillin’” pose on the floor. One ankle was still locked up in a heavy iron cuff, at the end of a short chain leading back to the wall. Snoresville, as dead stuff goes; Dean’s seen worse at Disneyland. It was the skeleton’s comment about Dean’s ass that really livened things up.

Discovering the bunker in the first place was a helluva surprise. The whole facility is legitimately batshit; Dead Guys of Letters knew how to live (and, apparently, die. All at once.).

But after plowing through a dozen rooms worth of priceless treasures and crusty boobytraps, even Sam was looking kinda full up on shock and awe.

“We can hit the basement tomorrow,” he said. There was a big smudge of dust across his nose and some cobwebs in his hair.

“Nuh uh,” Dean answered, kicking the door shut with the toe of his boot. “If there’s shit still kicking down there, we gotta clean it out before it cleans us out. It’s that or we’re sleepin’ in the car.”

“Ugh,” Sam said, as if twenty minutes ago he hadn’t been losing his mind over a rare book about werewolf hemorrhoids.

So discovering that the basement included a no-shit actual dungeon felt more like an unanticipated bonus, and stumbling across a skeleton while exploring it barely even registered. Skeletons and dungeons! They go together like rama lama lama ka dinga da dinga dong.

It wasn’t even a particularly creepy skeleton; it was in kind of a “just chillin’” pose on the floor, inside a big circle of greasy black ash.  It looked a little mildewy in in places. One ankle was still locked up in a heavy iron cuff, at the end of a short chain leading back to the wall. Snoresville, as dead stuff goes; Dean’s seen worse at Disneyland.

It was the skeleton’s comment about Dean’s ass that really livened things up.

“Welp,” Dean had said, holstering his gun and wiping his hands on his jeans. “We’re all clear. Let’s head back upstairs, salt the shit out of everything, and then we can pick up some groceries.”

“Do I get to buy a vegetable that doesn’t fit in a bun, or are we still in the refractory period?” Sam snarked from the corridor.

“I don’t see you cookin’, “ Dean started, shuffling back towards the hall, and that’s when the skeleton butted in.

“Are those astronaut pants?” it asked. “Because your ass is outta this world!”

Dean absolutely did not scream, but it’s possible there was a yelp. 

He almost unloaded a clip into it – unclear what that would’ve possibly done, but it’s good to start with the simple, available solutions. Next he nabbed the lighter fluid off of Sam and dumped out half a pound of kosher salt as a chaser and set the fucker alight.

This does not have the intended effect.

“Baby, I’d like to put my meat on your grill,” the skeleton says, greenish flames dancing between its ribs, “because you’re hot, and I’m smokin’.” Then it sits up a little, just enough to shoot Dean some finger guns.

“What the fuck,” Dean says.

Sam makes a little evaluatory noise. “Sexually harassed by a skeleton,” he chuckles. “I think that’s a new one. Even for you. Is that a new one? I know a lot of strange shit went down in Purgatory.”

The skeleton perks up even more at that, grungy eye sockets sweeping up and down Dean’s body. “Are you a time traveler?” it asks. (Maybe he asks, because the voice is pretty deep and dude-ish, although possibly just on account of its vocal cords being leather shoelaces.)

“Wh…no, I’m not a time traveler,” Dean fibs. He’s more of a time trafficking victim, anyway. “Oh, wait, god,” he says. “Please don’t tell me you’re asking that because –“

“– I can see you in my future,” the skeleton finishes, eagerly, and Dean really wishes this thing had eyebrows so he could tell if they’re waggling.

“Yeah, okay. That’s enough for today,” Dean groans. “I need a drink.” He starts to back out of the room as a pre-emptive strike against Bones commenting on how he hates to see Dean leave, but loves to watch him go. Dean’s working on stumbling back again Sam’s left shoe when the skeleton pipes up one last time, this time with a husky, anxious edge.

“I realize that Purgatory isn’t accessible through a simple chronological shift,” it says, teeth chattering. “But it does require travel between modalities, and if you’re capable of that, I would very much like to speak with you again.”

Dean and Sam’s heads slowly swivel back towards the skeleton, like two little pizzas on the same Lazy Susan.

 An hour later, they’re still in the dungeon, working on dousing the skeleton with every possible anti-bad-stuff solution they’ve got, just in case he’s a vampire skeleton or a ghoul skeleton or a witch skeleton or maybe just a wendigo that’s incredibly bad at its job. In between progress reports, he’s still hitting on Dean.

“Dude, don’t you have an off switch somewhere?” Dean asks him.

“Well, Dean, you certainly make me feel like a light switch,–“

“– because you turn me on,” all three of them say in unison.

The skeleton looks a little embarrassed, which is kind of impressive when you think about it. “You’ve…heard that one before?” he asks.

“I spend a lot of time in bars,” Dean deadpans. “Okay, sage is a no-go.”

Sam strikes a line off on the clipboard he found upstairs. “Is this part of a curse or something?” he asks, glancing up at Bones. “Like on top of being a sentient skeleton, you can only speak in horrible pickup lines?”

The skeleton shakes his head, which produces a sound Dean recognizes from his kneecaps on cold mornings. “No, the spellwork allows me to speak freely on most subjects; except who I am, or how to free me. But it’s helpful to use language modern humans can easily understand.”

“Huh. Well, in a way, it is Dean’s native tongue,” Sam says, smirking.

“You shut your face,” Dean hisses.

“When I first saw you, I lost my tongue. Can I try yours on for size?” Bones asks Dean.

“Buddy, I don’t know where you get your information from, but nobody actually talks that way,” Dean tells him. “Nobody sober, anyway. Who isn’t a virgin.”

The skeleton slumps. “I learned from my last visitor. He tried to release me on several occasions, but he either died or abandoned the project.”

Dean arches a brow. “The project being…you?”

“I would be very valuable under the right circumstances.” The skeleton shrugs and casually holds out an arm for Dean to scrape at with the demon blade. “He gave me lessons in modern vernacular as a way to pass our time together.”

“Sounds like a peach,” Dean says, before he can catch himself. “If you have a peach-related pickup line in there, man, you’d better just sit on it.”

“That’s what-“

“I will smash you with a hammer,” Dean barks.

The skeleton relents, but with obvious reluctance.

 They call it quits before Kansas rolls up the sidewalk for the night and leaves them stranded with nothing but two Clif bars and a gross of septuagenarian cans of franks ’n beans. Bones shifts nervously when Dean leaves – “Which is better, pancakes or waffles?” he asks.

“Pancakes,” Dean says, with a sense of grim duty.

“Because I’d like to know what you’re making me for breakfast,” says Bones, his voice trailing off as Dean books it down the stony corridor.

  By lunch the next day (bologna sandwiches, so sue him, he’ll make something good later) they’re pretty sure that Bones doesn’t pose any known, immediate threat – other than to Dean’s sanity – so they switch gears to springing him. Maybe he will be worth something, or maybe he’ll crumble into dust and Be Free, or maybe he’ll just stop being chained to the basement wall, in which case he can become their skeleton butler or something.

There are weird runes on the ankle cuff, so Sam snaps some quick photos and heads upstairs to feel up the library. This leaves Dean in the basement with Bones, some good old-fashioned power tools, and Bones’s ex-suitor’s gross sense of humor.

“You know I can understand you just fine when you’re talking normally,” Dean says. “You’re just reciting some prehistoric shit that idiots say to girls to get a pity-laugh, hoping it leads to a pity-fuck.”

“What’s a pity-fuck?” Bones asks, all mildewy innocence. Dean’s pretty sure the grunge in his eyeball sockets is dried eyeball.

“Pretty much what it says on the tin, my guy,” Dean answers, and reaches for the acetylene torch.

 “Enochian,” Sam says, when Dean surfaces for another sandwich and possibly a beer. He’s really disappointed about the torch.

“Gesundheit?” Dean replies, around a mouthful of bologna. Like everything else here, the kitchen is pretty schwa, although the inside of the fridge required three exorcisms and half a jug of bleach.

Sam paws around the smelly old book in a way that makes Dean feel sorry for the girls Sam dated in high school. “The symbols on the cuff. I think they’re Enochian. It’s a fake celestial language made up by some sixteenth century con artists.”

Dean coughs up a bit of Wonder Bread. “I respect the hustle, but what’s it doing on an ankle cuff in a dungeon younger than Mickey Mouse?”

Sam frowns. “Well, it could be for show. But just because some nutbars made it up doesn’t mean it’s totally powerless. Maybe it does have some kind of…heavenly mojo.”

“Liwl probbem,” Dean observes, finishing off his sandwich. “Def nuh heggen.”

“Huh?”

Dean takes a swallow of beer. “I said: there’s no heaven.”

Sam shrugs. “We didn’t think there was a Purgatory, either.”

“Okay, but if we find out angels are real,” Dean snorts, “then Bones can fuck me in the ass.”

 Sam reports his findings to Bones, who sits placidly on the back of his pelvis, carpals splayed out on his kneecaps. What’s even holding him together? Dean can see what’s left of his ligaments, but they look like petrified gas station jerky.

“Do you know what they mean?” Sam asks him, pointing at the sigils.

Bones’s jaw creaks open a little, then closes again, and then he shakes his skull (something rattles inside.) Finally he makes a little frustrated noise and replies – “Baby, are you a book? Because I’d like to check you out.”

“Hey!” says Dean. “Keep it in your pants, man, I’m right here.”

Sam squints. “I think…Dean, I think he’s trying to tell us something, but the spell on him means he can’t say it directly.”

Bones clenches his fists, releases them, clenches them again.

“Yeah. Keep him talking. Let’s see how close he can get.”

Clack clack clack.

“Uh,” Dean says, rubbing the back of his neck. “Okay. Do I need to, like. Give you some kinda opening?” he asks Bones.

“Sweetheart, I’d like nothing better,” Bones answers, then clacks his knuckles on his brow with exasperation.

“Sorry, Christ. Hit me with your best shot, buddy. Dealer’s choice.”

Bones clears his…ghost throat? and tries: “Tell me, Dean…did it hurt?”

Dean blinks. “When I…fell from heaven?”

Sam claps his hands. “Fucking knew it. It is Enochian, and it does have something to do with this. I think he wants me to check the library for another book. Maybe there’s one misshelved or something that I can actually use to translate. Or I can Google around, maybe there’s a subreddit.”

Dean’s pretty sure Bones has never heard of a Google or a subreddit (for that matter, does Dean actually know what a subreddit is?), but it seems like there’s a glimmer of hope deep in those scum-holes.

 Sam gets translations for a few of the words – “obedience” and something he’s fifty percent sure means “millstone” – but the rest is still gobbledygook, and he hasn’t come down with another update in hours. The dungeon is pretty roomy, but it’s not like there’s a foosball table or a cable TV pickup down there, so Dean and Bones wind up lying on the cold-ass ground, staring up into the dark reaches of the ceiling together and, like. Chatting.

Occasionally Bones goes quiet and Dean glances over at him. He really could just be a totally normal, completely dead dungeon skeleton. A good power washing and the right mounting hardware and he’d be ready for a high school biology classroom.

“So if these runes are a celestial thing, does that mean you’re some kinda demonic...thing?” Dean asks. “Cause I gotta say, you’re a much less of a douche than the demons I’ve met.” He snorts. “I know you probably can’t say.”

Bones sighs (how? With what lungs?). “The last person who tried to free me was a demon.” He shifts a little, maybe surprised that he can say this out loud. “It had been so long since somebody had spoken to me…I’m afraid I came close to actually enjoying his company. But he was no better than his kind usually are.”

“Don’t suppose you caught his name? Maybe Sam or me killed him for you already.”

“He called himself—no, I can’t say it.” He makes a sound resembling a harumph.

Then his skull creaks over to look at Dean. “Does your name start with ‘C’?” he says, very deliberately.

Dean is momentarily puzzled, but he works it out by the time Bones wincingly adds “…because I’ve got a D that wants to come behind you.”

There aren’t too many demons under the “C” tab in Dean’s blood-stained mental rolodex, and when he says the name out loud, Bones makes a sound like an entire set of dominos being thrown down a spiral staircase.

  Crowley is pretty pissed, which is fun.

It’s nice that the dungeon floor already has a perfect trap on the floor; they don’t even have to hit up Ace Hardware for paint. A damp shop cloth and a little nail polish (Wet ’n Wild in “Red Red,” don’t leave home without it) brings it right up to working order.

“Why does it smell like a nail salon fucked a bloody wine cellar?” Crowley says, after he’s settled down a bit. He manifested right in the creepy torture chair (in the shackles, even! What service!) and he made some escape attempts followed by angry noises about rust stains. Now he’s recovered his dignity and has kicked back a bit, legs crossed, fingers steepled, oozing maximum levels of 2 cool 4 school.

“How do you know what a nail salon smells like?” Dean retorts.

“I get a monthly mani-pedi. There’s no shame in a little self-care, boys.” Crowley’s eyes trickle down to their feet. “Imagine what fungal horrors those work boots must conceal.” Then he squints, and looks up, finally taking in the whole room. “Could swear I’ve been here before. Little upscale for you, isn’t it? Did we splurge for a vacation rental?”

“Crowley, why don’t we roleplay Titanic?” Bones growls from the wall behind him, and Crowley’s face goes slack. “I’ll be the iceberg, and you can go down.”

Crowley swallows and slowly twists back, as far as the shackles let him. “Feathers, is that you? Well, as I live and breathe.”

“You do neither,” says Bones, with so much gravelly contempt that Dean suppresses a little shiver.

“Oh, I still breathe now and then, when the mood takes me. I’m a sentimentalist.” Crowley cranes his neck a little harder and squints into the dim. “Goodness, you’ve dropped some weight since we last spoke, haven’t you. Finally let go of all that pesky soft tissue?”

Bones tilts forward and kind of clatters onto hands and knees, then tipsily begins to rise up to standing. Dean’s a little concerned he’s gonna topple right over and they’re gonna spend the next two hours collecting him in a basket, but when he moves to help out, Bones waves him off. After a couple false starts he makes it up onto his feet bones and then shuffles out to the end of his chain, right under one of the overhead lights. He’s still a good couple feet off from Crowley, but Crowley looks like he wouldn’t mind a few extra acres.

Bones sways a little bit, just enough for Crowley to wince. “You didn’t come back.”

“I got busy.”

Sam shifts impatiently. “What is he?” he snaps, gesturing at Bones.

“Exceedingly dull,” Crowley says. “I should’ve guessed you were friends.”

Dean uncorks a fresh bottle of holy water.

“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you,” Crowley amends, quickly. “And even if you did, you wouldn’t know what to do with him. It’d be like giving a laptop to a pair of howler monkeys.”

Dean puts his thumb over the mouth of the water bottle and holds it over Crowley’s head. “Try me.”

Crowley scoffs, rolls his eyes. “It doesn’t matter what he is, since he’s useless as long as he’s chained up. And I wouldn’t have left him down here if I had a single clue how to smuggle him out.  I haven’t even been in here since the Bay of Pigs; I’d worked a loophole in one of the defense spells here that let me in. When it broke down, I lost my exploit. Wasn’t worth the bother after that.”

Dean slides his thumb a millimeter north of a perfect seal, and a fat drop of water busts its ass open on Crowley’s forehead and sends up a thin line of steam. “Good thing I’ve got a limitless supply of bother,” Dean notes. “Sam, we still got those syringes in the trunk?”

Crowley snarls. “Go ahead and melt me like the cartoon shoe in Roger Rabbit, it’s not going magically make me come up with a solution.”

Bones grunts and rattles his leg chain. “Do you speak Spanish, Crowley? Because you look like the Juan for me.”

“Did I teach you that one? You absolute xylophone.” Crowley glances back at Dean. “Do your worst, Squirrel, I deserve it.”

Sam frowns. “He uses the lines to get around the spell’s speech restrictions. This is something about speaking languages…were you able translate the Enochian symbols on his cuff?”

Crowley blinks. “What symbols?”

 After a whole lot of faffing around with mirrors and terrible cellphone photography, they confirm that Crowley can’t see the symbols at all.

“More demon-proofing. Clever little buggers, those Men of Letters,” Crowley sighs. “A real shame they were peeled and eaten like bananas.”

Finally Sam just hunkers down with a pencil and pad to transcribe the entire ankle cuff, and Dean awkwardly holds up Bones’s ankle, like he’s being sized for a glass slipper. When they shove the results in Crowley’s face, Dean watches his eyes dart along the words.

“Well, it’s your lucky day, boys. Along with the usual wankery, there are instructions on how to release the cuff. I can translate it,” he finally says, with an unusually low inflection of bullshit, “but I’ll thank you to release me, first.”

Dean is flummoxed. “What, you’re not gonna haggle for a cut of the profits or anything?”

“Activating the release mechanism will free him completely, and restore his…restore him. I’d rather be at a safe distance.” He glances back at Bones, looming in the shadows. “A continent or three should do the trick.”

“If it doesn’t work–“

“I’d be more worried about what happens if it does,” Crowley sighs.  “But feel free to summon me back for tea and sympathy. Here, I’ll even give you my number. But please, no personal photography. I pity you enough as it is.”

  Crowley finally smokes out, and Dean has a beer to celebrate while Sam looks over the list of what they need and Bones clatters his fingertips like castanets. The ingredients are (as always) larded with shit that’s exotic and expensive; Sam is looking crestfallen at some of the items. “I’ve heard of all of this, but I’ve only seen maybe half of it for sale anywhere.”

“Baby, are you a yard sale? Because you’ve got some serious junk in that trunk,” Bones monotones. He’s back to lying on the floor.

At least it’s getting easier to translate this shit. “They’ve got all the ingredients here somewhere,” Dean says. Sam looks skeptical. “C’mon, Sam, no way these dudes would use a lock when they didn’t have the key.”

The ensuing scavenger hunt takes a few pints of elbow grease, but at least by the end they’re both familiar with the Bunker’s floor plan, document filing system, and inventory records. They find virtually everything in-house, though they do end up driving to the nearest farm stand for some hen’s eggs and rosemary (and heirloom tomatoes, because they look bomb).

Dean christens – or maybe exorcises – the kitchen range with some red meat, and they fuel up with burgers before taking the plunge. Dean’s still licking the ketchup off his fingers when Bones pipes up one last time. “Can I ask you something?” he says.

Dean and Sam brace for impact.

Bones sighs. “That’s not the start of a pickup line. I genuinely have a question.”

“Shoot.”

“Why are you so intent on freeing me? You could have just left me down here. I’m not a threat this way. You only have Crowley’s word that you might profit - or suffer - from my release.”

Sam gives Dean a look; it’s the look that says I sure hope you have an answer, because I think this entire thing has been dumb as shit and half as necessary. It’s a look Sam uses pretty regularly.

“Uh. It’s the right thing to do? As far as I can tell, you haven’t hurt anybody or done anything else to deserve being down here. We went through all those records upstairs, and there’s no note that says ‘by the way, that skeleton downstairs eats babies for breakfast.’ This place is cool, but the dudes who built it were obviously shady as fuck.”

“I see.” Bones sounds a little disappointed.

Sam fake-coughs into his hand, and Dean sets down his paper napkin. “Also, you seem cool. Like, you’re easy to hang out with. Other than the stinky one-liners, and we’re gonna wean you off of those.”

Bones straightens himself out a little. “Thank you, Dean. You know, on a scale of one to ten, I’d rate you a nine.”

“Okay, okay. Why not a ten?”

Bones sets his chin on his knuckle bones with a tidy little clack. “Because I’m the one you’re missing.”

Dean groans, but he thinks the guy might be smiling, somewhere behind that skeletal grin.

 By hour two, Sam’s pretty tuckered out from pulverizing a billion and three mummified dove livers while reciting nonsense syllables, and Dean’s right arm is about to fall off from holding up this giant silver swizzle stick that’s either a really weird short sword or a decorative javelin, but Bones has never looked perkier. He’s lying on a nice white bedsheet and looking fresh as a recently exhumed daisy.

“Okay,” Sam rasps. “Light the candle and we should be good to go. Any last words, Bones?”

“Are either of you religious?” He crosses his arm bones over each other.

“Fuck no,” Dean answers, before Sam gets a chance to launch into it.

Bones shakes his skull fondly. “You should reconsider. Because you’re the answer to my prayers.”

Dean makes a gagging noise and lights the candle.

 What happens next (well, after the cuff pops open) is some of the freakiest shit that Dean has ever seen, and his Freaky CV is pretty fucking impressive, thanks. Bones tells them to avert their eyes, “just in case”, but he takes a peek between his fingers anyway, because he’s an idiot.

For a second Bones is just lying there, and Dean has a second of real disappointment that maybe he’s Moved On Past The Veil or something, but then he starts…foaming. It starts out kind of uniform and colorless, but then it really picks up speed and volume and starts to separate into swaths of distinct and horrible colors and textures. He closes his eyes again for a second to give his stomach a chance to reboot, and when he looks again the foam is gone, and instead there’s a whole lot of angry jelly trying to form into organs.

Just as the jelly is really getting its shit together and looking more like lungs and intestines and stuff, the heart-jelly pulses once and sends out a fistful of big squishy vines…veins? and a fat white worm of nerve scrambles down the spinal column and starts putting out franchises. This is followed by some disturbingly tasty-looking red sheets of muscle that swiftly sheathe over all the whole scene, and then the muscles start sweating out fat and cartilage and this is the point where Dean decides that looking away is actually definitely one hundred percent for the best. Even then, the sounds are tough to handle.

Kinda wild: he’s seen people taken apart, but watching one get put back together is somehow gnarlier. Well, if this guy is even a person. It’s a human skeleton, sure, but god knows even Mickey Rourke has one under there.

Finally everything seems to have quieted down.

“How you doin’ over there, Bones?” Dean asks, and dares to take a peek.

Bones is crouched down in front of them, fists balled up in the bedsheets (it’s a relief that the bedsheets didn’t get accidentally sucked into the muscle layer or something, like one of those surgeons who leaves a sponge behind). Dean sees white guy skin and some dark messy hair and gets the gist of a decent build.

The face slowly cranes upwards, and Dean is really truly ready for anything here; tusks, fangs, Klingon forehead ridges, gingivitis. Instead he gets a faceful of hot math teacher. Bones’s eyes are still closed, but he’s frowning like he’s mentally reviewing his strategy to explain the quadratic equation to a roomful of horny teens.

He slowly rises to standing (yikes! Naked! Dean is a Moderately Bad Man, so he glances, but just long enough to register “nice), uncurling slowly and carefully.

Then he’s all the way up. Bones squares his shoulders and straightens the last kink in his spine, and the frown resolves. Dean’s about to say something, when his eyes snap open, and this cold white light absolutely blasts out of them, and fuck, Crowley wasn’t kidding: this guy is definitely A Thing. The whole room flattens and distorts in the light. Shadows race up the walls like they’re looking for a way out, then snap together into the shape of enormous ragged wings, stretching thirty feet higher than the actual ceiling clearance.

Then the light dies down; the wings fade into regular-grade shadows. Instead of a terrifying unearthly avatar of Oh Shit, Dean’s looking at a buck naked thirty-something math teacher. Who happens to be an unearthly avatar of Oh Shit. And has nice eyes.

“My name is Castiel, angel of the Lord, Seraph of the First Shield,” the avatar says, in a piss-shakingly resonant version of Bones’s voice.

Then: “Do you speak English, Dean?”

“Yes?” Dean fumbles.

“So do I,” says Castiel, and smiles.

Then he makes finger-guns.

  Castiel sticks around for a grand total of five minutes before he’s suddenly gone again, because angels are (a) real and they can (b) teleport? at (c) any moment because (d) fuck you, then he reappears six hours later (clothed) standing over Dean’s bed, having apparently forgotten that humans like to sleep; this time Dean does shoot him, but luckily he doesn’t seem to take it personally.   

“I located Crowley,” Bo- Castiel says. The silver sword-javelin thing is sitting on the kitchen counter in front of him; apparently it’s an Angel Blade and it lives in Castiel’s coat sleeve and can vaporize demons. It doesn’t look like it has any Crowley on it, but maybe it’s self-cleaning.

“Did you kill him?” Dean asks, now that he’s semi-coherent and wrapped around a cup of coffee in the kitchen.

“Not this time,” Cas answers. “He did help, after all.”

“Sure,” says Dean.

“You don’t need to let me fuck you in the ass, either,” Castiel says, and Dean honks some coffee up the back of his nose.

“Oh,” he gasps. “Okay. Cool. Thanks. Didn’t realize you could hear that convo all the way down there.”

“Angels have excellent hearing. Mine wasn’t impacted by the spell.”

Dean can think of at least three very private moments Castiel almost definitely could hear every instant of, and longs for death. Or maybe not, since apparently this guy lives in Heaven and could hear him there, too. “Great. Good to know. Noted.”

“But…” Castiel looks wistful.

“What?” Dean nudges him. Dean Winchester: angel nudger.

Castiel frowns. “If I said…” he stops himself. “This is…what I want to say is very irregular, at least between angels and humans.”

“Jesus christ on a goddamn pogo stick, man. It’s three in the morning, some of us have a circadian rhythm and a limited lifespan. Say whatever it is you gotta say.”

Castiel looks up and drowns Dean in his swimming pool eyes, which Dean has learned belong to a radio ad salesman in Illinois, who Castiel possessed a few years back before jumping several decades into the past to run some errands and getting rope-a-doped by the Men of Letters and then warehoused in their basement; after they all spontaneously bought the farm, he just slowly ran out of the power reserves needed to keep his vessel from turning to mush and hey presto, talking skeleton.

Classic story, really.

“If I said you had a beautiful body, Dean,” Castiel says, solemnly, “Would you hold it against m-“

Dean doesn’t let him finish. {AO3 version}

[cynicalities]

I'm on the fest blog but,

Consider this ask as a coupon to infodump us about something you're passionate about!

Okay first of all, you are extremely sweet to have sent this in, thank you! I’m not very good with words, so this is going to literally be an infodump, unlike the beautiful articles that you people wrote.

Lately I’ve been reading a book called The Secret Lives of Color by Kassia St. Clair. It talks about the stories of different pigments, hues and colours throughout history. The writer starts the book with “I fell in love with colors in the way most people fall in love: while concentrating on something else.” and that is honestly the most relatable thing I have ever read.

So I fell into the rabbit hole that is ancient pigments and their history.

Earlier, artists were restricted to using only the colours they could make from naturally derived pigments. That meant pigments derived from the ground, or leaves and insects. That lead most prehistoric artwork to have earthy tones.

Quite later, humanity did figure out how to form pigments from minerals and gemstones, leading to the art having a wider variety of colour. Sometimes, the art itself is a hint towards what pigments were used in its making, because people tended to draw what was around them, using paint made from what was around them.

The pigments themselves vary considerably, not only in colour, but in other properties. Some are very commonplace, some are so rare that they were only used for commissions by the royalty. Some were quite literally toxic (though that was discovered long after those pigments had already poisoned a lot of people).

In earlier days, pigments were sold in special shops, including alchemists and apothecaries, and the artists made their paint themselves.

Vermillion is a colour we are all familiar with, but the vermillion pigment we use today is a synthetically made one. The original vermillion used to be made from Cinnabar. Cinnabar, or mercury sulfide, is a highly toxic natural mineral. The first documented use of vermillion colour to date is at the Neolithic village of Çatalhöyük, in modern-day Turkey. Traces of cinnabar have been identified within burials preserved at the 8,000-9,000-year-old site. Because of its cost and toxicity, though, it was almost entirely replaced by a new synthetic pigment, cadmium red, in the 20th century. According to Wikipedia, the Chinese were the first to produce a synthetic vermillion as early as the fourth century BC.

Anything I write about art or colours would be incomplete without a Van Gogh reference. This particular story is about Van Gogh's Sunflowers, which use a generous amount of chrome yellow. The artists of Van Gogh’s day had access to a lot of brilliant blues and reds, but they did not have a saturated yellow. This changed when the French chemist Nicolas Louis Vauquelin began working on crocoite and soon discovered that the orange stone contained a new element. It was a metal, which he named chrome or chromium, after another Greek word meaning “colour,” because its salts seemed to come in an extraordinary variety of hues. By 1809 pigments made from this mineral were already on artists’ palettes. However, chrome yellow tends to brown as it ages. Research carried out on Van Gogh’s paintings in Amsterdam over the past few years showed that some of the chrome yellow in the flowers’ petals has darkened, and Van Gogh’s Sunflowers are slowly wilting. This reaction also forms lead sulfide, which is very toxic. Because of that, it was replaced by another safer pigment, cadmium yellow.

Hematite is the mineral form of iron oxide and gets its colour from Fe2O3, anhydrous iron oxide, or, more simply, rust. The word hematite itself is derived from the Greek word "haimatitis" which means "blood-red." Primitive people discovered that hematite could be crushed and mixed with a liquid for use as a paint or cosmetic. Cave paintings dating back to 40,000 years ago were created with hematite pigments. Since it gets its colour from iron that has already oxidized, it cannot rust more. So it is in a way weather-proof.

Emerald is probably one of the prettiest colours to have existed. The Romans considered green to be soothing to the eyes because the colour was so commonly found it nature, so they powdered emeralds and used them in eye balms. Because it was quite cheap to manufacture, emerald green was used not only as an artist’s paint but as a household paint: it was widely used on patterned wallpaper up until the 19th century. Unfortunately emerald green is chemically not stable, and made from a very poisonous copper-acetoarsenite. Which means it contains arsenic. In 1867, farmers in Illinois and Indiana found that Paris green was effective against the Colorado potato beetle, an aggressive agricultural pest. Despite concerns regarding the safety of using arsenic compounds on food crops, Paris green became the preferred method for controlling the beetle. By the 1880s, Paris green had become the first widespread use of a chemical insecticide in the world.

Before World War II, manufacturers often used uranium oxide in colored glazes to produce vibrant red and orange ceramic wear. This meant that these pieces of dinnerware were radioactive. But since radiation and its effects weren’t seriously studied until the late 19th century, this went unnoticed. These dinnerware lines were discontinued when the US government seized control of uranium because of WWII.

Lead white is a basic lead carbonate with a crystalline molecular structure. It is thick, opaque, and heavy, and there is strong evidence that it was being manufactured in Anatolia from around 2300 B.C. It has remained in production the world over ever since, using roughly the same method described by Pliny the Elder 2,000 years ago. The resulting pigment was used in the enamel on ceramic dishes and bathroom fittings, in house paints and wallpapers, well into the 20th century. White lead had long been used as a cosmetic to make skin look smooth and pale. However because it contained lead, it was extremely poisonous and deadly, and people who used it were often afflicted by painter's colic (which we now know is lead poisoning) because of the absorption of too great a quantity into the body.

Wow this is already too long now. Infodump accomplished!

[obligatorynasty]

You Drive Me Crazy, Kid.

“No, Rhodey,” Tony shook his head, the middle of his brow furrowing and wrinkling like his last shred of patience. “A good driver is like a good barber: knows what you want, not annoying, and cute.” Currently, he was stuck in the lobby of Stark Tower, sitting in a suede armchair like it was a throne and arguing with his exasperated friend about the driver he just fired.

Rhodes sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose at the sheer audacity of his friend’s comments. “You’ve fired too many drivers, Tony. Cute shouldn’t be viable criteria here. I think you should start with: can drive.”

“Plenty of people can drive, Rhodey, but not all of them are suited to drive around greatness.” Tony flashed a smug grin, and through his sunglasses, his eyes gleamed with self-pleasure aimed at his own wit. He was a busy man, after all; tech demonstrations, business meetings, iron-clad super-heroics.

“Okay, hotshot, let’s dial back the arrogance.” Despite his frustration, Rhodes smiled at his friend’s comments, knowing that Tony will be Tony and certain battles are best ended with laughter. “So, then what will you do today? You have a meeting in ten and you just sent off your third disgruntled driver this week. Pep’s concerned.”

“Well, Pep found the last three, have her get me another one.” Tony shrugged, not particularly alarmed by his tardiness. A meeting with Tony Stark is a meeting worth the wait, and he carried himself with that energy like followers to religion.

“Well, now I owe Pepper twenty bucks. She knew you would say that.” Rhodes laughed as he grabbed Tony’s phone from the coffee table, “Oh, good, a driver was only a minute away.”

Tony stared up at Rhodes with a lifted brow and gloating smirk, “See? Pepper must have sent a new one. I knew there was a reason I keep her around.”

“Very funny, Mr. Stark,” Rhodey joked dryly. “Come on now. The driver’s here.”

“Lead the way, platypus,” Tony used one of the many names logged under Rhodey in his brain as he stood from the armchair and followed his friend towards the front doors. Outside, there were no sleek black sports cars, no black windowed SUVs, no flair, no style, just a prehistoric bucket of a car with a ride-share logo sticker half-adhered to the side window.

“Rhodey?”

“Yes, Tony?”

“Is the driver here, Rhodey?”

Rhodey held his breath to keep his laughter at bay, but with one look at Tony’s stunned face, it burst free. “Yes, he’s right there.” He said with a huge grin, gesturing to the old vehicle that probably had stained fabric seats and a squeak when the wheels turned too hard.

“Rhodey-”

“It’s a ride-share app, Tony.” Rhodey placed a hand on his disbelieving friend’s back and ushered him down the front steps of Stark Tower. “You get a new driver every time and, if you don’t like them, you can just call for another. Perfect, right?”

“This was Pep’s idea, wasn’t it?” Tony sighed, noting the rust building on the back wheel of the car. “She does this kind of thing when I ask her for-”

“Frivolous things?” Rhodes offered with a look Tony came to know as the ‘is-that-really-what-you-were-going-say’ face.

“I was going to say the finer things in life, but to each his own.” Tony shrugged with fake surrender. “I’m going up to the lab. Send him away and tell Pep to bring someone serious.” He turned towards the building, ready to forgo the meeting and work on suit upgrades, but instead, he froze, compelled into stillness by the voice that called after him.

“Um, excuse me! Mr. Stark, right? I’m your- I’m the ride-share driver you ordered.”

Tony spun on his heel to catch a glimpse of the beauty behind the voice and oh fuck was he a beauty. The kid looked barely legal, sporting a graphic tank-top, a waist-tied plaid shirt, and jeans so skinny you could see every curve in his toned legs. His hair was well-kempt, but Tony could only imagine it messy and bouncing around his face as he rode Tony’s dick all the way to orgasm. He had submissive eyes that flickered to just about everything except the rich man before him. Oh, how Tony wanted to force those eyes to only look at him.

“Never mind, Rhodey,” Tony placed a hand on his friend’s shoulder and retrieved his phone from his hand. “I’m actually running late, and this meeting is so important. This will just have to do for now I suppose.”

Rhodes gave Tony a knowing smirk, “So the third criteria outweighs your repulsion to normal shit?”

“Something like that,” Tony grinned.

Rhodey shook his head, “Enjoy your ride, Tony.”

“Will do,” Tony nodded, watching his friend disappear into the building before turning his focus on his future plaything. “You going to stand there all day, or are you going to get the door for me?”

“Oh! Um, right. Right! Sorry- I, um,” The way the kid stumbled over his words and hurried around the car to open the front passenger door was cute. Exactly what Tony wanted. “Here, Mr. Stark.”

Tony smirked, “Thanks, kid.”

“You’re welcome!” His voice dripped with nerves, and it continued dripping in the way he awkwardly shut the door, scurried around the car, and fumbled with his seat belt. His slender hand reached up to the makeshift phone mount to confirm the pickup in the app, “Is this- um, is the address correct, Mr. Stark?” He pointed to the destination address in the app. It was ten minutes away.

“Sure,” Tony smirked, not caring if the address was wrong. If it was, then he would get more time with his newest, adorable conquest.

The kid nodded, and with his hands tensing at ten and two, he pulled away from Stark Tower. Despite the dilapidated look of the outside, the kid’s car was very clean and cozy. The first few minutes of the ride was spent in silence. Tony busied his mind with the purposefully frayed slits in the kid’s jeans that exposed enough of his thigh that the older man’s hand twitched in temptation. The aroma filling the car was sweet and flowery, and it definitely wasn’t wafting from the rumpled pine tree air freshener hanging from the rearview mirror.

“Um, Mr. Stark?” The kid spoke but he kept his eyes trained on the road in front of him.

Tony pulled himself from his thoughts. “Yeah, kid?”

“Not to- I mean, I don’t want to be rude or anything.” The timid way the kid spoke did things to Tony that he didn’t want to admit. “Do you...use ride-shares often?”

“First time,” Tony crossed his arms and leaned back against the gray fabric seats. “My friends think I fire too many drivers.”

The kid’s stifled giggle also did things to Tony that he didn’t want to admit, and don’t get him started on the kid’s smile. “Well, I’ll do my best for you, Mr. Stark.”

Tony didn’t know what that sound was but he was fairly certain that it was the sound of his sanity crumbling under the weight of the kid’s words. “Hey, what’s your name, kid?”

“Oh, you didn’t see it in the app?” His words made Tony glance at his phone, and sure enough, the kid’s name was there in big black letters.

“Peter?” Tony smirked. “Very fitting, very cute.”

“Oh, um, thanks.” The way Peter shifted awkwardly in his seat and the way his face flushed pink just made Tony want to tease him more. So he did.

Tony stared at the passing buildings, keeping a stoic face as he said, “Do you like it long, usually?”

Peter flinched at Tony’s words, “E-Excuse me?”

“The trips.” Tony grinned, pleased with the reaction he managed to pull from the kid. “Do you prefer longer trips?”

“Oh!” Peter let out a quick, relieved breath. “Yes, I make more money on longer trips.”

“And you’re such a good driver.” Tony leaned against the center console, brushing his arm against Peter’s. “I bet all your customers say you give amazing rides.”

“I, um, I have a pretty high rating, I guess.” Peter probably thought Tony didn’t hear the little squeak he made as their arms touched, but Tony heard it.

“Do you like riding, Peter?” Tony said smoothly, continuing the tease.

“Yes,” Peter breathed out but then blushed, catching himself in a Freudian slip. “What I mean is-! I like giving rides. Wait, no, um...I like my job! It helps pay for my college housing, so yeah.”

Tony chuckled at the reaction, “What about tips?”

“I don’t get many tips actually.” Peter nervously gripped at the steering wheel and glanced at his phone. They were only two minutes away from the destination.

“Well, I can’t wait to give you my tip.” Tony was enjoying every second of the tease.

Peter inhaled sharply, but then gave a sly smile, “I would love that, Mr. Stark.” It was Tony’s turn to blush. He did not expect the kid to play along. The active participation only made Tony want him more, but their ride was swiftly coming to an end. Peter pulled the car against the curb outside the corporate building, and a soft beep erupted from his phone, prompting him to conclude the ride. “Here we are, Mr. Stark.”

Tony didn’t move to leave the car, instead, in one quick motion, he pressed the conclude ride button on Peter’s phone. Then, he grabbed his own phone, opened the app, and lifted it towards Peter.

Peter’s eyes widened in confusion at the screen before him. It was the ‘Rate Your Driver’ section that allowed for comments and tipping. “Mr. Stark, what-?”

“How much do I have to tip you to stay here until I get back?”

“Um, what? Mr. Stark, I- that’s- I can’t stay here. I have to work for the rest of the afternoon.” Peter was clearly taken aback by the generous offer, his modesty keeping him from jumping at it.

Tony sighed, leaning forward and adjusting his suit jacket. “How much would you usually make? I’ll double it if you stay here.”

Peter’s expression was a blend of nerves, hesitance, and a little enticement, but still, he resisted. “Mr. Stark, I appreciate it, but-”

“Name your price, Peter.”

“My price?” Peter’s voice cracked.

“Yes, the price of your time.” Tony wouldn’t say he was getting tired of Peter’s resistance. It was quite the opposite actually. He liked the challenge. Not many people gave pushback. If he wanted someone, dangling money in front of them usually did the trick, so the defiance was refreshing. “Tell me and I’ll pay it.”

Peter shifted uneasily, dragging his open palms against his jeans as if to wick away the sweat caused by the suggestive atmosphere radiating off of Tony Stark. “I don’t have one.”

“Everyone has a price, kid.” Tony tapped his fingers rhythmically against the edge of the cupholder. “What’s yours?”

“I don’t know, Mr. Stark.” Peter glanced nervously at Tony’s fingers. “No one’s ever asked me that. I mean, I probably make like a hundred dollars a day doing this. It’s not much-”

“Good boy,” Tony smiled, filling out the form. “There.”

Peter’s phone buzzed again, this time flashing his recent tip on the screen. It was for three hundred dollars. “Mr. Stark!” He exclaimed, unable to process the man’s generosity. “That’s way more than double. You have to take it back. I can’t-”

“Two hundred for your waiting fee, and one hundred for the tip,” Tony said pointedly. “Seems to me that everything is accounted for. Now, stay here until I get back.”

Read More on AO3: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20800205/chapters/49437071

[islanublar]

MASRANI BACKDOOR

AVAILABLE PROGRAMS:

ASSETS ..... USE TO ACCESS A PARK ASSET

QUERY ...... USE TO QUERY AN OBJECT

INBOX ...... READ RECEIVED MESSAGES

ARCHIVE .... READ ARCHIVED LOGS

TIMELINE ... USE TO SHOW COMPANY HISTORY 

USEFUL COMMANDS:

HELP ....... DISPLAYS ASSISTANCE

LS ......... LIST DIRECTORY FILES

CLEAR ...... CLEARS THE SCREEN

EXIT ....... EXITS THE PROGRAM

ARCHIVE

KARYOLYSIS

---BEGIN LOG---

OWNER: WU, HENRY DATE: 09/20/1991 2205 CST SUBJECT: KARYOLYSIS NOTES: DESPITE INITIAL TESTS SHOWING PROMISING RESULTS, SUBJECTS 4X, 6X AND 7X (VELOCIRAPTOR) ALL FAILED WITHIN 6 DAYS DUE TO KARYOLYSIS: COMPLEX CHROMATIN MOLECULES COLLAPSING DURING INTERPHASE. WE BELIEVE THIS WAS DUE TO INCOMPATIBLE GENETIC STRUCTURES IN DENDROBATES LEUCOMELAS; AN INTERESTING THOUGHT AS DILOPHOSAURUS HAS SHOWN GOOD RESULTS WITH XL-22(728)[REGION 1]. A POSSIBLE SOLUTION HAS BEEN FOUND IN HYPEROLIUS VIRIDIFLAVUS.

---END LOG---

COLLECTIVE INTELLIGENCE

---BEGIN LOG---

OWNER: WU, HENRY DATE: 02/13/1992 1410 CST SUBJECT: COLLECTIVE INTELLIGENCE NOTES: VELOCIRAPTOR SUBJECTS HAVE BEEN DISPLAYING HIGH LEVELS OF SHARED INTELLIGENCE AS A RESULT OF A THREE STEP PROCESS INVOLVING COGNITION, COOPERATION, AND COORDINATION. THE COLLECTIVE IQ IS STAGGERING. PERHAPS MORE ALARMING ARE SCANS OF THEIR TEMPORAL LOBE DISPLAYING HIGH LEVELS OF ACTIVITY RESPONSIBLE FOR MEMORY, ORGANIZATION AND SEQUENCING, AND RECEPTIVE LANGUAGE.

---END LOG---

LYSINE

---BEGIN LOG---

OWNER: WU, HENRY DATE: 05/12/1994 1215 CST SUBJECT: LYSINE NOTES: THERE MUST BE A HICCUP IN THE LYSINE CONTINGENCY SOMEWHERE. THE ANIMALS HAVE NOT PERISHED. WHAT'S MORE ASTONISHING IS THAT THEY'RE BREEDING. I'VE SEEN THE NESTS MYSELF. ONE CAN ONLY ASSUME INCLUSIONS FROM HYPEROLIUS VIRIDIFLAVUS WERE TO BLAME. COMPLETELY UNPRECEDENTED IN MY FIELD OF RESEARCH. LIFE FOUND A WAY?

---END LOG---

KARACOSIS WUTANSIS

---BEGIN LOG---

OWNER: WU, HENRY DATE: 05/21/1997 0745 CST SUBJECT: KARACOSIS WUTANSIS NOTES: SUCCESS! SOMETHING THAT I THOUGHT WAS DECADES AWAY WAS ACHIEVED IN A MERE FOUR YEARS: THE ABILITY TO COMBINE MULTIPLE SPECIES OF GENETIC LIFE INTO A SINGLE ENVIRONMENT. A BRAND NEW SPECIES OF LIFE. THE INTERNATIONAL SOCIETY OF GENETICISTS ARE ALREADY NAMING IT IN MY HONOR: KARACOSIS WUTANSIS. IF ONLY HAMMOND WAS WELL ENOUGH TO HAVE COME AND SEEN THIS. LOOKS LIKE I'LL HAVE TO UPDATE MY BOOK.

---END LOG---

IRON STORES

---BEGIN LOG---

OWNER: WU, HENRY DATE: 08/25/2000 1355 CST SUBJECT: IRON STORES NOTES: TECHNOLOGY NEVER CEASES TO AMAZE ME. JUST A DECADE AGO NO ONE HAD BELIEVED WE'D HOLD THE TECHNOLOGY WE USE TODAY. MOORE'S LAW IS THRIVING. OUR RESEARCHERS IN SAN DIEGO (BRIDGES & CURTIS, ET AL.) HAVE GIVEN ME THE NEWS THAT OUR PROTOTYPE IRON ANALYZER READ INTO OUR RECENTLY UNCOVERED FOSSILIZED MOSASAUR SKELETON AND HAS SHOWN SIGNS OF TRACEABLE DNA FRAGMENTS. WHILST IT IS STILL MUCH TOO EARLY TO TELL, I BELIEVE THIS MAY BE OUR ONLY MEANS TO RECREATING AQUATIC LIFE IN THE ABSENCE OF CULICIDAE.

---END LOG---

WEEK 3

---BEGIN LOG---

OWNER: HOSKINS, VIC DATE: 04/19/2002 1910 CST SUBJECT: WEEK 3 NOTES: I WAS IMPRESSED WITH THE TEAM TODAY. HELL, STARING A SEVEN TON PREDATOR IN THE EYES IS NO EASY JOB. THESE THINGS ARE BIGGER THAN YOU'D EXPECT! LET'S JUST HOPE TIMACK KNOWS HOW TO BUILD STRONG PADDOCKS.

---END LOG---

RUFFLED FEATHERS

---BEGIN LOG---

OWNER: WU, HENRY DATE: 02/20/2003 1410 CST SUBJECT: RUFFLED FEATHERS NOTES: I'M CALLING THIS THE 'COMMON COLD OF GENETICS'. WE CAN'T CURE THIS ONE SOON I'M SURE. BECAUSE WE'RE ACTIVELY MANIPULATING AND MUTATING THE ANIMALS' GENES, ADDING FROG, BIRD AND REPTILE DNA, WE CREATE WHAT IS KNOWN AS 'NULL ALLELE'. THE DINOSAURS CANNOT LIVE WITHOUT SOMETHING ADDED TO THEIR CODE SO FOR NOW WE'RE STUCK WITH SCALES. MAYBE MY RESEARCH INTO GENE SPLICING WILL UNEARTH THIS PROBLEM, IT CERTAINLY PROVED ITS LIMITLESS CAPABILITIES WITH THAT ACCIDENT WE LEFT ON SORNA.

---END LOG---

NAMUMKIN KUCH BHI NAHI

---BEGIN LOG---

OWNER: MASRANI, SIMON DATE: 06/06/2009 0800 CST SUBJECT: NAMUMKIN KUCH BHI NAHI NOTES: I REMEMBER THE FIRST TIME I HELD A BABY DINOSAUR, AN INFANT PARASAUROLOPHUS IN 1999 DURING MY VISIT TO OVERSEE OUR RECENTLY PURCHASED INGEN. I REMEMBER THINKING THIS WAS THE RESULT OF PURE IMAGINATION REINFORCED BY THE UNDERSTANDING THAT NOTHING IS IMPOSSIBLE. PEOPLE OFTEN TALK ABOUT HOW MAN CANNOT FLY WITHOUT AN AIRCRAFT, HOWEVER IF YOU REMOVE GRAVITY MAN CAN FLY WITHOUT AID OF ANYTHING. IT'S ALL ABOUT PERSPECTIVE. I KNOW NOW, MORE THAN EVER, THAT OUR SPECIES HAS UNLIMITED CAPABILITIES. HOLDING THAT YOUNG ANIMAL WAS A WAKE UP CALL. IF WE DREAM OF IT, WE CAN ACHIEVE IT. NOW ONLY ONE QUESTION REMAINS: WHAT IS NEXT FOR INGEN? I BELIEVE HENRY WU HAS AN ANSWER.

---END LOG---

INBOX

THE NEXT TEN YEARS

---NEW MESSAGE---

FROM: MASRANI, SIMON TO: [UNDISCLOSED RECIPIENT] DATE: 01/10/1998 1215 CST SUBJECT: THE NEXT TEN YEARS MESSAGE: FANCY MEETING ME FOR LUNCH THIS THURSDAY? STRICTLY BUSINESS. SIMON.

---END MESSAGE---

JURASSIC PLOP

---NEW MESSAGE---

FROM: MASRANI, SIMON TO: [UNDISCLOSED RECIPIENT] DATE: 10/23/1999 0005 CST SUBJECT: JURASSIC PLOP MESSAGE: I'M DISSATISFIED WITH THE NAME. 'PARK' FEELS SMALL, TOO 1980'S, NOT TO MENTION IT HAS A LOT OF WEIGHT AND BAD PRESS AROUND IT. I'VE BEEN SCRIBBLING NOTES ON MY FLIGHTS COMING UP WITH POSSIBLE TITLES, AND I'M THINKING 'WORLD'. WELCOME TO 'JURASSIC WORLD'! THOUGHTS? OTHERS IDEAS INCLUDED ... JURASSIC ISLAND, THE LOST WORLD, PREHISTORIC WORLD, JURASSIC LAND, DINO ISLAND, CRETASIA ISLAND, ROAMING REPTILES, DINOSPHERE, ... GIANT CHICKEN ISLAND?

---END MESSAGE---

RE: JW SYSTEMS CHECK

---NEW MESSAGE---

FROM: MCCLURE, JAMES TO: [UNDISCLOSED RECIPIENT] DATE: 06/08/2004 2050 CST SUBJECT: RE: JW SYSTEMS CHECK MESSAGE: I'VE MANAGED TO ISOLATE THE ANOMALY. I WOULD SAY THE SYSTEM IS NOW WATERTIGHT. I'LL GIVE HOSKINS A CALL AND SEE IF HE CAN SPOT ANYTHING THAT NEEDS UPDATING. YOU KNOW HOW HE HAS AN EYE FOR DETAIL. MIGHT HELP.

---END MESSAGE---

GRAND OPENING

---NEW MESSAGE---

FROM: MASRANI, SIMON TO: [UNDISCLOSED RECIPIENTS] DATE: 05/30/2005 1530 CST SUBJECT: GRAND OPENING MESSAGE: I JUST WANTED TO SEND A QUICK MESSAGE TO THANK EACH AND EVERY ONE OF YOU FOR ALL THE EFFORT YOU'VE PUT INTO MAKING JURASSIC WORLD COME TO LIFE. WE HAVE A SAYING BACK HOME IN INDIA, 'DER AAYE DURUST AAYE' OR 'BETTER LATE THAN NEVER'. IT'S TIME WE MAKE HISTORY. HAMMOND WOULD BE PROUD. NAMASTE. SIMON.

---END MESSAGE---

NEW OPPORTUNITY

---NEW MESSAGE---

FROM: MASRANI, SIMON TO: [UNDISCLOSED RECIPIENT] DATE: 04/04/2012 1720 CST SUBJECT: NEW OPPORTUNITY MESSAGE: HENRY. I'VE JUST COME OUT OF A MEETING AND THE BOARD ARE UNANIMOUS IN THEIR DESIRE FOR A NEW PARK ATTRACTION TO SATISFY OUR INVESTORS. SOMETHING BIGGER, SCARIER, COOLER. ANY NEW SPECIES COME TO MIND? YOU HAVE MY FULL AUTHORIZATION. SIMON.

---END MESSAGE---

HELP

---NEW MESSAGE---

FROM: GRADY, OWEN TO: [UNDISCLOSED RECIPIENT] DATE: 05/17/2013 0955 CST SUBJECT: HELP MESSAGE: THEIR PACK DYNAMIC IS MUCH MORE COMPLICATED THAN WE FIRST THOUGHT AND I'M STARTING TO THINK YOU'RE NOT WEIGHING UP THE GRAVITY OF THAT. WE CANNOT BURY OUR HEADS IN THE SAND AND HOPE FOR THE BEST WITH THIS, SO I' M GOING TO NEED SOME HELP. I HAVE AN OLD FRIEND IN FRANCE, BARRY, WHO CAN ASSIST. I'LL SEND HIM YOUR NUMBER TO INTRODUCE YOU. IF WE'RE TO STUDY THESE ANIMALS AND LEARN HOW THEY WORK THEN WE SHOULDN'T ASSUME TO GAIN THEIR CO-OPERATION WITH JUST A FEW SNACKS. REMEMBER, THEY CAN TALK TO EACH OTHER. JUST A TIP, VIC.

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MARTEL

---NEW MESSAGE---

FROM: WU, HENRY TO: [UNDISCLOSED RECIPIENTS] DATE: 11/15/2014 1105 CST SUBJECT: MARTEL MESSAGE: CONGRATULATIONS TO THE MARTEL TEAM ON THEIR OPENING! THIS IS OUR FIRST STEP INTO CREATING THE MOST COMPREHENSIVE BIOLOGICAL LIBRARY THE WORLD HAS EVER SEEN. OBVIOUS RUMORS HAVE ALREADY BEGUN CIRCULATING ABOUT OUR INTENTIONS BUT I WANT THE CORE TEAM TO KNOW THAT WE'RE JUST COLLECTING AND ARCHIVING FOR NOW. I'VE SPOKEN WITH SIMON AND HE HAS EXPRESSED HIS UTMOST DELIGHT THAT WE'LL BEGIN WORK ON THIS.

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RE: INDOMINUS REX

---NEW MESSAGE---

FROM: MASRANI, SIMON TO: [UNDISCLOSED RECIPIENT] DATE: 12/24/2014 0940 CST SUBJECT: RE: INDOMINUS REX MESSAGE: UNFORTUNATELY MY FACE IS NEEDED AT SEVERAL OTHER MEETINGS AND EVENTS OVER THE COMING SIX MONTHS. I WON'T BE ABLE TO SEE THE FRUITS OF YOUR LABOR UNTIL THE END OF MAY OR EARLY JUNE. SINCERE APOLOGIES. SIMON.

---END MESSAGE---

INSTALLATION

---NEW MESSAGE---

FROM: HOSKINS, VIC TO: [UNDISCLOSED RECIPIENTS] DATE: 01/10/2015 1215 CST SUBJECT: INSTALLATION MESSAGE: MASCOM NETWORK ENGINEERS WILL BE ON SITE INSTALLING NEW SCANNING HARDWARE IN THE NORTH OF THE ISLAND PAST THE RESTRICTED ZONE ON JANUARY 30 0800 CST. ALL INGEN SECURITY STAFF PLEASE BE ON STANDBY TO ASSIST.

---END MESSAGE---

QUERY TERMS:

Amber - DESCRIPTION: Fossilized tree resin (not sap).

Barbasol - [Used to open a page on jurrasicworld.com]

Colin - Name: Trevorrow, Colin Position: Director, Safety (Not Guaranteed)

Derek - Name: Connoly, Derek Position: Employee of the Month

Diabolus rex - ERROR: Did you mean 'Axis Boulder'?

Fetahers - ERROR: Null Allele.

IBRIS - Name: Integrated Behavioral Raptor Intelligence Study. FURTHER INFORMATION: RESTRICTED ACCESS

Isla Nublar - Location: 120 miles off the coast of Costa Rica. Description: Home of Jurassic World.

Isla Sorna/Isla Matanceros/Isla Pena/Isla Tacaño/Isla Muerta - Location: Las Cinco Muertos. Description: U.N. heritage preservation.

Masrani - Name: Masrani, Simon Position: Cheif Executive Officer, Masrani Global Corporation

Timack - DESCRIPTION: Building the foundations for state of the art entertainment.

Visitors Centre - [Opens jurrasicworld.com] It also says "FURTHER INFORMATION: RESTRICTED ACCESS".

Wu - Name: Wu, Henry Position: Lead Genetic Biologist, International Genetic Technologies, Inc.

TIMELINE

1525 - Isla Nublar discovered by Diego Fernadez. 1526 - Muertes Archipelago discovered (disputed). 1928 - John Parker Hammond born in Edinburgh, Scotland. 1930 - Sanjay Masrani is born in Bombay (Mumbai), India. 1967 - Simon Masrani is born in Bombay (Mumbai), India. 1969 - John Hammond's 'Animal Kingdom' opens in Nirobi, Kenya. 1973 - Mascom Network established in Bombay (Mumbai), India. 1975 - International Genetics Technologies, Inc. established in San Deigo, USA. 1979 - Mascom unveils concept for fiber-optic communications. 1982 - Isla Sorna leased from the Costa Rican Government. 1983 - Construction of Jurassic Park: San Deigo. 1984 - First test fertilizations of artificial ovum. Tatsuo Technology established in Tokyo, Japan. 1985 - 'Jurassic Park: San Deigo' decommissioned. Isla Nublar leased from the Costa Rican Government. 1986 - First dinosaur (Velociraptor) successfully cloned at 'Site B'. 1987 - Last remaining Bribri Tribe descendant resettled off Isla Nublar. 1988 - Construction of 'Jurassic Park' begins. 1990 - First mature animals moved from 'Site B' to Isla Nublar. 1992 - Sanjay Masrani passes away. Simon Masrani made chef executive officer, Mascom Network. 1993 - FURTHER INFORMATION: RESTRICTED ACCESS 1994 - FURTHER INFORMATION: RESTRICTED ACCESS 1995 - Dr. Henry Wu publishes 'The Next Step: The Evolution of God's Concepts'. 1996 - Masrani Oil Industries established in Abu Dubai, UAE. Data Analysis established in Johannesburg, South Africa. 1997 - John Hammond passes away. Dr. Henry Wu creates Karacosis wutansis. FURTHER INFORMATION: RESTRICTED ACCESS 1998 - International Genetics Technologies, Inc. acquired by Masrani Global. 1999 - Masrani Global acquires limited access to Isla Nubalr and Isla Sorna. FURTHER INFORMATION: RESTRICTED ACCESS 2000 - Dr. Henry Wu begins work on 'Jurassic World' project. Axis Boulder established in Dubai, UAE. 2001 - 'Flying Reptile Cleanup' headed by Vic Hoskins. FURTHER INFORMATION: RESTRICTED ACCESS 2002 - Timack Construction established in San Jose, Costa Rica. Construction begins on 'Jurassic World'. 2003 - Midixal Health established in New York, USA. 2004 - 'Jurassic World' construction completed. Assets moved from Isla Sorna to Isla Nublar. 2005 - Opening of 'Jurassic World' on Isla Nublar. 2007 - Aerospace Dynamics established in Toulouse, France. 2009 - Hybrid hatched April 05. FURTHER INFORMATION: RESTRICTED ACCESS 2011 - Tatsuo Technology acquired by Masrani Global Corporation. 2012 - IBRIS Project begins development. FURTHER INFORMATION: RESTRICTED ACCESS 2014 - 'Martel' facility established in Siberia, Russia. International Genetics Technologies, Inc houses world's most complete genomic library. 2015 - UPDATE PENDING

ASSETS

Upon entering any asset, it will pull up the asset page on the jurrasicworld.com website

LIST DIRECTORY FILES

IBRIS.JPG

MEME.JPG

TIMACK.JPG

[professor-beryl]

{PrisonRose} 8, 6, 7, 5, 3, (1)0, 9

[ @prisonrose ]

8.: Least favorite Pokemon?

[Charizard. Just, Charizard. It’s the most basic bitch dragon design imaginable and it keeps being endlessly shoved into our throats by both Gamefreaks and the fandom and i am so fucking done with that. If Charizard came out right now in SwSh, genwunners would have been all over it saying it’s just a basic ass fire dragon and that gamefreaks is running out of ideas and yet just because it came out in gen 1 that thing is worshiped and held as the pinnacle of pokemon design. 

All Charizard makes me think of is genwhunners, people that i despise, because they have a mentality very similar to awesomebros (people who refuse to acknowledge and get very hostile toward scientific facts about prehistoric animals because their childhood media didn’t picture them that way, think every cunt out there saying “Dinosaurs will always be scaly to me feathers aren’t scary uwu science ruined dinosaurs.” and you get the idea) who are a massive pain in my ass as a palaeontology enthusiast running a paleontology blog. I guess i’ll at least give genwunners credit for being ass about a fandom rather than, you know, actual real life science.]

6.: Least favorite region?

[Kanto, same reason, gen 1, don’t like it.]

7.: Favorite Pokemon?

[Tyrantrum because, listen: 

1: A T. rex pokemon could have gone horribly wrong if they had gone for a more pop culture appearance rather than being bold and giving it feathers, as, the same way as charizard, the pop culture image of T. rex nowdays isn’t just innacurate, it’s also very basic and boring since, as with many “pop culture icon” dinosaurs, JP has been copied to death and then again.

2: Ironically, despite us now knowing that T. rex was probably less feathered than we thought back in 2014, Tyrantrum’s feather placement somehow still holds up as plausible (in a stylized way, of course, but still). Tyrantrum, to this day, is still in the top 3 of the most accurate T. rex in pop media today, if not the most accurate, despite it being a completely fictional creature made of literal rock that is only inspired of the actual animal.

3: For some reason they made the T. rex french and i think it’s beautiful. ]

5.: Favorite region? 

[Galar: I love the mood of it. I love the new pokemon, i love the designs of the random trainers and the gym leaders, i think the areas you go through are very cool, the characters feel organic in the way they react to things most of the time (ex: Leon trying to keep hop and the protag away from dealing with dangerous situations because adults should be the ones dealing with that) and it’s refreshing, 

and my god, my god do i love the chairman, i have never felt as involved and passionate about a pokemon character as i do with Rose.]

3.: Favorite starter? 

[Snivy. I like snakes a lot.]

10.: Least favorite type?

[Electric, got nothing against it really it’s just my least favorite out of all of them.]

9.: Favorite type?

[Steel and Rock. I like fossils and i like machines and object pokemon and those are often steel types.]

[letterdrill08-blog]

About face mask

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An Unbiased View of face mask

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5 Tips about face mask You Can Use Today

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[darkfalcon-z]

This is a bit of historical misinformation, undoubtedly unintentional. The post is correct about the modern use of swastika, but not about historical use of it. The symbol is not as young as the OP claims, the earlies know examples are from around 12 000- 10 000 bce. The Nazis did not appropriated swastika from Hindu and Buddhist specifically, they did appropriated it from approximately entire fucking World.

As far as I know they chose the symbol because it was already popular in German folk nationalist movement and I think it was popular with those guys because a) it was popular symbol everywhere in Europe at that time, b) it was common in archaeological materials particularly those assumed to be manufactured by Germanic tribes in Iron Age in Europe, although to be fair swastikas are present all over Europe at least since Neolithic's - the Greeks did used it, the Romans used it, the Balto-Slavs used it, the “Vikings” used it, everyone used it. Among other things, because the swastika was so strongly associated with the Germanic tribes, the Nazis used the presence of swastikas in archaeological materials from Central and Eastern Europe to justify the conquest of the region. It is a part of our heritage, that we can no longer use because it was appropriated by Nazis. The Nazis took it away from us by making it theirs. Nazis were murdering our grandparents and great-grandparents, treating us as a race of slaves, all while using the symbols our ancestors used, the symbol that our great-grandparents have been using not so long ago. And we can’t even try to reclaim it, regardless if we want it back or not,  because the Neo-Nazis are still fucking around with it. We (White Europeans) can’t use it outside museum’s context because doing so would provide smoke screen for Neo-Nazis and because it would make Jewiesh people (and everyone who isn’t white or heteronormative or able bodied) living in out communities feel more unsafe (neither can White Euro-Americans for the same reasons) .

That part of our history, our tradition had been almost erased from public consciousness, all as result of Nazis claiming the symbol for themselves. By far not the worst crime the Nazis did, and by that time the symbol lost any religious significance it might one had for Europeans, but it still sucks. And, like, the fact that South and East Asian people living in Europe and America may be in danger right now for practising their religion is more relevant right now.

Note that all that does not mean some Europeans weren’t and aren’t co-opting and appropriating Buddhist and Hindu swastikas, you know the whole orientalism thing, but historically for the most part the use of swastika didn’t have anything to do with the use of the symbol in India and East Asia. 

wikipedia has some examples of swastikas from different regions and time periods 

this paper has some more pictures from Europe

Swastika had also been used for early XX century commercial products:

The fact that the only ones who still use the symbol today are the people of South and East Asia doesn’t mean they were always the only ones to do so.

It is also worth remembering that Native Americans and People of Africa also do use the symbol of swastika. I think at least some groups of Native Americans decided not to use swastika any more after WWII out of consideration for the victims of Holocaust, but there may be some who still use it. I just do not know enough to talk about it.

So yeah be mindful that the people who use this symbols are not always Nazis, in fact most people who use swastika around the world aren’t Nazis, but instead believer of Buddhism and Hinduism.

I’m sorry for making this addition to the original post mostly about prehistorical and historical Europe, but I just know it better and I do not deem myself competent to adequately address the historical use of swastika in other regions like America and Africa. I also do not intend to take away from the dangers South and East face right now. But what OP said is not historically accurate and I think the original point is valid and can be very well made without distorting historical facts.

not so friendly reminder with diwali coming up that the swastika (swuhs-theek-ahh) is of vedic origin, and it's a symbol of well-being, auspiciousness, and prosperity in hinduism, jainism, and buddhism. it's still common in nepal, mongolia, china, japan, and, most famously, india.

it's been around since 500 BC, and germany appropriated it, making it a symbol of hate.

the symbol on the right? THIS is not offensive. it's stolen culture. please be fully informed before you make any accusations this upcoming holiday season.

[nichehouse]

Color of The Month: Most Popular Brown Art

There is art in everything because art comes in many different forms.

I must say, art has come a long way. It’s now more than just a way to record history. Art to me is a form of self-expression. For some people, art could be a symbol of luxury living. You might have heard of artworks being sold at museum auctions. There are several art pieces that have been sold for a huge amount of money. Learning history is one thing, but actually owning a piece of history is quite an experience to have.

The vast majority of art pieces created throughout history have been earth-oriented. This is likely because humans have always had a strong connection to the earth. We depend on the earth for our survival, and it is the only place we have ever known. The earth is also a powerful source of inspiration, with its stunning landscapes and diverse wildlife.

It is no wonder that so many artists have chosen to feature the earth in their work. From sweeping landscapes to intimate portraits of animals, there is an endless supply of subject matter to be found in nature. And as our understanding of the earth has grown, so too has our appreciation for the art that celebrates its beauty.

Why are most art brown in color?

We can all agree that brown is abundant in nature. It has been a readily available color ever since. We see it in rich soil, dark wood, and fair skin.  Paintings from prehistoric times have been examined to contain either raw umber or burnt umber. Umbrian clay, being a natural clay pigment, was widely used for its distinctive earth tone. Artists generally heat this natural clay pigment composed of manganese oxide and iron oxide. Umbrian clay heated turns to a darker shade of brown paint. 

Brown progressed with history. Aside from umber, artists found a way to create other tones of brown. Reddish-brown earth mined from Siena in Italy can be used as raw sienna or burnt sienna. When heated, this reddish brown earth turns into a dark reddish brown color. Dark brown clay mined from Umbria was also used to create luminous brown portraits. Moreover, dark brown clay was one of the popular browns used for classic oil paintings during the Renaissance. Today, artists have a variety of paint mediums to choose from for their art exhibitions.

Many well-known artists have used brown in their work, and brown is still a colour that many people like to use. Rembrandt is one of my favourite artists whose paintings include brown. I love how he uses different shades of brown to make depth and contrast. Brown is a very flexible colour that can be used in many different ways to make different effects.

Vincent Van Gogh is another well-known artist who likes to use brown in his work. He used brown a lot to make his paintings feel warm and inviting. Brown is a colour that I think can be used in a lot of different ways to make a lot of different effects. Brown is a great colour to use if you want to make a painting feel warm and inviting or deep and full of contrast.

What are the most popular brown arts to be created?

This brown coloring is what artists have used to create portraits and landscape paintings. That’s why most art pieces share the same browns in them. But only a few famous painters have managed to use brown to create some of the world’s top fine art. 

Mona Lisa by Leonardo Da Vinci

The Mona Lisa has got to be the most popular brown art of all time. This painting effectively uses the background to highlight how the subject appeared. It is still uncertain where Leonardo da Vinci got the inspiration for the subject of this portrait. Some say it’s his mother while others say it’s a painting of himself. I don’t know for sure which side is correct but we can all agree that this art has brought so much impact around the world.

Nevermore by Paul Gaugin

Arnolfini by Jan Van Eyck

Another painting that you should know is Jan Van Eyck’s Arnolfini. The painter creatively uses different shades of brown to create such a sophisticated oil painting. Despite having brighter colors, its ground layers are still composed of browns. This painting also somehow depicts the grandiose lifestyle that Arnolfini and his wife had. Who knew brown could be used to portray luxury living well?

Nightwatch by Rembrandt Van Rijn

Finally, we have the famous Nightwatch. What makes this art popular like the other paintings of Rembrandt Van Rijn is how he played with brown and other earth tones to create chiaroscuro effects in his work. I admire the contrast that the painter makes between light and darkness. Brown works well with the chiaroscuro effect because it acts as a transition color.

Even in the present time, brown is still widely used. Other artists such as Bob and Roberta Smith create contemporary art that features brown to create signs that address life issues in the community. 

Brown is a color that is often overlooked, but it can be very versatile when used in prints and paintings. Rembrandt was a master of using brown in his work, and his paintings are some of my favorites. Brown can also be used to create a warm and inviting atmosphere in a room, and it is a popular choice for home décor. When used correctly, brown can be a very beautiful and elegant color.