#mark workman

[dustedmagazine]

Listening Post:  John Coltrane/Eric Dolphy’s Evenings at the Village Gate

In 1961, John Coltrane was reaching a wider audience via his edited single version of the Sound of Music classic "My Favorite Things.”  He was also, although it seems trite to say given the trajectory of his career, in a state of transition. Moving away from his "sheets of sound" period to exploring modality, non-western scales and polyrhythms which allowed him to improvise more deeply within the constraints of more familiar Jazz tropes.

His personal and musical relationship with Eric Dolphy was an important catalyst for the development of his sound. Dolphy was an important presence on Coltrane's other key album from 1961, Africa/Brass and here officially joins the quartet on alto, bass clarinet and flute. Evenings at the Village Gate was recorded towards the end of a month-long residency with a core band of Coltrane, Dolphy, Jones, McCoy Tyner on piano and Reggie Workman on bass. The other musician featured here, on "Africa,” is bassist Art Davis.

The recording captures the band moving towards the more incandescent sound that made Live at the Village Vanguard, recorded just a few weeks later in November 1961, such a viscerally thrilling album. The hit "My Favorite Things" and traditional English folk tune "Greensleeves"  are extended into long trance-like vamps. Benny Carter's 1936 classic "When Lights Are Low" showcases Dolphy's bass clarinet and in the originals "Impressions" and particularly "Africa"  the quintet hit almost ecstatic grooves. Dolphy's solos push Coltrane further into the spiritual free jazz that so divided later audiences. Dolphy's flute on "My Favorite Things" and especially his clarinet on "When Lights Are Low" are extraordinary, particularly the clarity of his upper register.

The highlight for me is the 22 minute version of "Africa" that closes the set. The two basses, bowed and plucked, Tyner's chordal work and solo, the slow build from the bass solo where the music seems to meander before Jones' explosive solo heralds the return of Dolphy and Coltrane improvising together on the theme, spiralling up the register, contrasting Coltrane's long slurries with Dolphy's staccato bursts which lead to the thunderous conclusion. 

As an archivist, sudden discoveries in forgotten basement boxes never surprises and the excitement never gets old. The tapes of Evenings at the Village Gate were recently unearthed in the NY Public Library sound archive after having been lost, found and lost again. Recorded by the Village Gate's sound engineer Rich Alderson these tapes were not meant for commercial use but rather to test the room's sound and a new ribbon microphone. As Alderson says in his notes, this was the only time he made a live recording with a single mic and, yes, there have been grumblings from fans and critics about the sound quality and mix particularly the dominance of Elvin Jones' drums. For me, one the best things about this is that you hear how integral Jones is not just as a fulcrum for the other soloists but as an inventive polyrhythmic presence, playing within and around his bandmates. I know that many of the Dusted crew are Coltrane fans and would love to hear your takes on the music and whether the single mic recording affects your enjoyment in any way. 

Andrew Forell

Justin Cober-Lake: There's so much to get into here, but I'll respond to your most direct question. The single-mic recording doesn't affect my enjoyment at all. I understand (sort of) the complaints, but I think they overstate the problem. More to the point, when I hear an archival release, I really want to get something new out of it. That doesn't mean I want a bad recording, but there's not too much point in digging up yet-another-nearly-the-same show (and I have nearly unlimited patience for Coltrane releases) or outtakes that give the cuts the same basic idea but just don't do it as well. I was really looking forward to hearing Coltrane and Dolphy interact, and nothing here disappoints. Having Jones so dominant just means I get to hear and think more about the role he plays in this combo. It would sound better to have the other instruments a little more to the fore, but it's not a problem (and actually Tyner's the one I wish I could hear a little better).

I think your topic suggests ideas about what these sorts of recordings — when made publicly available — are for. Is it academic material (the way we might look at a writer's journals or correspondence)? Is it to get truly new and good music out there? Is it a commercial ploy? Is it a time capsule to get us in the moment? The best curating does at least three of those with the commercial aspect a hoped-for benefit. This one probably hits all four, but I suspect the recording pushes it a little more toward that first category.

Bill Meyer: I’m playing this for the first time as I type, and I’m only to track three, so my (ahem) impressions could not be fresher. 

First, I’ll say that, like Justin, I have a lot of time for Coltrane, and especially the quartet/quintet music from the Impulse years. The band’s on point, it sounds like Dolphy is sparking Coltrane, and Jones is firing up the whole band. Tyner’s low in the mix and Workman’s more felt than heard; the recording probably reflects what it was like to actually hear this band most nights, i.e. Jones and the horn(s) were overwhelming. 

How essential is it? If you’re a deep student of Coltrane, there are no inessential records, and the chance to hear him with Dolphy, fairly early on, should not be passed up. But if you’re big fan, not a scholar, then you need to get The Complete 1961 Village Vanguard Recordings box and the 7-CD set, Live Trane: The European Tours, before you drop a penny on this album. And if you’re just curious, start with Impressions. This group is hardly under-documented. The sound quality, while tolerable, is compromised enough to make Evenings At The Village Gate less essential than everything I just mentioned. 

I’m only just now starting to play “Africa,” so I’ll check in again after I play that. 

“Africa” might be the best reason for a merely curious listener to get this album. It’s very exploratory, the bass conversation is almost casual (not a phrase I use much when discussing Coltrane), and they manage to tap into the piece’s inherent grandeur by the end. 

“Africa” is a great example of this band working out what they’re doing while they’re doing it. 

Andrew Forell: On Justin’s points about the function of archival releases, I’ve been going back and forth on the academic versus time capsule/good music uncovered question. There is a degree of cynicism and skepticism in these days of multidisc, anniversary box sets in arrays of tastefully colored vinyl which seemed designed for the super(liquid)fan and cater to a mix of nostalgia and fetish. Having said that specialist archival labels have done us a great service unearthing so much "lost" and under-represented music. On one hand I agree with your summation and to Bill’s point, yes this quintet has been pretty thoroughly documented and yes the Vanguard tapes would be the place to start. But purely as a fan I am more interested in live recordings than discs of out- and alternative takes. I’m thinking for example of the 1957 Monk/Coltrane at Carnegie Hall and Dolphy’s 1963 Illinois concert especially his solo rendition of “God Bless the Child," recordings that sat in archives for 48 and 36 years respectively.

By contrast, the other recent Coltrane excavation, Both Directions at Once is wonderful but I’m not listening to it as an academic exercise, taking notes and mulling over the different takes, interesting as they are. I approach Evenings as another opportunity to hear two great musicians, in a live setting, early on in their short partnership. As Justin says, this aspect doesn’t disappoint. I agree with Bill that the mix is close to what you would you hear in the room, the drums and horns to the fore. All this is a long way to a short answer. A moment in time, a band we’ll never experience in person and when all is said and done, 80 minutes of music I’d otherwise not hear.

Jonathan Shaw: As a relative newb to this music, I can't contribute cogently to discussions of this set's relative value. Most of the Coltrane I've listened to closely is from very late in his life, when he was playing wild and free--big fan of the set from Temple University in 1966 and the Live at the Village Vanguard Again! record from the same year. None of that is music I understand, but I feel it and respond to it strongly. The only Dolphy I've listened to closely is Out There. So I'll be the naif here.

I need to listen to these songs another few times before I can say anything about them as songs, but I really love the right-there-ness of the sound. I like being pushed around by the drums and squeezed between the horns (the first few minutes of "Greensleeves" are delightful in that respect). Maybe I'm lucky to come to the music with so little context. It's a thrill to hear the playing of these folks, about whom there is so much talk of collective genius. Perhaps because my ears are so raw to these sounds, I feel like that talk is being fleshed out for me.

Jim Marks: I think that this release has both academic and aesthetic (if that’s the right word) significance for Dolphy’s presence alone. I am more familiar with the original releases than the various re-releases from the period, but it’s my impression that there just isn’t that much Dolphy and Trane out there; for instance, I think Dolphy appears on just one cut of the Village Vanguard recordings (again, at least the original release). In particular, I’ve heard and loved various versions of “Favorite Things,” but this one seems unique for the six-plus-minute flute solo that opens the track. The solo is both brilliant in itself and creates a thrilling contrast with Coltrane when he comes in. This track alone is worth the price of admission for me.

Marc Medwin: I agree concerning Dolphy's importance to these performances, and while there is indeed plenty of Coltrane and Dolphy floating around (he took part in the Africa/Brass sessions that gave us both Africa and a big band version of "Greensleeves") his playing is really edgy here. Bill is right to point toward the sparks Dolphy's playing showers on the music. Yes, the flute on "My Favorite Things" is really stunning. He's all over the instrument, even more so than in those solos I've heard from the group's time in Europe.

Jon, I'd suggest that there's a strong link between the albums you mention and the Village Gate recordings we're discussing, a kind of continuum into which you're tapping when you describe the excitement generated by the playing. The musicians were as excited at the time as we are on hearing it all now! It was all new territory, the descriptors were in the process of forming, and while Cecil Taylor, Ornette Coleman, Sun Ra and a small group of kindred spirits were already exploring the spaceways, they were marginalized. That may be a component of the case today, but it's tempered by a veneration unimaginable at the time. That's part of the reason Dolphy lived in apartments where the snow came through the walls. Coltrane had plenty to lose by alienating the critics, but ultimately, it did not stop his progress. These recordings mark an early stage of that halting but inexorable voyage. With the possible exception of OM, Coltrane's final work never abandoned the tonal and modal extremes at which he was grabbing in the spring and summer of 1961.

Jennifer Kelly: Like Jon, I'm not well enough versed in this stuff to put it context or even really offer an opinion. I'm enjoying it a lot, and I, also, like the roughness and liveness of the mix with the foregrounded drums. But I think mostly what I am drawn to is the idea that this show happened in 1961, the year I was born, and that these sounds were lost for decades, and now you can hear them again, not just the music but the room tone, the people applauding, the shuffling of feet etc. from people who are almost all probably dead now.  It seems incredibly moving, and I am also taken by the part that the library took in this, in conserving this stuff and forgetting it had it and then rediscovering it.  In this age of online everything-available-all-the-time, that seems remarkable to me, and proves that libraries are so crucial to civilization now and always, even as they're under threat.  

Marc Medwin: A real time machine, isn't it? We are fortunate that we have these documents at all, and yes, the story of the tapes resurfacing is a compelling one! To your observations, audience reaction seems pretty enthusiastic to music that would eventually be dubbed anti-jazz by prominent members of the critical establishment!

Bill Meyer: I can imagine this music being more sympathetically received by audiences experiencing its intensity, whereas critics might have fretted because it represented a paradigm shift away from bebop models, so they had to decide if it was jazz or not.

It is amusing, given the knowledge we have of what Coltrane would be playing in five years, that this music is where a lot of critics drew a line in the sane and said, "this is antijazz."

Jon Shaw: Yes, Bill, that seems bonkers to me. I am particularly moved by the minutes in that 1966 set at Temple when Coltrane abandons his horn altogether and starts beating his chest and humming and grunting. Wonder what the chin-stroking jazz authorities made of that.

Given my points of reference, this set sounds so much more musically conventional. But the emotional force of the music is still immediate, viscerally present. Beautifully so.

Andrew Forell: In retrospect, all those arguments seem kind of crazy. Yesterday’s heresies become tomorrow’s orthodoxies but what we’re left with is, as Jonathan says, the visceral beauty of Coltrane’s striving for transcendence and his interplay with Dolphy’s extraordinary talent which we hear here working as a catalyst for Coltrane. As Marc and Jen note the audience is there with them..

Come Shepp, Sanders & Rashid Ali, the inquisitors’ fulminations only increased and you think what weren’t you hearing?

Marc Medwin: I was just listening to a Jaimie Branch interview where she's talking about her visual art, about throwing down a lot of material and finding the forms within it. I think that might be another throughline in Coltrane's and certainly Dolphy's work, a gradual discarding of traditional forms and poossibly structures based on what I hate to call intuition, because it diminishes the process.

Then, I was thinking again about our discussion of the critics. I see their role, or their assessment of that role, as a kind of investment without reward, and yeah, it does seem bonkers now! Bill Dixon once talked about how the writers might spend considerable time and expend commensurate energy learning to pick out "I Got Rhythm" on the piano, and they're suddenly confronted with... well, the sounds we're discussing! What would you do, or have done, in that situation? It's really easy for me, like shooting fish in the proverbial barrel, to disparage critical efforts of the time, especially in light of the ideas and philosophies Branch and so many others are at liberty and encouraged to play and express now, but I wonder how I would have reacted, what my biases and predilections would have involved at that pivotal moment.

Ian Mathers: The points about historical reception are really interesting, I think. There's a famous (in Canada!) bunch of Canadian painters called the Group of Seven, hugely influential on Canadian art in the 20th century and still well known today. In all the major museums, reproductions everywhere, etc. They were largely landscape painters, and while I think most of the work is beautiful, it's so culturally prominent that it runs the risk of seeming boring or staid. I literally grew up with it being around! So it was a delightful shock to read a group biography of them (Ross King's Defiant Spirits: The Modernist Revolution of the Group of Seven, if anyone is hankering for some CanCon) and see from contemporary reviews that people were so shocked and appalled by the vividness of their colour palettes and other aesthetic choices that they were practically called anti-art at the time. It's not surprising to me that this music would both attract similar furore at the time and, from the vantage point of a new listener in 2022 who loves A Love Supreme and some of the other obvious works but hasn't delved particularly far into Dolphy, Coltrane live, or this era in jazz in general (that would be me), be heard and felt as great, exciting, but not exactly formally radical stuff.

I don't think I would have noticed much about the recording quality were people not talking about it. "My Favorite Things" seems to have the overall volume down a bit, but still seemed pretty clear to me (agree with the assessments above; Coltrane, Dolphy, and Jones very forward, others further back although even when less prominent I find myself 'following' Tyner's work through these tracks more often than not), and starting with "When Lights Are Low" that seems to be corrected. It actually sounds pretty great to me! Although I absolutely defer to Bill's recommendations for better starting places for serious investigations, I can also say as a casual but interested fan who tends to quail in the face of box sets and other similarly lengthy efforts this feels from my relatively ignorant vantage like a perfectly nice place to start. I like Justin's rubric for why these releases might come about (or be valuable), but if I hadn't heard any Coltrane and you just gave me this one, my unnuanced perspective would just be something like "wow, this is great!" But maybe I'm underthinking it. And having that reaction doesn't mean that others aren't right to recommend better/more edifying entry points, or that having that reaction shouldn't lead one to educate oneself.

Jonathan Shaw: Maybe it's a lucky thing for me to be so poorly versed in Coltrane's music, not just in the sense of having listened to precious little of it. I am even less familiar with the catalog of music criticism, which in jazz seems to me voluminous, archival in scale. But even with music I'm extensively engaged with — historically, critically — I try to understand it and also to feel it. I can't imagine not feeling what's exciting in this music, energizing and challenging in equal measure.

Like Marc, I don't want to recursively impugn the critical writing of folks working in very different contexts. But I don't like it when the thinking gets in the way of the music's emotional and aesthetic force, which to me feels unmistakably powerful here.

Ian Mathers: Yeah, maybe that's a good distinction to draw; I can imagine in a different time and place feeling like the music here is more radical or challenging than it sounds to us now. But I can't quite imagine not getting a visceral thrill out of it.

Marc Medwin: And doesn't this contradiction get at the essence of what we're trying to do? Those of us who've chosen to write about music are absolutely stuck grasping at the ephemeral in whatever way we're able! How do we balance the ordering of considerations and explanations in unfolding sentences with the  spontaneity of action and reaction that made us pick up a pen in the first place?! We add and subtract layers of whatever that alchemical intersection of meaning and energy involves that hits so hard and compels us to write! In fact, the more time I'm spending with these snapshots of summer 1961, the more I decamp from my own philosophizing about critical relativity to sit beside Ian. The stuff is powerful and original, and the fact that so much of what we're hearing now is a direct result of those modal explorations and harmonically inventive interventions says that the dissenting voices were fundamentally, if understandably, wrong! It could be that the musician can be inclusive in a way the writer simply can't.

I'm listening to "Africa" again, which is for me the disc's biggest single revelation in that it's the only concert version we have, so far as I know. How exciting is that Jones solo, and how much does it say about his art and the group's collective art?!! He starts out in this kind of "Latin" groove with layers of swing and syncopation over it, he goes into a melodic/motivic thing like you'd eventually hear Ginger Baker doing on Toad, and then eases back into the groove, all (if no editing has occured) in about two minutes. He's got the music's history summed up in the time it would take somebody to get through a proper hello!! Took me longer to scribble about it than for him to play it!!

Justin Cober-Lake: I'm not sure if Marc is making me want to put down or pick up a pen, but he's definitely making me want to listen to "Africa" again. (Not that I needed much encouragement.)

Andrew Forell: Africa/Brass was the first jazz album I bought. Coming from post-punk, I found it immediately the most exciting and challenging music I’d heard and it set me off on my exploration of Coltrane, Dolphy, Coleman and their contemporaries. This version of “Africa” is a highlight for me also for all the reasons Marc, Ian and Jon have talked about.

Bill Meyer: Yeah, "Africa" is quite the jam! 

A thought about critical perspective — our discussion has gotten me thinking, not for the first time, about the impacts of measures upon experience, and the limits of critical thinking when I’m also an avid listener. If I’m listening for “the best” Coltrane/Dolphy, in terms of sound quality or most focused performances,  this album isn’t it. But if I’m looking for excitement, this album has loads of it, and that might be enhanced by the drums-forward mix. 

[ungoliantschilde]

"On Your Feet, You Gold-Bricks!", by John Paul Leon, with Letters by John Workman, and a Script by Jesse Alexander that was Edited by Mark Paniccia.

[polkadotpatterson]

workman and dot :3

bimgo :)

I hesitate to say canon did them wrong because I think the stuff that did happen made a good compelling story. but also in an ideal world they won a championship together instead of workman dying. it's what they deserve

[yeyinde]

touch starved reader with an oral fixation x kidnapper!Simon who’s all punishment and no physical affection? Please Simon just a little kiss? with tongues? :( (i just wanna make out with this man while my heart aches for him)

by Allah, you people are dogs. i will write the filth as usual.

DEAD DOVE, 18+ | dubcon. kidnapping. mean!Simon. dom!Simon. masking corporal punishment as affection. kissing. size kink, size difference. some thigh riding. degradation + humiliation (verbal). non-con pet play. marking (heavyyyyyy mentions of Simon biting you like a chew toy). choking. daddy kink (but in the awful, demeaning way). manipulation. forced affection. coersion. forced/manufactured dependency. brief mention of Simon stepping on your back to hold you down so he can whip you w a cat o nine tails. yanno. the usual Friday night.

idk. there's something so hot about you, completely naked, riding Simon's clothed thigh as he holds you up by your neck. tongue out, desperate for a kiss while he just mocks you the whole time.

It's survival. 

At first.  

A means of masking the innate horror of being stripped of your agency, your autonomy, by a man you barely even know. One you met once before (fate sealed), and now—outside of your apartment complex where he was idling by the foothold, smoking a cigarette as he leaned against the brick wall, head turned. Gaze narrowed as you approached. 

Waiting for someone, you assumed, thinking nothing else about the matter. 

Nothing else, except—

He looked familiar. You think you saw him before. He was staring at you. Hadn't stopped. Hasn't said a word, either. The silence was oppressive. Heavy. Your hands fumbled with the keys. Shaking. Trembling. 

He's pretty, you thought, suddenly. In the way car wrecks can sometimes be. Jarring and awful and hideous, but—

Mesmerising. 

Macabre. And that's what he is. Everything from the mask on his face (skulls, go figure), to the absurdity in his size, his width. The way space itself seemed to move around him, bending and distorting just to let him pass. His own gravitational pull. Magnetic. You feel it tugging on you as he pulls another lungful of smoke. Another. Another.  

(like an hourglass, a timebomb, almost. you wonder what will happen when it runs out—)

He gives you the creeps. Suddenly. Unexpectedly. A visceral sense of unease curdling in the pit of your belly as he keeps staring, staring. Eyes—crystalline under the broken headlamp, washout into crushed topaz—drilling into your back, sharp enough to flay skin. Everything inside of you says to run, but your key won't fit inside the lock. Won't—

Ever. 

And hindsight has always been a bitter thing, hasn't it? Cruel in her mockery. Had you known, then, that he wasn't a workman loitering by the complex, waiting for a friend; or a low-level drug dealer casting webs into the plum hewn aether, it might have saved you. Might have. 

Maybe. Because he was there, waiting for you, all along. 

Life has a funny way of paying back good deeds. All it took for your life to crumble down around you, rubble falling off of a shaking mountain, was kindness. Was seeing a large man in the pouring rain, already drenched. Black clothing sticking to the granite contours of his body, and offering sanctum in the shape of a rusting umbrella you found at a thrift store for three dollars. 

(“here,” you said, chipper. All smiles. “i live just down the street, and you look like you need it more than i do. do you want it?”

and he—

he simply stared. stared. his eyes liquid, molten, as they carelessly dropped, roaming down the length of your body at his own leisure. leering. assessing. it was odd. weird, but—

he huffed, then. seemingly satisfied by whatever you measured up to in his head. his neck lulled back, and he gazed at you from down the crooked length of his nose, tucked neatly away under the thick band of a facial mask. skulls. how could you be so stupid? 

slowly, like he was trying not to startle a mare, his gloved hand reached out, curling thick fingers around the hilt of it. he tugged once. in your stupor, you forgot to let go. embarrassment flooded in. he huffed again, quietly amused, as you untangled your numbed fingers from the umbrella. 

in your distraction, he moved closer. smelled of ash, of mildew. sweat and stale cigarettes. there was something predatory in the way he slipped through space. a preternatural quiet. an eerie stillness. 

you hadn't realised he was there, looming, until he rasped out, “more ‘n you could ever realise, pet.”

and you're sure why you do it. did it. but your hand slips into your shopping bag, eyes widen. heart thundering in your chest. 

“are you hungry? i, uh, i just bought some apples, um—”

his eyes are lavascapes. shackles. chains. “i could eat.”)

And now—

Forced to play this strange cat and mouse of his where he treats you like soot on the bottom of his shoe, and you pretend that it's affection. Love. How godless.  

Protection, he calls it. 

("mine," he whispers, orison soft, into your ear. "ain't go' nowhere else to go, do you, pet? world's big. would eat a small thing like you up. safer here. wit' me. only me.") 

You wonder what he'd do if you told him the biggest danger here was the madness nestled inside your head, the one that sometimes made you look at him like he was your salvation instead of the warden holding the end of your leash in a firm hand. Unyielding—like everything he does. Is. 

Withholding, too. Everything must be earned. Nothing given. Nothing handed out. And you know that this is a ploy, a tactic. Subterfuge meant to chisel into your sense of self, dehumanise you. Turn you into a simpering, obedient little doll for him to play with as he wishes. You know this, and yet—

It's survival, you promise yourself as he tugs on the hook latched to your collar, testing it for weakness. Survival, when his hands—bare, bare; warmed skin against skin, you could just weep—brush over your throat, nails skimming goosebumped flesh as he wedges one, then two inside, hirsute knuckles tickling your pulse. It tightens the collar to near choking. Intentional, you know. He likes it when you beg—for air, for food, water, him. 

Vile man. Awful. 

(You want to roll on your belly at his feet.)

This cold, cruel touch lights a fire under your skin. It's been months since he's last done so. Always wearing gloves when he has to. Using paddles, belts, when you misbehave. Never his bare hand. Not anymore. 

(“m’hand is for good girls,” he slurred, words merging, meshing together, painted with exertion. He wedged his boot against the small of your back, holding you down, and cracked the end of a cat over your bare ass, thighs. Unbothered by your howls, your screams, as the whip bit into your skin. You've never so much as been hit as a child for misbehaving, and now, as an adult, you have a madman standing over you, introducing you to something called a cat o’nine tails—a favourite in the army, lovie. “bad girls,” his boot pressed down harder, heel digging into your spine. “Bad girls get the whip—”)

Bad. Bad. Because you tried to run, to leave him. He dressed you up, called you Mrs Riley, and you—

Ducked out the back door when he turned away for a second. 

Stupid. It was poor timing. A test. He set you up, measuring your loyalty to him, your commitment, and you failed. Failed. 

(“this is what ‘appens when spoiled little cunts get their way too much. they act out, don't they? bitin’ the ‘and that feeds. you'll learn soon enough, though—”)

Ghost—sir, sir (master, maker, god; you'll call him anything he wants if he touches you again)—pulls his fingers away, depriving you of his touch once more. And it's all so stupid. So fundamentally wrong, deplorable, but you follow. Needy. Whining for it in the back of your throat. 

It's been months. Months without touch. Without sensation outside of leather lashing across your thighs, your ass; harsh, gloved fingers digging into your jaw, braced against the back of your head, as you swallow down his cock in an effort to prove to him you've been good. So good. Can be good. His good girl. 

You need to touch him. Need his touch. Ache for it, for something outside of this nook he placed you inside of, denied the privilege of living upstairs with him after you tried to escape. 

You want to. Badly. Your fingers twitch. Ghost sees it. Hums. 

“Need somethin', pet?” 

Your mouth is dry. You swallow. It burns. It hurts. “Yes—”

“Yes, what?”

“Sir—”

Behind the mask he's yet to take off for you fully, only ever hitching it under his chin to devour your cunt whenever you've been good, his jaw tightens, the fabric bunching up. 

You reel back from the look of sheer displeasure etching harsh lines into the hollow gaps of his eyes. Heart thundering. Stomach churning. 

“Mas—” he cuts you off with a soft sigh. Marked with his irritation. “D—dad—”

Dad. A new one. Daddy. He didn't seem like the sort to be into this type of play, not with his sardonic, deadpan eyes. His mockery. His dessicated humour, awful and biting. You'd have sooner expected him to laugh at you—in that slow, deep hum he gives; a little chuff, full of condescension and jeer—than to get off on it. On you, kneeling between his legs with your chin braced against his palm, mouth open, tongue out, as he fucks into the tight clench of his fist, groaning as you beg daddy to give you a taste. 

It's gross. Disgusting. 

It's not done for anything else other than to humiliate you. To crush you under the heel of his boot—little bug—so that you will always know where your place is in this scenario. His little wife. Mother, mum—

He pulls on the leash, jerking you forward. Purrs, “good girl,” and then steps back, moving away from you. Cruel. Dismissive. You hate him, hate him—

(Need him so deeply. With every fibre of your being—)

You watch him as he goes, mourning the loss of his presence already, as he paces around your space, your cage. Broad shoulders barely fitting inside. Head ducking to avoid hitting his crown on the popcorn ceiling. It's strange seeing him here like this. Prowling. He usually comes when he wants you, when he needs to enact more merciless punishment on you for whatever perceived evils you committed (not greeting him with a kiss when he walked in, not letting him suffocate himself in your cunt when he had you sit on his face, not making him cum all over your face quick enough when you knew he had other engagements to get to—), or when he ruts, heavily, between your thighs, cold and detached. Seeking pleasure from your icy flesh, and giving nothing in return but white hot agony. 

Him here, idling in your presence, is revolutionary. 

“S–sir—?”

He hums, quiet. Sits in the chair as you gather the fragments of yourself littered on the ground. His mood is malleable, it seems. 

You push, fingertips sinking into the putty of his agreeable temperament. “Can I—”

You waver when his sharp eyes raze over your bare body—clothes are for good girls, after all—pupils sloshing over the edges, bleeding into midnight blue. 

Your body is a battlefield. Every inch of skin branded with his mark—pretty, thrawn rings of teeth tattooed in silver, haloed in black and red, desecrate your flesh: neck, collarbones, breasts, belly, thighs (a particular favourite of his), ass, mons; all bitten through, chewed up. It weeps when you move, has blood trickling down your skin. The cracking scabs make him coo, poor thing, all bloody fer me? and he licks at them, sucks, until only a pinkish wound in the mimesis of canines remains. 

Uprooted, turned into something new—

His chest expands when he settles his gaze on the sliver of space between your spread thighs. Concealed in tenebrous, hidden from his leering, lecherous view. He cocks his head, considers something unknown to you. His thoughts, his mind, worlds away. Untouchable. 

(only to bad girls, he’d snarled out when you asked why—)

“Testin’ my patience still?” He doesn't rip his gaze away from your cunt, speaks to it sometimes more than he speaks to you. “Thought this alone time might’a cleared your ‘ead.”

You flush. Embarrassment roiling through you. His displeasure is a palpable thing. Heavy. You hate the weight of it. 

“I need—I need you.”

Another toneless hum. “‘Course you do. Ain't got anyone else.”

He's awful. Hideous. You want to rip his tongue out of his mouth. “I—I want you. Please.”

Ghost doesn't answer. You stopped expecting him to a long time ago, his moods odd measures of ebbs and flows; passive and mild, cracking terrible, awful jokes as he strokes your back, hands riveted to your skin, and then biting and caustic the next. Pushing and pushing until you lash out, snap, so he has a reason to push you down, punished and smothered under his bulk, as he ruts into you like a beast, a man starved. Tells you it's for your own good. That you need him. Would be lost without him. 

Bludgeoning a hole into you wide enough for him to crawl inside of. Poisoning you from the inside out with the same nocuous rot that flows in his veins. 

Maybe that's been his agenda all along. Maybe. To make you want him as badly as he wanted you. Desperate, obsessive. Going so far as to follow you home, lost little mutt waiting in the shadows outside of your door until you threw him another bone. And when that didn't work, when the food stopped being enough—

He took you. Held you captive in his house deep in the wilderness. A place so endlessly green that you sometimes stare out at it—unfathomable sea of phalthos and jasper—and feel dizzy. You'll get lost out there—

just like he says. 

As he turns your obsecration over in his head, you wait, supplicant to this man as you rest on your knees. Pretty pet with a golden collar adorned in gems. 

Fitting, you find. With his head cradled against his thick knuckles, you can't help but shiver at the way he looks shrouded in the gloaming embers of a fading twilight. Leonine. A king perfectly at ease in this thick, caliginous atmosphere.

His eyes burn, magmatic, in the low light. Vats of endless ink. Black holes that will swallow you whole if you get too close. But he's poised. Contemplative. Assessing. 

And then grips the end of the leash tight in his other hand. Tugs.  

You obey the wordless command, crawling on your hands and knees to where he's spread out on the recliner. Laxed, dripping with a careless indifference as you wander to him, resting your chin on the spread of his knee. 

Looking up, up, at him, waiting. Wanting. 

There's so much of him—a fact that has been the catalyst to your downfall the moment you saw him standing under the awning; this massive creature. Thighs wider than the width of your body. Burly forearms. Broad shoulders. He's big. Indomitable. Thick, endlessly so. But there's a give to his body. Valleys of softness hiding corded muscle. Firm, but—

Your fingers sink into the soft give of his belly when you reach out, bracing against stomach. Pulling yourself further into the bracket of his spread thighs, inching closer to him. 

He meets your reverent stare, eyes liquid along his lower lash line.

“Thought you were gonna keep me waitin’ all night,” he muses, giving another pull on the leash. It destabilises you. Your nose bumps into his sternum, and you moan at the sting. 

There's a dissonance in the back of your head. A hairline fracture in the line that keeps a degree of separation between pleasure and pain. They meet against the crack in the divide, merging into a abysmal polyphony conducted by his hand. 

He watches, amused, as you whimper, sniffing harshly against the burn. It's not bleeding, and not broken—small mercies, you suppose—and you let it simmer into a dull ache as you slowly clamber into his lap.

Ghost leans back as you settle, greedily taking in the sight of your thighs stretched wide over his leg, cunt pressed, tight, against the rough scrape of his jeans. The touch burns. He hasn't touched your pussy in weeks—

“C’mon,” he urges, hand spanning the width of your lower back. Coaxing. “Show me ‘ow good you can be.”

It's all the permission you need. Slowly, slowly, your hips start to gyrate, dragging your slit over the coarse material. The friction is agony. You need more—

He draws his other hand up, curls it around your neck, forcing your head back, back. You gasp, staring at him, dizzy, from down the slope of your nose. The clasp of the collar digs into your skin. It hurts. It's too much. 

you don't want him to stop. 

His hand is huge. It spans the entire length of your neck, thumb to your pulse, pinky grazing the hollow of your throat. It forces you to lift your chin higher just to let him fit.

He likes it, too, you know. His eyes darken as he takes in the sight of his bare hand, scarred and thick; dusted with a cropping of fine hairs along his scabbed knuckles, sitting against the whole of your throat. Swallowing you up. Can feel how much he enjoys the sheer depth between your sizes when his cock twitches, stiffening more

The look on his face is appraising, anatomising. There's a cold measure of distance in his gaze. A barren polynya. You want to cross it. Chart these untamed lands until they're deeply ingrained within your being. Cimmerian effigy burning to keep you warm. 

It's survival, you think, and arch into the palm of his hand. 

He holds you like a doll. One hand on your lower back, pressing your cunt to thigh. The other tightening around your throat. Bare skin against bare skin, and oh, you could just cry—

But this is not what you need. What you want. And he knows. He always does. Knows the inside of you like it's written down—inked on paper. Thumbs through the makeup of you, chapter by chapter, until no mystery remains. 

“Tell me what you need, pet. Beg for it.” 

“Let me—” his hands tighten, choking the air from your throat. Crushing your collar against your neck. “Lemme—kiss you, please, please—”

Tighter. Tighter. The world around you swims under a thin ocean. Phosphenes swim, untethered, in your periphery, ghosting along the curve of his shoulders. He might kill you yet. Keeping going, going, until those brittle, bird-like bones in your neck snap—

You'd let him, you think, muscles falling lax. Submissive. Just the way he says he likes even though you know he fucks you harder, touches you more, more, when you act out. Misbehave. 

“Kiss me?” He taunts, words abrasive. Strident. Scrubbing hard against your skin. “Ain't that jus’ the sweetest thing I ever ‘eard.” 

You burn, blister. “Please—”

“Reckon I ought to. Kissed your pretty cunt ‘fore I even kissed your lips, huh, pet?” 

Your chest folds over itself. Stomach knotting. Balling tight. Unease is a razor blade scraping your nerves. 

“Simon—”

“Ah, ah—” his hand tightens. Vicious. Chiding. “You ‘aven’t earned the privilege of sayin’ my name, ‘ave you? Cheeky thing. Might ‘ave to take a cane to you next.” 

“No, no, no—! I'm—”

“Sorry?” He mocks, cocking his head. Condescension drips from the corners of his eyes. 

“Please, sir—”

“Dad is gettin’ tired of this attitude of yours, pet—” his fingers dig into your skin, hard. Biting. A warning, you know. The blunt press of a blade to your jugular. But it thrums along the suture line to your desire, a wellspool of murk coiling low in your guts. You throb, cunt clenching down around nothing. Achingly empty. “Thought we got rid of it this time ‘round. Learned our lesson.”

The words are frank, prosaic. Had you any sense of self still malingering in the back of your head, you might have struck him for the blatant disrespect. But as you struggle to reach for it, pawing around in the vacuous abyss for any fragment of who you were before this, before him, you know—without any doubt—that none exists. Nothing. He’s too ingrained in your marrow, hewn into your skin. Copper sutures holding his filament within you. Cradled between your thighs, nestled in the rotting vacancy of your heart. 

He knows you. Every part—

“We did—we did, da—daddy, please—” 

It’s shallow. Muffled, like he’s trying to swallow it down, but you feel it rumble through his broad chest. A guttural sound. A groan. Drenched in pleasure, in want. So thick, you could almost taste it. 

He hides his need under a layer of derision. 

“Such a needy thing, ain't you? Desperate little slag like you wouldn't last out there, would you?” 

His hand digs into your hip, pushing you off of his thigh. Eyes skewering into the wet stain on his trousers. A huff spills out—the sound a near perfect mimicry of crushing charcoal in your hand. 

“No. You'd be eaten alive. Torn to pieces. World's too big for somethin' like you.”

Mindless, dazed, you nod. Arching into him. The leather leash snaps against your chest. “Yes, yes—”

His cock presses into your thigh, hard, fat. Your mouth waters. Drool dribbles down your chin. 

He smells of tinder when he leans in close, blood drenched words biting into your skin. “messy today, aren't you? Be lost without me. Tha’s why you wear a collar, isn't it?”

Pitifully, you nod. Eyes full of tears. Each word is a bludgeon into your resolve. Into your sense of self. 

But it earns you his affection, and his thumb presses into the corner of your mouth, unhinging your jaw until it falls open, lax. He holds you like that, mouth lax with his hand still around your neck. The other lifts away from your lips, goes to the thick band around the bridge of his nose, slips inside. 

There's no buildup to it. No lingering sense of anticipation. Practical, detached, he merely tugs it down, and lets it snap under his chin. 

Your breath is punched out of your lungs at the sight of him. Barefaced. Scarred. His nose is crooked; a jagged hook with scar tissue delineating the spots where it's been broken too many times. His lips are—

Full. 

Mangled. 

Scars run in thick slashes over them, denting the flesh in places. Burn marks line his pale flesh. Charcoal rubs into his eyes, highlighting the whites of his lashes against smeared soot. 

He's—

Pretty. 

Like a car crash. Calamity. The broken remains of a town after a hurricane, a tornado, ripped it apart. Ugly, brutal. His face looks like it's been mauled by a bear, a tiger. Scarred and hideous, and—

You shiver. His eyes drop, landing on your own lips. The soot on his brow flutters down, lands on his eyelashes when he lifts his brow up mockingly. Derision curdling an awful smirk on the corner of his mouth. Crooked. Like him. Like his teeth. His nose. His boxy jaw. His lips—

You kiss him. 

Can't help yourself, really. There's a pull. Gravitational. Magnetic. You need, need, to taste him. To quench this ache in your jaw that makes you want to wrap your tongue around something, play with it between your teeth. Soft and sweet—

Ghost's lips are plump beneath yours. The thick scar tissue is almost velveteen when it glides over your bottom lip. You moan into it, into the feeling; victory—however pyrrhic—swims like mercury in your veins. Finally. 

And he doesn't kiss you back. Doesn't make any effort to reciprocate at all, but he's not tense beneath you. Not stunned. Or reluctant. He’s pliant. Malleable. Agreeable, willing to let you devour his mouth, his taste, as much as you want. Doting. Letting you spoil yourself on him. With him.

Because you need him, don't you? 

Like the air you breathe. The food he gives you—apples, always, on rainy days; salmon and rice in a pretty bowl with your name etched into the porcelain—and the attention, the affection—

(suck my cock, pretty girl. don't make me put a gag on you—deeper, you can take it, can't you? take my fat cock all the way up inside your sweet little cunt—my pretty girl—)

—it’s all so divine. 

His hands on your body, your throat, spasm. Once. Just once. Against your leg, his cock twitches. Leaks prespend into the demin. You rut against his thigh, aching for it. Whimpering—

And then he's groaning into the kiss, snarling out your name until it wedges between your lungs, syphoned in from his scorching breath. Another brand in the shape of him. 

Ghost kisses the same way he eats—messy, sloppy; all teeth and tongue, and full pretty lips. Clumsy, like no one taught him how to properly hold his silverware and he's trying to mock what he saw on television. Brumish. A broken, contemptuous pastiche of sumptuosity. A starving dog, snarling around its plundered morsel. Protective. Possessive. 

It coils around you. Thick, smothering. 

He sucks your tongue into his mouth, catching it between his teeth. The sting brings tears to the corner of your eyes, and when you pry them open, you find him already staring at you (always, always, always—), lidded. Heavy pools of desire shaded in the brume of a winter dawn. A bonfire flickering in the distance of a whiteout. Sanctuary from the cold—

He seems to catch himself. Expression flickering. Warbling around the edges. It closes off in a blink. He pulls back. Locks into the ashlar veneer of this indifference he wears like a suit of armour. 

But you saw it. It was there. Within reach—

“Need me, don't you?” He drawls, timber a needlepoint between cruelty and desire. Sultry, low. Husky. He knows what it does to you. How he can unravel you at the seams with just his voice alone. “Need me so fuckin’ much, pet. Would be lost without me—”

“Please, Simon,” you whisper, feather-soft. Cunt throbbing, pulsing. Needy. “Please—”

The strident reprimand for using his name doesn't come. His hand tightens around your throat, unconscious. A paroxysm that has pleasure carving itself down your spine, electric. 

“Come get it, then,” he rasps, voice wrecked. Raw. Curling at the edges, thickening his accent until the words elide. 

Hand to your throat, he drags you close. Closer still. Keeps you sat pretty on his lap as he pulls you in for a bruising, hungry kiss. Tongue shoving between your teeth when you gasp.

His kisses are always hungry, but this is different. Greedy. He devours you whole. Eats you alive. His hand falls to your lower back, holding you tight to his chest.

You moan into it, fingers digging into the fabric of his shirt. Squeezing until your knuckles blanche, joints twinging in discomfort. 

After months of nothing, this alone is bliss. His taste soaking onto your tongue, drenching it in the bitter tang of sage, wheatgrass, and stale cigarettes. Intoxicating. It leaks into you, nocuous. Infects from the inside out. 

His plan coming to fruition, you think. What he sought out to do all along, ever since you wandered close to this untameable Tartarean guard, and offered yourself up to the jowls of a starving beast. 

He pulls away with a heavy breath, eyes charing around the edges; brittle briquette. 

“Gonna be a good girl from now on? Come upstairs, be a good mum for dad? Or am I gonna ‘ave to cane this—” his hand drops, grabbing a fistful of your ass in his hand, fingers digging into the skin between your cheeks. Possessive. It cracks like a whip down your nerves. “—tight lit’le arse?”

You shake your head instantly. Quickly. “I'll be good,” you whisper into his chin, tongue flicking out to lick across his scars. The dried sweat on his skin tastes briny. Reminds you of the ocean on a brumous November evening. The incipient yawn of a ravenous hurricane gathering its lot on the shore. 

Sirens blare in the distance. Fear curdles in your guts, sits heavy like a stone. An anchor. 

“So sweet f’me,” he mutters, words deepening as his head falls back, letting you pepper kisses across the underside of his jaw. Mouthing along the constellation of scars. His voice is rumble. It shivers across your lips, tongue. Shakes the marrow in your bones. “Better stay this way, pet.”

Into his pulse, you murmur, “I think you like it better when I’m bad.” 

You can feel the snarl brimming in the back of his throat. Your ass stings with the phantom burn of when he lashed out with the whip. It drags a whimper out from deep within your chest. 

His hand tightens around your neck. A warning. “Got some guests over f’dinner tonight. Would love to finally introduce them to my sweet little wife—” deft fingers slip across the dewy skin of your folds, knuckles grazing over your drenched hole. The touch makes you squirm. “But if you’re gonna be bad, then I’ll leave you locked up down ‘ere.”

“I’ll be good,” you swear, words a hushed breath over his jugular. His finger flattens, drawls soft, slow circles around your clit. “Ah, I’ll—I’ll be so, so good, Simon—”

“Good girls deserve rewards, don’t they?” His palm flexes possessively around your throat when you nip at old scar tissue. “Maybe I’ll let you sleep in our bed tonight instead of in your dog house. We can ‘ouse together. I’ll fuck you proper—” he roughly shoves two fingers into your hole, leering when you gasp, back arching in a bow. “Know this pretty pussy has been achin’ for me, ‘asn’t it? Gonna breed it full—”

There’s static in your head, ringing in your ear. The noise distorted, pulled underwater. You think you say something, plead—no, no, no, anything but that—but his hand tightens around your throat, fingers pushing up, up into you, notching against that spot inside that makes your head swim, your vision flicker. The abyssal chasm inside of you aches, rages; its waters swell, currents frothing, slamming against the ceiling of its iron prison, and—

Simon pulls away. Fingers stilling inside of you. No friction, no relief. Hypoxia renders the world silent. Muted. Held in stasis, stagnating at the edge of a gaping precipice he holds you over, secured by the fragile curve of your neck, fine bone china. 

Phosphenes swim by. The chossy wobbles.

This distance is agony. You need to be closer, closer, to crawl inside of him, to live in the brackets of his ribs, safe and protected from the world he warns you about. Stone cold. You mewl, whine—

“Gonna be my good little wife?”

Gasping with broken lungs, you nod. Nod, nod until you’re nauseous. Dizzy. Sick—

His spit cools on your lip. Your hackles raise, body shuddering in revulsion—some primal part rears, hisses it’s infectious. Wrong. Get rid of it—

“Not gonna run?”

Slowly, you lick your lips, catching his sickness on your tongue. Swallowing it down until it sinks like a stone to the bottom of your belly. Heavy, for such a small, damning thing. 

How absurd, you think. How absolutely mad. 

Then you whisper, paperthin, “kiss me again, please, Simon—”

And he moves. Liquid in the gloam. Made more for shadows, midnight, than for golden apricity, where the light is harsh on his face, unveiling ruins and ravines; monoliths meant to be paid tribute to in the dark. Your hands lift to his jaw when he moves in, catching your lips in a bruising, biting kiss. 

His touch is searing. Owning. He isn't laying claim: no, you're already his. 

It's possessive and angry. No finesse. All slate teeth and tender tongue. They slide together in a strange game; little fawn stupidly nipping at the tiger's heel. He lets you, groaning into your mouth when you arch back, hips pushing into his fingers, taking him deeper. A pale pantomime of what's to come when he lays you on his soft bed, sweet and divine, and buries himself deep. 

It should scare you. Ought to. And maybe it does. Survival, you think, but you still pull him closer. Deeper. Because it’s bliss, you find. The world around you falling dead. Silent. Pulled into a vacuum. Teetering on the edge of a black hole, event horizon. He drags you in. 

Simon hums, pulling you closer. Touching you—soft, sweet. Palms a gyve. Shackles, chains. His fingers lift from your neck, trailing down the slope of your throat until he reaches the golden loop of your collar's hook. His gaze glides, magmatic, down to where your leash dangles between your heaving breasts.

It's almost tender when he grabs it into his fist. When he pulls, pulls—

Your back arching. His fingers slipping deeper inside your cunt. Obedient little doll.

When he lifts his eyes, the look you find is hot enough to char bone. You taste blood in the back of your throat—

Into the seam of your mouth, he purrs, “good girl.”

—and you swallow it down with a moan. 

(after all, you know better than to run from starving dogs—)

[bunnys-kisses]

bear den (2)

bear!john price

cw: hybrid au, bear!price, bunny!reader, pregnancy, smut/pwp, scenting, protective!price, couch sex, mating press, mentions of childbirth

part 1

as the snow melted off the roof, the promise of spring was upon you. price was as cuddly as ever. his large hand on your growing belly and his nose in the nape of your neck.

your bear lover, you'd consider him your husband without all the paperwork. he was a protective lover, he cared for you very deeply. even when he was half asleep as winter started to melt away.

it was morning in march when you got out of bed and scampered over to the shower. as much as you loved price, he was a messy lover. his cum was still stuck in your hair. he said it was in an effort to 'mark' you as if the growing cub wasn't enough proof.

you stood naked by the tub as you waited for the water to warm up. you caught a glimpse of your side profile in the mirror and looked at yourself curiously. it wasn't as if you had never seen yourself in the mirror before, but rather the changes to your body were already settling in. you straightened up a little and rubbed your slowly swelling middle.

your eyes cast down to your bump as you rubbed it gently. sometimes you couldn't believe that there was price's child inside of you. it made you smile to yourself before you got into the shower.

the warm water felt good against your body as you stood under the spray. despite how isolated the cabin was, it was home. price had completely renovated his den, everything still had a charm to it but nothing was falling apart.

you washed yourself, using his soap. you got under your pregnant belly and heard the door to the bathroom open. you peeked through the curtain and saw your mate. you smiled at him, "good morning, honey."

he nodded, he seemed a little more lucid, "let me help." he was naked already, you could see every inch of your lover. from the hair that coated him, to his built body with a bit of softness to it. his broad shoulders and scratchy facial hair.

"i can do it myself, john."

he shook his head as he got into the shower. he made a pleased noise when a bit of the warm water hit him. he stood under the spray of water with both hands on your belly from behind. "you look good." he said as his thumb rubbed the side.

"i'm only going to get more pregnant with time." you replied.

he kissed your wet hair and replied, "good." you felt his cock start to stiffen against your back. he took the bar of soap from you and started to wash your back. while he was cleaning the front of you (that you already cleaned) he got a good squeeze of your breasts.

"john!'

"sorry, love. can't help it." he purred. when he finished washing you, you washed him. you were turned to face him and his hands were on your bump as you ran the bar across his hairy chest.

you loved his body as much as he loved yours. he was so strong but still able to cuddle him. the hair on his chest and stomach, across his arms and down his legs left you feeling tingly all over. this was your husband, your mate, your lover.

he leaned down do you could wash his hair. and he did the same for you, once you were done your shower and out of the tub. he pinned you against the sink counter. his nose dipped into your neck and rubbed his cheek against the skin.

"john!"

"gotta get my scent on you."

you held onto the sink behind you and replied, "you possessive old man."

he replied, "gotta be. little bunnies like you can get into a life of trouble." he kissed your neck all the way to your cheek before he settled on your lips. his calloused, workman's hands touched your torso.

you giggled into the kiss and when he pulled away he gave you a short nod before he dried the both of you off. now that you were clean, it was time to get dirty again.

usually your place for mating was in the bedroom, it reeked of hibernation scent and your love making. you knew it would take a lot of washing of the entire room before it scent wasn't so overwhelming. but instead he made love to you on the old couch in the living room.

you were seated on the soft cushions, price pulled you legs up and closer to your head, exposing your cunt to him. a perfect angle for him to sink his cock into. it was a little odd due to your pregnancy, but when price slipped in with ease. you felt the stars behind your eyes.

"that's it. that's my baby girl." his voice was low and his pace methodical. he knew how much stronger he was compared to you. bears and bunnies often didn't mingle, so john had to be gentle with you.

his bear ears gave a small twitch when he felt his cock throb inside of you. your pussy was a tight heat around him that made him so thankful that you snuck into his cabin. he gave you a home and he into turn made your pussy his home.

he admired your body, he watched those little bunny ears twitch. he smiled down at you, "like that? knowin' how deep i am inside of you. knowin' that i bred and kept ya? soon you'll be chasin' a cub around our little home."

you had your hands on your belly as he thrusted into you. you felt heat bloom in your chest. you admired your lover over you, you watched how his body moved and it made the pleasure seep into your blood.

"i love you."

"i love you too." he replied, his voice full of warmth as he held onto your legs for support. he squished you a little in the press he had you in, but it felt really good.

price loved having you in a good mating press. where he could put his weight onto you, show how strong he was as he bullied his cock into your pussy.

his breathing was heavy as he continued to thrust into you. you could see the rise and fall of his chest as he moved. the air of the living room grew warmer with your love making. you felt like you were on another planet, the pleasure throbbed in your head the more it built.

you held onto the couch under you and your eyes closed for a moment as you tried to catch you breath. the sounds of sex filled the entire cabin as a bunny and her mate made love on the threadbare couch.

this was their home, their slice of paradise. you reached for him and leaned up to kiss him. he met you half way with a curve of his back and pressed a searing kiss onto your lips. his kisses were promises, he would never turn his back on his mate.

you were bound together until the sun engulfed the earth. husband and wife, bear and bunny.

the ache in your pussy felt good, your head swam with pleasure. you held onto your lover as he kissed you deeply. heat set into your gut. your pussy so exposed to him. you gave yourself over to him, as his mate and let him breed you.

when he pulled away he said, "you're my good girl aren't ya." he kissed at your sweaty face, "my good wife. my good mate. the mother to my cubs. perfect woman." he beamed at you.

it didn't take long afterwards for the heat of orgasm to wash over you. you kicked out your little bunny legs and tensed up as you came around his cock. a noise left price's mouth as you clamped down on him. it was guttural, primal in a way. you dug your nails into his shoulders as you climaxed.

your head felt even more full as started to relax. but price kept you in position and continued to batter your pussy. the grip it had on you was amazing. it left him in a state of shock. with a few more heavy thrusts, he finished inside of you.

"ah fuck." he grumbled as his pace staggered and slowed down.

you laid there on the couch, your legs were soon back on the hardwood floor. price's cum leaked onto the fabric of the couch. but you were lost in your own wonderland to notice it.

price stared down at you, cock limp between his legs. his breathing was shallow as he tried to cool down. the bear picked up his bunny lover with ease, and placed kisses on your face. you fit so nicely in his strong arms as he carried you back to bed.

after all he needed to make sure that his scent was deep in your skin that no shower could ever get rid of it. he stuck his nose in your wet hair and inhaled deeply.

his mate. his lover. his everything.

-

on august tenth, in the comfort of your cabin. you gave birth to your first child. with a lot of support from your husband, you had your son, oliver. he had two round bear ears and the brown bear tail of his father. it took over ten hours to deliver him.

"i got ya love, keep at it." price assured you as your labour went well into the evening. but the end result was your son.

you spent all spring and summer pregnant with him. and now he was in your arms. you saw how price admired your body post-pregnancy. the softness of your bottom and post partum tummy. he also admired how you were so attentive to his son.

while he did most of the work around the garden and caught (full) animals for meals, your responsibility was to make sure that you healed from the nine months of pregnancy and caring for your newborn son.

while he tended to vegetable patch, he often got distracted by the sight of you in the reclining lawn chair with oliver close to your chest. the baby was wrapped in a thin blanket and pressed against your bare chest. you were still nude more days, but when you dressed it was mostly in price's clothes.

he watched as you gazed at your son. it was so motherly. it was endearing to price was getting a little harder in his coveralls. he had a family, he started on with the bunny who came into his home.

there was one thing he noticed post-pregnancy about you. it wasn't how hungry you were or how your body had changed. it was that his scent lingered, you no longer smelled like the intruder bunny who snuck into his cabin.

you smelt like him through and through.

[its-ironic-right]

Now how about the reverse?

Gideon dying before (maybe while protecting) Kremy.

Sometimes I get prompts that blow way past 500 words…

Where is the line drawn? Mathematically it’s between two points, but who determines those points? What gives them the right to define a beginning and an end?

Let’s simplify.

Life has a determined beginning and end. You’re born, you live, you die. (Well, if you’re lucky you die. Sometimes you just live and that’s so much worse.) The thread of your life held taut between two fingertips. That was a line drawn.

Death comes for us all. As a friend, an enemy, it comes without hesitation. In the smoldering ashes of a burnt out planet, death is the only constant. But death is known to play games. It loves a gamble.

Blasts of white hot magic fly through the air. It hits its mark with a sickening thud, knocking its victim to their knees.

“Shit.” A hissed curse, flesh hitting a wooden dock. Water laps under foot, breaks in the planks reveal white peaks. A heavy current, falling into the drink would mean certain death. Another bolt of magic, missing its target by a hair.

A roaring beast shoots out from thick woods, rending the magic users flesh from bone. Enemy neutralized for now, time to inspect the damage. The party wasn’t completely stupid. An attacker this strong wouldn’t come alone. Nothing to do but run.

“Sound off, who’s unconscious?” Kremy croaked. His ribs were broken, it took twice the effort to breathe or speak. He still needed to know who was left. A groan.

“I’m… okay. Very injured but alive.” Morning Frost was battered and broken, blood caked his fur and everything smelled awful. But conscious. Torbek looked up from his prey.

“Torbek is here. Torbek could definitely be doing better.” slashes oozed deep magenta from his side. That left Gricko and Gideon.

“Oh fuck, where’s our healer?” Kremy searched what was left of the dock. A green arm shot up from under some rubble.

“Here… I’ve got… banañas… one spell slot left.” Not ideal. Goodberries would get them through the night at least. One member left. Kremy’s heart dropped.

“Anyone see Gid?”

There was a peace that came with unconsciousness. A twilight state where nothing hurt, sinking into the bliss of oblivion. Gideon was no stranger to death. They crossed paths countless times, either by his hand or another. He wouldn’t say they were on friendly terms, more like work associates. For all his fire and bravado Gideon had a workman’s attention to detail when it came to destruction. Death was another detail.

He’s in an empty field. Rows of black dirt stretch in either direction. It looks familiar. He picks up a rock and chucks it. It flies in an arch, landing with a ‘thud’ yards away.

“Good arm.” Gideon whips around to see a towering figure of a man. He has a hand Up over his eyes like a visor, peering out to wherever the rock landed. The man looks down and smiles. Gideon is ten years old, his Pa ruffles his hair.

“…Pa?” Pa Coal winks.

“Who else?” He whistles. “Damn Gid, you really did a number on yourself. I thought it’d be another few years before I saw you again.” Gideon looks down. No longer a child but a man. A man with a hole burnt into his chest.

“Oh no, am I dead?”

“Almost dead. You’ve got a few hours before your organs shut down completely.” Pa leans down and picks up a rock. He throws it. It soars through a blue sky and lands farther than Gideons. The prairie didn’t have many ponds for skipping stones, but if you flicked your wrist in just the right way you could watch it skid across dirt. He remembers being a kid, throwing rocks into empty fields and challenging Pa to see how far they could throw them. Pa always had the better pitching arm.

“Almost dead, huh.” He threw another rock. Pa nodded.

“You took a bolt of lightning to the ticker Gid, you should be thankful it’s an ‘almost’ and not a ‘definitely’.” Uncomfortable silence passes between them. Funny how much “almost dead” didn’t bother him. Maybe it was the “almost” part. That meant hope.

“Kremy will figure it out, he always does.”

“You found a good husband, I’m glad.” Gideon blushes and stammers.

“Well, ironically my husband. More like a partner in crime, you know?” Pa slaps a hand on his back and he’s five years old.

A broken plate lays shattered on the floor of their shotgun shack. It was the prettiest thing they owned. Deep purple with scalloped edges trimmed in gold. The gold was flaking and you could barely see the vine motif in the center, but it was the only thing in the shack not meant for work. Gideon had wanted to look at it up close, to trace the lines and curves of snaking green vines. He’d attempted to climb up the shelf, it toppled under his weight. His face falls, what would Pa say when he found out? He can’t find out. Gideon pushes all the pieces into a pile. He’s placing them together like a puzzle, lining the image the best he can, trying like hell to make jagged edges match seamlessly. Tears stream down his face, he can’t let Pa see the plate is broken beyond repair. Tiny fingers coated in porcelain dust and microscopic cuts can’t put it together again. He’ll have to lie.

“The gods did not gift you a silver tongue, son.”

Gideon looks away from the broken plate. Shame crashing into his heart.

“I tried to fix it…”

“You tried to hide it. That’s not the same.”

He remembers being frustrated with the shards, making more and more mistakes until he gives up. He gathers the pieces into a bucket and sneaks out the front door. The plate is missing less than a day before Pa finds it in the tool shed.

Suddenly, pain. Deep, burning into his chest. He gasps and collapses, clutching the hole in his heart.

Its hot. So fucking hot. Is he in an oven? A forge? He opens his eyes again. The train. Of course. Metal stained black with soot, coals smoldering in the boiler, waiting for him to set them alight. He doesn’t have to look down to know what he looks like. The image is seared in his brain forever. A tear rolls down Pa Coal’s weathered cheek.

“The worst part about being dead: you can’t protect the living.” He feels the cuts and burns etched into his skin. This wasn’t right. He’d left the train, killed every mother fucker in the thing and jumped to freedom. This was a vision, it had to be. Gideon wouldn’t stay in hell unless he was dead. “Tell me the truth, son.”

“What the fuck is going on?!” He’s gasping, smoke filling every capillary in his lungs. Choking on every breath.

“You’re dying. Ever heard the phrase ‘life flashing before your eyes’?” Pa’s voice is low and sad. Steam escapes from a smoke stack, a shrill whistle piercing the air. And he can’t fucking breath. “Told you, your organs are failing.”

“Kremy will fix it. I know he will.”

“How do you know?”

“He always does.”

Everything goes dark. His stomach turns, he can breathe. Barely. Everything hurts. He’s discombobulated, soaked to the bone in rain and piss. He doesn’t need to open his eyes to know where he is. An alleyway in Agwé, somewhere in the Crawdad Corner. The turning point in his life that made it worth living. He was bruised from some fight, passed out drunk in the rain. He didn’t remember how he got there, fate has a funny way of taking you places you never expect. Eyes still shut, he doesn’t want to see the look on Pa’s face. This is him at his lowest. But he knows what comes next. A whisper in the dark. Pattering rain against pavement nearly drowns it out, little words that create big waves. Eyes open to meet golden eyes. A smile, a handshake, a new life. So quick it almost didn’t happen.

“So that’s him? The man who will save you?” Gideon nods.

“Always does.” Pa Coal chuckles.

The alleyway fades into a tavern. Nondescript people bustle around, ordering drinks between lively conversation. A barmaid whistles a soft tune. Swatting wandering hands and passing mugs of ale. Gideon sips at a whiskey. Warmth fills his belly. Pa leans against the bar facing towards the door, opposite his son. Countless taverns litter his memory, but this one stuck out. A night that lived in his core. Kremy plays cards across the room. He’s winning, he always wins. Even when he loses he somehow comes out on top. It’s easy settling into this moment, nothing hurt. Yet.

“I’ve come close to death loads of times, why am I getting the full treatment this go around?”

“Never this close.” Gideon scoffed. He shot back the whiskey and turned around.

“I’m pretty sure I’ve died before. Or came close.”

“Gideon, you’re dead. Almost. I wouldn’t be here if this wasn’t your brain firing its last synapses.” Grief pangs at his heart. Of course.

“So you’re not really here. Just my brain trying to make sense of everything.” He lights a cigar with his finger. The tavern moves around them. Kremy wins another hand, Gideon can see the losers fist clench under the table. His cue. He crosses the room, The cigar leaving a trail of smoke in his wake. The loser rears his fist, Gideon catches it in his hand. A headbutt and two punches later they’re running out the door. Kremy laughs. /Gid I could kiss you!/ In the fleeting light of passing windows, Kremy shines. For a second, Gideon wishes he would. They duck into an alley, footsteps run past them. Gideon is intimately aware of how close they were. He could do it. Lean in and kiss Kremy, he could blame it on the adrenaline. He could lie.

“Do you love him?” Gideon almost jumps out of his skin. Pa smokes a cigar across the alley.

“Of course. I love him like a brother.”

“You’re a terrible liar.” Something rams itself down his spine, searing every nerve. The scene dissipates. Oblivion engulfs him.

Three.

Two.

One.

His time is up. He can feel it. He wonders what happened. Did everyone die? Or just him?

It’s warm here. He always thought death would be cold. He could fall asleep like this. Although it wouldn’t be sleep. Sleep had an end.

Guess that’s why it was called eternal slumber.

One.

Two.

Three.

Gideon gasps awake. He was alive. The throbbing pain in his chest told him that. Golden eyes rimmed in red stare down at him.

“Gid!” Kremy pulled him close, forehead to snout. Gideons body sprawled out from under the alligator’s grasp. Tears spilled out in streams against scales. “Oh my gods I thought I lost you! Your heart stopped-“ Gideon’s lips met his. It wasn’t a passionate kiss, more weak and desperate than anything. When they broke, Gideon winked.

“I knew you could do it.”

Point A to Point B, but the interesting part was all the twists in between. Who knows who draws the line. So long as they had a sense of humor.

[communist-manifesto-daily]

Socialism: Utopian and Scientific - Part 2

[ First | Prev | Table of Contents | Next ]

At the request of my friend, Paul Lafargue, now representative of Lille in the French Chamber of Deputies, I arranged three chapters of this book as a pamphlet, which he translated and published in 1880, under the title: "Socialisme utopique et Socialisme scientifique". From this French text, a Polish and a Spanish edition were prepared. In 1883, our German friends brought out the pamphlet in the original language. Italian, Russian, Danish, Dutch, and Roumanian translations, based upon the German text, have since been published. Thus, the present English edition, this little book circulates in 10 languages. I am not aware that any other Socialist work, not even our Communist Manifesto of 1848, or Marx's Capital, has been so often translated. In Germany, it has had four editions of about 20,000 copies in all.

The Appendix, "The Mark", was written with the intention of spreading among the German Socialist party some elementary knowledge of the history and development of landed property in Germany. This seemed all the more necessary at a time when the assimilation by that party of the working-people of the towns was in a fair way of completion, and when the agricultural laborers and peasant had to be taken in hand. This appendix has been included in the translation, as the original forms of tenure of land common to all Teutonic tribes, and the history of their decay, are even less known in England and in Germany. I have left the text as it stands in the original, without alluding to the hypothesis recently started by Maxim Kovalevsky, according to which the partition of the arable and meadow lands among the members of the Mark was preceded by their being cultivated for joint-account by a large patriarchal family community, embracing several generations (as exemplified by the still existing South Slavonian Zadruga), and that the partition, later on, took place when the community had increased, so as to become too unwieldy for joint-account management. Kovalevsky is probably quite right, but the matter is still sub judice [under consideration].

The economic terms used in this work, as afar as they are new, agree with those used in the English edition of Marx's Capital. We call "production of commodities" that economic phase where articles are produced not only for the use of the producers, but also for the purpose of exchange; that is, as commodities, not as use values. This phase extends from the first beginnings of production for exchange down to our present time; it attains its full development under capitalist production only, that is, under conditions where the capitalist, the owner of the means of production, employs, for wages, laborers, people deprived of all means of production except their own labor-power, and pockets the excess of the selling price of the products over his outlay. We divide the history of industrial production since the Middle Ages into three periods:

handicraft, small master craftsman with a few journeymen and apprentices, where each laborer produces a complete article;

manufacture, where greater numbers of workmen, grouped in one large establishment, produce the complete article on the principle of division of labor, each workman performing only one partial operation, so that the product is complete only after having passed successively through the hands of all;

modern industry, where the product is produced by machinery driven by power, and where the work of the laborer is limited to superintending and correcting the performance of the mechanical agent.

I am perfectly aware that the contents of this work will meet with objection from a considerable portion of the British public. But, if we Continentals had taken the slightest notice of the prejudices of British "respectability", we should be even worse off than we are. This book defends what we call "historical materialism", and the word materialism grates upon the ears of the immense majority of British readers. "Agnosticism" might be tolerated, but materialism is utterly inadmissible.

And, yet, the original home of all modern materialism, from the 17th century onwards, is England.

[ First | Prev | Table of Contents | Next ]

[pinkrelish]

I came here to find you from AO3 and I'm so glad you haven't vanished from the Internet. 😭 TYP is one of those works that would haunt you for a decade if it were abandoned.

Also I saw that you have the masterlist marked with pregnant!reader! Aaaahhhhhn 😱😱😱

I sometimes skip single parent or kid fics but I'm so glad I started this one. And after the confrontation when she told him it wouldn't be an insult to be pregnant with his baby! 🥹🥹 OMG it's gonna be so epic. Is he going to be scared? Confident? Frustrated by his financial situation?

Bro I love love love supportive reader when she's like "gotta stroke my man's ego" I eat that sh** UP. Tell Eddie is the best daddy and a big strong man, and then 😍😝🍆💦💦 Ok let me calm down. 😤😂

Anyway have fun at your show, I'll be here cheering you on 📣

oh yeah, sorry it does totally look like a disappeared from the internet, even on here with my very infrequent updates lmao. 😅 in truth, i've been thinking about my TYP universe more than ever. (fictional men are so much more attractive than what we're presented with irl. iykyk.) i don't like writing in the morning, but i'm trying to shift my brain into complying so i can finally get back to working on my projects since writing after my job is a no-go.

and i'm so glad you gave TYP a chance! kid fics were always a hard skip for me too, so i really catered it to my preferences and how *i* would be interested in reading one. (re: it's a perfect vehicle for angst and Reader coming in to support eddie with a big ol' hug.)

really, i'm just a puddle at this man's workman boots.

also, i did i have fun seeing Lightning Bolt finally! i did uhhhhhhh faint from the heat and get a little banged up from the fall, but i'm good, i promise. 😅

[daisymeade]

Vhenadahl

day 3 : veilguard 30

9:33

The trunk of the Highever Alienage's vhenadahl was wrapped in rope that boasted seashells and starfish. Sand dollars, candles, and offerings nestled at its roots and overhead sea glass tied with cord hung, swaying lazily in the early evening breeze.

Heulwen gazed at the massive oak, gripping a drink she'd been nursing for some time. Zevran was nearby telling another grand story to his enraptured audience; if not for his presence she may very well have refused the invitation to this joint celebration of her victory over the archdemon two years ago and Hahren Sarethia's recent elevation to Bann.

Though it wouldn't have been a good look to refuse when she was already in the city for Teryn Fergus's dedication ceremony in the market: a beautiful statue in honor of their fellow Highevrians, Riordan and Duncan, standing vigil over the city.

So Heulwen was here in the square where she saw her father for the last time, her screams as the templars pulled her from his arms just as shrill as that day but his face a faded blur.

There weren't any burn marks on the tree. The same couldn't be said for the other children she'd been with. Heulwen had wondered all day if they were here, but she didn't expect any of them to want to be near her.

It was a relief actually. All of these people who had cast her off so long ago, a liability, a danger, a curse, now calling her one of their own felt wrong. Heulwen didn't need to be a hero or point of pride for her papa to love her but he was gone and now there were only strangers. She reached up and rubbed the necklace Dimas had put around her neck -his hands were shaking, she'd realized later- the one her mama had gifted to him at their wedding. A Dalish pendant, emerald in an ironbark setting.

The leaves of the vhenadahl rustled overhead, the seaglass clacking together in time.

The strong hands of a workman lifting up a giggling, pig-tailed girl as she tried to tie the knot he'd shown her. "You've got it, sunshine." The cord held a shiny blue rock but papa said she couldn't take it home...

Heulwen's hand dropped to her side. That home had been gone for a long time.

[collection here]

[gabessquishytum]

Did you know Oscar Wilde and Walt Whitman once spent an intimate evening together? Which makes me wild, if you'll pardon the pun, and also reminds me of Poet!Dream from Moorishflower's recent cowboy au.

My particular riff would be similar. Dream is a young poet on a speaking tour of the UK and the US espousing the ideals of a more bohemian lifestyle versus one grounded in reason and security. One should strive to see all of his dreams come true. He doesn't quite know what his tour exists partially to promote a rather scathing play based on him and his enclave back in London, but the seats fill themselves and he's getting a very nice pay. One such person who attends his talks is Hob.

Hob is not a young man anymore. He's spent the better part of his life working the trades and molding himself into being the sort of intellectual that he wants to be. He's entirely self-taught in most of his artistic matters and has only recently become a national sensation after a volume of poetry he has written about his life as a poor workman and of the intense friendships he's had with other men becomes a best seller. He thinks Dream is a little naive, but appreciates his fight for the arts.

They both happen to know the same literary agent and said agent gets them to correspond with each other. Both make horrible first impressions as Dream, who has never read a line Hob has written, basically stands in awe that someone without a formal education could be so good. Hob responds in kind that living a life focused solely on art must be heaven when he doesn't have to worry about paying his rent. They volley back and forth for a few weeks, trading well-humored insults and falling ever so closer in love than before. That is until Dream's speaking tour comes to an end and he must leave. Hob concedes then and invites him over for dinner.

At dinner, they drink wine and talk philosophy. Dream is much more humble in person than he is via correspondence. Hob also is much more learned than he comes across. Dream is actually in awe of him making the best of his life no matter the situation. Which Dream simply didn't think was possible. He places his hand on Hob's knee and one thing leads to another. About three months after he's returned to London, he reads a new poem from Hob that's just been published in a highly respected magazine and while it's titled "An Ode to Somnus", he knows it's about him his heart just soars.

- 🤜 Anon

This is a great AU, I absolutely love it. If you guys are interested in reading more about Oscar and Walt's romantic evening, there's a fantastic little article in The Toast which I'll link here.

Anyway, I can't stop thinking about Dream putting his hand on Hob’s knee. And Hob calling Dream a "great, splendid boy". God, yeah. Hob taking Dream into his lap and telling him that he's so pretty and clever. Dream pressing coy kisses to the edge of his mouth until Hob takes him properly in hand, slides rough fingers into his neatly combed hair, and kisses the soul out of him.

Dream lies in bed at home and luxuriates in the memory of Hob’s touch, and he has never been so happy. He takes a clipping from the magazine and presses it against his heart. The next time he writes to Hob, he leaves kiss marks stained with rouge on the paper. And he's already begging for another speaking tour - he already has so many new thoughts to present, about following one's dreams and the nature of love. And he wants very much to give Hob a private performance.

[eternal--returned]

Vincent van Gogh ֍ Worn Out (1882)

'How beautiful such an old workman in his patched bombazine suit with a bald head is', Van Gogh wrote about this drawing. He had a preference for popular figures, who were marked by life. With the title Worn out, he emphasized the drama of the performance. The bent old man lived in the Dutch Reformed Old Men's and Women's Home in The Hague. Residents of this institution posed for Van Gogh for a few quarters. He made them wear old, worn-out clothes.

[istherewifiinhell]

grand finale baby okay. (what do u mean their are 80-300 more of these...)

[ID: Optimus looking up to a hole in the ceiling, a beam of light filtering through, rubble around him. He says "That was Megatron's way of letting us know he has come!" END]

badum tssk 🥁🔔

its marvel tf no 4! or 7-8 in uk reckoning, winter of 84, the cartoon is now on air!

okay lets hear it- Writer: Jim Salicrup, Pencils: Frank Springer, Inks: Ian Akin & Brain Garvey, Letters: John Workman Colour: Nelson Yomtov, Editor: Bob Buduansky, EiC: Jim Shooter Digital Re-master by Digikore Studios Limited. Collection Edits by Justin Eisinger and Alonzo Simon. Editorial notes and assistance by Mark. W. Bellomo

it wouldnt be some 80s comics without some pain so lets get hurting

[ID: Caption box: Meanwhile, at a ballet class attended by Buster's girlfriend Jesse… A gratuitous panel of four presumably teen girls in sleeveless leotards looking out the window. Jesse asks "What is it?" One answers "Looks like the Rolands are leaving town! They've packed everything --including the kitchen sink!" Close of three looking out the window, mild expressions of shock on their ingenue faces. The speaker continues "I really can't believe anyone would take this robot business seriously!" Jesse cries a single tear thinking "There's no escape from this Madness!" In the dance locker rooms, Jesse stands in elegant contrapposto of distress thinking "I thought coming here would take my mind off Buster--fora little while, at least. But knowing that he's risking his life to save his father is eating me up inside! Guess I was only fooling myself! I can't stop wondering if I'll ever see Buster again!" Caption Box: While back at the ark… Buster kneels over his father, fingers to his pulse. Optimus, looming in the fore asks "Is your father still functioning?" Buster pleads up at him "My father's not a machine! He's flesh and blood! And if we don't get him to a hospital fast--he'll die!" Ratchet in the back says "Perhaps I can help!" END]

sorry thats as long and as hateful as i ever intend to be here. boy i hate comics tho...

this episode of transformers is brought to you by: jarring cuts!

[ID: A military jeep driving, a human voice inside it says "I'd give anything to get a little sleep, but if you and this truck aren't delivered to the 4067th M.A.S.H unit in time, my goose'll be cooked! This is all your fault, old friend! If you weren't such a hotshot mechanic they wouldn't need you to repair their ambulances.' END]

[anime girl image] MASH REFERENCE 🎊🎉🥳 (yes sparkplug will be having war flashbacks the whole comic. technically. theres a point to it)

[ID: Two EMT's get into the front seats of Ratchet in alt mode. Passenger: This is the only ambulance available, and we need it. Ratchet: What? Driver: Did you hear that squeak? Passenger: We'll get it fixed after we bring back that heart attack victim! As they drive off Ratchet thinks: These men seem to mean well! I'll just keep quiet and help them! After all, it's the least I can do as a doctor-- even if an earthling is my patient--and it's better than waiting! END]

oh by the way ratchet is just parked outside the hospital cause he drove sparky there. what a nice fella. also im not showing any of it but actually the AUTOBOTS are the ones that hurt him... like. accidentally but they werent being.. VERY NICE either. bad vibes all around.

[ID: Various dinosaurs in a cretaceous vista. A character narrates. "In a volcano-ringed valley, inhabited by weird, alien creatures, some even larger than ourselves. The drone found its answer…" A single transformer walks fully over one of the dinosaurs in the clearing. The speaker continues "The cybertronic life form was none other than the Decepticon known as Shockwave!" Editors note: "Long-time marvel readers will recognize this place as the savage land, prehistoric domain of the present-day Ka-zar!" END]

(sees 5 specific kinds of dinosaurs) OH BOY OH BOY. shut the fuck up marvel editor. THATS DINOBOT ISLAND where my friends the DINOBOTS live. jeez... also shockwave bigfooting it up, as tfs are wont to do.

anyway get ready for the meg.op comedy hour

[ID: Ironhide shouting: What are we waiting for? Let's get him! Optimus: No! That's exactly what he wants!-- so he can pick us off easily! Let him come to us! END]

[ID: Caption box: One after another, the Decepticons enter Mount St. Hilary, pushing the attack… Megatron stands in the left fore, his troops in the mid, and Optimus high on distant hill on the right. He calls out: I'm coming for you, Optimus. Our war is nearly ended! He thinks: Too many of my men stand between me and Optimus! My fusion cannon would destroy them as well! Bah! A small price to pay to rid myself of my constant foe forever! END]

normal thinks to say and think megs. wow

[ID: Optimus large in fore, looking same direction the camera is focused. He and the other Autobots shaded in dark purple and black. The Decepticons, in full colour, seekers flying above, and the rest charging down the middle, all firing weapons. Megatron yells "Prepare to be DESTROYED!!!" END]

HEY. THATS NOT HALF BAD. a panel with dynamic composition and values that direct the eye??? I CANT BELIEVE IT. also i just noticed. lets all thank soundwave's head being obscured in this panel. THEY LEFT IN A PURPLEWAVE!!!! he endures... seek him out where the remaster dare not go.

[ID: Megatron firing his fusion canon, shouting "You're mine, Optimus!" Optimus yells in pain, his arm melting, and his gun dropping to the ground. END]

as im always saying...

anyway yeah the autobots win in the end cause sparkplug sabotaged the fuel he made for them, JUST LIKE HE DID WHEN HE WAS A POW IN THE KOREAN WAR... jesus. comic of people who like. have heard how drama is supposed to work, without perhaps. really getting why it works. at least it looked nice...

fucking hell. anyway and then shockwave shows up and tramples the autobots. THE END

[ID: Printed comic. Caption Box: --Into Shockwave! Shockwave stands in full view, light emanating behind him, rubble, and injured Autobot's at his feet. He speaks "After four million earth years I have accomplished my mission-- The Autobots are no more!" END]

(dont he look great in printed purples. mwah)

[princesssarisa]

Opera on YouTube 3

Il Barbiere di Siviglia (The Barber of Seville)

Mario Lanfrachi studio film, 1965 (Sesto Bruscantini, Valeria Mariconda, Ugo Benelli; conducted by Alberto Zedda; no subtitles)

Jean-Pierre Ponnelle studio film, 1974 (Hermann Prey, Teresa Berganza, Luigi Alva; conducted by Claudio Abbado; English subtitles)

New York City Opera, 1976 (Alan Titus, Beverly Sills, Henry Price; conducted by Sarah Caldwell; English subtitles)

Arena Sferisterio, 1980 (Leo Nucci, Marilyn Horne, Ernesto Palacio; conducted by Nicola Rescingo; no subtitles)

Teatro Real de Madrid, 2005 (Pietro Spagnoli, Maria Bayo, Juan Diego Flórez; conducted by Gianluigi Gelmetti; Arabic subtitles)

Teatro la Fenice, 2008 (Roberto Frontali, Rinat Shaham, Francesco Meli; conducted by Antonino Fogliani; Italian subtitles)

Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, 2009 (Pietro Spagnoli, Joyce DiDonato, Juan Diego Flórez; conducted by Antonio Pappano; English subtitles)

Vienna State Opera, 2019 (Rafael Fingerlos, Margarita Gritskova, Juan Diego Flórez; conducted by Evelino Pidó; English subtitles)

Arena di Verona, 2022 (Leo Nucci, Nino Machaidze, Dmitry Korchak; conducted by Daniel Oren; English subtitles)

Garsington Opera, 2023 (Johannes Kamler, Katie Bray, Andrew Stenson; conducted by Douglas Boyd; English subtitles)

Rigoletto

Wolfgang Nagel studio film, 1977 (Rolando Panerai, Franco Bonisolli, Margherita Rinaldi; conducted by Francesco Molinari-Pradelli; Japanese subtitles)

Metropolitan Opera, 1977 (Cornell MacNeil, Plácido Domingo, Ileana Cotrubas; conducted by James Levine; no subtitles)

Metropolitan Opera, 1981 (Cornell MacNeil, Luciano Pavarotti, Christiane Eda-Pierre; conducted by James Levine; no subtitles)

Jean-Pierre Ponnelle film, 1982 (Ingvar Wixell, Luciano Pavarotti, Edita Gruberova; conducted by Riccardo Chailly, English subtitles)

English National Opera, 1982 (John Rawnsley, Arthur Davies, Marie McLaughlin; conducted by Mark Elder, sung in English)

La Monnaie, Brussels, 1999 (Anthony Michaels-Moore, Marcelo Álvarez, Elizabeth Futral; conducted by Vladimir Jurowski; no subtitles)

Arena di Verona, 2001 (Leo Nucci, Aquiles Machado, Inva Mula; conducted by Marcello Viotti; Italian subtitles)

Zürich Opera house, 2006 (Leo Nucci, Piotr Beczala, Elena Mosuc; conducted by Nello Santi; no subtitles)

Paris Opera, 2016 (Quinn Kelsey, Michael Fabiano, Olga Peretyatko; conducted by Nicola Luisotti; English subtitles)

Teatro Massimo, 2018 (George Petean, Ivan Ayon Rivas, Grazia Schiavo; conducted by Stefano Ranzani; English subtitles)

Così Fan Tutte

Vaclav Kaslik studio film, 1969 (Gundula Janowitz, Christa Ludwig, Luigi Alva, Hermann Prey; conducted by Karl Böhm; English subtitles)

Jean-Pierre Ponnelle studio film, 1988 (Edita Gruberova, Delores Ziegler, Luis Lima, Ferruccio Furlanetto; conducted by Nikolaus Harnoncourt; English subtitles) – Act I, Act II

Teatro alla Scala, 1989 (Daniela Dessì, Delores Ziegler, Josef Kundlak, Alessandro Corbelli; conducted by Riccardo Muti; Italian subtitles) – Act I, Act II

Théâtre du Châtelet, 1992 (Amanda Roocroft, Rosa Mannion, Rainer Trost, Rodney Gilfry; conducted by John Eliot Gardiner; English subtitles)

Vienna State Opera, 1996 (Barbara Frittoli, Angelika Kirschlager, Michael Schade, Bo Skovhus; conducted by Riccardo Muti; English and Italian subtitles)

Teatro Comunale di Ferrara, 2000 (Melanie Diener, Anna Caterina Antonacci, Charles Workman, Nicola Ulivieri; conducted by Claudio Abbado; no subtitles)

Zürich Opera House, 2000 (Cecilia Bartoli, Liliana Nikiteanu, Roberto Saccá, Oliver Widmer; conducted by Nikolaus Harnoncourt; no subtitles) – Act I, Act II

Opera Lyon, 2007 (Maria Bengtsson, Tove Dahlberg, Daniel Behle, Vito Priante; conducted by Stefano Montanari; French subtitles)

Salzburg Festival, 2009 (Miah Persson, Isabel Leonard, Topi Lehtipuu, Florian Boesch; conducted by Adam Fischer; English subtitles)

Zürich Opera House, 2009 (Malin Hartelius, Anna Bonitatibus, Javier Camarena, Ruben Drole; conducted by Frans Welser-Möst; English subtitles)

Aïda

San Francisco Opera, 1981 (Margaret Price, Luciano Pavarotti; conducted by Luis Garcia Navarro; no subtitles)

Metropolitan Opera, 1985 (Leontyne Price, James McCracken; conducted by James Levine; English subtitles) – Act I, Act II, Act III, Act IV

Teatro alla Scala, 1986 (Maria Chiara, Luciano Pavarotti; conducted by Lorin Maazel; English subtitles)

Metropolitan Opera, 1989 (Aprile Millo, Plácido Domingo; conducted by James Levine; English subtitles)

Teatro Comunale di Busseto, 2001 (Adina Aaron, Scott Piper; conducted by Massimiliano Stefaneli; Italian subtitles)

St. Margarethen Opera Festival, 2004 (Eszter Szümegi, Konstantin Andreev; conducted by Ernst Marzendorfer; English subtitles)

Metropolitan Opera, 2012 (Liudmyla Monastyrska, Roberto Alagna; conducted by Fabio Luisi; Russian subtitles)

Tbisili State Opera, 2017 (Maqvala Aspanidze, Franco Tenelli; conducted by Marco Boemi; Russian subtitles)

Teatro Colón, 2018 (Latonia Moore, Riccardo Massi; conducted by Carlos Vieu; Spanish subtitles)

Teatro la Fenice, 2019 (Roberta Mantegna, Francesco Meli; conducted by Riccardo Frizza; French subtitles)

[ultradude13]

Volcana, in Mark Workman's No Shirt,No Shoes Sketchbook Comic Art Gallery Room

Volcana by Budd Root

[steampoweredstarsketch]

In all my time of being an amateur animator, half of what I have always loved about it, is looking into animation history.

Lost clips, shorts, cells, etc, that go as far back as the medium itself. There are so many things to appreciate in the history of the medium, not the least of which being the sheer painstaking effort and time it took to hand paint every single cell. And the more obscure the project the more fascinating it becomes, the differences in method, artstyle, variations in execution and ways to tell stories.

There’s so many different little touches of love even in the cheapest, low budget animations, you can’t help but connect with the hand of the artist who made these projects despite the difficulty in the time of history it was made in, the locations, the circumstances, and yet these little gems become forgotten in a box somewhere, only to become a rediscovered treasure.

The older and stranger the work is, makes the fact that such an impressive labor intensive and time consuming process could even be done, even more incredible. For many once you can look past the strangeness of an artform finding it’s footing. you can really appreciate the sheer inovation, practical craft, creativity and effort that went in to creators seeking to tell a story.

In my opinion there are few occupations that summon more wonder, creativity, and perserverance than the gift of being able to bring these fantastic pictures to life.

Fantastic Planet (1973)

The Theif and The Cobbler (1993)

The Peanut Vendor (1933)

The Mascot (1933)

Ray Harryhausen’s Fairytales; Little Red Riding Hood (1949)

The Adventures Of Prince Achmed (1926)

Cracks (1970s)

O Paradive Sally [About Dressy Sally] AKA “The Clock Man”

The Tale Of The Priest And His Workman Balda [Bazzar] (1932)

The Adventures of Mark Twain (1985)

[goodmode]

Consumed by Turo thoughts cause reasons and I just realized there's something I've never really asked before because my stupid ass brain has only thought about this week but uh... How capable is Turo in a fight like obviously he tinkers with magic stuff but like can he actually like fight with magic if need be in the same way the dragons or the Fae can defend themselves with magic if need be? I only say this because I'm thinking back on the pie slice image and it only just occured to me he may be magic blasting someone in the face. Is Turo more of a badass than I originally thought? I know there are spoiler reasons which may lead to this answer but the shortened version of this question is : Could Turo blast a goon in the face if he needed to?

short answer: nope!

long and cooler answer: "a workman is only as good as his tools" and he happens to make very powerful enchanted tools for a living.

physically, Turo is functionally just a regular human man. he can be injured and he's only as strong as the regular human body. however, he is decked out wearing the most heavily enchanted gold accessories of his own making.

it's probably important to know how he works as an enchanter: he takes gold that was already soaked in magic (magic rings and swords and etc), and melts it down. then he cuts it with some mythical beast's blood or spit or hair or something during the forging process to add certain desirable properties (or to make certain species deathly allergic to the thing), and adds layers upon layers of incantation and/or somatic gesturing. then he spends long hours inscribing absolutely tiny runes or markings or power-words taken from here-there-and-everywhere to bind and enhance and add extra properties.

it's a long process, and it takes work and finesse. it's not something he can just Do in the middle of a fight, he has to prepare in advance and it helps to know exactly what his agents will be up against so he can craft something specially designed to harm that exact thing

his gold claw jewellery is especially nasty, by the way. the edges are honed to be sharp enough to cut with very little effort (what's the word? a microplane or something? i forget) and every finger piece has some bonus specialty or other. some of them are specialised right down to the species. he also has replacements with slightly different specialties just in case.

in short, if you can prevent a grown man from clawing you, you're probably fine. but if he comes anywhere near you with a knife or a blade or you let him keep his earrings or a pendant or a ring or anything else gold, you're making a mistake.

it may be worth noting that every gold item on his person has been enchanted heavily, to some purpose or other. everything is an enhancement intended to either protect him or repel something or to damage something etc etc.

the trick is in preparation, and he's a very prepared man - but he is just a man. (right?)