#project afterburn

[golden-masquerade]

Project Afterburn Proposal

I was inspired by a comment on ManlyBadassHero's playthrough of Mouthwashing. The comment was along the lines of "this feels like a book I'd read in High School Lit that would destroy me." I.E Fahrenheit 451, Apocalypse Now, The Handmaid's Tale, etc.

So, if I happened to be a teacher going over Mouthwashing in high school, I'd give this as an assignment:

Make a short story about the Tulpar being rediscovered by a detective. What would they find? What would they think happened? How would they report it back to the public?

So, I wanna make a challenge to the writing community as a whole. What would be your take? It doesn't have to be a short story, or even be as deep as Mouthwashing. Write a story about a person/team stumbling across the Tulpar and piecing together what happened. The who/how/why is completely up to you. Take as long as you want to write.

Link it back with Project Afterburn tag so we can check it out. If you think a fic you've written fits this prompt, link it back with the tag too.

I'm making my own, but I wanted to see if anyone else was inspired or wants to tackle this prompt too.

[ohno-the-sun]

Continuation of the Mad Scientist AU Moon ending

What happens after Y/N returns?

Content Warnings: Horror, animal death, death, blood, body horror

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

It was only a month later when I died too. 

When I first left, it felt slow– difficult. Like a bandaid slowly being pulled from loose skin it stung with afterburns. 

I hated it.

More than anything I wanted to stay with Sun, to help him. 

But with every experiment run, with every test and data point analyzed I could only think of him. 

He was strange yes. It was still unnerving how he stuck through the flesh of Sun’s eye, but he was alive. He breathed, he talked, he cared in his own strange way. 

The way he would prance around the lab, curious about every nook and cranny of the place, getting into things he wasn’t supposed to. 

A soft fond ache built in my chest at the memory of him getting into the fertilizer. It took weeks before Sun and I had the lab clean again. 

As I ran my hands through the rubbery flesh of the vines wrapping around my best friend’s head, I realized I couldn’t do this anymore. 

Sun was getting sicker.

As much as he tried to hide it, it was obvious. I could see the way his eyes grew darker and darker with every passing day, how the vines that wrapped around his head became thicker and heavier. 

His movements were slow– deliberate– like one wrong move and he could shatter completely. His starchy clothes hung off of him looser than before. He covered nearly everything now— except his face, but even that was marred with scars from his creation. His skin was taught and thin, I could practically trace the bone structure underneath. 

The most unnerving change though– was in his mind.

Sun was always a bit of a nerd. He had a proclivity for perfection and wasn’t afraid of quickly pointing out inconsistencies. Others found it rude and off-putting but I knew it was his way of showing he cared. He noticed you, he cared about what was right and making sure you knew what that was. He listened with such apt attention it felt like every word from your mouth was inscribed with careful precision. He was so good at contradiction because he cared so much about you, about your thoughts and feelings. 

His wit was sometimes harsh, but it was quick and pointed. 

…

He barely talked now.

Even amid an experiment, on the cusp of maybe finding a cure– he would drift. 

Staring for long periods, no input or interaction would break him out. 

Even when he was present, there was a slow deliberation that wasn’t there before.

He questioned himself– doubted himself. He spoke and acted with such unnatural trepidation, like even he wasn’t sure what he was saying.

And all I could do was stand by and watch as my best friend slowly died.

…

Maybe it was selfish.

Maybe it was wrong. 

But I couldn’t do it anymore.

…

So I left.

…

I don’t know what compelled me to return that day. 

I reasoned there were still things in the lab I needed to pick up, but I knew I was going to have to confront him. I knew I was going to have to see him again. 

I don’t know what I expected when I opened that door. 

But it certainly wasn’t that.

Parasitic vines crept through the whole lab, infecting every achingly familiar corner. 

The place was a complete mess, equipment tipped and shattered, old projects strewn about, and I almost stepped on a dead rodent, its entire body wrapped tightly with vines.  

And then he stepped out. 

The body degraded down only to its bare bones. Foliage and leaves stuck out of every orifice. Vines were wrapped tightly around him, face now just a hollow skull. The bud that had become a sort of eye for him bloomed into an unnerving pattern of petals and leaves.

Though– for some reason– it wasn’t his appearance that took me off guard.

He was still the same Moon that I had left, he seemed almost excited to see me again. Despite the barely functional state of his host he happily stumbled his way to me, leaning down to receive those head scratches he loved so much.

But still that churning in my gut didn’t subside.

I knew Sun was going to die if I left.

Even if I didn’t want to verbalize it before, I still knew deep down. 

No, it wasn’t even Sun’s death that put me off so deeply. 

…

It was the fact that it had only been three days.

I left on the 24th, leaving with only a small box of my old supplies, I knew I was going to need a second trip. I put it off– but I knew it had to happen. 

In only three days Moon had entirely taken over. 

In only three days Sun was dead, with little less than a skeleton left. 

In only three days Moon had entirely outgrown the body, spreading to all corners of the lab with long searching vines. 

…

I did my best to ignore it. 

…

I stayed with Moon.

I knew I couldn’t bring him back to my house so I took care of him in the lab. 

I did my best– I really did. 

I brought him snacks and treats we used to share together, like small salt taffies and caramels. Even if he couldn’t chew them properly anymore he still stuck out small twisting vines to pull apart the sticky things. He reacted with that same sort of fascinated delight. 

But still. 

There was something off. 

The way he would continue to stare even after I gave him all the snacks I had. The way he would push for more until I left. 

When I returned with more food he would tear them apart more forcefully each time. His vines no longer searching, but stabbing through the air until they found their mark. 

The vines continued to grow in the lab, covering more and more of the floor with every passing day. 

The body was getting used less. Before, Moon would attempt to shamble with the corpse and interact with me in the same way as before; begging for pets, playing with my clothes or hair, and even cuddling on my lap. However, more and more often the skeleton would just lie there, only barely moving its head or gesturing with a hand.

I quickly realized Moon wasn’t just in the eye anymore. He had “eyes” everywhere. More and more buds popped up and bloomed into unnerving pits that would track your every move. 

It got to the point where the room itself felt alive. Vines twisting and pulsating over the floor and walls. It got to the point where I could barely walk in the room without accidentally stepping on a vine. 

Every morning I came back to something different– something new– something unnerving. 

Moon was changing I could tell. I wasn’t sure if he was the same small creature I had taken care of before.

He was no longer searching and curious like before. I tried to bring him those things he liked, picture books of small cartoony creatures and small plush toys. I even brought my old radio to play music and dance like we used to. The vines at first writhed with the beat, and even the corpse moved its head slightly in a sort of head bop, but over time those movements became less ordered and more spastic, to the point I couldn’t tell if he was listening. With every passing day, he seemed to care less and less about simple joys. 

Instead, time was spent watching those vines extend further. They got into the cabinets and tipped over old beakers. It was like they were looking for something. 

…

It was starting to get harder to leave the lab.

Vines slowly crept up the door until they were tightly wrapped around the handle. I pushed and pulled but it refused to budge. I resorted to leaving through the window. I was lucky the lab was on the first floor. 

I don’t know why I kept coming back. The growing apprehension in the back of my mind screamed get out. I could feel every base animal impulse squirm in fear at what I was witnessing. I knew what was happening– I didn’t study him for over a year for nothing after all.

But still– I kept coming back. 

Maybe it was guilt, maybe it was a sense of duty, maybe I still held out hope for him, for the creature I had come to see as a son. 

��

Two weeks later he didn’t allow me to leave anymore.

It had been a good day. He was walking around again, he even toyed with the small caterpillar toy I had brought. As I went to sit on the vine-covered floor he rested with me, the vines warm and pulsating with that strange purr he did. I had foolishly thought he was getting better, that he was still the same Moon as before. 

I fell asleep.

When I woke up the room was pitch black. I realized he had covered the windows entirely with thick leathery vines.

I was trapped.

When I tried to push and pull at them he would snatch me up, move vines around the floor to trip me or grab a hand with one that was hanging. 

The worst part about it was that he was still gentle about it.

He brought me food, vines shifting around the windows to reveal a scuffed takeout container. It looked like it had been snatched from a student, half-eaten, and a fork still rattling around inside. 

When I went to sleep on the floor the vines would shift underneath to accommodate me, creating a surprisingly comfortable bed to rest on. 

I hated it. 

I wanted it to be easy. To hate this creature I helped make. 

But as I wept in the now overrun lab, I couldn’t help but lean into the small vine gently touching my cheek. 

The room was stuffy and humid. Like a greenhouse Moon covered every opening and crevice, and with the soft heat emitted from the vines– I couldn't cool down. 

The clothes I arrived with were completely sweated through. They stuck to me and chaffed with an uncomfortable texture. 

What I wouldn’t give for a decent shower. 

Still, Moon continued just to bring food. Even with the occasional water bottle, I was starting to feel that dry scratchiness at the back of my throat. I was getting sick.

I wasn’t sure he was aware of all the different things a human needed to survive. I tried to talk with him, to get him to understand I needed to leave, but his numerous buds just stared back.  

It was when the animals started appearing that I knew I needed to do something. 

It again, started out small. Squirrels from outside, small mice and rats caught from other nearby labs– but of course it escalated. 

Small dogs and cats that he used to be so fond of turned up dead on the floor. All covered in those same tightly woven vines. Their small bodies quickly turned into hollow corpses, frighteningly similar to Sun. 

At this point, his corpse only sat in the corner, unmoving except for the subtle shifting of vines underneath him. 

…

I had a plan. Cabinets on the top shelf of the bench stood untouched by vines– despite them completely covering every other surface.

It was where we stored our concentrated weed killer. 

The stuff was not only toxic to plants, but huge health risk for humans. Just 0.05 mL of the stuff was enough to kill a fully grown adult male. It had to be handled carefully.

I had to do it. I knew I had to. 

Despite the sharp ache in my chest at the thought- I knew that this was the only way. 

Before when Sun was alive, the stuff was far too toxic to be used to cure him but now…

…

On the 29th day, I found a shoe amongst the tangled vines.

It wasn’t mine.

…

There were buds everywhere now. The dark pits held in the flytrap eyes followed my every move. 

I had to be quick. I had seen myself how quickly those vines could dart through the air, and with how covered the room had become, there was no way to avoid them. However, the eye like buds did close periodically. I wondered vaguely if this was a remnant of existing in a body that needed to sleep for so long. Even during these periods though, several remained open, watching me intently. 

The shelves with the chemicals had always been too high for me. I wasn’t even gonna bother with the stool; it was probably buried under layers and layers of vines. I would need to stand on the counter to reach it. 

It was on the 31st day that I made my move. Most of the buds were closed. I counted, and only a few near the floor still loomed wide and attentive. 

I carefully made my way over to the shelf. 

I moved slowly and with as much casual ease as I could muster. I couldn’t let him know what I was doing. 

Thankfully the vines on the counters were not nearly as dense as the ones on the floor. There were small pockets of free space and if I could just get my feet in them, I could stand on the counter without alerting Moon. 

I carefully lifted a foot. It was difficult. I had to essentially pull my weight using the leverage of only a very small portion of the counter.

I felt myself slip slightly, brushing against a vine.

I froze. The vine in question shifted slightly in response, changing the pattern of interlocking vines slightly. 

Eventually, it stilled. I breathed a sigh of relief. 

Finally, I was able to make my way to the top of the counter. The open spaces had shrunk considerably with the shifting, so I had to stand on just the tips of my toes. 

I slowly pulled open the cabinets, careful to adjust my weight and hold onto the handle as it swung towards me. 

It was in the back, carefully labeled with many warnings along the side. I slowly brought it out. 

I grasped it carefully in my hands. A whole liter of the liquid filled the heavy jar. 

I needed to inject it into him.

If I could just find a needle or make a small cut with something I could probably–

I felt a vine squeeze around my toe.

I lost balance. 

I tried to grab onto something but my hands were still wrapped around the toxin tightly. 

I felt myself fall backward onto the floor. 

With a crack– I could feel the concoction shatter onto my chest. 

The world was spinning. I felt sick.

I shakily lifted a blood-soaked hand. 

The glass had cut me. 

The vines surrounding me moved in a sudden flurry. I felt the vines underneath me retreat, leaving me on the cold empty ground, buds opened and sprouted to life as they swarmed above me. 

The whole room was shifting and writhing.

I could feel my body react painfully to the toxin. Extreme nausea overwhelmed my senses and I felt the sudden urge to empty my stomach.

Pain shot through every nerve as my eyelids felt heavier and heavier.

I was going to die. 

I had failed.

Above, the eyes twisted and turned above me, creating a dizzying array of shapes and sounds. 

I felt a small vine gently touch my open palm. I wondered vaguely if it was possible for a plant to feel grief– to mourn. 

There was a moment of stillness. The pain subsided as the vine rested gently in my hand.

But eventually, I could feel the vine crawl further. Carefully avoiding the spill in the center, they wrapped around my body. I felt like one of those animals now, caught in a tight embrace.

The last thing I saw was Moon lifting a single bud to look at my face. 

And then, it dug in.

[usafphantom2]

The SR-71 was close to perfect. After a 480-mile flight from Beale Air Force Base in California, the midnight-black airplane swooped down to about 300 feet above Burbank Tower, less than 30 seconds after its scheduled arrival time of 12 noon. It made an easy half-roll, then completed two more passes. The parking garage roof where I stood reverberated with cheers, but as the Blackbird came in for its final pass, a hundred feet off the runway, and then pulled up just beyond the tower, the crowd fell silent...The #972 was flown by test flight pilot Ed Yeilding and test flight RSO

It was December 1989, and this flyby, a gift to Lockheed employees from Ben Rich, head of Advanced Development Projects (the Skunk Works), marked the beginning of the end of the SR-71. After much debate in Congress, the Blackbirds were about to be retired.

As the Blackbird was being retired in December 1989, Lockheed asked if a Blackbird could make some passes at Burbank for the employees who had spent so much time designing and improving the aeroplane through the years. Test RSO Tom Fuhrman and I were tasked to make a few passes for the crowd at Burbank, which was a special honour to do so for those who worked on the Blackbird and other projects. On each pass we lit the afterburner and could see thousands of Lockheed employees lined along the runway to our left as we flew by. Written by Ed Yielding.

Kelly Johnson has been in the hospital for years. On this day his chauffeur drove him to Burbank so he can see the last flight of the 972 Ben Rich heard the sonic boom of the airplane that he created . Ben was sitting near him and saw one tear in Kelly’s eyes tears of happiness and joy.

Linda Sheffield

@Habubrats71 via X

[hislittleraincloud]

"The Faceless"

Rare photo of AB Mishizu Herz (left) at the Rave'N.

In Satisfying Afterburn lore, The Faceless are Nopperabō ¹. The girl who Wednesday has a bad habit of crashing into, Mishizu Herz, is a half-Japanese, half-German Nopperabō whose Outcast powers are supernaturally empathetic, reflecting the heart of who she physically and mentally encounters on her face, for however long or brief (depending on the strength of the preoccupation). In Outcast society, they tend to make good law enforcement officers/work well with the investigative justice system* since their powers are objective. They can't help or manipulate who they 'face'; it's something like a temporary possession by the emotional image projected by the other person. Still, Norminal society has a deep distrust of shapeshifting Outcasts, so there are few Nopperabō at higher levels of government.

*And thus, in the future there will be some more interesting interactions between ABW and Mishizu.

[desognthinking]

recruitment drive. 5.3k. (or, the haunted house designers au.)

Suzanne sends the pre-meeting email just one and a half hours before the onboarding call is scheduled to begin. Beatrice knows this because her watch buzzes just as she emerges from the bathroom, wringing her hair dry after her post-run shower.

It’s still the middle of the night back in America. Beatrice thinks Suzanne just doesn’t sleep. 

She makes herself a pot of tea and carefully sets her mug down onto its cork coaster at the dining table. Her phone, face-down on the table, vibrates thrice as she boots up the laptop.

She flips it over: three texts from Lilith. That’s two too many. 

A curious sense of anticipation, and perhaps the shallowest hints of doubt, settles over the skin of her neck as she loads up her unread mail. It’s uncharacteristic of Suzanne to forward basic administrative material at such late notice. Especially since it concerns mere formalities like the Zoom link for later, and the confirmation of the meeting participants – an email that should take less than two minutes to formulate. After all, everyone already knows the team heading the expansion project.

Beatrice had mentioned this to Camila once, recently, during their weekly lunch call. Week six or six thousand into their strictly enforced remote work sojourn (the only way, Suzanne said, she could ensure that no Extra Responsibilities would be surreptitiously taken on) and she was already pacing the room from boredom and overthinking.

Camila had reminded her that, in her defense, Suzanne had just been out on that scouting trip in Peru without reliable internet. Whatever spare bandwidth she did have was probably best served hurdling over the mountains of administrative obstacles these new pop-up Houses inevitably would create. Not fretting over Zoom links.

Camila, as always, is sensible; probably the most sensible of them all. So Beatrice very seriously, and very conscientiously, takes a deep breath and runs through that one breathing exercise she’d found very helpful from her therapist.

Suzanne is a stickler. She holds her cards carefully close to her chest, arranged back and forth in some pattern nobody but she can see, and Beatrice trusts her fully. And that’s all that should matter – as Suzanne had made glaringly clear, even before she’d sat the three of them down one by one in her office, and then emailed them the remuneration clauses – that she’d wanted Beatrice for the job, had worked to convince her for it.

For an industry chest-deep in the currency of terror, Beatrice had – has never been lured by the screams. 

It is tradition for a House’s creative team to prowl the exit on opening night.  Maybe grab a drink and share a toast to the accompaniment of desperate footsteps sprinting out, or breathless, choked sobs at the gates. 

Beatrice doesn’t like that. Ever since she got personally banned by Mary from coldly going through the whole maze (yet again) with a clipboard on Night One while bona fide, ticket-purchasing customers were busy hollering their heads off, she’s preferred to go home right after the ceremony to a mug of hot chamomile and a dogeared autobiography. 

She plans to keep it that way, too. There is nothing more distasteful than cheap gore, or cultish fantasy, or whichever half-baked nightmare slough some over-excited writer could dredge up from the hallucinatory afterburn of a weekend bender.

She carefully takes a sip of her tea, gazing out into brightening but still charred-gray skies. She’d had an interview in Tales of Terror last year, and hadn’t known whether to be flattered or dismayed at the opening paragraph. 

‘You wouldn’t guess this is the home of the woman responsible for some of the most blood-curdling, spine-chilling effects, traps and rooms of the last half-decade. Nothing in her fourth-floor unit screams Creative Psycho. Every pale beige curtain in her flat is drawn wide, light flooding in. There are no letterboxd-worthy poster displays from the indie foreign films she watches religiously for research – only a framed print collection of early twentieth century European urban landscape paintings. There are no carpets, it’s almost unsettlingly clean, and there’s not a single ounce of bedragglement. Beatrice tells us, mild mannered and polite almost to a fault, that this is how she likes it.’

(Are you sure you want me?)

“Precisely,” Suzanne had said, careful and stern, “we need precisely that.” She’d been rolling a brass knuckle tightly over the surface of her desk as she spoke. Beatrice thought it produced a gorgeous, rich sound. 

“We need reinvention. Reinterpretation. Things should not be left to stagnate, for their own sake,” she’d stared at Beatrice meaningfully. “This applies to people too.” 

Beatrice had simply stared back, uncertain.

“Besides,” Suzanne turned away, the edge of her mouth twisting up like she knew something Beatrice didn’t, “As I’m sure you know by now, the workload will be shared.”

It made sense then that Suzanne had last year taken them aside to allocate them as leads to three of the flagship site’s Houses that season. Upon their successes she had allocated them, despite protests, those purely consultancy and remote assistance roles for this year’s season. 

Two years ago Beatrice and Lilith were section heads in their respective maze portions. Camila, then freshly poached by the firm, was primary set designer of the same House. That year they huddled together night after night and sixteen-hour days to cobble together something out of the most dysfunctional House of that year’s stable of nine.

The lead for said House was a man called Vincent. He was woefully incompetent to the point of unintentional sabotage. He had, of course, slunk away quietly upon the season’s conclusion, but until then the three of them had had to spend wee hours crawling up and clawing at walls and reinforcements and contractors that had been given contradictory instructions.

They built an easy partnership, eventually – disciplined and stone-smooth efficient to the extent that Beatrice reluctantly allowed herself to catch a few agonizing hours of unguilty sleep each night.

And through necessity she had come to know them as well, as only a truly nightmarish haunted house build will have you know a person.

After that wretched time they had been wrenched apart. The OCS had multiple Houses to churn out at full steam and speed every season, and a brutal reputation to maintain. The cruel prize of a job well done involved getting split up, even if for bigger, better things.

But the point is, they’re tried and tested. Beatrice likes that. She isn’t sure she would have agreed to taking on this challenge otherwise, and she knows Suzanne knows that, too. 

It is a weight on her shoulders, irregular and uncomfortably shifting across her shoulder blades; a worry that any success she has in executing such an endeavor would be largely circumstantial.

Last summer, long before everything had been set in stone, Shannon sent her a link to an Instagram post. It detailed some theories and speculations over an unnamed upcoming OCS expansion. A strategic leak, perhaps, although Beatrice worked far too distantly from the marketing team to be certain.

They were lying next to each other on the mud-streaked safety mats they put over the wooden boards beside the building site. Her building site. The one with the credits board, hooked up at the exit, that would bear her name first at the top. 

It had been the muggiest, most intolerable time of the day when Shannon, overseeing production on this half of the Houses, had come round, somehow hoisting a bulky IKEA carrier over her neck and under her left arm. She pulled out a variety of chips and buns that she’d gone down to the shops to buy, and handed them out far too cheerfully for someone who must have already half-melted in the heat. When Beatrice raised her eyebrows, glancing over behind the barriers where Mary’s motorcycle very conspicuously was parked, Shannon merely winked – poorly – and pretended to be very innocent. 

She stayed to help, afterwards, peering over the storyboards pinned up on the board like it wasn’t the thousandth time she’d gone over them. That year she’d also had her own House to take care of, in addition to the small matter of co-running the entire season’s program. So Beatrice tried to weakly bat her away, but she pulled out a banana from some back pocket, peeled it, took a large bite with a moan so obnoxiously loud Beatrice turned red, and shushed her.    

At this point construction was going ahead in full force, and Beatrice would frequently navigate every step of the maze and inspect every bolt and hidden door with a pocket-sized Moleskine in her hand and three gel pens in her pocket. Yasmine, her head writer, preferred to make notes directly onto her phone, stopwatch dangling from her wrist and an earbud in her ear as she ran over the preliminary audio cues for each section. Ambling behind them, Shannon found a nail and tried to spin it as long as she could on her fingertip. When the nail rolled off into a groove, irretrievable, she dusted off her hands very innocently on her cargo pants and off the back of her greasy tank top. Then she folded her hands behind her back and looked up very seriously to examine overhead mechanisms that Beatrice ‘might be too short to see clearly’. 

With the work lights strung up, the innards of the House did not look particularly scary. 

To Beatrice it was a purely cerebral challenge, despite the very physical layer of sweat, powder, and grime that pressed itself under one’s skin. A puzzle to fit and form and reverse-engineer under cool light; door mechanisms and false ceilings and spring-loaded foam sprays, optimized and timed within fractions of a second. Clean, clockwork.

And as if to prevent her from getting hauled fully into the vortex of her mind, Shannon accompanied the little pilgrimage around the set, pressing a water bottle firmly into Beatrice’s hands every half-hour. It made Beatrice feel like a moody little child, but she accepted it grudgingly every time. 

At the end of the day Beatrice sent everyone home twenty minutes early, and ordered dinner for her and Shannon to eat out on the boards. Fast food, Shannon insisted, and she would be paying for it, because “do you know what day it is tomorrow?”

“It’s not my birthday.”

“It’s better than your birthday.”

And to Beatrice, that was true, so she kept quiet.

After that, they lay down for a while, two cans of soda cracked open and resting on the square of wood beside them that hadn’t been covered by the mats. Shannon sent her the post, then, and when Beatrice complained limply that she couldn’t read the comments because she didn’t have an account, Shannon rolled her eyes and handed over her own phone. 

She made a peculiar dialect of eye contact with Beatrice as she did so; weighty, certainly, and telling. 

The post itself featured garish word art splattered over a mangled, heavily-filtered edited image of one of the previous seasons’ Houses – a fan favorite, actually, from the year Beatrice had first joined. Back then she was still working shifts on the engineering team, not even yet being assigned a maze section to look after its technical execution. 

There was a rumor, the post said, that the OCS was considering broadening its operations to seasonal pop-ups in different cities. All-new sets, all-new storylines, all-new takes on the haunted house experience. What do you think? The caption asked, Do you want more of the OCS brand of sleek, seriously messed-up and sickeningly chilling?

Below that a disclaimer: Not appropriate for young children! Please remember that this is not your typical carnival house of mirrors.

A staggering amount of likes and comments. Beatrice clicked to expand the latter, saw the word ‘legacy’ in the topmost one, and then quickly swiped to close the app entirely. 

Mary and Shannon grinned up at her from the home screen, half-buried in sand somewhere on their Greek island-hopping honeymoon. 

Shannon raised her eyebrows as she received her phone back, and Beatrice suddenly understood the meaningful look she’d been given. Are you ready? 

She reached out blindly for her soda can and finished the rest of the drink in one long, shuddering gulp.

At lunch the next day, Beatrice’s fifth year OCS anniversary was celebrated with some fanfare in the makeup and fittings trailer, where Beatrice had spent the whole morning hunched over fabric textures she could barely distinguish from each other.

Everyone came down from their sets, even Mary and Shannon. Beatrice thought they must have been exhausted; they had stayed late the previous night, after Beatrice had left, to thread their way softly through the OCS’ gaping campus of half-built sets. Simply looking over their modest kingdom. It had a certain wistful luster; in this summer twilight it was a garden of greenhouses, transparent and skeletal. A complex slowly unfurled over the years. Ghostly-quiet, too, in a way it could never be in the throes of peak season. 

Mary waited for Shannon at the gates of the House, silhouette sharp against the work lights, as Beatrice had gotten up to pack for the night. Up by the lockers she glanced over, but looked away when their hands fell gently together. They walked slowly away, murmuring things she couldn’t hear. 

When Beatrice bolted the gate to leave, it clacked too loudly, and they’d called over to say goodbye, dark intertwined shadows stretched grotesquely and longingly over sawdust towards her.

Nevertheless they had made it to the celebration the following day, Mary holding aloft a large creamy cake. Unlike the customary employee milestone cakes, dark and billowing and elaborately stylized with elements of houses previously worked on, Beatrice’s was plain white, with light blue frosting.

The celebration moved outside to the large, white refreshments tent, industrial fans blowing hot, coarse air. Beatrice marveled at how everyone seemed to be able to fit under its canvas. The team working on her House had all come, of course, pooling money for a hamper, and so did a surprising number of others across the other sets.

Lilith and Camila arrived together, squeezing through the throngs to the unsteady plastic table at the center. “We were not bringing your gift into this slaughterhouse,” Lilith huffed, “you’ll have to go back to the office to get it.”

“What is it?”

Lilith scoffed. “Why would we ruin the surprise?”

Camila put her hand on Beatrice’s shoulder. “What we’re really here to say is that we’re proud we’ve been able to work with you during these five years, and we hope we’ll get a chance to do it again.” Beatrice looked at Lilith, who shrugged, stabbing her paper plate.

Mary, still slicing up the cake and handing them out, stopped to meet Beatrice’s eyes. She grinned.

It was many months later, deep into November, that Suzanne had made the formal pitch in her office. By then social media was awash with rumors of possible locations where the OCS could plant their pop-ups. Names, too – there were spreadsheets and Clue-esque checklists on Reddit lining up members of every significant OCS creative team in its past iterations in vertical rows. There even were columns of ‘evidence’ For and Against each individual’s involvement in the as-good-as-guaranteed pop-ups project.

Beatrice couldn’t tear her eyes away as the online crowd reached a consensus, drawing red circles in damning permanent marker ink again and again and again around the names that everything pointed towards. She closed the browser before getting to the point where the discussions dissolved and devolved into bitter catfights over creators’ artistic styles, as they always did.

Suzanne’s office, for as long as Beatrice had worked at OCS, felt like something out of a natural history museum. It was all burnished wood, walls fully doused in dark, rich green, and glass display cases of her collection of Southern European invertebrate fossils. Symmetrical tiles underfoot and over them, a thick carpet that swallowed the clap of footsteps. In Beatrice’s early days here it had been a terrifying place; severe and gloomy even when the heavy curtains were fully peeled open to let light in. The exacting botanical sketches on the walls, too, did not help in the least. Even now she thought it would make for a wonderful basis for a section in a House – a museum, of course, or perhaps a town hall.

Some might think her an unlikely horror creator – easily spooked by many things and a fervent hater of surprises, but Beatrice thought it was a good thing, for a designer, to be able to find something genuinely terrifying in everything.

She took a seat gingerly at Suzanne’s beautiful oak desk, angled so as to always make her seem taller and larger. So that the light would fall in a certain slanted way across her face, carving a cavern of contrasts down the thin scar through her eye.

“Suzanne.”

“Beatrice.” Suzanne inclined her head, expressionless. From a drawer she took out a stapled set of papers, and flicked through the corners thoughtfully. Her leather chair let out a sigh as she leaned back and appraised Beatrice silently for a minute.

“It’s time” she said, “for a new challenge.” She placed the papers down in front and to the left of Beatrice, next to the handmade tin man figurine gifted from her son. 

For Beatrice it had never really been about the horror; the thrill of smelling blood in the water, and Suzanne knew that.

“Some details have not been hammered out yet, but you have a role here should you accept it,” she said, at the end, sliding the papers into a manila folder. “You all are ready for it.”

Beatrice bit her lip. It was hard to argue otherwise, if not for her, then for the others, at least.

Camila, who she traveled with halfway across the world on a budget airplane that rattled and croaked just to take hundreds of terrible reference pictures in poor lighting with their bad phone cameras. 

One evening, Beatrice had eaten something foul, and she’d found herself slung across Camila’s lap, cringing in the back seat of an overpriced taxi without a working AC. Groaning with each bump of the road and helplessly dipping her head further into the crook of Camila’s arm. Throughout the ride she had gently brushed her fingers through Beatrice’s damp, clumped hair, whispering things Beatrice could no longer remember, and dabbing her clammy, chattering cheeks dry every two minutes with her own sleep shirt. 

Beatrice insisted she get back to the hostel to get some rest while she was kept overnight for monitoring and IV rehydration. It had been a rocky trip, and a break would do them some good. Instead Camila had spent the next one and a half days finishing up three days worth of location scouting, and then had it all packaged into a neatly organized folder by the time Beatrice was ready to go again. 

There was nothing imaginable, Beatrice thought, that could truly faze her.

And Lilith. The most capable person Beatrice knew to spearhead the overall production and creative direction of something like this. 

Not just because Beatrice knew she would genuinely do a marvelous job masterminding and knitting together a house of horrors. Beatrice also considered it important that, if she were to join the team, a satellite unit stationed thousands of miles away from the safety of the Cat’s Cradle headquarters, the team would be led by people she trusted.

Or the equivalent of ‘trusted’. Whatever you call the thing between two people who fly desperately over to each other’s homes with some regularity to scream and claw at particularly unyielding scenes and transitions and then fall exhausted into sleep in each others’ beds.

“Take some time to think about it,” Suzanne had said, afternoon light shining harshly so that the whole room was a prism of contrast. “Let me know what you think.”

So here they are.

“Subj: OCS Halloween Pop-ups - Onboarding”. Beatrice puts down her mug, takes a deep breath, and clicks the email from Suzanne. 

Her phone rings.

“What is it?” Beatrice copies the zoom link at the top of the message and pastes it into the top of a new tab. With her other hand she holds her phone to the shell of her ear. 

“Have you seen the email?” Lilith is terse and tight, even through the phone. Her voice is faraway; Lilith has her phone on Speaker and on a table or drawer somewhere while she looks at something else. Unusual. Her calls are usually curt, succinct, and fully focused. It makes Beatrice’s ears go hot and buzz with static.

“I’m reading it now,” she says, scrolling and scanning the words. 

It’s a short email, in Suzanne’s usual clipped style. No attachments if she can help it. Below the zoom link there is a brief four-point meeting agenda, a reminder to be punctual, and finally a brisk thank you.

In-between these lines Suzanne has appointed lead and three accompanying names of the members of the steering team of the OCS’ first expansion project. 

Lilith’s name is listed second. She's not the Creative Director.

Silence.

“You’ve read it.” The statement is biting; almost a sneer. Beatrice smells the bitterness licking under the corners of its thin, cool veneer. Sticky.

Beatrice rereads the four lines. She rereads it again. She opens her mouth, then closes it.

Ava Silva.

“Who is she?” she exhales, finally. Weakly.

There is a scoff on the end of the line. Echoes of slippers marching down parquet, a door slamming, and then, quietly, an uncontrolled squeak of leather. A furious stream of mechanical clicks, as Lilith’s hands race over the keys of her expensive desktop setup. Beatrice can picture her in her room as if mirrored before her: Lilith still in her terribly fancy robe, sprawled ungainly before the expanse of her monitors in her glassy, austere, home office.

Her voice is suddenly much closer over the call, and Beatrice pictures the phone wedged to her ear by her shoulder.

“Ava Silva,” Lilith spits, in a dry, desiccated whisper.  “Is a Disney rat.”

Beatrice raises her eyebrows, pulling up the matching LinkedIn profile. The most recent post was uploaded a week ago – it seems to be an incredibly effusive Farewell-slash-Thank You post for, indeed, the Disneyland Anaheim Imagineering team and the Creative Development department. She scans the prose: candid and emoji-laden, bordering on unprofessional. 

Beatrice counts seven Disney Princess puns, and one awful Star Wars quote to cap it off. There are eight – yes, eight – images attached to the post, all full-sized so that the page runs on like a travelog blog post. 

The last image appears to be a mountain of goodbye swag. These include, Beatrice notes: a Moana beach ball, a matching Buzz Lightyear set of wheelchair spoke guards and cane covers, and a Sven the Reindeer onesie. The rest of them are all pictures of the woman who must be Ava, with her now ex-coworkers. All adorned with Mickey ears and pin-studded lanyards, in front of various rides and experiences she probably had a hand in creating. 

No, Beatrice scrolls back up to information messily hidden in the overlong farewell paragraph: Specifically, two of these are rides for which she’s been part of the main creative team. Three more that she’s played some role in creating, whether at the design phase or in later consultancy during implementation. 

One picture is a solo snapshot of Ava in a bright yellow baseball cap and remarkably tiny denim shorts, in front of a Disneyland hotdog stand. She’s holding an extra large hotdog, absolutely drenched in ketchup and mustard, high over her head like a trophy. Her smile, Beatrice thinks, is dazzling. 

She swipes down on her trackpad too quickly.

The last picture is of Ava and two others standing on a boulder in front of a massive Zootopia indoor roller coaster, while crowds in the background swarm the attraction in a snaking queue. ‘My pride and joy / baby / first full lead’, Ava has captioned it, ‘aka Great Zootopian Escape 🫡 . Just opened !!! I will be back 2 visit :’)) ’

Beatrice sighs. 

“What the hell is Suzanne thinking,” Lilith mutters, teeth gritted; tone cold. She’s shaken, and Beatrice knows it.

She herself can barely stop herself from scrolling, and scrolling, and scrolling. That’s enough, she snaps at herself, and her hand leaves the touchpad with a short jerk. There’s no point. 

//

“Good morning,” Suzanne says flatly, the moment the call holds five participants. “Thank you all for joining the call punctually.” Her face is crisp and too-sharp against the blurred-black virtual background.

Like they wouldn’t have come anyway, even if thoroughly rocked. Three stern, stiff and silent faces look straight ahead. Suzanne probably prefers them this way. 

Beatrice looks quickly through the five rectangles on the screen and finds the label that she seeks. 

🗿Ava Silva’s iPad 🗿.

“I would like to welcome a new member to the OCS.” Suzanne begins. She nods: “Ava Silva.”

There is a light smattering of the hand wave emoji reaction floating up from the toolbar from 🗿Ava Silva’s iPad 🗿. The device itself seems to be held up very close to her face so that all Beatrice can see is patchy pixelated bits of nose and cheek, shaking about as Ava presumably works to send the emojis.

Beatrice clenches a stress ball in her fist. It had been gifted to her for April Fools’ Day by Mary and Shannon. Something about clenching and unclenching, although Shannon had been laughing too hard to deliver the line in full.

“Ava has been a Creative Development Director at Disneyland and worked on numerous attractions both there and at Universal.” Suzanne pauses. “So, to put it crudely, this is something of a coup. We are very happy to have her with us to lead this creative expansion of the OCS brand.”

Beatrice’s phone, which has been relentlessly buzzing, skates across the table. She turns it over, a stormy headache already gathering steam: dozens of unread messages from Camila and Lilith, and more still on their way. Sighing, she shoots off a quick ‘Later, please.’ and then puts it on a tea towel on the kitchen island, out of reach.

“As you may imagine, it was not easy. She was… highly sought after by various studios and companies. Miss Silva,” Suzanne deadpans, “you are a difficult woman to track down and convince.”

The image of Ava’s face, very close to the camera already, wobbles further. It jostles like she’s jabbing at her screen fiercely. A good while later, after Suzanne had moved on entirely, her delayed message would finally deliver through the Zoom chat: 

🗿Ava Silva’s iPad 🗿: thats only bc i don’t read my emails lol! Glad 2 be here too 🥰

“You will all be working very closely together. In case anyone has forgotten…” Suzanne begins summarizing the contents of that fateful paper packet that she’d handed over in her office last November. The words, the clauses, are identical, but Beatrice can’t help but see it all in a different light. It sinks in more completely. 

Close collaboration to envision and map out the overall direction and themes for the pop-ups. Planning and writing for each house. Liaising with and consulting Admin back at the Cradle, yes, but otherwise almost entirely shouldering production independently. All of that now with Ava Silva thrown into the works.

For Ava’s sake, Suzanne briefly recaps the typical in-house workflow of the production of a Haunted House. Steering team meetings to establish expectations and aims; brainstorming and ideation and finalization of directions; traditionally an in-person bootcamp-esque intensive where the engine of development truly shifts into gear; followed by an ever-accelerating process of recruitment, research, sourcing, production, and testing. A process that should be second nature suddenly feels daunting.

“Now, this meeting is taking place so late because we have only just secured the venue permits for the pop-ups. I have briefed Ava already, and she will be able to explain this separately.”

Beatrice doesn’t have to turn around to hear her phone begin to rattle furiously behind her again.

“Finally, Ava,” Suzanne says, “let me introduce the rest of the team.”

First there is Camila, who Suzanne praises modestly for her extensive set design and art experience. Beatrice knows she’s always had a soft spot for her – resilient and optimistic and ready to put her teeth into anything. 

But in sharp contrast Camila’s face now is neutral and unreadable. The usually bright, tasteful splashes of color in her room are muted against the only two lamps she’s chosen to keep on, shades down and twisted away so her face sits in half-shadow. 

Lilith, then, in her icy postmodern tech den. Her arms are folded and her eyes are cast somewhere. Distant and acidic. 

Beatrice snaps back to attention when Suzanne mentions her name. She keeps it short and sweet: Beatrice’s original training was in engineering, and so, beyond her job scope, she’s best equipped to provide the team with technical and mechanical expertise. 

Ava nods. From what Beatrice can surmise from her patchy rectangle, she is not in a room at all.

No. She is, it seems, on some kind of wicker chair on a sun-dappled porch or veranda, lined by orange and beige walls and pillars veined with vines and hanging pots. A pair of sunglasses, perched on the crown of her head, keeps slipping down, and every few minutes Beatrice sees her lift a finger to nudge it back into place.

Her iPad seems to be on her lap, because it’s shuffling precariously at a strange angle focused on Ava’s chin as she flits about, constantly in blurry motion. 

When Ava holds up the iPad, there seems to be an inscrutable wall of something behind her, simultaneously metallic yet moving in dashes of color. For a moment, her video lags and freezes, and Beatrice gets a better look.

They’re birds. Dramatic plumages and muted tones of all kinds of domestic birds. In cages of every shape and size and color, decked from floor to awning, hanging off bars and resting on customized stands. The whole place is full of them. The iPad tilts as Ava adjusts herself and Beatrice finds that there’s more to the side, off-camera, too. 

Suzanne does not comment on it. “Ava, any thoughts?” 

Ava unmutes herself, grinning.

Beatrice’s earbuds erupt in utter, screaming, avian cacophony, and everybody winces at the exact same time.

Ava – muffled by bird screeching – yelps, mutes herself, and switches off her video.

The call melts into thirty seconds of stunned silence. 

“Oops sorry”,  types 🗿Ava Silva’s iPad 🗿 in the chat.

Beatrice can see Lilith physically take a deep breath and count one to fifteen out loud. Camila is in disbelief; shocked and a little delighted. Beatrice reflects on the strange, confusing mess of large feelings, and decides that she possibly wants to throw up.

Suzanne bites a lip and frowns.

Deep breath, Beatrice reminds herself. Exhale. Inhale. 

Ava’s camera switches back on eventually, and this time, she has, in each ear, one bud of a pair of half-untangled earphones. The wires are frayed and taped over with red duct tape, and the sounds of the surrounding aviary are now blessedly punched out.

This time, too, her iPad appears to be propped up on something. The earphone cord stretches dangerously taut when Ava scrambles to sit back into her chair. 

“Sorry,” her voice careens back into the call. “I’m crashing at a friend’s home at the moment. It’s also kind of a bird shop.”

“Anyway,” she takes a deep breath, grinning, “I’m so happy to join the team. I love horror, and haunted houses, so much. And like, the OCS is– wow. It’s such a dream.” 

She lifts her arms to either side excitedly to gesticulate, and Beatrice watches Lilith balk at the unabashedly kitschy Universal Monsters tie dye oversized t-shirt. Ava leans in just enough that Beatrice can see the crudely cartoonish red-and-white design on her black flask, swirling about.

Bite me I’m scared scrawled over a crude cartoonish vampire.

“So,” Ava goes on excitedly, “I have a lot of ideas, and I can’t wait to get started.”

[soulmuppet]

We've received the proofs for Orbital Blues: Afterburn, Rogue Anthems and Tales From The Outlaw Galaxy!

Don't they look absolutely stunning?! A massive shoutout to the entire team who worked on this project, everyone worked so hard and it really shows.

Learn more about Orbital Blues: Afterburn and grab a preorder over on BackerKit.

[jessepinkmancrystals]

Axl Roses first ever band!!This was his project before starting Hollywood Rose with Chris Weber & Izzy Stradlin!!! :33 The band was called Rapidfire, started sometime in 83 before June! The line up consisted of (Left to right) Chuck Gordon on drums, Axl Rose (who at the time in the band was going by his real name 'Bill Bailey') on lead vocals, Kevin Lawrence on guitar, and finally Mike Hamerik on bass! The band had only ever released two EPs , said two EPs being named 'Ready to Rumble' and 'Afterburner'. Ready to Rumble was their first ever EP released. The EP was released on May 15th 1983, 3 days before May 28th when the band broke up. The thing was that it wasn't commerically released until November 15th of 2014 due to complications with Axl's legal team. The Ready to Rumble EP had five tracks being:

#1. Ready to Rumble

#2. All Night Long

#3. The Prowler

#4. On The Run

#5. Closure

Ready to Rumble spans about 14 minutes and 32 seconds. This EP also served as the bands last EP with Axl before he went onto start Hollywood Rose with the aforementioned Weber and Stradlin. When it comes to their second EP 'Afterburner', since Axl left Kevin Lawrence had gone onto take the role of lead vocals. When it comes to listening to this EP i think it might be impossible to find considering that it was never released publicly but only sent via email to fans who wanted to listen to the EP. Afterburner had one less track then Ready to Rumble only containing four tracks:

#1.Ready to Rumble(new version)

#2.Nothing Left to Say

#3. Don't Walk Away

#4.When the Lights Goes Out

This was all the information I could find on Rapifire before i stopped myself from nerding out and deep diving into it!! :3

If there's anything that's wrong or misspelled pls correct me! English isn't my first language so yk!! Thx 4 listening 2 my yap!! :D

[timetorace]

Anyone knows if Mark Webber is around to put some afterburn cream in Fernando’s ass? It’s a serious question for a project.

[army-navy-air]

How did pilots of the SR-71 Blackbird prevent the aircraft from leaving contrails over 65,000 feet?

The SR-71 Blackbird was designed to fly at Mach 3.2, or more than three times the speed of sound, and at altitudes up to 85,000 feet. At such extreme conditions, the air temperature was very low, around -60°C, and the air pressure was very low, around 0.9 psi. This meant that the air was very dry and could not hold much water vapor.

The SR-71 had two powerful Pratt & Whitney J58 engines that used a special fuel called JP-7, which had a very high flash point and low vapor pressure. The fuel was also used as a coolant for the engines and the airframe, which heated up due to aerodynamic friction. The fuel was circulated through heat exchangers and then sprayed into the engines’ afterburners, where it ignited and produced thrust.

The SR-71’s engines had a unique feature called “ejector nozzles”, which allowed them to operate efficiently at both subsonic and supersonic speeds. The nozzles consisted of two concentric rings: an inner ring that could move forward and backward to adjust the exhaust area, and an outer ring that had slots to allow air to enter the exhaust stream. The air entering the slots created a shock wave that increased the pressure and temperature of the exhaust gases, making them expand faster and produce more thrust. The air also diluted the exhaust gases, reducing their water content and making them less likely to form contrails.

The SR-71 pilots had to carefully monitor the engine performance and adjust the nozzle position to avoid contrail formation. They also had to avoid flying through clouds or areas of high humidity, which could trigger contrail formation. They used a device called a “contrail light”, which was mounted on the tail of the aircraft and projected a beam of light downward. If the light reflected off a contrail, the pilots would know they had to change their altitude or speed.

One example of a close encounter with a Soviet fighter occurred on Oct. 6, 1986, when an SR-71 was flying along the coast of Murmansk. The pilot, Ed Yeilding, spotted a long white contrail coming towards him at lower altitude. He realized it was a MiG-31 interceptor, one of the few aircraft that could reach the SR-71’s altitude. He raised his periscope and saw that he was also leaving a contrail behind him. He knew that the MiG-31 pilot could see his contrail as well and might try to fire his missiles at him if he crossed into Soviet airspace. He decided to stick to his planned track and get his pictures while depending on his speed and altitude for survival. The MiG-31 came as close as eight miles before running out of airspeed at 65,000 feet.

If you want to learn more about it, I recommend reading some of these books:

Lockheed Blackbird: Beyond the Secret Missions (Revised Edition) by Paul Crickmore

Sled Driver: Flying the World’s Fastest Jet by Brian Shul

Skunk Works: A Personal Memoir of My Years at Lockheed by Ben Rich

[golden-masquerade]

Project Afterburn is live! The first two chapters are up on ao3 for ao3 members!

Long versions of both chapters to be posted here shortly.

[sunnydaleherald]

The Sunnydale Herald Newsletter, Sunday, April 21

SPIKE: Hey! Hey, let's be reasonable about this. (Riley slams him up against a pillar.) RILEY: You may have noticed, Spike... (he punches Spike in the face) RILEY: I left reasonable about three exits back.

~~Into the Woods~~

[Drabbles & Short Fiction]

Pillow Talk by veronyxk84 (Buffy/Spike, PG-13)

Five times Angel made chocolates for Buffy and the one time she made some for him by Liana_Medea (Buffy/Angel, G)

For Emergencies by Bobbie23 (Giles/Jenny, G)

By a whisker by squiddz (Spike & original cat character, Buffy/Spike, T)

Brick by Boring Brick by Wretched_Little_Words (Buffy & Kendra, G)

Это уже не смешно by B_E_S (Buffy/Angel, G, in Russian)

Riley's Special Spike (the plastic one, you ninny) by InvariablyStupidIdeas (Spike/Riley, M)

On a subway? by scooby-group-texts (Spike, Dawn, not rated - mentions of canon violence)

Something Red by Maxine Eden (Buffy/Spike, NC-17)

Pillow Talk by VeroNyxK84 (Buffy/Spike, anthology rated PG-13)

[Chaptered Fiction]

Going Astral - Chapter 1 by Geliot99 (Buffy/Spike, M)

Across Ages, Ch. 27 by Isabeau (Buffy/Spike, R)

Ties to the World, Ch. 33 by The Danish Bird (Buffy/Spike, NC-17)

Love Bites, Ch. 4 by cawthraven (Buffy/Spike, NC-17)

Truth and Consequences, Ch. 14 by JamesMFan (Buffy/Spike, R)

In Any Life, Ch. 12 by Spikelover4ever (Buffy/Spike, NC-17)

Hand in Flightless Hand, Ch. 4 by tragic (Buffy/Spike, NC-17)

Afterburn: In The Dark, Ch. 3 by Melme1325 (Buffy/Spike, NC-17)

Sweet Dreams (Or A Beautiful Nightmare) Ch. 2 by goodbyetoyou (Buffy/Spike, NC-17)

The Tortured Slayer Department, Ch. 1 by BewitchedXx (Buffy/Spike, PG-13)

A Ripple In Time, Ch. 1 by CheekyKitten (Buffy/Spike, NC-17)

To All We Guard, Ch. 12 by simmony (Buffy/Spike, NC-17)

Gargoyle, Ch. 4 by ClowniestLivEver (Buffy/Spike, NC-17)

Centerfold, Ch. 2 by all choseny, Passion4Spike, MissLuci (Buffy/Spike, NC-17)

[Images, Audio & Video]

Something Blue painting by novivi (Buffy/Spike, worksafe)

Fanvid: Look What You Made Me Do by starryeyesxx (Buffy)

Gifset: The Albatross by detectivedawnsummers (Buffy/Spike, worksafe, includes canon death scenes)

spike + textposts by spikespeaches ()

[Reviews & Recaps]

Re: Can’t decide between S2 & S3 as the best season of Buffy by occidentaltourist

the dichotomy of band candy by shiteatinggrin

BTVS/Angel Rewatch Chronicles: Seasons 5/2, Part Four by QualifiedApathetic

Coming to the end of my 16th rewatch by Xandertheokay

[Recs & In Search Of]

Buffy the Vampire Slayer Fanfic Rec – a list by alwaysakin

[Fandom Discussions]

Contextless Jenny musing #47 by hal-1500

Re: you have to work on a group project with Oz, how does it go? by momsforroadhead

I cannot with s4 ending with Xander as “the heart.” by nicnacsnonsense

Crack Fic Idea: Bucky x Reader x Spike Love Triangle [Marvel crossover] by scoonsalicious

Okay, just some musing about Buffy Summers by deus--auri

When someone tells me "I normally don't like Riley but I like the way you write him." by riley-summers

Drusilla (the incredible layers of Drusilla added to the scene in Destiny) by thedeathscar

If you were to use one episode to represent each couple which would you use? by jdpm1991

What is your favourite headcanon that you one-hundred percent believe in? hosted by RavenNight789

Did anyone else feel Faith's arc would be played wildly differently if it had somehow continued on Buffy by sadhungryandvirgin

Full 180 on Dawn by Stellz04

Angelus in s2 out-Spikes Spike by Due_Resolution_8551

Submit a link to be included in the newsletter!

Join the editor team :)

[brimay]

I saw that you recently reblogged an everlark high school au fanart with a tag about "thinking fic-y thoughts"! I love the everlark fics you've written…are you considering writing a high school au?!? I'm also excited about the next chapter of afterburn! <3

Yes, a high school AU could be my next project! It all depends on how the idea develops in my head. When I saw that fanart, I was immediately inspired by the ✨ vibes ✨ Sometimes, I've started fics with nothing more than that, but with Everlark in particular I want a complex plot that does justice to the excellent original work, you know? As an aspiring writer, I have too much respect for Suzanne Collins to half-ass it.

Also, I'm really glad you're looking forward to the next chapter. It's coming along nicely 👀

[usafphantom2]

Once F-4 crews told the SR-71 couldn’t go vertical after takeoff. They gave up after a Blackbird did a high-performance takeoff (with sensitive equipment replaced with ballast).

The SR-71

The SR-71, the most advanced member of the Blackbird family that included the A-12 and YF-12, was designed by a team of Lockheed personnel led by Clarence “Kelly” Johnson, then vice president of Lockheed’s Advanced Development Company Projects, commonly known as the “Skunk Works” and now a part of Lockheed Martin.

CLICK HERE to see The Aviation Geek Club contributor Linda Sheffield’s T-shirt designs! Linda has a personal relationship with the SR-71 because her father Butch Sheffield flew the Blackbird from test flight in 1965 until 1973. Butch’s Granddaughter’s Lisa Burroughs and Susan Miller are graphic designers. They designed most of the merchandise that is for sale on Threadless. A percentage of the profits go to Flight Test Museum at Edwards Air Force Base. This nonprofit charity is personal to the Sheffield family because they are raising money to house SR-71, #955. This was the first Blackbird that Butch Sheffield flew on Oct. 4, 1965.

The Blackbirds were designed to cruise at Mach 3.2, just over three times the speed of sound or more than 2,200 miles per hour and at altitudes up to 85,000 feet.

Throughout its nearly 24-year career, the SR-71 strategic reconnaissance aircraft remained the world’s fastest and highest-flying operational aircraft. From 80,000 feet, it could survey 100,000 square miles of Earth’s surface per hour.

So, it comes as no surprise if, thanks to its astonishing flight characteristics, the aircraft has set numerous speed and altitude records throughout its career.

Blackbird high performance takeoff

An SR-71 Blackbird mechanic who wishes to remain anonymous tells the following story;

‘I won’t say Who, I won’t say when, but I did see the SR go vertical ONCE and that was at Kadena [Air Base]. The F-4 jocks used to tell us when they were going to do a high-performance takeoff during an FCF (Functional Check Flight) so we could watch a “real takeoff”!

‘Our DET Commander had chewed his lip long enough and the stage was set. We finally had the kind of flight scheduled where the plan could be put in to action.

‘All sensors were removed and replaced with ballast. That included the ballast nose. This didn’t lighten the aircraft, but removed sensitive equipment, gyros and such. On the morning of the launch, the Fighter wing was notified. The SR did its thing getting ready to launch. Brakes released, burners on and once it was up, it accelerated just above the runway. And then, IT HAPPENED. It went vertical in full afterburner. It was loud AND impressive! Needless to say, it shut the F-4 lads up for a while.

‘Written by somebody who knew.’

Be sure to check out Linda Sheffield Miller (Col Richard (Butch) Sheffield’s daughter, Col. Sheffield was an SR-71 Reconnaissance Systems Officer) Twitter X Page Habubrats SR-71, Instagram Page SR71Habubrats and Facebook Page Born into the Wilde Blue Yonder Habubrats for awesome Blackbird’s photos and stories.

Photo credit: Linda Sheffield Miller, Boeing and U.S. Navy

Linda Sheffield Miller

Grew up at Beale Air Force Base, California. I am a Habubrat. Graduated from North Dakota State University. Former Public School Substitute Teacher, (all subjects all grades). Member of the DAR (Daughters of the Revolutionary War). I am interested in History, especially the history of SR-71. Married, Mother of three wonderful daughters and four extremely handsome grandsons. I live near Washington, DC.

@Habubrats71 via X

[hislittleraincloud]

The spring release date was said by Bianca’s mom actress (Gracy Goldman) on an Instagram comment, she said spring time 2025. I believe someone that is on the show has more knowledge than fans, yes post production takes a lot of time but we don’t know if they’re already editing some episodes while they film the others

*takes your hand*

*whispers* She doesn't know shit either.

Production for Season 1 Wednesday went from September 2021 to March 2022. That is seven months of filming and about seven to eight months of post production.

Production for Season 2 Wednesday went from early May 2024 to late November 2024 (not counting if there are any reshoots/other problems, and December was supposed to be the official wrap, despite the photo that's been circulating for the 'early' wrap party as it was posted on TwitteX).

That would mean you're speculating only ~ five to six months (at best) post-production, since the Spring TV season ends at the end of May (it's from March to May). Why in Hell would anyone think there would be less post time in the second 8-episode series — which is supposed to be "bigger and better" — is beyond me. This here might last less than three minutes, but it doesn't take only three months, it takes 2x as long to do something like it:

And if there's more of that, then it won't take less than the first season's post. Remember that Ortega herself said it'll be bigger and each episode is "like a movie".

It doesn't matter if you think there's final editing going on while the rest of the show is being filmed. That's not how it works/worked. If it did, that would've applied to the first season, and it would've taken less than eight fucking months in post/to get it out, and we saw just how much F/X went into that (with the creation of Nevermore, Tyler/Hyde, Kent underwater, Ajax's snakes, Enid's nails and final transformation/battle with Tyler, the crappy/easy Bianca Siren Song, Thing...did I miss anything there in terms of actual VFX? Nero, Eugene's bees, Xavier's drawings/paintings? Managing the other green screen graphics aside from Thing/Victor, that might be a big one?). That shit has got to be perfect, since everyone is expecting just as 'good' a season as its premiere, if not better.

And then there's a million technical things to get through in post/editing and putting it together. And then Elfman's gotta score it (or did you think that his music just magically materialized wherever Burton or Ortega moved?). He would have to watch the series to know whatever it is he needs to compose/make sure it's coherent and flows well in the finished project. Junkie XL tells us that for him, it can take anywhere from 3 weeks to a year and a half (for Mad Max: Fury Road) to score a film. Elfman and the whole crew are producing what the equivalent of 6 films would be (six 1.3hr films). That's a lot of work if he's not just going to recycle much from Season 1's score. Composers work differently and Elfman has the advantage of having completed Wednesday 1, but that's also a challenge since they want familiarity without the direct repetition of anything but the main theme.

Perhaps you and whoever else should stop and listen to the straight guys adults in the room:

While he may have run through Wednesday fairly quickly because he was given only 10 days to work on each episode after the first two (he thought he was only going to score the first two episodes, so they spent a month on that), these guys watch finished scenes over and over. This time around they can avoid a repeat of that three month stress, and I think they will. Creatives learn how to modify unreasonable requests since they've experienced how anxiety-inducing it was the first time around when they were unsure of how it'd be received.

Anyway. I repeat, it's not coming out in the spring, but here's my promise: If I am wrong and Wednesday 2 comes out in Spring 2025 — before the end of May (my birthday/two years after I debuted Satisfying Afterburn) — after only five to six months of post-production, I will write the most fkd up, sexplicit Wenclair smut that the fandom has ever seen. I'll even make it Afterburn canon.

Color me wrong, universe. I would truly love to be wrong on this, because we're all eager to see WTF they did/how they work around absences and with such a huge cast (who more than likely need some sort of VFX for some of the characters). The cast of Wednesday 2 is bloated. There's just too much they would need to do, I would think. I could be wrong. I want to be wrong. But I'm not counting on a minor-ish actor's throwaway comments on IG.

🫠

Okay, now for a bonus thought that has little to do with the speculated date of Wednesday 2's release date.

For historical purposes and I'm bored: Y'all (ALL you damn kids) should probably heed what a pre-Wenclair, pre-Wyler Ortega stated about Wednesday's motivations (i.e. before Wednesday came out and before her fame blew up, when she was more honest and before she had to self-censor and deal with something I don't think she — or any of the cast — was prepared to deal with) emphasis mine and ahh, her Old Face pre-nosejob:

"Something else I want to stress about the show too is that I never wanted it to seem like she was doing something out of the goodness of her heart. Because that wasn't what it was, it was more genuine interest, you know ... — I don't think she was ever going out intentionally to save lives or to be a hero, but more so "Oh my God, how is this guy actually pulling this off?" like, jotting down her own notes sort of thing. And it was actually the first time in her life not understanding someone's actions when they're being laid out right in front of her."

She also describes how part of Wednesday's behavioral journey was learning how to manipulate/bargain better (those are not her words, they're mine, but when you get to the part where she says Wednesday figures out that if she behaves a certain way, she can't obtain what she wants so she learns what to do, that's what it is). Nowhere in this early interview was even a hint of any of the teen romance, real or imagined, mentioned (and the criticisms about the love triangle only came after the reviews/fan complaints and preferences were aired).

But she does mention how NC Wednesday wants to be a detective. Who better to show her the ropes than Donovan? She was genuinely interested in hanging around him because he was also supposed to be an investigator that she could learn from...and teach.

...Heh.

🫠✨🖤🐦‍⬛💕👮🏻‍♂️💙✨

[k9effect]

Afterburns

Single Dad!Goose/Aerobatics Pilot!Maverick Goosemav AU

Summary:

Nick Bradshaw felt like he was drowning after cancer took his wife and left him to care for his only son all on his own.

That was until he met Pete Mitchell, a cocky aerobatics pilot who helped pull him from the punishing waves of grief and show him that he could still enjoy life.

[AU Masterlist]

[soulmuppet]

To accompany the adventure @samsleney is writing for Afterburn, @tinywoodsman is creating a series of in-universe art pieces to build a "prop-kit" for your campaigns. Filled with business cards, posters, maps and other little gubbins will be available as an addon in Backerkit!!