#sorry for this but I had to be pretentious

[altcvnningham]

waning moon

helen park x madam shell

summary: helen park sees the cracks in her lover's façade. (inspired by @mickstart and their amazing post on perhaps the most underrated ship of all time??)

tags/cw: nsfw, wlw, angst, pre-cw, betrayal (but vaguely unspecified), light choking, younger woman/older woman, age gap, references to coercion, vague references to abuse of authority, so much bird imagery, doomed sapphics wc: 1.1k

a/n: i literally read @mickstart's park x shell (shellen???) post and got possessed, blacked out for an hour and wrote this. i have 0 memory of how i got here or what this means and though it isn't like 100% what the post was talking about it DID inspire me to spill out this ramble ab a character who has 0 canon appearances outside of dialogue. sorry for pretentious purple prose and rough editing!! it's 12am forgive me

She doesn’t know when she sees the change, but it slips in slow and sweet, like a paling knife glinting in the moonlight. How sand sifts to the bottom of an hourglass, she too feels just as suffocated under the weight of borrowed time.

Yet Shell’s eyes are paler still even in the dark, the waning moon of this interminable night, one that feels to Helen Park like the bookend of something. An answer, unspoken, but as implicit as though it had been there all along, a truth she’d known deep down but refused to acknowledge. And why would she? How could she? It had been three long years since Shell took her under her wing, her pretty little bird, three years that had changed everything. Irreparably. Even now as Park finds the pieces of it all scattered and frayed with Shell’s silent betrayal, she sees the beauty in each and every one, too besotted with the finer details to bear looking at the bigger picture.

Shell is lying.

She knows, more certain than she has ever been of anything in her life. As the older woman climbs languid atop her narrow hips, smothered in perfume bergamot and liquorice, plum coloured lips close over her own in a lazy mimicry of a kiss. Helen parts open her mouth, as she had her legs countless times, like a good little protégé, showing her madam just what she’s learned. All for her. Tongue hot as she kisses back with hooded, half-open eyes, curling around Shell’s like a proclamation. I know what you are. I know what you’re doing.

(And do you know, how powerless I am to stop you? As if I’d even try?)

And Shell knows it too. In the dark of this Parisian hotel room, blinds drawn to cast away the world’s prying eyes, she can see it on the girl’s face plain as day. Sweet Helen is a pretty thing, much too clever for her own good, but wears her heart on her sleeve, with eyes as big and shiny as a doe’s- and now hunting season had come for her sweet girl, and how wide they had looked at Shell upon her return, hands smothered in blood. Blood that she hadn’t bothered to scrub, knowing Helen had likely smelled it coppery on the air when she’d walked in. Her fingers are still tinged pink with it, even as she traipses them up the girl’s waist, cupping the plush undersides of her breasts.

That is to say, Helen isn’t the best at hiding her expressions. It’s what Shell had loved about her. The shrill gasps when Shell would come up behind her, grasping her waist in lieu of a polite excuse me; the way she’d avert her eyes shyly when she’d caught hers across a room, crowded, empty; how she’d been so young when Shell had met her, blushing like a schoolgirl at the mere whisper of praise; and how when Shell had asked her but a month later if she’d ever been touched before- properly, darling girl, like a lover might- Helen had flushed red and bright as a virgin. Perhaps she had been, too proud to admit it. For a girl who is as sharp as a knife and twice as lethal, Shell had held in her hands a mourning dove, cooing softly in her palm, willing to piece together its nest there. Right there. With her.

Now, not so much. Her songbird doesn’t sing as she used to, her eyes parsing through the fog she’d been happy to let Shell pull over them. Helen sees her for what she is now, and they both know it.

It isn’t a strange thing, what she’s doing. Not at all irregular. It’s a gesture Shell had exercised over her innumerable times before, a kind of sordid foreplay, staking her claim over her. Shell’s hands lay flat upon Helen’s sternum, her heart thrumming steady but beating violent as a war drum; the older woman smiles- how well she’s taught her. Calm, girl, slow breaths. Don’t let them see you falter. Don’t let them feel you shiver. Don’t let them hear you breathe. In the face of fear, Helen had grown around herself flesh of stone, unyielding. That doesn’t change, not even around Shell.

But this isn’t a test. This isn’t one of her many lectures, her teachings. Very rarely does Madam Shell separate work from pleasure, seeing the two overlap rather conveniently; but for Helen she had all the time in the world. Perhaps not after tonight, given what they both know now. But pleasure is a special thing she keeps locked in a drawer for Helen to pry open and play in, rifle curious fingers through until they snag on something that piques her interest.

And yet it always ends the same way. Like this. The older woman atop her, faraway look in her eye, warbled smile on her lips. Hands around neck.

Her fingers slide slow, deft, thumb parted to curl her hand around the pale column of Helen’s throat. And she can do nothing but be still for her mentor, her lover, holding her breath in wide-eyed submission, a devotion that spoke beyond words, beyond meaning. A kind of reverence she knows only Shell would understand, a stillness like prey clutched within a lioness’ maw. Playing dead, prettily.

Shell’s eyes fix upon her, steel grey boring into vivid green, alight with something akin to amusement; in the daytime, Helen mistakes the glint for adoration, something like love, when she’s drunk enough on Shell’s affections to believe it.

Now, in the waning moon of their last night together- as they are, as they could have been, if only she didn’t know what she knows at the very pit of her being is true- she recognises the errant flicker for what it is. Kindling. A struck match, willing to burn it all down, even if it means taking sweet Helen with her. Her mourning dove. Cast to the fire like everything else. For a terrifying moment, Park isn’t even sure she’d much mind it at all. Ashes to ashes, as they say.

And as Shell squeezes her hand soft and gentle around her favourite girl’s neck, Helen surrenders her head against the pillow, spilling back with a moan shrill like a song. It’s the last time she knows she’ll ever sing for her again, so she makes sure it’s a good one.

[spibbb]

venom is a love born from ugliness, monstrosity in a literal and moral sense. aggrieved entitlement borne from a lifetime of being hated for the crime of existing. their anger is a reclamation of power. their rage is nuclear destruction. they love revenge because it feels so fucking good to finally be the one doing the hurting. aren't you tired of being nice, don't you want to go apeshit.jpg

[cabeswaterdrowned]

I can understand someone not liking Gansey that much but I Can Not imagine calling him boring. Sir that’s President Freak of Clowntown right there…

[hamable]

HEAR ME OUT!!!

Bakudeku/Class-1A Camp Rock AU

DOES ANYONE ELSE SEE THE VISION

[telesodalite]

Sort of a ramble, sort of me just writing my thoughts out while I'm stuck with writer's block, but I keep thinking about how Fulcrum was in stasis for roughly 3 million years??

Like, that's a long time, even for Cybertronians. Not a really long time, not an entire lifespan. But still, it's a large chunk of a normal lifespan just gone. Poof.

One second you're crawling across the pockmarked terrain of an alien planet, surrounded by the sound of gunfire, and the shouting and screaming before and after each earth shuddering impact of another k-con hitting the ground. And then it's quiet. You're not there anymore. You're drifting somewhere between not alive and just asleep. Preserved somewhere in the background of a doomed body, ignored by time and space, still here, but also not.

And then there's sound. Not gunfire. Not shouting or screaming. Not the sounds that'll haunt you till your dying days, your own death sentence pounding in your head. No. Just voices, talking, standing out against a silent, dead world. Wondering. Joking. Bickering. Familiar. Just, not familiar to you. And you're awake. Pulled back from the nothingness you've been frozen in, consciousness tugged forwards with the yank of a fuel pump and the nearness of life.

These two moments are roughly 3 million years apart, but only minutes, maybe even seconds, to him. From a hectic harrowing battlefield, to an old silent graveyard in one blink.

How long did it take to really sink in? I mean, he seems to just roll with it. He doesn't seem particularly bothered. But like, what happened outside of what we see? How did he really feel?

Also, his body aged without him. While his mind preserved itself, freezing him as he was right then, his body was left to weather Clemency for all those years. No wonder it crumbled to dust when he jumped off the world sweeper. It's probably a miracle of some kind that it didn't just fall apart each time someone leaned on him.

And even after they rebuild him, give him a better, newer body. His spark, it's casing, all the irreplaceable core bits that make up their inner bodies, it aged in the time without him. Does he feel it? Does it make his body even more foreign to him?

Then he's also a technician with information that's 3 million years out of date. Lucky him that the scavengers probably weren't working with top of the line material. But still it's gotta be weird when faced with anything brand new, because a lot can change and progress in 3 million years, and now some of the knowledge he once prided himself in is obsolete.

Besides those things, his view of the galaxy, of the war, of their kind, of other kinds, is one of the few things actually pointed out when it comes to him being stuck in the past. So, how often were his old views challenged? Facts of life he held close proved to no longer true? There's 3 million years worth of new science, new beliefs, new words, new terms, new views.

And sure, some of it can be familiar, because they're an ever evolving kind, and they have patterns, core beliefs, repeating behaviors, but a lot of it's gonna be unfamiliar at the same time, because it's 3 million years worth of catch up, it's not like missing last week's trend.

In a way, it makes him a living relic of a bygone era for Decepticons. It would've been really interesting to have had that explored a little more.

[farrahfawcetts]

welcome to my stranger things alternate universe / timeloop / time travel speculation corner! The theory (is that what it should be called?) Is under the cut, inspired on some set production leaks. I go into how I think time travel could work in this universe with some help from USS Elridge's disappearance and reappearance through time.

Hello stranger nation, I was looking at set photos for s5 I believe first uploaded by will80sbyers.

I notice this Hawkins high chalk board (I assume) and the math problem on it seemed interesting to me.

This was my interpretation of it. I am not 100% confident on it but if anyone smarter then me has other interpretations I would love to see them.

I also have a small theory on how time travel might be utilized in this universe. Again, there is likely huge holes in my theory and anyone with strong ideas willing to bounce off what I put down is more then welcome.

USS Elridge going outside of time then coming back, with two of its passengers potentially going forward in time during this leap creating a time paradox sort of situation due to them being returned back to their present time. (technically now their past.)

This might also be why there is multiple / alternate universes in general, as they created different possible futures due to their absence in their original universe/timeline and the absence of them in the alternative universe they accidentally visited.

now here is where I speculate who are potential knowing time travelers, though again if anyone else has better conclusions I'd love to see them!

(Dr. Who's time-war anyone?)

Thanks for coming to my Tedgate talk. *launched into dimension x*

Even more, thanks to everyone who has been putting all the leg work on this series (some shoutouts, wheelercore, henrysglock and aemiron-main who have had some really awesome thoughts regarding the series! And anyone else I might gotten ideas from but couldn't remember when posting this! Yall stranger things theorists rock!)

[steelycunt]

everyone get up and make some noise for sirius' vivienne westwood two cowboys with their cocks out shirt!! we're losing our minds over here for sirius' vivienne westwood two cowboys with their cocks out shirt!!

[eldragon-x]

The average Fluttercord shipper believes that Discord hates everyone but Fluttershy and the average Fluttercord hater believes that Discord tramples all over Fluttershy. I however get them and understand that Fluttershy can very much stand her ground against Discord and that Mac and Spike made friends with Discord specifically because he was a lonely looser.

[the-land-of-dreams]

One last thing to hold on to.

[lesbianwyllravengard]

My professor took off a point from one of my scripts because I labelled a character as Nonbinary, and he claims I should've left the gender description blank because "it's not necessary for this character", as if "nonbinary" is a placeholder for "I don't care what gender" I am actually going to tear him to shreds

[bedcorpse]

but yeah to piggyback off that post y'all have to understand that if you're not usamerican or got lucky in regards to english teachers, even writers like myself got so sick of being handed boring, surface-level interactions with media and being discouraged from anything else that ofc we hated having to explain why the curtains are blue. because it wasn't a discussion of "okay is this meant to set a tone? tell us something about the character, like is blue their favorite color? or is it meant to symbolize something deeper? what are the different ways we could interpret this?" it was "the curtains are blue because the main character is sad. we don't have time for anything else bc public schools are wildly underfunded and overcrowded depending on the district and i make like 40k a year so any differing opinions will be shrugged off at best and punished at worst."

[wizardmp3]

"philosophy is pretentious" love? my best friend love is pretentious? platos symposium opens to talk about love amd hes one of the big three socratic philosophers. what is love by haddaway is pretentious? baby dont hurt me, dont hurt me no more?

[technicolorxsn]

Arthur c clarke is rly convinced birth control is the sign of modernity and progression huh?

[fritzllang]

a few days ago spanish newspaper el país published an article titled '25 songs that should be erased from rock or pop history' where they asked a bunch of music journalists to each pick a popular song that they dont like. and okay, this type of articles are obviously made to create controversy and i shouldnt fall for the provocation. BUT I DID. because yeah some of them were overplayed or overrated songs, i wouldnt mind not listening to lennon's imagine ever again, and everyone's entitled to their opinion. BUT. but. one of those so called journalists chose Bohemian Rhapsody.

HE PICKED BOHEMIAN RHAPSODY AS A SONG HE WOULD ERASE FROM ROCK'S HISTORY (translation under the picture)

"OK, Freddie Mercury was a great frontman and vocalist, that's beyond doubt; but musically, Queen's contributions to rock history have been more pernicious than positive. Bohemian Rhapsody, their most iconic song, is a pretentious, operatic rock hassle, and a demonstration that the path of excess does not always lead to the palace of wisdom. It is grotesque, camp and, at the same time, grandiloquent. Pure onanistic artifice without any content. But the worst is what came after: dozens of even heavier imitators (Muse, My Chemical Romance, etc.), tribute bands everywhere, musical theatre extravaganzas and legions of fans who, looking at you with a superior, quizzical look, identify Queen with the epitome of good music".

CONGRATULATIONS BUDDY EVERY WORD YOU JUST SAID IS WRONG

[shorthaltsjester]

i am a big fan of using real world philosophies to analyse fictional worlds on the watsonian level, they’re a particularly good way to make abstract theories more concrete, but if you look at things like actual literal deities that do have inherent power compared to other beings and uncritically say how they’re just like the one percent or some shit, i beg you to crack open a book and review what the hell reification is or move on to other hobbies.

[boundsoffateandfamily]

the hazel wood

An obsession that lasts two decades has to be kept alive with skill and care. Like the sacred fire of Zoroastrian temples, crackling unceasingly inside a glass chamber, it needs constant tending from its priest and regular offerings of something odorous and incendiary, bone-dry sandalwood or else. And that's the hunt and the thrill of the hunt, and it's the blood of innocent victims, and it's the gratification of avenging or preventing the same tragedy in different faces, different houses. Rage begets rage, people often say, but it might also be argued that all the productive violence and the satisfaction that comes from helping those in need of help could have given some personal closure, some peace of mind, at least to some extent. And it did not. John would return from a hunting trip, no longer the hunter but the angry wounded animal with the angry inevitable wound festering on his side (a hunter always arrives at least one victim too late), prone to thrash about, biting, kicking, and lashing out at anything or anyone within reach. The more rabid the longer he is inactive, as if he can only be hunter or beast, and knows nothing of what lies outside the chase and the woods.

Dean sometimes deems that the job does actually kind of console, does kind of make things more bearable, after having had a taste of it himself. No training is more effective, no endeavor is more absorbing. No moment of greater peace than the one that comes after seeing the ghost dissolve into smoldering ashes, the demon seep through the tiny fissures of the soft brown earth, the monster collapse into a jumble of flesh and viscera. But if his father felt that way all the years he worked alone, then Dean would have to wonder if John came back to them from those hunts not to seek some respite between gulps of rage but the opposite, to remember and take the fading, muddled, complicated pain and make it simple and sharp once again. Maybe he and Sam were, in a subconscious way, the dripping wound that Mary left, that the monster that killed her left, that had to be nursed and scratched never to close and scar, not much of a family but the insistence of an absence. Little faces haunted by absence, starving even for an annoyed glance or a distracted inquiry about their progress at school. Somehow their little boys, the last physical remnant of their union, the mixed blood in their little veins, somehow it had become the fuel of that mysterious fire that broke out in their home and still is burning, never to be quenched, not in his mind's eye.

What is the blueprint of the hunter? Is it being harshly touched by the otherworldly? Dean hasn’t met many hunters, but from what he’s gathered, every hunter has in their personal history that one tragic incident to which their never-ending quest can be traced back. A bloody initiation to the truth of this world, like a second birth: once your eyes are wide open, there’s no going back. The garden fades into dark woods like a dissipating mirage, it doesn’t exist anymore ­–it probably never existed in the first place. A false sense of security. One encounter with the abnormal to render all normalcy into a charade. One moment you're safe, home, surrounded by beloved ones and fellow human beings, and the next it's just you, alone, and the realization of being exposed and vulnerable in the middle of a vicious jungle, the pressing awareness of danger in every shadow and every noise. Evil in everything and everywhere, searching for crevices to seep through.

But knowledge can't be the only thing, not even if it has emerged in the most traumatic shape. Just how many of the people they have saved over the years and who have come to see behind the veil of what is explicable have decided to carry on with their ordinary lives. The absolute majority. It wasn't a question of spirit or righteousness, and it didn't matter if there was nothing left to return to: in the wasteland, the road could be formed in any direction, but no one chooses theirs. Eyes wide open is not enough. Eyes slashed open, eyes ripped open is not enough. The wound has to get infected; the infection has to poison the blood.

Messing to the marrow, tangling your guts with what you don’t even begin to understand requires a certain sort of insanity, some sort of impurity, of freakiness.

Dean realizes his father is doing the best he can within their circumstantial limitations. He’s a hero and Dean worships him, and like the old heroes of ages past, he seems to stand in a mythical plane of existence, beyond good and evil as they are understood today. Normal fatherhood standards do not apply to him either. It matters that he’s trying. But it's also true that pain can mutilate a man's ability to feel. He hasn’t forgotten that night, just a bunch of days after the fire, no matter how much he would like to bury definitely the memory. Perhaps the little instinct of self-preservation he has left prevents him from doing so.

They must have been still in Lawrence, most likely staying at the home of some family friends whose faces and names Dean can’t recall. The house was nice, better furnished and more cozily decorated, it displayed a slightly higher standard of living than what had been his parents', but Dean hated it there with all his heart and he couldn't wait to get back to his room and his toys, his smaller TV, his bathtub where mom helped him wash his hair every night, and the nursery where little Sammy babbled and wiggled his rosy little feet in the air while mom played with them and told Dean wonderous stories and answered his questions about tigers, space or guardian angels. He knew that if he sneaked out and crossed the few streets that separated him from all that he missed, he would not find it. Half the house was gone, the other half scorched, and it was not safe. But nothing was safe anymore, was it? Not even the place they were now, no matter how much his father tried to hide his anxiety by having them play catch in the backyard or getting him his favorite brand of cereal. Dad had deep dark shadows under his eyes, dad startled at the slightest noise, he often withdrew into himself for long stretches of time as if spellbound. And people seemed to act awkwardly around him, a mixture of frustration and pity; ‘you are in shock’ they would say, ‘you have to listen to what you’re saying’, then they would pass him a little amber bottle and a glass of water ‘take these, they worked wonders for me after the car accident’.

They were supposed to grieve and gather strength to rebuild their lives and move forward, but the nightmare didn't seem to end. The screams and the roar of the flames, the smoke crawling like a living thing through ceilings and walls, making his eyes hot and water as he ran with his fragile package downstairs, –and later­–, the howl of the ambulances, hearing his father yelling frantically at the firemen, seeing in the distance his blank stare as he repeated his testimony over and over like an automaton to a couple of policemen, –and afterwards–, sitting on the car hood, clinging to his father and finding a trembling body like his own, and then the eventual we're sorry, this must be very difficult for you, and the no evidence has been found to confirm her death, the disturbingly disconcerting there's no body, no skeletal remains, no teeth, his father’s Dean, please go with this kind lady, she'll give you some water while I talk to the officers, just a few minutes and the muted talk about ominous things he couldn’t understand like steel's melting point and temperatures higher than those of a crematorium, and the gradual confirmation that his mother was gone for good.

She had been entirely devoured by an inexplicable fire, a monster with sharp yellow teeth and sharp yellow claws that fattened up with her flesh and painted yellow the insides of the house and made the windows seem to stare down at them like bright yellow eyes as they waited and waited for the night to end. Sometimes the wind would rise, and a shower of ash would fall on them, but they would not move, just like the first lovers, powerless and transfixed, looking at the flaming swords that would separate them forever from Eden.

The fear that had crept up inside Dean at that moment hadn't left him. It was inhabiting him; it had robbed him of his voice, holding it inside like a hostage. He hadn't uttered a word since that night, he hadn't had a restful sleep since that night. And so, he remembers tossing and turning, then waking up to the sound of faint weeping. He remembers, mouth tightly closed, eyes wide open, walking barefoot down shaded unfamiliar corridors, lured by the cries of his baby brother, to a room also shrouded in shadows, and seeing a pale and noisy bundle through the rail of a portable crib, tiny hands escaping the tight wrapper and grasping nothing, and a black figure sitting in a chair across the room, just watching the baby cry. Standing at the doorway, Dean bloomed in cold sweat. His heart raced wildly, and he couldn’t breathe. He felt the urge to grab little Sam and run away, but the air inside the room was paralyzing and eerie, it felt like a trap, a decoy, the dark silhouette waiting in the corner for something to happen, someone to come. He wished he could scream and call his m-his father, but soon enough the instant of absolute panic gave way to confusion as the shadow sighed heavily and buried his head into his hands just like his father did all the time those days. It was dad, of course it was just dad. Tired sleepless dad. But why wasn't he taking care of little Sammy? He's right over there, dad! You just have to rock him in your arms and sing softly to him, maybe that song mom used to sing about a mommy and her baby, so he’ll r-ah-, but something was off, a scene frozen in the first frame. Dean almost turned around expecting to see his mother walking past him in a hurry to take the baby in her warm arms and scold the callous, indolent dad. John, what are you doing, what's up with you tonight? John, don't you see he's crying out for you? Daddy, what if he burst into flames? What if I burst into flames too? The silence around the crying was thickening by the minute and Dean couldn't stand it any longer. He entered the room heading directly towards the crib, he saw his father straightened up at his presence and raise his hand, he said ‘don’t’ and slammed his mouth shut as if he had just unwittingly admitted to a crime. The two stood still for what seemed like forever, just looking at each other through the mounting sounds of mourning, and Dean thought his father’s eyes were oddly lusterless in the dim light.

Let your baby brother need her. Let us all need her and cry and be hungry.

Dean still couldn’t move or breathe. Cold slowly seeping into him through the soles of his feet. How could his father feel so far away when there seemed to be no air between the two of them? Between the three. It was like all three of them were being pressed together and compressed by the lack of air, vacuum-sealed, petrified and isolated, coalescing into a small, solid stone. Maybe a lump of coal.

Let’s all burn in the need for her. As long as she’s dead.

for @spnyuri's John Winchester Week prompt: Cycles // Grief // Pre-series (Day 1) The title is a reference to The Song of Wandering Aengus, a poem by Yeats about a man infatuated with an otherworldly woman whom he only sees once before she disappears, launching him into an obsessive search to which he devotes his entire life