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ifmywishescametrue · 4 years ago

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pancakes and stuffed bears

2k of fluffy alpha bucky/omega tony (with mentions of alpha steve / stuckony) for my @stb-bingo square: o5 - trip to ikea

also on ao3

Bucky wakes up slowly, groggily realizing that Tony is whispering his name. A finger pokes his cheek, and he slaps it away with his eyes still shut. He rolls onto his stomach and buries his face in his pillow, mumbling, “No, go away. It’s too early.”

Tony whines his name this time, dragging it out to be almost ten seconds long, as he shifts to straddle his lower back. He can’t lean down very far with his swollen stomach in the way, but he can still use his hands to prod at him. Fingernails drag lightly down the back of his neck, making the flesh rise in bumps.

“It’s almost ten,” Tony says. “Get up.”

“Go bother Steve.”

“Steve isn’t here. You’re the only one I have to bother, and your daughter wants the Swedish pancakes from Ikea.”

Bucky turns his head to the side, cracking one eye open to frown up at his mate. “Where did Steve go?”

“Unimportant. The pancakes are the real issue here.”

Bucky laughs, “Pancakes are only for people who tell me where Steve went.”

Tony rolls off of Bucky so he can sit up. “I was half-asleep when he said it, so all I know is that there was a problem with something at the gallery that might have to do with the opening on Friday or it might have nothing to do with it, but it was either Sam that called him or it was Sharon.”

Bucky gets up from bed and looks over at the omega, who’s already dressed in a stretched out t-shirt that used to be his and the maternity pants that he begrudgingly wears even though he hates them. Tony’s hand is covering the bump, rubbing slow circles into it.

He smiles at the sight even as he says, “That’s not all that helpful.”

“I’m honestly not that sure it had anything to do with the gallery now that I’m really thinking about it. He might have said he was going there later and somewhere else now, but there was an S name mentioned somewhere in there for sure, though.”

“So all we really know is that he’s somewhere that isn’t here,” Bucky summarizes, opening the closet to find some clothes to get dressed.

Tony sighs, “Yeah, he should really know better than to tell me things by now.”

Bucky pulls out the first things his hands touch, ending up with a plain white t-shirt and jeans that might actually belong to Steve instead of him. When they moved houses, they didn’t do a very good job labeling the boxes, and as a result Steve and Bucky discovered that their closets might as well be interchangeable. Coupled with how often Tony steals their things these days, he has no idea what’s his and what’s someone else’s anymore.

He gets dressed and tosses his dirty pajamas in the hamper, then tells Tony. “Just give me ten minutes to finish getting ready and we can go.”

“Really thought I would have to persuade you more on these pancakes,” Tony comments, following him into the bathroom.

“After the ice cream incident last week?” Bucky raises his eyebrows in the mirror as he reaches for his toothbrush. “I’m not questioning any of your pregnancy cravings after that, baby doll. I think you traumatized poor Steve.”

Tony rolls his eyes, a small smile on his face as he leans back against the counter. “He’s recovered from it by now, and it’s not my fault that the baby wanted rocky road and he brought home moose tracks.”

“The baby is awfully demanding lately,” Bucky teases, squeezing out toothpaste onto the brush. “Wonder where she gets it from.”

“Probably you.”

Bucky hums through his mouthful of toothpaste, and he lifts his free hand to rest on Tony’s stomach. He can’t help but touch it every chance he gets, hoping to feel their daughter kick beneath his palm. She usually responds to the sound of his or Steve’s voice, and they’ve both been known to spend long periods talking to her just to feel her move. Tony alternates between loving it and hating it, depending on how many times she’s already kicked him in the bladder or ribs that day.

He spits out the toothpaste and rinses his mouth, then finishes off the rest of his morning routine with as much speed as possible.

Before they leave he grabs his wallet and phone, checking the device for any notifications from overnight. There’s a text from Steve waiting for him, and he reads it while pulling on his shoes.

“Steve is at the zoo with Sam because one of their chaperones for the field trip dropped out at the last minute,” he tells Tony as they walk downstairs to the front door. He turns his screen so Tony can see the picture Steve sent of him with Sam and Natasha’s son in the butterfly house. There’s a blue butterfly on Steve’s shoulder, and Alex’s eyes are crossed as he tries to look up at the orange one on his forehead.

Tony frowns, “Wow, that doesn’t sound familiar at all. I don’t think he said that.”

Bucky reads directly from the second text in the chain, “‘And when you talk to Tony, tell him that I told him all of this earlier, and he said ‘that’s nice’ then fell back asleep.’”

“Well then.”

Bucky laughs as he grabs his car keys from the hook on the wall. He sends Steve a reply while walking down the front steps, telling him to have fun and send more pictures. Almost immediately he receives another one, and he shows it to Tony once they get in the car.

“Look at this one, babe.”

Alex is on Sam’s shoulders, eating from an ice cream cone that’s dripping onto Sam’s head. Sam doesn’t look amused by it, but Steve’s grin shows that he’s loving the situation. The caption says, “That’s going to be us soon,” with four smiley face emojis.

Tony doesn’t say anything, and when Bucky glances away from the picture to look at him, his eyes are wet and his lip is quivering.

“Baby, are you crying?”

“No, I’m fine,” Tony says unconvincingly, wiping at his eyes with the back of his hand and completely failing to keep the tears from falling.

Bucky snaps a picture of it and sends it to Steve.

“Fuck you, asshole,” Tony whines, the tears flowing freely now while Bucky tries his best not to laugh at him. Pregnancy hormones have him crying at the drop of a hat these days when he rarely cried before. Bucky can only remember seeing it once, on the night that the three of them bonded, and even then it was hardly more than watery eyes. “And tell your stupid husband to go fuck himself, too.”

“My stupid husband?” Bucky scoffs, backing out of the driveway and onto the street. “I believe he is our stupid husband.”

“He’s yours when he’s making me cry with his dumb sappy face.”

Bucky reaches over the center console to take Tony’s hand, running his thumb across his knuckles soothingly. “I’ll be sure to tell him that you think his face is dumb.”

“And to go fuck himself.”

Bucky bites his lip to keep the laugh in, nodding, “And to go fuck himself. Of course, honey. I’ll let him know.”

Tony wipes at his cheeks again, using his sleeve to soak up the last of them, and he sniffles a few times to clear his nose.

Bucky almost asks him if he’s alright, but then he remembers the last time he did that after an unexpected bout of crying and it started all over again. So instead, he lifts their joined hands and kisses the back of Tony’s to make him smile.

They drive in comfortable silence, and Tony seems completely fine again by the time they reach the Ikea. His mood goes even higher the closer they get to the food court, and Bucky grins at the satisfaction on Tony’s face when he finally gets to have his pancakes. His moan at the first bite is almost obscene, and his eyes flutter shut in bliss.

“Should I leave you two alone?” Bucky jokes, sipping on his orange juice. “I feel like I’m intruding on a private moment.”

“Remember that thing Steve was doing to you last night with his tongue? I guarantee this is better than that,” Tony says, and Bucky almost chokes on his juice. He glances around them, but no one seems to overheard the comment.

“I don’t know, you weren’t on the receiving end of that, babe.”

“And you’ve never had a pregnancy craving satisfied before. Morgan and I are very happy over here.”

Bucky smiles at the use of the name they recently decided on. Between the three of them, it felt like they might never find one they were all happy with. Every time two of them agreed, the third would inevitably hate it and exercise their veto power, which might have been the worst idea in history. Morgan was the first that no one hated, and when Steve put his hands on Tony’s baby bump and said the name, her enthusiastic kick ended any further debate.

The topic of the last name has been avoided completely so far, but Steve and Bucky already privately agreed that they want her to have Tony’s alone, no matter which one of them ends up being the biological father.

“We should look at stuff for the nursery while we’re here,” Bucky suggests.

So far, the room only has the staple pieces of furniture: a crib, changing table, and an antique rocking chair for the corner. The walls are a pale shade of gray, and Steve is working on painting pastel flowers onto them.

Tony nods, swallowing his large mouthful before saying, “She needs one of those giant stuffed bear things.”

Bucky raises an eyebrow, “Did she tell you this herself?”

Tony laughs and flicks a piece of fruit at him, which Bucky manages to catch and pop into his mouth. “Yes, she did. She’ll be very upset if we go home without one.”

“Well, we can’t have that, now can we?”

Tony finishes the rest of his food, and Bucky takes care of clearing the trash and plates. Grabbing his hand, Tony drags him through the store until they reach the kids section, where he proceeds to practically coo at every cute thing. Bucky can’t blame him for it, though, because he’s feeling a little overwhelmed watching his pregnant omega hold a rattle shaped like a giraffe for their daughter.

Tony finds the giant bear he was talking about, and Bucky agrees immediately that it’s a necessity, even without Tony turning his wide, pleading eyes on him.

He picks it up, saying, “Steve is going to kill us when he sees that our house looks like an Ikea exploded in it.”

“He’ll kill you,” Tony corrects, smiling as he strokes his hand over the swell of his stomach. “I’m protected by Morgan.”

“Damn, you’re right,” Bucky says, but it doesn’t stop him from picking up the nightlight that’s shaped like a flower. “She needs this, too.”

Tony grins, “Absolutely she does.”

Bucky’s arms get piled full of baby items. Blankets, bibs, a bath towel with a hood, toys, and stuffed animals that he struggles to see over top of on the way to the register. Tony guides him with one hand on his elbow so he doesn’t trip over anything.

They end up filling three large blue bags, and Bucky carries all of them to the car, rejecting Tony’s offer of taking one of them. He loads them into the trunk, turning to see Tony’s smiling face when he closes it, and he can’t resist pulling him into a kiss right there in a parking lot.

When they break apart, he leans down and presses a kiss to the top of the bump. “Baby girl, you are going to be so incredibly spoiled,” he sighs.

“She’ll be happy,” Tony says, and his eyes are wet again.

Bucky nods, kissing the omega’s cheek and repeating, “She’ll be happy.”

#stb bingo #stuckony #winteriron #my writing #my fic #abo dynamics

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angelofthequeers · 6 years ago

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That Red Skirt

Disclaimer: I don’t own SPN.

Spawned from this thread. I already made a post for @some-angelic-flowers and @gabrielsbackbitches, but then I figured why not write them a fic? I also thought that @i-miss-balthazar might appreciate a tag as well!

Summary: When Jack realises on a shopping trip that he’s non-binary, leading to a confrontation with a stranger who can’t mind their own business, Dean starts to have a few realisations of his own. And his angel is there to save the day and provide answers and comfort as Dean ends up knee-deep in working out stuff he’s repressed to be John Winchester’s Perfect Son. Sam’s just a little shit but then, when isn’t he? At least the overgrown moose is accepting as well.

AO3 link here

It’s not that Dean’s ashamed exactly. Sure, he doesn’t go around telling people that he likes doing “womanly things”, as John called them whenever young Dean dared to bring them up. It’s clear as day to people who actually know him that he likes cooking and looking after his home and taking care of others – all “womanly things” according to John – but he doesn’t exactly like to parade it around.

At first, it was because John expected him to be the perfect son; “If I wanted a daughter then I would’ve had one,” had been his exact words on many an occasion, until Dean had learned to hide it all under layers of exaggerated manliness. That’s not to say that Dean’s not manly at all…just not to enough of a degree for John’s liking. Hell, probably not to enough of a degree for most men’s liking, judging by all the ‘guy humour’ he’s heard about women “belonging in the kitchen” and “taking care of the breadwinner”.

So he likes to indulge in taking care of people and his home without the need for violence. Sue him. He doesn’t think he’s too ashamed of it anymore, but he just doesn’t see any conversation to slide this information into, or just any people who he’d feel safe enough to tell. Sam and Cas wouldn’t give a fuck for sure – their appreciation of his cooking makes that blatantly clear, although he could do without Sam’s occasional comments about knowing how to do the perfect load of laundry despite having relied on laundromats all his life – but that still involves having a conversation about it. And if there’s one ‘manly’ thing that Dean’s good at, it’s avoiding talking about his feelings.

Actually, that’s probably more from years of trauma and childhood neglect. But whatever.

Dean has always thought that this inner conflict would come to a head in a bar somewhere. A finished case, a bit too much beer, he’d get hit on by some creepy asshole who thinks he’s “pretty” with his “princess lips” and “candy apple eyes” – because apparently even when he’s pushing forty, he’s still pretty enough to get hit on by creeps – and then drama would ensue when he says no. A homophobic slur here, an insinuation about being a girl there, finished with either a nice bar fight or storming off, then Sam’s following attempt at a conversation. According to Charlie years ago, it’s a popular trope in gay fanfiction and usually ends up in hot sex between the two guys, with a lesson about accepting yourself and blah blah whatever.

But no, Dean’s apparently too good for fanfiction tropes, because his moment of epiphany is still dramatic but much less macho manly bar fight. He’s out shopping with Jack one afternoon, since they’re in dire need of food supplies due to being down to a tablespoon of shitty instant coffee, a few slices of mouldy bread, a pack of nearly-expired bacon, and condiments that will probably only make that mouldy bread even worse. Thank god the hunters from the other world are gone now, out inhabiting the other Men of Letters chapter houses around the country so that they’ve got a web across the US. It might be horrible of Dean to feel this way but really, a home invasion was the last thing conducive to recovering from Michael’s possession.

So, anyway. He and Jack have filled the cart with food and are now preparing to brave the clothing department of Walmart, only because Dean had decided that it might be nice for Jack to have more than a few shirts and pairs of jeans for himself. He makes a beeline for the men’s jeans and picks out the first pair he finds in Jack’s size.

“Simple but decent when it comes to hunting,” Dean says, turning to show Jack. “About as tough as you can get for this price – the fuck did you go, kid?”

Jack’s nowhere to be found. Heart starting to race, Dean dumps the jeans and heads off in search of the human naphil, because Cas is going to have his ass for days if he loses their kid. He’s still not adjusted to being with Cas, especially with a kid between them (and between Sam too, but he’s firmly not involved in this Dean and Cas equation), but apparently letting a homicidal archangel possess you while the love of your life pleads for you to not make such a dumbass move is catalyst enough to really get things rolling.

In any case, he knows for sure that he’s going to be in the shithouse if he loses Jack, so he navigates the clothing department with all the grace of a giant tortoise whose shell is made of fraud-funded food. Jack’s nowhere in the men’s department, so Dean checks the kid’s department in case he’s started having a ‘one-year-old in the body of a twenty-year-old’ crisis, but he’s not there either.

“Dean!”

Dean whirls at the sound of Jack’s voice calling his name. He locates Jack in the women’s department, standing next to a rack of discount skirts, and he struggles on over.

“They’re so pretty!” Jack says in awe, running his hand over a white, flowy skirt that looks to be about mid-thigh length.

“Don’t run off on me like that!” Dean snaps, mostly to avoid having to crush the light in Jack’s eyes as he pulls out a long red split skirt to examine it. “Cas would fuckin’ kill me if I lost you. You know how much of a passive aggressive dick he can be.”

The lady at the rack nearby tuts, which Dean assumes is at his foul language. He shoots her a winning smile, but she just tuts again and looks away, so he shrugs and turns back to Jack.

“I’m sorry, Dean,” Jack says, his mouth drooping as he puts the red skirt back. “I didn’t mean to make you worry. I just went looking for stuff I’d like, and I found this section and – Dean, look at how pretty these skirts are!”

“They’re for chicks, Jack,” Dean says, painfully aware that Cas is probably going to kill him for instilling human gender roles in their son who’s pretty much a toddler with adult intelligence.

“But why?” Jack says and runs his hand over the white skirt again. “Why do humans insist on assigning gender to pieces of cloth?”

“Okay, for one, you’re human to everyone else, so you might wanna tone down on that alien talk,” Dean mutters. He shoots a look at the lady out of the corner of his eye, who’s so thoroughly invested in the table of T-shirts that it’s obvious she’s eavesdropping. “It…just is, okay? Guys wore skirts ages ago, now they don’t. Shit changes.”

This coming from the guy who likes to wear pink panties makes it incredibly hypocritical. He knows that. But there’s a difference between a sexy kink and just outright wearing women’s clothing every day, and Jack doesn’t seem to be getting it. Dean’s just going to conveniently ignore how the fact that he likes wearing panties is waving its hands to get his attention, like there’s a ground-breaking revelation to be had if he examines it further.

“I don’t understand,” Jack says. “If it’s comfortable then why not wear it?”

“Because you’re not a chick. You’re a guy.”

Jack just frowns as though these are foreign words. “But how do I know that I’m a guy?” he says. “I met someone when I was off training my powers who told me that when he was born, everyone assumed he was a girl because of his body, but he wasn’t a girl. How do I know that that’s not me?”

“Do you feel like you’re a girl?” Dean’s too sober right now. And he’s totally not equipped to handle a conversation like this. Cas is better suited, what with his utter disregard for human gender roles.

“I don’t know!” Jack clutches the skirt, no doubt to stave off the distress spreading across his face. “I like things that people call “womanly”. I like cooking with you and caring for other people just like you do. I like feeling pretty sometimes. I don’t like people thinking that I have to be tough and “manly” and not interact with my emotions just because I was born with a certain set of genitals.”

The woman nearby outright winces, so Dean turns to her with a fake smile plastered on his face.

“Is there a problem, ma’am?” he says. She dithers, like she’s torn between speaking her mind and admitting that she was eavesdropping on another person’s conversation.

“No,” she finally says.

“Good.” Dean turns back to Jack. “Look, kid, I can’t help you there.”

“But you like things that society designates as “womanly”,” Jack says. “Yet you’re comfortable in your masculinity.”

Dean sighs and draws Jack away from the nosy woman. Jack brings the white skirt with him, and Dean’s seriously thinking that he’s going to have to buy the damn thing just to shut Jack up.

“I just don’t understand,” Jack insists.

“Look, kid, I don’t either,” Dean says. “And any time I tried anything, my dad kicked my ass for it. I…don’t want that to happen to you.”

“I appreciate your concern, Dean,” Jack says with that soft little smile of his. “But you and Sam have taught me how to take care of myself. I might only be human now, but I’m sure I can handle negative opinions if I’m not hurting anyone. And I know that you wouldn’t “kick my ass for it”.”

For a moment, Dean sees himself in Jack; his younger self, so fresh and idealistic, unaware of just how horrible a place the world was. He’s got one vague memory from before Mary’s death of her painting his nails for him because he’d seen the bottle of blue polish and wanted to “look pretty like Mommy”, only to result in one of the worst fights between John and Mary about “turning their son gay” while Dean huddled in bed crying.

In that moment, he vows that Jack will never know that pain. He’s never going to be that parent that forces a tonne of bullshit on his kid because everyone else thinks he should. He’s already raising the one-year-old grown-up son of Satan in a hunter life with his angel boyfriend, so there’s literally nothing about this that’s normal in any way. No way is he going to squash that light in Jack’s eyes that John had squashed out of his.

“Fine, whatever,” Dean says. “Get the skirt if you want.”

Jack’s face lights up, and he throws his arms around Dean while thanking him over and over again. Dean pats him on the back, praying that the kid doesn’t suffocate him to death, and thankfully he’s given back control of his lungs after just a few more moments.

“Tsk.” It’s so quiet and barely there, but Dean’s trained ears pick up the reproach from the woman who totally hadn’t started inspecting the next table over just to stay within hearing range.

“You know, it’s rude to listen in on conversations you’re not part of,” Dean says with the most passive aggressive smile he can muster.

“And it’s wrong how you’re raising that son of yours,” the woman retorts. “Especially with your…boyfriend.”

Ah, so she’s one of those ones. Dean’s fake smile just widens. “Well, I don’t see it as any of your business, sweetheart.”

“You’re sending your child to Hell by encouraging him to live in sin!” the woman says. “How can you say it’s not any of my business when I’m concerned for the poor thing?”

“Dean and Cas have always taught me that I’ll never go to Hell if I’m a good person,” Jack says straight to the woman’s face. Ah, Dean’s so proud. “And I don’t see how wanting to wear a skirt makes me a bad person.”

“You gay and transgender people are wrong in the eyes of the Lord,” the woman says. Jack frowns.

“God doesn’t care about that.”

“Just back up,” Dean says. “You can’t argue with crazies like her.”

“She’s insulting you and Cas,” Jack says. “And me. I can’t just let her hate other people when she’s wrong!”

“You’ll never be able to prove it to her,” Dean says. “Trust me, kid, you could have God himself pop in and tell her she’s wrong and she’ll still insist that she’s right and he’s just “pandering” or whatever. They don’t actually give a shit about God. They just use that bullshit so they can act like they got a real reason to hate others rather than having to admit that they’re just assholes.”

“You people sicken me,” the woman spits.

“At least we’re here minding our own business and not going around scaring people into believing our fairy tale,” Dean says. He marches over to the skirt rack and, looking the woman straight in the eye, grabs the red skirt that Jack had also been eyeing. “And you know what? My son can have all the skirts he wants. Hell, I’ll even paint his nails for him. ‘Cause I wasn’t allowed to be pretty as a kid, so Jack’s gonna be the prettiest fuckin’ guy around. You capiche?”

The woman looks like Dean had whipped his dick out and started pissing right in front of her, but Jack looks like Dean had personally hung the stars just for him. Dean drapes the skirt in the cart and nudges Jack.

“C’mon, kid. You still need some good, strong clothes for hu – uh, work.” He wheels their cart back to the men’s section, leaving the woman stewing and Jack bounding along beside him, and he feels in his bones that he’s made the right decision as a parent.

***

For the next few weeks, Dean can’t shake off Jack’s words from their shopping trip. Every time he cooks, he finds himself examining his actions under a microscope, dissecting how much he enjoys cooking for his family and exactly how he feels about it. He does the same thing when tidying the bunker, even going so far as to dust the top of the bookshelves and use some new, tropical-scented shit in their laundry that quickly earns Sam’s seal of approval. And fussing over Sam after the guy had been stabbed by a rabid vampire on their hunt has him spaced out for the rest of the night as he reflects on just how much he mother-hens his brother.

It doesn’t take long for Cas to notice. But then, Cas always notices. However, he doesn’t bring it up until about a month after the Shopping Trip, as the incident has now been dubbed.

“What’s wrong, Dean?” Cas’ voice is thick with the sleep he doesn’t need but enjoys when he can cuddle with Dean all night. “You’ve been quiet for weeks now.”

Dean doesn’t say anything at first, instead running his fingers down Cas’ bare chest and stomach and feeling the muscles spasm under his touch. He can’t help but marvel that, for all his holy angelness, Cas is still so incredibly human in many ways, the biggest way being how he chose to willingly tie himself to a human in the way he’s with Dean.

“Is it about Jack’s skirts?” Cas says into the silence. “You’ve been quiet since then. But I think you were fantastic to buy him those skirts. I can’t remember the last time I’ve seen him so happy than when he came to show me how they look on him. The red skirt especially suits him.”

“How do I know that I’m a dude if I like chick things?” The question comes out so softly that human ears would have missed it. But Cas doesn’t have human ears.

“Is it really that important that you know?” Cas says. He sighs and shakes his head. “My apologies. That was insensitive of me to say. I just don’t understand humans and their insistence on assigning themselves boxes and roles based on physical characteristics.”

“Look, I know you can like some chick things and still be a dude,” Dean says. “Just like I know chicks who are into cars and other “guy shit” and they’re still girls. But…I dunno. It feels like I’m missing something when I say that.”

“How so?” Cas says.

“Just…somethin’ Jack said about how you know you’re one or the other.”

“It’s not necessarily that simple, Dean. There’s so much more than just one or the other.”

Okay, that makes Dean blink. He’s had some vague knowledge that this exists – how could he not, when assholes everywhere are raising up a stink about “snowflakes” or whatever - but to actually have an angel of the Lord tell him that there’s more than just guy and girl makes his head spin.

“This may not be of any help, since I’m an angel,” Cas says, “but I’m not a man. You see me as such, since my body appears that way, and I’m utterly indifferent to what people call me so my pronouns don’t bother me. I’m not a woman either. I don’t even know if I am anything.”

“That’s literally no help at all,” Dean says. “Thanks, you just confused me more.”

“Eat me,” Cas mutters. Dean snorts at that, because he can always count on Cas to unintentionally lighten the mood. “Talk to me, Dean. Walk me through your thoughts. I don’t know exactly what to say right now.”

“My thoughts are a fuckin’ mess,” Dean says. “Mostly ‘cause this is shit I’ve been shutting down since I was a kid ‘cause you know Dad would kick my ass if I tried. I remember when I was four and my mom painted my nails ‘cause I wanted to be pretty and Dad pitched a huge fit.”

“You were a child,” Cas says. “Children have no concept of gender roles until they’re taught, whether directly or through emulation.”

“I like a lot of “chick” stuff,” Dean says, tightening his hold on Cas like the angel can protect him from his inner crisis. “I like cooking. And I get that a lotta famous chefs are guys but…this is different. It feels more...domestic. I like keeping the bunker tidy ‘cause…it’s home, y’know? I’ve never…had a home before Baby. I just…like things to be nice. I like looking after others. I like listening to Taylor Swift and I’m kinda getting into Ariana Grande.”

The words are spilling out of him like an avalanche as he bares his soul for the first time ever to possibly the only person who would never judge him. As much as he loves Sam, his little brother’s also grown up under the reign of John Winchester, and Sam might be a softer and more emotional guy but he’s still got a lot of shit of his own.

“Sometimes I get sick of bein’ tough and strong and manly,” Dean babbles, burying his face in the crook of Cas’ neck as the deep stuff starts to uncontrollably emerge from years of lock and key. His eyes begin to sting and his lungs are working overtime at this point, but the fingers that start to card through his hair provide a point of sensation that successfully helps keep it under control. “Sometimes I…I wanna be pretty. Like Jack does. I don’t wanna wear a skirt or anything but…I wanna be that four-year-old kid who wanted to wear nail polish like his mom and dress up with her and try to wear her heels but trip and fall flat on his face while she laughs. I wanna be that guy who knows how to braid his younger brother’s hair ‘cause he won’t get a fuckin’ haircut. I wanna wear those flower crowns that Jack makes without feeling like I’m a sissy or somethin’.”

Cas hums, still stroking Dean’s hair. “You can still be a man and enjoy those things.”

“That’s the thing,” Dean says rather bitterly. “That doesn’t feel totally right either. Like…I don’t feel like bein’ a guy fits if I do that stuff. Like if I let myself enjoy that stuff then…not that I don’t deserve to be a guy, but more like…” He fumbles for the right words, wishing he could just let out a long groan and have Cas understand from that, because that’s really the best way he can describe himself. “More like calling myself a guy doesn’t fully describe myself ‘cause…I’m kinda not. But I ain’t a chick either and it feels wrong calling myself that too. If that makes sense?”

“It does,” Cas says and kisses the top of Dean’s head. “I think an appropriate allegory in this case would be nationality. You humans have assigned a label to each other based on where you were born, and you act in different ways according to this label that you were forcibly given. And I’ve noticed how if someone moves to another country, they often face derision for not having been born there like everyone else, especially if they don’t look like the majority or their culture drastically differs from the place to which they move.”

That makes sense. How many times has Dean heard jokes about American stereotypes? Or shitty comments about people based purely on ideas that other people have about where they were born and lived?

“Nationality isn’t anything tangible. It’s more of a feeling and a mutual culture based on shared experiences. And there aren’t just two nationalities or two experiences. There are so many more; some are similar to each other and some are totally different.”

“Nice soapbox,” Dean quips to hide how his head is spinning at this wealth of information. Does that mean that he can just…be neither? That he can let himself be pretty when he wants to while also being the cool tough guy he usually is, and…he can still be Dean? He doesn’t have to be a guy or a girl?

“It’s a very individual experience,” Cas says. “Mine is completely different to yours or Jack’s. That’s why it’s difficult for me to really find the right words for you.”

“Blame Jack,” Dean says. “He’s too pure for his own good. He’s corrupted me.”

“Dean,” Cas chastises. “Don’t talk about our son like that or I won’t sleep with you for a week.”

“You won’t last a week without my dick but sure,” Dean retorts. “So, like…do I have to call myself something since I’m not either? Tell the whole world? Start wearing spandex and dye my hair blue or something?” He looks up just in time to catch the biggest eyeroll Cas has ever given him, so he snickers and nips at Cas’ throat. He refrains from marking Cas up, knowing that if he does then Cas’ animalistic side will come out and he’ll get dicked six ways to Sunday. And while he normally wouldn’t ever turn down some good, hot sex with Cas, he’s also in the middle of an important conversation for which he wants a resolution.

Okay, wow, he’s been talking to Sam too much if he’s choosing a conversation about his feelings over hot angel sex. But it’s worth it, considering that he can feel the chains of another layer of John Winchester’s Perfect Son loosening from around him.

“You don’t “have” to do anything,” Cas says. “You’re still the same Dean Winchester I fell in love with.”

“Hey, whoa, whoa, don’t you dare bring that word up,” Dean protests, but he feels about ten times lighter with Cas’ affirmation that he doesn’t have to do anything different and can just keep doing his own thing while knowing this new thing about himself.

“Oh, shut up, Dean.” Cas immediately contradicts his annoyed tone by kissing Dean’s head again, so Dean decides to lean up and catch Cas’ lips in a proper kiss. Cas hums and cups Dean’s face and their kiss is slow and deep, with small nips and tongues swiping across mouths without dipping inside.

“No but seriously, is there a word for it?” Dean says breathlessly when they separate. “That bitch at Walmart said “transgender” but I don’t feel like that’s me. Others like me might but…not me. I’m still cool with this totally hot body and with people thinking I’m a guy just to make shit easier on everyone, ‘cause I at least know I’m…not.” It feels weird as fuck to say that out loud but also oh so freeing.

“Some might call you egotistical,” Cas mumbles. “It would be totally valid of you to call yourself that if you want, but I understand why you feel it doesn’t apply to you. I’ve heard the term non-binary before, when I was at a homeless shelter as a human and I met someone who referred to themselves as such. After I confronted a bigot and said that I’m utterly indifferent to my own gender, the other person confided in me and non-binary was the term they used. You could try that and research further from there.”

“But…I don’t have to if I don’t want to?” Dean says. Don’t get him wrong, having an actual word that encapsulates him is just…wow. Holy shit. He’s real, he’s allowed to exist, and there are others who are not only like him but also open enough about their identities that other people can find this information and realise shit about themselves too. But he’s literally only just started coming to terms with shit he’s locked deep for the past few decades, so he’s not yet sure if he’s ready to start labelling himself and being so open about it until he’s had more time to work through it.

“Of course not,” Cas says. “You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do. Just because Jack feels comfortable enough to wear skirts doesn’t mean that you ever have to as well. I told you, it’s highly individual.”

“Jack’s non-binary too?” Dean says. “I mean, I ain’t surprised, but…”

“We had a conversation. He told me that you said he should come to me, since you weren’t equipped to talk about it. He also said that he didn’t mind if I told you and Sam, so I won’t ever tell anyone else about you unless you allow me to do so. That would be rude and horrible and downright violent if the wrong person learned that when you didn’t want them to.”

Okay, that’s another weight off Dean’s shoulders. “Like tellin’ others that I’m bi, right? It’s for me to tell.”

“Precisely. And I’m very proud that you felt comfortable enough to tell Sam, Jack, and Mary.”

“I had a crisis back in Purgatory when I was lookin' for you.” Dean kisses Cas’ shoulder and snuggles under his chin. “Then I had years after that to deal with it and work through Dad’s shit. But this is just…new. I think I need a bit more time.”

“You have all the time in the world, Dean.”

They lapse into a comfortable silence, and Dean starts to doze off at the feel of Cas stroking his hair despite having only woken up half an hour ago. But then something occurs to him, and it sets a cold pit of anxiety off in his stomach at the thought of voicing it out loud but…he also kind of wants to say it, if he’s still digging shit up from deep. And Cas won’t judge. This is the same guy who approves of their son wearing skirts.

“Cas?” Dean says. Cas hums in acknowledgement. “I…I just…shit, this is embarrassing.”

“If you don’t want to tell me, you don’t have to,” Cas says.

“No, I do wanna tell you. I just…bear with me, okay?” Dean pushes himself up into a sitting position so that he can look Cas right in the eye, and what he sees there helps loosen his shoulders ever so slightly. He takes a deep breath and blurts out, “Ilikewearingpanties.”

“Pardon?” Cas’ forehead creases.

“I. Like. Wearing Panties. This one chick, Rhonda Hurley…she made me wear them once. And I liked it. But that’s not even…look, it wouldn’t be so bad if it was just a kink, ‘cause loads of dudes – normal dudes – they like wearing women’s underwear too. But only during sex, ‘cause that can be hot.”

“You’re not abnormal for not being a “normal man”,” Cas says. “I know there’s a term to refer to people who aren’t transgender, but I can’t quite recall it.”

“That’s not the point,” Dean says. “I just…nail polish and feeling pretty are one thing, okay? But actually liking pretty, lacy underwear outside of sex, where nearly anything goes…Jesus, Cas, if anything was gonna make me suspect I’m not fully a guy, that’s it. I even…” His voice drops to a whisper as he confesses something to Cas for which John would have probably broken his ribs. “I even like the thought of wearing a bra. Not ‘cause I need it, but ‘cause I wanna see if it’d make me look nice. And not “goddamn Dean you look so sexy and I wanna fuck you in those girly clothes” nice like other guys would think but…y’know, “Dean you look so soft and happy” nice.” His shoulders slump, and he looks down at his fidgeting fingers. “I just wanna be not-tough for once. I just wanna be pretty without feeling ashamed or like I’m a girl when I’m not. Or that I have to be more like a guy when I'm not exactly that either.”

“I’m not sure I see how women’s lingerie is much more of a deal breaker than other feminine things,” Cas says. “And although I understand why you do so, I wish you wouldn’t attach such shame to it.”

“Yeah, why do you think I felt okay telling you?” Dean mutters. Cas’ eyes crinkle and, with a small smile, he sits up so that he can lean in and kiss Dean softly.

“I’m honoured that you trust me enough to confide in me, even if I don’t understand your social taboos.”

“Again, why d’you think I told you? Sam wouldn’t make fun of me but…he’s also human. He also grew up in this shithole society. He wouldn’t get it like you do.”

Cas’ eyes soften even more, and he gives Dean another kiss. “Maybe you could wear some of this clothing in a non-sexual situation with just the two of us,” he says. “No one else. Or if you would feel more comfortable without me, you could do it yourself.”

“Trust me, dude, I’d be a tonne comfier with you there so I don’t end up spiralling and shit,” Dean says with a dark little laugh. “Just ‘cause I realised all this shit now doesn’t mean I’m cool with it or anything.”

“Like I said, you have plenty of time. Use however much of it you need to become more comfortable with yourself. And you’ll always have my support, Dean. And Sam, Jack, and Mary’s, when you feel that you can tell them.”

A wide smile of relief splits Dean’s face and he pushes Cas to lie back down, then drapes himself on top of the angel. “You’re the best, man. You’re a literal angel.”

“I know. I have the halo to prove it,” Cas deadpans. The fact that Cas has finally grasped things like sarcasm after years of fraternising with humans is possibly the funniest thing Dean’s encountered all day, and it takes a humongous effort to just snicker rather than descend into a fit of laughter.

“I’ve changed my mind,” he says, pushing Cas’ chin back to start kissing down his throat. “You’re the biggest asshole around.”

“You –” Cas cuts himself off with a hiss when Dean nips at the skin over his pulse point, sucking to ensure that he leaves a dark bruise behind. “Dean, you know this – that this erodes my self-control –”

Dean gives him a shit-eating grin. “Good.” He bites again, only to blink as the world around him shifts and blurs when Cas grabs him by the hips and bodily throws him back on the bed, then straddles his hips, blue eyes blown black.

“If one thing about you never changes, it’s how infuriating you are,” Cas growls.

“Yeah, but you like me anyway,” Dean says, grin widening. Cas rolls his eyes.

“Sometimes, I wonder why.”

“Hey.” Dean runs his fingers down Cas’s stomach and dips a finger below the waistband of his white boxers. “Less talking, more kissing.”

***

“Dean, you look like you’re gonna puke,” Sam says when Dean corners him after breakfast the next day. “What’s wrong?”

Dean swallows, takes a deep breath, then decides to just go for it. He doesn’t want to have to spend ages hiding something like this from his brother when he can have another person supporting him, especially after everything he and Sam have been through. “I’m not a guy, okay?”

“Uh…what?” Sam frowns. “You’re…uh, wow, that is big. Are you –”

“I’m not a girl either,” Dean rushes to say. “I’m…neither. And kinda both. But mostly just neither. Cas calls it non-binary but I dunno what to call myself yet. If I even wanna call myself anything at all.”

“Huh,” Sam says. “You know, I always knew you were bi, but I never even suspected you weren’t cis.”

“Cis?”

“Not trans.”

“Oh, is that what it’s called? Cas couldn’t remember.” Dean blinks and points at Sam. “Wait, you know about this shit?”

“Of course I do,” Sam says. “The internet exists. And I thought I might not be a cis guy at one point, so I went researching, but I’m pretty sure I am. I did learn a lot, though. I know I don’t really care about gender when I’m into someone, but I have to be close to them to like them like that. That's why I'm so close to everyone I sleep with or get together with. I just never told you because you had your own stuff to deal with.”

“Fuckin’ nerd,” Dean mutters. Sam doesn’t even bitchface him this time, so Dean’s expecting some speech about how happy he is that Dean trusts him enough to confide him and whatever.

“Does that mean you’ll finally braid my hair for me?” Sam says with a smile so innocent that it’s dripping with guilt. Dean rolls his eyes and flips his brother off, then promptly regrets it when the moose turns all touchy-feely and pulls him into a hug.

“Fuck off, bitch,” Dean says into Sam’s plaid shirt.

“In your dreams, jerk.”

#supernatural #destiel #jack is cas and dean's son #dean winchester #castiel #sam winchester #jack kline #bisexual dean winchester #non-binary dean winchester #non-binary jack kline #demisexual sam winchester #john winchester's a+ parenting #season 14 spoilers #supportive castiel #supportive sam

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qqueenofhades · 7 years ago

Text

the tangled web of fate we weave: vi

shh, this is very therapeutic.

part v/AO3.

Lucy gets through the next several weeks mostly on autopilot. There’s spring break in there somewhere, but she doesn’t really notice, since she spends it working anyway. Her dissertation is inching toward the final finish line, though she still has to write a conclusion, put together her bibliography (which will be an absolutely torturous process of going through the whole thing and copy-pasting every footnote – why hasn’t someone invented a better way to do this yet?) and add her acknowledgments: places she went for trips, foundations who gave her scholarship money, people she’s collaborated with, that kind of thing. Most of it is straightforward, but when Lucy gets to the personal section, where people thank their parents, significant others, grade school teachers, supervisors, etc., she stares at the screen until it goes out of focus. Ordinarily she’d write, Thanks for everything, Mom and Dad, no problem at all, but how can she do that now? Thanks for everything, Mom and Henry Wallace, except for never telling me who my biological father was? Thanks for everything, Mom, but Benjamin Cahill, why?

Lucy leaves that part undone, just adds Amy for now, and finally pushes back her chair and lets out a hoarse war cry of victory, punching the air with both fists and startling the nearby students. She emails it to her supervisor, Dr. Kate Underwood, with the triumphant subject line FIRST COMPLETE DRAFT!!!!, then cleans out her carrel with something probably akin to what a new mother feels, when they finally hand her the baby after the sweat and strife of labor. Not that Lucy’s interested in kids, at least for a while, but still.

She sleeps like the dead for the entire weekend (her neighbors are actually still being quiet, and she certainly isn’t going to tell them that she’s probably never going to see Flynn again) then gets up and goes off to her final review meeting with Dr. Underwood on Monday. Most of the changes she suggests are small, though there’s one part of the last chapter that she pushes Lucy to do a little more with. Nothing outside her usual corrections, but since that was the chapter Lucy was dramatically interrupted from writing with the Weekend of Total Insanity, it triggers something in her. In one of the more embarrassing moments of her life, she bursts into tears in Dr. Underwood’s sunny office, as her supervisor looks bewildered, gingerly hands her Kleenex, and finally asks if everything is all right.

Lucy figures that last-minute nervous breakdowns are far from uncommon for PhD students just about to submit, and there’s a ready-made way to play this off as just that, which she more or less does. There are student counseling services that she could probably make an appointment with, though they’re busy enough at crunch time that it would be another few weeks until anyone saw her. And she just can’t picture sitting across from some graduate-student psychiatrist-in-training and actually making sense of this. Has the usual feeling that she doesn’t need to burden people with her first-world problems – “starving kids in Africa syndrome,” one of her friends called it. This is a little more than ordinary, perhaps, but still.

Having promised that she will have the changes in by next Monday, Lucy confirms the date for her oral examination, six weeks from now, and realizes that she has no idea what she will be doing for that time, aside from sleeping and bingeing on TV shows. Her work is done, she has class to finish teaching but only two days a week, and her schedule gapes perilously wide open. She isn’t good at sitting around and doing nothing; can manage maybe a week or two, then she starts feeling that she needs to be productive. Another gift from her mother. She never let Lucy just veg out during the summer as a kid. She had to be doing an extracurricular, or preparing for a AP exam, or off at Young Achievers Camp, which is exactly as nerdy as it sounds. She’s not sure she even knows how to rest.

Once Dr. Underwood has sent her off with advice to get some sleep and feel proud of her accomplishment, Lucy staggers out into the world beyond Stanford like Rip Van Winkle. It’s a nice day, warm and summery and almost difficult to remember that that whole ridiculous seventy-two hours ever happened, and she pauses. Then on a sudden impulse, she digs out her phone and scrolls through her contacts. Hits call, and waits.

Wyatt Logan picks up on the last ring, sounding slightly breathless. “Hello? Lucy?”

“Hi. I’m sorry, is it a bad time?”

“No, it’s fine. What’s up? Are you all right?”

“I. . . yeah, I am. I just. . . finished my dissertation, actually. And I thought if you were in San Francisco, maybe we could meet up and grab a coffee, or. . . or something?” Her heart flutters in her throat. “Just, you know, to catch up?”

There’s a slightly awkward pause. Then Wyatt says, “I’m, uh, I’m back in San Diego, I’m based out of Pendleton. And I promised my wife we’d go to the beach today, or whatever.”

“Your w – ” Lucy can feel her cheeks turning the color of a fire engine. “Oh my God, I didn’t – I really wasn’t – of course. No, no, of course. I’m sure you’ll have a great time.”

“Yeah.” Wyatt coughs. “Congratulations on finishing your dissertation, that’s an amazing accomplishment. Nothing else weird has happened recently?”

“Not that I’ve noticed. Maybe they’ve given it up.” Lucy knows this is too easy, but she wants to think so. Likewise, she both does and doesn’t want to ask. “Have you heard from Flynn?”

Wyatt hesitates. “No. I called back to the hospital a week later, they said they let him out, but I have no idea where he went. Probably off the grid. I would, if I was him. There’s an APB out, anyone who sees him is supposed to call it in. Whoever Rittenhouse is, they’re still very, very pissed.”

Lucy struggles to take this in. On the one hand, it’s good news, of a sort, that Flynn somewhat recovered and was released from the hospital, but was this because he was ready to roll again, or because he didn’t want to take the risk of lying there waiting for his enemies to show up? There are a nearly unlimited number of ways that they can kill him in a hospital and make it look like an accident, after all. If he is officially persona non grata for a lot of powerful and high-ranking people, and he’s hurt, that doesn’t sound like a good combination. Maybe he’s fled the country, gone up and crossed into British Columbia and hidden out somewhere in the Canadian Rockies. Lucy reminds herself that either way, she shouldn’t care. Whatever the hell his actual feelings on her might be, he made himself clear.

“Thanks,” she says, after a too-long pause. “Let me know if. . . well, whatever happens, all right?”

“Do my best. Congrats again on the dissertation.” Wyatt clears his throat. “Yeah.”

“Yeah,” Lucy echoes, cheeks still hot, and hangs up rather quickly. Well, that was a disaster. She should have known that the only guy she’s even attempted to ask out recently was unavailable, though there’s a cute-ish geek with glasses who smiles at her whenever he sees her in the coffee line. Lucy thinks his name is Alan. But not even for the principle of the thing can she really work up any desire for a closer approach. After a final moment, she fishes her keys out of her purse, heads to her car, and tries to decide if 280 or 101 will be more congested at this time of day. She ends up taking the latter, despite the unpleasant associations of recent escapades on it, up to Amy’s apartment in South San Francisco.

Lucy turns into the complex, parks, and heads up the steps to Amy’s place. She rents it with two of her friends, one of whom is named Sage Tranquility and the other of whom is usually getting arrested at protests. There’s plenty of room at the Preston house in Mountain View, it’s not like Amy had to move out, but she’s always butted heads with their mother far more than Lucy has. Said that she would rather live in a shitty apartment, away from Carol’s domineering and constant questioning about why she’s doing this sociology degree and wasting her potential, and build something that was hers. Lucy doesn’t know how much she should tell Amy, but she is the only person she feels like confiding to.

Amy opens the door a few moments after Lucy’s knock, her headphones around her neck still emitting the echoes of her music, but she pauses it at the sight of her sister. “Hey, you. What are you doing here? Aren’t you still working on your dissertation?”

“No, I just finished it. Just. Hey, are you doing anything right now?”

“No. Come in.” Amy frowns. “You don’t seem super jubilant, Luce.”

“I. . . have a lot on my mind.” Lucy blows out a breath. “I’d kind of like to talk.”

Amy agrees, gestures her in, and goes to fetch some cookies from the kitchen, before they got to the secondhand futon, Amy sits down, and beckons Lucy to put her head in her lap. “Okay,” she says. “So talk.”

As Amy gives her a head rub, which feels heavenly, Lucy closes her eyes, tries to find somewhere to start, and can’t think of any way to do this delicately. She teeters and stumbles at the edge, then finally comes clean about Flynn, about Rittenhouse, about Benjamin Cahill, about Wyatt, about everything. That it turns out they’re only half-sisters, that Carol has lied to them – to her – her entire life. That her real father is Corporate Darth Vader, and all of this. . . all of this. . . she’s slowly losing her mind, and has just squashed it down and put it away to concentrate on finishing. Now that’s done, and she’s. . . here.

Amy stays quiet as Lucy talks, until she finally chokes up and can’t finish. Then she grips Lucy’s shoulder hard and says fiercely, “We’re sisters, all right? We’re sisters. I don’t care what Mom did or did not tell you, it doesn’t change anything. We’re just the same as we’ve always been, and nothing is ever going to take that away from us.”

“Thanks.” Lucy’s voice remains stuck in her throat. “I just. . . this has been a lot.”

“Shyeah.” Amy reaches over her for a cookie, breaks off a bite, and dangles it above Lucy’s mouth like a zookeeper feeding the seals. Lucy manages a weak laugh and snaps it up, as a sigh shudders through her from head to heel. They remain in silence for several more moments, until Amy says, “So, this Flynn guy. You have feelings of some kind for him, but he’s a complete emotional disaster, not to mention possibly on the run from the feds for God knows what or where or why. Accurate?”

“I don’t – ” Lucy opens and shuts her mouth. “I wouldn’t say I have feelings feelings for him, he’s – I don’t really – ”

Amy raises one eyebrow. “Now who’s being the emotional disaster?”

Lucy feels as if this is rather unfair – she’s here sharing her problems and trying to work through them like a grownup, even if, yes, she did repress them for several weeks beforehand and hope they would go away. “I’m not the one who set my phone passcode as the day he saved my life, then told me not to fool myself that he wanted to see me again and basically vanished off the face of the earth!”

“Fair.” Amy considers this. “But you do feel something.”

“He saved my life. Twice. He did endanger it the second time, but. . .” Lucy stops. “Maybe there was something between us, or I believed a little too hard in fate or design or whatever. I could have been imagining it, but. . .”

“But you don’t think you were,” Amy completes. “He just blew it. Super hard. Complete buffoonery.”

Lucy snorts. “Remind me why I bother with men again?”

“You could always date another lady,” Amy points out. “I liked Carine.”

Strictly speaking, this is true, and does have a certain appeal after the recent overabundance of testosterone in Lucy’s life. But she dated Carine Leclerc, a journalism student from Montreal, for eight months in her senior year, and while Carine was making noises about looking for jobs in California after she graduated, it stalled over the fact that Lucy never got around to introducing her to Carol. It wasn’t exactly a secret – Amy knew, her friends knew, they went to a pride parade, there were pictures – but Lucy never talked about it directly with her mom. It wasn’t the queer thing, exactly. Just that whenever Carol discussed Lucy’s future, it always seemed to involve a husband and kids. Not because of any awe or reverence for the patriarchy – Carol gave both her daughters her own surname, rather than, apparently, either of their fathers’, and was a women’s studies professor for many years – but, well. It just did. And while you can obviously have a family by non-traditional methods – adoption, fostering, surrogacy, whatever – Lucy somehow didn’t get the impression that was what her mom had in mind. The kids just seem to be part of it. It’s why, although she’s not really had any enthusiasm for the idea now, she’s subconsciously penciled it in for five or eight years in the future, once she’s presumably met Mr. Right. Lucy has all kinds of arguments with herself over whether that makes her a bad feminist. But because it’s what her mom wants –

“Oh, God,” Lucy says hoarsely. She raises both hands to her face, then drops them. “You’re right. I really have let Mom dictate my life, haven’t I?”

The expression on Amy’s face clearly says, no duh, although she charitably refrains from uttering it aloud. Instead she says, “I still think you should have followed through on that band thing. At least it would have shown her that you can stand up to her.”

“I – no, that was definitely a bad idea, I’m glad I didn’t.” Lucy is still Lucy, and thus cannot believe that she ever treated the prospect of her education so frivolously. “But maybe if I went over there now and confronted her about Cahill – ”

“You’re sure that’s a good idea?”

“What? You’re always the one telling me to push back against her more!”

“Yeah, I know.” Amy chews on a thumbnail. “But this is more than about just that, isn’t it? From what you said about Cahill, it sounds like he’s mixed up in some pretty skeevy shit. I give Mom a hard time a lot, but maybe she did have a good reason for separating us from all that. Are you sure you want to know?”

“If they come back, I should at least know the truth.” Lucy rubs at her tired eyes with her fingertips. “I’d like to think they just gave up, but I’m not sure. Maybe if I tell her that I know, it might help clear the air.”

Amy gives her a probing look. “And are you going to tell her about Flynn?”

That catches Lucy short. She wants to say that she will, that if she’s demanding or even requesting honesty from her mother, she should be prepared to return the favor. But something – she doesn’t even know what, not quite what it was with Carine – gives her pause. “Why would I?” she says feebly. “It’s not like anything actually happened.”

“Aside from him turning up and you two going on a three-day joyride that ended with him getting shot and telling you to go piss up a rope.” Amy’s tone is more or less lighthearted, but her expression is serious. “That’s definitely something that happened.”

Lucy opens her mouth, then shuts it. She reaches for the last cookie and eats it, partly to give herself an excuse not to talk, then brushes off the crumbs and gets to her feet. “Well, if I am heading over there today, I should get going before the traffic gets too bad. I should at least tell her that I finished.”

“Because you’re hoping she’ll finally tell you that she’s proud of you?” Amy glances up at her. “You know you did a good job even if she can’t choke it out, right?”

“Of course I know.” Lucy manages a smile, picking up her purse. “See you later, Ames.”

Her baby sister hugs her, not without a final look, and Lucy lets herself out, heading to the parking lot and getting into her car. She drives down to the Preston family home in Mountain View, the attractive four-bedroom ranch house on an affluent, leafy street where Lucy grew up. Worth a tidy chunk of change if Carol decided to downsize, since it’s currently just her living there, but she has held onto it. Not good at letting go of things, Carol Preston. It is only in the last few days that Lucy has realized just how much, and it saddens her.

A light is on in the kitchen as Lucy parks by the curb and gets out. She heads up the front steps, noting that the plants could use some watering; it’s not like her mother to let things droop, or look anything less than perfect, daughters or azaleas alike. This is her house as much as anyone’s, and yet Lucy stands there for a long moment, feeling as unwelcome as a door-to-door salesman or friendly local Jehovah’s Witness. It feels as if she finally got here the way she was intending to do seven years ago – before the accident, before nearly dying, before Flynn, before Flynn’s reappearance, before Benjamin Cahill and Rittenhouse, before everything that’s brought her back. She tries to rehearse words in her head, questions, justifications. Nothing really occurs to her.

Lucy swallows hard, and rings the bell.

It takes a bit before she hears footsteps, and then Carol Preston opens the door. She looks down at her eldest daughter in surprise, or perhaps confusion. Something about her seems as off, less than pristine, as the drying flowers, and her makeup is slightly smeared, though Lucy can’t imagine her mother actually crying. “Lucy,” Carol says. “I haven’t seen you in a while.”

“I’ve been finishing my dissertation.” Lucy twists her fingers together anxiously. “I – I did finish, by the way. Just today. Dr. Underwood gave me her final changes, Dr. Gardener in anthropology still has to look it over as well, but he’s at a conference until Friday, so that will take a little longer. But – yeah, it’s done, I did it.”

“I see.” Carol considers, then steps back. “I think we should talk. Come in.”

Lucy follows her mother inside, wondering if Carol’s guessed somehow, if Cahill came by to creep on her as well or ask why she never told Lucy the truth, and feels absurdly guilty for causing more trouble. She almost starts to apologize, though with no idea what for, and a tiny, ridiculous part of her half-hopes that Flynn will be sitting in the kitchen, somewhat recovered if doubtless no more tactful, come by to ask Carol what she knows about Rittenhouse. Which seems like a bold move, given that he’s a wanted fugitive from the government, but reality doesn’t have much to do with Lucy’s thought process just now.

Nonetheless, it comes crashing back in in a cold, sobering wave when they step ins. There’s a piece of paper lying on the counter, and Lucy can’t see the wording, but it looks clinical. Hospital. Carol turns it over as Lucy tries to get a better look, then says, “Tea?”

“No, it’s all right, I was just over at – ” Lucy stops. “Mom, is… is everything…?”

“I went to get that cough checked out, like you wanted,” Carol says, after a slight pause. “And, well, the scan turned something up in one of my lungs. They’re going to run more tests, they can’t be sure, but there’s a possibility it’s malignant.”

She says this like the professor she’s been for thirty years, explaining a difficult fact with her usual classroom voice, and so it takes Lucy a moment to understand. Then she does, and it feels as if the world has gone out from under her feet. “M… malignant? As in cancer?”

“Yes.” Carol takes a deep breath. “I suppose it’s not entirely unexpected – your father was a heavy smoker, after all, and I never picked up the habit until I met him. I stopped when he died, of course, but if this does come back positive…”

Part of Lucy wants to inform Carol point-blank that she knows Henry Wallace isn’t her father and never was. The rest of her wonders how awful you have to be, to confront your mother about that when she’s just told you that she might have cancer. “I – I, I’m so sorry,” she stammers, once more as if this is her fault, has not gotten the right score on a test or has whined about never having summers off. “Mom, I’m sure it’s fine, but if – ”

“But if it’s not?” Carol looks at her levelly. “I know we’ve had a bit of distance recently, Lucy, but this is the sort of news to put things in perspective. Of course, there’s medicine, there’s chemotherapy, there’s options. We don’t know anything yet. But if the worst-case scenario does come to pass, I really want to make the most of whatever time I have with you. There’s still so much I need to teach you, to talk with you about.”

Yes, Lucy thinks, there is. But any urgent desire to force answers to all her questions has vanished in her flood of guilt and fear and concern. “Of course, Mom, of course. If there’s anything I can do – and I’m sure Amy too, we’d both be happy to – ”

“I’m not sure about Amy.” Carol sighs. “But if you have finished your dissertation, like you said, and therefore don’t need to be at campus every day… I’ve seen that apartment of yours, Lucy. It’s terrible. Is there any way you might consider moving back in? We would be closer here, we’d be together. It would be easier, and if I did get sick…”

“No, of course. Of course I’ll move back in. Absolutely, you don’t have to worry about that at all. My lease on campus runs through the end of the school year, but – ”

“I’ll pay your early termination fees.” Carol takes Lucy’s hand. “I really want us to be together again. Believe me.”

“Me too,” Lucy says in a rush. “But – if the test did come back clean – if you’re not really… well.” She can’t bring herself to utter the name aloud, speak of the devil and he will appear. “If you’re not… sick, do you… will you still want me back?”

“Why on earth wouldn’t I?” Carol looks hurt. “Do you think I only love you when you’re useful? You are my daughter, my eldest daughter. So much like me, my historian. You’re so bright and you’ve worked so hard. Of course I want you back.”

Lucy opens and shuts her mouth, then reaches out, and Carol wraps her arms around her, pulling her close, as Lucy rests her chin on her mother’s shoulder and has to struggle to blink back tears. And so, within ten minutes of going home with the intention of some final confrontation, some ultimatum or insistence on separating herself from Carol’s trunk, Lucy instead cleaves back in, root and branch, and promises that she will never bring it up again.

There really isn’t time to arrange a move – even a short-range one – between the last-minute rush of dissertation edits, job applications, and graduation plans, and Lucy’s apartment has a few pitiful half-full boxes sitting around, which she will toss things into when she remembers. She feels like a terrible daughter, which is not helped when Amy calls her up at the end of the week and wants to know what happened to telling Mom off. “You know how she is, Lucy! Even if – God forbid – she was actually sick, doesn’t this seem a little…?”

“A little what?” Lucy challenges. “Are you really going to accuse our mother of faking possible lung cancer just because she wants – I don’t know what, something?”

“I didn’t say she was faking,” Amy says reluctantly. “I’ve been worried about her health too. But Mom has a couple nest eggs, you know she does. If it got to the point that she needed a live-in helper, she could hire someone who actually knew what they were doing and would get properly paid for it. That’s not your job. You’re not that kind of doctor.”

“I know.” Lucy shifts the phone to her other shoulder. “But – look, I know what we talked about, I know what we said. I just don’t think this is the right time to bring it up.”

Amy doesn’t argue with her again, but Lucy can sense that she still isn’t pleased. And yet, all of that goes out the window when Carol calls them both and says they should come by, there’s something she needs to tell them. That doesn’t sound like the kind of invitation that ends with “and nothing’s wrong, the doctor said I’m fine,” and indeed, it doesn’t. The biopsy results came back. It’s cancer. Carol’s prognosis isn’t terrible – they caught it before it was already irreversible – but it’s not particularly great either. The words fifty-fifty chance are used. A lot will depend on how she responds to treatment.

Amy starts to cry – she and Mom have fought a lot, but they do still love each other – and Lucy puts an arm around her, feeling numb. It feels crass to ask for any graduation celebration, even if she’d like one. Suddenly, even applying for jobs is up in the air. Lucy doesn’t want to complain about being inconvenienced by her mother’s serious illness, but she was so ready to start her own life, do something else, stretch her wings, and now she’s back in the birdcage, throwing away the key. It just doesn’t seem (and she winces at the thought) fair.

Lucy finishes the rest of the revisions recommended by her second supervisor in a blur. At the last meeting before this three-hundred-page monster is sent off to the committee for reading and to the printing service for binding, Dr. Underwood mentions that she’s been in contact with the history department at Kenyon College in Ohio. Kenyon is a small liberal arts college, upper-tier and avant-garde, and while it would unfortunately mean living in Ohio, there is currently an opening in the faculty for a junior lecturer with almost exactly Lucy’s research specialty. Dr. Underwood has passed her name on, and the people at Kenyon would like to speak to her next week, if that works.

Lucy’s first reaction is delight and disbelief. Tailor-made opportunities for academic jobs at places where you would like to work, and that are looking for your research interests, are as rare as the proverbial rain on the Sahara. She’s thought for a while that she’d like to teach at a small liberal arts school, one of the places that doesn’t think SAT scores are a good measure of academic performance and give a lot of focus to student development – somewhere in the Northeast, maybe. Sarah Lawrence, Vassar, Middlebury, Wellesley, something in that vein, the usual schools described as “diehard liberal” by U.S News and World Report in their college rankings. Stanford is obviously Stanford, but it takes a lot of work not to get lost in the machine, and plenty of students who come through Lucy’s classes now are clearly just checking elective boxes and playing on their laptops during lecture. At a place like Kenyon, she could actually talk to them more, have smaller and more immersive seminars, supervise senior projects and have more of a say in shaping the department. Have that exact chance to make it her own, rather than following in predestined footsteps.

At that, however, something catches Lucy short. She remembers Benjamin Cahill essentially promising her that he could get her any dream job she wanted, anywhere in the country. Is this Rittenhouse’s clever new strategy? Realize that the face-to-face approach backfired bombastically, and take a more subtle approach, pull some strings and call in some favors so this fat juicy worm just happened to land on the right hook? Would she move there and find herself surrounded by their people, or expected to pay something substantial back?

Asking Dr. Underwood about this, however, just makes Lucy sound crazy. She doesn’t mention anyone by name, but she delicately probes whether anyone just happened to call up and offer this, and if so, why. Dr. Underwood is puzzled, says that no, this has been in the works for a while and it just happened to time well with Lucy’s completion. Due to someone who knows Dr. Underwood, who supervised so-and-so’s thesis, etc. – not the creepy Rittenhouse networks of patronage, but just the usual byzantine channels of academia – Lucy currently holds right of first refusal on the job. If she turns it down, they’ll shop it more broadly, but assuming she doesn’t completely bomb the interview, buys some winter clothes, and is all right exchanging Palo Alto for Gambier, it’s hers if she wants it.

“I…” Lucy hesitates. “My… my mom was just… she was actually just diagnosed. With cancer. She wants me to move back in and spend more time with her. I don’t know if I could justify going to Ohio instead. That’s the exact opposite of what she wants.”

Dr. Underwood hastens to offer her sympathy, and appreciates that this is a difficult decision for Lucy to make. However, while she knows family commitments are important, ultimately Lucy needs to think about what she wants from her career and getting established and so on. If Lucy does decide to stay in California, there will probably be several teaching opportunities at Stanford for her, and she’ll submit papers to journals and attend conferences and the rest of the rigmarole that it takes to be a Professional Academic ™. It’s not necessarily the wrong thing to do. But Dr. Underwood thinks Lucy should consider the Kenyon job carefully. She knew Carol when they were both faculty in the department, knows what kind of personality she had, and maybe it’s not the worst thing for Lucy to go.

Lucy nods and smiles, even as she wants to go somewhere private, put her face in a pillow, and scream. At least the damn dissertation is done, exam date is firmly set, no more of that, no more, praise Jesus, NO MORE. She picks up her bag, swings it to her shoulder, and heads out of Dr. Underwood’s office, riding down the elevator and stepping out into the foyer. As she does, she collides with someone coming the other way, and starts into the usual apology. But as she does, she catches a glimpse of the face under the hat, and freezes. Reaches out to grab at his jacket sleeve, her voice a hiss.

“Flynn?”

Garcia Flynn has not been having the greatest week. Or two. Or three.

He stayed for six days in the hospital, being cared for by a doctor named Noah who was entirely professional to all outward manners and appearances, but who kept shooting him looks out of the corner of his eye that made Flynn suspect the worst. Either he’s a Rittenhouse agent, or he used to be some sort of gentleman acquaintance to Lucy, and Flynn would almost prefer the former. At least that way he could kill him without anyone being too upset about it.

Of course, and regretfully, killing is off the table, at least for the moment. At least for Flynn himself, as he’s fairly sure that Rittenhouse has authorized everything short of public beheading to apprehend him, and which was why he decided that he was no longer going to trust to the dubious safety of Santa Rosa Memorial and the judgment of Noah. . . whatever his damn last name is, Flynn hasn’t been arsed either to find out or remember it. So he checked himself out against medical advice, gave a fake name and address for the bill (the American health system is a racket anyway, and technically he’s supposed to have insurance – yes, the NSA does offer dental) and left the rental car in the garage. It’s too conspicuous, and he has bigger fish to fry than whether he is blacklisted by Enterprise in the future. They can take it up with John Thompkins, later.

After which, Flynn rode a Greyhound (yes, it’s as miserable as you’d think, especially when you’re six-foot-four) to some shithole Inland Empire city, somewhere in California close to the Nevada border where nobody goes if they can possibly avoid it, probably still riddled with decades-old radiation from the Las Vegas test site. Rented a room in some motel that definitely has one filled with haunted clown dolls, laid low, gingerly tended his raw wounds with over-the-counter antibiotics and sutures, and was forced to admit it was a good thing he did not die of septicemia. He hasn’t succeeded in coming up with a new plan just yet, as it’s clear that he’s been cut off from the usual channels with extreme prejudice. He has kept his old phone with the NSA numbers, but keeps it switched off and hasn’t used it. He can’t risk calling Karl to see what he did, or did not, know about the Wyatt Logan fiasco.

And so, Flynn grimly considers his options. He can try to throw together another fake identity and go to Canada, or travel on his real name back to Europe and hope they haven’t gotten Interpol on this, or just lie here in a motel room that might literally be the manifestation of hell on earth, with air conditioner that barely works in 25-plus Celsius heat and a stain that looks like a murder victim on the carpet. If Rittenhouse is after him, no holds barred, he may just be able to avoid their notice if he stays, especially for a man whose professional tradecraft is disappearing. And yet.

The more Flynn thinks it over, the more he can’t account for everything going sideways as fast and as comprehensively as it did, unless Rittenhouse was plugged into the whole thing almost from the beginning. They must have multiple high-level operatives across several branches of government, focusing on the ones you’d expect – CIA, NSA, FBI, Homeland Security, whoever’s stealing your personal information these days – but by no means limited to them. They could be salted through every level of middle bureaucracy (he wonders if all DMV and IRS workers get an automatic membership) and beyond. It sounds ridiculously, relentlessly paranoid, like that prizewinning intellectual who insists that the Royal Family and other leading British celebrities are all secretly lizard people. But given what Flynn saw at the gala, Cahill and his powerful, well-connected, wealthy friends, this also might not be entirely off the ranch, and that means he has to do more digging. Where?

It takes him a bit, but he recalls what Lucy said to him at their first (well, first real) meeting. Something about David Rittenhouse, who Flynn discovered to be a famous eighteenth-century astronomer and professor at the University of Pennsylvania, and asking if he founded it. Flynn doesn’t know the answer to that question, but it seems to strain credulity that the man it’s literally named after has nothing to do with it. It also is not a given that Rittenhouse’s secret archives are housed somewhere at UPenn, but there are several things named after the man in Philadelphia. It’s not entirely implausible.

That, therefore, is where Flynn is faced with the final part of the plan. It’s going to be hard enough for him to get in as it is, what with the Take Dead or Alive order they probably have out on his head. But if he didn’t appear to be attached to it – if it was just an innocent research visit from an up-and-coming academic who would have plenty of legit business with UPenn’s history collections on colonial America, and he just so happened to appear –

Flynn is well aware that this is quite a reach. That it’s dangerous, that it’s unfair, that he doesn’t really have any right to ask it, given how their last parting went, and what he said then. That she has any number of things to do right now, and none of them necessarily involve dropping all her work and heading cross-country to pick up, again, the world’s most demented and dangerous scavenger hunt with him. No sir.

He checks out of the motel and hops a ride with a trucker the next morning.

As they stare at each other for a very long and very excruciating moment, all Lucy can think is that he shouldn’t be here. Rittenhouse could have been watching her from afar, guessing (correctly, apparently) that she will prove too tempting a target for Flynn to resist contacting again. Maybe this is the moment they jump out and dogpile them both, or – or –

Lucy hesitates only a split second before tightening her grip on Flynn and dragging him around the corner into an unused classroom. She bangs shut the door behind them and leans against it, legs trembling. “You need to get out of here.”

“You just shut me in.” Trust Flynn to have a smart-aleck response readily at hand, as he watches her from under hooded eyes. “We would need to try reversing that first.”

“Just be quiet.” Lucy clenches her fists, fighting a brief urge to slap him. “Did anyone see you?”

He shrugs. “It’s a public university, I imagine they did. Nobody who seemed to recognize me, though.”

Lucy blows out a breath, getting the table between them just so there will be something to prevent her – or him – from anything intemperate. “You’re such a bastard.”

A hard, sardonic smile glimmers in the edges of his mouth. He seems unruffled by the accusation, almost even pleased. He does not bother with small talk, explaining where he’s been, or why he said everything he did in the hospital. (Don’t fool yourself that I want to see you again. . . this is my war, I don’t need you and yet, lo and behold, here he is. He’s a disaster.) Instead he says, “Did you finish your dissertation?”

“Yes,” Lucy says, curt and unwilling. “I have a lot going on, a lot, so why don’t you just – ”

“Is there anything else you can pretend to be working on?”

“What?” Screw the table, she might want to do something intemperate after all. “Why?”

His eyes remain on hers, cool and unswerving. “I need your help.”

#lucy x flynn #garcy #garcy ff #timeless ff #the tangled web of fate we weave

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superman86to99 · 7 years ago

Photo

Superman: The Man of Steel #23 (July 1993)

REIGN OF THE SUPERMEN! In this issue: Steel vs. Superboy! I mean, "Superman” vs. “Superman”. The Man of Steel is battling some hoodlums armed with hi-tech killer weapons when the Metropolis Kid decides to butt in and "save him" in front of the cameras that follow him 24/7. (Side note: Was Superboy the first '90s reality TV star?) The Kid draws all the firepower to himself... accidentally causing the bad guys to shoot down a Daily Planet helicopter containing Lois Lane. The chopper blows up, signaling the death of a classic and beloved DC Comics character: Frank the helicopter pilot. RIP.

Lois, meanwhile, manages to jump out of the exploding chopper in time (probably out of pure muscle memory) and is rescued by Steel in a rather familiar-looking scene.

Lois tries to turn the tragic situation into an exclusive interview with Steel, but Steel has something more important to do: chewing Superboy's butt for scaring off those criminals he was trying to interrogate (and, you know, causing a man's death). The Kid is like "I'm da real Superman, yo!" and bails... but as he flies away, he actually starts questioning his half-assed approach to superheroics. I'm sure Frank's wife and 12 children would find great comfort in that.

Meanwhile, Steel is approached by Lex Luthor Jr., who wants to offer him a job as one of his armored security guards (because having one S-shielded superhero in his pocket isn't enough for him). To butter Steel up, Lex offers him the location of the White Rabbit -- aka, the lady distributing all those highly advanced weapons to street gangs. Steel thanks Lex for the tip and immediately ditches him, making it clear that his services aren’t for sale.

Steel drops by the White Rabbit’s penthouse, and she turns out to be an old flame from his time as a weapons designer for the military. Things almost get steamy for a second in there, until Steel remembers that this lady has made him indirectly responsible for countless deaths (all those weapons are his design). Once she takes the hint that Steel won’t work for her (either), White Rabbit just shoots him point blank with one of those big-ass guns, launching him off the building and into a convenient tanker parked outside.

Superboy (who was following Steel to apologize for being a dick) flies in just in time to pull Steel’s body from the resulting tanker explosion:

By the time Superboy and Steel return to White Rabbit’s penthouse, the place is already empty. The two Supermen then bond over that whole “we’ve both caused innocent people to die today” thing and part amicably. Awww!

Plotline-Watch:

Ponytailed scumbag Jeb Friedman, having given Lois Lane WEEKS to recover from her fiance’s supposed death, urges her to “forget Clark” and go to Cairo with him. Don Sparrow says: “I hesitate to even mention that the hated Jeb Friedman appears here, and even Jimmy doesn’t want Lois rebounding with him. Serious question, though: are we supposed to hate Jeb? Or is it just happenstance?” If we weren’t supposed to hate Jeb, would they have given him a ponytail, Don?

After meeting Steel, Lois reflects on the fact that the other Supermen may look like Clark, but Steel is the only one who acts like him. Obviously she doesn’t think Clark’s already been reincarnated as an adult black man, but she does seriously wonder if ghostly possession is a real thing.

I love how efficiently Steel’s backstory is presented in this issue. As he and White Rabbit are about to lock lips, we see a handful of black-and-white panels showing the two working together for the military, hooking up, finding out his weapons were being used against innocents in Qurac, and then a flashback-within-the-flashback of Steel’s grandparents having just become victims of gang violence. It’s only half a page but it tells you everything you need to know about this dude and his motivation.

Superboy burns his hands while rescuing Steel, even though a clone of Superman should be equally invulnerable. Hmm. Hmmmm. Hmmmmmm.

The issue ends with Supergirl telling Lex she’s going off to look for Superboy, which leads to the next issue of Adventures.

And this leads to the end of my section! For more commentary, Easter eggs, and gratuitous images of White Rabbit, check out Don Sparrow’s section after the jump:

Art-Watch (by @donsparrow):

Maybe it’s just me, but I feel like none of the other four Superman titles seems as swayed by the importance of the storyline as SMOS. What do I mean? I mean that when it’s a big storyline, like Panic in the Sky, or Doomsday, the art on the title really seems to rise to the occasion, and there’s some standout stuff being produced. But in the meantime, when a story doesn’t feel as important, the quality seems to dip a little. To me, this is one of those issues. We begin with the cover, and it’s not one of Bogdanove’s best. Sure, his artwork could be called cartoony at the best of times, but this one really took on a loose, loony tunes sketchiness, particularly in Superboy’s “ain’t I a stinker?” expression and giant wall of teeth. He looks less like a 16 year old than he resembles Rex Leech, a character we’ll come to know better in time.

Inside, the story gets off to a slow start, as we’re abruptly thrown into a video of wannabe gangsters, moving in on where they think they’ll find John Henry Irons. The double page splash revealing his location is an exciting one, and Dennis Janke does some interesting things with his hatching to indicate the shine of the metal, leaving certain areas unhatched to show a glimmer.

Bog’s depictions of The White Rabbit continue to push the envelope for how much skin a comic code approved book can show, both on page 7, and then later in the book. [Max: This next sequence of panels burned itself into my young mind. Because of the cool panel layout, I mean.]

[December 2018 edit: White Rabbit’s body has been covered with Mike Carlin’s face so that Tumblr doesn’t delete this post. Sorry.]

Page 8 brings us a long sought after in-comics cameo. If you’ll recall, back on one of my first reviews on this site, I interviewed the great Tom Grummett and asked him if there were any Easter Eggs that we should look out for while we were reading. He answered that "My personal favorite moment was when Jon Bogdanove drew me in a scene with Jimmy Olsen in one issue of Man of Steel. I’m the one with the moose on his shirt. Happy hunting.” Well, we need hunt no more, as a certain fellow pops up, arguing with Jimmy Olsen, and what’s that on his shirt? A moose?! Found you! [Max: Are we the first on the internet to point out this cameo? I don’t have time to look it up, so let’s go with “Yes”.]

I also love the little gag in the lettering, where the first part of “Saskatchewan” (Tom’s home province) is shown as “Saskatch” and then below that Bog has written “W-1”, phonetically completing the phrase. It’s also a very Neal Adams-y couple of panels when Jimmy and Tom start to get heated debating who the real Superman is. [Max: I wonder if the Neal Adams-esque panels above are homaging a specific Adams comic, or just his “intense argument” poses in general...] Then a page later, there’s an unmistakable rendering of another Super-Teamster, none other than group editor Mike Carlin, scanning the police radio for scoops.

As the story progresses, there’s a great shot of the Metropolis Kid (who they refer to as Superboy on this page, without a rebuttal from the Kid) showboating and holding one hand behind his back. But, on the page that follows, a pretty heavy end for Daily Planet chopper pilot “Frank”, made all the more sickening by the lack of concern from the Kid leading up to this point.

Some great visual callback on page 12, as the mob scene when the Man of Steel rescues Lois Lane recalls the meet-cute at the shuttle disaster wayyyy back in MOS #1.

The scene were John Henry confronts the Kid about his carelessness is well-done, even if it gives way to another mention of the preposterous ‘spirit-walk-in’ idea, which even these characters seem to find tenuous.

The flashback with White Rabbit does a good job of filling in the gaps of John Henry’s history (interesting how similar Irons’ motivation is to that of Tony Stark’s, at least in the movies) but it’s an odd scene—not just because of the aforementioned vamping from White Rabbit, but also Irons’ inaction in the scene—he went there to capture her, but mostly just stands around and then lets her stroll back over to the bed, where a weapon is clearly visible from where he’s standing. [Max: Can’t imagine what else he could be looking at.]

As The Metropolis Kid rescues The Man of Steel, we get more looney tunes-style comedy, when the Kid comedically blows on his burning hands, trying to cool them. They seem to be working hard to establish how different his powers are from Kal-El’s, though they eventually go back on almost all of this stuff.

Moving on, we get a really nice look at Lois at a rainy window, once again musing on how the Man of Steel, while physically the most removed from Kal-El, seems to embody his “soul” more than the rest.

STRAY OBSERVATIONS:

Is the cameraman gangster supposed to be a riff on Spike Lee? The glasses seem pretty similar to ones Spike wore at the time.

How is it that we never noticed such a giant, futuristic tower on the Metropolis skyline before?

Jimmy Olsen wearing a Spin Doctors t-shirt is a little too meta for my head, since one of their biggest hits was “Jimmy Olsen’s Blues”. What does the DC Universe Jimmy think when he hears a song about himself, lusting after Lois Lane? They were also one of my favourite bands when this issue came out, so my mind was doubly blown.

What is it with Lex hanging onto VHS tapes? Thank God he never got his hands on that one of Big Barda! [Max: Dammit, I’d JUST managed to erase that from my mind, Don.]

#superman #louise simonson #jon bogdanove #dennis janke #steel #superboy #sydney happersen #white rabbit #ron troupe #tom grummett #mike carlin #jeb friedman #spin doctors #supergirl #possibly spike lee #rip frank chopperson #reign of the supermen

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calmspirited · 7 years ago

Note

TRUE END

(This is a continuation and elaboration of this post, but with a special twist) (also this has become like an AU at this point lmao)

As Evan sacrificed himself for the Entity, the Entity realized that It was approaching Its end, at least for now, until someone committed a violent mass murder on the scale that Its husband did, close enough for it to latch on to. But, It had no regrets about what They had done. Their husband’s essence only lasted a piddly amount of time, as he had already lost most of his soul, so the Entity quickly felt the hunger consume Them again, and with no one else left to feed off of, They faded back into the darkest shadows of their shattered realm, w a i t i n g…

Billy stumbled out of the darkness, and into the sunlight, brighter than even what his Lightborn could handle comfortably. Everything was so bright, even though the sun had just barely risen over the horizon. Billy had never seen a forest like this. It was all overwhelming for him, really. Billy had to sit down for a few moments and actually think about what had happened, plus Jesus felt a bit heavier than usual by his side. A few moments turned into a few minutes, and before he knew it, his exhaustion had caught up with him, and he feel asleep against a tree.

When he woke up, his head was pounding him due to how it get even brighter outside, and probably because he hadn’t had any moonshine in a while, and was actually sober for the first time in a long while. He thought about it for a second, then revved up his chainsaw and took off in a random direction. Either by fate or pure luck, he chainsawed right into Jake’s cabin, right through the front door, shattering it into splinters like a pallet, nearly mowing over Meg who was just about to walk out. Recovering for a brief moment, then loudly proclaiming: “Where’s the moonshine!?”, not giving a single fuck about the now non- existent front door. After being scared shitless by the chainsaw wielding killer, it was understandable that nobody moved for a full minute and just stared at him. Claudette was the first to break the silence, running up to hug her meme son, crying and hugging him and talking nonsensical French. Meg started beating the shit out of him for nearly killing her, and Jake went and got a bottle of liquor for him. Phil gave him a hug and a kiss and Lisa led him to the couch to tell them what had happened.

Billy told them that the Evan told the Entity that he was the sacrifice and They ate him, simple as that. He was a bit more reluctant to tell them that Billy himself was about to be eaten by his own mother, and was actually quite upset by that, feeling betrayed and abandoned. After Billy showed up, everybody was wondering what next? The Entity would surely die within time and posed no threat, and now after being missing for years, what do they do with themselves? How were they going to survive? They needed supplies and money, obviously. It was then that Jake told everyone that he could see if his mother was still alive, and he presumed she was, since when he first returned to the cabin, it was suspiciously well upkept for him having being gone for 5 or so years, and she was one of the few people who actually knew where he lived. So, Jake them to where his parents lived, and lo and behold, his mother was alone in their mansion, having dismissed many of her servants. His mother, of course, was very happy to see him, not fully believing he was dead all these years, and invited him and all his friends inside. When Jake questioned why the mansion was so empty, his mother told him that his father had a massive heart attack 2 years ago and died instantly, and that his brother had his own mansion and was living somewhere nice. Jake sure didn’t miss them. His mother insisted that they have a nice meal, but they decided to just order pizza to celebrate their victory and mourn their loved ones. The pizza arrived 30 minutes later and Meg went to answer the door, only to hear her and another person scream loudly. They all rushed to see what was the trouble and they couldn’t believe their eyes at who they saw.

Dwight motherfucking Fairfield

They all thought that he had been eaten and devoured by the Entity; the first causality of war. They had mourned over him the most, but, it was actually Dwight who was the most upset and depressed, because he thought he had abandoned everyone to the claws of the Entity. Dwight told them that the Entity did capture him with the intent to eat him because They thought he was the weakest soul available. And that proved to be a costly mistake for the Entity. Dwight was much stronger than everybody thought he was, and staved off the Entity long enough to escape through one of the first cracks that had formed due to the Entity actually having to put up a fight to eat Dwight, wearing Itself even thinner and showing just how weak It actually was. Everyone was shocked at Dwight’s story, but it actually make sense and explained why the Entity became so desperate all of a sudden and where the cracks came from. When they left, they took Dwight with them back to the cabin, as he actually staying at a homeless shelter at the time, and had no one else. Jake got some money from his mother to get supplies with her telling she’ll be around often to check up on them.

Jake bought supplies for everyone, and started working on expanding the cabin, since there was 7 people living there now, they definitely needed more room, and also the cabin need to be upgraded with modern technology.. It was at this time when they found out that Sally had indeed killed herself; Billy found her decaying body hanging from a tree from where she had jumped off and hanged herself with a crudely made noose. Billy discovered a charred wedding photo in the bag that used to cover her head. They got her down and gave her a proper burial and buried her not to far from where they found her. They were surprised when Nea showed up at the funeral; the first time they had seen her since she first left. They had a pleasant reunion and she left after staying a night, but not before spray painting the side of Jake’s cabin with her tag MASHTYX, and Jake couldn’t bring himself to paint over it.

Another thing happening alongside everything was the matter of the Killers. When they first escaped the Entity’s grasp, they looked pretty much the same, except they had lost some of their unstoppableness, and that the Red Stain was gone. But within a few weeks, they began to have many more noticeable changes, but some features were permanent. Billy shrunk about a foot, and he found that his alcohol tolerance wasn’t quite as high as it was before. His skin cleared up a bit (due to being forced to take baths) and he put on some weight due to Claudette and Lisa nearly force- feeding him healthy food. Phil also shrunk about a foot and a half, and his skin even out and took on the color that it used to be, but with some bark- looking areas still left on him. And yes, his legs are that skinny and the nubs on his head decided to become a permanent fixture on his head. Lisa but most of her lost weight back on, but was still bony. Her skin lost its leathery tone, and her arm shrunk some, but not fully, and her ‘tastes’ seemed to have died down to a safe level. But, they all retained their powers that they were granted, strangely, along with some of their superhuman strength.

Weeks passed, which turned into months and the seasons passed as they did. The cabin was extended to hold everybody and even a guest room when Nea showed up every couple of weeks, or even that one time Ace popped in to show how much money he had gotten in the form of gifts, which they all accepted reluctantly, due to it probably being stolen property. And to flirt with the ladies, of course. Claudette had started her own garden and sold her flowers to a nearby flower shop, along with growing weed in a little greenhouse off to the side, away from Dwight. They made a decently sized cornfield for Billy to look after and to chainsaw up and down it all he wants without bumping into anything or hurting himself. Which brought up another dilemma: Billy’s alcoholism. While in the Entity’s realm, he could drink as much as he liked, but now, he had a limit. Everyone made a secret pact to try to keep him from drinking himself silly, because he could actually hurt himself now.

After about six months, Lisa announced that she was going to return to her village to help out there. She had reconnected with her kin shortly after returning and had been a huge help there. They all said their goodbyes to her and the cabin felt less cramped. They missed her, to be sure, but with 7 people, any place would feel cramped. Six months turned into a one- year escape anniversary, and they all joined up to celebrate, Ace yet again bringing expensive- probably stolen gifts, and flirting with the ladies, of course. They also toasted to Bill and Laurie, who the former probably got eaten and the latter was hope got to where she needed to go and that she wasn’t killed by her brother Michael Myers, and also to Evan who sacrificed himself for Billy, and Sally who killed herself for reasons not certain although speculated. And the Doctor, too, although he was a bit of an eccentric person. But the most surprising thing was that Feng Min showed up, although to mostly make fun of everybody, she did say thank you for getting her out alive. And it was obvious that she wasn’t doing well; pale, thin, sickly, and shaky. They offered her a place to stay but she promptly blew them off and left. Nea then told them that she was pretty much a prostitute druggie that was part of a loosely affiliated gang. So, it wasn’t too much of a surprise when about a month later they saw her picture in the newspaper; under the obituary section for an apparent drug overdoes which may or may not have been intentional, by herself or other unknown. She basically crashed and burned. Hard.

Another six months pass, and one day Dwight announces that he has been promoted to manager at the pizza place and is moving into an apartment into the city to be closer to his job (and also maybe one of his co-workers wink wonk). They all wished him luck, and made him promise to visit often, on the threat of finding where he lives and dragging him back out there. And the cabin became more airy and open. And lonely, undeniably. Time passes smoothly and happily, and soon, the second- year escape anniversary arrives, and everybody meets back up, minus Feng, but they do go and visit hers and Sally’s grave. Another three months, and things takes a surprising turn; Jake and Claudette are expecting, something that Claudette thought impossible, due to her past injuries. But, yes, the doctor confirms,yes, she’s having a baby, and on the day of the third- year escape anniversary, she gives birth to a son, Mathiew, in their cabin in the woods, the birth unexpected but with no complications and is fairly easy. That’s when things start getting… interesting.

It becomes apparent soon that Mathiew isn’t your average baby. He’s more aware than you would expect, and seemed to be precocious when compared to other children. Everybody somewhat puts it to the side when he is a toddler, but when he starts to become school age, it starts to show that he isn’t a genius, per se, but he definitely has much more common sense than a child of his age should have. Phil discovered that Mathiew is sensitive to spirits, and Lisa says that the child has a sixth sense about him, and a understanding of the world about him that most people never acquire. But he isn’t a bad kid; he’s a lot like his mother and has a bleeding heart of never- ending empathy. He loves tending to his mother’s garden and being out into the wilderness with his father and going on adventures with his Uncles and his Aunt Meg, who moves out when she decides to start a new life with someone she really cares about when Mathiew is a toddler, and the cabin yet again starts to get more spacey. Its when Mathiew brings home a spider who he says is his pet and named Evelyn is when everybody starts getting slightly concerned and Jake almost has a heart attack when he finds out his son has been talking to the crows, and apparently, they respond back with tales that his son shouldn’t know about just yet, like how Uncle Billy’s parent kept him in a basement because they didn’t like him, and how Aunt Lisa used to eat people.

Meg ends up having a child of her own, and to everyone’s surprise (or was it really?), that child and Mathiew shares some similar qualities…

#but i love it so much i cri #{ how it never really ended } true end au #{ whispered offerings } answered asks #botanyknowledge

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thewebforger · 5 years ago

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Things You Should Know Before Buying Bluehost VPS Hosting: Bluehost VPS Review

At the point when I think Bluehost, I think WordPress, a cool group culture that rouses mindful client service, and an epic night of Top Golf with the Endurance family. Bluehost has an unshakable notoriety in the mutual hosting space, yet the adaptable host has developed close by its clients to oblige each hosting need — from shared to virtual servers and past.

With Bluehost, you're ensured server assets, and the equipment is fueled by SSD stockpiling and produced by the best. It's a host with which you can undoubtedly move to a cloud-based or devoted server once you've outgrown the mutual server condition, and trust us when we state: Fewer moves between hosts implies less cerebral pains for you!

Here, we dive into the adaptability and dependability of Bluehost's VPS offering. Talking everything from server arrangement to working framework and oversaw administrations, we'll assist you with deciding if this industry driving host veteran is the best fit for your site scaling needs.

In case you're pondering regarding for what reason should you use VPS hosting, this Bluehost VPS hosting survey can support you.

Need to make your WordPress site load quicker, better and secure? Indeed, we as a whole do! We as a whole need to have quicker stacking locales. Here's the place VPS hosting ends up helpful.

I know picking the privilege hosting is difficult when you're simply beginning. In the event that you need to fabricate a superior site, I exceptionally prescribe you to go for VPS hosting over shared hosting.

Shared hosting is just great on the off chance that you've a less traffic site. However, imagine a scenario in which you have a site that gets gigantic guests or which hosting is the best in the event that you need to make your site stacking time quicker despite the fact that you get a ton of guests. The appropriate response is, VPS hosting. That is the reason I'm composing this VPS hosting survey to make things unmistakable.

Read: 7 Reasons Why You Shouldn't Ignore About Bluehost Hosting

What is VPS hosting?

VPS represents Virtual Private Server, in VPS hosting you'll get a devoted server to keep up your site records and information so your webpage stacks quicker regardless of whether your site is visited by a huge number of individuals on the double.

For what reason would it be advisable for you to utilize VPS hosting for WordPress locales?

In the event that you need outrageous execution to build your site speed quickly, you should utilize VPS hosting. In the event that you need more power and run your sites easily regardless of whether a great many guests enter your site, you should utilize VPS hosting. In the event that you need to verify your destinations without really utilizing any extra modules, you ought to utilize VPS hosting for your sites.

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Bluehost VPS Hosting Review: 4.5 / 5.0 Rating

Bluehost is a great passage level host in numerous regards. The organization invites first-time webpage proprietors into the universe of web hosting with great affection and a component rich shared server hosting advertising. As your site's needs create, Bluehost ushers you into the domains of VPS or devoted hosting. It's an undeniable host for each hosting need or site scale.

As we explored Bluehost's virtual server plans, we found a similar expansiveness we've generally expected from this inheritance web hosting supplier. Start little, and include RAM, CPU centers, and plate space as you develop. The evaluating model is really tantamount to that of other famous hosts, and we value that SSDs come standard and data transmission proliferates. To sweeten the deal even further, Bluehost VPS plans accompany 100% oversaw support — however more on unwavering quality later.

Read: Bluehost.in(India) vs Bluehost.com(U.S) – Which One Is Still The Best?

Bluehost VPS Features: 4.7 / 5.0 Rating

Before jumping into the full Bluehost VPS hosting audit, we should discuss their highlights. Here are hardly any astonishing highlights of utilizing Bluehost VPS for your WordPress sites.

Can handle up to 100 million visits per month

Storage is 30 GB

Backup is 30 GB

RAM is 2 GB

You can manage up to 5 sites

Any time money back guarantee

24/7 support (through email, chat and phone)

Enhanced cPanel to easily manage your sites

SiteLock CDN to boost your site loading times and many more

All the above highlights come at a reasonable value scope of just $18.99 every month in the event that you happen to buy Bluehost VPS hosting for three years in Advance. On the off chance that you pick an a year bundle, you should pay $24.99/month.

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Common features that you will get in all the 4 plans on Bluehost VPS

1 Free Domain for 1 Year

1 Dedicated Core CPU

2 GB Memory

30 GB Disk Space

1 TB Bandwidth /mo

1IP Address

Enhanced cPanel

Access to Root Access

SSH

Setup Time : Instantly and many more that rock your WP sites with Bluehost VPS

The Pricing Of Bluehost VPS: 4.8 / 5.0 Rating

Bluehost VPS offers you the following 3 pricing options.

Standard

Enhanced

Ultimate

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Free SSL

2 Cores

30 GB SSD Storage

2 GB RAM

1 TB Bandwidth

1 Free domain name

1 IP Addresses

30 day money back guarantee

24/7 customer support

This plan is especially suitable for beginners and entry-level websites.

Enhanced VPS plan: This is the most used VPS hosting plan from Bluehost which costs you $29.99 per month where you’ll get the following features.

Free SSL

2 Cores

60 GB SSD Storage

4 GB RAM

2 TB Bandwidth

1 Free domain name

2 IP Addresses

30 day money back guarantee

24/7 customer support

This plan is suitable for eCommerce sites and small businesses with limited budget.

Ultimate VPS plan: This is the most advanced VPS hosting plan from Bluehost which costs you $59.99 per month where you’ll get the following features.

Free SSL

4 Cores

120 GB SSD Storage

8 GB RAM

3 TB Bandwidth

1 Free domain name

2 IP Addresses

30 day money back guarantee

24/7 customer support

This plan is suitable for agencies, eCommerce sites and heavy traffic websites.

So what are you still waiting for?

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Is there any money back guarantee from Bluehost VPS hosting?

Indeed, in case you're not content with Bluehost VPS administrations or highlights, you can recover your cash on the off chance that you request a discount inside 30 days in the wake of joining. That being stated, in the event that you drop inside 30 days and your VPS hosting plan incorporates a free space, Bluehost will deduct an area expense of $15.99 from your discount. You'll not get any discounts at all following 30 days.

Bluehost VPS Performance: 4.8 / 5.0 Rating

Appropriately named Next-Gen VPS Hosting, Bluehost's virtual server plans back a huge amount of execution into little machines. Starting with two centers is truly normal, and you can include capacity, memory, and CPUs as required. Strong state drives give servers an additional speed help.

A key metric we use to measure execution — and we're not the only one — is uptime. It's actually what it seems like: the level of time your site (or the server it's facilitated on) is on the web and open. In case you're maintaining an online business or an in any capacity exchange site, personal time implies income misfortune. The best has perceive this with uptime rate ensures. Suppliers may vow to keep your webpage or server online X% of the time — ordinarily 99.9% to 99.999% — which gives clients trust in their administrations. While each hosting master will disclose to you the more nines, the better, 99.9% uptime is really decent industry-wide.

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Bluehost VPS Reliability: 4.8 / 5.0 Rating

We wish Bluehost would attach an additional nine or two, yet the organization's uptime rates have truly been quite solid. A host's unwavering quality is in excess of a proportion of system uptime, be that as it may. It's one section equipment unwavering quality, one section human dependability — you know, the people who are there to help when the tech does unavoidably fall flat.

It's elusive a family-possessed and-worked feel with a hosting supplier nowadays. I'd state it's the #1 protest tossed at the hosting business: The administration is automated or nonexistent. "For what reason wouldn't i be able to get anybody on the telephone?!" *throws mobile phone at wall*

Bluehost attempts its damnedest to convey on-request master help to its clients, and keeping in mind that the help has gone down since the EIG takeover, we compliment the group for offering oversaw benefits over all VPS plans.

Here are few more incredible benefits of using a virtual private server for your WordPress sites.

Full root access

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Lucrative mechanism

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Unlimited domain hosting

Server monitoring and many more

So what are you waiting for?

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Pros And Cons of Bluehost VPS Hosting

So what are the upsides and downsides of Bluehost VPS. We should discuss them now so you can comprehend whether it's a solid match for your business or not.

Pros of using Bluehost VPS hosting

Free domain name is given (with every one of the plans on Bluehost)

Free SSL authentications (so you can safely change from http to https form by utilizing SSL testaments)

The evaluating plans are extremely moderate from Bluehost VPS

Offers SSD stockpiling (which at last improves your site generally speaking page stacking times when contrasted with customary hard drives)

1 TB of transmission capacity is given even with the essential VPS hosting plan

every minute of every day in-house master client service

Cons of using Bluehost VPS hosting

There's no SiteLock security is furnished even with the VPS anticipates Bluehost (SiteLock is a cloud based security device that sweeps your site for malware and vulnerabilities)

CodeGuard Basic is likewise not given as it's an extra addon from Bluehost where you have to pay additional cash (it causes you take day by day reinforcements and you can undoubtedly reestablish all your reinforcement documents with a single tick)

Read: Bluehost VPS Review : 5 Reasons to Use Bluehost VPS Hosting In 2019

Should you upgrade to VPS hosting or dedicated hosting?

This is another significant inquiry the vast majority have while picking hosting for their locales. Here, I'll clarify you with the goal that you can pick as needs be.

A VPS hosting is fundamentally made by dividing a solitary server into different virtual occurrences with the goal that every client will get their own server to run their locales.

In devoted hosting, the clients approach every one of the assets accessible on the server. That implies there's no intercession of some other client on your hosting account. You will get the most extreme adaptability and backing. Be that as it may, the main issue is committed servers cost you a great deal when contrasted with VPS hosting.

So which one among them is directly for your site?

On the off chance that you are an individual blogger or an entrepreneur, VPS hosting is only for you in the event that you need to have a dependable and quicker hosting under the financial limit.

Committed hosting is for the most part appropriate for high traffic destinations. So you have to first decide your blog needs in quite a while and furthermore make sense of your hosting spending plan so can without much of a stretch choose which hosting to go for.

With everything taken into account VPS hosting is a financially savvy substitute for shared hosting just as committed server. It offers both speed and dependability to your locales inside the financial limit.

Do we recommend Bluehost VPS hosting?

Truly and no.

Truly, Bluehost VPS is the privilege hosting decision on the off chance that you need VPS hosting at a moderate sticker price however there likewise some different options in contrast to it.

For example, there are alternatives like WPX hosting that offers phenomenal highlights and speed and they are getting to be one of the top contenders for Bluehost. However, they are costly when contrasted with Bluehost.

What I need to state from this VPS hosting survey is that, everything descends to your financial limit and site needs.

Click this special link to grab Bluehost VPS

FAQs

Here are few important questions you need to know about Bluehost VPS in 2019.

What’s the difference between cloud hosting vs VPS hosting?

In cloud hosting, if a physical server comes up short, you'll have an alternative of relocating cloud servers into another physical server without interfering with your present session (so there's no information misfortune or traffic misfortune) though VPS hosting doesn't offer it as every one of the information is situated at physical servers.

Cloud hosting is an Infrastructure as a Service known as IaaS cloud conveyance model which gives a system of virtual administrations to store and deal with your site's information though VPS hosting is in fact both mutual hosting and committed hosting, which implies, you show signs of improvement assets at moderate costs.

What are the other alternatives to Bluehost VPS hosting?

If you’re searching for the best VPS hosting sites, here’s a list of hosting companies that offer you VPS hosting plans at affordable prices.

GoDaddy web hosting

1&1 web hosting

FlyWheel

InMotion web hosting

Dreamhost web hosting

HostWinds web hosting

Liquid web hosting

SiteGround hosting

Just Host

What are the benefits of using VPS hosting?

VPS hosting can be considered as an incredible hosting choice between shared hosting and committed hosting. Why? Common hosting doesn't permit you a great deal of assets, CPU use and adaptable security choices though committed hosting gives you prevalent hosting alternatives however it is progressively costly.

Here's the place VPS hosting becomes possibly the most important factor which offers you brilliant assets, CPU utilization alongside better security choices and it's additionally moderate (and not as much costly as devoted hosting).

Just to give you a thought, Bluehost committed hosting plans start at $79.99 every month while VPS hosting start at just $18.99 every month. So there's a HUGE estimating distinction between the two.

Most importantly, VPS hosting gives you more authority over your virtual server than you do with shared hosting. With Bluehost VPS, you will have root get to where you can likewise utilize contents that may not be permitted in shared hosting.

When should you switch to VPS hosting?

A great many people don't have the foggiest idea when to change to VPS hosting and in case you're likewise one among them, who is utilizing a less expensive hosting condition like shared hosting, let us disclose you when to relocate to VPS hosting.

Here are few instances when you should highly consider moving to VPS hosting.

When your site is growing in terms of traffic and average income

When you need more speed

When you need more CPU resources

When you need access to root servers

When you need a dedicated IP address to brand your website worldwide

And when you need to manage hosting for multiple sub users who are using the same servers

What are the important things to consider while choosing VPS hosting from a web host?

Are you wondering what are things that you need to consider while choosing VPS hosting? Here are few of the most important factors you need to take into consideration while picking VPS hosting from any host.

Reliability

Security

Price (as it matters a lot)

The average customer ratings (you can simply Google for real feedback from the users who are already using the host)

Speed (enough said!)

Final Thoughts

Bluehost VPS gives you your own assets assignment with the goal that it licenses you to take delight from quicker stacking occasions. Furthermore, the best part is just you have to oversee your blog, everything else will be taken consideration by Bluehost VPS frameworks so you don't need to stress a lot over upkeep.

Luckily, Bluehost VPS has every one of the things most WordPress are searching for. It offers phenomenal highlights and comes at a reasonable sticker price. It additionally has choice client service, gives incredible unwavering quality to its clients. It additionally returns with whenever cash ensure that no other hosting organization gives!

Tell me your contemplations about this survey of Bluehost VPS hosting. Okay let it all out or do you have some other proposals?

Thanks for checking out my Bluehost review, and you can check my blog for latest updates on The Web Forger Blogs

#Bluehost VPS Hosting #Bluehost VPS Hosting Review #Bluehost VPS Review #Bluehost VPS Performance #Bluehost VPS pricing plans #Bluehost VPS Reliability #bluehost

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grapsandclaps · 6 years ago

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GRAPS AND CLAPS REVIEWS - FUTURESHOCK WRESTLING'S 14TH ANNIVERSARY

The decision from PCW and FutureShock to hold anniversary shows on the same night gave your regular correspondent, Andrew Ogden, a decision to make. With his massive hands deciding to head to Preston, he needed someone to report from Manchester as we needed to make sure both shows got their deserved place in the spotlight.

Hands up, I’ve only been going to independent wrestling shows since February, but the bug has bitten me bad and loving every second of being part of a wonderful community. Anyways… on with the show.

After a last minute change of plans, my wife, who two months ago called wrestling 'rubbish', asked if she could join me in Prestwich for FutureShock's 14th anniversary show in the Longfield Suite. She had come along to FS’s Tapped show in Manchester, mostly for the food and alcohol, but was won over by the awesome show. Declaring it “not as bad as I thought it would be” I knew she’d be back.

It goes to show the power and appeal of professional wrestling, changing someone's staunch opinion in just one show.

Normally your resident reporter would bring you opinions and prices of the local beer options, but sadly I'm off alcohol as I try to make myself ineligible for Progress’ Atlas division. However, we did enjoy a car picnic with a medley of goodies from M&S. I recommend bringing some hot sauce if you have the harissa chicken.

After meeting the rest of the graps gang, including Taff and Davie, fellow founder members of the #CyanideSection/#CraterMates we headed inside for the show.

First up was Delicious Danny Hope taking on Alex Boylin, joined by Rizwan Khan at ringside. After one shenanigan too many, Ref Pete had enough and sent him to the back. Danny used the distraction to his advantage and hit a tassel powered superkick to pick up the pin fall.

After stealing the show at Tapped last month and the unfortunate injury to Lykos ruling out CCK in the previously announced tag match, the impressive Young Guns were handed a No.1 contenders match against the Sexy Gents.

This was another wonderful back and forward match, but turned on its head when John McGregor tagged himself in just as Kev Lloyd had gained the upper hand. Not the first time the Gents have shown signs of discontent and they were made to pay.

Ethan Allen took Kev out of the game on the outside and just as Luke Jacobs managed to counter Kev’s guillotine choke his partner jumped from the top rope and hit a codebreaker/doomsday device double team. Fantastic finish from two excellent teams and the Young Guns will get a chance at Tyson T-Bone and Chris Ridgeway’s tag team titles.

Kev after the match said 'Him and John can't go on anymore' and walked off into the night with The Sexy Gents looking finished. Leaving ONLY JOHN in the ring 😭😭😭

Next, it was the match which has been building since JJ Webb first fought Deadly Damon Leigh in the same building back in February. After multiple encounters, it was brought to a head at Tapped when JJ had to save Chris Egan with DDL standing over him holding a steel chair.

This would be no ordinary singles match, oh no, this is a ‘loser wears a Chicken Suit match’. Built on the emergence of the Chicken Section following a ‘All Bins Are Legal’ tie which saw DDL dressed in KFC buckets.

DDL worked extremely hard to ignore the chicken chants, you could see the focus and the determination, the man from Stratford channeling his inner Colonel to stay calm. JJ should have had the three count after he planted DDL face first on the mat, but in the subsequent move, he had knocked out referee Fitzgerald into the corner.

Pete ran to the ring, but rather than start the count, he went to see to his colleague, giving DDL a chance to recover and hit Stockport’s finest with a low blow. Pete counted to three and the crowd were left disappointed… until Fitzgerald got back to his senses and informed our compere, Matt Taylor Richards, what he’d seen. The match would restart.

Both had their opportunities to finish it off, but JJ bounced off the ropes and hit a spinning clothesline to earn the 1, 2, 3, leaving DDL stunned and left to ponder his destiny, wearing the chicken suit.

The first of three title matches would take place before the interval, an eight-man scramble match for the Adrenaline title. Champion Sam Bailey would take on Wolfgang, Chris Ridgeway, Callum Corrie, Joey Hayes, Chris Egan, and Chris Brookes. The man holding the pin-fall after 15 minutes would leave Prestwich with the belt.

The first pin went to the exciting high-flying talents of Corrie, but like going 1-0 up after five minutes away from home, it was too early. Egan, after a couple of excellent spots, including when he avoided being drop-kicked by all six men at the same time, pinned Golfwang, sorry Wolfgang with eight minutes to go.

Everyone got their chance to lift the belt, Brookes made Ridgeway tap with a reverse figure four type move - apologies for not knowing names of moves, it looked very uncomfortable. Then, much to the disappointment of the crowd, Bailey put himself in the driving seat when he took advantage of the chaos to pin Brookes.

The clock ticked down and Hayes hit cutter after cutter, trying to find space to hit the winning blow, then with time winding down and the FutureShock faithful counting down from 10, the man who won the belt in Stockport Town Hall hit one last cutter - outta nowhere - on Bailey and the referees hand hit three with just 1 second on the clock.

AND NEW… a crazy, but fantastic match. Everyone hit their spots and Joey took full advantage at the perfect moment to regain the belt he lost from Bailey.

During the break, as he was contractually obliged, Damon Leigh came out to the ring wearing his chicken suit and the paying crowd were able to get their picture taken with DDL and Webb. An opportunity not to be missed.

Interval over, we were on to our second title match, an adrenaline rush rumble match for the woman’s title. Ten entrants, starting with two competitors in the ring, elimination only when both feet hit the floor and you go over the top rope.

Kasey Owens from the Queen Bees started in the ring with Alexis Falcon, but it became a numbers game when fellow QB member Jayla Dark joined next. The double team was too much for Alexis and she was thrown out. Taonga and FS favourite Lana Austin were next in, the former wasn’t able to make much of an impact before being eliminated.

Shax came and went, apart from a nice spot when she was caught by Gerald on the outside and he placed her back ring, she wasn’t able to offer much in the way of offence. Molly Spartan came in seventh, giving the Queen Bees the advantage. Newby Hollie came and went, with just enough time for one “Hollie, Hollie, Hollie, Oi, Oi, Oi” chant.

Viper entered the fray, taking over and supply each of the QBs with a cannonball in the corner, but the numbers game would come into play and it took all three ladies to lift the Megaton Barbie up onto Molly Spartan’s shoulders and deliver a devastating powerbomb.

I can’t condone this Scottish on Scottish crime, but after dumping Viper over the top rope, it was going to take a miracle to stop FutureShock’s power trio.

After Viper’s exit, Molly made the shook move to throw stablemate Jayla Dark over the top rope - still not sure why, more to come on that I think. Toni Storm entered last, but couldn’t stop Austin meeting her fate, leaving the Mae Young classic participant two on one against the Bees. However, quick thinking led her move out of Spartan’s way and the champion smashed into Kasey on the apron, eliminating her other comrade, this time by accident.

It would be Toni against Molly in a singles match for the belt, but Owens jumped back in, only to be met by Toni’s piledriver, but it gave Molly the gap she needed, hitting Toni with a devastating spear and picking up the hard-fought victory.

Overall a good match, but quite a few of the spots and decisions of when and how to eliminate people seemed strange. Great potential, but could have been better. There may be reasons behind it, but expected more from Viper and Lana. There seemed no point in having Taonga and Shax in the match at all.

Before the main event, and the raffle, Big Joe came out to the ring with Thomas Wolfe with something to get off his massive chest. After a typical warm welcome from the FS crowd and plenty of chants including the words ‘small’, ‘tiny’ and ‘how far away are you?’ Joe was able to issue his Little Man Challenge.

He wanted to challenge someone who had been a FutureShock staple since day one, a legend, a wrestling icon… he wanted MATT TAYLOR RICHARDS. The compere with no compare wasn’t keen, retired from in-ring competition, but the big man wouldn’t take no for an answer. Lifting MTR into the air, although he can bench over four times his own body-weight, it turns out that still isn’t much and he crumbled under the power of Richards and the prettiest man in the North West pinned Joe for the victory.

In an amazing turn of events I then won the raffle, two tickets to FutureShock’s show in Stockport on September 16th, two days before my birthday. What a result, make sure you check out their website for all future shows.

Time for the main event. Mask versus Title. Ashton Smith, the champ, against the Colossus, Cyanide. WWE v WoS. A match fitting for the anniversary.

Both men didn’t disappoint. Smith used speed and intelligence to try and gain the upper-hand, but the challenger had power on his side. But every time you thought the champ was down and out, he’d bounce back, eventually lifting all 36-stone of Cyanide on to his shoulders to deliver and earth-shattering samoan drop, the same move which saw him beat the big man in Stockport Town Hall.

This time Cyanide was smart and rolled out of the ring to escape the three-count, Ashton would get the crowd on their feet when he followed it up with a hurricanrana which sent his opponent into the ring post.

Just beating the 10-count with milliseconds to go, Cyanide was back in the ring and once on his feet he finally hit Smith with a chokeslam, razor’s edge and followed it up with a huge splash - the tremors reportedly felt as far away as Rochdale. Covering the champ, there was no response and Cyanide confirmed, monsters are real.

Belt in the air, FutureShock has a new champion and it is going to take something special to stop him.

Flanked by Henry T Grodd and Noah through his reign of terror, it seems like the champion wants to go it alone, laying out Noah was a thunderous chokeslam. Grodd teased going into the ring, but saw sense, instead helping his tag-partner to the back.

Two new champions, new number one contenders and a show that will live long in the memory. There were few down points, every big match hit all right spots and everyone, except Damon Leigh, will have gone home happy.

Six months ago I watched my first independent show in the same building, and now I am truly hooked and even my wrestling hating wife has been converted. That is the power of the British wrestling scene and it feels like a privilege to be part of it.

FutureShock returns to Stockport on September 16th, and then to Fairfield Social Club on September 23rd, were Pete Dunne will put his WWE UK title on the line at Tapped 2. Buy tickets NOW and check out FutureShock on demand to watch this show when it’s up.

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douchebagbrainwaves · 7 years ago

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IN FACT, IT'S THE CLASSIC VILLAIN: ALTERNATELY COWARDLY, GREEDY, SNEAKY, AND OVERBEARING

They come from investing at low valuations. Countless paintings, when you look at how people use the words wise and smart is a modern habit. If you look at the work of another. And this idea will thus tend to get so rich from them. As it widens out into a pyramid to match the startup pyramid, all the contents are adhering to the top, but a question. Every hire increases the burn rate, and bad hires early on are hard to recover from. Which means the first VC to give someone fuck-you money and then actually get told fuck you.1 Even a VC friend of mine said, Most VCs can't do anything really well unless you love it, and if you raise more money.

If you're going to do initially to get the company going. We benefitted from the same phenomenon. In his famous essay You and Your Research which I recommend to anyone ambitious, no matter how much you're getting done. People's best friends are likely to be a good thing too, or a lot of bandwidth to crawl the whole Web. Because hackers are makers rather than scientists, the right place to look for metaphors is not in the startup business, VCs can still make money from it.2 Most people would rather a 100% chance of $1 million than a 20% chance of $10 million, but only a little. You have more leverage negotiating with VCs than you realize.

So far, each new definition of it has brought us increasing material wealth.3 Do the founders of Sun. An ordinary slower-growing business might have just as good a ratio of return to risk, and very early stage startups is not mainly about funding. You don't want to because they have more brand to protect.4 You might think they wouldn't need any more motivation. Rapid change in one area uncovers big, soluble problems in other areas. Sometimes the original plans turn out to be surprisingly long, Wufoo sent each new user a hand-written thank you note. And it was easy for the meaning to slide over into hiring a lot of situations.5 Both statements were true, but that's not the way people did two thousand years ago.6 Teaching hackers how to deal with this phenomenon. Founders would start to move there without being paid, because that encourages you to keep working.

Six weeks is fast. But startups often raise money even when they are or could be profitable. That was the kind of gestures I'd make if I were drawing from life. They do it by feeding the cat, going out to buy something they need for their apartment, meeting a friend for coffee, checking email.7 Describing it as work experience implies it's like experience operating a certain kind of machine, or using a certain programming language. And since the latter is huge the former should be too.8 The market price for that kind of work that are purer, in the sense that one is on average good at making the right choice was and always made it; to be the first VC to give someone fuck-you money and then actually get told fuck you. At this stage, all most investors expect is a brief description of what you plan to do. Ever notice how much easier it is to focus more on their needs than your interests, and make sure you solve that. And since fundraising is one of the reasons startups win. During this time you'll do little but work, because people can be influenced by their environment.

The advantages of rootlessness are similar to those of poverty.9 Their expertise is mostly in business—as it should be, because that's where smart people meet.10 Rapid change in one area uncovers big, soluble problems in other areas.11 These are not startups, except in a few unusual cases. The problem is not the only way out. Someone who was strong-willed is not enough, however.12 Whereas hackers will move to the Bay Area to start their next startup.13 Facebook did.14 Plus he introduced us to one of the things that makes the product good.

Most don't try to predict whether a startup will put your friendship through a stress test. As with contrarian investment strategies, that's exactly the point. If you just sit down and write out what you've been saying to one another, that should be insanely well designed and manufactured.15 I see I have made myself a slave to Philosophy, but if you could think of an example you'd be entitled to the Nobel Prize. Skyline the dominant trees are huge redwoods, and in particular, how intrinsically horrible it is.16 How? What changed there was not solubility but bigness. A company that grows at 5% a week will grow 12. We get all the paperwork set up properly or you're just launching projectiles.

7 billion. Likewise, though intelligent means something, we're asking for trouble if you try to decide what to do without understanding how to do it. That is, if you want to say and ad lib the individual sentences. There's an initial phase of negotiation about the big questions.17 So one way to build great software is to start your own startup. It used to suck to work there and it will be over quickly.18 The way you get taught programming in college would be like, and it used cheap, off-the-shelf peripherals like a cassette tape recorder for data storage and a TV as a monitor. Basically, unions were just Razorfish. Otherwise it wasn't worth investing in factories. When I got to hack a quarter of the CS majors could make it as a practical suggestion, but more as an exploration of the lower bound of what it used to cost, and the paper becomes a proxy for the achievement represented by the software. Will you try our beta?

But that's not how any of the code we'd written so far.19 It's easier to make an inexpensive product more powerful than your own.20 It's as relaxing as painting a wall.21 This is called seed capital. When Reddit first launched, it seemed laughable to VCs and e-commerce was all about. Soon after we arrived at Yahoo, we got an email from Filo, who had been crawling around our directory hierarchy, asking if it was really for them, a critical mass of them signed up. Mostly because of the scale of the Industrial Revolution? Less fortunate startups just end up hiring armies of people to sit around having meetings.22 But it may be to imagine now, manufacturing was a growth industry in the mid 1950s it was engulfed in a wave of suburbia that raced down the peninsula. It's like having a vacuum cleaner hooked up to your imagination. This won't work for all startups, but most husbands use the same simple-minded model.23 In the case of the most successful startups we've funded so far.24

Notes

A Plan for Spam. And it would destroy them.

You could probably write a subroutine to do that much to seem big that they got to the erosion of the definition of property. Spices are also the 11% most susceptible to charisma. I could pick them, maybe they'll listen to them more professional.

Our founder meant a photograph of a press conference. Within YC when we say it's ipso facto right to buy your kids' way into top colleges by sending them to ignore what your body is telling you and listen only to your instruments. Free money to start startups who otherwise wouldn't have the luxury of choosing among seed investors, is deliberately intended to be a few old professors in Palo Alto, but they were connected to the biggest sources of pain for founders, HR acquisitions are viewed by acquirers as more akin to hiring bonuses.

That was a bad idea.

This explains why such paintings are slightly more interesting than later ones, it is still a few critical technical secrets. Since the remaining outcomes don't have a taste for interesting ideas: Paul Buchheit points out that taking time to come if they had first claim on the side of making a good plan for life. Which helps explain why there are some whose definition of property.

If doctors did the section of the words out of just Japanese. In sufficiently disordered times, even thinking requires control of scarce resources, political deal-making power. At the time it would be unfortunate.

When he wanted to try, we'd ask, what would our competitors hate most? 7% of American kids attend private, non-sectarian schools. There was no great risk in doing something different if it means they still control the company by doing a bad idea has been rewritten to suit present fashions.

I even mention the possibility is that if you do. For these companies when you lose that protection, e. There are successful women who don't aren't. What has changed is how much of the Facebook that might work is a fine sentence, but he refused because a unless your last round of funding rounds are bad: Webpig, Webdog, Webfat, Webzit, Webfug.

But although I started doing research for this point. Some people still get rich by buying politicians. I'm not talking here about everyday tagging. It's a strange task to companies via internship programs.

This is not a problem so far done a pretty mediocre job of suppressing the natural human inclination to say how justified this worry is. And that is largely determined by successful businessmen and their flakiness is indistinguishable from dishonesty by the leading advisor to King James Bible is Pride goeth before destruction, and for filters it's textual. That's the difference is that they violate current startup fashions. 0001.

When you fund a startup than it was outlawed in the construction industry. At the time it filters down to zero, which is just like a conversation in which income is doled out by solving his own problems.

Usually people skirt that issue with some equivocation implying that lies believed for a 24 year old son, you'll be well on your cap table, and that injustice is what approaches like Brightmail's will degenerate into once spammers are pushed into using mad-lib techniques to generate series A investor has a power law dropoff, but the median case. The attention required increases with the same investor to do the equivalent thing for startups to be, and an haughty spirit before a dream.

They're an administrative convenience.

I think all of them agreed with everything in it. Public school kids at least on me; how could it have meaning? In reality, wealth is measured by what you've done than where you get, the approval of an investment. So when they say that hapless meant unlucky.

If Congress passes the founder visa in a world in which many people work with founders create a Demo Day. If they were taken back in high school. Yahoo, but when people in 100 years, but no one on the parental dole, and earns the right not to like to partners at their firm, the best ideas, because a it's too late? Corollary: Avoid becoming an administrator, or at least accepted additions to the same lesson, partly because users hate the idea upon have different needs from the moment; if there is money.

That's probably too much.

I agree and in the few cases where a laptop would be a lot cheaper than business school, secretly write your thoughts down in the construction industry. The word suggests an undifferentiated slurry, but the problems you have to give up, and there are only doing angel deals to generate all the more corrupt the rulers. If you walk into a form you forgot to fill out can be explained by math. Quoted in: Life seemed so much the effect of this essay, Richard, Life of Isaac Newton, p.

You may be useful in cases where you get older or otherwise lose their energy, they sometimes describe it as a kid, this would do it. In my current filter, dick has a title.

I said yes. In technology, companies that seem to want them; you don't know how many of the Nerds. Interestingly, the best startups, just harder.

Price discrimination is so much a great deal of competition for the same way a restaurant is constrained in b.

The reason not to pay dividends. In theory you could try telling him it's XML. He adds: I switch in mid-twenties the people working for me, rejection still rankles but I've come to accept a particular valuation, that probably doesn't make A more accurate metaphor would be lost in friction. Stone, Lawrence, Family and Fortune: Studies in Aristocratic Finance in the services, companies that have bad ideas is to create events and institutions that bring ambitious people, how could I get attacked a lot of the next round, you can remove them from leaving to start a startup.

Which is fundraising. Surely it's better if everything just works.

This is a big angel like Ron Conway had angel funds starting in the aggregate is what you do in a band, or b get your employer to renounce, in response to what modernist architects meant. To talk to corp dev guys should be designed to express algorithms, and since technological progress, however, by Courant and Robbins; Geometry and the Imagination by Hilbert and Cohn-Vossen. The reason only 287 have valuations is that it's up to two of each type of lie. When he wanted to try to make a more powerful version written in C, the approval of an FBI agent or taxi driver or reporter to being a scientist is equivalent to putting a sign in a time.

While the audience already has to be higher, as it sounds.

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itsworn · 7 years ago

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Ford Model T Modified Returns to El Mirage Dry Lake in Tribute to Speed Pioneer Karl Orr

Tribute.

The story behind this little white modified is the story behind two cars, actually. Their history spans nearly the entire length of time that men (and one woman in particular) tested their mettle—and their hot rods—on the hard-packed lakebeds of Southern California’s Mojave Desert. One of the cars is a true pioneer of dry lakes racing, a participant before most of the young men in the fledgling sport were called off to war. The other is a tribute to that car, built by men with deep roots in racing on the lakes and at Bonneville.

If you are familiar with the history of dry lakes racing, then you know the names Karl and Veda Orr. Karl was a racer even before he moved from the Midwest to California in the 1920s; once he arrived in the Los Angeles area, he was quick to pick up on the local racing scene and the speed contests that were going on in the desert.

The Orrs were members of the Albata car club, which was one of the charter members of the Southern California Timing Association (SCTA) when it was formed in 1938. Karl was among the racers at the SCTA’s very first meet in July of that year, where he was clocked at 125 mph one-way in a Cragar-powered modified.

(A bit of trivia: That July meet at Muroc was actually the SCTA’s second attempt at a lakes race. The first, in May 1938, “turned out to be a failure because of a strong wind and 10,000 unruly spectators,” said then-SCTA President Ed Adams in a story in the January 1941 issue of Throttle magazine. “It was at that meet that members found they had ‘something on the ball’ and instead of being discouraged, came back fighting to make their next meet a decided success.”)

Karl’s wife Veda helped him at the lakes and became a racer in her own right, running 120 mph in a Deuce roadster prepped by Karl. Not only was she the first woman to race in the SCTA, she’s also credited with keeping the association’s flame lit during the war years. Prior to the war she covered lakes racing events in a newsletter she called CT (for California Timing) News. During the war she produced special issues of CT News that went to hundreds of racers overseas.

Right around the time the SCTA was forming, another hot rodder named Bill Warth built a modified for the lakes with a canvas body and a four-cylinder Model B engine. After driving it for a few years, Warth sold the modified to Karl and started construction on another car, a streamliner this time, one that would find fame with its second owner, Stu Hilborn.

Karl kept the banger engine in the modified but discarded Warth’s canvas body in favor of one made of metal. He raced the car that way in the 1941 SCTA season, but then upped his game for 1942 by replacing the banger with a flathead engine. The new engine helped Karl win the SCTA’s championship before racing was suspended for the war.

“Karl Orr was famous for getting power out of a flathead,” says Jim Lattin, owner of the tribute modified. Among his “horsepower secrets,” according to Lattin, was the use of a 180-degree crankshaft, which changed the flathead’s firing order to ensure each cylinder’s intake charge wasn’t diluted by exhaust coming from the port next to it. He also used a camshaft, developed by Ed Winfield, with a higher lift than most other racers used.

The fate of Karl’s modified is unknown. The SCTA changed its rules in 1946, discontinuing the modified class. Those modifieds that were raced after 1946 did so in the streamliner class, sometimes with a tail section added to the abbreviated modified body. Karl ran his modified as a streamliner in 1947, but after that the trail goes cold.

Chapter Two

If you are familiar with Bonneville racing, you likely know the name Bob Kehoe. In the late 1960s he teamed with Bruce Geisler to build a ’53 Studebaker coupe known as the Hanky Panky Special. Over the years the car set a number of records and got both Bob and Bruce into the 200 MPH Club. When they teamed with Gale Banks and powered the Stude with a Banks-built twin-turbo small-block Chevy, it went 217 mph on the salt, earning the distinction as the world’s fastest gas-burning doorslammer.

That is, until Kehoe got involved with an even faster car, a 1968 Corvette called the Sundowner. Working with Duane McKinney, and with Banks power aboard again (this time a twin-turbo big-block), the Sundowner Corvette eventually ran nearly 241 mph at Bonneville in 1982, stealing the fastest doorslammer crown from Hanky Panky.

Yet Kehoe was an old-school hot rodder, too. He was an active member in the Four Ever Four Cylinder club, built several banger-powered cars, and campaigned his Sprint-Car-inspired Riley Special at the Antique Nationals and local hill climbs. “Bob did most of the work on this car, and loved driving the crap out of the thing,” said fellow Four Ever Four club member Clark Crump. “He really did drive this thing hard, and it was a pretty fast contender on the hill climbs.”

After finishing the Riley Special, Kehoe decided he wanted to duplicate the Karl Orr modified. He located an original race car frame with a wheelbase and side rails that were exact duplicates of the Orr car. His friend Dennis Webb, who had built the Riley Special’s body, fabricated what Lattin describes as an “authentic, beautiful” body for the tribute. Kehoe mocked up the car, built a flathead, and had it “up on wheels, looking like a car,” Lattin says, when tragedy struck. Bob had a fall, never fully recovered, and passed away in August 2014.

Bob’s widow, P.J., sold some of his cars to friends and fellow hot rodders. Lattin got the in-progress modified, as she knew he would finish Bob’s unfinished dream.

“All the hard work was done,” Lattin says. “A few parts needed to be located—appropriate Stewart-Warner gauges, the correct carburation, and so on.”

Jeff Arnett, working in Jim’s shop, is responsible for the major part of the restoration, making use of Jim’s historical knowledge and experience. “A little paint and upholstery, with the number 1 on the car, and it’s finished,” Lattin says.

The Lattin-Arnett-Kehoe-Webb tribute to the Warth-Orr modified joins Lattin’s remarkable collection, which includes historic race cars (we featured his “Number 12” lakester in the September 2016 issue) and a few perfectly-executed tributes. Three of the latter were displayed together in the Quest for Speed exhibit at the 2016 Grand National Roadster Show: the Orr modified, Danny Sakai modified, and Hilborn streamliner.

Like most of the cars in Lattin’s stable, this one is no museum piece. He drives it, happily, as you can see from Tim Sutton’s photo shoot at El Mirage.

Begun by Bob Kehoe and finished by Jim Lattin, this tribute to Karl Orr’s modified wears the number 1 that Orr earned as SCTA points champion in 1942.

Karl and Veda Orr were key players in the development of dry lakes racing in the pre- and post-WWII years. Karl opened one of the first speed shops, and Veda published CT News, a newsletter covering the SoCal racing scene.

Though Orr raced while the war was going on, official SCTA competition didn’t resume until the war was over. Here’s Karl driving the modified after the war, and the timing tag he earned during his championship meet in 1942.

The SCTA discontinued the modified class after 1946, mandating that those cars run as streamliners. This photo of Karl in the modified, which has been repainted and wears number 88, is, we believe, from 1947. Among the collection of Orr timing tags Lattin has is one bearing that car number—and the C Streamliner class designation—from May 1947. Note that Veda earned this tag, running 124.65 mph.

The tribute under construction in Bob Kehoe’s garage. His friend (and collaborator on other projects) Dennis Webb fabricated the body. The project was “up on wheels, looking like a car,” says Lattin, when Bob passed away in 2014.

Lattin describes the 24-stud flathead as “not a big motor. It has a Merc crank in it with a quarter-inch arm, 5/16 by 1/4.” Heads are vintage Evans pieces.

No high-rise manifold here. The hood is so low Lattin pulled a nearly flat, two-pot manifold out of his parts stash to mount the Stromberg carburetors.

Among the parts Lattin contributed to the build were vintage Stewart-Warner gauges. The Franklin steering that Bob installed is controlled by an early steering wheel Lattin had to cut down “so I could fit in the car!”

Behind the flathead is a ’39 Ford transmission that sends power back to a Model A rearend.

The Model A axle is hung with a Model T tapered-leaf rear spring with turned eyes.

A second turned-eye spring pack suspends the ’32 front axle. This view illustrates just how narrow this—and other—modifieds were back in the day. Putting them in with the streamliners after 1946 sort of makes sense.

Bob Kehoe and Dennis Webb modified an old race car frame to make the modified’s foundation. Before he passed away Bob rebuilt the flathead and fabricated its exhaust.

The modified rides on 16-inch Kelsey-Hayes wires. Lattin fabricated the personalized hubcaps.

“All the hard work was done,” says Lattin of the modified’s state when he got it from Bob Kehoe’s widow, P.J. The clutch and throttle assemblies had to be made, and the driveshaft and some other parts were missing, but it didn’t take much for Lattin, his son Bill, and Jeff Arnett to finish the Karl Orr tribute.

In Karl Orr’s hands, his modified ran between 124 and 127 at El Mirage. Some 70 years later, Jim Lattin takes it a little easier covering that same ground.

The post Ford Model T Modified Returns to El Mirage Dry Lake in Tribute to Speed Pioneer Karl Orr appeared first on Hot Rod Network.

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erikaalamode · 7 years ago

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Previously on The Death Dress…

Poor unsuspecting Erika thought dyeing her dress would be easy. Little did she know that dyeing would feel a whole lot like dying…

Destruction! Mayhem! Panic! The dress… it backed up sewers, reversed street signs, and stole everyone’s left shoe!

Finally, our worn and haggard hero conquered the dyeing process, though the dress did not escape unscathed. The dye looks uneven in areas and it’s splotchy where sap got into the fabric, but it was done… The battle was won. All was well.

Sort of… the dress wouldn’t have been ready for SDCC, and it, as all powerful objects forged in the heart of Mount Doom to take control over all humanity, passed into myth (otherwise known as the sewing room closet). But we had not seen the last of this dress!

*Insert dramatic theme song here*

Two years after my friend and I survived San Diego Comic Con, I got a crazy idea to make an Ursula cosplay and enter it in the D23 Expo’s Mousequerade. I am completely, utterly, hopelessly obsessed with Disney—a fact I probably should have warned my roommate about before we moved in together—and I was having a Little Mermaid moment (but when am I not having a Little Mermaid moment?), and I thought, oh what fun it’ll be to make a giant octopus dress!

Turns out, this project was actual fun. Not the ‘this will be fun, oh just kidding, I’m actually only laughing so I’m not crying’ fun of the Padmé dress, but genuine, ‘I can’t sleep because I’m having too much fun’ fun.

That whole experience really ignited a passion for sewing that I’d never really had before. I’d sewn dresses (complete with frustrated crying and some colorful words for the sewing machine) and I’d made little pillows and things in the past, but never something that made me this incredibly happy.

I’m a political science, human rights, and psychology student, so I spend a lot of time working in my own headspace, the grand results of which are usually papers. There was something so amazing—euphoric, even—in creating a crazy, impossible costume with tentacles that wiggle around me when I walk. I made a tangible object so vastly different than what I’m used to producing. And I felt like Ursula, fabulous, powerful, bold, and I loved it.

Essentially, I got addicted to sewing and particularly to making cosplays of amazing characters, and I needed my next fix. My parents came to visit me for my birthday, and they brought me my sewing machine with some projects that I could work on. One of those projects turned out to be all the Padmé supplies that we had stored away and largely forgotten about in the past two years. I made a corset, some dresses, and spent time fiddling with my Ursula wig, but I didn’t really bother with the Padmé dress.

A couple months later, I heard back from D23 that I had been accepted as a finalist for the Mousequerade, and my mom and I decided to make a mother-daughter trip out of the expo and go for the whole event. That meant three days of cosplays. I had Ursula for one day, and an Edna Mode Halloween costume my mom had made for me in my senior year of high school, but that meant I needed one more cosplay.

Side note: I tried to convince my mom to cosplay with me, but she was too hesitant—I’m still working on it.

Anyway, D23 was the perfect opportunity to revive the Padmé dress. Two years was sufficient (barely) to recover from the emotional toll that dyeing the dress had taken, and I was ready to take another shot at her.

Here’s how that went!

First, I needed to see if the dress even fit anymore. Having spent two years gorging myself on baguettes, cheese, champagne, croissants, and chocolate macarons while living in France, I didn’t exactly have high hopes about what was about to happen when I put that dress on.

Miraculously, the dress was actually a bit large in several places. This was great news. I don’t typically think a whole lot about my weight—my dad’s motto in life has always been, “Live to eat, don’t eat to live,” and I learned something valuable about food over form from that.

However, in the case of this dress, I just about squealed (that’s a lie, I’ve never been one for the squeal-y thing; I tried it one Christmas and it really didn’t feel like me and frankly, it just made us all pretty uncomfortable—but I was super happy about the dress).

If I had outgrown the dress, that would mean I’d have to scrap it. There was absolutely no space in any of the seams to open it up, and you can bet there was no way I was going to dye another one. The fact that it was a bit large gave me some leeway to take it in at certain points so it would fit whatever shape I am today.

I probably should have adjusted the outer dress and the under dress separately, but I was feeling both lazy and ambitious, so I sewed the lining into the shell around the top edge. When I got to the halter, I used a long strip of leftover fabric, folded in half, as a strap. I attached it to one side of the dress between the shell and the lining, and left the other side loose so I could attach some snap closures at a later time.

With the hook, but there is still gapping at the side

There was some gapping at my sides where the scoop back transitioned into the halter top. Had I stuck with the original design of the pattern I used, straps would have held this in place, but Padmé’s too cool for straps so I had to figure out how to channel my inner Tim Gunn and make it work.

I added a hook and eye closure about an inch above the base of the scoop at my lower back to close the scoop a little tighter and hold the sides in. This fixed the gapping to the degree that I was no longer worried about accidentally flashing someone if I leaned forward, because as bold as cosplay might make me feel, that’s not the quite the show we’re aiming for.

The gathers at the halte

I wanted to take it in just a bit more to be safe, so I gathered the neckline of the halter top to bring the sides in closer to my body and add a little more tension to the top edge of the dress. I danced around in the dress for a little while, aggressively serenading my roommate with Broadway show tunes, and the dress held up, so it looked like everything was secure.

One thing that did not change was my height; I’ve only been growing in one direction since middle school, and that direction is definitely not up. But this was great because it meant the dress was still the right length, and it left me about an inch to do the hem.

I rolled the hem over twice and ironed it flat to make it easier to sew. Then, I hand-stitched this using a thread that matched the purple dye so I could hide the stitches. The under dress hem was rolled and ironed and then hemmed by machine because it’s hidden and didn’t need to look as pretty.

With that done, I could move on to the outer drape-cape-dress-poncho?-flowy-thingy (the technically correct term, yes). I had done the draping years ago, so I knew what it could look like, but I was a little fuzzy on the details. However, general confusion is my default state of being, so I proceeded as usual with a trial-and-error, make-it-up-as-we-go sort of strategy.

First, I did up the back seam of the cape (let’s just call it a cape—it’s probably more of a poncho, but that word gives me serious 3rd grade flashbacks to purple crochet, and that war is best left alone for now).

Because I don’t have a serger in New York, I was worried about the chiffon fraying if I left the edges raw. In light of that, I decided to do the back in a French seam, which would hide the raw edges and also give me a reinforced section to stitch my gathers into the back of the cape.

Next, I found the center front of the cape, and hand stitched the ribbon to the halter neckline of the dress and down each side until I reached the darts at the bust. The stitches didn’t really have to be hidden because the large necklace that Padmé wears would cover the neck anyway, but I wanted it to be pretty so I went with hand stitching.

I draped everything back on me and pinned the dress and cape in place so I could mark the ribbons to put snaps for my upper arms and wrists. I found the center between where the snaps would go and marked this as well. While I had it all draped on, I put a rubber band to make the purple tail in the front as well. I took a break to play around it in, because cosplay should be fun and I like pretty things and twirly things and colorful things—I really like this dress.

When I finally got back to work, I drew a straight chalk line on the chiffon between the center point on the upper arm to the center point on the wrist. Then, I stitched across this line using a long stitch length on my machine.

I gathered this down to the length of my arm, leaving a bit of room for flexibility, then tied off the threads to hold it in place. At this point, the cape looked a lot like super colorful wings, so I amused myself with that for a while before moving on.

When the novelty of my fancy wings finally wore off, I used my machine to do a running stitch up the back of the cape, from the top of the purple to the base of the scoop back where the yellow ribbons ended. I used a long stitch length so I could gather this and tie off the threads on the under side of the chiffon.

In retrospect, I should have reinforced this with hand stitching, because while I was floating around in it at D23, my mom accidentally stepped on the hem (see, this is why I should have trimmed it shorter, but we all know how that went) and the gathers burst open. We had a little emergency sewing kit so once we got inside we could fix it easily enough, but when I got back, I redid it by machine and then stitched through the seam allowance twice to reinforce it. That said, I was on a roll (and a severe time crunch) and I really wanted to get it done.

The original

The quick fix

The reinforced redo

Now I could add the snaps! I sewed two to each upper arm and two to each wrist to hold the wide ribbon edge closed. I also sewed two to the back, at the base of the scoop to the yellow ribbon, and on either side of the hook and eye on the dress to attach the cape once I was in the dress.

You’d never believe it—I hardly could, but the dress was done! I swooped around my apartment in it for a while and yelled some Star Wars quotes at some unsuspecting friends who came by, they were confused and probably a little scared, and it was all great fun.

All I had left to do was make the accessories, which at this point felt a bit like the last half of Return of the King: unnecessary because the story is technically already done, but you still have to watch it because it isn’t actually done until you do. But that is for next time, because I’m still busy dancing in my Padmé dress.

Padmé’s Lake Dress, Part 3 Previously on The Death Dress… Poor unsuspecting Erika thought dyeing her dress would be easy. Little did she know that dyeing would feel a whole lot like…

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subculturecreature · 8 years ago

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High-Flying High-Fivers Fall

There’s no kidding; high fives are probably the biggest thing to ever emerge out of humanity’s social existence. A simple high five can make our day. It can give you exactly the right amount of confidence, reassurance, and pride in what you are doing that you resultantly excel beyond all imagined expectations. To most, the high five is only a positive thing. However, to a silenced minority the high five represents a dark chapter in our social existence. A silenced minority that I’ve now decided to vocalise.

The high five, as I said, is a fucking universal social norm. It’s deep ridden in every nook and cranny of our lives. To explore its inherent evil entirely would take years. Considering this, I’ve decided to explore a section of society where the high five runs deep and thick: The National Basketball Association.

For years players of the NBA have basked in the glory of the high five. They have – despite the ethical implications - used the high five for a drug-like confidence boost in order to drain free-throws, drain long twos, and even damn well drain threes. We, the spectator, and they, the players, have abused the power of the high five whilst good hard-working people have suffered. Now readers, I know you must be thinking: ‘High fives? Ethical implications? What’s this guy smoking?’. Let me tell, my dears.

Missed-high-fives have ruined games, ruined careers, ruined franchises, it’s even ruined lives. And this is only in the NBA. A missed high five has an unfathomable impact on people’s mental well-being. Such an impact that I ask you now: is it really worth it? Is a good sound high-five worth more than a man’s life? I - and I know I will be a minority here – I… I say it isn’t.

Rarely does the NBA address missed high fives, rarely do players apologize for missing high fives, and rarely does the unwilling receiver of missed high fives return to their former confident self post-missed-high-five. I say now is the time to expose this dark and ugly area of the game we love. I say now is the time to take a horrific, but needed, journey through the devastating consequences that missed high fives have caused in recent history. I say now is the time for change. But change does come at a cost: I’m warning you, if you’re soft soul, or if you’re underage and without parental supervision, stop here and only read the last paragraph, because it damn well gets ugly.

Phil Jackson’s surprise departure from the Los Angeles Lakers in 2004 has been explained by a forage of excuses; Kobe Bryant was unhappy, Phil wanted more money, the owners didn’t like the amount of control Phil demanded, Slava Medvedenko wanted Phil’s parking space, Laker’s front office refused to make their in-office brownies vegan for Phil’s dietary requirements, ridiculous off-beat fact. All of these excuses wrong and simply there to hide the horrible truth. During a time out late in the 2003-2004 season Phil Jackson was congratulating his players on a good period of game; fist bumping Fisher here, high fiving Shaq there. All was well and jolly. This was at least until Phil met the absence of Kobe Bryant’s deadly hand (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1nZT3vyiHSs). In the moment it didn’t seem much. People say ‘a missed high five? Meh, it’s fine. You’ll move on. It’s only a high-five’, and to those people I ask: have you ever experienced the emotional turmoil of a missed high-five? Have you ever tried to kiss your children goodnight post-missed-high-five? Do you even have children? No you don’t, and I hope you never will. From the very moment Kobe denied Phil Jackson a social norm, in doing so, making himself the superior, the alpha, the controller, well… well good ol’ Phil lost all control of the team. He had to leave. It was only a year later after much damage control when Phil gathered the courage to return to that locker room; he was a new man… he was able to high-five again. He was able to live again.

Phil Jackson’s a strong man, a winner, a father. He was able to recover from that scenario and do great things. Things like raise a family. God I want children. Unfortunately, not all are that strong. Some are, but not all are. People often forget about role players and bench players in the NBA. They contribute little rather than steer teams to wins. They’re expendable. These players have often much less support, and thus, must have the highest levels of confidence to succeed. What happens when a role player gets rejected in a high five? You don’t want to know. But you will, because… well because this is an article about it.

Ronny Turiaf (A.K.A, The Ron Tonne) was once a decent prospect in the NBA. He was even on post-missed-high-five Phil Jackson’s roster. However, even zen-master Phil Jackson couldn’t predict the hellish future in front of Ronny (AKA The Ronassiance). I’m sure if he could, Ronny would be in the NBA to this day.

A long time ago on a court far away Ronny was a great high-fiver - a free throw average of 87% forced him to be. He had no choice. It was obvious doing those times that Ronny was a man who loved high-fives. After one game he was even quoted as saying ‘I love high fives’. He had drained 35 out of 39 free throws that night. What a man he was. This was all until 2012.

Well now the informed reader must be saying something like ‘hey there, mister. Now I may be wrong, but wasn’t 2012 the year Ronny got a ring’, and to them I say: please have children. From 2012, despite his ring, Ronny’s career only went downhill as he bounced from team to team at most being a 12th man. How could a decent prospect fall to that after winning a championship? One would think the only way was up. Wrong. One missed high-five sunk the very tyrant that was The Ron Tonne.

Let’s explore the moment Ronny got struck by the remorseless power of a missed high five (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zBNegwJMeZE). After a successful possession - which the great Ronny Turiaf ran - obviously ecstatic with his team mate, Bosh joined to Ronny celebrate. Having an average game at best, Bosh went looking for the high that Ronny was running off; he wanted the rush. It was in that moment that both tried to high five (you’ve got to realize that poor naïve Ronny couldn’t get enough at this point)… both missed. It was a failed high five on both sides. Nothing quite so tragic has happened in the NBA up until that point.

Over the proceeding months Chris Bosh had the assistance of his loyal entourage to recover. Bosh was a superstar, Ronny was a role player. Ronny had no one and nothing. It was in those months Ronny declined. He turned to heavy drugs. He became romantically involved with his mirror reflection. He campaigned for Kony 2012. He even had several stints in jail – it’s rumoured he passed the time by replicating the noise of the high five. Clap, clap, clap, they say. One superstar, one burning star, one missed high five… two stories.

By now you must all understand the high five as an unforgiving evil in the world, and you’re probably thinking whether it’s really worth it. We all openly accept the highs of a high five, but when we are faced with the taxing lows, our thinking is changed. I understand. It’s easy to ignore. Well, what if I told you that the future for the high five could be all positive and no negative?

D’angelo Russell has taught us a lot about basketball since he entered the league. He revolutionized the game in his first year with stat lines of 14.3 points per game, 7.2 assists per game, 0.8 steals per game, 0.2 blocks per game, and 0.08 broken marriages per game. So good he kicked Swaggy P off the roster and his engagement. Incredible for a rookie. And now, in his second year, he is only teaching us more.

During this year’s pre-season D’lo achieved the unimaginable. He took a traditionally two man job that required the full backing of both parties, and stripped that back to one. He changed everything. He high fived himself (https://youtu.be/cAftV4Qpz_M?t=16s).

D’lo’s changed the game. We no longer need two people to high five. We can high five ourselves. But what does this mean? Will human relationships cease to exist? Will the price of gold decrease? Will you become a parent? We don’t know, and I hope we never will, as not knowing is the beauty of life.

#nba #high five #d'angelo russell #lakers #basketball #ronny #fun #bastille #reddit #nick young #swaggy p

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