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cinebration · 4 years ago

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Written in DNA (Booker x Reader) [Part 3]

Booker wakes up in an unusual position.

Tagged: @lucy-sky, @city-of-weird

Warnings: none

Gif Source: dcnnatroya

Booker woke slowly, painfully. His head pulsed with each heartbeat. His tongue felt dry and gummy in his mouth, yearning for liquid relief.

His eyes peeled open.

The ground was moving beneath him. He stared down at it, struggling to orient himself. How could he see it do that when he was stationary?

Touch was the last of his sense to reawaken. He felt an arm wrapped around one of his thighs, his right wrist held in a hand. Something hard pushed into his chest, not quite uncomfortable.

He was being carried.

Booker tensed involuntarily.

“Awake now?” you asked.

He lifted his head and glanced aside to see your face in close profile.

You stopped walking abruptly and slung him off your shoulders with the ease of someone slipping off a backpack. He stumbled as his feet hit the ground, hung onto you for dear life.

It felt like grabbing hold of a pole. You didn’t so much as move as he unintentionally yanked on your arm to right himself.

“Are you a robot?” he heard himself ask.

You laughed. “No.”

The early morning sunlight chose to lance through the swaying tree tops, assaulting Booker’s eyes. He squeezed them shut, wishing he would wake from this strange dream.

You were still there when he opened them again.

In natural lighting, you seemed…normal. Ordinary. There was something deep in your eyes that he couldn’t quite see in the light, but you stood with a casualness that belied what he had experienced so far.

“Look, you basically went to a lot of trouble to break me out,” you said. “So I figure, I can go with you to see whomever your boss is, that way you don’t get in trouble.”

Booker frowned. “Why?”

“Because I owe you for opening the door. Plus, it’s been my first time out here in…ten years, I think. And I don’t have any friends, so.”

“So…”

“So right now, you’re my touchstone to the world. TV only taught me so much about what the world’s like right now, and we both know it gives a biased view of things.”

The meaning of your words sunk in as Booker watched you start off in the same direction you had been traveling when he had woken. Ten years away from the world?

Ten years trapped in that room?

In his two-hundred years on the planet, nothing had been as crazy as this.

He debated running off in another direction, but something told him you would hunt him down with all the skill of an apex predator. Why he thought this, he wasn’t sure, but you hadn’t killed him. Yet.

He still had to deliver you to Quynh…

Booker trudged after you.

You had been following the road via the woods the whole night. When you finally stepped onto the asphalt road just outside of a mid-sized town, you had traveled fifty miles with Booker on your back for eight hours over uneven terrain.

Booker did the math as he trailed behind you. Fifty miles over eight hours meant you had averaged six miles an hour—or a mile every ten minutes.

He weighed about 180lbs.

It shouldn’t have been possible. Then again, very little he had experienced with you seemed possible.

Probable, he corrected himself. It wasn’t probable, but the…things had happened. He couldn’t ignore that.

You headed straight for the nearest diner. It hung just on the outskirts of the town, catering to overnight truckers. By the time Booker reached the door, you were already inside, ordering right at the counter.

“I ordered for you,” you said as he stepped up beside you. “Mind if we sit in a booth? I need to rest my back.”

Booker shrugged and followed you to the booth in a corner. You sat with your back to the wall, your position giving you a full sweep of the establishment.

Training, Booker noted, slipping into the bench seat opposite you.

A waitress strode over and poured out a mug of steaming coffee for Booker.

“Leave the pot,” you said, smiling.

The woman arched an eyebrow but set the pot down on the cracked tabletop. “Food’ll be right up.”

“Thank you.”

Booker watched you scan first the room, then the parking lot through the window. Your gaze settled on him after you were satisfied.

There was something unsettling about your stare. It wasn’t like you were looking through him. It seemed more like you were processing him like a computer crunching data.

He itched beneath that stare.

“How old are you?”

The question caught him off guard. “Two hundred years old, give or take.”

“How many times have you died?”

Something writhed within him. “Too many.”

The waitress returned, a tray laden with plates balanced on her hand. She set the dishes out on the table with practiced swiftness: waffles, pancakes, eggs, sausage, bacon, hash browns, toast. The whole shebang.

You smothered the waffles in butter and maple syrup. The first forkful went in your mouth. Your eyes fluttered closed, your back slumped against the seat. The ecstasy on your face almost brought a smile to Booker’s face despite his confusion and mistrust.

“I haven’t had these in forever,” you said. There were almost tears in your voice.

Booker forked some eggs and toast onto a plate. He ate slowly as you devoured your meal. Somehow you seemed to relish each bite despite the pace at which you ate.

If he didn’t know any better, he would’ve thought you were starving.

At last, on the second plate of food, you slowed. You finished another plate before you pushed the empty platters aside. Leaning back against the seat, you resettled your attention back on Booker.

“Are there others like you?”

His chest constricted. “Yes,” he answered, glancing away. “Are there others like you?”

A pause. Then: “I don’t know. I imagine so. I’m not exactly a top-quality specimen.”

“What does that mean?”

The waitress sauntered over. “Can I get you anything else?”

“No, thank you,” you said. “Just the bill.”

The woman set the bill down with a flourish. You looked pointedly at Booker.

“What?” he asked.

“I don’t have money.”

“Of course you don’t.” He pulled out his wallet and counted out the necessary cash.

You reached over and pulled a ten-dollar bill out of the billfold before he could close it. “For the waitress,” you explained. “I have to use the bathroom. You gonna run out on me?”

Booker met your intense gaze. “No.”

You made a sound in your throat but got up and headed toward the restrooms anyway. Booker followed a moment later, realizing he needed to piss.

The restroom was thankfully empty. Booker stepped up to the urinal and tried to relax. His body still ached. How long had it been doing that? Maybe since before he had been exiled from the group. The thought poisoned his thoughts and soured the food in his stomach.

Shaking himself, he zipped up, flushed, and went to the sink. The cool water felt restorative over his hands. He splashed it onto his face, risked a glance in the mirror. His broken gaze reflected back to him, fractured by grief and shame and self-loathing.

He looked away.

The door to the bathroom opened. He glanced up to se you in the doorway.

“What?”

“We should get moving,” you said.

“You can wait a minute.”

“I’m a multi-million-dollar project. Waiting isn’t an option. They’ll come for me.”

Booker read the warning in your eyes and the tension in your voice. He turned off the faucet and snatched up some paper towels to dry his hands and face.

The government would want you back. And they’d love to get his hands on him, too.

He wasn’t going to stick around for that.

#Booker x Reader #Booker #Booker imagine #Sebastien le Livre x Reader #Sebastien le Livre #Sebastien le Livre imagine #Matthias Schoenaerts x Reader #Matthias Schoenaerts #Matthias Schoenaerts imagine #The Old Guard

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tsukkinami · 5 years ago

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clever-tongued

fandom: The Last Kingdom (TV)

pairing: aethelflaed / aldhelm

rating: Explicit

chapters: 1/1

read on ao3 here

The evening started innocently enough—the quiet of her bedroom, a mahogany lounge lined in sheepskin, wine poured halfway to the top before rippling with the echo of colliding goblets. Aldhelm seemed weary, distracted, and Aethelflaed found she could not blame him. Who could? The burden of knowledge is a heavy one, encumbering when padded with secrets, and the man had been yoked by loyalty to Mercia through her husband for a long while. But Aldhelm is good at his job. He had always been tight-lipped and clever-tongued.

The candlelight flickers once, twice. Aethelflaed first begins to feel the hum of her alcohol running just beneath her skin, and it’s not too much. She laughs at something, spoken hushed between them, and it’s a bubble rising in her chest that bursts. Aldhelm smiles, tries to hide it by focusing his gaze to the floor between his planted feet, but Aethelflaed leans into him to pull him close, to draw him into the warmth of her small delight. She says something back, a quick retort, and his laugh mirrors hers.

And then the laughter fades into silence, into curious flicks of the eye to noses, lips, planes of cheeks. Aethelflaed never realized that gold was spun into Aldhelm’s dark hair, that his eyes held storms and his brow arched to the right, like hers.

I want you to kiss me. She had not meant to say it outloud.

There’s a strangeness in the moment, like being plucked from time itself. Aldhelm is still, lips parted to reply, to act, to promise. No thought demands the action of Aethelflaed moving her hand to rest upon his, but she does so regardless, pink fingertips brushing against the hem of his blue linen sleeve and curling. It is an anchor, a touchstone, and it draws Aldhelm’s eyes away from hers for a moment, to assure himself that the words she had spoken were true.

“Lady, I cannot.”

It’s a push and pull, a calculated move which Aethelflaed can see him forming a plan around in his mind. He always thought two steps ahead, strategic and cautious. Oft she’d find herself thinking in stride, but tonight her patience was not held for games.

“Why?”

Her voice is as quiet as the flutter of her eyelashes, when her gaze falls from him to the small space between them, growing smaller with the passing seconds. She watches his eyes do the same, watches his mind struggle to keep up with the moments ticking by.

“I fear what a kiss becomes.” His hand twitches, turns over in her palm, to hold it, to run his thumb over the peaks and valleys of her knuckles. “I fear I am not worthy.”

His hand is soft on hers, his presence warm and comforting. He’d saved her life, time and time again, even when it seemed not in danger. The tears she had cried into his shoulder number too many to count. Aethelflaed has no fear.

“Then let me prove you wrong.”

She grants him no quarter, no time to think, to retreat. Her body moves forward, curving into his embrace, and her mouth finds him, even in the low light, with trained ease. His stubble scratches at the corners of her lips, the underside of her nose. He smells of pine and the wine they shared, and when she breathes in, he is all she knows.

For all his hesitation, Aldhelm does not fight, but responds with her enthusiasm, blended with his own long-suppressed desire. He runs that clever tongue along her bottom lip, lets her guide his hands to her waist as she presses herself against him. The heat at her core rises to simmer against her skin, to set them both alight at every point of contact. He seems not to mind being burned.

The heat grows, amplified by their closeness, and soon Aethelflaed is shrugging out of her dress, a red velvet affair which clings stubbornly to her body. Without a word or a pause, Aldhelm brings his deft hands to her collar and lets his fingers stutter across her pale skin, slipping her arms from the confines of the garment. She snatches one of his palms from her shoulder and draws it to her breast, body lurching as he molds his touch to supple skin. When she moves, upsetting their rhythm, he breaks away from their kiss, sealing his lips now to her pulse point and sucking a dark red brand against it. His lips drag, gentle and purposeful, down the length of her neck and pause to rest inside her clavicle, kissing her freckles in the pattern of a constellation.

Despite the heat, Aethelflaed shivers, eyes shivering closed in kind, and takes a gasping breath between her lips as her fingers trail up his arms to his neck. The binds of Aldhelm’s shirt are loosed with precision, and soon she is spanning her palms across his chest with possessive desperation, nails grazing across his skin in an unspoken promise to him that by night’s end, neither one of them would go unmarked.

He hums into her skin, spurred by her ministrations, and in a motion as quick as thought, he reaches around her waist and draws her up into his lap. The sheepskin is soft against her knees as she braces her hands on his shoulders and captures him between her thighs, locks of her hair falling against his ears when she kisses the top of his head. His arms curl around her back to pull her flush against him, and his mouth worships her heart, her breasts, until she can be silent no longer, her moan echoing about the room as she tilts her head back to let it slide from her throat.

“Is there still fear in your heart?” she whispers into his hair once she cranes her head back down. Aldhelm pauses, peering up at her in the same way a priest peers to the heavens, reverence only faintly undercut by lust, a darkening thunderhead in his eyes. Never before in her life has Aethelflaed so badly wanted to be caught in a storm.

“For you, my Lady—always.”

And with that, he resumes, efforts redoubled; whether it is to draw more noise from her lips or for his own pleasure, Aethelflaed does not know. She does not care. Her hips cant against him when his hands wander to the soft plush of her belly, tracing the marks of childbirth that line her thighs.

“I fear what you do to me,” he whispers as she pulls his shirt over his head, hair mussed when she twines her fingers through it. He plucks at the fabric gathered at her hips before diving beneath, exploring her searing heat. “I fear what I become for you.”

His nose bumps the lobe of her ear as his fingers breach her, eased by her arousal. Air hisses through her teeth as his wrist flexes to move his fingers inside of her, accompanied not by pain but by surprise and feverish anticipation. She moves her hips in time to assure him of his actions, moaning into his neck between uncoordinated kisses.

“I fear what you could do to my heart if you realized just how much of it belongs to you.”

In a flurry, she tears his face from her nape and bruises his lips with hers, gasping against his mouth as his fingers quicken their pace. The flat of his thumb rubs against her clit with pinpoint accuracy, and she cries as fire ignites inside her blood, tightening fast around his fingers and rocking against them as the flames lick her from head to toe. She barely has time to let the air return to her lungs before Aldhelm is lifting her upright, careful to keep her steady.

The rest of her dress falls to her feet, and she steps backwards out of it, glued to him still as he guides her to her bed and lays her gently down. He takes a knee at the foot of it once he tugs his boots from his feet and his breeches from his legs. Aethelflaed is still awash in the glow of pleasure when she feels his hands running up the underside of her thighs, hooking them over his shoulders as he inches her closer to his face.

“My blood runs hot for you, Lady,” she hears him say, and props herself up on her elbows to peer in awe down at him. “If I could—”

“Aldhelm, yes,” she cuts him off, grabbing a fistful of his hair. She knows his intentions already, and the mere thought makes her skin jump. “Please, I cannot—oh!”

The feeling is so different than what she expected it to be. It is hot to hot, slick to slick, an alien sensation which makes her angry—angry—not to have felt before tonight. It seizes her for a long moment, draws all air from her chest and thoughts from her mind as Aldhelm drags his clever tongue between her wet folds, lily soft and trembling with residual waves of shock.

Her neck cranes backward, the crown of her head brushing the pillows beneath as she lets out a long groan, bucking against his mouth and twitching when his facial hair scratches the delicate skin around her core. Aldhelm is relentlessly delicate, mouth moving with practiced form, and if Aethelflaed did not know him better, she would think him an expert at his craft. It is not long before she is all but clay beneath him, shaped to him and pliant to every scorching touch he graces her with, and not much longer after that before she is rutting against his tongue in small, febrile movements, chasing after the fire in her gut with him as a guide.

When he hums his pleasure of the moment, the feeling of her around him, all-consuming, the lady of Mercia loses her head, stars soaring across her vision as she trembles with her second shockwave of release that night. Her back arches out of her control, fingernails scratching against his hair as she pulls him close, and never once does he relent or complain. He has done now twiceover what no one else could ever do.

Aldhelm waits for her to quiet, to still, before planting kisses on her thighs, her hips, her belly, finally to her mouth. Her slick is heady and intoxicating on his tongue, and when it’s mixed with his taste, not the finest wine can compare.

“Do you still believe yourself unworthy?” she murmurs once he pulls away, body slotting neatly between her legs. She feels his arousal rub against her wetness and she brushes up into it, eager, despite the tenderness at her center and the tiredness in her veins, to continue their escapades. He gazes at her with the highest adoration, lips quirking into an easy smile.

“Lady, I have not yet begun to prove myself,” he vows, and Aethelflaed’s nostrils flare as heat does the same down her spine.

“Then you’d best start now.”

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sameerabrahamthomas · 4 years ago

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20 Books to Read Against CoViD-19

Thank you to my ex-student Svetya for the idea.

Why 20? Because we should always be one step ahead of the enemy. Why Books? Because they allow you to escape the world we’re in while also expecting your mind to do some of the heavy lifting. Why “Against”? Because whether it’s against the backdrop of the virus or a handy weapon against it, this list should hold you in good stead. So here it is, in no particular order:

1. Dragon Rider by Cornelia Funke

A beautifully illustrated fantasy of escape and adventure involving dragons, mushrooms and other magical creatures. Perfect for days when the news is only making you wish you were somewhere else.

2. 2666 by Roberto Bolaño

A long, dark read about rapes, murders and mysterious authors. Definitely a commitment, but one worth attempting even if the book was never completed. Worth reading when you start thinking things couldn’t possibly get any worse.

3. His Dark Materials trilogy by Philip Pullman

Technically cheating, since it’s three books and not one, but my list, my rules. Magical, controversial, beautiful and haunting. If you want to question the powers that be but wish you had people to help you on your journey, read this for inspiration. There’s a sequel book series and a TV adaptation in the air, so this is as good a time to pick these books up as there ever was.

4. Harry Potter series by JK Rowling

Cheating again. If you haven’t read them already, give it a go. A lot of pop culture references will make a lot more sense. Magic, love, and solidarity wrapped up in a story that’s as much a meme as it is a series. I hope you find something worth bringing home after reading it.

5. Hopscotch by Julio Cortázar

A book written to be read two ways – the normal way or the hopscotch way. Read chapters in order or jump from one chapter to another according to the author’s rule, or your own. A perfect book for reminding you that you can have agency even when it doesn’t feel like you do.

6. Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid by Douglas Hofstadter

One of the most mindbending and revelatory books I’ve ever read. If you’re interested in music, mathematics, lithographs, philosophy, artificial intelligence, genetics, Lewis Carrol, and/or human consciousness, this is the book for you. Open yourself up to strange new experiences now that you have some time.

7. A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking

Speaking of time, read the book that starts off with CBSE +2 physics and chemistry syllabus and ends with questions of black holes and dimensionality. Great for learning about physics whether you identify as a science enthusiast or not. Go for it. A wizard in Harry Potter did (true story, Google it).

8. Catch-22 by Joseph Heller

One of the few books that has made me laugh out loud in a manner that exceeds the usual nose exhalation that LOL-worthy content actually inspires (or expires, or respires). Do you hate the system? Does everything seem like a trap? Read Catch-22 and learn to fight the power and lose, but with a smile on your face and joyful insanity in your heart.

9. Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell

A book I prescribed for my LAA course but didn’t end up teaching. Read it anyway. A touchstone when it comes to dystopian fiction, it’s a primer for what not to do when the State has you in lockdown.

10. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley

If you’re going to read Nineteen Eighty-Four, read the other prophet of dystopia too. Brave New World might convince you that we’ve always lived in a dystopian future, with or without the coronavirus. Read for context to the debate surrounding dystopias that you might not know existed.

11. Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie

A magnum opus with a sprawling narrative that follow the history of our country with more than a pinch of what literature types like to call “magical realism”. If you think it’s overhyped, here’s something to lure you in: it’s basically X-Men: First Class set around the time of the Emergency. Not even kidding.

12. Em and the Big Hoom by Jerry Pinto

A heartbreakingly honest look at loving people with atypical states of mind and how to deal with loss and mourning. Not all of us will come out of this lockdown unscathed. Jerry Pinto shows us we can still laugh and cry and live, even if our loved ones can’t anymore.

13. The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy

Another book that you might think is overhyped, but I assure you, it’s worth the read, if not for Roy’s lush, vibrant prose, then for the unflinching gaze it casts at the cruelty of family and the realities of caste oppression, both things that some people are grappling with more than ever during the lockdown.

14. Annihilation of Caste by Dr B.R. Ambedkar

If you’re interested in questions of caste, go to the source. Ambedkar is a titan when it comes to anti-caste literature, but he’s also a keen student of history and sociology. Read the speech he never got to give and try to find reasons why his argument doesn’t hold water. Whether you succeed or not, you will have learnt something crucially important to the world around us.

15. The HarperCollins Book of English Poetry, edited by Sudeep Sen

A book I’m currently reading, so take my recommendation with a grain of salt. Poetry is something we don’t read as much as we should and anthologies are a great way to start getting into poetry, especially this one, with its special focus on Indians writing poetry in English. If nothing else, read the poems in this collection by Jeet Thayil. Maybe they’ll inspire you to read the whole book, as they did for me.

16. London ki Ek Raat by Sajjad Zaheer

Translated into English as A Night in London, Sajjad Zaheer’s novel is a masterpiece of modernist fiction set before Independence. Reading it certainly made me aware of how the more things change, the more they stay the same. Read it for the way in which people belonging to your grandparent’s generation echo the exact same sentiments you might have, only in a different context.

17. The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexander Dumas

I’m a sucker for melodrama, and Dumas is its master. Read the book in its unabridged form to cry, rage and experience the rollercoaster of emotion and revenge that Dumas creates. If nothing else, it might offer you a little catharsis.

18. Any book you've already read

My list, my rules. And here’s the rule: re-read something. We often don’t get the time to but you’ll be amazed at how much different a book can feel the second time over. If you’ve never read a book before, pick up the first book you see and read it again if you liked it the first time. You’ll thank me later.

19. Any book you've been meaning to read

Tsundoku is the Japanese term for the act of buying books and never reading them. Whether they’re physical books or e-books, whether you obtained them or someone else did, if it’s there and it’s waiting for you, let it wait no more. Get into reading, now.

20. The book you're about to write

“If you find a book you really want to read but it hasn’t been written yet, then you must write it.” – Toni Morrison, speech at the annual meeting of the Ohio Arts Council, 1981.

This was the quote that convinced me I wanted to be a writer someday. Let it inspire you too. We are living in strange times and if there’s one thing that such times give birth to, it’s strange narratives. Be the midwife to the tales of the new world we are living in. Add to this list. Add to my list. Add to your list. Be the writer the world wants to read. Be the writer you need to be. Good luck.

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twitchesandstitches · 5 years ago

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Commission for @alt-hammer of a Karkat/Terezi/Nepeta polyamory romance set on an AU where the trolls live on Earth and, after a year away, have returned to Karkat for a sleepover whle moving into his place and got STACKED

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The photo lurked in a crowd of other pictures, of varying sizes; some were pretty much the same size as it, and others were a lot bigger. Still others towered over it like a very sweet tiger over a kitten, making the little photo look ridiculously tiny.

There was probably a pretty good metaphor in that, wagered Karkat Vantas.

The photo he was staring at was the absolute oldest one, taken by the Parent Trio themselves; he, Nepeta and Terezi had barely been more than larval wrigglers there, hardly popped out of their cocoons and still poking at the humans for the exotic thrill of it. He was a bit stunned by how small Nepeta and Terezi were in this one; they were barely any taller than him, Nepeta wiry, Terezi very stout, and with Karkat’s more feminine build, and the way they had always been sat Vantas-Leijon-Pyrope, there was also a sliding scale of ‘round to pointy’ horn shape. A bit inverted for body shape, but whatever.

He followed the trail of photos taken over the years. They always sat in the same way, but always kind of teasing; Nepeta bonking Karkat with her horns while Terezi had him in a headlock, for example, back when they were in middle school with their human friends. The photo passed; so did the years, and there was a common theme there. Terezi and Nepeta got bigger, and Karkat did not; circa the college years, he was sitting upon their thighs just to be in frame with them, and their large bustlines pressing into his back in a way that was very distracting and they were totally doing on purpose.

He tried not to crack a grin at the memory.

Finally he looked down at the photo in his hands, taken just that morning to celebrate Nepeta and Terezi moving in after a year away from home, establishing their careers and incidentally hitting their full adult growth, and taking their respective careers of intrepid zoologist and internal affairs agent by storm. He’d been living a pretty ordinary life, by all accounts, in technical assistance calls. Even before they left for that fateful year, and they had to continue their relationship mainly via video calls, he wondered why they stuck with him.

(‘It’s nice to come home and know it’ll always be there, nice and safe,” Terezi had said once, before kissing him on the cheek. Usually that was for teasing, but he supposed this time it meant something special.)

Karkat selected a special place of honor for the photo and placed it where it would loom over all the others, like the girls did to him. Right behind the other photos, plainly visible and the new glass still shiny on it.

On the photo, Karkat was doing his best to look stern and serious; hard to do, sitting on a chair that made you look tiny, just to get into frame. The two women were next to him, sitting in a way that accidentally (and he had doubts about it being an accident) pressed their door-breaking hips right into him; both their hips had to be almost wider than he was tall! They were a lot bigger than him, more than twice his size, and while he was small for a troll, he was still bigger than a human; they would have towered over any of the beings native to their adopted world, and even over other trolls.

In the photo, he looked kind of stunned. Kind of funny, looking it at from this angle, but he still remembered the weight of them pressing against him from both his sides and above; the sense of mass like their personal space included him too, how their bustlines had grown so large he couldn’t look them in the face if he got too close. That his horns were about level with their waists. They were just so damn big.

Their hugs were a lot more fun, though.

Nepeta, in the photo, was grinning; her thick lips framed an open smile as she hugged Karkat with one wiry arm. Shaped rather like an hourglass (huge boobs, small waist, huge hips, all corded with muscle), she was at least nine feet tall, her breasts bigger than her head and filling out the lab safe gear she was wearing. She’d still just come off her shift at the biology labs for this photo. A long tail, covered in the same thick and fluffy proto-fur as the cropped hair hanging over her face, curled around both Karkat and Terezi.

Oh boy. Terezi; he blushed at the memory. She looked too big to even fit into the frame, a big and… motherly looking troll, like a personification of the very idea of the Hot Mom everyone had a crush on. Big all over; massive boobs, a soft and plump gut hanging over her belt line, absolutely massive hips, huge thighs wider than Karkat’s whole body, and she was even taller than Nepeta to boot, at least a full head-and-shoulders more. Even sitting down, cackling up a storm and doing the neat trick of giving Karkat noogies but being a sweetie about it, she emanated a weird charisma. The tightly pressed and professional business suit of a lawyer she wore (the cleavage cut low, not because she wanted to but her boobs were just so big that low cuts popped in) seemed incongruous.

Appearances were deceptive. Terezi Pyrope and Nepeta Leijon were by far some of the most skilled, competent and smart people in the whole world, and he was still a little offended on their behalf that they wanted to spend their lives with him.

He knew them well; Karkat had been dating the two of them ever since high school; technically middle school, if you believed their parent’s interpretation of things. Multi-person relationships were not so uncommon these days, especially among trolls, and definitely after the discory of ancient troll artifacts depicting cultural touchstones of their unknown homeworld from before they had ever come to Earth; the translated notions of pansexual relationships based on different sorts of interpersonal dynamics had been an interesting one, and the discovery of it had put Aradia’s mom, Damara Sr., right in the spotlight.

She was a generous lady, bankrolling Terezi and Nepeta’s education like she had, and they had really gone places in but one year. To the law circuits, to the most prestigious laboratories in the world… and he’d been with them all the time, dating mostly by distance, over video call and e-mail, but they’d all been loyal to each other even as fame seekers came calling to earn their favors.

‘Terezi and Nep have got weird taste,’ Karkat concluded. Those two women had turned down some big stars, sticking with him. He was just the guy who kept the house for them to come home to, or so he’d thought of himself.

There was a soft motion from behind him, a sense of air being moved, and he didn’t even have to look around to know that Nepeta was standing nearby now, her tail swishing gently. He turned to face her and instantly blushed, staring back at the ground.

Nepeta’s boobs… were so… BIG. Where was her face at!? Where am I supposed to look… oh damn, that is BIG… don’t look, don’t look! BE A GENTLEMAN, YOU DENSE VAGABOND.

“Aw,” Nepeta cooed, perfectly aware of what he was thinking, and she moved over to him, bouncing enthusiastically all the while. “Come here!” She scooped him into a hug; he squeaked as he was lifted off the ground, against a much cooler body and then a lot of softness that he sank into, like a big and slightly sloshy bed. He nearly vanished into her cleavage as she hugged him, purring rumbling all around him.

And then, she kissed him on the forehead, holding him up higher to do that.

She put him down. Karkat wobbled faintly. “Are you going to keep doing that every time you see me now…?” He said weakly.

Nepeta nodded firmly. “I have to make up for lost time. I haven’t been around you for too long! Me and Terezi promised!”

Karkat felt his heart skip several beats at the thought. He felt warm and fuzzy, thinking about it. He was just a solid romantic.

But, to buisness. “Okay, we got everything ready for our official first night together as a… uh. Proper romance trio?”

Nepeta frowned. “I don’t know.” She turned her head and yelled, “TEREZI!”

“WHAT?!” Another voice bellowed from elsewhere.

“DO WE HAVE ALL THE STUFF WE NEED!?”

“I DUNNO! BRING IT HERE! MIGHT AS WELL GET EVERYTHING READY!”

Karkat nodded with a grim purpose totally inappropriate to the situation. “IT WILL BE DONE!”

“COOL, THANKS!” Terezi said. “I’LL BE DOWN, GIMME A SECOND!”

“WAIT, YOU DON’T NEED TO-” There was a loud stomping noise, as if of stars taking a very curvaceous weight they were not built for. Karkat groaned. “Never mind…”

Nepeta’s mouth worked, calculating the damages likely to ensue. As she did, her horns gouged right into the ceiling; she was just too tall for it otherwise. “Oops…!”

“Never mind! Gotta renovate this place anyhow.”

“I’m sorry!” Nepeta said anyway. “I don’t want to ruin your house! Our house! Um. Sorry!”

“...Eh. Place has been empty for a while; it’s mostly just been me here.” He froze up. He had talked about a lot of things to Nepeta and Terezi since they left and he’d stayed behind, but he’d never quite found a way to put into words the numbing sense of isolation.

He had missed Nepeta’s bone-crushing hugs, the way Terezi threw an arm around his shoulder and crushed his body to her own ithat wasn’t quite bullying. He missed their voices on the air, the sound of them singing off-key to drown out an especially annoying commercial.

(“Come on!” they’d yelled, years ago, when they had been small; Karkat had been slightly smaller, but they had been just as tiny as him, three rambunctious gremlins, their horns like a sliding scale of round to pointy.

He’d wandered over, grumpy and pouting, but he bellowed louder than either of them, and they picked up the song with him, discordant and screeching until Dad Vantas came down and promptly joined. Then he headbutted the TV and dared the kids to do the same.

He still remembered how cool Terezi and Nepeta’s hands felt on his hot blooded arms.)

“Having to get repairs done is totally worth have you guys here, full time,” he said, straying back into his usual persona.

Nepeta gave him a very knowing look that calmly indicated she wasn’t buying into his deceptions, and she smiled. “Sorry anyway. Look… I got some meat pies for us earlier. Let’s bring them up.”

“Yeah, sure.”

Karkat dropped to all fours and galloped into the kitchen, the bulk of Nepeta right behind him. She paused at the entrance and he gamely ignored the severely wrecked doorframe and the spaces that had apparently been carved out for some distinctly curvy frames much too large to fit into a Vantas-sized doorway. He walked past a trailer of crumbled plaster and glanced up to the ceiling. There was an impact point, as if of an unwary head boink-ing into the ceiling, and two wavering tears right into it, apparently scooped right out with easy force, and they went all the way to the table… and another pair going back out. They were pretty wide and, he was sure, a perfect match for Nepeta’s slightly concave horns.

He pretended it wasn’t there. No reason to make her sad.

Even so, he went to the closet and got out a little cleaning robot he’d gotten Dave to design into a crab-like shape. It swore in a very creative mash of randomized pretentious insults and obscure slang; that would have been Sollux’s part of the gift. He sent it to clean up the mess and went to get the pies.

He tried, at least. The table was built to his specifications (a little bigger than an average human, but smaller than most trolls), but the specially woven basket was almost wider around than the tables entire diameter. Filled to the brim with enormous pies that had to weigh a couple dozen pounds each, stuffed with juicy meats and savory sauces, each one nearly as big across as Karkat’s torso and promised to feed an entire family for a week. They’d probably make mouthfuls for Nepeta and Terezi, though.

“This is just a few pies, huh!?” He said, grumpily.

Nepeta grinne and patted one huge hip. “A growing girl needs lots of food to build up!”

“That’s the excuse you’re going for?”

“Yep!”

There was a loud stomping behind him, at the newly expanded doorway to the kitchen. It was both an announcement, declaration of intent to enter, and lurking beneath that, a quieter invitation.

It was a very layered noise, but that was just Terezi Pyrope all over.

Karkat turned and looked up, and up, and up some more, at an absolutely enormous teal-blood troll woman. He’d been vaguely aware that the two loves of his life had kept growing when he had just sort of petered out, and that puberty was a gift for them that never stopped giving, but it had been one thing to get a vague idea of on video call. It was totally different to see their full enormity in person.

Terezi didn’t so much move as swagger, and her hips suited a motion like that; they were so wide, testaments to absurd fertility, that she couldn’t even fit them into the doorway, and she was too tall to fit anyway. She ducked down, swinging one hip in and then the other in a surprisingly quick jerk. Her breasts heaved, pinching against the doorway, just too big to fit through so they were pushed together, as if by a rather mean-spirited push up bra. Terezi grunted with effort, heaving and struggling, her broad shoulders flexing…

Nepeta winced, covering her ears in expectation of an architectural problem. Karkat avoided further stress and just blurted out, “Oh, hell with it, just smash through!”

Terezi did so. A lot of plaster rained down, and a bit of framework crumbled around her waist as she stood up, and bonked her head into the ceiling just like Nepeta apparently had earlier. “Ow!” She ducked down again, too tall for this room. “Stupid low ceilings…” Karkat grimaced at her, and Terezi verbally backpedaled. “Uh, it’s a good low ceiling though… yeah. Your ancestors should be proud. ...I think?”

“Damn right!” Karkat retorted, mostly on reflex. It was a family joke that the house had been in the Vantas bloodline, in its various permutations, ever since trollkind had first come to Earth from wherever it was they’d originally come from. The archaeological evidence that pinned the earliest trolls at beng at least around six thousand years on Earth made the claim of owning this spit of land extremely unlikely, since at that point Karkat’s most distant ancestors had probably been crawling around central Asia with the semetic branch of humanity they would eventually be considered blood-brothers to, several continents away from this house.

It could be very hard to tell the difference between a running Vantas joke and a logical impossibility the family had nonetheless wired into their brains. Certainly Karkat’s father, Kankri, thought it was important to keep the joke going with a totally straight face.

Terezi grinned, but given how huge her boobs were, it was really hard to tell; they looked almost bigger than Karkat’s whole upper body, and projected out from Terezi’s torso like a cliff face, her t-shirt hanging loose from their contours. Her face, gorgeous as it was, had become a rare sight for him.

Terezi seemed to fill the entire kitchen, even though she wasn’t that big. She was too tall to comfortably walk into a human-sized room, and too wide (and too curvy, and too busty) to deal with ordinary doorways without breaking them, but the fact that she was probably around ten feet or so tall didn’t account for the sheer weight her presence had.

Terezi was charismatic; she could have been a leader of humans and trolls alike, and he’d eagerly followed the news accounts of her terrorizing corrupt court rooms and bureaucracies into shape. The terror of bribe-bought officials and authorities too eager to employ force or keep people controlled, Terezi came and swept the landscape like a dragon in a fantasy story, leaving behind ashes that she grew into a much better organization.

She put a hand on his shoulder, and leaned down enough so that her face was on level with his. Her thick lips brushed wetly against his mouth. “C’mon,” she murmured. “Let me gimme a hand.”

“Both of us!” Nepeta chided her. “We’re all in this, all three of us!”

“Yeah, that too.” Both women placed a hand on Karkat’s shoulders and gave him a pleasant squeezy touch. He almost fainted; after so many years of barely being in their presence, he was being spoiled terribly by them!

Terezi stood up, and lifted up the basket without any real sign of effort. Her arms were bulky, soft, and had no real definition, but he had felt her arms, and the muscles there put bridge cables to shame. He contemplated faking a swoon just so he could fall into her arms, but decided against it. She’d probably let him drop and then she would pick him up and tease him so bad.

Terezi winked at him. “Let’s get going,” she said, and stifled an odd sensation, as if of a little surge building up. Nepeta felt it too, but it was so minor, neither of them thought to say anything.

They did feel very hungry, though.

-----

Several hours passed as they got everything ready.

At last Karkat sat down on what was, to him, a mattress so thick and heavy that it could double as a very gradual bounce house. To Nepeta and Terezi, it was a comfortably thick mattress, sized up for their particularly sizes. It was stable enough, and steady enough, to support a little blanket, and all the food and drinks they wanted on a nearby tray. Approximately a dozen kegs worth of different fizzy drinks, bowls of snacks and tasty treats that Karkat could have slept inside.

The room was large, the ceiling newly renovated for the two ladies to actually be able to stand up in. Nepeta sat up and waved her arms excitedly, stretching her claws out. Terezi lounged on a small pile of blankets, rolling around and cooing. “Someone get a movie queued up,” she mumbled. “I’m feeling it~!”

Karkat, dwarfed by the two giant women, sat in their shadow and he examined a little agenda clipboard. He rifled through it. Food? Check. Drinking things? Check? Terezi and Nepeta? Very check. Karkat? HE poked himself, felt quite real, and he checked that off too.

Terezi rolled her eyes; presumably; she had been blind since birth. She left him too it and swallowed a meat pie whole, frowning at the rumbling in her belly. “Geez, I’m starving.”

“Me too!” Nepeta outdid her, gulping down two extremely large sandwiches at once, her jaws stretching to fit them in.

Karkat didn’t pay much attention to them begin to gorge, or their puzzled comments on why there were suddenly so hungry, and if he had he might have put two and two together. As it was, he selected a queue of movies for them to watch, all things they had seen together in the past as a kind of tribute to the good old days, and celebrating the new ones to come.

When he was done, Terezi and Nepeta were sitting upright, their guts rumbling very loudly. “Uh,” he said. “You two all right?”

Nepeta winced. “My tummy kinda hurts. And my boobs!” She gestured towards her heavy bustline. “It’s itchy!”

“Me too,” Terezi said. “This feels familiar.”

Nepeta nodded. “Yeah! I… oh. Oooohhh.”

Trolls have growth spurts. It was a biological thing. They usually grew gradually, but sometimes, a growth spurt hit all at once. It needed a lot of nutrition to fuel the growth, but once it hit, it was intense.

And intense it was; though it took not much more than about half a minute of furious biological activity, it seemed longer, and Karkat saw it for the first time in person. Terezi and Nepeta’s growth spurts had been big, he knew the results, but it didn’t prepare him for the sight of their overhanging t-shirts straining as their breasts abruptly swelled bigger, dozens of pounds of flesh growing on the spot!

“Eep!” Nepeta squeaked, trying to cup herself and failing. A few seamlines popped as her cleavage dove, the suddenly constraining fabric forcing a lot of new breast-flesh upwards. Her boy shorts creaked as well, in a way indicated her thighs had swelled so much the sides were touching even now, and her butt growing so much her shorts looked like a thong from the back!

Terezi sat back speculatively as her body grew in the same way as Nepeta’s, perhaps a bit more dramatically with how much larger she already was. Her boobs appeared to double in size! Already bigger than her head and upper torso, they expanded with some audible milky noises to be large enough to overflow right into Terezi’s lap, over her thighs, and even right onto the bed. Perfectly round, fabric creaking and t-shirt peeling away from all but the most awkward of her contours, so much boob that it was being pushed upwards into two hills of cleavage, rising higher than her eyes.

And she, and Nepeta, were still growing.

Eventually it petered off, with one particularly dramatic flounce from Terezi. She doubled over, nearly flopping right onto Karkat boob-first, nailing him underneath her. He sank into her new assets, and made an adorable squeaking noise.

“Oh, wow… this is a, a lot!” Nepeta said, examining herself. She turned to Karkat. “Are you okay!?”

“Yes,” Karkat said, ratherly muffled from all that Terezi on him.

Terezi leaned up and fell back down again, her increasingly gargantuan backside wobbling heavily in her pajama pants. They looked more like leggings now, though. “I’m okay, I’m fine! Just gimme a WHOA!” She overbalanced and flopped over, again, but this time NEpeta dove forward and pulled Karkat out of the splash zone.

Terezi did a thumbs up. “Nice work… ooh, this is gonna be an adjustment.”

“That was on purpose, wasn’t it,” Karkat said weakly, his body still tingling.

“The growth?” Terezi replied. “No. Landing on you?” She turned from her faceful of boob, grinning. “Maaay-be!”

Nepeta hugged him, and he fit very snugly into her expanded cleavage. It had to be going from her collar all the way to her ribs! Not as huge as Terezi’s upper body not being totally concealed, but still, that was big. Karkat sank in, and was quite content with that. “See? I told you we needed the nutrition!”

“Hmph!” He squeaked. “Let me go…!”

“Nuh uh. Make up for lost time, remember?”

Terezi snuggled over, with some difficulty; her new bust size was throwing off her balance too much. But she locked up with Nepeta, Karkat neatly pinned between them, and Terezi first kissed Nepeta between the horns, and then Karkat, her breasts pushing against Nepeta’s so that Karkat was lost in a world of giant girlfriend boobs.

“You’re sneaky,” he managed to say, too dazed to be more clever.

Both girls giggled as a movie started to play, and they hugged each other and their tiny boyfriend more enthusiastically.

#/#//#///#////#/////#commissions #my writing #fics #alt hammer #twitchy!homestuck #twitchy!terezi #twitchy!nepeta #twitchy!karkat #queued

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karenpage · 6 years ago

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soft kastle prompt! Frank's comes back from yeehaw states after dd3 and is with Karen and he knows about everything that happened and they're just in bed and he cant stop looking st her and touching her maybe they cuddle up and eat take out or watch TV or something but Frank is just his puppy self in love with her

When he left New York, everything was quiet. Calm. Or, as close as a city that never sleeps can be to dreaming - he wondered if shit, maybe he had gone and died that day at the carousel because he had never caught an inch of peace while living.

But he is. He’s breathing and right now it tastes like Joshua trees, juniper thick and prickly on the shoreline and the kick of salt, sand, the sea. Frank’s never had the chance to appreciate this country, and for all its faults…

It sure as hell’s a beautiful place.

Watching the fat, yellow sunset on the far side of the grand canyon, or rise in the shadow of Mount Rainier, in the thicket of a forest or in the heart of a desert valley. Frank saw it all and let it stick to his ribs, let it sink past the kevlar and tucked it someplace safe. He’s not nor has he ever been a sentimentalist but maybe the new Frank gets to be. Gets to appreciate the little things, the sing of cicadas or a nice lady buying him coffee in Tucson when he complimented the apron that matched her eyes.

Maybe isn’t much to go off of but it’s more than the finality of death so he’d take that, and whatever grain of good will he finds along his way.

He really shouldn’t be all that surprised that, while he was gone, everything in Hell’s Kitchen had gone the way of its namesake. Worse, is that a certain Miss Page sat at the epicenter of the wreckage and all he had left of that calm is lost in the twitch of fingertips, resting against the trigger’s curve.

She has got to stop making a habit of pissin’ off the worst sorts of people, even if it’s evidently in her job description as an investigative journalist, to do just that.

Frank will worry about that some other time.

She’s safe right now, tucked into his side and snoring. Karen had warned him, sleep heavy and slurring her speech, says that Ellison woke her up, asleep at her desk and asked her to keep it to a dull roar.

Her nose twitches, eyes moving rapidly beneath their lids. She’s dreaming, and Frank finds himself wondering, not for the first time, what she dreams about. Is it his place to ask? Does he exist in her in-between? Does he have that right?

Frank doesn’t entertain the notion that he’s good enough for her, but he’s also not as hellbent on self-sacrifice these days so he’ll unpack that when she isn’t a warm weight in his arms and she isn’t smiling in her sleep.

She shifts, huffs out a sigh and the furrow between her brow deepens, she doesn’t have the right to be this cute, not when he’d seen her fire and fury. Nearly died three times just to make sure she saw another day of living. But here they are and she’s riled up, even in her dreams, so Frank chuckles, tucks some feathery strands of her hair behind her ear and murmurs, “can’t catch a break, can ya?”

When she wakes up, he’d carefully disentangled himself, left her bundled up in her favorite blankets on the couch while he sat at the kitchen table, ordering Thai food in a hushed, gruff voice. Trying to keep quiet so he wouldn’t disturb her. It isn’t that, which pulls her out of her deep, and evidently busy sleep. It’s the space he left, it’s the phantom of his arm around her waist and the spot beside the hollow of her throat that burns where he’d placed a kiss moment before.

“Hey,” she rubs the sleep from her eyes, sitting up to rest her chin on the back of the couch, watching him. “Food?” With a yawn full of hope. Single syllables and short sentences are the groggy intellecutal’s best friend.

Frank doesn’t mind, brevity is sort of his shtick. So he just smiles at her over the laminated edge of the takeout menu and says, “yes ma’am.”

Romance isn’t grand gestures, isn’t hundred thousand dollar diamonds too heavy to lift the hand its on. It’s not even fresh flowers in a vase every day. It’s the roses on the window sill that’d grown too large for the ceramic pot, so they’d been transplanted into something larger. Left to grow. To thrive. It’s the singing hush of rain against the window and the way the neon light outside makes Frank’s eyes look like liquid gold, and how her stomach fills with butterflies when she can’t look away.

“Perfect.” She smiles lazily, stretches her arms above her head and when she squints up at him he’s stepped over to her, his thumb sweeping back and forth across her chin.

He doesn’t say anything, Frank’s always been a man of action, words are more the wheelhouse of the journalist he loved, pressed a kiss to her forehead and rested his own against it. Their touchstone of peace, comfort, of quiet worship.

Coming back had meant the city, but returning to Karen is where he found himself home.

#asks #kastle #kastleff #kastle fic #kastle fanfic #*writing #holy shit this is so soft and i'm proud of it also i'm EMO #Anonymous

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cyberneticlagomorph · 6 years ago

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It was morning when she came, swept in under cover of darkness and picked the lock on your front door as easy as a 5th grader saying their ABC's. She waited for you in the tavern, ass planted on the smooth surface of your bar like she owned the place, her eyes were an unnaturally bright green that glowed dimly in the darkness of the still closed establishment. A sword and shield badge was clipped to her lapel, the sign of the Knights of Malta. You'd had run-ins with her kind before, puffed up "magic cops" that do more harm than good. You were distinctly reminded of the other evening, when Magnolia sent two of this stranger's brethren squealing into to the night, half changed into slobbering pigs. You wondered if that was why this new Knight was there, to make Magnolia pay. Your hackles raised at the thought, as the Knight chuckled,

"Simmer down there, kiddo, I'm not here to bring you in," she hopped off the bar, boots thudding hollowly on your pristine floor. An unspoken 'yet' hung in the empty air between you as the Knight sauntered closer. You saw movement back by the kitchens and remembered Magnolia, a silent prayer was sent to any god listening in hopes that Maggie had enough sense not to do anything stupid. Something was different with this Knight, something the earlier two lacked, it made your skin itch and your stomach writhe.

"I need your help, there's been a murder." those six words sent your stomach hurtling to the floor, metaphorically shattering along with any sense of bravado you'd cultivated in the brief moments you thought this was about Magnolia. Your brain seemed to function in slow motion, sluggishly trying to arrange the facts presented into something coherent.

"...Murder? ...Who?" you managed to stutter out, assuming that it was someone you'd known and they were calling you in to ID the body. Here your mind went off on a tangent, trying to identify those most likely to be newly deceased, for some reason you felt like crying, like this was all your fault. The Knight hesitantly and awkwardly pet your shoulder, muttering a half assed apology as the feeling of fear and dread started to slowly lift from you.

"Aura of Intimidation, I can't turn it off." she explained as she gave you a nudge towards the door and you numbly marched out without a second thought. Maggie watched from the kitchen windows, even as you were leaving you could see her trembling in fear, maybe even anger as she watched you go. The tavern would be fine without you, Tammy knew what to do when you weren't there, it'd be ok. The Knight, who's name you were afraid to ask for, led you to her car. You sat in the passenger seat and stayed painfully quiet as the woman got in and drove off. Silence blanketed the car from the moment the doors closed and your seatbelts clicked into place, this seemed to make the woman uneasy, way more than it made you so she fought to break the tension.

"My name is Detective Addison, and I require your assistance interrogating a victim."

She didn't offer any further explanations, and her so called 'Aura of Intimidation' thoroughly discouraged you from any further prodding. The ride to the morgue was short and dreary, punctuated by a miserable soaking spray that was too light to be rain, but too heavy to be fog. Umbrellas did little against cloying moisture, so anything unfortunate enough to get caught in it had to just suffer with being damp. Detective Addison led you inside the plain gray building that housed whatever special morgue the Knights used, the place smelled astringent, cold, and clean. The clocks on the walls there didn't seem to move, time seemed syrupy and tentative like a hundred people holding their breaths, not knowing they'd never breathe again. Restless ghosts brushed against you as the detective half dragged you to where the corpse was, the ghosts watched you with eyeless faces and mouths open at impossible angles. You pretended not to see them, not to feel them, it'd only upset them.

The room the corpse was in was fridgid and sterile, everything looked disgustingly clean despite the faint odor of death that hung over that sad sad place. You found yourself fixating on everything except the task at hand, you weren't entirely sure why you were so afraid, you handled dead things on an almost hourly basis. You'd cleaned corpses to the bone, seen what decomp and putrefaction could really do to something, dealt with smells so vile that they clung to you for days, so why did this freak you out? Somehow, none of that prepared you for what you were about to see. When the body bag was unzipped, something left you almost as easy as your stomach contents did the moment you laid eyes on what was left of the victim.

Part of you felt humiliated at vomiting, you couldn't remember the last time you'd gotten sick because of a dead thing. It seemed ironic and childish, especially now that you were doing something so important. By the time you'd cleaned up, the corpse was still waiting for you. Desiccated and curled in on itself, arms held defensively, face contorted in horror, mouth agape in an eternal scream. It had no tongue. Someone didn't want whoever this was snitching from beyond the grave, and yet you were expected to ring some sort of testimony out of them regardless. You could do that, but first things first.

Your magic crackled along your spine filling the air around you with the same dusty static that clung to the screens of old fat-back TV's when they were switched off. Your biolume danced in fitful patterns, your freckles seemed to swim across your skin, forming into ancient symbols carved in places where the dead lay sleeping. This corpse was but a touchstone, a thread tethered to a soul sent flying to whatever afterlife would take it, you plucked the thread like a guitar string, calling back the soul. If Addison was to be believed, this person hadn't been dead long so it shouldn't take much to call them back. You hoped. In the end you had to drag the poor bastard back from whatever realm of rest by the scruff of their metaphysical neck. They crashed into their old body with little fanfare, producing a rattling wheeze from the birdcage of a chest. They moved stiffly, joints creaking and cracking as it struggled to uncurl and sit up. You strained to hold the spell, this person refused to stay here and whatever afterlife you tore them from was desperately calling them back.

"Ask..." you hissed at Addison, mouth going dry, "can't... hold... for... long."

The detective is staring at you in awe or maybe even horror, she opens her mouth to speak but only stammers. The corpse reaches for you, rasping, creaking, groaning. You can't move or else risk losing control of the spell or worse, the victim grabs you by the throat with astonishing strength, their life flashing before your eyes at a blinding pace.

Small, helpless, new

Growing, growing, growing

Endless schooling, magic lessons with mom after class

Getting their-- HER Witch's tattoos at fourteen

Honing her craft for years and years

Moving away from the coven

It hurts, so sad, so much regret. But she had to, for work.

The job is hard and unfulfilling but pays well

A dark alley, its raining, cold, after work and her feet are hurting

She missed the last bus home and has to walk, her umbrella is back at the office

The smell of sweets, the promise of somewhere dry

A smile in the dark, a flash of teeth turned snarl

Pain, weakness, exhaustion, fear

Fear fear fear fear fear fear fear fear

Can't run, can't hide

The smell of sweets, burning sugar, baking things, barely hiding the scent of vicera

A scream, the taste of blood, growing blackness.

You are torn from the vision as Detective Addison pulls the victim's hand from your throat. Your hold on the spell slips, the dead dying for the last time as your vision swims and you are sick again, but not even the taste of bile can shake the ghost of blood from your tongue.

#emetophobia #action post #ic #ask to tag #death #body horror

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touchstonehomeproducts · 8 months ago

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#home decor #diy home projects #interior design #home improvement #home remodeling #diy projects #tv lifts #motorized tv lift #tv lift mechanism #touchstone tv lifts

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burnbrite-fireplaces · 1 year ago

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Touchstone TV Lift Mechanisms

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#home decor #home & lifestyle #interiors #interior decorating #interior designers #home builders #diy projects #tv lift mechanism #motorized tv lift #touchstone tv lifts #woodworking #av integrators

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a-sweet-pea · 6 years ago

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The Last Flight

A/N: I see ‘hyperfixation’ pop up on my dash every so often, and as far as I can gather its sort of related to add / adhd, and it pretty much is what it sounds like. With that in mind, if a person had plenty of other writing projects to deal with but then they watched an episode of a TV show, and a thirty-second portion lodged itself in their brain so firmly that they watched just that clip, like, eighteen more times, while walking to pick up some takeout, while on lunchbreak at work, and it made them absolutely fall in love with the idea of reinterpreting that whole episode in a G/T context, such that they pretty much couldn’t focus on any other WIP because they were too in love with the performance of this particular actor, the combination of old-fashioned military politeness, cocky fly-boy attitude tempered with vulnerability and confusion, and big dark scared eyes and clark-kent style hair, and then they wrote almost two-thousand words about it, is that what hyperfixation is? Asking for a friend.

On an entirely unrelated note, this is a short fanfic of Season 1, Episode 18 of the Twilight Zone. Some pieces of the dialogue are taken directly from the episode, and I highly recommend watching it (it’s available on USA Netflix) if only the segment from 3 minutes in to 7 minutes in.

- - -

Witness Flight Lieutenant William Terrance Decker, Royal Flying Corps, returning from a patrol somewhere over France. The year is 1917. The problem is that the Lieutenant is hopelessly lost. Lieutenant Decker will soon discover that a man can be lost not only in terms of maps and miles, but also in time and dimension - and all of these navigational touchstones are waylaid in the Twilight Zone.

Sara was just stepping out of her front door when the plane landed. The street was empty. Not many people were up at six in the morning on a saturday, at least not in the early early spring, when the weather had a habit of acting as if it was still winter. Sara was only up because a particularly loud bird had taken up residence in the tree next to her bedroom, and she was never able to go back to sleep once she’d woken up. She was only outside because inbetween bouts of birdsong, she’d heard this weird chattering engine noise and wanted to see what it was. And she saw it the moment she stepped outside; a model airplane landing on the sidewalk going up to her house like it was a runway. It touched down at the far end of the walk, by the mailbox, and came to a stop about halfway to the stoop.

Who on the street owns a model plane? She looked the road up and down but there were no conspicuous remote-control-holding children in any of the nearby windows. Maybe someone got one for Christmas and they only ever play with it early in the morning.

The propeller slowed to a lazy twirl as she got closer. Hopefully whoever owns it put their name on it so I can return it.

Something climbed out of the plane.

What the hell?

Sara had seen videos of people putting their pets in model cars or planes; hamsters or lizards, anything small enough to fit in the cockpit. It seemed like such an awful thing to do to a pet. I hope they didn’t put their name on the plane, and then I’ll have an excuse not to return it. You don’t get to have a pet if you’re going to fly it around in a remote control plane; I don’t care how carefully you land it, that’s just irresponsible.

No, it wasn’t a pet. It must have just fallen out of the cockpit, not climbed out, because it was shaped like a person.

Now, putting an action figure in a model plane; that’s fine.

An action figure that was standing up on it’s own, despite having tumbled out of the plane. An action figure that took off it’s helmet and tossed it into the plane. An action figure that turned around and looked at her, and stumbled backward, and took off at a run in the opposite direction..

Small as it was, it didn’t get very far.

She knelt down on the concrete and curled her fingers around the fleeing figure. It wriggled in her grip; tiny hands pushed against her fingers, struggling to pry them apart.

It’s not…it isn’t…

She grabbed the plane in her other hand. It was metal, and it was still hot, like the hood of a car that’s been running all day.

They make remote control airplanes out of metal, don’t they?

She pushed back through the door, hands full, and let it slam shut behind her. The thing that could not be what it looked like still struggled in her right hand. She let her grip loosen a fraction. The plane, she set down on the coffee table. The other thing, she did not set down. She sat down on the couch and took a deep breath.

Why am I so shaky?

Her hand shook as she lifted it toward her face, opening it as she did so that her palm lay flat. And on it was an impossible creature, scrambling to his feet.

A man. A man with dark eyes and dark hair that was parted at the side and touseled at his forehead. A man dressed in a leather aviator jacket, a white scarf, clean pressed pants, and tall leather boots. A man who was four inches tall.

“Holy…” He flinched at the sound of her voice, raising his hands in front of his face as if to shield himself.

“Sorry!” She cut her volume in half. “A-are you okay?”

He wasn’t listening. His eyes were fixed on her, but his attention was elsewhere, fumbling for something at his waist; some miniscule metal implement. When he raised it, gripping the handle in one hand and steadying his grip with the other, it became clear what it was.

“Easy, easy.” His shoulders were steady but his chest was heaving with hyperventilated breaths, and his hands were shaking so much the gun didn’t stay pointed in any one direction for more than a moment. Even so, she was such a big target (relatively speaking) that he was liable to hit something if he fired. “Put the gun away.” He swallowed, readjusting his grip. “I’m not gonna hurt you, I promise.”

“Are you American?”

It took her a moment to answer, she was so startled. He can talk. That somehow made him more real (one would have thought that seeing and touching him would have been enough to establish the truth of his existence, but apparently she had still been partway unconvinced).

“Yes. Are you?”

He shook his head. “British.” The tip of the gun faltered, and then lowered. “What-who are you?”

“I’ll tell you if you put the gun away.” He nodded and holstered the gun. “Name’s Sara. Sorry for grabbing you, hope you’re not too shook up. What’s your name?”

He stood straighter, a puppet with it’s strings pulled tight all of a sudden. “Leftenant William Terrance Decker.” He brought his hand to his forehead with rigid military precision. “Royal Flying Corps.” Hearing him speak properly, she could have guessed he was British. A refined and educated, albeit currently out of sorts, English accent.

“Pleased to meet you, Leftenant.”

He lowered his arm, but he still stood rigid as a toy soldier. He turned his head one way and the other, taking in his surroundings with increasing confusion. “Where exactly am I?”

“Havelock, North Carolina. In my house, specifically. Where did you think you were?”

“Well, I thought I was landing at 56 Squadron RFC.” He laughed nervously. “But I also thought the worst thing that could happen on patrol would be to run into was a German plane, and well, here we are.”

German? Despite the fact that Germans had no doubt made many planes since, ‘German plane’ was a phrase somehow inexorably tangled up with the world wars. Add to that a British pilot, and the connection was almost undeniable. And his plane has a definite early-World-War look to it, like the one on display up at Cherry Point.

“What’s today’s date?”

He answered without hesitation, although he looked puzzled. “March the fifth.”

Correct. “What year?”

He looked doubly puzzled. “Why, nineteen-seventeen.”

“Nineteen-seventeen?” The little figure in her hand suddenly felt different. More alien. More lost.

“That’s correct.” What little composure he’d mustered over the past few minutes faltered slightly. “Isn’t it?”

“It’s…” She paused, trying to choose her words carefully. Was it possible to phrase this delicately? “It’s two-thousand and seventeen.”

He stared past her. There was different fear in his eyes now; not the wild, dangerous fear of seeing her. Something subtler and stranger.

“Uh…look here…” He spoke much softer now, voice steady despite his obvious distress. He looked down at her palm; she felt the toe of a minuscule boot tentatively tap her skin. “You…” He looked back up at her, eyes wide with concern and confusion. "You’re not joking with me, are you?"

She shook her head.

“Good lord…” Already unsteady on his feet, his weight shifted and he fell to one knee.

“Careful!”

He didn’t respond to her warning, if he even processed it. He was staring into the distance, lowering himself to a sitting position in the center of her palm. She could feel his arms shaking where they touched skin.

“When I was landing…” He was whispering still, Sara had to lift her hand closer to hear him. He was too lost in remembering to notice. “There was a thick white cloud…I couldn’t hear my engine. It was like being swallowed in a vacuum. The same sort of thing happened to Guy Niemayer. He disappeared one day while flying. At the memorial service the Cardinal said ‘He belonged to the sky, and the sky has taken him.”

“Well, he never showed up here, if that’s what you’re wondering.”

He jumped, shaken from a reverie.

“Well of course not, I only…” His voice trailed away. He was looking at her as if he’d only just remembered she was there. “Is this what he saw as he was dying?”

“You’re not dying!”

“Aren’t I?” He gestured at the air, at nothing. “Castaway in time and space; in the clutches of giant? It all feels to real to be a dream, and if it’s not then I don’t see what else it could be.”

“You’re not in my clutches!” Sara lowered her hand to the coffee table; the Leftenant’s fingers dug into her palm at the sudden movement. “I-I’m not clutching. Honest.” He didn’t move at first, but the longer she kept her hand flat and still, the more assured he was that it wasn’t going to suddenly lift off again. He pushed himself to his feet and walked unsteadily off the edge of her palm. Sara lifted her hand away and absent mindedly brushed her palm with the thumb of the other hand.

He’s so light.

He took a few cautious steps on the glass table top, looking up toward the ceiling, what must have been a hundred feet above him or more.

“I’m sorry…” He turned back to her with a very militaristic about face. “I’m sorry if I scared you. I didn’t mean to."

He crossed his arms and furrowed his brow. “I’m not afraid.”

She smiled wide and did one of those quick breathy laughs you can’t politely supress because you weren’t expecting it. “Good.”

A/N 2 : If this is rushed and unpolished, it’s because I farted it out. This idea was literally posessing me. Also, I spelled Lieutenant weird on purpose because they pronounced it that way. This whole post is a fever dream. I make no apologies.

#giant/tiny #fanfic #g/t fluff #g/t writing #holy guacamole i wrote fanfiction #am i a real tumblr now #I’m sorry I never post anything #happy Mabon everybody #asweetpeawriting #asweetpea #g/t

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thelazypetowner · 8 years ago

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1/23: A Dog’s Purpose Update (Statement from Polone, the producer, and BAU, the animal training company)

Please note I’m not trying to tell people how to feel, who to blame, if they should boycott or not (or who they should be boycotting), etc. I’m not trying to tell anyone what to think. This is just me summarizing the latest news on A Dog’s Purpose in regards to the video released by TMZ of Hercules, the german shepherd, being forced into the water. Anyway, we’re finally getting some real details from producer Gavin Polone. I’ve yet again summarized it here, but here is the link for anyone interested in reading the full article. I only quoted what I thought were the key parts.

1. Polone recognizes that Hercules was forced in the water and blames the handler, AHA representative, those on set who did nothing, and himself for not being present.

“As with the TMZ video that you saw, two things were evident: 1) the dog handler tries to force the dog, for 35 to 40 seconds, into the water when, clearly, he didn’t want to go in; and 2) in a separate take filmed sometime later, the dog did go into the water, on his own, and, at the end, his head is submerged for about 4 seconds. These two things are absolutely INEXCUSABLE and should NEVER have happened. The dog trainer should have stopped trying to get the dog to go in the water as soon as the dog seemed uncomfortable, and the trainers should have had support under the dog as soon as he came to the side of the pool and/or had less turbulence in the water so he never would have gone under. The American Humane Association (AHA) representative who is paid by the production to “ensure the safety and humane treatment of animal actors,” as its website states, should have also intervened immediately on both of those parts of the filming. So should have whomever was running the set. Those individuals should be held accountable and never used again by that studio or its affiliates. I also hold myself accountable because, even though I was not present, I knew and had written about how ineffective AHA has been over the years.”

2. Hercules wanted to jump in the water.

“In footage of the rehearsal for the scene, you can see the dog not only unafraid of the water but desperate to jump in. In fact, he had to be held back by the trainer from going in too soon (the dog was trained to retrieve a toy sewed into the hoodie of the stunt woman and give the illusion that he was pulling her to safety).”

3. Polone confirmed the author’s earlier statement that Hercules did not want to jump because he was on the wrong side of the pool.

“The dog did the scene in rehearsal without problem, though it was from the left side of the pool, not the right side, which is where the dog is in the TMZ video.”

“Before the first real take, the handlers were asked to change the start point of the dog from the left side, where he had rehearsed, to the right side. That, evidentially, is what caused him to be spooked.”

4. Polone also confirmed Cameron’s statement about the safety precautions.

“In the rehearsal footage, it’s clear that there is a safety diver and a trainer in the pool to protect the dog in case of a problem, as well as two trainers, a stunt coordinator and a safety officer on the deck, and that there are platforms built into the pool where the dog can swim to and stand, if need be. The pool was heated to between 80 and 85 degrees, causing it to steam.”

5. Polone explained why the video was misleading.

“When the dog didn’t want to do the scene from the new position, they cut, though not soon enough, and then went back to the original position. The dog was comfortable and went in on his own and they shot the scene. The TMZ video only shows the unfinished take of when the dog was on the right side.”

“You can also see, at the end of the scene, the dog going underwater for four seconds, which never should have happened, and then the diver and handlers lifting the dog out of the pool. The dog then shook off and trotted around the pool, unharmed and unfazed. They only did one take of the full scene and then ended for the day. TMZ’s edited version gives the impression that the dog was thrown in and eventually drowned, since the two parts seem to be connected. You never see him pulled out and OK.”

6. Polone prompted people to consider why the video was edited, why it wasn’t released for a year and three months, and PETA’s involvement (it seems to be implied he believes PETA is at fault).

“Why did the person who edited it to seem like the two clips were connected and not let you see the dog was alright and never in mortal danger? Also, why did the person who shot it hold on to the video for a year and three months before releasing it? If he wanted to protect animals, wouldn’t he want whoever did wrong stopped from doing the same on other productions immediately? Of course, waiting until eight days before the movie's Jan. 27 release date, when the studio was spending money creating awareness of the film, would yield a bigger sale to TMZ, which is known to pay for newsworthy video. I can only believe that desire for personal profit explains why the shooter of the video did as he did.”

“Not only have they been circulating the TMZ video, which portrays an inaccurate picture of what happened, but they have included a clip from our trailer where you see the dog jumping into a treacherous rushing wall of water. But THAT ISN’T A REAL DOG, it is a computer-generated dog leaping into the water. Isn’t that the definition of "fake news"? In another post, they show a German Shepherd in a dismal steel cage, which isn’t our dog. Again, misleading.”

7. Polone explains why the whole movie could not be in CGI because it would be too expensive. Three sceengrabs (two shown here) were also released showing the CGI.

“The idea of making a more contained movie like A Dog’s Purpose with all CGI animals is impossible, as the cost would be astronomical to replace every animal in the movie. For example, the digital dog that I mentioned above cost $41,075. Extrapolate that across the whole movie, where most of the scenes have at least one dog in them and many have more, plus other animals in other scenes in the background. I would estimate that it would balloon the budget by a factor of four or five to more than $110 million, making the project economically unviable.”

8. Polone describes PETA’s faults (which hopefully by now we should all know that PETA is garbage).

“In 2008, PETA sent a letter to Ben & Jerry’s ice cream suggesting that it stop using cow’s milk to make its product and instead use human breast milk. It has protested various video game makers for cruelty toward digital animals in their video games. It has posted articles on its website suggesting that dairy products cause autism. More troubling, PETA has been against the growing “no-kill” movement to spare the lives of unwanted pets in shelters by advocating for and facilitating pet adoption. no-kill has vastly reduced the number of euthanized animals in cities around the country. Conversely, according to The Washington Post, at a shelter in Virginia, owned by PETA, the euthanasia rate was 80 percent and in some years the rate has been as high as 90 percent (the rate in Los Angeles city shelters, thanks in large part to The Best Friends Animal Society’s “No Kill LA” program, has dropped by 66 percent to about 16 percent).”

9. Polone proposes that people use the incident to focus on encouraging the building of “a better method to protecting animals on sets through a better animal-protective service.”

“I say that we build a better method of protecting animals on sets through a better animal-protective service. PETA says the film should be boycotted and no dogs ever be used in movies or TV. I would ask that if a teacher were to hit a student in class, should the whole school be closed and all the children left without an education? This is a movie that is intended to reinforce the idea that animals are sentient and we should love and protect them, just like the movies and TV shows I saw as a kid made me understand. You probably have similar touchstones that relate to your feelings about animals, too. So, isn’t there worth in A Dog’s Purpose, and movies like it, from an animal welfare perspective? Wouldn’t it be better to fix the problems that led to this unfortunate and anomalous event and ignore the manipulated media and half-truths disseminated by those with either financial or extremist agendas?”

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In other news, Birds & Animals Unlimited (the company that provided Hercules to the production), sent a letter to TMZ. Here is the letter. Here are the key points:

1. Hercules was trained for months and was picked for his love of water.

“ Hercules, a two-year old German Shepherd, had been in training for months to perform the swimming scenes for this film. He was chosen for the film based on his love of the water.”

2. BAU confirmed Hercules was uncomfortable by siding pool sides.

“After many successful takes throughout the day, a request was made to have Hercules perform the same behavior, but changing the point from which he was to enter the pool. As the camera started rolling, the trainer in the water began to call the dog. It quickly became apparent that Hercules did not want to enter the pool from this location.”

3. BAU addresses the voice in the video saying they were not in charge of Hercules’s well-being.

“We cannot identify the voice that appears on the videotape saying “Just gotta throw him in,” but there were many people on the film set and it was not anyone with any authority over Hercules’ welfare as some of the news coverage implied.”

4. BAU described Hercules willingly jumping in the pool where he briefly went under the water before being lifted by a diver.

“In the next shot, Hercules entered the pool from his rehearsed location. While swimming across the pool, the current carried him closer to the wall at end of the pool than it had in previous takes. When the dog reached the wall, he was briefly submerged at which point the diver and trainer immediately pushed him to the surface. Trainers poolside then pulled him out of the water. Hercules shook the water off and wagged his tail.”

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In my personal opinion, I think this is a great start to figuring out what happened, but we’re not all the way there yet. I'm also glad to hear that the producer has recognized the problem (the handler, AHA rep, people not saying anything, etc.). However, I would still like to see some sort of fitting punishment for the handler and the AHA representative. I would also like to know who edited the video, why they edited it, and why they waited so long to release it. It has not been confirmed to be PETA, despite many stating it, but there are heavy implications and suggestions that it was. Nonetheless, I’m overall more pleased by the article than upset, annoyed, or disgusted by it. I still believe they should release the full, unedited clip so we know exactly what happened. It would be the easiest way to end this mess.

#a dog's purpose #other #lazytalks

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buzzdixonwriter · 5 years ago

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The Seven Secrets Of Pure Dumb Luck

“Introduce a little anarchy. Upset the established order, and everything becomes chaos. I'm an agent of chaos. Oh, and you know the thing about chaos? It's fair.”

-- The Joker, The Dark Knight

Sandra Newman’s meme has been bouncing around the Internet for a while now, and while many people get it’s point, some fail to realize she’s satirizing not people who fail to achieve success (however one chooses to define “fail” or “success”) but rather the mindset of those who are “born on third base and believe they knocked a home run”.

It’s the mindset of privilege, and while her meme specifically focuses on those with the privilege of wealth, truth be told privilege comes in many shapes / forms / fashions depending on when and where and to what group one is born.

But let’s focus on the wealth-based form she cites.

Chance, as Louis Pasteur observed, favors the prepared mind.

It’s certainly solid advice for everyone to strive to be as mentally / emotionally / physically fit and healthy as possible, to develop productive habits, and to constantly be open to learning new things.

Before they became glorified trade schools, universities’ classical liberal arts degrees didn’t teach students what to think but how to think, the goal being to produce a cohort of graduates who -- regardless of what situation they found themselves in -- would be able to analyze what was needed and figure out how to achieve it.

Nowadays, thanks to libraries and the Internet, it’s possible for anyone to be their own polymath.

All it takes is the will and desire.

But despite being prepared, there is no guarantee chance (or fate, or fortune, or destiny, or God’s will, or plain ol’ dumb luck, or whatever you want to call it) will provide you with an opportunity to succeed.

Indeed, as our friend The Joker observes, chaos is fair.

It will dash you down just as easily as it lifts you up, and sometimes it will lift you up only to dash you down all the harder. (Cue Carl Orff’s “Carmina Burana - O Fortuna”.)

You can’t complain about that. As Jimmy Durante observed, dem’s da conditions wot prevails.

Life is neither pure intellect -- such as chess -- nor pure chance -- such as roulette.

Rather, it’s more like Monopoly.

Now, as a game, Monopoly starts off fairly (well, kinda…each player brings their own particular skill set / insight / personal history to the proceedings, and sometimes a player’s background can provide either a distinct edge or disadvantage).

Every player starts with $1,500.

The bank owns all the properties.

Play is determined by a random roll of the dice, and a random distribution of Community Chest / Chance cards when one lands on those spaces.

Player wheel and deal, each trying to force the others into bankruptcy, thus winning the game.

(It’s really a damn tragedy that Monopoly -- which began life as a socialist teaching tool called The Landlord Game -- has become a cultural touchstone for sociopathic success instead of a dire warning for community disaster.)

Now imagine Monopoly played under these conditions:

Of the maximum number of eight players at the start of the game, two only get $100, two only get $500, two get the full $1,500, one gets $2,000, and one gets $5,800.

The two wealthiest players never go to jail, never pay any penalties.

The players with the least money pay double.

The two wealthiest players get their $200 every time they pass Go.

The other players only get $150…or $100…or just $20.

The two wealthiest players can borrow as much as they like, any time they like, and pay back at their leisure with only minimum interest.

The other players can’t borrow enough to meet their needs, and what they do borrow, they need to pay back on a rigid schedule at usurous rates.

The two wealthiest players can purchase properties and houses and hotels whenever they like.

The other players are either limited to what they can buy or denied the chance all together.

It would be bad enough if the unequal benefits were handed out purely at random, but in order to more perfectly model real life, this version of Monopoly would require the owner of the game not only get the most money but be the banker as well, that their best friend takes the #2 position, and that lesser acquaintances fill in the bottom six slots on the roster.

And to make it even more realistic, imagine that the top two players are allowed to keep their winnings and properties from the previous game every time a new game was started.

Now, it is possible for a player starting with only $100 to come out on top and win the game through a combination of shrewd business strategy and uncommonly good luck --

-- but that ain’t the way the smart money bets.

At a certain point, no matter how brilliant one may be regarding financial strategy or computing mathematical odds, the only “winners” will be those pre-ordained to win by the owner of the game.

Every successful person is successful for a combination many different reasons, but unless one admits pure blind luck random chance is one of those reasons, one is lying.

Case in point: My personal history.

Random factor #1: I was born as a male into a white middle class family in the American South in the early 1950s. For most of my life, I had advantages millions of others -- black, white, and female -- were denied.

Random factor #2: Because my father changed jobs a lot, we moved frequently, averaging out one move a year, usually to a different town or at the very least a different school district. As a result, I grew up with no lifelong friends or neighbors or schoolmates.

Random factor #3: Because we were always moving into new schools, I gravitated towards science fiction fandom. It gave me a group of friends and pen-pals who were never further away than my mailbox, and a sense of permanence lacking in real life.

Random factor #4: Because I was involved in fandom, and because I had a creative bent (and because my father once harbored ambitions himself of being a writer -- throw that in as random factor #4b -- and thus could provide me with books and magazines on writing), I started writing science fiction / fantasy / horror stories and reviews / articles / letters of comment to fanzines.

Random factor #5: I was drafted at age 19, and thus missed an opportunity to go to college straight out of high school.

Random factor #6: I met and married my wife while in the Army, and we started a family. This gave me an incentive to stay in for the full 6 year enlistment, as well as an incentive to find employment in my desired field as soon as possible once I was discharged.

Random factor #7: Though the GI Bill got me into USC’s film school, that started in October of 1978 and I was discharged in February of 1978. We came to Los Angeles to find a place to live and hopefully for me, a mail room or driver job in the film or TV business so I could make a little money and get my feet wet in the industry before starting film school.

Random factor #8: After visiting nearly 100 other studios and production companies (no kidding!) in search of a mail room or driver job, I worked my way down to Filmation Studios. By chance I was there during what was called hiatus season (i.e., the lag time between the end of production on the previous season’s shows and start of the next) and Filmation’s live action producer / director Arthur Nadel Jr. was twiddling his thumbs in his office, bored out of his mind, so when the receptionist asked if he wanted to see the guy looking for a job, he said sure, send him back, anything to kill an afternoon.

Arthur took a liking to me. I told him about writing but not selling short stories for sci-fi magazines (see random factor #4 above). Arthur asked if he could see some, and to make a long story short, when October rolled around I was making too much money as a staff writer at Filmation to go to film school that year (see random factor #6), so I decided to put it off until 1979.

Which became 1980…1981…1982…

Random factor #9: Filmation downsized and turned me loose in early 1980; I found a staff position at Ruby-Spears, and there met Steve Gerber and several other people whom I’d work with repeatedly in the ensuing years, becoming dear friends with many of them.

Random factor #10: For various reasons, Steve and I left Ruby-Spears. Steve was hired to story edit Sunbow’s G.I. Joe series.

Now here’s an important point: I was not one of the first round picks for staff positions at Sunbow.

Indeed, I was told even freelancing there would likely be a long shot.

However, Steve knew I’d served in the Army (see random factor #5) and, realizing the stories they were getting lacked a certain sense of verisimilitude, asked if I would look them over and give him some feedback. I did so gratis because we were friends (see random factor #9).

From that feedback, Steve recommended to Sunbow they hire me as a staff writer / technical advisor. That quickly morphed into an assistant story editor position, and from there I went on to story edit the second season of G.I. Joe.

I’m going to break off my narrative there; clearly there were a lot of other random factors that impacted me through the next 35 years of my life.

My point is, had any one of random factors #1 through #10 been changed, the subsequent events of my life and their random factors would have changed as well.

If I hadn’t been drafted and sent to Korea (random factor #5), it’s extremely unlikely I would have ever met Soon-ok (random factor #6).

And while one can argue these random factors carried combinations of good and bad circumstances (and sometimes what seemed bad -- being drafted and sent to Korea, f’r instance -- turned out to be really, really good), had I not been steered into the direction of sci-fi fandom (random factor #2), and / or if my father hadn’t encouraged me (random factor #5), I wouldn’t be posting this, you wouldn’t be reading it.

Would I have been a better / happier / more successful person under different circumstances?

Good question -- and I’d like to think no (at least to the better and happier parts).

But I would certainly have been different.

To return to my central point: I got breaks other people didn’t get because of my random factors. Assuming all the random factors averaged out with good nullifying bad and vice versa, I can feel a certain sense of accomplishment in my career.

But there are others who had far more advantages due to their random factors, and others who faced far more obstacles due to their random factors.

Looking back at our Monopoly game, while there’s nothing wrong with a truly random advantage, there’s also something profoundly unfair about ginning the game to stack the odds in your favor.

#writing #creativity #privilege #success

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